“Good luck to you, my pretty one,” he had murmured.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing, nothing. You did the right thing. Put to sea again, and come back in a couple of days.”
The first day, he had had no news from Eimerich. On the second, he went back into Barcelona. He could not just sit there waiting; he left his servants in the exchange, with orders to find him if anyone appeared asking for him.
The merchants’ districts were exactly the same. He could walk through the city with his eyes closed, letting himself be guided by the distinctive smells from each of them. The cathedral, like Santa Maria or the Pi church, was still under construction, although work on the shrine to the Virgin of the Sea was much further advanced. Santa Clara and Santa Anna were also covered in scaffolding. Guillem paused in front of each church and watched the carpenters and masons hard at work. What about the seawall? And the secure harbor? How strange Christians were.
On the third day, one of his servants came panting up to him. “Someone at the corn exchange is asking for you.”
“Have you given way then, Nicolau?” Guillem wondered as he hurried back.
NICOLAU EIMERICH SIGNED the Inquisition’s sentence with Guillem standing on the far side of the table. He added his seal, and handed it over in silence.
Guillem picked it off the table and began to read it.
“Read the end. That’s all you need bother with,” the grand inquisitor urged him.
He had forced the clerk to work all night, and had no intention of spending all day waiting for this infidel to read the document through.
Guillem peered at him over the top of the parchment and carried on reading the inquisitor’s arguments. So Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig had withdrawn their charges: how had Nicolau managed to achieve that? Margarida Puig’s testimony had been thrown into doubt because the tribunal had discovered that her family had been ruined in dealings with Arnau. As for Eleonor ... she had refused to accept the surrender and submission every wife ought to show her lord and master!
In addition, Eleonor claimed that the accused had publicly embraced a Jewish woman with whom he was suspected of having carnal relations. As witnesses, she cited Nicolau himself and Bishop Berenguer d‘Eril. Guillem looked up again at Nicolau; the inquisitor held his gaze. “It is not true,” Nicolau had written, “that the accused embraced a Jewish woman on the occasion Doña Eleonor was referring to.” Neither he nor Berenguer d’Eril, who had also signed the document—at this point, Guillem did turn to the last sheet to confirm the bishop’s signature and seal—could support this charge. The smoke, the flames, the noise, the crowd’s passion—Nicolau had written—could have led a woman who was by nature weak to have thought this was what she had seen. And since the accusation made by Doña Eleonor regarding Arnau’s relationship with this Jewish woman was obviously false, little credibility could be afforded to the rest of her testimony.
Guillem smiled.
This meant that the only actions that could be held against Arnau were those described by the priests of Santa Maria de la Mar. The blasphemy had been admitted by the prisoner, but he had repented of it in front of the whole tribunal, and this was the ultimate goal of every trial held by the Inquisition. For this reason, Arnau Estanyol was sentenced to pay a penalty consisting of the seizure of all his goods, and to do penance every Sunday for a year outside Santa Maria de la Mar, wearing the cloak of repentance that all those found guilty by the Inquisition were obliged to wear.
Guillem finished reading all the grandiloquent legal formulas, then checked that the document was properly signed and sealed by the grand inquisitor and the bishop. He had done it!
He rolled up the parchment, then searched in his clothes for the bill of payment signed by Abraham Levi. He handed it to Nicolau and watched in silence as he read it. The document signified Arnau’s ruin, but guaranteed his freedom and his life. In any case, Guillem would never have been able to explain to Arnau where the money had come from, or why he had hidden the piece of paper for so many years.
58
ARNAU SLEPT THE rest of that day. At nightfall, Mar lit a fire with twigs and the wood the fishermen had collected in the hut. The sea was calm. Mar looked up at the stars coming out in the night sky. Then she peered out at the cliffs surrounding the cove: the moonlight was playing here and there on the edges of the rocks, creating fantastic shapes.
She breathed in the silence and savored the calm. The world did not exist. Barcelona did not exist. Nor did the Inquisition, or Eleonor or Joan. There was only her ... and Arnau.
Around midnight she heard sounds from inside the hut. She got up to see what it was, and saw Arnau emerging into the moonlight. They stood in silence a few steps from each other.
Mar was standing between Arnau and the bonfire. The glow from the fire silhouetted her figure, but hid her features. “Am I in heaven already?” thought Arnau. As his eyes grew used to the darkness, he was able distinguish the details he had so often pursued in dreams: first of all, her bright eyes—how many nights had he shed tears over them?—then her nose, her cheekbones, her chin ... and her mouth, and those lips ... The figure opened its arms to him and the light from the flames streamed round her, caressing a body clothed in ethereal robes that the light and dark complemented. She was calling him.
Arnau answered her call. What was happening? Where was he? Could it really be Mar? When he took her hands, saw her smiling at him and then kissing him on the lips, he had his reply.
Mar clung to him as tightly as she could, and the world returned to normal. “Hold me,” he heard her ask. Arnau put his arm round her shoulder and held her to him. He heard her start to cry. He could feel her sobbing against him, and gently stroked her hair. How many years had gone by before they could enjoy a moment like this? How many mistakes had he made?
Arnau raised Mar’s head from his shoulder and forced her to look up into his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he began to say. “I’m sorry I forced you to—”
“Don’t say anything,” she interrupted him. “The past doesn’t exist. There is nothing to be sorry for. Today is when we start to live. Look,” she said, pulling away from him and taking his hand, “look at the sea. The sea has no past. It is just there. It will never ask us to explain. The stars, the moon are there to light our way, to shine for us. What do they care what might have happened in the past? They are accompanying us, and are happy with that; can you see them shine? The stars are twinkling in the sky; would they do that if the past mattered? Wouldn’t there be a huge storm if God wanted to punish us? We are alone, you and I, with no past, no memories, no guilt, nothing that can stand in the way of ... our love.”
Arnau stood looking up at the sky, then lowered his gaze to the sea and the gentle waves lapping at the shore without even breaking. He looked at the wall of rock protecting them, and swayed in the silent darkness.
He turned back to Mar, still holding her hand. There was something he had to tell her, something painful that he had sworn before the Virgin after the death of his first wife, something he could not renounce. Staring her in the eyes, he told her everything in a whisper.