The Antiquarian (35 page)

The assistant unsheathed a knife some six feet long from the leather casing. Along with it, he assembled a tripod on which to rest the end, for greater ease of maneuvering and more exactitude so as to not excessively tax the muscles of the arm. Jacques and his assistant entered the house with faces covered, muttering a psalm that, more than Christian prayer, seemed a warlock's spell, with words distorted through the cloth covering their faces. Once inside, the assistant lifted the bedclothes off the children with a staff. Then, the two of them prepared a vessel in which they placed the content of a great flask, and mixed it with water. Once satisfied with the dissolution, they placed a sponge inside which, once soaked, they brought near the children's faces. The effect was nearly immediate. The children were at first agitated, but they then calmed, put to sleep by the drug. Then they proceeded to lance the boils one by one, from a distance. A foul odor filled the chambers as the pus from inside the buboes spilled forth, and was absorbed by the blankets. The cut flesh, dead as it was, issued no blood. After tending to the children, they did the same with their mother. The remedy completed, they covered them anew with fresh blankets, taking the soiled ones to a fire set by the soldiers outside. There they burned them. The soldiers stood on the windward side, where the rotten breath of the Black Death would not reach them. Then, Jacques fixed me with a grave look as he spoke to me.

“This remedy is to be done every day. We will do it every morning, early. You may only approach the house then, while we are inside. If you do so at any other time, the soldiers are under orders to employ their arms, or oblige you to remain inside. Be cautious, be patient, and pray to our Lord. We are all in His hands from the day of our birth.”

The soldiers closed the door and bolted it with a heavy beam. Devastated, I left the place for the cathedral, where I fell on my knees before the high altar. I prayed for hours, until exhaustion overtook me. Prostrated by fatigue, it was my fellow
overseer of the works, Master D'Arimon, who undertook to allay my sadness and lead me away.

All Narbonne seemed to know the bad news. As D'Arimon walked with me back to the wet nurse's house, I felt the eyes of the citizens stab my back like the sharpest daggers. Fear and disdain were clear on every face, and several even avoided us as if we were plague-stricken, instead of healthy, such was the primal fear of the Black Death. We could not forget that only years before, the plague had taken over half the people of the city, and on a nearby hill was a potter's field filled with the remains of countless relatives and friends. I understood their horror. I myself had felt it seated before my own door. But now that fear was of little import.

Once in the open field, upon entering the district of the Canons, I saw several bonfires burning on what had been my rented lands: the fields and granary were also ablaze. The rings of smoke billowed upward, blackening the blue sky with the color of Death itself, which marked the site of its new prey thus. D'Arimon prevailed on me to drink several cups of strong wine, and I did not refuse, as I longed for the oblivion it could give me.

I awoke in the wee hours, dulled by the drink that had at least let me rest and forget. I attended the physician's remedies, as new boils had formed on the chastised flesh of my family. Exonerated from the cathedral works by the intercession of my fellow D'Arimon, I spent the next four days watching as my family, who could hardly feed themselves, wasted away. At last, one morning, the little ones passed, immediately following the remedy. Their bodies were burnt on a pyre that the soldiers, with foresight, had readied for this purpose. That same morning, when the bodies of the children were cast into the flames, I nearly lost my judgment, as I attempted to take and embrace them. A soldier interposed to keep me from it: he smote my head with a well-aimed blow from the handle of a battle dagger. In the afternoon, while I was still overcome and numb, Leonor passed. There was no funeral for her: as they were to burn the house, they decided to spare themselves the
task by setting it afire with her body still inside. When I came to myself, on a pile of fresh hay, I received the news. D'Arimon was at my side, awaiting the fateful instant. I cried and cried for hours, until my eyes were dry. My companion made me drink. The sadness and pain, so great, so cursed, were again mitigated by the satisfaction of the oblivion provided by wine.

I awoke two days later. Other cases of Black Death had been reported, on the outskirts of the other side of the city: dwellings of needy peasants who survive only with great difficulty. The prince's response was drastic: he dislodged the houses and burned them. The stricken were taken to a makeshift lazar house at the bottom of an abandoned quarry and unscrupulously left there. There was no physician for them. Poles and ropes were used to furnish them with meager foodstuffs. A curfew was declared, and any contact with the outside was forbidden for thirty days, the time for which the city had sufficient provisions. After that, a decision would be made.

Little Eulàlia, my baby, showed no sign of the sickness. My decision was immediate; nothing was holding me in Narbonne. I wanted only to leave that cursed place as soon as possible, not so much for the presence of the plague as the omnipresent memory of my loved ones. I hoped it would be tempered when the distance separating me from their remains was greater. How naive I was! As if presence or absence could have any influence on the purest sentiments! In any event, the decision had been made. Only Eulàlia's nursing hindered my desire for leaving, which was truly little more than fleeing. It took all my savings to convince the wet nurse. The journey to Barcelona was long, with safe stretches in Perpignan, Girona, and Vic, and some nights spent at inns along the road. Moreover, I had to secure her return voyage. Fortunately, the possibility to leave the city was incentive enough for Anne to decide. She said farewell to her husband, a brute her parents had married her to, with the promise to return in three weeks at most. I gave the husband the agreed—more than generous—amount, and we began our voyage. Three weeks! Three weeks for her husband, thirteen years for Eulàlia. Anne had no intention of
returning to Narbonne. She was not happy with her life, her husband abused her, and, with her daughter gone, she found in Eulàlia a substitute. Eulàlia depended on her for everything, not only nourishment. I knew not how to care for a baby, such work belonged to the world of women. Thus, little by little, an unbreakable bond grew between them.

Once in Barcelona, I rented a dwelling by the shore, near Plaça de la Trinitat. It was small, but it had an inner courtyard with a tiny garden, and had plenty of sunlight in the mornings. When we had settled, Anne asked for a word with me.

“Sir, I wish to tell you that I have decided not to return to Narbonne. If you like, I can continue serving as Eulàlia's wet nurse. That way, you will not have to find another, especially now that she is accustomed to my milk.”

“But by the accord with your husband you must return in three weeks, and that time will be reached within five days.”

“I want nothing more to do with my husband. If you allow it, I will stay with you and continue raising the baby. And if you do not wish for me to nurse her, I will stay in the city and find the means to make an honest living.”

“You do not even know the tongue! What will become of you, alone in Barcelona?”

“The Lord will guide my path. Although I would rather be guided by you. Under your protection I will feel safe, and I promise you will have nothing to fear from me, only to receive my eternal gratitude.”

And thus, Anne became Anna. She was quick to learn Catalan, and so began a new life far from a past that I supposed much more brutal than her neighbors in Narbonne ever knew.

Thirteen years later, Anna herself gave me the bad news about the last of my lineage, the morning of November 27.

It appears that the shadow of the past never pardons, never forgets, and Eulàlia's childhood had only been a flight from a cruel adversary who had marked
her name—an enemy that, in oversight, had allowed her to escape. But this time, merciless Death, if you take her, I will not let it be in my absence, as occurred with her mother and siblings. I will fight to save her any way I can. I will do all I can. And if there is no other way, and it be God's will, she will die. But she will die with me at her side.

Another day. Today I have prayed for hours, and realized that it serves no purpose. Does the Lord hear my pleas? Does He hear the prayers and pleas of man? Have I not faithfully served the Church? Given my life wholeheartedly to manifesting and erecting the splendor and glory of our Father? My knees are skinned from the stone and sand of Eulàlia's chamber. My back aches from praying with arms outstretched. All compassion and love for Christ and the Church have been spilled from my soul. Monsignor Custodi, from the parish near Sant Just, has tried to console me. It is no good: I am beyond consolation, and I am so sure of it that I have said so. Alarmed, Monsignor Custodi urged me to reflect on what he believes to be my intemperance. I decided to act as if heeding him in order to avoid suspicion of my latest intentions: my existential doubts as little more than a passing exaltation. But they are not: they are deep and firmly rooted, and are ever more so every instant as I watch my daughter's clammy face, and her body, as it becomes covered with the incipient boils that mark her fate.

I have tied this book to a leather strap, and will hang it always from my neck. There is too much of me in it, I must not risk it falling into the wrong hands.

Yet another day, and Aimeric's diagnosis reveals the truth we hoped to dispel with our desires and hopes. It is a case of Black Death. The boils have been long in appearing, but now they cover her body. Aimeric is to report the case to the king's
representative, the
batlle
; the city must prepare for a visitation of plague, as it already suffered thirteen years ago, and more recently, eight years ago, though with lesser effect. The measures will be similar: the girl is to be isolated, either at home or in a lazar house. If she remains at home, those who stay with her will not be allowed to leave the building.

Hers is not the only case. It has been secret up to now, but the malady is known to have struck along the shoreline, and in L'hort de Sant Pau.

I am grateful to Aimeric for his aid. He is a good man, and he has not abused his current position of privilege. Perhaps I remind him that, not too long ago, his position was no higher than mine. Perhaps he looks kindly on me, as we have been friends for years, though our lives have followed separate paths. As he was leaving he stopped, turned, and said:

“Pere, perhaps I should not give you this counsel, but I will.”

“Please, speak.”

“For Eulàlia, I will apply all that I know of my art. But it may not be enough. Pere, you know this pestilence has slain people by the thousands. Only a handful have been saved. Yet …”

“Go on!” I urged him.

“What we Christian doctors can do is very little. But perhaps others may help you where we fail.”

“What do you mean? Speak clearly!”

Aimeric entered the house anew, closed the door behind him, and asked me to lower my voice.

“No one can hear what I will now tell you. I only do this out of the affection I have for you. If it were known, we could both be in terrible danger.”

“I swear on my honor that no one will ever know it.”

“Very well. Now listen. In the plague of '65, there was a rumor about the Jews of the Call. The talebearers accused them of spreading the Black Death, just as was
done during the previous plague, in '48. I was little more than a young barber's apprentice, and I hardly remember those days of confusion and disaster in '65. All I remember is the sight of the carts that collected the corpses, stacked full day and night, rolling down Barcelona's deserted streets, with their burden of foul-smelling bodies, on their way to Porta Ferrissa or Portal Nou, to be burned and buried in mass graves. Not only did those backbiters accuse them, they claimed the Jews did not die, that the plague did not affect them. That was not true, because I myself saw their bodies taken from the Call. I walked the streets with my master barber; we practiced bleedings and lanced the boils of those who could not afford a physician or surgeon. And so I saw that the lies wickedly told always have foreseeable results for the people who are their object. At that time the city was broken asunder, and no one had the desire or will to attempt anything against the Jews of the Call. But the seed had been planted and was awaiting its time to sprout, which would arrive, as you know, two years ago, on August 3. One of the reasons espoused by those who attacked the Call was the alleged grievance that made those people guilty, guilty of anything that could justify the assailants' appetite for plunder. It was a slaughter, Pere. You saw it too, and, like me and so many others, did not dare try to stop it. Only the authority of the bishop, who courageously interceded on behalf of the Jews, prevented their extermination by going personally to the gates of the Call with fifty soldiers from the
veguer
, the authority of the Crown. There had been attacks before: in '67 three men were executed. But that was little compared to what we lived through little more than two years ago.”

“What does this have to do with Eulàlia's sickness?”

“Be patient and listen. After the Great Plague of '65 there was a second one, though not as bad, eight years ago.”

“I remember it well. Once it was declared, we left the city for three months. We did not want to expose ourselves to contagion.”

“Yes. I had returned from Paris by that time. I was no longer that young boy fighting the pestilence and its consequences. As an adult, I could see that the rumors about the Jews' supposed immunity, while not completely true, were not completely false, either. Jews did die, as they always had, but they died in numbers lower than could be expected.”