“I ... What has happened to you, Father?”
“Get away from here. This is no place for children.”
“Where should I ... ?”
“Here, take this.” Bernat handed him two money bags: his own and the one for the prisoners.
“What am I to do with these?” asked Arnau.
“Go home, son, go home.”
Arnau saw his father disappear in the midst of the crowd. The last thing he saw of him was the glint of hatred in his eyes.
“Where are you going, Father?” he shouted after him.
“In search of freedom,” said a woman who was standing nearby, also watching the mob swarming through the streets of the city.
“But we’re already free,” ventured Arnau.
“There is no freedom where there is hunger, my lad,” the woman declared.
In tears, Arnau fought his way through the rushing crowd.
THE DISTURBANCES LASTED two entire days. The homes of the councillors and many other noble residences were sacked. The enraged crowd went round the city, at first in search of food ... and then in search of vengeance.
For two whole days the city of Barcelona was submerged in chaos. The authorities were powerless to stop it, until an envoy from King Alfonso arrived with sufficient soldiers to put an end to the violence. A hundred men were arrested, and many others fined. Of the hundred, ten were hanged after the briefest of trials. Among those called to testify, there were few who did not point to Bernat Estanyol, with the birthmark over his right eye, as one of the instigators of the citizens’ revolt in Plaza del Blat.
16
ARNAU RAN THE whole length of Calle de la Mar to Pere’s house without glancing at Santa Maria even once. His father’s eyes were engraved on his mind; his shouts echoed in his ears. He had never seen him like that before. “What’s happened to you, Father? Is it true as that woman said that we are not free?” He rushed into Pere’s house without paying heed to anyone or anything, and shut himself in his room. Joan found him there, sobbing.
“The city has gone mad... ,” Joan said, opening the door. “What’s wrong?”
Arnau did not answer. His brother looked round the room.
“Where’s Father?”
Arnau choked back his tears and pointed up into the city.
“Is he with them?”
“Yes,” Arnau managed to stutter.
Joan recalled the rioting he had been forced to avoid on his way back from the bishop’s palace. The soldiers had sealed off the Jewry and were standing guard outside the gates to keep out the mob, who had turned their attention to looting the houses of rich Christians. How could Bernat be with them? Images of groups of enraged people battering down doors and emerging with armfuls of possessions filled Joan’s mind. There was no way that Bernat could be one of them.
“It can’t be,” he said out loud. Arnau looked up at him from the pallet. “Bernat is not like the others... How can it be possible?”
“I don’t know. There were lots of people. They were all shouting ...”
“But... Bernat? Bernat couldn’t do things like that... Perhaps he was just... trying to find someone?”
Arnau stared at Joan. “How can I tell you it was he who was shouting the loudest, who was leading the others on? How can I tell you I don’t believe it myself?”
“I don’t know, Joan. There were a lot of people.”
“They are stealing, Arnau! They’re attacking the city aldermen!”
Arnau’s look silenced him.
THE TWO BOYS waited in vain for their father to return that night. The next day, Joan got ready for school.
“You shouldn’t go,” Arnau advised him.
Now it was Joan’s turn to silence him with a look.
“KING ALFONSO’S SOLDIERS have put an end to the revolt,” was Joan’s only comment when he came back that evening.
But Bernat did not return that night either.
The next morning, Joan said good-bye to Arnau once more.
“You ought to get out,” he said.
“What if Bernat comes home?” said Arnau, his voice choking with emotion.
The two brothers hugged each other. “Where are you, Father?” they both thought.
It was Pere who went out in search of news. It was easier to find out what had happened than it was to make his way back home.
“I’m sorry, my lad,” he told Arnau. “Your father has been arrested.”
“Where is he?”
“In the magistrate’s palace, but—”
Before he could finish, Arnau had run out the door. Pere looked at his wife and shook his head. The old woman buried her face in her hands.
“They held emergency trials,” Pere explained. “Lots of witnesses recognized Bernat because of his birthmark, and swore he was one of the leaders of the uprising. Why did he do it? He seemed—”
“Because he has two children to feed,” his wife interrupted him, tears in her eyes.
“Because he had... ,” Pere said wearily. “He has already been hanged along with nine others in Plaza del Blat.”
Mariona raised her hands to her face again, but then suddenly dropped them.
“Arnau...,” she exclaimed, heading for the door. Her husband’s words brought her to a halt:
“Let him go. From today he’s no longer a boy.”
Mariona nodded. Pere went over and held her in his arms.
By order of the king, the executions had been carried out immediately. There was not even time to build a scaffold, and so the prisoners were hanged from carts.
Arnau stopped running as soon as he got to Plaza del Blat. He was panting, out of breath. The square was full of silent people standing with their backs to him, staring at... Above their heads, next to the palace, hung ten lifeless bodies.
“No! ... Father!”
His anguished cry echoed round the square. Hundreds of heads turned toward him. Arnau walked slowly through the crowd, which pulled back to let him through. He searched the ten dead faces...
“AT LEAST LET me go and tell the priest,” Pere’s wife pleaded.
“I’ve already told him. He must be there by now.”
When he identified his father, Arnau vomited. The people around him jumped back. The boy took another look at the swollen purplish black face, tilted to one side, with its contorted features and eyes that were fighting now for all eternity to burst from their sockets. His father’s tongue lolled lifelessly from the corner of his mouth. The second and third times he looked, all Arnau brought up was bile.
He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“We should go, my boy,” said Father Albert.
The priest tried to pull him in the direction of Santa Maria, but Arnau would not move. He looked over again at his father, and shut his eyes. He would never be hungry again. Arnau trembled like a leaf. Father Albert tried again to pull him away from the macabre scene.
“Leave me, Father, please.”
With the priest and the others in the square looking on, Arnau ran unsteadily over to the improvised gallows. He was clutching his stomach and was still shaking all over. When he reached his father, he turned toward one of the soldiers standing guard beside the bodies.
“Can I take him down?” he asked.
Faced with the boy’s insistent gaze from below his father’s body, the soldier hesitated. What would his own children have done if he had been hanged?
“No,” he had to tell him. If only he could have been somewhere else! He would have preferred to be fighting a band of Moors, or to be with his children ... What kind of death was this? The hanged man had simply been fighting for his children, for this boy begging him with his eyes, like everyone else in the square. Where was the city magistrate? “The magistrate has ordered that they be left hanging in the square for three days.”