Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE - Chained to the Land
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
PART TWO - Chained to the Nobility
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART THREE - Chained to Passion
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
PART FOUR - Chained to Destiny
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Author’s Note
More Praise for the #1 International Bestseller
CATHEDRAL OF THE SEA
"The passion and heartache, as well as the grit and grime, of medieval Spain come alive in ... this epic novel .... The saga is filled with colorful characters .... The backdrop is always dramatic ... a fantastic fourteenth-century fresco.”
—USA Today
“[It’s] soap opera on a grand scale, made believable and enthralling by the inclusion of the commonplace brutalities and small compassions of life in medieval Barcelona. Watching Arnau’s rise from literal rags to riches is frequently like watching a series of train wrecks; you’re horrified but can’t look away ....[The] plot ... is so beautifully structured that the last sixty pages detonate like a string of firecrackers ....[The] prose is powerful .... Falcones has an eye for the singular, telling detail, and ... his characters are ... believable ... a riveting story.”
—The Washington Post
“[An] absorbing epic ... Falcones’s rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A] sprawling medieval family saga.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“With Cathedral of the Sea, Ildefonso Falcones dethrones Eduardo Mendoza and Arturo Pérez-Reverte ... and has become Spain’s new Dan Brown.”
—El Mundo
“A new Ken Follett is born!”
—ADP (Spain)
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Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Previously published in a Dutton edition.
First New American Library Printing, April 2009
Copyright © Ildefonso Falcones de Sierra, 2006
Translation copyright © Nick Caistor, 2008
Images on page 1, 2, 51, 52, 217, 218, 453, 454 courtesy of Liesbeth Vries
Map © Sergi Parreño
All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-440-63041-5
Falcones de Sterra, Ildefonao, 1959-
[Catedral de la mar. English]
Cathedral of the sea/by Ildefonso Falcones.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-440-63041-5
I. Title
PQ6656.A375C3813 2008
863.,64—dc22 2007046077
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To Carmen
Barcelona in the 14th Century
PART ONE
Chained to the Land
1
The year 1320
Bernat Estanyol’s farmhouse Navarcles, in the principality of Catalonia
BERNAT REALIZED NOBODY was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky. The weak late September sun played on the faces of his guests. He had put so much time and effort into preparing the feast that only bad weather could have spoiled it. He smiled up at the autumn sky, and when he looked down again, his smile broadened as he listened to the hum of happy voices in the cobbled courtyard that ran alongside the animal pens at the foot of his farmhouse.
His thirty or so guests were in high spirits: the grape harvest that year had been magnificent. All of them—men, women, and children—had worked from dawn to dusk harvesting the grapes, then treading them, without allowing themselves a single day’s rest.