The Convenient Saint and Other Stories by Sarah Waldock

Author:Sarah Waldock [Waldock, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781671524552
Published: 2020-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

IV

The children were excited about the Carnevale procession to take place and I worked on keeping them calm and quiet. Pernel was quite capable of getting herself so over excited that she could be quite physically sick with it.

Jerid, methinks, was almost apprehensive, for he hated crowds and noise; and he clung to Pernel’s hand on one side of me as Adam protectively held Emma’s on the other. Robin had Sebastian sitting on his shoulders, crowing and laughing happily, so different to the cowed child who had first come to us. Rosa had declared herself more than happy to stay at home with the babies, out of all the noise and bustle, for she too was a quiet little body. I fed the twins and left her to burp them and put them down to sleep that I might have the most possible time out with the other children.

Connie and Rafe accompanied us of course, as our escorts. Rafe had seen such things before, but Connie was big-eyed, staring around in wonder at the colourful displays in the streets.

Many of the dwellings on the main streets had been dressed for the occasion, with greenery and coloured bunting-cloth, and pennants I took to signify allegiance to prominent families or guilds. I did not know the heraldry of the powers of Barcelona.

The palace of the Counts of Barcelona may be found in the centre of town, and Santa Maria del Mer, a cathedral that must be nearly two hundred years old; the name, Saint Mary of the Sea, says it all, for the fine building celebrates the power and prestige of the great shipyards. These buildings displayed their own banners and branches of green. Decorated too were the fine new buildings that ran along the banks of a stream called La Rambla that ran just outside the city walls. The city had outgrown its walls and universities and religious houses were being built there to the glory of God and learning, and their inhabitants were keen to make their mark, the decorations of each building vying for grandeur with the next, so as one passed downstream the decorations became more and more extravagant.

The university of Barcelona had been founded but sixty years previously, so the students were still trying to establish customs and prestige.

Elephants were much in evidence as banners, reminding us of the legend that Barcelona was founded by Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal. There are still portions of Roman walls in the cathedral from when Hannibal was defeated and the Romans took the city. One university building had made an elephant’s head close to full size from wool over a wicker frame, with a trunk that was operated from within by some enthusiastic fellow whose main aim seemed to be to try to get it under the skirts of any woman or girl silly enough to stray too close; and another played a most creditable imitation of an elephant’s trumpeting on, methinks, a bagpipe. I think the elephant was to

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