Cathedral of the Sea

He raised the lamp, and the flame rose higher. Where were they ... ? It was a cemetery! They were in a cemetery. A tiny cave that for some reason had survived beneath Santa Maria like an air bubble. The roof was so low they could not stand up. Arnau looked over at several huge amphorae. They looked just like the jars he was used to seeing in Grau’s workshop, but more rounded. Some of them were broken, showing the skeletons inside, but others were still intact: big clay vessels cut in half, stacked together, and sealed at the top.

Joan was still shaking: he was staring straight at a skeleton.

“It’s all right,” Arnau insisted, going over to him.

Joan drew away from him.

“What is—” Arnau started to ask.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Joan, interrupting him.

Without waiting for a reply, he plunged into the tunnel. Arnau followed, and when they reached the boards at the entrance, he blew out the lamp. There was no one in sight. He put the lantern back where he had found it, and they returned to Pere’s house.

“Don’t say a word of this to anyone,” he warned Joan on the way. “Agreed?”

Joan said nothing.

14

EVER SINCE ARNAU had told him that the Virgin was his mother too, Joan ran to the church whenever he had a free moment. He would cling to the grille of the Jesus chapel, push his head in between them, and stare at the stone figure with the child on her shoulder and boat at her feet.

“One of these days you won’t be able to get your head out,” Father Albert said to him once.

Joan pulled back and smiled at him. The priest ruffled his hair and knelt down beside him.

“Do you love her?” he asked, pointing inside the chapel.

Joan hesitated.

“She’s my mother now,” he replied, more as a wish than a certainty.

Father Albert was choked with emotion. How much he could tell the little boy about Our Lady! He tried to speak, but the words would not come. He put his arm round Joan’s shoulders until he could safely speak again.

“Do you pray to her?” he asked when he had recovered.

“No. I just talk to her.” Father Albert looked inquisitively at him. “Well, I tell her what’s been happening to me.”

The priest looked at the Virgin.

“Carry on, my son, carry on,” he said, leaving him at the chapel.

IT

WAS NOT hard. Father Albert considered three or four possible candidates, and finally settled on a rich silversmith. During his last annual confession, the craftsman had seemed very contrite about several adulterous affairs he had been involved in.

“If you really are his mother,” Father Albert muttered, raising his eyes to the heavens, “you won’t hold this little subterfuge against me, will you?”

The silversmith could not say no.

“It’s only a small donation to the cathedral school,” the priest told him. “It will help a child, and God ... God will thank you for it.”

Now all that was left was to speak to Bernat. Father Albert went to find him.

“I’ve managed to get a place for Joanet at the cathedral school,” he told him as they walked along the beach near Pere’s house.

Bernat turned to look at him.

“I don’t have the money for that,” he said apologetically.

“It won’t cost you anything.”

“But I thought that schools ...”

“Yes, but those are the public ones in the city. For the cathedral school, it’s enough ...” What was the point explaining the details? “Well, I’ve seen to that.” The two men continued walking. “He will learn to read and write, first from hornbooks and then from psalms and prayers.” Why did Bernat not say anything? “Then when he is thirteen, he can start secondary school. There he will study Latin and the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetics, geometry, music, and astronomy—”

“Father,” Bernat interrupted him, “Joanet helps out in the house, and because of that Pere does not charge me for his food. But if the boy goes to school ...”

“He’ll be fed at school.” Bernat looked at him again, and shook his head slowly, as though thinking it over. “Besides,” the priest went on, “I’ve already spoken to Pere, and he’s agreed you should pay the same as now.”

“You’ve done a lot for the boy.”

“Yes, do you mind?” Bernat shook his head, smiling. “Just imagine if one day Joanet went to university, to the main center in Lérida, or even to somewhere abroad, like Bologna or Paris ...”

Bernat burst out laughing.

“If I refused, you’d be really disappointed, wouldn’t you?” Father Albert nodded. “He’s not my son, Father,” Bernat added. “If he were, I wouldn’t allow one boy to work for the other, but it’s not going to cost me anything, so why not? He deserves it. And perhaps one day he will go to all those places you mentioned.”

“I’D PREFER TO be with the horses, like you,” Joanet told Arnau as they walked along the same part of the beach where Father Albert and Bernat had decided his future.