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the forge. They crossed it and headed for the back, where the lad opened a door leading into a shed where equipment and tools were kept. He went in, and Bernat followed. As soon as he was inside, the boy sat on the floor and started to devour more bread. Bernat peered around the squalid room. It was stiflingly hot, but he could not understand why the apprentice had brought him there: all he could see was piles of tools and old scraps of iron.
    Bernat looked inquiringly at the boy. Chewing on the loaf, he pointed to one of the corners of the room and waved Bernat to go and look there.
    Abandoned and starved, his son lay on a pile of wooden planks in a broken wicker basket. The strips of white linen bound round him were filthy and in tatters. He was on the verge of death. Bernat could not stop himself uttering a strangled cry that sounded hardly human. He snatched Arnau up and pressed him to his chest. The infant responded only feebly, but he did respond.
    “The baron ordered your son be kept here,” Bernat heard the apprentice explain. “At first, your wife came several times a day, and soothed him by breast-feeding him.” Bernat clutched the child to him, as if trying to breathe life into his tiny lungs. “One day, the steward came in after her,” the boy went on. “Your wife fought him off. She shouted as loud as she could ... I saw him. I was in the forge next door.” He pointed to a crack in the wooden planks of the wall. “But the steward is a very strong man ... When he was done with her, the lord and some soldiers came in too. Your wife was lying on the floor; the lord began to laugh at her. All of them did. Since that day, whenever your wife came to feed her child, there would be soldiers waiting at the door. She could not fight them all off. In the past few days, I have hardly seen her here. The soldiers catch her as soon as she leaves Doña Caterina’s apartments. She cannot even reach the forge. Sometimes the lord sees what they are doing, but all he does is laugh.”
    Without a moment’s thought, Bernat lifted his shirt and pushed his son’s tiny body inside. He disguised the bulge by holding the other loaf of bread up against his chest. The infant did not even stir. As he made for the door, the apprentice rose to stop him.
    “The lord has forbidden it! You cannot—”
    “Out of my way, boy!”
    The lad stepped in front of Bernat. Once again, he did not hesitate for a second: holding the baby and the loaf of bread in one hand, he snatched an iron bar from the wall and whirled round. Bernat caught the apprentice full on the head. He fell to the ground in the entrance to the storeroom before he had time to utter a sound. Bernat did not even look at him; he went out and shut the door behind him.
    He had no problem leaving Llorenç de Bellera’s castle. No one could have suspected that beneath the loaf of bread he was hiding his son’s poor, abused body. It was only after he had emerged through the castle gate that he thought of Francesca and the soldiers. Indignantly, he reproached her for not trying to contact him, to warn him of the danger their son was in, for not fighting for Arnau ... Bernat cradled his son’s body, and thought of his wife being raped by the soldiers while his son was left to die on a pile of rotten planks.

    How LONG WOULD it take them to find the lad he had struck? Was he dead? Had he shut the storeroom door properly? As he strode back to his farm, Bernat’s mind was filled with questions. Yes, he dimly remembered he had shut the door.
    As soon as he had turned the first bend on the twisting path that rose toward the castle, so that he was now out of sight, Bernat uncovered his son. His eyes were dull and lifeless. He weighed even less than the loaf of bread! His arms and legs were so thin! Bernat’s stomach churned, and a lump came to his throat. Tears began to trickle down his cheeks. He told himself this was no time to cry. He knew they would set out in search of them,