Read Online Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones - Free Book Online

him.
    “Hasn’t the master paid you enough? Why do you insist on demanding more?” he snarled, pushing Bernat out into the street. Arnau began to cry. “You’ve already been told that if you come here again, we’ll report you to the authorities. Grau Puig is an important man, you know.”
    Although he did not understand any of this, Bernat let the man force him backward.
    “Listen ... ,” he protested, “I ...”
    By now, Arnau was howling in his arms, but then all of a sudden there was an even louder cry from one of the upper-floor windows.
    “Bernat! Bernat!”
    Bernat and the man turned round together and saw a woman leaning half out of the window, arms whirling like windmills.
    “Guiamona!” shouted Bernat, returning her greeting.
    The woman pulled her head in. Bernat turned to the man, his eyes narrowed.
    “Does Mistress Guiamona know you?” the man asked.
    “She’s my sister,” Bernat answered curtly. “And by the way, nobody in this house has ever paid me a thing.”
    The man apologized, hoping he was not in trouble. “I’m sorry. I was referring to the master’s brothers: first one came, then another, and then still another.”
    But Bernat saw his sister coming out of the house, so he cut the man off and ran over to embrace her.

    “WHERE’S GRAU?” HE asked his sister once he had cleaned off his eye and handed Arnau over to the Moorish slave who looked after Guiamona’s small children. As he watched the boy wolf down a bowl of milk and cereal, he added: “I’d like to greet him too.”
    Guiamona looked uncomfortable.
    “Is something wrong?”
    “Grau has changed a lot. He’s a rich and important man now.” Guiamona pointed to the many chests lining the walls of the room: the sideboard; a piece of furniture Bernat had never seen in his life before, which was filled with books and crockery; the carpets adorning the floor; and the tapestries and curtains hanging from windows and walls. “He barely attends to the workshop and his potter’s trade these days; it’s Jaume, his chief assistant, who sees to everything. He’s the man you met in the street. Grau is busy as a merchant: ships, wine, oil. Now he is a guild official, which in accordance with the laws and usages of the city, means he is an alderman, a gentleman. Soon he expects to be made a member of the Council of a Hundred.” Guiamona looked around the room. “He’s not the same anymore, Bernat.”
    “You’ve changed a lot too,” Bernat said, interrupting her. Guiamona looked down at her matronly body and nodded. “That man Jaume,” Bernat continued, “said something about Grau’s relatives. What did he mean?”
    Guiamona shook her head, then replied.
    “What he meant was that, as soon as they heard that Grau was rich, all of them—brothers, cousins, nephews—suddenly started turning up at the workshop. They had fled their lands to come and seek Grau’s help.” Guiamona could not help noticing her brother’s expression. “So you too ... ?” Bernat nodded. “But you had such a wonderful farm!”
    When she heard Bernat’s story, she could not hold back her tears. As he told her what had happened to the lad in the forge, she stood up and came to kneel next to his chair.
    “Don’t mention that to anyone here,” she warned him. Then she laid her head on his lap, and went on listening. “Don’t worry,” she sobbed when Bernat had finished. “We will help you.”
    “Ah, sister,” said Bernat, stroking her head. “How do you intend to help me when Grau would not even help his own brothers?”

    “BECAUSE MY BROTHER is different!” shouted Guiamona so loudly that Grau took a step backward.
    It was night by the time her husband returned home. Small, skinny Grau, a bundle of nerves, strode up the staircase, cursing. Guiamona was waiting for him. Jaume had told him what had happened: “Your brother-in-law is sleeping in the hayloft with the apprentices, his boy ... with your children.”
    Grau charged up to