Cathedral of the Sea

  Today, as Grau peered anxiously out of his windows to see if his guests were arriving, Bernat kissed his son on the cheek and sent him back inside.

  “It’s very cold, Arnau. You should go in.” The boy made as though to protest, but his father insisted. “You’ll eat a fine meal tonight, won’t you?”

  “Cockerel, nougat, and wafers,” his son said enthusiastically.

  Bernat gave him an affectionate tap on the behind. “Run inside. We can talk another day.”

  ARNAU ARRIVED JUST in time to sit down to dinner. He and Grau’s two youngest children—Guiamon, who was the same age as him, and Margarida, a year and a half older—were to eat in the kitchen. Josep and Genis, the two older children, were allowed to dine upstairs with their parents.

  The arrival of so many guests had made Grau even more nervous than usual.

  “I’ll see to everything,” he had told Guiamona as she was preparing the feast. “You look after the women.”

  “But how are you going to ... ?” she started to protest, but Grau was already giving instructions to Estranya, the cook, a plump, impudent mulatto slave, who kept one eye on her mistress while appearing to pay attention to what Grau was saying.

  “How do you expect me to react?” thought Guiamona. “You’re not talking to your secretary, or in the guild or the Council of a Hundred. So you don’t think I’m capable of looking after your guests? So I’m not good enough for you?”

  Behind her husband’s back, Guiamona had tried to restore order among the servants and to make sure that the Christmas feast was a success, but now, as their guests arrived and Grau fussed over everything, including their rich capes, she found she was pushed into the background as her husband had wished, and had to make do with smiling pleasantly at the other women. Grau meanwhile looked like a general in the thick of a battle: he was talking animatedly to his guests, while at the same time showing the slaves what they had to do and whom they were to attend to; the more he shouted and insisted, the more anxious they became. In the end, all of them—except for Estranya, who was in the kitchen preparing the meal—decided that the best thing was to follow Grau wherever he went.

  Freed in this way from all supervision—as Estranya and her assistants were all busy laboring over their pots and fires—Margarida, Guiamon, and Arnau mixed the chicken with the nougat, and stuffed food in one another’s mouths, laughing and joking all the while. At one point, Margarida picked up a jug of undiluted wine and swallowed a whole mouthful. She immediately turned bright red and her cheeks flushed, but she succeeded in not spitting any of it out. She encouraged her brother and cousin to do the same. Arnau and Guiamon both drank from the jug, but although they tried to keep their composure like Margarida, they started coughing and spluttering, searching desperately on the table for water, their eyes full of tears. After that the three of them could not stop laughing: just from looking at each other, at the jug of wine, or at Estranya’s huge buttocks.

  “Get out of here!” the mulatto shouted, tired of their shouts and laughter.

  The three of them ran from the kitchen, still laughing and shouting.

  “Shh!” another slave warned them at the foot of the main staircase. “The master does not want any children here.”

  Margarida tried to protest. “But ...”

  “No buts about it,” insisted the slave.

  At that moment Habiba came down in search of more wine. The master had shot her a furious look when one of his guests had tried to pour some out and been rewarded with only a few miserable drops.

  “Keep an eye on the children,” Habiba told the slave on the staircase as she passed by. “More wine!” she shouted at Estranya, going into the kitchen.

  Worried that Habiba might bring ordinary wine rather than the special vintage reserved for this occasion, Grau came running after her.

  The children had stopped laughing, and instead were keenly watching all this commotion. Grau spotted them with the slave.

  “What are you children doing here? And you? Why aren’t you doing anything? Go and tell Habiba that the wine is to come from the old jars. Don’t forget; otherwise I’ll flay you alive. And you children, get off to bed.”

  The slave bustled off to the kitchen. Their eyes still glistening from the effects of the wine, the three children smiled at one another. As soon as Grau had rushed back upstairs, they burst out laughing. Bed? Margarida stared at the wide-open front door, pursed her lips, and raised her eyebrows.

  “Where are the children?” Habiba asked when the slave appeared in the kitchen.

  “Wine from the old jars ...,” the slave repeated.

  “What about the children?”

  “The old ones. The old ones.”

  “But what’s happened to the children?” Habiba insisted.

  “In your bed. The master say go to bed. They with him. From the old jars, yes? He’ll flay us alive ...”

  IT WAS CHRISTMAS. The streets of Barcelona were empty: no one would be outside until midnight mass and the sacrifice of a cock. The moon shone on the sea so brightly it seemed that the street they were walking down stretched on forever. The three children stared in wonder at its silver reflection.

  “There’ll be no one on the beach tonight,” Margarida reasoned.

  “Nobody puts to sea at Christmas,” Guiamon agreed.

  The two of them turned to Arnau. He shook his head.

  “No one will notice,” Margarida insisted. “We can go and be back very quickly. It’s close by.”

  “Coward,” Guiamon hissed.

  They ran down to Framenors, the Franciscan convent built on the shore at the far western end of the city wall. When they reached it, the children stared across the beach to the Santa Clara convent, which marked Barcelona’s eastern limit.

  “Look!” Guiamon said excitedly. “The city fleet!”

  “I’ve never seen the beach like this before,” said Margarida.

  Eyes big as saucers, Arnau nodded in agreement.

  All the way from Framenors to Santa Clara, the beach was filled with ships of all sizes. There were no buildings to spoil the children’s view of this magnificent sight. Once, when Grau had taken them and their tutor down to the strand to watch one of the ships he had an interest in being loaded or unloaded, he had explained that almost a hundred years earlier King Jaime the Conqueror had forbidden any building on the beach in order to leave it free for boats to be grounded. None of the children had thought any more of what Grau had said: wasn’t it natural for ships to be beached like that? They had always been there.

  Grau had looked over at the tutor.

  “In the ports of our enemies and trading rivals,” the tutor explained, “none of the boats are left on the beach.”

  At that word “enemy” the four children were suddenly all ears.

  “It’s true,” Grau went on, finally sure of their interest. “Our enemy Genoa has a wonderful natural harbor protected from the sea. That means they do not need to beach their ships. Our ally, Venice, has a great lagoon reached by narrow canals: their ships are safe there from any storms. The port of Pisa is connected to the sea by the River Arno; even Marseilles has a natural harbor protected from rough seas.

  “The Phocian Greeks are known to have used the harbor at Marseilles,” the tutor added.

  “You say our enemies have better ports than us?” asked Josep, the eldest. “And yet we defeat them: we’re the lords of the Mediterranean!” he said, repeating the words so often heard from his father. The other children agreed: how was it possible?

  Grau turned to their tutor for the explanation.

  “Because Barcelona has always had the best sailors. We don’t have a harbor, and yet ...”

  “What do you mean, we don’t have a harbor?” protested Genis. “What’s this then?” he said, pointing to the beach.

  “This is not a harbor. A harbor needs to be a sheltered place, protected from the open sea, but this...” The tutor waved his hands toward the waves lapping on the shore. “
Listen, Barcelona has always been a city of sailors. Many years ago, there was a harbor here, like all the other cities your father mentioned. In Roman times, ships sheltered behind the Mons Taber, which was over there somewhere ... ,” he said, pointing to inside the city walls, “but gradually the land took over from the sea, and the harbor disappeared. Then there was the Comtal harbor, but that has gone too, and so has Jaime the First’s, which was also sheltered by another small natural outcrop, the Puig de les Falsies. Do you know where that is now?”

  The four children stared at one another, then turned to Grau. Laughing, he pointed his finger downward, as if trying to hide his gesture from the tutor.

  “Here?” all four of them chimed.

  “Yes,” replied the tutor, “we’re standing on it. But that one disappeared too ... so Barcelona was left without a harbor, but by then we were a sea-faring city, with the best sailors, and we still are ... even though we have no harbor.”

  “Well, then,” Margarida objected, “why is a harbor so important?”

  “Your father can explain that better than me,” said the tutor. Grau nodded.

  “It’s very, very important, Margarida. Do you see that ship?” He pointed to a galley surrounded by small craft. “If Barcelona had a harbor, we could unload it at a quay without needing all those people to unload the merchandise. Besides, if a sudden storm blew up now, the ship would be in great danger because it is so close to shore. It would have to leave Barcelona.”

  “Why?” Margarida wanted to know.

  “Because it couldn’t ride out the storm here: it might sink. Why, it’s even made explicit in the Ordinances of the Barcelona Coast. There it stipulates that in case of any storm, ships must seek refuge in either the harbor at Salou or at Tarragona.”

  “So we don’t have a harbor,” said Guiamon sorrowfully, as if he had been robbed of something of the utmost importance.

  “No,” said his father, laughing and putting an arm round his shoulder. “But we’re still the best sailors! We’re the lords of the Mediterranean! And we do have the beach. Here is where we ground our boats when they are not on a voyage, and it’s here that we repair and build them. Can you see the shipyards? There at the far end of the beach, where those arches are.”

  “Can we go onto the boats?” Guiamon asked.

  “No,” said his father, suddenly serious again. “Boats are sacred, my boy.”

  Arnau never went out with Grau and his children, still less with Guiamona. He was always left at home with Habiba, but later on, his cousins would tell him all they had seen and heard. They had explained everything about the beach and the boats.

  And there the boats were that Christmas night. All of them! The small ones: cockboats, skiffs, and gondolas. The medium-sized vessels: cogs, dromonds, gallivats, pinks, brigantines, galliots, and barques. And even some larger ships: naos, carracks, caravels, and galleys, which despite their size were forced by royal decree not to sail between October and April.

  “Look at them all!” Guiamon exclaimed.

  On the shore at Regomir they could see some fires burning, with watchmen sitting round them. Scattered along the beach from Regomir to Framenors rose the silent boats, lit only by the moon.

  “Follow me, sailors!” commanded Margarida, raising her right arm.

  Captain Margarida led her men through storms; they fought pirates, boarded ships, won battles. They leapt from one ship to the next, defeating Genoese and Moors, whooping in triumph as they regained Sardinia for King Alfonso.

  “Who goes there?”

  The three of them stood paralyzed with fright in the bottom of a skiff.

  “Who goes there?”

  Margarida poked her head over the side. Three torches were coming toward them.

  “Let’s get away from here,” Guiamon whispered, tugging at his sister’s dress.

  “We can’t,” she said. “They’re right in front of us.”

  “What about over toward the shipyards?” asked Arnau.

  Margarida looked over toward Regomir. Another two lighted torches were heading toward them from that direction.

  “It’s not safe that way either.”

  “The boats are sacred!” Grau’s words echoed in all their minds. Guiamon began to sob, but Margarida silenced him. A cloud covered the moon.

  “Into the sea!” ordered the captain.

  The three of them jumped overboard into the shallow water. Margarida and Arnau crouched down; Guiamon stretched out at full length. As the torches approached the skiff, the children moved out farther into the sea. Margarida looked up at the moon, praying silently that the clouds would keep it hidden.

  The search seemed to go on forever, but none of the men looked out to sea, and if one of them did ... well, it was Christmas, and they were only three frightened children—frightened, and soaked to the skin by now. It was very cold.

  By the time they reached home, Guiamon could hardly stand. His teeth were chattering, his knees trembled, and he was shaking uncontrollably. Margarida and Arnau had to lift him under the arms and carry him the last part of the way.

  When they arrived, all the guests had already left. Alerted to the children’s disappearance, Grau and the slaves were on the point of setting out to look for them.

  “It was Arnau,” Margarida said accusingly, while Guiamona and the Moorish slave girl plunged the little boy into a bath of hot water. “He talked us into going down to the beach. I didn’t want to ...” The little girl made sure she accompanied her lies with the tears that always worked so well with her father.

  The hot bath, blankets, and scalding broth were not enough to revive Guiamon. The fever took hold. Grau sent for the doctor, but his efforts were in vain. The fever grew worse: Guiamon began to cough, and his breathing became shallow and wheezing.

  “There’s nothing more I can do,” Dr. Sebastia Font said resignedly on the third night he came to visit.

  Pale and drawn, Guiamona raised her hands to her head and burst into tears.

  “But that’s impossible!” shouted Grau. “There must be some remedy!”

  “There may be, but ...” The doctor was well aware of Grau and his dislikes. But the situation called for desperate measures. “You will have to call on Jafuda Bonsenyor.”

  Grau said nothing.

  “Call for him!” Guiamona said, between sobs.

  “A Jew!” thought Grau. If you deal with a Jew, you deal with the Devil, he had been taught as a child. And as a child, Grau had joined the other apprentices to run after Jewish women and smash their water jars when they came to fill them at the public fountains. He went on doing so until the king bowed to a petition from the Jewry of Barcelona and prohibited all such attacks. Grau hated Jews. All his life he had harassed or spat at anyone wearing a badge. They were heretics; they were the ones who had killed Jesus Christ... how could he allow one of them to cross his threshold?

  “Call him!” shouted Guiamona.

  Her anguished cry was so loud that everyone in the neighborhood heard. Bernat and the apprentices shrank back on their pallets from the sound. Bernat had not been able to see either Arnau or Habiba for three days, but Jaume kept him up-to-date on what was going on.

  “Your son is fine,” he told him when no one was looking.

  Jafuda Bonsenyor came as soon as he got the message. He was wearing a plain black hooded djellaba, with the badge round his neck. Grau watched him from a distance as he stood in the dining room, hunched over as he listened to Sebastia’s explanations. Guiamona stood next to them. “Make sure you cure him, Jew!” Grau glared silently when their eyes met. Jafuda Bonsenyor nodded respectfully toward him. Jafuda was a learned man who had devoted his life to studying philosophy and the sacred scriptures. King Jaime the Second had commissioned him to write The Book of Sayings of Wise Men and Philosophers, but he was also a doctor, the most prominent in all the Jewish community. When he saw Guiamon, all he did was shake his head slowly from side to side.

  Grau heard his wife’s cries. He
ran to the stairs. Guiamona came down from the bedroom on Sebastia’s arm. Jafuda appeared behind them.

  “Jew!” hissed Grau, spitting as he passed by.

  Guiamon died two days later.

  No SOONER HAD they all returned to the house, dressed in mourning, after the burial of the boy’s body, than Grau signaled to Jaume to come over to him and Guiamona.

  “I want you to go to Arnau at once and make sure he never sets foot inside this house again.” Guiamona did not say a word.

  Grau told him what Margarida had said: that it was Arnau who had led them on. Neither his youngest nor a mere girl could have planned such an escapade. Guiamona listened to his accusations, cursing her for taking in her brother and nephew. And although deep in her heart she knew it was only a childish prank that had led to fatal consequences, the death of her youngest son robbed her of the strength to oppose her husband, while Margarida’s blaming of Arnau made it almost impossible for her to bear the sight of him anymore. He was her brother’s son, and she wished him no harm; but she preferred not to have to see him.

  “Tie that Moorish girl to a beam in the workshop,” Grau ordered Jaume before he went off in search of Arnau, “and make sure everyone gathers round, including the boy.”

  Grau had been thinking it through during the funeral service. The slave girl was the one to blame: she should have been looking after them. As he heard Guiamona start crying again, and the priest droned on, he wondered what punishment he should give her. According to the law, he could not kill or maim her, but no one could object if she simply died as a result of the punishment he meted out to her. Grau had never had to deal with such a grievous problem. He ran through all the different tortures he had heard of: covering her body in boiling animal fat (would Estranya have enough in her kitchen?); putting her in chains or shutting her up in a dungeon (that would not be punishment enough); beating her, putting her feet in shackles ... or flogging her.