Cathedral of the Sea (48 page)

“Because she lied to me,” she answered. “I gave her food and clothing. I took her in. I don’t like being lied to. You look like a good person, and I think she is lying to you too.”

Arnau looked her straight in the eye. What did it matter? Aledis was free of her husband and was far from Barcelona. Aledis would tell everything, and besides, this woman ... what was it in her that somehow made him feel at peace?

He leaned toward her and began to explain.

K
ING PEDRO THE Third had already been in Figueres for seven days when on 28 July 1343, he ordered the army to strike camp and begin the march on Roussillon.

“You’ll have to wait,” Francesca told Aledis while the girls were taking down their tent to follow the soldiers. “When the king orders them to set off, none of them can leave the ranks. Perhaps when we make camp again ...”

Aledis looked at her inquiringly.

“I’ve already sent him a message,” said Francesca in an offhand way. “Are you coming with us?”

Aledis nodded.

“Well, help out then,” Francesca told her sharply.

Twelve hundred men on horseback and more than four thousand foot soldiers, all of them armed and with provisions for eight days, set off toward La Junquera, a town little more than half a day’s march from Figueres. Behind them came a huge train of carts, mules, and all sorts of camp followers. When they reached La Junquera, King Pedro ordered them to set up camp once more: a new papal messenger, an Augustine friar this time, had brought another letter from Jaime the Third. When King Pedro had conquered Mallorca, King Jaime had turned to the pope for aid; on that occasion, monks, bishops, and even cardinals had tried unsuccessfully to mediate.

Now once more King Pedro refused to listen to the papal envoy. His army spent the night at La Junquera. Was this the moment? Francesca wondered as she watched Aledis helping the others prepare the food. No, it was not, she decided. The farther they were from Barcelona and Aledis’s former life, the more opportunity she would have. “We have to wait,” she told Aledis when she inquired anxiously about Arnau.

The next morning, King Pedro ordered everyone on the march again.

“To Panissars! In battle formation! Four columns ready for combat!”

The order ran through the ranks. Arnau heard it as he was ready to move off with the rest of Eiximèn d’Esparca’s personal guard. To Panissars! Some of the men shouted the word, others merely whispered it, but all spoke of it with pride and respect. The pass at Panissars! The way through the Pyrenees between Catalan territory and Roussillon. That night, only half a league from La Junquera, stories of the feats of arms from the legendary battle of Panissars could be heard round every campfire.

Panissars was where Catalans—the fathers or grandfathers of the current army—had defeated the French. The Catalans standing alone! Many years earlier, Pedro the Great of Catalonia had been excommunicated by the pope for conquering Sicily without his consent. The French, led by Philippe the Bold, had declared war on the heretic in the name of Christianity, and with the help of some traitors had crossed the Pyrenees by the pass at La Macana.

Pedro the Great had been forced to withdraw. The nobles and knights of Aragon had abandoned him and returned to their own lands.

“Only we Catalans were left!” said someone in the night, silencing even the crackling fire.

“And Roger de Llùria!” shouted another man.

His armies depleted, King Pedro had to allow the French to invade Catalonia while he awaited reinforcements from Sicily, under the command of Admiral Roger de Llùria. He ordered Viscount Ramon Folch de Cardona, the defender of Girona, to withstand the French siege until Roger de Llùria could reach Catalonia. Viscount Cardona mounted an epic defense of the city until at length King Pedro authorized him to surrender.

Roger de Llùria arrived and defeated the French navy. On land, the French army was swept by an epidemic.

“When they took Girona, they desecrated the shrine of Sant Narcis,” one of the soldiers at a campfire explained.

According to local legend, millions of flies had come buzzing out of the sepulchre when the French defiled it. It was these insects that spread the epidemic through the French camp. Defeated at sea, weakened by sickness on land, King Philippe the Bold called a truce in order to allow him to retreat without a massacre.

Pedro the Great granted him the truce, but only in his name and that of his nobles and knights.

Now ARNAU COULD hear the cries of the Almogavar company as they entered the pass at Panissars. Shielding his eyes, he looked up at the steep mountainsides off which the mercenaries’ bloodcurdling shouts echoed. It had been here, alongside Roger de Llùria and watched from on high by Pedro the Great and his nobles, that the Almogavars had slaughtered the retreating French army, killing thousands of men. The next day Philippe the Bold died in Perpignan, and the crusade against Catalonia was over.

The Almogavars kept up their shouting all the way through the pass, challenging an enemy that failed to appear. Perhaps they too remembered what their fathers and grandfathers had told them had happened on this very spot fifty years earlier.

Those ragged men, who when they were not fighting as mercenaries lived in the forests and mountains and spent their time plundering and laying waste to the lands ruled by the Moors, ignoring whatever treaty the Christian kings might have made, took orders from no one. Arnau had seen it during the march from Figueres to La Junquera, and it was obvious again now: of the four columns into which the king had divided the army, three advanced in formation beneath their banners, but the Almogavars swarmed in an unruly mass, shouting, threatening, laughing at their enemy, daring them to come and show themselves.

“Don’t they have any leaders?” asked Arnau when he saw how the Almogavars ignored Eiximèn d’Esparca’s call for a halt and instead went on with their disorderly advance through the pass.

“It doesn’t look like it, does it?” said a veteran who had come to a halt beside him, as all the royal shield bearer’s personal guard had done.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Well, they do have their leaders, and they are careful not to disobey them. They’re not commanders like ours, though.” The veteran pointed to Eiximèn d’Esparca, then caught an imaginary fly in his fingers and waved it in front of Arnau’s eyes. The bastaix and several other soldiers laughed at his gesture. “They have real leaders,” the veteran said, falling serious all of a sudden. “In their company, it doesn’t matter whose son you are, if you have a name, or are some count or other’s favorite. The most important of their leaders are the
adalils.”
Arnau looked at the Almogavars, who were still swarming past them. “No, don’t bother,” the soldier said. “You won’t be able to pick them out. They all dress the same, but all the Almogavars know who they are. You need four things to become an adalil: skill at leading troops; to give your all and to inspire your men to do the same; to have the qualities of a born leader; and above all, to be loyal—”

“That’s what they say our commander has,” Arnau interrupted him, pointing to the royal shield bearer.

“Yes, but nobody has ever challenged his position. To get to be an Almogavar adalil you need to have twelve other
adalils
swear on pain of death that you possess all these qualities. There would be no nobles left in the world if they had to do the same in front of their peers—especially when it came to loyalty.”

The soldiers listening to him all nodded their agreement. Arnau looked at the Almogavars once more. How could they bring down a charging warhorse with nothing more than a spear?

“Below the
adalils,”
the veteran went on, “come the almogatens. They have to be expert in battle, to give everything for their cause, to be mobile and loyal. They are chosen in the same way: twelve almogatens have to swear that the candidate possesses all the required qualities.”

“On pain of death?”

“On pain of death,” the veteran confirmed.

What Arnau could not have imagined was that these mercenaries’ independent spirit was so great that they would disobey even the king’s orders. Pedro the Third had ordered that once all his army had successfully crossed the Panissars pass, they should head directly for Perpignan, the capital of Roussillon. Despite this, as soon as they had emerged from the pass, the Almogavars split off from the main army and headed for Bellaguarda castle, which guarded its northern entrance.

Arnau and the royal shield bearer’s guard stood and watched as the mercenaries rushed up the slope to the castle. They were still whooping and shouting as they had done all the way through the pass. Eiximèn d’Esparca turned toward the king, who was also observing the attack.

But Pedro the Third did nothing. How could he stop them? He turned back and continued on his way to Perpignan. This was Eiximèn d‘Esparca’s signal. The king had sanctioned the assault on Bellaguarda, but he was the one paying the Almogavars, and if there was any booty to be shared, he wanted to be there. And so, while the main force followed the king in battle formation, Eiximèn d’Esparca and his men set off after the Almogavars.

The Catalans laid siege to the castle. That afternoon and through all the next night, the mercenaries took turns chopping down trees to make their siege weapons: assault ladders and a big battering ram mounted on wheels that was swung using ropes suspended from another, higher tree trunk, and was covered with hides to protect the men underneath.

Arnau stood guard below the walls of Bellaguarda. How were they going to storm the castle? They would be advancing unprotected, uphill, while the defenders could fire down on them from behind their battlements. He could see them up there, peeping out and observing the besiegers. On one occasion he even thought someone was staring straight at him. The defenders seemed calm, though his own legs shook at the idea of their watching him.

“They seem very sure of themselves,” he remarked to one of the veterans standing guard beside him.

“Don’t be fooled,” the man said. “Inside the castle they’re having a far worse time than us. Besides, they’ve seen the Almogavars.”

The Almogavars. There they were again. Arnau turned to look at them. They were working tirelessly and now seemed to be perfectly well organized. None of them was laughing or arguing; they were all getting on with the task in hand.

“How can they possibly frighten the people inside the castle so much?” asked Arnau.

The veteran laughed. “You’ve never seen them fight, have you?” Arnau shook his head. “Just wait and see.”

Arnau waited, dozing on the hard ground through a long night during which the mercenaries kept on building their machines by torchlight.

As day dawned and the sun rose over the horizon, Eiximèn d’Esparca ordered his troops to deploy round the castle. The shadows of the night had barely dispersed in the first timid light of day. Arnau looked round to see where the Almogavars were. This time they had obeyed the order, and were drawn up beneath the walls of Bellaguarda. Arnau peered up at the lofty castle. All the lights inside had been extinguished, but he knew they were waiting inside the walls. He shivered. What was he doing there? The morning air was chill, but his hands were sweaty on the crossbow. There was complete silence. He could die. The day before, he had often seen the defenders staring straight at him, a mere
bastaix:
the faces of those men, which then had been blurred in the distance, now appeared clearly before him. They were there, waiting for him! He shivered again. His knees were knocking, and he had to make a great effort to stop his teeth from chattering. He clasped his crossbow firmly to his chest so that nobody could see how his hands were shaking. The captain had told him that when the order to advance was given, he should run toward the castle, seek cover behind some boulders, and fire his crossbow up at the defenders. The problem would be to reach those boulders. Could he do it? Arnau found himself staring at them. He had to run there, hide behind them, fire his bow, duck down again, fire a second time ...