City of Silver (13 page)

AN AFRICAN SERVANT girl with a seductive walk shocked Padre Junipero by ushering him directly into the bedchamber of Doña Ana. Normally, ladies of the aristocracy met priests, or any guest, for that matter, on their patios or in their receiving rooms. He entered their private quarters only to bring Viaticum to the dying.

Though the lady was not ill, Doña Ana’s chamber carried the odor of a sickroom—of a place too long closed up and a person too long unbathed. The room itself was of the Moorish style, typical of ladies’ bedrooms fashionable in Sevilla when he had studied there—when such places had not been unknown to him, as they were now supposed to be. The whitewashed walls were covered with tapestries fashioned like Turkish carpets but made by local Indians. Under the windows ran a raised platform—about six inches above the floor—covered with carpets and velvet cushions. On this
estrado
lay the remnant of a beautiful woman. Her heavy cosmetics camouflaged neither her pallor nor the black signatures of dissipation under her dark,
glassy eyes. She sipped
chicha
from a cup and fed sweetmeats to a little red Chinese dog. She seemed not to notice the oddity of a man entering this room that, like a seraglio, was meant to be sacrosanct.

“Padre,” she said languidly, through the dullness and distraction induced by the strong drink. Her hair was almost as dark and straight as an Indian’s. It fell awry around her shoulders. “Bring his chair near me, Bernardina,” she ordered the maid.

The stately African carried from a gloomy corner a chair covered with painted leather. The presence—in an alcove—of a huge gilt bed with lace-trimmed sheets and pillows in disarray made him sit stiffly and greet the lady as formally as he could. There was a silver chamber pot in the corner.

Without sitting up, Doña Ana handed the dog to the maid, who carried him out. The pillow behind the lady’s head was embroidered with a double bird—the Indian symbol of fertility—and the words
Sonreír y Besar.
The tragic eyes of the woman told the priest that little smiling and no kissing took place here.

“Have you come to hear my confession, Padre?” Her thin, pale hands swiped at the wrinkles in her rumpled blue silk gown.

“I am not here for that purpose, but—” He despaired at ever finding the wisdom to discharge his duty with her any more mercifully than he had with her poor, grief-crazed husband.

She was, like the padre himself, a white Creole, the daughter of a wealthy
encomendero
—a rancher who had been brother in arms to Morada’s father in Pizarro’s army, reportedly a stern, silent man who was as frugal as Morada was extravagant.

“Will you take some maté? Some
chicha
?” The offers were diffident, from a person whose offers were never accepted.

“It is the climate, the cold, the thin air, that has reduced me to this.” She spoke distractedly, half talking to herself. Everyone in Potosí bore these hardships, but women of her class seemed more susceptible to their ravages than the men or the Indians. The priest questioned the wisdom of bringing white ladies to this
altitude. Out of self-interest, the Crown encouraged Spaniards to marry and settle in the territories, but the King and the Council of the Indies gave little thought to the fate of Spanish women at the frontier.

Out the window, across the courtyard, the moon lit the barren, ocher-colored hills. This was hell for a delicate nature such as Doña Ana’s. She was more isolated behind the locked doors of this house than any nun in a convent. She had nothing to do all day except sit with her daughters and sew clothing for gaudy religious statues. Like the dolls of a child, a collection of them lined shelves over the windows. Those and her dresses and her jewels were supposed to sustain her. Her only role was to bear the children of the master of the house—not even to care for them after their birth—and to be a testimonial to his manliness, a sparkling bauble that adorned him like the pearls embroidered on his ceremonial saddlecloth. Few women maintained their sanity in such a life, especially in Potosí, a city dominated by Venus and Libra, where venery and the pursuit of riches were the preferred proofs of manhood.

“My husband never comes to my bed,” she said, as if she had read the padre’s thoughts. “He has told me to my face he is bored with my love.” She sipped again from her
chicha
cup.

To such laments, a priest was supposed to answer that she must accept her husband’s infidelities without complaint, that she should strive for the virtues of patience, humility, and obedience. How could he mouth such advice tonight? Besides, God help him, Padre Junipero saw in her slovenliness Morada’s excuse. Who would desire such a woman?

“I know you are thinking how unattractive I am.”

He jumped at the accuracy of her guess.

She laughed a laugh of bitterness and desperation. “You are looking at the effect of his neglect, Padre. Not the cause.”

His skin itched with fear of such insight. He had always imagined
that Inez inherited only her beauty from her mother—that her intelligence came from her father. Now, he saw that this ruined lady was astute. Could she not then see that he had brought her a terrible sack of woe?

“You may wonder why I care,” she said languidly, “about the attentions of a smuggler and social climber.” She raised herself up enough to look him in the eye. “He is, you know. Since he married me, he pretends to be of the aristocracy. But he is common. He has raised dealing in contraband to a high art. He does not even hide it. My father used to pretend he was going hunting when he was really going out to bring in goods. Francisco Morada does not even pretend—” She broke off and looked at the padre quizzically for a second. “Why are you here?” Her eyes challenged him, and she waited.

He could not bear to speak. He stared, riveted by her pain. Through the window came the barely audible voices of Holy Week hymn singers walking in procession in the street below.

“I suppose you mean to mollify me in some way. You think I should be satisfied that I have more dresses than the Princess of Asturias.” Her voice was thick with drink and self-pity.

He let his reticence torment him.

“You are here because you want to talk about Inez. Captain Morada told me he has relinquished her to the convent.” Doña Ana seemed to enjoy this fact. He knew she was waiting for him to speak, but he could not.

Their silence was a third presence in the room.

Doña Ana gave in first. “Inez must have told you in confession that she did not honor me. She shouted at me in the street. I am sure it was the talk of Potosí. This city is so filled with gossip. I have never been able to control her. It is my own fault. I let an Indian wet-nurse her. Inez drank in savage ways with the mil—” She broke off. “Ah, but then you are the great defender of the Indians, so now you too will hate me.”

He did not blame the milk Inez drank as an infant for the defects of her character. What the girl had lacked was a proper mother.

“She hates me,” Doña Ana moaned.

“No, she does not,” the priest protested. Inez no longer hated anyone.

“Yes, she does. I can feel that you are here to tell me that she never wants to see me again.”

“That is not it,” he said softly, “but I do have bad news.”

“What?”

He hesitated, lost in her accusing eyes.

She rose, knocking her
chicha
cup to the floor. It was empty. “What? I cannot have bad news. I do not allow a single knot in the house. I burn incense to the Virgin every day.” She came to him and grabbed his hands.

He looked directly into her glazed eyes. They suddenly read his heart and fired with recognition. Her face contorted.

“Bernardina!” she screeched.

The maid was in the room and on her knees near to the door before the sound of Doña Ana’s scream faded.

The trembling lady never let go of his fingers, never took her eyes off his. “Coca. Bring the gum from that tree.
Now!
And tobacco.
Now. Now.
”

The maid hurried out. He said nothing. Then, Doña Ana began to beat on his chest with an energy her wasted body had seemed incapable of. Beating and shouting, “There is not one knot in the house. I tell you I never had one dream. No. You are lying. You are a liar. All Jesuits are liars.”

He caught her as she fell back, his heart shredded by anguish.

She fought him off and fell to the floor. She pounded it with her fists. “I did it,” she wailed. “I killed my own daughter. I did it. I killed her.”

THE NEXT MORNING, a frosty Good Friday dawned and fear gripped all but the drunkest, most debauched, most addle-brained Potosinos. Many had spent a strange Holy Thursday scrambling to prepare a suitable welcome for Doctor Nestares, who held their fate in his hands. Others had anesthetized themselves with the drug of acquisition. Panicked that the power of their silver coins would soon diminish, they sought to buy while they could. Goods disappeared from the shops. Prices spiraled upward as shop keep ers realized that their products would hold value even if the currency did not. Late on the night of Holy Thursday, the weary merchants had finally turned out their clamoring customers and closed shop for the holiest days of the year. Dazed citizens trudged home through the stone-paved streets, quaking with an unnamable terror that the center of their existence would not hold.

When morning came, they turned to God. A desperation for His mercy intensified the usual Good Friday outpouring of penance. Even the most materialistic and impious joined those
burning with genuine remorse in an attempt to stay their Maker’s wrath. Beginning at dawn, processions of penitents formed and wound through the streets, calling at all the churches.

On his way to the Convent of Santa Isabella de los Santos Milagros, Fray DaTriesta, the local Commissioner of the Inquisition, stopped to watch a huge parade pour out of the great stone Church of San Lorenzo and make its way along the Calle Zarate toward the Church of Jerusalén. Before his approving countenance passed children wearing only white tunics and dragging heavy fetters. Their heads were covered with ashes, and they chanted,
“Lava quod est sordidum.”

Yes, thought DaTriesta, wash what is defiled.

A group of noblemen wearing hair shirts followed. Don Juan de Armuña whipped himself. Blood ran on his back. Don Francisco Casteñeda, his hands bound, wore an iron gag fastened with a heavy lock that clanked as the old man hobbled along. Twenty or so men in black hoods with eyes cut out bore huge crosses on their shoulders. Others dragged heavy logs with outstretched arms. The men of the Cabildo in white robes of rough cloth carried litters with statues of San Pedro and the Pietà. A group of Indian men bore a weighty silver litter that held an image of Our Lady. Indian women wearing crowns of thorns recited the rosary in chorus with their children. Noblewomen dressed in mourning, wearing ashes on their heads, carried candles in the gathering daylight. Doña Niña de Figueroa caught Fray DaTriesta’s eye, folded her hands, and bowed her head. The Commissioner raised his right hand to bless her, but his heart was not in an absolving mood. Sinful as this city was, not even such outpourings of repentance were guaranteed to repulse God’s anger.

DaTriesta turned his reluctant steps toward the convent to warn that troublesome Abbess not to commit the sin that would finally deliver her into his power.

At that moment, inside the convent in her tiny private
chapel, the Abbess knelt in prayer before the oval image of the Virgin of Carmen with the Christ Child. “My conscience is clear,” she said to God’s beautiful Mother. “It is right to bury Inez here in the convent. I am sure of it,” she told the boy Jesus, who held a globe and red rose. “The girl came here for sanctuary, and I must keep her here. And I must confront whatever secrets lie in my convent.” The possibility of scandal made her stomach tremble. The threatened flames of the auto-da-fé made her sweat. “I came here to serve You, Lord. I will do what is right by Inez. After that, I put my future in Your hands.”

Even as she spoke these words, she understood that although her life was in God’s hands, the plans she had been formulating in her mind all night were the key to saving her from the Inquisition. There were still unknowns—questions that would not emerge until the first facts came to light. She had instructed Sor Monica and Padre Junipero on what they were to try to learn. Sor Monica must determine what exactly had killed Inez. The priest, because he could move freely about the city, was to find out the meaning behind Inez’s pleading note to Beatriz Tovar, why Inez felt threatened, what was the secret that frightened her, the knowledge of which may have taken her life. Their discoveries would light her way to safety.

She herself meant to uncover any information Inez might have shared with her sister, Gemita, a sweet, bland girl who had never much attracted the Abbess’s notice. Now she needed Gemita’s trust, but she did not have it.

“How could I have known that I would need her?”

The pretty, benign faces in the painting remained impassive to her pleas for help. She would have to find her own way. Nothing in her education had prepared her for this. She smiled ruefully at her own naïveté. She used to imagine that life in a cloistered convent would bring her a peaceful existence.