“That’s true. I’m sorry. I meant ...”
“I know what you meant.”
The two men sat gazing down at the documents on the table. They could hear the noise and bustle of the warehouse all around them.
“Sahat,” Filippo said finally, “for many years I was Hasdai’s agent, and now, as long as God grants me life, I’ll do the same for his son. In addition, thanks to Hasdai and you, I also became Arnau’s agent. During all that time, I have heard only good things of Arnau, from traders, sailors, or sea captains. The news of what he did for his serfs reached even here! What happened between the two of you? If you had fallen out, he would not have rewarded you with your freedom, still less instructed me to give you all that money. What happened for you to abandon him, while he rewarded you in that way?”
“It was a girl ... an extraordinary girl.”
“Ah!”
“No,” the Moor protested, “it’s not what you think.”
And for the first time in six years, Sahat told him everything that he had until then kept to himself.
“HOW DARE YOU!” Nicolau Eimerich’s angry shout echoed along the corridors of the bishop’s palace. He did not even wait for the guards to leave the room. The inquisitor strode up and down the chamber, waving his arms. “How dare you put at risk something that by right belongs to the Holy Office?” Nicolau turned abruptly toward Joan, who was standing in the center of the room. “How dare you sell off commissions cheaply like that?”
Joan did not reply. He had spent a sleepless night being mistreated and humiliated. He had just had to walk several miles behind the back end of a mule. His whole body ached. He stank, and his filthy, mud-caked habit scratched at his skin. He had not had a bite to eat since the previous day, and he was thirsty. No. He was not going to reply.
Nicolau came up behind him.
“What are you trying to do, Brother Joan?” he whispered in his ear. “Could it be you wish to sell off your brother’s fortune so that the Inquisition cannot have it?”
He stood close to Joan for a few seconds.
“By God, you stink!” he said, leaping away from him. He waved his arms in the air once more. “You smell like a peasant.” He paced the room muttering to himself, before he finally sat down again. “The Inquisition has taken possession of your brother’s account books. There will be no more selling.” Joan did not move. “I’ve forbidden all visits to the dungeons, so do not try to see him. His trial will start in a few days.”
Still Joan did not react.
“Didn’t you hear me, Friar? Within a few days I’ll sit in judgment on your brother!”
Nicolau thumped the table.
“That’s enough! Get out of here!”
Joan dragged the hem of his filthy habit across the shiny floor tiles of the grand inquisitor’s office.
JOAN PAUSED IN the doorway to allow his eyes to get accustomed to the bright sunlight. Mar was standing there waiting for him, the mule’s halter in her hand. He had brought her here from her farmhouse... How could he possibly tell her that the grand inquisitor had forbidden any visits to Arnau? How was he going to bear that sense of guilt on top of all the rest?
“Are you going out, Friar?” he heard behind him.
Joan turned, and found himself confronted by a widow in black. Her face was streaming with tears.
They looked at each other.
“Joan?” the woman asked.
Those big brown eyes. That face...
“Joan?” she asked again. “Joan, it’s me, Aledis. Don’t you remember me?”
“The tanner’s daughter ... ,” Joan started to say.
“What’s going on, Friar?”
Mar had walked up to the doorway. Aledis saw Joan turn toward the newcomer, then back at her, and once again toward the woman with the mule.
“A childhood friend,” he said. “Aledis, this is Mar. Mar, this is Aledis.”
The two women nodded at each other.
“This is no place to stand and talk!” The guard’s barked command startled all three of them. “Clear the doorway, will you?”
“We’ve come to see Arnau Estanyol,” said Mar, still gripping the mule’s halter.
The soldier looked her up and down. A mocking smile appeared on his lips.
“The moneylender?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Mar.
“The grand inquisitor has forbidden any visits to him.”
He went to push Aledis and Joan out of the doorway.
“Why has he done that?” asked Mar, as the other two stepped out into the street.
“You should ask the friar here that,” said the soldier, gesturing toward Joan.
The three of them moved away from the palace.
“I should have killed you yesterday.”
Aledis saw Joan lower his eyes to the ground. He said nothing. Then she studied the woman with the mule, standing there proud and erect. What could have happened the day before? Joan made no attempt to hide his battered face, and his companion wanted to see Arnau. Who could this woman be? Arnau was married to the baroness. It was she who had stood beside him on the platform at Montbui castle when he had renounced all his privileges ...
“Arnau’s trial is to start in a few days’ time ...”
Mar and Aledis came to an abrupt halt. Joan walked on a few paces, until he realized the women were no longer with him. When he turned back toward them, he saw they were looking intently at each other, as though asking, “Who are you?”
“I doubt whether the friar ever had a childhood ... and still less knew anything about girls,” said Mar.
Aledis met her gaze. Mar stood there proudly; her bright young eyes seemed to want to pierce her through. Even the mule appeared to be listening to her every word, its ears pricked.
“You are nothing if not blunt,” Aledis told her.
“That’s what life has taught me.”
“Thirty years ago, if my parents had given their consent, I would have been married to Arnau.”
“And six years ago, if I’d been treated like a human being rather than an animal,” Mar said, glancing at Joan, “I would still be at Arnau’s side.”
The two women fell silent as they again measured each other with their gaze.
“But I haven’t seen Arnau in twenty years,” Aledis finally admitted. “I’m not trying to compete with you,” she was trying to tell her, in a language only two women could understand.
Mar shifted her weight from one leg to the other and relaxed her grip on the mule’s halter. She rolled her eyes, and stopped challenging Aledis.
“I live outside Barcelona. Do you have anywhere to put me up?” she asked after a few moments.
“I live outside the city as well. I am being put up ... with my daughters, in the Estanyer Inn. But we could arrange something,” she added quickly when she saw Mar hesitate. “What about him?” Aledis pointed her chin at Joan.
The two women surveyed him, standing there with his bruised face and his filthy, torn habit hanging down from his stooped shoulders.
“He has a lot to explain,” said Mar, “and we might need him. He can sleep with the mule.”
Joan waited for the two women to set off again, then followed a few steps behind.
“‘WHY ARE you here?’ she will ask me. ‘What were you doing in the bishop’s palace?’” Aledis cast a sideways glance at her new companion; she was walking on serenely, pulling at the mule, and not stepping aside for anyone they came across on the way. What could have happened between Mar and Joan? The friar seemed completely crushed ... How on earth could a Dominican allow a woman to send him to sleep with a mule? They crossed Plaza del Blat. Aledis had admitted she knew Arnau, but had not told them she had seen him in the dungeons, begging for her to come close. “What about Francesca? What should I tell them about her? That she’s my mother? No. Joan knew who she was, and knows she wasn’t called Francesca. My dead husband’s mother? What will they say when she is brought in during Arnau’s trial? I ought to have an answer. And when they find out she is a whore? How could my mother-in-law be a whore? Better to pretend I know nothing: but then what was I doing in the bishop’s palace?”