City of Silver

by Annamaria Alfieri

  AT THAT SAME hour on the eve of Easter, Maria Santa Hilda found herself pacing the halls of the convent, waiting for the tolling of the Vesper bell. In less than thirty-six hours, Visitador Nestares would enter the city and receive a hero’s welcome, despite the dread the citizens had of him. Fear consumed the Abbess. Fear and guilt.

  She had spent the holiest days of the year trying to find a defense for herself against Commissioner DaTriesta’s accusations. She had discovered nothing to ward off his threat, but in the process she had caused the women in her care to give evidence against one another—perhaps false evidence. And she had neglected all the other duties of her office. No texts were chosen for reading aloud at meals during the Easter season. No arrangements were made to transport the winter supply of charcoal from Cochabamba.

  From the arched upper story of the rear cloister, she watched the Cerro change colors in the sunset and finally darken in the gathering twilight. She had not given a thought to the damage devaluation of the currency would wreak on the convent’s finances. Less than a week ago, she had been worried about Captain Morada withdrawing his support from the missions. Now, the convent itself faced potential financial crisis. The Abbess’s life before she took her vows had never required her to pay the slightest attention to how one managed in the face of want. She ought to be planning how to continue the convent’s charities and the hospital even if the money lost its value. More important, she ought to be examining her soul for taints of the sins of which DaTriesta would accuse her. Perhaps she was guilty. Perhaps there was no explanation for Inez’s death, except that God was testing the Abbess. Evil dwelled within her walls, of that she was certain. The convent’s aura of holiness was a sham, like the decoration in the chapel that was painted to look like carved wood but was gesso underneath.

  The sun had set. When it rose again, it would be Easter morning—a day for the greatest rejoicing of the year. But what joy could there be here, with a dead girl moldering beneath the choir floor and the taint of the demon in the air?

  Vespers finally rang, and she started toward the chapel. A commotion below slowed her steps. She leaned over the balustrade to see the normally lazy maid Luisa running along the corridor, black braids flying behind her. The girl looked up, saw the Abbess, and let out a wail. “Ayeee! Oh, Mother, we are all doomed. Ayee! Ayee! She is dead. She is dead!”

  The Abbess grasped her skirts and took the stairs at a full run. She caught Luisa. The girl’s round face was twisted with terror. Her eyes were wild. She sobbed hysterically. The Abbess shook her. “Stop. Luisa. Tell me what you found.”

  “Dead!” Luisa screamed. “We must run away. Dead! She is dead, just the way Inez was dead. I found her. I saw her lying there. She was blue, just like Inez. Only she was not naked. But she is dead. We must run away.” The girl struggled to pull free of Maria Santa Hilda’s grip, but the Abbess held her fast.

  “Who? Who is dead?” Others had come. They all stared at the terrified Luisa.

  “Hippolyta!” she screamed. “Hippolyta is dead!”

  The Abbess reeled with shock. She let go of the maid, lifted her skirts, and ran to Hippolyta’s cell. The door was open. The girl lay sprawled half on and half off her bed. Her habit was undone in the back. Her rosy, soft shoulders were pierced here and there with marks of the flail she still held in her right hand. Her large, dark eyes so soft in life stared and gleamed like polished coal.

  A moan escaped Maria Santa Hilda. She moved to lift the girl.

  “Stop. Don’t touch her yet.” Sor Monica was pushing her way through the crowd at the door. “I want to examine her first.”

  The Sister Herbalist held out her arms to keep the others at bay. She scrutinized the body without touching it. Sniffed the air. Looked carefully at the items on the table beside the bed. Opened the armario. Checked the brazier. “Cold,” she said absentmindedly. She asked the sobbing and shaking Luisa if Hippolyta’s door had been locked.

  “No,” the girl managed to choke out.

  Only then did Sor Monica begin to inspect the body. She peered closely at Hippolyta’s back. She bent her limbs, parted her lips, and poked at her tongue, looked again at the marks on her back. The Abbess saw nothing unusual. Hippolyta had used the flail she held in her right hand. There seemed to be no excess in the self-inflicted wounds. They looked like the normal results of the penance all the sisters did from time to time.

  Maria Santa Hilda had always been careful to guard against her sisters becoming overly abusive in their self-discipline. She instructed them to use the flail only twice a week while they were saying the Miserere. She never left this part of their instruction to Sor Olga, the Mistress of Novices, who ordinarily would address such issues. Olga often wore, under her habit, a blouse embroidered with sharp wire prongs that stuck into her flesh. She had asked the Abbess’s permission to have the thing made. Maria Santa Hilda had reluctantly allowed it only on the condition that the Mistress of Novices would not foster the practice in her charges. The Abbess had discussed the issue with Padre Junipero many times. They agreed that for the sisters in the convent, self-flagellation should be a symbol of penance, not so harsh that suffering became an end in itself. “Remember,” she always told the novices, “too much is just as bad as not enough.”

  Luisa continued to sob. The Abbess put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “Sor Dolores,” she called out. When the nun appeared, Maria Santa Hilda handed the terrified maid into her care.

  Monica beckoned to Sor Eustacia. “Please go out to the cloister garden and bring Vitallina here.”

  Eustacia, her face grim with grief, bowed her head and left.

  “The rest of you,” the Abbess announced to the crowd at the door and in the hall, “go to the chapel. Sor Olga, in place of Vespers, please lead the prayers for the repose of Hippolyta’s soul.” She said nothing of the poor baby who had died within its child mother.

  As the sisters moved off toward the chapel, Beatriz Tovar pushed her way through toward the Abbess. She looked pleadingly into Mother Maria Santa Hilda’s eyes. “Please, Mother,” she said haltingly, “I want to go home to my parents.”

  The Abbess shook her head. “Not now,” she said sharply. “You may not leave now.”

  “But—” Beatriz protested.

  The Abbess held up her hand in command. “Do not question me, child. Go to the chapel.”

  The girl curtsied and opened the door. As she exited, Sor Eustacia and Vitallina arrived. The African woman’s handsome face betrayed no shock. She looked at the dead girl and back at Sor Monica and said not a word.

  “Take her, please,” Monica said. “I will meet you in the infirmary in a few minutes.”

  The tall Negress lifted the body and carried it out.

  The Abbess drew Monica and Eustacia out into the gloomy cloister. “What is happening?” she demanded. “Why have two young women died here?”

  “I do not know,” they answered, practically in unison.

  “What can you tell me?” the Abbess asked of Sor Monica.

  “Nothing useful. Like Inez, until she died, Hippolyta seemed in perfect health.”

  “Could she have died from being upset by a great guilt?” The Abbess eyed Eustacia but could not see her clearly in the gathering darkness.

  Monica clenched her hands together. “It is true that strong emotion can upset the balance of the body’s humors and set a person out of harmony, but in such a case, sickness slowly takes over. One does not see sudden death.” She opened and closed her hands in a gesture of frustration, and they showed white and ghostly beneath the black sleeves of her habit.

  “We know no more than that?”

  The spirit hands fell to Sor Monica’s sides. “I am quite certain that whatever killed Inez also killed Hippolyta. She seems to have died instantly. Her lips were blue.”

  Sor Eustacia lifted her head. “What about the substance we found among Juana’s things?”

  “A person can eat it without harm,” Monica said.


  “A person, Sister?” The Abbess was horrified.

  “A person or a cat,” Monica whispered, and bowed her head.

  “I never want to hear that you are putting yourself in danger,” the Abbess scolded.

  “No, Mother.” Monica did not raise her head.

  “Can you learn anything more from examining the body?”

  “I will try.”

  “Go, then, and do it now. I excuse you from chapel.”

  Monica walked away down the arcaded cloister walk, close to the wall, with her hands folded in her sleeves, in the humble way of any mere postulant.

  The Abbess turned to Eustacia. “Let us go and pray now, but I want to talk to you in my office before the Compline bell rings tonight.”

  Thirteen

  PILAR TOVAR STOOD in the corridor outside her husband’s study and listened at the door. Muffled, angry voices of Antonio and his mayordomo, Domingo Barco, came through. This was not the moment to approach.

  Because it was the eve of Easter, the mill beyond the wall was quiet. The only sound out there was the thudding of a maid beating a carpet. It could have been the pounding of Pilar’s heart. What she intended to say to Antonio would destroy their life together.

  She took a few steps away and stopped. If only she had Beatriz’s determination and fearlessness. It must be the air of this New World where her Criolla daughter was born that gave females such courage. Even the temperate valley by the lake of Tarapaya where she had gone to birth Beatriz seemed to infuse infant girls with a force of will unknown to women born in Spain. Spanish women feared their husbands and fathers too much to defy them. Pilar had caressed and kissed every part of Antonio’s body. In bed, she matched his passion. He encouraged that. But in the light of day, he expected her to be timid. And she was. She told herself she had no choice. But—

  She returned to the office door and burst into the room.

  Barco and the Captain were seated across the writing table from each other. They leapt to their feet. “What?” Antonio snapped.

  Pilar stiffened her neck the way she had seen her daughter do when she was being willful and barked back at him, “I must speak to you at once.” She felt her voice shake, but only slightly, and wondered if they heard it.

  The handsome Barco’s glistening eyes stared at her for a moment and then closed. He scooped up his plumed hat from the floor beside his chair, bowed low, and left the room without a word.

  Her husband glowered. “Woman, have you lost your mind?”

  She shivered inside her fur wrap. “I have a grave matter to discuss.” She sat in the chair Barco had just vacated. Her husband did not sit down. He turned and looked out the window. She rose and went to his side. Angry heat emanated from his body. Courage failed her. She could not speak the words she had prepared.

  Outside, no one stirred within the stout stone walls of the ingenio. Since Beatriz had gone away, this fortress that protected her had become a lonely prison. Pale candlelight glowed from the windows of the chapel, where the women were decorating the altar for Easter. What would the feast be without Beatriz to cheer her?

  Thin plumes of smoke rose from the cooking fires of the Indians. The smelting furnaces were cold and the waterwheels still. White frost fringed the rivulet that flowed through the aqueduct. Pilar wondered where the water went when it left the city. Did it find its way down from the Altiplano, through the passes and valleys? Did it find the ocean? If she wrote her heartaches on pieces of paper and floated them on the water—

  “That bastard Morada is a Portuguese and a Jew.” Her husband’s words were guttural and ugly.

  “Oh, Antonio, you know that is not true.” Whatever troubled him in his work or in the administration of the city, he blamed on Morada.

  “He was just a rural magistrate when he put my brother to death without a priest.”

  Pilar placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder.

  He shrugged her off. “Miners used to dominate this city. If justice prevailed, we still would. We take all the risks to produce the silver.” It was a story she had heard at every meal this week. How, many years ago, the Basques had taken control of the Cerro in the sure knowledge that it was the source of all power in Potosí. How now the worm had turned, and they were enthralled to Andalusian silver dealers and the moneylenders not of their brotherhood. How their petitions to the King and the Council of the Indies all fell on deaf ears.

  Antonio flopped into the carved wooden chair next to the desk. He leaned forward and held his head in his hands. “The whole city is on the verge of ruin, and those idiots in the Cabildo are planning fancy parties. What folly! How can banquets make up the difference between false money and true?”

  She knelt before him, took his hands, and looked up into his face.

  “I could hardly keep up with my debts before.” He took her hand. “Those bastards are going to make me a failure.”

  The word stunned her. Her fist started toward her mouth but stopped halfway. “What about the silver you sent to Spain on account?”

  “It was taken by the King.”

  “Taken?”

  “They gave me bonds in its place. Bonds that I cannot redeem.”

  “Good God! Then the King is a thief.”

  In a swift gesture, he put his fingers to her lips. “Do not speak treason.” He went to the window and then, on tiptoe, to the door, which he opened softly and, after seeing no one outside, closed again.

  She bit her lip. Any remark, even one uttered in vexation, could be punished. “If Nestares catches the people responsible for the false money, won’t that be the end of it?”

  “You are naïve.”

  She affected Beatriz’s bravado. “I am. But I am not stupid.”

  He sighed. It was the closest thing to agreement she would get from him on that subject. “Spanish money has been the strongest in the world. Spain cannot afford to be passing false currency. The city’s punishment must be harsh.”

  “We cannot avoid poverty, then?”

  “I know no other honest occupation.” He looked into her eyes and let her see his terrifying, heart-stinging humiliation. “I could become a smuggler, I suppose.”

  She rose half out of her chair. “Too dangerous! You could go to jail.”

  “I could go to jail for what I owe the King for the mercury I am forced to buy at inflated prices.”

  “The King is not fair,” she nearly shouted.

  He glared at her.

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You are not allowed to lend money to the Indians and keep them in peonage, but the King does to you what he forbids you to do to them. Why do we have to treat the Indians better than the King treats us?”

  He flashed her a bitter smile. “You are losing your innocence, Doña Pilar.”

  A soft knock at the door interrupted him. He strode across the room and opened it. The maid Mariza ushered in a thin, serious mestizo lad. “This boy brings a note.”

  Silently, the boy put a paper in Antonio’s hand. Antonio took a coin from his pocket and handed it to the child, who bowed low and backed out with Mariza. Antonio opened the letter and read. His face contorted with pain. He made a low noise, half groan, half sob.

  Pilar rose. “What is it?”

  “It is from the convent. In Beatriz’s hand.” He read in a halting, disbelieving voice, “ ‘Gentle Mother and Father, I kiss your hands and send you the greetings of my heart. It pains me to give you the grave news that Hippolyta de Escobedo met with the same fate that took Inez de la Morada. Some force is taking the postulants of this convent. I pray you to relent. Let me come home and marry Domingo. I am afraid to remain here. Your loving daughter, Beatriz.’ ”

  Though she could not read, Pilar ripped the letter from his hands. She crushed it between hers. Hippolyta dead? “Antonio?” Her own voice sounded like a ghost’s. “We must give in.”

  “I have told you it is out of the question.”

  She would not be deterred. “You are afraid for her, too.
I hear it in your voice, see it in your face.” Surely he would relent now.

  “What I fear is for the soul of this girl who has the audacity to use another girl’s death as a weapon against her own parents.”

  Pilar gulped. “That is unfair.” She could not bear it when Antonio criticized the girl. Not even when he was right.

  His broad chest heaved a sigh. “Beatriz is willful, opinionated, and stubborn.”

  Pilar’s fists went to her hips. “She is also energetic, and brave, and confident. Her faults are your faults, Antonio, just as her virtues are your virtues.”

  He grimaced and turned away.

  Without his eyes on her, she let flow the argument she had prepared for him and had been unable to deliver before. “My husband, I have told you I cannot, I will not, allow my child to languish in that convent. I brought myself here to this desolate land to be with you. I left my mother and sisters forever. I came here to the mine you started with the money from my dowry. But I will not remain without Beatriz. I—I will leave you and go into the convent to be with her.” She trembled at the thought.

  He turned back to her. His dark eyes were on fire. “You are my wife. You will stay right here, as I tell you.”

  She had prepared herself for this. “You will not keep me. I will find a moment to escape. I will lie to the sisters about your treatment of me. The Abbess will give me sanctuary. Even if it means giving you up, I will have the company of my daughter.” She gazed right into his face and prayed to keep her resolve.

  The jagged scar on his left cheek—from a wound of a pike in the war—burned a reddish purple with his anger. “You would make such an unspeakable threat to me?”

  “I would.” She tried to draw up her head, but it sank. “Oh, Antonio. Listen to me. Barco will take Beatriz without a dowry. Use the dowry to pay down some of your debts. Your profits will return. I do not care that Barco is Mestizo. He eats at our table. He is handsome and kind. I think he loves her, too. He has always been so affectionate to her. In the course of time, when you have the money, you will buy a royal cédula declaring him white. Please, Antonio, I went to see her yesterday. I tried to persuade her to marry Rodrigo. I told her we would not relent. She called me a traitor. She will never give up.”