The two girls looked at her in surprise. “Religious?” they exclaimed as one.
“I realize you don’t know much about them,” said Aledis, “but use your imagination. I think she’s accused of something to do with witchcraft ... When they threw me out of the palace, they shouted about me being a witch.”
A few hours later, the soldiers guarding the Trentaclaus gate allowed in a woman dressed in mourning clothes, with her hair coiled round her head. With her were her two daughters, dressed in near-white kirtles, with demurely plaited locks. They had common rope sandals on their feet, wore no makeup or perfume, and walked with downcast eyes behind their mother, staring at her ankles, as she had instructed them.
49
THE DUNGEON DOOR suddenly clanged open. This was not the usual time; the sun had not yet gone down sufficiently, and daylight was still struggling to find a way in through the bars of the tiny ground-level window, although the scene of misery inside seemed to make this an impossible endeavor amid all the dust and the foul vapors coming from the prisoners’ bodies. This was not the usual time for the door to open, and all the shadowy figures stirred. Arnau heard the sound of chains, which ceased when the jailer came in with the new prisoner. That meant he had not come in search of one of them. Another man ... or rather, another woman, Arnau thought, correcting himself when he saw the outline of the old woman in the doorway. What sin could that poor woman have committed?
The jailer pushed her inside the dungeon. She fell to the floor.
“Get up, witch!” his voice resonated round the entire dungeon. The old woman did not stir. The jailer gave the bundle at his feet two hefty kicks. The echoing sound of the two dull thuds seemed to last an eternity. “I said, get up!”
Arnau noticed how the other shadows tried to merge into the walls of the prison. The same shouts, the same gruff bark, the same voice. He had heard that voice often during the days he had been imprisoned, thundering from the far side of the door after one or another of the prisoners had been unchained. Then too he had noticed how the shadows shrank away from it, consumed with the fear of torture. First came the voice, then the shout, then a few moments later the heartrending cry of a body in pain.
“Get up, you old whore!”
The jailer kicked her again, but she still would not move. Eventually, puffing and blowing, he bent down, grasped her by the arm, and dragged her over to where he had been told to chain her up: as far as possible from the moneylender. The sound of keys and chains told them all what had happened to her. Before leaving the dungeon, the jailer came over to where Arnau was.
“Why?” he had asked when he had been ordered to chain the witch up as far away as possible from Arnau.
“This witch is the moneylender’s mother,” the officer of the Inquisition told him; he had heard it from one of the lord of Bellera’s men.
“Don’t think,” said the jailer when he was next to Arnau, “that you can pay the same to have your mother eat properly. Even if she is your mother, she is still a witch, and witches cost money.”
NOTHING HAD CHANGED: the farmhouse, with the tower to one side, still dominated the low rise. Joan looked up the hill and in his mind once more saw the assembled host, the nervous men with their drawn swords, the shouts of joy when he, on this very spot, succeeded in convincing Arnau to give up Mar in marriage. He had never got on well with the girclass="underline" what was he going to say to her now?
Joan looked up at the heavens and then, stooping and with downcast eyes, started to climb the gentle slope.
Outside, the farmhouse seemed deserted. The silence was broken only by the rustle of animals moving on the straw in the stables.
“Is there anybody there?” shouted Joan.
He was about to call out again when he spotted something moving by a corner of the house. A boy was staring at him, his eyes wide open in astonishment.
“Come here, boy,” Joan ordered him.
The youngster hesitated.
“Come here ...”
“What’s going on?”
Joan turned to look at the external staircase leading to the upper floor of the farmhouse. At the top was Mar, staring straight at him.
The two of them stood motionless in silence for quite some time. Joan tried to discover in this woman the image of the girl whose life he had handed to the Lord de Ponts, but the air of severity about her seemed far distant from the explosion of feelings that had occurred in this same farmhouse six years earlier. The seconds flew by, and Joan felt more and more inhibited. Mar meanwhile pierced him with her steady, unflinching gaze.
“What are you here for, Friar?” she asked him finally.
“I came to talk to you.” Joan had to raise his voice to reach her.
“I’m not interested in anything you might have to say.”
Mar made as though to turn on her heel, but Joan quickly added: “I promised Arnau I would talk to you.”
Contrary to his expectations, the mention of Arnau’s name did not seem to make any impact on her; but she did not go inside either.
“It’s not me who wishes to talk to you.” Joan let a few moments go by. “May I come up?”
Mar turned her back on him and went into the farmhouse. Joan walked to the foot of the staircase. He peered up at the heavens. Was this truly the penitence he deserved?
He cleared his throat to show her he was there. Mar was busy at the hearth, stirring a pot that hung from a hook over the fire.
“Speak,” was all she said.
Joan studied her back as she leaned over. Her hair cascaded down below her waist, almost as far as a pair of firm buttocks whose outline was very clear beneath her smock. She had turned into an ... attractive woman.
“Have you got nothing to say?” asked Mar, turning her head toward him briefly.
“Arnau has been put in jail by the Inquisition,” the Dominican blurted out.
Mar stopped stirring the food in the pot.
Joan said nothing more.
Her voice seemed to quaver and dance as delicately as the flames of the fire itself: “Some of us have been incarcerated for much longer.”
Mar still had her back to him. She straightened up, staring at the beams of the hearth.
“It wasn’t Arnau who put you there.”
Mar turned quickly to face him. “Wasn’t he the one who gave me to the Lord de Ponts?” she cried. “Wasn’t he the one who agreed to my marriage? Wasn’t he the one who decided not to avenge my dishonor? Ponts raped me! He kidnapped me and raped me!”
She had spat out the words. Her whole body was shaking, from her top lip to her hands, which she now raised to her breast. Joan could not bear to see the pain in her eyes.
“It wasn’t Arnau,” the friar repeated in a faint voice. “It was... it was me!” He was speaking loudly now. “Do you understand? It was me. I was the one who convinced him he should marry you off. What future was there for a raped girl? What would have become of you when the whole of Barcelona learned of your misfortune? Eleonor convinced me, and I was the one who arranged your kidnapping. I agreed to your dishonor in order to get Arnau to allow you to be married to someone else. It was I who was guilty of everything. Arnau would never have done it otherwise.”
They stared at each other. Joan could feel the weight of his habit lightening. Mar stopped shaking as tears welled up in her eyes.
“He loved you,” said Joan. “He loved you then and he loves you now. He needs you...”
Mar lifted her hands to her face. She bent her knees to one side, and her body sank until she was prostrate before the friar.
That was it. He had done it. Now Mar would go to Barcelona. She would tell Arnau and ... These were the thoughts racing through Joan’s mind as he bent to help Mar up ...