Rose of Fire

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And so, when 23 April came round, the prisoners in the block turned to David Martín, who lay in the shadows of his cell with his eyes closed, and begged him to tell them a story with which to alleviate their tedium. ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ he replied. ‘A story about books, dragons and roses, as befits the date, but above all, a story about shadows and ashes, as befits the times…’

(from the lost fragments of The Prisoner of Heaven)

The chronicles tell us that when the maker of labyrinths reached Barcelona on board a vessel hailing from the East, he already carried with him the germ of a curse that was to stain the city’s skies with fire and blood. It was the year of Our Lord 1454. A plague had decimated the population during the winter and the city lay under a blanket of ochre-coloured smoke that rose from bonfires ablaze with hundreds of corpses and shrouds. From afar one could see the noxious pall spiralling upwards. It crept through towers and palaces and soared like an omen of death, warning travellers to continue on their way and not approach the city walls. The Holy Office had ordered the city to be sealed off and had carried out an investigation. After days of brutal interrogation it was established without a shadow of a doubt that the plague had originated in a well close to the Jewish quarter, also known as the Call de Sanaüja, where Semitic money-lenders had conjured up a demonic plot to poison its waters. The usurers’ substantial goods were seized and what was left of their bodies was cast into a pit in the marshes. Now, all that anyone could do was hope that the prayers of honest citizens might bring God’s blessing back to Barcelona. Every day fewer people died and more people believed that the worst was over.

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