Cathedral of the Sea (9 page)

“Y
OUR SON WILL stay in the main house; Doña Guiamona will take care of him. As soon as he is old enough, he will become an apprentice in the workshop.”

Bernat paid only scant attention to what Grau’s assistant was saying. Jaume had burst into the dormitory at first light. The slaves and apprentices leapt from their pallets as though he were the Devil himself, and rushed pell-mell out of the door. Bernat was satisfied with what he heard: Arnau would be well looked after, and in time would become an apprentice, a freeman with a trade.

“Did you hear me?” Jaume asked.

When Bernat did not reply, he cursed: “Stupid peasants!”

Bernat almost reacted violently, but the smile on the official’s face made him think twice.

“Go ahead,” Jaume taunted him. “Hit me and your sister will be the one who loses. I’ll repeat the important things, peasant: you are to work from dawn to dusk, like all the others. In return you will have bed, food, and clothing ... and Doña Guiamona will take care of your son. You are forbidden to enter the main house: on no account may you do so. You are also forbidden to leave the workshop until after the year and a day necessary to win your freedom. Whenever anyone comes into the workshop, you are to hide. You are not to tell a soul of your situation, not even the apprentices in here, although with that birthmark of yours ...” Jaume shook his head. “That is the bargain the master has struck with Doña Guiamona. Do you agree?”

“When will I be able to see my son?” asked Bernat.

“That’s none of my business.”

Bernat closed his eyes. When they had first set sight on Barcelona, he had promised Arnau he would be a freeman. He would not be any lord’s vassal.

“What are my tasks?” he said at last.

To carry wood. To carry hundreds, thousands, of the heavy branches needed every day for the kilns. To make sure the fires were always lit. To carry clay, and to clean. To clean away the mud, the clay dust, and the ashes from the kilns. Over and over again, hauling the ashes and dust to the back of the house. By the time Bernat returned, covered in dust and ashes, the workshop would once again be filthy, so that he had to start all over again. He also had to carry the pottery out into the open with the other workmen, under the watchful gaze of Jaume, who supervised the life of the workshop at all times. He strode around, shouting, cuffing the apprentices and cursing the slaves, on whom he did not hesitate to use the whip if anything was not to his liking.

On one occasion when a big pot slipped out of their hands and rolled onto the ground, Jaume brandished his whip at them. The pot had not even broken, but as hard as he could he lashed the three slaves helping Bernat carry the piece out. He was about to turn on Bernat, until the latter calmly warned him: “Do that and I’ll kill you.”

Jaume hesitated, then flushed and cracked the whip in the direction of the others, who by now were safely out of range. Jaume charged after them. Bernat took a deep breath.

Bernat worked so hard he gave the assistant little opportunity to threaten him. He ate whatever was put before him. He would have liked to tell the stout woman who served them that on his farm the dogs had been better fed than this, but when he saw how the apprentices and slaves threw themselves on the food, he preferred to say nothing. He slept in the loft with the rest of them, on a straw pallet, under which he kept his few belongings and what little money he had managed to rescue. The fact that he had stood up to Jaume seemed to have won him the respect of the others, so that he was able to sleep soundly, despite the fleas, the stink of sweat, and all the snores.

He put up with everything just for the two evenings a week when Habiba the Moorish slave girl brought him Arnau, who was generally fast asleep. Bernat would pick him up, sniffing the smell of clean clothes and fragrance that hung about him. Taking care not to wake his son, he would lift his clothing to look at his legs and arms, his full stomach. Arnau was growing and filling out. Bernat rocked the baby in his arms, pleading with his eyes for Habiba, the young Moorish girl, to let him keep the boy a little longer. Sometimes he tried to stroke him, but the rough skin of his hands chafed the boy’s skin, and Habiba snatched him away. As time went by, Bernat came to a tacit agreement with her (she never said a word to him) so that he could stroke the boy’s pink cheeks with the back of his fingers. The mere touch of his son’s skin made him quiver. When the slave gestured for him to hand the baby back, Bernat would give him one final kiss on the forehead.

As the months went by, Jaume realized that Bernat could do more useful work in the pottery. The two men had come to respect each other.

“There’s nothing to be done with the slaves,” Jaume said one day to Grau Puig. “They work only because they fear the whip, and don’t care what they are doing. But your brother-in-law ...”

“Don’t call him that!” Grau protested yet again, as this was a frequent liberty his assistant allowed himself.

“The peasant ...” Jaume corrected himself, pretending to be embarrassed. “The peasant is different. He takes care over even the most menial job. He cleans the kilns in a way I’ve never—”

“So what are you suggesting?” Grau butted in, not raising his eyes from the papers he was studying.

“We could give him more responsible work, and besides, he costs us hardly anything...”

This observation finally made Grau look up.

“Don’t you believe it,” he said. “He may not have cost anything to buy, like the slaves do, and he may not have an apprentice’s contract, or have a wage like the potters, but he’s the most expensive workman I have.”

“I meant...”

“I know what you meant.” Grau buried himself in his papers once more. “Do as you see fit, but let me warn you: that peasant must never forget what his place is in this workshop. If he does, I’ll throw him and you out, and you’ll never become a master potter. Is that clear?”

Jaume nodded, but from that day on, Bernat helped the potters directly in their work. He was even promoted above the heads of the young apprentices, who were unable to handle the heavy fireproof molds used to bake the pots in the kilns. From the molds came big potbellied jars with short necks and small bases that could hold up to 280 liters of grain or wine. Previously, Jaume had needed to employ at least two potters to haul the molds around; with Bernat’s help, only one other person was necessary. They would make the mold, fire it, apply a layer of tin and lead oxides to it, then fire the jar again in a second kiln at a lower temperature so that the tin and the lead would melt together to form a clear waterproof glaze.

Jaume waited anxiously to see whether he had made the right decision. After a few weeks, he was satisfied with the result: production had increased noticeably, and Bernat still took the same trouble over his work. “More than some of the potters themselves!” Jaume was forced to admit when he went to put the workshop’s stamp on the neck of one of the storage jars.

Jaume tried to read the thoughts the peasant concealed behind his placid countenance. There was never any glimpse of hatred in his eyes, or any sign of rancor. Jaume wondered what could have happened for him to end up in this situation. He was not the same as the master’s other kinsmen who had shown up at the workshop: they had all been bought off. But Bernat... The way he fondled his son whenever the Moorish slave girl brought the baby to him! He wanted his freedom, and worked harder than anyone else to make sure he got it.

The understanding between the two men produced other results apart from an increase in production. One day when Jaume came over to imprint the master’s mark on a jar, Bernat narrowed his eyes and stared pointedly at the base of the piece. “You’ll never become a master potter!” Those words of warning came immediately to Jaume’s mind whenever he considered becoming more friendly with Bernat.

Now he pretended he was having a coughing fit. He moved away from the jar without stamping it, and looked at the place the peasant had been pointing out to him. He saw a tiny crack, which meant that the jar would break in the heat of the kiln. Jaume shouted angrily at the potter ... and at Bernat.

So the year and the day that Bernat and his son needed to become freemen passed. Grau Puig achieved his longed-for goal of being elected a member of Barcelona’s Council of a Hundred. And yet Jaume did not see the peasant react in any way. Anyone else would have demanded his citizenship document and gone off into the streets of the city in search of fun and women, but Bernat did nothing. What was wrong with him?

Bernat could not get the memory of the lad in the forge out of his mind. He did not feel guilty about him: the fool had tried to stop him from taking his boy. But if he had died ... Bernat might win freedom from his lord, but even after a year and a day he would not be free of the charge of murder. Guiamona had advised him not to tell his story to anyone, and he had followed her advice. He could not take the risk; Llorenç de Bellera had probably not only ordered his arrest as a fugitive, but as a murderer as well. What would become of Arnau if he were captured? Murder was punishable by death.

His son was growing strong and sturdy. He could not yet talk, but he was crawling everywhere, and gurgled joyfully in a way that made the hair on the back of Bernat’s neck stand on end. Despite the fact that Jaume still did not speak to him, his new position in the workshop (which Grau was too busy with his trading and other commitments to notice) gained him even more respect among the others. With Guiamona’s tacit assent, the Moorish girl brought him Arnau more frequently now. His sister was also much busier as a result of her husband’s new responsibilities.

There was no way that Bernat was going to risk his son’s future by going out into the streets of Barcelona.

Christmas 1329

Barcelona

 

 

B
y NOW, ARNAU was eight years old. He was a quiet, intelligent child with wavy, shoulder-length chestnut locks that framed a face in which his big, clear, honey-colored eyes shone.