City of Silver

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Long ago she had expunged all thoughts of physical love, turning her mind to the grief such weakness brought to women. Instead she had used her energies to relieve the misery of children brought into the world by indulging those appetites. In her current state of uncertainty and fear, those longings had perversely returned.

  A door latch clicked and a shadowy figure passed under the painting of San Casimiro in his opulent red-and-blue robes. “Mother?” a voice whispered.

  She grinned in the gloom. It was not the name a lover would have called. “Here, Padre.” She stepped down the last step into the church. “Have you found out anything?”

  “I could not bring myself to ask the Alcalde probing questions at such a grievous moment. The only thing . . .” Padre Junipero’s voice trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Nothing important, really. Doña Ana collapsed at the news. She began to shriek that she had killed Inez. She was distraught, and I don’t think she would have shouted it out if she had actually done it.”

  The Abbess reached her hands toward him, then pulled them back before they touched. “Yes, but she might have done it and then become overwhelmed with grief. Sinners do repent.”

  “A mother kill her own child!”

  The innocent priest seemed really to believe that no mother could harm her own child. The Abbess knew better. The histories of the children who had passed through her care told her full well how much malevolence could live in a mother’s heart. “I would think that Doña Ana is too weak to accomplish much at all, good or evil, but we must not eliminate any possibility until we are sure.”

  “How could she have managed it? Did she come here yesterday to visit Inez?”

  “No,” the Abbess said. “At least not that I know of. But she could also have employed an accomplice within the convent walls,” she said. The words uttered her most secret fear.

  “You have, then, considered the idea that one of your sisters—”

  “I intend to ferret out whatever evil may lie within my walls,” she said.

  “Has anyone come forward with any information?”

  “Only Beatriz Tovar. You saw the note she had.”

  “She is a good girl.”

  “And so full of silly notions—romantic enough to fall in love with her father’s mayordomo.”

  “Is she?”

  “So she says. She came to me after a conversation with Gemita. She has several theories of how Inez might have died, all of them highly imaginative. I sincerely doubt the veracity of any of them, but to be absolutely sure, we must not dismiss any notion before we have investigated it.”

  “Does Beatriz suspect someone in particular?”

  The Abbess smiled at him, not sure he could see her expression in the dark. “She said she thought Gemita stood to gain a great deal by Inez’s death.”

  “Was she really accusing that poor child?”

  “I don’t think she realized what she was saying. I told her I thought the notion that Gemita would actually harm Inez was absurd. So she came forward with an even more unbelievable theory—that Sor Olga had murdered Inez to get me into trouble with the Inquisition, so she could succeed me as Abbess.”

  The priest snorted.

  “When I pointed out that Sor Olga could not have been sure Inez’s death would accomplish such a thing, she said perhaps Sor Olga intended to poison me and that somehow the substance was mistakenly consumed by Inez.”

  “Preposterous,” the priest said, but without much conviction.

  “Yes,” said the Abbess. “But there is a worse story. One I fear is true. Inez was not exactly the person we hoped she was. Gemita told Beatriz about an actor.”

  Nine

  THE BISHOP, WHO shepherded a flock of 160,000 in Potosí, was forced to forgo the quiet contemplation of Christ’s passion on that Good Friday morning. He ought to have been preparing his soul to conduct the three-hour-long service that was to begin at noon, but while the wind howled and shook his shutters, he bore as best he could the constant interruptions to his meditations.

  Ocampo, the cook, wanted approval of the menu for Monday’s luncheon in honor of Visitador Nestares. Ham, smoked sausage, blood pudding, stuffed suckling pig. “And let us give him some Peruvian specialties,” the Bishop told Ocampo. “Onions and chilies pickled in vinegar. Potatoes roasted in embers. And that delicious thin bread of maize.” The Bishop’s Lenten-starved taste buds watered at the thought. For the moment, he had to satisfy himself with stimulating but bitter Paraguayan tea while he pictured the sumptuous banquet table less than three days away. He wished he had fine porcelain plates to lay out. He had only silver, which in Spain would be a sign of great wealth, but here everyone had them.

  Bustling workers and several penitential processions clogged the streets beneath his windows. The noise of their comings and goings invaded his already discomfited thoughts. He had tried to get the Abbess to give up Inez, hoping his good offices would ally him with the Alcalde. Such a rich man could prove a great patron for projects of the Holy See. Look what he had done for the convent—the expansion of the building, the erection of the great church attached to it, to say nothing of the missions in Caricari and Contumarca. They said the Alcalde had given Los Milagros more than five hundred thousand reales—an amount greater than the Bishop’s total fortune, but only a fraction of what Morada possessed. Pack trains had gone into the country every night for a month. Everyone knew they carried away Morada’s silver and concealed it somewhere out on the craggy Altiplano. Now, with the girl dead, de la Morada was slipping through his fingers just when an alliance was so critical to his future.

  As an appointee of the Crown, he, like all bishops, had civil as well as ecclesiastical responsibilities. Certainly His Majesty the King would approve of close cooperation between the most powerful temporal power in the city and the local head of the Church. Just as certainly, DaTriesta’s obsession with prosecuting the Abbess would spoil any chance of such an alliance. How could anyone hope to endear himself to the Alcalde by accusing his dead daughter of suicide?

  The Bishop might win Morada’s support by siding with the Abbess against DaTriesta, but he had to be careful there, too. The local Commissioner of the Holy Tribunal kept detailed records of all he knew. Charges could always be trumped up, even against a bishop. His Grace had heard of a man who, viewing the heavens on a clear Andean night, said there were too many stars. The Inquisition brought him up on charges of blasphemy because he implied that God had erred in His creation. Once he was accused by the Holy Tribunal, even a bishop’s reputation would be tainted forever. His chances of an appointment to the Viceroyalty would be ruined, no matter how much silver he could pay into the King’s coffers. He dismissed a niggling doubt that the circumstances of his birth had already negated his chances. He was noble. After his belated ordination, he had been appointed directly to the Bishopric of the most powerful city in the Western Hemi sphere. The King favored him. He did not doubt that. His Majesty could even legitimize his birth if he wanted to.

  Such a dilemma. A chance to ally himself with local power and to profit thereby, or the slimmer chance for far, far greater riches by remaining out of DaTriesta’s clutches and in favor with the King. As his Dutch clock chimed eleven, His Excellency reached for the bell and rang for a small early lunch. Even on Good Friday, the denial of the flesh need not be complete. But before the silver pinging faded, a sharp rap at the door told him the irksome Commissioner was here to torture him anew. He sighed, offered up the anticipated annoyance for the souls in purgatory, and called out, “Come.”

  DaTriesta made a curt greeting and rubbed his thin, hairy hands together before the fire in the brazier. “Workers are running every which way, preparing for the arrival of Nestares. The sinners clog the streets, making a show of their great penance when we all know they will be back to gambling and whoring before their Easter soup is cold.”

  “Yes, yes. Daring and unscrupulous people are always drawn to a place like this.” Th
e Bishop let his voice show the distaste he felt. DaTriesta would think it was for the sins of his flock and not for the Commissioner himself. “Who would come here but greedy adventurers and their camp followers?”

  DaTriesta eyed him askance. “Who indeed?”

  The Bishop turned away. What gall! Dealing with this worm was like having to drink the putrid water on the galleons that crossed the ocean. One did it to stay alive, but it turned the stomach of a sensitive man.

  Without invitation, DaTriesta took the wide oak-and-leather chair opposite the Bishop’s. “We have seen many bloody battles in the streets, corruption, revolting sexual crimes. We must put a stop to them, Your Excellency. We must strive for the triumph of true Spanish traits—honor, piety, the supremacy of the spiritual over the material.” DaTriesta tented his hands and nodded as if to show agreement with his own words.

  The Bishop nodded, too, although he was sure that stamping out materialism at the world’s richest silver mine was about as possible as banishing the burning sun at noon or the piercing cold at midnight.

  “The Abbess has put the condemned girl in the vaults with the other nuns,” DaTriesta said triumphantly. “If this is not blasphemy, I do not know what is.”

  A savior of an idea glimmered in the Bishop’s mind. There might be a way to appease DaTriesta, get rid of the overly independent Abbess, and leave the door open to a friendship with the Alcalde. “Blasphemy would only put the Abbess in prison. Perhaps we should come up with a more serious charge.” He rummaged in his mind for the best one. “Possession by the devil, for instance.”

  DaTriesta waved his long, skinny hand. “Too difficult to prove. Half the time the proofs are the same as those for sainthood. Besides, we have no evidence.”

  “Witchcraft, then. It is very easy to prove.”

  DaTriesta’s pale, irritable mouth worked, as if he were tasting wine and not sure if it had turned. “Such a charge might involve a number of the nuns.”

  He was warming to the idea. The Bishop nudged him forward. “Exactly. They took in that Negress slave from Brazil. We all know that Rio de Janeiro is crawling with Jews.”

  “You are right that blasphemy would mean only prison. Witchcraft could bring her to the auto-da-fé.” The Commissioner’s eyes glowed, as if he looked upon a plate of food he wanted to devour.

  “Precisely!”

  “With a charge of witchcraft, we could close the convent. Their coca plantation at Cochabamba, their vineyard at Pelaya, the cattle ranches in Tucumán, these would all revert to the Church. That is, to your control.”

  The Bishop held his breath. DaTriesta saw even more benefit in it than he did.

  The Commissioner’s expression suddenly soured, as if the food and wine of victory had turned indigestible. “No. I am sorry. I can see why you would favor such an approach, but I remind you, I am a university-trained lawyer. I cannot bring false charges against the Abbess.”

  What? Was he giving up the meal entirely?

  “No,” DaTriesta said with specious sympathy. “I am afraid we must charge her with the sin she has committed. Defiance of Church law by burying a suicide in a sacred place. This blasphemy can also bring her to the stake.”

  FOR THE FIRST time in her life, Mother Maria Santa Hilda could not even pray. She sat on the hard oak chair in the corner of her tiny private chapel, her breviary open on her lap, looked up into the faces of the expensive paintings on her walls, and despised herself.

  Several of her sisters had come to counsel or console her. She was too fearful or proud to take their words into her heart. Sor Olga had accused her of flouting Church law and insulting the memory of their dead sisters by interring Inez among them. Sor Monica feared for her Abbess, not because of the burial of Inez, but because on Good Friday they should think about no other death but Christ’s. Mother Maria knew Monica was right. She should give up this idea of investigating Inez’s death. She should let the Bishop and DaTriesta do their worst and submit to whatever judgment the Holy Tribunal would impose on her. The pious thing to do would be to accept their accusations as one of life’s tests to destroy her love of self. If she were striving for virtue as she ought, she would remain passive, as befitted the role of a woman who had given herself as a bride of Christ.

  But her old pride welled up in her, and she could not put it down. The Bishop and DaTriesta were so like her father and her brother-in-law—so sure of themselves, so certain of their rights to dictate to all women. Her mother had died because of her father’s selfishness. She would not let herself die or even be disgraced because the Commissioner and the Bishop thought her insolent.

  She had always counted herself fortunate to live at a time when passengers regularly crossed the great ocean and to have crossed it herself. Now she felt isolated among the whitewashed stone buildings huddled on this vast, desolate plateau. She had made a life for herself here, but that life was threatened. She could be banished from her beautiful convent. Her carved and painted beams, wainscoting of oak, stone from Panama, wood from Guayaquil, red ebony from the islands of the Main. This tiny chapel, her pride and joy, a retreat where she could come and meditate or play on her small foot-pedal organ the beautiful music of Bocanegra. To study and write. These simple joys. And the complex satisfactions of command of the convent, the hospital, the missions.

  In Spain, she might have been able to save herself by appealing to her father. He would entreat the King. But only after he gloated at her having to humble herself before him. She had told him she would never forgive him. And she would not. That was twenty-five years ago, when she was fourteen. The day after her mother’s funeral.

  The doctor had told her father another pregnancy would kill her mother, but he had indulged his appetites—gotten the poor, weak woman with child for the tenth time. Both the woman and baby, like six of its pre de ces sors, had died. Her father was a pig. He deserved no humble petition from his daughter, though she be threatened by the Inquisition. Besides, any letter of appeal to him would take three months to cross the ocean. His reply would take a minimum of six months. By then, the Abbess of Los Milagros would be dead.

  She was more and more afraid.

  Christ had been afraid, too. In the garden of Gethsemane, He had prayed to be spared. Like Him, she—

  What was she thinking? How could she compare herself to the Lord?

  She rose and went out. She rang the bell and gathered all the sisters to the common room. She stood before them and watched their somber faces. Perhaps one of them would give a sign of discomfort, betray a guilty conscience. “My daughters,” she said, “we must face the serious fact that one of our number has died mysteriously. Sor Monica has fed the water from Inez’s carafe to the cat, yet the animal lives. If not by poison, how did Inez die? Even if there were an easy answer, we would still have some explaining to do. Inez was barred in her room by means of a plank. How did she come to possess such a thing?”

  At that moment, young Beatriz bowed her head. The Abbess watched her for a moment, but the postulant did not look up. Did she know more than her harebrained theories revealed? The Abbess went on. “Sisters, I am reluctant to say this—my heart does not want it to be true. But Inez’s death reveals the certain existence of secrets among us. Secrets that must be uncovered.”

  Young Hippolyta, standing near Beatriz, stared straight ahead, her eyes filled with terror and her pudgy hands gripped so tightly together that the skin on her fingers was mottled. What could these young women have learned in a few weeks that the Abbess of the convent did not know?

  “We are a community,” Maria Santa Hilda continued. “We must be able to trust one another.” Even as she said this, she knew she had been hiding from herself all these years the knowledge that this convent, like the Mother House in Madrid, like every convent or monastery, like every family’s home, held secrets, animosities, small or large depravities. Even in God’s strongholds, wherever humans entered, sin entered also.

  “First of all, I will speak to each of yo
u to try to piece together what led up to this tragic event. Before our Creator, I call on each of you to come forward with the truth.” Young Hippolyta’s gripping hands tightened. “Everyone here has sanctuary under the protection of this convent. No matter what you have to confess, it will never bring anyone here to temporal punishment. I assure you of this. Go to the chapel and pray silently. I will call you to me one by one. I will begin with the maids and then with the sisters who have been here longest.”

  She led them across the outer cloister to the chapel and left them in the stalls along the walls. She went to the postulants’ refectory, next to the chapel, taking Clara, the youngest maid, with her.

  The plainness of the room befitted the exercise she would perform here. Rough wooden tables, ordinary pottery, white walls, a plank floor unadorned by carpets. These stark surroundings were supposed to teach humility to the girls who entered the order. The only adornment in the room was a gruesome painting from Cuzco of Christ at the pillar, bloody, in agony, enduring the Roman soldier’s lash. Appropriate for the season and for the painful exercise the Abbess was to perform.

  She faced young, shy Clara across the table. The girl stood behind the chair the Abbess had placed for those who would come to speak to her. Girls of Clara’s station never sat in the presence of noblewomen or lifted their eyes to meet the glance of their mistresses. How was one to judge their veracity without seeing into their souls? To encourage the girl, the Abbess addressed her questions in Aymara, the Indian language. The girl squeaked out answers. Had she noticed anything particular about Inez de la Morada on the day she died? No. Had the postulant seemed ill? No. Had Clara herself entered Inez’s room that day to clean? No. Clara knew nothing. Or at least admitted nothing. The Abbess asked the girl to send in the next youngest maid, the garrulous, lazy Luisa, who for reasons the Abbess could not fathom hated her fellow maid Juana and always found excuses to accuse her.

  Before the Abbess was able to formulate a proper question in Aymara, Luisa interrupted. “You should be asking questions of Juana, not of me.”