City of Silver

by Annamaria Alfieri

  The Abbess put on her mantle of black vicuña and placed over it a stole of brown alpaca fur to protect her from the brutal weather. Touching the foot of Christ on the crucifix, she whispered, “Give me courage, Lord.”

  She crossed the front cloister and knocked at the door of Sor Olga, the Mistress of Novices. A chair scraped against the brick floor of Sor Olga’s private chapel, and the wiry, old nun’s searching dark eyes appeared behind the iron grille in the door. “Mother Abbess, I thought—”

  “I decided to go out early. The crier called out that they will read an urgent proclamation in the Plaza Mayor at nine this morning. On our way to our audience with the Bishop, we must pass there to hear the news.”

  Sor Olga’s eyes disappeared, leaving a whiff of disapproval. Sor Olga disliked the Abbess’s curiosity about events in the outside world. Sor Olga disliked a great many things.

  In seconds she came out of her cell, mute and bundled against the cold. They bowed to the Sister Porter, who unbolted the heavy front door and let them out to the street.

  Indian women bread sellers behind tall baskets, haughty noblemen wearing metal breastplates and plumed hats, and smiling Mestizo tradesmen all saluted them as they passed along the Calle Real in an ever thickening, wind-whipped throng heading for the main square. The nuns nodded in response to the greetings but spoke to no one, not even one each other. Their silence was born of habit from their years in a contemplative order, but also of a tension between them. Both knew there was bitter disagreement, maybe even animosity, hovering and ready to pounce if too many words were spoken.

  The Abbess searched her heart for a spot of tenderness toward the small, hard nun at her side. Underneath Sor Olga’s armor of rigid piety there must be a real human story—like the stories of the convent’s other women, young and old.

  There were those—and many—who entered for the pure joy of doing nothing but loving God. Sor Olga had none of the serenity of such a one. Nor had she the heat of passion for Christ that infused the women whose eyes flamed as they gazed at the raised host during Mass. Something else had brought Sor Olga to the religious life. The Abbess was sure she would never know what had wounded this tiny, unyielding woman so long ago.

  As befitted their lineage, the two nuns took their places with the nobles on the steps of the cathedral, which the locals called La Matriz—the Womb. The leading citizens near them were typical of Potosí’s elite, Spaniards, richly and fashionably dressed. Men stood proudly, as if posing for a painter’s brush, head to toe in severe black with white high collars, their capes and doublets embroidered in silver and gold. Ladies, whose thick and elaborate brocade gowns could not protect them from the cold, huddled in plush fur cloaks, their hands plunged deep into muffs of white and gray. They bore their gold-and-diamond necklaces like princesses, stepping daintily across cobbles in slippers sewn with pearls and precious stones. Even their maids wore gold on their chests and pearls embroidered on their sleeves. The women of Potosí had so much to spend on beautiful dresses that they displayed them on their servants as well as themselves. Wealth was the reason for this city’s existence, and its citizens flaunted all they had.

  In every skin tone from the smooth ebony of the statuesque African slaves to the bronze of the Andean Indian ore carriers to the pallor of the Spanish nuns who stood in silence on the steps of the cathedral, the chilled faces of the crowd revealed a certain apprehension about the nature of the news they were about to receive, but also a smugness born of living in the largest, richest city in the Western Hemi sphere, of knowing they participated, in their various ways, in the most important activity in Christendom. They believed in the power of Potosí. Their city had dominated the economic life of the planet for nearly a century.

  They faced the elegant, cut-stone façade of the Alcaldía Municipal—the headquarters of the city government—across the plaza. From the railing of the second-floor balcony, the city’s multihued coat of arms, given a hundred years ago by King Carlos, the Holy Roman Emperor, rippled in the wind between bright banners of red and gold. “I am rich Potosí,” it proclaimed, “trea sure of the world, the king of mountains, and the envy of kings.” The head of the city government—the Alcalde Mayor, Francisco Rojas de la Morada—would soon emerge to read a proclamation.

  Maria Santa Hilda reached for the rosary that hung from her sash and fingered the beads. The news could be bad. It might further sour the Bishop for their discussion. Though her position as Abbess gave her clear jurisdiction over matters inside her convent, she could not defy the Alcalde and the Bishop forever.

  Long ago and far away, she had gone to the convent searching for peace. That naïve novice soon became a woman burning with ambition. Sor Maria Santa Hilda rose rapidly in the estimation of her superiors and in the responsibilities they bestowed. Just days after her thirtieth birthday—only fifteen years after she had put on the ring and married Christ forever—the Mother General of the Order appointed her to cross the ocean and found the Convent of Santa Isabella. Since her arrival in Potosí, while she was immersed in the euphoric work of building, her energy and the inspiration of God’s love had glowed within her. Now, the convent was built and its great church almost completed. Instead of simple stones and mortar, she had to deal with conflicts that plagued her conscience and responsibilities that weighed like boulders. For the noble women and girls of her community, she stood in the place of Christ—unworthy though she was. She had to decide for them, and many of those decisions—like the problem of Inez—gave her no clear choice between good and evil. She prayed to the Holy Spirit to inspire her, but so far she had prayed in vain.

  IN HIS MANSION only a few yards away, from behind the heavy Neapolitan silk draperies of his upstairs sitting room, the Bishop Don Fray Faustino Piñelo de Ondegardo de Léon scanned the plaza and the hundreds of whitewashed brick-and-stone buildings beyond. His stern eyes narrowed. Would that the life of Potosí were as orderly as the grid pattern of its streets. The souls of its inhabitants ought to be as clean as the whitewash on its buildings. Their faith should shine as brilliantly as the sun in this clear, rarefied air. But the behavior of the citizens resembled more the uneven ground on which the city was built—high ideals and religious fervor in some quarters, low lawlessness, enslavement to flesh and violence elsewhere. The riches of the mine had spawned this great city, but everywhere the turbulent mining camp of its past showed through its veneer of elegance.

  The Bishop let the curtain drop. How he longed to be in Sevilla or Andalusia. Almost any warm city in Spain that offered small compensations for the sacrifices of the priesthood—a decent wine, a fresh peach—that was all he wished for. But for the circumstances of his birth, he would have the life he wanted. Instead, fate had forced him to accept what was offered—a perilous voyage amid unspeakable shipboard conditions—filth and crowding beyond description. Two months from Spain to Panama. Across the isthmus by mule. Another stench-ridden ship south to Lima. Then that tedious trek up the endless mountains. He saw the barren Altiplano as a remnant of the earth before God created Eden—earth separated from sky, but nothing else. Here he lived, fourteen thousand feet above the sea. Why had God put that mountain of silver in this miserable place?

  Because of that silver, remote and desolate as it was, Potosí’s citizens felt themselves at the center of the universe. Fools. They may as well have been buried at the bottom of the deepest ocean.

  The Bishop turned again to look out. He sighed deeply. The city gave only one consolation. The quantity of its riches and suddenness of its citizens’ good fortune made them generous with God’s representative. His own fortune grew. He had already enough money to erect, one day, a chapel that would hold his earthly remains—one to rival the glorious tombs of the popes in Rome, of the same marble, sculpted by the finest artists. If his mother had been a different person, he might have aspired to be Pope. As it was, perhaps, if his fortune grew large enough and the King’s coffers required it, he might even purchase the Viceroyalty itself. O
ther lesser offices had been for sale to the highest bidder for some time. Why not the highest office in this land?

  Rumors troubled him. Talk of problems with the currency—problems that could threaten his own wealth. The men in the plaza spoke of counterfeit coins, made not of pure silver but adulterated with baser metals. If this turned out to be so, the coins of Potosí would not be trusted. The King might even devalue the pesos stamped in Potosí. The Bishop shuddered to think that soon his four hundred thousand might be worth only half that.

  A sharp rap at the door halted the descent of the Bishop’s thoughts.

  “Come,” the now deeply annoyed Bishop called across the room. Only one person would have the temerity to disturb him at this moment.

  Juan-Baptiste, the porter, entered, went down on one knee, and predictably announced Fray Ubaldo DaTriesta, the local Commissioner of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition.

  The tall priest, thin and dry, entered from the hall and bowed. “Good morning, my lord Bishop,” he said in his lowborn Spanish.

  Eyes still lowered to the floor, the porter said, “This parcel arrived this morning, my lord.” He placed a canvas-wrapped package on the inlaid marble table near the door. He folded his hands in an attitude of prayer, bowed from the waist, and backed out the door, which he closed without a sound.

  DaTriesta glanced at the parcel and raised his eyebrows questioningly. This local representative of the Inquisition was nothing if not inquisitive.

  The Bishop refused to indulge him with an answer. The package was a private matter. The plebeian Commissioner’s pretensions at intimacy stuck in the Bishop’s craw, little gravels of annoyance, like the pebbles in a turkey’s gullet. But DaTriesta’s power was not to be trifled with. The Bishop suppressed a snide remark about the priest’s shiny, grease-stained cassock. He unlatched the window and wrinkled his nose instead at a whiff of acrid smoke from the llama-dung fires in the Indian section to the south, on the slope of the Cerro.

  “Look. I see some movement behind the balcony doors of the Alcaldía. Perhaps Alcalde Morada is ready to read the announcement.”

  DaTriesta crossed the room. “The talk in the plaza is of Inez de la Morada. The whole city knows the Abbess Maria Santa Hilda is defying the Alcalde by keeping his daughter in the convent. And they all know that you have asked the Abbess more than once to send the girl home.”

  The Bishop fingered the fine green silk of his draperies and hid his rage. “I should think the citizens would be more interested in the proclamation they are gathered to hear. The words come from their King. Do you think it will be about the currency? There have been so many reports of false money.”

  “Smugglers’ rumors.” DaTriesta waved a skinny hand as if to shoo a gnat. Again, he swiveled his narrow head and eyed the canvas-covered parcel near the door. “Problems with silver are the things of Caesar. Your concern must be the Church. You are the Bishop of a hundred and sixty thousand in this city. You cannot be seen to allow the Abbess to defy you. You have the means to control her if you are willing to use them.”

  The Bishop stroked his ecclesiastical ring. He hated DaTriesta when he was right.

  The Commissioner went on. “I’ve heard also about a heretical Indian woman who demanded that her husband be brought back from the dead.”

  The Bishop turned to the window. “Just an overly emotional woman—like all of them.”

  Across the plaza, the door to the balcony opened and three members of the Cabildo—the City Council—filed out. The Alcalde’s powerful form paused on the threshold. The Bishop opened his window wider. Wind ruffled his lank gray hair as he cocked his head to hear.

  BEFORE GOING OUT to read the proclamation, the Alcalde Francisco Rojas de la Morada took pen and paper and scratched out a single sentence. He dropped the quill on the long oak table, lifted the page, and blew on it before folding it and handing it to a liveried footman by the door. “Take this to the Abbess of the Convent of Los Milagros. She is standing on the steps of the cathedral,” he whispered, though the members of the Cabildo were unlikely to overhear him. They filled the room with chatter.

  He turned his face away and struggled to gain control of himself.

  Pellets of grief burned in his heart. For these past three weeks, he had been unable to still his own mind and soothe his hurt. He gulped rich pastries at dinner every night despite the Lenten fast. He went over and over his accounts, tallying his wealth three or four times a day. He changed his clothes every few hours, wearing more and more elaborate dress until his friends began to taunt him to reveal the name of his new mistress. In fact, not even Doña Laura’s beauty and skill could distract him.

  On the afternoon before Inez disappeared into the convent, she had sat with him in his study at home, as she so often had. It was a place ordinarily forbidden to women, but he had welcomed her there from the time she was four years old. At first to sit on his lap and tickle him with his quill. In those days, she had often stood on the chair behind him while he worked on his accounts. Many times she had fallen asleep with her arms around his neck and her head on his shoulder. He would reach behind and hold her to him and walk her gently and deposit her, still sleeping, into the arms of her nurse.

  As the years passed, she sat across from him, her bright eyes shining with intelligence and understanding as he explained to her the workings of his affairs. But on the afternoon before she ran away, those blue eyes shone instead with challenge and resolve. Her persistence had shocked and angered him. Suddenly, they were battling, and she was defying him.

  Regret overwhelmed him. He was right not to have given in to Inez, but he should have held his temper, reasoned with her. She responded to logic. In this way, she was like a man.

  He had no son of his dreams, tall and deadly with a sword. He always consoled himself with the thought that no son could have been more fearless and clever than his Inez, and a son might one day grow to challenge him. He had not expected a daughter to do such a thing. But now that Inez had, even this seemed only natural for a creature like her. She was female, but strong-willed like him, and despite the weakness of her sex, a girl of her quality of mind would have her own ideas.

  “I will go to Buenos Aires,” she had said. “I will establish myself there. It will give us a foothold in another place. That way—”

  “Are you insane?” he had shouted.

  She remained cool. Her blue eyes looked upon him as if he were her little sister who needed to be cajoled into playing a game Inez’s way. “Father, you still think of Potosí as the center of the universe, but given what you have told me about the currency, it will not always be that way. If I go to Buenos Aires—”

  “Buenos Aires! It is backwater. Nothing of importance happens there. And how can you go there without your family?”

  “I am—”

  “You are stupid. Exactly like your mother!” His breath quickened. No words could have injured her more.

  She glared at him.

  He kept his countenance stern, but he felt his heart tumble down a mountain.

  He had thought she would shout. She looked as if she might slap him. But then her gaze left his face. She rose and said calmly, “Very well, Father.”

  That evening and the next morning, it was as if the argument had never happened. Then that night, she disappeared into the convent, where she had been ever since.

  Why had he let his blood flare? He should have charmed her. She was a girl, after all. Daughters were hardly worth the notice of a man like him. Now, for three weeks, he had suffered without her. No one but Inez could be a comfort to him in his home. Certainly not his droning wife or that silly little Gemita. He got nothing out of those boring, frivolous females.

  His noble wife, Ana, had brought him social position and a dowry of twenty-five thousand pesos. He had cultivated those seeds into a vast fortune—the greatest in the city. His wife took and spent the wealth he bestowed on her without one thought to the intelligence, determination, and fearlessness it took t
o amass it. Only his Inez understood, as well as any son would have, that his fortune was more than a mere means to luxurious ends. It was the measure of him as a man. Inez delighted in the details of his work, offered her own clever suggestions, some of which had paid off handsomely. She admired him. Why had she suddenly decided on this ridiculous scheme of leaving Potosí?

  It must have been the influence of the Abbess, who meant well enough, or that meddling priest. Who was that sanctimonious Jesuit to preach about money and how it was gotten? He and his fellow men of the Compañia de Jesus prayed in a golden church.

  The burning pain under the Alcalde’s heart flared again. There had been moments when he had looked into Inez’s eyes and caught—What? A fleeting glimpse of something that seemed to belie her love. It never lasted long enough to see, just to sense. He dismissed the thought as he would an unworthy supplicant begging in his patio. How had he become so enthralled to the love of a daughter? It was unseemly for a man of power. Yet he saw clearly how bleak his days would be if Inez never returned.

  Morada approached the stained-glass window, where, unobserved from outside, he could survey the dense crowd in the plaza. The women’s bright silk mantles stood out like jewels against the deep black of the men’s attire. His friends and supporters stood fast together near the massive brick-and-stone bulk of the Mint, every man proud and stoic. Among the group of overdressed Creoles who lingered near them were five or six old campaigners, with sun-burnished skin and masses of gray hair that made them look like statuary carved from the rocks of the Cerro. Even their hats were the color of earth—tan vicuña—the headgear that had identified their side in the bloody civil war. Morada had fought beside them in his youth against the Basque bastards who still controlled more than their share of the city’s wealth and power.