Cathedral of the Sea (44 page)

“I have to do it.”

She crawled over and reached out to clutch his legs.

“I have to do it, Aledis!” he repeated, jumping backward.

Then he ran off down Montjuic hill.

S
HE COULD TELL by the vivid colors of their clothes that they were prostitutes. Aledis was uncertain whether she should approach them, but the smell from their pot of meat and vegetable stew was irresistible. She was hungry. She was starving. The girls, who looked as young as she was, were moving and talking animatedly around their fire. When they saw her close to the camp, they invited her to join them; but they were prostitutes. Aledis looked down at herself: ragged, evil-smelling, filthy. The whores called out to her again; she was dazzled by the way their silk robes caught the sun. Nobody else had offered her anything to eat. Hadn’t she tried at every tent, hut, or fireside she had come across? Had anyone else taken pity on her? No, they had treated her like a common beggar. She had begged for help: a crust of bread, a piece of meat, a vegetable even. They had spat on her outstretched hand and laughed. These women might be whores, but they had asked her to share their meal with them.

The king had ordered his armies to assemble in the town of Figueres, in the north of the principality. All those nobles who had not abandoned him headed there, together with the hosts of Catalonia, including the citizens of Barcelona. Among these was Arnau Estanyol. He felt free and hopeful, and carried his father’s crossbow and his blunt
bastaix
dagger.

But if King Pedro succeeded in bringing together an army of twelve hundred men on horseback and four thousand foot soldiers in Figueres, he also managed to attract another army: the relatives of soldiers—mostly of the Almogavars, who lived like Gypsies and took their families with them wherever they went: tradesmen selling all kinds of goods, and hoping to be able to buy whatever booty the soldiers obtained; slave traders; clergymen; cardsharps; thieves; prostitutes; beggars; and all kinds of hangers-on whose only aim was to try to cream off the army’s spoils. Together, they formed an incredible rear guard that moved at the same pace as the army, but obeyed its own rules—often crueler ones than those to be found in the conflicts they lived off like parasites.

Aledis was simply one more in this motley crowd. The farewell from Arnau was still ringing in her ears. She could still feel the way that her husband’s rough, clumsy hands had forced their way between her legs. The old man’s panting mingled with Arnau’s words in her memory. He had pushed at her, but she had not moved. He had grasped her more firmly, hoping for that fake generosity with which she usually rewarded his efforts. But this time, Aledis closed her legs. “Why did you leave me, Arnau?” was all she could think as Pau fell on her, pushing his penis into her with his hands. She gave way and opened her legs. She felt so bitter she had to stifle a desire to retch. The old tanner started to squirm like a snake on top of her. She was sick beside the bed, but he did not even notice. He was still thrusting away feebly, supporting his flaccid manhood with his hands, and nibbling at her breasts, where the nipples lay flat, unaroused. As soon as he had finished, he rolled off and fell fast asleep. The next morning, Aledis made a small bundle of her scant possessions, took a few coins she had managed to steal from her husband, and went out into the street as usual.

That morning, however, she headed for the monastery at Sant Pere de les Puelles, then left Barcelona and started along the old Roman road that led to Figueres. She walked through the city gates, head down, avoiding looking at the soldiers and restraining the urge to break into a run. Once she was beyond the city walls, she looked up at the bright blue sky and set off toward her new future, smiling broadly at all the travelers coming in the opposite direction toward Barcelona. Arnau had also left his wife; she was sure of it. He must have joined the army to get away from Maria! He could not love that woman. When the two of them made love ... she could tell! When he was on top of her, she could feel his passion! He could not fool her—it was her, Aledis, whom he loved. And when he saw her ... Aledis had a picture of him running toward her, arms outstretched. Then they would escape! Yes, they would run away and be together ... forever!

For the first few hours of her journey, she fell in with a group of peasants returning to their farms after selling their produce. She explained she was going in search of her husband because she was pregnant, and wanted him to know before he went into battle. From them she learned that Figueres was a good five or six days’ walk away, following the same road through Girona. She also had the chance to hear the advice of a couple of toothless old women who seemed so frail that they must break under the weight of the empty baskets they were carrying on their backs, but who nevertheless kept going barefoot, and showed an unbelievable strength for such old, weak creatures.

“It’s not good for a woman to be traveling these roads alone,” one of them told her, shaking her head.

“No, it isn’t,” agreed the other.

A few seconds went by, while they both paused for breath.

“Especially if you are young and beautiful,” the second one added.

“That’s true, that’s true,” the first one concurred.

“What can happen to me?” Aledis asked naively. “The road is full of good people such as yourselves.”

Again she had to wait, while the old women struggled to catch up with their group.

“In this part there are plenty of people. There are lots of villagers who live off Barcelona like we do. But a bit farther on,” one old woman added, still staring at the ground, “when the villages are fewer and there is no large city nearby, the paths become lonely and dangerous.”

This time her companion did not add an immediate comment. Instead she walked on another few steps, then turned to Aledis. “If you are alone, make sure you’re not seen. Hide as soon as you hear a noise. Keep away from other people.”

“Even if they are knights?” laughed Aledis.

“Especially if they are!” one of the old women cried.

“As soon as you hear a horse’s hooves, hide and pray!” added the other.

This time they both shouted the warning together, without even needing to pause for breath. They were so insistent that they came to a halt, and allowed the other peasants to get some way ahead. Aledis’s look of disbelief must have been so obvious that, as they set off again, the two old women repeated their warning:

“Listen, my girl,” said one of them, while the other crone nodded agreement even before she knew what her companion was going to say, “if I were you, I’d go back to the city and wait for your man there. The roads in the countryside are very dangerous, especially now that they are full of soldiers and knights off to fight. That means there is no authority, nobody is in charge, nobody is worried about being caught and punished by the king, because he is so busy with other matters.”

Aledis walked thoughtfully alongside the two old women. Hide from knights on horseback? Why on earth should she do that? All the knights who had ever been to her husband’s workshop had always been courteous and shown her respect. Nor from the many traders who supplied the tanner with his materials had she ever heard any stories of robberies or problems on the roads of Catalonia. Instead, they had regaled the old man and her with terrifying stories of what could happen during sea voyages that took them into the lands of the Moors or even farther, to the territory of the sultan of Egypt. Her husband had told her that for more than two hundred years, Catalan roads had been protected by law and by the king’s authority, and that anyone who dared commit a crime anywhere along them would be punished far more severely than for a similar offense committed elsewhere. “Trade depends on peace on the highway!” he would declare, adding: “How could we sell our products all over Catalonia if the king could not guarantee peace?” He would go on to tell her, as though she were a child, how two hundred years earlier it had been the Church that had first started to take measures to defend the roads. First came the Constitutions of Peace and Truce, drawn up at church synods. If anyone broke them, they faced instant excommunication. The bishops established that the inhabitants of their sees were not to attack their enemies from the ninth hour of Saturday to the first hour on Monday, or during any religious festival. This truce also benefited all members of the clergy and churches, and everyone who was headed toward a church or coming back from one. He went on to explain that these constitutions had gradually been broadened to protect a greater number of people and goods, until they included merchants and farm animals, as well as those used for transport, and then farming implements and houses, the inhabitants of villages, women, crops, olive groves, wine ... and finally, King Alfonso the First extended this official peace to all public highways and paths in his kingdom, ruling that anyone who broke these provisions committed a crime of
lèse-majesté.

Aledis looked at the old women, who had carried on walking in silence, bowed down under their burdens, dragging their bare feet through the dust. Who would dare commit a crime of
lèse-majesté?
What Christian would want to run the risk of being excommunicated for attacking someone on a Catalan road? She was still turning all this over in her mind when the group of peasants headed off toward the village of Sant Andreu.

“Good-bye, my girl,” the old women said. “Take heed of what we’ve told you. If you decide to carry on, be careful. Don’t go into any town or city. You could be seen and followed. Only stop at farmhouses, and then only when you see women and children in them.”

Aledis watched the group move off, with the two old women struggling to keep up with the others. A few minutes later, she was all alone. Until now she had been in the company of the peasants, talking with them and allowing her thoughts to fly out as she imagined herself with Arnau again, excited by the adventure she had experienced after her sudden decision to leave everything and follow him. Now, as the voices and sounds of her companions faded into the distance, Aledis suddenly felt lonely. She had a long way ahead of her; she put a hand to her forehead to try to make out where she should go, protecting her eyes from the sun, which was already high in the bright blue sky. Not a single cloud spoiled the magnificent dome joining the horizon to the vast, rich lands of Catalonia.

Perhaps it was not only a feeling of loneliness that Aledis felt when the peasants departed, or the strangeness of finding herself in this unknown landscape. The fact was that Aledis had never seen the earth and sky laid out before her, with nothing to prevent her from looking all round her and seeing everything stretched out in front of her ... whenever she liked! She stared and stared. She stared toward the horizon, beyond which she had been told lay the town of Figueres. Her legs trembled at the thought. She turned and looked back the way she had come. Nothing. She had left Barcelona behind, and could see nothing she recognized. Aledis looked in vain for the rooftops that until now had always come between her and this unknown marvel: the sky. She searched desperately for the smells of the city, the smell of her husband’s leather workshop, the noise of people, the sounds of a living city. She was on her own. All at once, the words of warning the two old women had offered her came flooding into her mind. She tried to catch some last glimpse of Barcelona. Five or six days! Where was she to sleep? How would she eat? She raised her bundle. What if their warning was true? What should she do? What could she do against a mounted knight or an outlaw? The sun was high in the sky. Aledis turned again toward where they had told her she could reach Figueres ... and Arnau.

She tried to be careful. She was constantly on the alert, listening for any sound that might disturb the road’s peace and quiet. As she drew near Montcada, where the castle stood proud on its hill, defending access to the plain of Barcelona, the road filled once more with peasants and traders. It was almost midday, and Aledis joined them as though she were part of one of the groups heading for the town, but when they came to its gates she remembered the old women’s advice, and instead skirted it and continued on her way on the far side.

Aledis was pleased to find that the farther she walked, the more the fears that had assailed her when she found herself alone gradually subsided. To the north of Montcada, she met up with more peasants and traders. Most of them were on foot too, although some rode on carts or on mules and donkeys. They all greeted her cheerfully, and this generosity of spirit also cheered Aledis. As she had done earlier, she joined a group, this time of merchants headed for Ripollet. They helped her ford the River Besós, but as soon as they had crossed it, they veered off left toward Ripollet itself. On her own again, Aledis avoided Val Romanas, but then found herself facing the real River Besós, a river that at that time of year had enough water in it to make it impossible for her to cross on foot.