City of Silver

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Monica shook off images of damnation. “I will do it. I will prove that Inez did not take her own life.”

  Vitallina seemed to be laughing at her. “To do that, you need to imagine how the devil thinks. You have to have some of the devil in you.”

  A chill crept up Monica’s spine. “I know he may be here in this convent.”

  Vitallina smirked. “But do you have the heart to find him? Can you look him in the face?”

  Sor Monica sniffed. “You are being impertinent.” She sounded like Sor Olga.

  Vitallina lifted her strong arms and let them drop to her sides.

  Monica knew it was a mistake to allow the Negress too much familiarity. But she needed her. The Sister Herbalist fixed her features in what she hoped was a stern, superior look but said nothing.

  Vitallina smiled. “Can you imagine, for instance, that the child who died was a murderer herself?”

  “Inez?” What sense could such a theory make?

  “I do not mean Inez. Inez was no child. I think perhaps she was never a child.”

  Monica shunned the bright light of an unthinkable thought. “Then—”

  “Hippolyta,” Vitallina said, as if the idea were tenable. “Suppose she killed Inez and then killed herself out of remorse.”

  The notion staggered Monica. She stepped back and sat on the edge of the pallet where Sor Elena had died. She touched the pillow where her wise old friend’s head had lain. Oh, if Elena were only here, with her capacity for transcendent prayer, to help her friend look in the eye of Satan. “Hippolyta could have . . .” Her voice wavered. She made it stronger. “She could have offered Inez a sweetmeat.” Monica pressed her mind forward. She was determined. The less she wanted to think a thought, the more she must force herself to think it. “She could have despaired over having committed such a sin and then eaten some poison herself.”

  Vitallina nodded.

  “But why? Why would she have wanted Inez dead? How could she have done such a thing? She was so timid and pliable.”

  Vitallina’s hard black eyes waited.

  Was not the weak Hippolyta precisely the instrument the devil would have chosen to do his works? Monica leapt up and raced toward Hippolyta’s cell.

  She had found sweetmeats hidden in the folds of Hippolyta’s undergarments when Mother Maria ordered the search. The candies had seemed then like a girl’s small indulgence. Could they have been a weapon of murder?

  As Monica and Vitallina crossed the cloister, the door to Hippolyta’s cell opened and quickly closed again.

  Vitallina sped ahead and flung open the door. When Monica entered the room, Vitallina had the maid Juana by the shoulders. The tiny Indian woman’s toes barely touched the ground. “I came in to clean. It is my work,” Juana protested. Vitallina did not let go.

  Monica’s eyes scanned the room. “Let her down, please,” she said distractedly to Vitallina. She glanced over the sparse furnishings, the rough wooden cot, the primitive table. Look Satan in the face, she told herself. Believe Hippolyta’s sweet, round, dimpled face was the mask of the Evil One. Believe that her sad eyes saw such debauchery.

  Her gaze lit on the armario. “Wait,” she said involuntarily. She opened the door and touched Hippolyta’s neatly folded woolen undergarments. “No sweetmeat could have killed Hippolyta. True, we found some here, but I threw them in the trash myself hours before Hippolyta died.”

  Juana started quietly for the door. Vitallina blocked her way. “Perhaps the girl had others, more carefully hidden.”

  “Nothing escaped our search. Whatever killed Inez also killed Hippolyta. But it wasn’t sweetmeats hidden in this room.”

  Juana listened but said nothing.

  Once again, the Sister Herbalist’s eyes surveyed the room. “Go and fetch Beatriz Tovar,” she commanded Vitallina. “She should be in the postulants’ refectory.” Vitallina went out, and Juana made to follow her.

  “One moment, please, Juana. I want you to stay here.” The maid stopped but did not turn around.

  Monica went to the foot of the bed and picked up a flail. The instrument’s silver handle was heavy and richly ornamented, with four light chains each carrying a steel barb fashioned like a thorn of Christ’s crown—the means to remind oneself of how He suffered for the sins of man. She went to the bedside table and picked up a second, almost identical flail. She looked at Juana. “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing. I came in to clean. The others left the room dirty after the girl died. They are afraid. They think it is haunted with evil spirits. But I know Our Lady of the Rosary will protect me.” She lowered her eyes.

  “May she protect us all,” Monica responded. Her mind clicked. The room had been left undisturbed until now.

  Vitallina entered with Beatriz. The girl’s pretty face was drawn and dark under eyes big with fear. “Come here, my child,” Monica said gently. She showed the girl the silver handles of the two flails. Both were the unmistakable work of the same silversmith in the Calle de los Mercaderes. “Beatriz,” Monica said softly, “do you know which of these belonged to Hippolyta, and to whom the other might have belonged?”

  “That one with the crest on the end of the handle was Hippolyta’s,” Beatriz said, indicating the one Monica had found on the table. “The other belonged to Inez. Inez showed them to me. She had them both made from bracelets she was wearing when she came here. She gave one to Hippolyta as a gift. But . . .” Beatriz’s soft eyes searched Monica’s. “Why are they both here?”

  The Sister Herbalist shrugged. “I just discovered that there were two here. I do not know why.”

  Sor Diogene, the Sister Porter, come to the door. “The sedan chair has come to take you home to your parents,” she said to Beatriz.

  “Go at once,” Sor Monica told her, and they rushed out. Juana gazed at them, taking it all in—looking for gossip, as all the maids did. “Juana, you may go.”

  The maid too went out.

  Monica took the flails and returned to her infirmary and to her confusion. The more she learned, the less she really knew.

  AS SOR MONICA prepared to examine the two flails, Beatriz was being carried from the convent in a sedan chair. She was trying frantically to think of a way to force her parents to let her marry Domingo Barco. At that same moment, the object of the girl’s desire was forcing Padre Junipero, at sword point, through the door of his humble quarters in a corner of the Ingenio Tovar.

  Between the Calle de la Paz and here, no one had asked Barco why he was marching a costumed Indian with a cape over his head through the streets. No one would. The mayordomo of a refinery would have charge of many Indians. He had a right.

  The priest had thought to call out for help to passersby whose voices he had heard but whose faces he could not see. But how could he know they were not Morada’s men? With Barco he might talk his way out of danger. Téllez or Taboada would run him through without allowing him to utter even a final prayer.

  When the cape was removed from the priest’s head, he found himself in a low-ceilinged room with a packed-earth floor. In one corner, a narrow cot was neatly made up with rough homespun blankets. Above it on the whitewashed stone wall hung an oversize cross bearing a silver body of the dead Christ. The room contained a table and small bench and a shelf with an astonishing number of books—at least twenty, with worn leather bindings. A book lay open on the table.

  Terrified as he was, the sight of the volumes arrested the priest’s gaze. Nowhere in the city outside the monasteries and convents had he seen so many books. Not even the Bishop owned a library so extensive.

  Barco was eyeing him with a raised eyebrow. “They surprise you, I see. My father taught me to read, and I am somehow compelled to do it, though it only reminds me of what a Mestizo bastard like me cannot have.”

  The words echoed in Junipero’s brain—it was exactly Sebastian the actor’s complaint. Twice Inez, the girl who had everything, had attracted illegitimate sons who longed for what they did not have. A
nd she had loved them. Or wanted them. Or used them. She had certainly used Barco. “You knew your father?”

  “And know him still.” The words carried an ominous ring.

  “Who?” the priest asked before he realized it was the wrong question.

  The sword rose to his throat. “That is not the business we have to discuss.”

  “No,” the priest said, panting. The weapon was within a hair’s breadth of piercing him. “But I believe you have something on your conscience, my son. Come, unburden yourself to me.”

  With one powerful hand, Barco wrenched the priest’s arm and shoved him onto the bed. The Mestizo did not lower his sword. “What were you doing snooping around my mother, asking questions about me?”

  Padre Junipero held an empty, completely vulnerable hand between his heart and Barco’s weapon. “I was looking for a way to save the Abbess of Los Milagros from the auto-da-fé.” His skin burned inside his suit of bright feathers.

  Doubt clouded Barco’s eyes, but he did not speak.

  The priest explained about Mother Maria’s impending arrest. At the mention of Inez’s possible suicide, Barco sank back and sat on the stool near the desk. His dark, handsome face contorted with anguish. “She is dead, and I will avenge her.”

  The priest stood up and leaned toward him. “Please,” he begged, “for the love of the Almighty, tell me what you know.”

  Barco’s tear-filled eyes became wary again. “I know little.”

  “How can you hold back when a holy woman’s life hangs in the balance? Inez is gone. If there is anything . . .” The proper argument finally blared into the priest’s struggling mind. He put a steadying hand on Barco’s shoulder. “Domingo, my son, you alone may have the key that proves Inez did not take her own life, that her soul is not in hell. By the love you still bear her, help me prove her innocent of taking her own life. Otherwise, the Tribunal will remove her body to unconsecrated ground.”

  Barco worked his lips. “They would do that?” His voice was hollow.

  The priest nodded.

  Barco looked at him for a long time. “My mother—” He broke off. The sword clattered to the floor.

  Padre Junipero held every cell of his body still, burying his own horror at inveigling a man to betray his own mother.

  “My mother says that Doña Ana did it.”

  A groan escaped the padre. “Do you really believe she could have?”

  “Doña Ana is capable of anything if she thinks it will hurt the Alcalde.”

  A frost hit the priest’s skin under his suit of feathers. “Tell me what you mean.” They were the words and tone he ordinarily used only in the confessional.

  Barco’s eyes dared the priest to believe him. “Her mother . . . She . . . Doña Ana found out that Inez was seeing that actor. She began to help her meet her lover. My mother said Doña Ana even let the man into the house. She gloried in the fact that their daughter was dishonoring the Alcalde. She laughed about the day she would reveal it to him. She would do anything to hurt him.”

  “Did she reveal it? Did Doña Ana tell the Alcalde?”

  “I don’t know. Once Inez took up with the actor, I only saw her once. The actor might know, but I do not.”

  “I must speak to him again.” The priest knew he must go back out into the town, whatever the risk. He eyed Barco’s sword on the floor. “I need your help.”

  Eighteen

  BEATRIZ TOVAR PEERED through the green baize curtains of the sedan chair her father had sent with bearers to carry her home. She wondered at the scene surrounding her. Even within the convent walls, she had heard that someone important had come to Potosí. The maids had talked of some festival for some special envoy from the King. But this! The streets were absolutely filled with the sounds of drums and cheering crowds. So little happened in this remote city, and she had been buried behind those walls and missed the best part of the biggest festival of her life.

  Well, she was out now. All she had to do was get the Abbess’s letter to Padre Junipero. And then summon the courage to run away with her Domingo. He would be so thrilled to see her again. Perhaps he was nearby now, among the reveling throngs.

  She pressed back against the blue velvet quilted headrest and scanned the crowd, trying to see without being seen. There in the Plazuela Campero was a circus with as many different kinds of animals as Noah’s ark and a fountain that simultaneously spouted wine, water, and chicha.

  Ahead, an Indian company blocked the street with their improvisations and dances. All about her were crowds of men on horse back and donkeys, and toreadors ready to enter the Plaza Mayor on foot, dressed in wild colors, accompanied by kettledrummers and mules covered with rich trappings and laden with spears and lances. Pages in splendid livery walked behind their masters. One of the boys—obviously drunk—pushed back the curtain and leered at her. She slapped him and screamed, but the din of the drums drowned the sound. He pulled open the door. The chair rocked as if it would fall. It was set down. The bearers, she thought, would chase the boy away, but he fell on her, pulled open her vicuña cloak, and pawed at the bodice of the plain muslin dress Sor Monica had given her to wear home. She shoved at him, but he just smiled. She put her hands against his face and pushed with all her might. Spittle drooled from his mouth onto her hands. She shuddered in disgust, kicked, and screamed.

  Suddenly, he was pulled away. Panting, she slumped back against her velvet seat and then peeked out to see the drunken boy slapped in the face and passed to a large man in a tawny cape. The man grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and dragged him away.

  A handsome face appeared at the door. “Señorita?” The man showed a beautiful smile. “Allow me to—”

  “No,” she commanded. “Do not speak to me. Do not touch me.”

  He drew back a little. She sat up straight, taking charge of her tiny domain.

  The handsome smile disappeared. “I must accompany you home. You have—”

  “No! Carriers, take me home. Where are my bearers? How could they have let this happen to me? They must take me home immediately.”

  “They are here, but they are unarmed. Please,” the man pleaded, “I offer you only protection.”

  “I don’t know you. Go away. Carriers, take me home. Now.”

  The handsome head withdrew. A gauntleted hand closed the door. “Take her immediately across the Ribera to the Ingenio Tovar.” His voice was commanding and clear. He knew who she was, though she was sure she had never seen him before. She would not have forgotten if she had.

  However beautiful his face and bearing, however intriguing the sights of the celebration, she wanted only to get away. He had offered escort, but she would not risk the unwanted attentions of some unknown blackguard who thought he could take advantage of her just because he had saved her from that slobbering boy. Who knows what he himself would have tried once he was alone with her in the deserted quarter across the river. In the convent, she had come to know a mother and daughter who were raped by a merchant in a shop. Both escaped with their lives but would pass the rest of their days condemned to the convent for their shame. Beatriz would never go back there. No one would put her in that position.

  Once across the Bridge of Santiago, she looked out to make sure he was not following, though she did not know what she would do if he was. The street was empty except for a couple of old Indian women sitting before their doorway, mending sandals. A shaggy llama stood near them and inserted its head between them as if to join in their conversation.

  When her bearers set down the chair and knocked at the gate of the Ingenio Tovar, her heart stopped. Perhaps Domingo would swing open the tall green doors. She patted her hair and alighted, not waiting, as a lady should, to be well inside before showing herself. The bolt opened. She smiled like the sun face carved into the center of the stone lintel. She touched the beautiful scrollwork of the door surround. She was home.

  It was not Domingo who opened. Rosa Yana, the widow of that Indian who had died in the mine, gree
ted her. The outer patio was completely quiet. The door between it and the ingenio yard stood wide open, but even the yard was silent. No Indians stirred amalgam. The waterwheel was still. Hides under which the mercury and silver united were tied down against the constant wind. Cones of amalgam—lined in perfect formation—awaited the purifying ovens. By contrast, the canvas bags they used to filter out the mercury lay in jumbled piles.

  Rosa unlocked the inner patio door, and Beatriz ran inside. She looked up, thinking to find her mother watching for her from the second-story gallery. In the arches, ferns in clay pots waved in the breeze, but no one was about. “Madre?” she called tentatively. She went into the lower hallway and was blinded by the sudden dimness after the glare of the sun outside. Down the hall from the kitchen came the smell of baking bread—made from wheaten flour according to the method brought by her mother from the home of that sweet grandmother in Spain whose letters Beatriz had read but whom she would never know.

  Her eyes began to adjust to the light, and she started for the stairs to the upper story. She heard her father’s voice from behind his office door. She put her ear to it and listened to her father’s words.

  “The King ordered him to punish the counterfeiters, although taking pity on them and not creating any scandals. Everything is left to his prudence and discretion.” He sounded sad. She wanted to see him, to make him smile.

  “Will he be prudent and discreet?” It was her mother! Mother never went into this room that was reserved for manly matters. She strained to hear every word.

  Her father spoke low, growled a word Beatriz could not make out. It sounded like a curse.

  She knocked gently.

  “Come,” her father commanded.

  She opened the door tentatively.

  As soon as her mother saw her, she rushed and enveloped her in a warm embrace. “My darling girl. My darling girl,” she repeated over and over, kissing Beatriz’s hair and hands.