“I’ve never yet met anybody who could jump with a block of stone on his back,” laughed Ramon.
As they climbed up to the royal quarry, Arnau peered back down at the city. It looked far, far below. How was he going to walk all that way with a huge stone on his back? He could feel his legs giving way just at the thought of it, but he ran to catch up with the rest of the group, who were still talking and laughing as they climbed ahead of him.
They went round a bend, and there the royal quarry lay in front of them. Arnau could not help gasping in astonishment. It was like Plaza del Blat or any of the other city markets, except that there were no women! On a flat expanse of ground, the king’s officers were dealing with everyone who had come seeking stone. Carts and mule trains were lined up on one side, where the walls of the mountain had not yet been excavated. The rest looked as though it had been sliced through, and was a mass of glistening rock. Countless stonemasons were dangerously levering off huge blocks of stone; down on the flat ground others cut them into smaller stones.
The
Arnau could not help watching the stonecutters at work. He was equally fascinated by the way the laborers loaded the carts and mules, always supervised by a clerk noting everything down. Just as in the markets, people were talking or waiting their turn impatiently.
“You weren’t expecting anything like this, were you?”
Arnau turned and saw Ramon handing back a wineskin. He shook his head.
“Who is all this stone for?”
“Oh!” said Ramon, then began to reel off the list: “for the cathedral, for Santa Maria del Pi, Santa Anna, for the Pedralbes monastery, for the royal dockyards, for Santa Clara, for the city walls. Everything is being built or changed; and then there are the new houses for the rich and the noblemen. Nobody wants wood or bricks. They all want stone.”
“And the king gives them all this stone?”
Ramon burst out laughing.
“The only stone he gives free is for Santa Maria de la Mar ... and possibly for Pedralbes monastery too, because that is being built at the queen’s behest. He charges a lot for all the rest.”
“Even the stone for the royal dockyards?” asked Arnau. “They are for the king, aren’t they?”
Ramon smiled again.
“They may be royal,” he said, “but the king isn’t the one paying for them.”
“The city?”
“No.”
“The merchants?”
“Not them either.”
“Well, then?” asked Arnau, turning to face him.
“The royal dockyards are being paid for by—”
“The sinners!” the man who had offered him his wineskin took the words out of Ramon’s mouth. He was a mule driver from the cathedral.
Ramon and he laughed out loud at Arnau’s bewildered look.
“The sinners?”
“Yes,” explained Ramon, “the new shipyards are being built thanks to money from sinful merchants. Look, it’s very simple: ever since the Crusades ... You know what the Crusades were, don’t you?” Arnau nodded: of course he knew what they were. “Well, ever since the Holy City was lost forever, the Church has banned all trade with the sultan of Egypt. But as it happens, it’s there that our traders can find their best goods, so none of them is willing to give up trading with the sultan. Which means that whenever they want to do so, they go to the customs office and pay a fine for the sin they are about to commit. They are also absolved beforehand, and therefore they don’t fall into sin. King Alfonso ordered that all the money collected in this way should go to financing Barcelona’s new dockyards.”
Arnau was about to say something, but Ramon raised his hand to cut him short. The guild aldermen were calling them. He signaled to Arnau to follow him.
“Are we going before them?” asked Arnau, pointing to the muleteers they were leaving behind.
“Of course,” said Ramon, still striding ahead. “We don’t need to be checked as thoroughly as they do: our stone is free, and easy to count: one
