Before Aledis arrived back at the inn, Joan had appeared. He was wearing a clean habit borrowed from the Sant Pere de les Puelles monastery. When he saw Guillem sitting with Mar and Aledis’s two daughters, he came to a halt in the center of the dining room.
Guillem studied him. Was that a smile, or a look of distaste?
Joan himself would not have been able to say. What if Mar had told him about the kidnapping?
The way the friar had treated him when he was with Arnau flashed through Guillem’s mind, but this was no time to relive old quarrels, so he stood up to greet the newcomer. They all needed to unite to come to Arnau’s aid.
“How are you, Joan?” he asked, taking him by the shoulders. “What happened to your face?” he added, when he saw all the bruises.
Joan looked over at Mar, but her face held the same harsh, emotionless expression he had seen on it ever since he had gone in search of her. But no, Guillem could not be so cynical ...
“An unfortunate encounter,” said Joan. “It happens to friars as well.”
“I suppose you will have already excommunicated them,” joked Guillem as he led the friar over to the table. “Isn’t that what the Constitution of Peace and Truce establishes?” Joan and Mar exchanged glances. “Isn’t that what it says: ‘Anyone who disturbs the peace against unarmed priests’ ... You weren’t armed, were you, Joan?”
Guillem did not have the chance to notice how strained the relationship was between Mar and the friar, because at that moment Aledis came in. Guillem greeted her briefly; it was Joan he wanted to talk to.
“You’re an inquisitor,” he said. “What do you make of Arnau’s situation?”
“I think Nicolau wants to find him guilty, but he cannot have much against him. I think it may end with him having to wear the cloak of repentance and paying a hefty fine—that’s what most interests Eimerich. I know Arnau: he has never harmed anyone. Even if Eleonor has denounced him, they won’t be able to find—”
“What if Eleonor’s accusation were backed up by several priests?”
Joan looked startled. Would priests stoop to that kind of thing? “What do you mean?”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Guillem, remembering Jucef’s letter. “Tell me, though: what would happen if priests backed her up?”
Aledis did not hear Joan’s reply. Should she tell them what she knew? Could that Moor possibly help? He was rich ... and he looked ... Eulalia and Teresa were watching her. They had stayed silent as she had instructed them, but it seemed as though they were anxious to say something now. She had no need to ask them; she could see what they wanted. That meant ... Oh, what did it matter? Somebody had to do something, and that Moor ...
“There is quite a lot more,” she said, interrupting Joan’s conjectures as to what might happen.
The two men and Mar all turned their attention to her.
“I have no intention of telling you how I found out, and I have no wish to talk about this again once I have said what I have to say. Do you agree?”
“What do you mean?” asked Joan.
“It’s perfectly clear, Friar,” snapped Mar.
Guillem looked at her with surprise: why did she speak to Joan like that? He turned to the friar, but he was staring at the floor.
“Go on, Aledis. We agree,” said Guillem.
“Do you remember the two noblemen who are staying at the inn?”
When he heard the name Genis Puig, Guillem butted in and stopped her.
“He has a sister called Margarida,” Aledis told him.
Guillem raised his hands to his face. “Are they still here?” he asked.
Aledis nodded, and continued telling them what her girls had discovered ; the favors Eulàlia had granted Genis Puig had not been in vain. Once he had exhausted his drunken passion on her, he had been more than happy to tell her of all the charges Arnau was facing.
“They say Arnau burned his father’s body ... ,” said Aledis, “but I can’t believe ...”
Joan was about to retch. All the others turned toward him. The friar had his hand over his mouth, as though he were choking. The darkness, Bernat’s body hanging from the makeshift scaffold, the flames ...
“What do you have to say now, Joan?” he heard Guillem asking him.
“They will put him to death,” he managed to say before he ran out of the inn, still covering his mouth with his hand.
Joan’s verdict floated in the air around them. None of them dared look at one another.
“What has happened between you and Joan?” Guillem whispered to Mar after a while, when the friar had still not reappeared.
He was only a slave ... What could a mere slave do? Guillem’s words rattled round Mar’s brain. If she told him ... They needed to be united! Arnau needed them all to fight for him ... including Joan.
“Nothing,” she said. “You know we never got on very well.” She avoided looking at him.
“Will you tell me someday?” insisted Guillem.
Mar looked down at the table.
54
THE MEMBERS OF the tribunal were already assembled: the four Dominicans and the clerk sitting behind the desk, the soldiers on guard at the door, and Arnau, as filthy as he had been the previous day, standing at the center of the chamber. All eyes were on him.
A short while later Nicolau Eimerich and Berenguer d’Eril came in. Everything about them spoke of luxury and arrogance. The soldiers snapped alert, and the others stood until the two men had taken their seats.
“The session is open,” declared Nicolau. “May I remind you,” he added, addressing Arnau, “that you are still under oath.”
“That man,” the bishop had warned him on their way into the tribunal, “will give away more because of the oath he has taken than from any fear of being tortured.”
“Please read the prisoner’s last declaration,” said Nicolau to the clerk.
“‘They only adopt ideas and beliefs just like us.’” Arnau was struck by his own words. All night he had been unable to get the images of Mar and Aledis out of his mind, and had gone over what he had said time and again. Nicolau had not allowed him to explain what he meant, but then again, what could he say? What could he tell those hunters of heretics about his relations with Raquel and her family? The clerk was still reading out his declaration. He must not allow the questions to focus on Raqueclass="underline" she and her family had suffered more than enough with the death of Hasdai. The last thing they needed was to have the Inquisition on their heels again ...
“So you think that the Christian faith is no more than a few ideas and beliefs, which men are free to accept or not as they see fit?” Berenguer d’Eril asked him. “How dare a mere mortal judge God’s designs?”
Why shouldn’t he? Arnau looked steadily at Nicolau. “Aren’t you two mere mortals as well?” he thought. They would burn him. They would burn him just as they had burned Hasdai and so many others. He shuddered.
“I expressed myself badly,” he said finally.
“How would you care to express yourself then?” asked Nicolau.
“I’m not sure. I do not have your learning. All I can say is that I believe in God, that I am a good Christian, and that I have always followed His commandments.”
“Do you think that burning your father’s body is following God’s commandments?” shouted the inquisitor, rising to his feet and thumping the table with both hands.
HURRYING ALONG IN the shadows, Raquel ran to her brother’s house as they had agreed.
“Sahat,” was all she said when she stood on the threshold.
Guillem got up from the table he was sharing with Jucef.