City of Silver

by Annamaria Alfieri

  The courtyard outside was now in shadow. The room had grown so dim, it was difficult to read the man’s eyes. Why would a man who was not a Jew claim to be one? More than trusting the actor, the priest knew he must win his trust. There was only one way to do that—to prove he trusted him.

  “I will tell you a story in return. My real name is Diego Cortéz de Aragón,” the priest said. And in response to a quizzical grunt from the actor, “Oh, yes, I am a real priest. But I am also a notorious felon. I was born in Hispaniola of Spanish parents and sent to Madrid at a young age to live with an uncle and be educated. There in the company of other wild boys, I raped a great nobleman’s daughter. I escaped to Sevilla before her father caught me. I changed my identity and, unrepentant, spent my time in seduction.”

  The actor snorted and eyed Junipero’s emaciated form.

  The priest smiled despite the guilt that ground at his heart. “I know I do not look the part now, but I have not always had the physique of a penitent.” He remembered his youthful beauty only with remorse. “After years of debauchery, I suddenly became ill. I could not eat. I vomited everything. My sister visited me and asked if I had finally become disgusted with myself. I entered the Jesuits and was, by the Grace of God, received into holy orders, but my crime was notorious. If my real identity was ever made known, I would be disgraced. Now, Sebastian, you have information sufficient to threaten me as I might threaten you. Please. Trust me. Tell me what you know.”

  “If you protect me and they find you out, you’ll be sent to the galleys for life, priest or no priest.”

  “I am doomed anyway, to tell the truth,” the priest said. “Morada’s men are trying to find me to kill me, and the Tribunal is after me for burying Inez in a consecrated place. I only want to save a holy woman before I die.”

  Sebastian moved from the bed and sat on the floor close to him. “I did not want Inez to die,” he whispered, the way men did in the confessional. “I wanted her to come away, to join the troupe. She would have made a great actress. You saw how she beguiled everyone. She was a natural.”

  The priest nodded. “And now she is dead. Tell me how, why.”

  The actor opened his hands and shrugged. “All I know is that she was blackmailing her father. She said she had the means to ruin him. She wanted money for us to go away together, lots of money, so she could live like the princess she has been. She was using what she knew about him to get the money and to protect me. Once he killed her, I knew I was a dead man. I am a dead man. She told her father about her love affair with me, though I warned her not to.”

  Padre Junipero shook his head. This was madness. The man could not be telling the truth. In confession, Inez had revealed none of this. “Why would she have told her father? Did she tell him you are a Jew?”

  “She did not know that. I am not circumcised.”

  “Nevertheless, I simply do not believe you.” He made as if to go.

  Sebastian rose to the bait. He held up his hand. “Wait. I will show you. I have a letter from her.” He riffled through his red sack and handed a piece of paper to the priest. The room was too dark now to read. Junipero went to the small unglazed window and held out the paper in the scant light. The words were scrawled in a hasty script, but unmistakably in Inez’s hand: “You were right, my darling. I have overstretched my father’s love. He has taken back the evidence I had against him. I have threatened to testify against him myself. But I am afraid. Since I am lost to him, I fear he does not care if I live. He loves me only if he can control me, and he loves his honor more.

  “I am going to the convent where he will not be able to harm me. From the safety of that sanctuary, I will force him to give me the money we need to go to Buenos Aires and establish ourselves there. You will see. We will become great in that city. My father will pay for my silence. Then we will be richer than your wildest dreams.

  “I kiss your sex and long for the day you kiss mine again. Inez.”

  The final words sent a shudder through the priest, of disgust and arousal.

  “She could create a paradise for a man, Father.” The actor had come to Junipero’s side and was reading over his shoulder.

  “How can you say such a thing about a dead girl?”

  “Inez was no innocent victim, Padre. She charmed and vamped everyone, including her father and the Abbess.” He regarded the priest knowingly. “Including you, evidently. Her mother and her baby sister were the only ones who saw through her.”

  “And yet you loved her.”

  “Loved her? I don’t know. She loved me. I could have had a pleasurable and interesting life with her.”

  The priest handed the letter back to the young man.

  “Don’t you want to keep it, Padre? As evidence?”

  “I could never show that to the Tribunal. It paints her as a wanton and a blackmailer. They will not want to vindicate her from suicide if they know what a sinner she was. Besides, it does not prove anything. What was the evidence she had against her father?”

  “I don’t know. She never told me what it was, because she said if I knew, he would certainly kill me. The evidence was letters, documents. That is all I know. Her father kept them to implicate others, so they would keep their common secret. She took them and gave them to someone she trusted. Somehow her father took them back.”

  “Then I must find those letters.”

  “Don’t do it, Padre. There is nothing you can do against the Tribunal. Come east with me. The smugglers are leaving at nightfall. Save your own life.”

  “No, I must save the Abbess.”

  “You have no guarantee that you will succeed at that.”

  “I know,” the priest said, “but I must try.”

  And then the last of the secret he had held so long in his heart slipped out. He had told it in confession. Vincente knew, but no one else. It was almost as if this young Jew, who had so trusted him, were the only man on earth who would ever truly understand. “Maria Santa Hilda would not be in the convent at all if she had not been raped in her youth. She is not the one I and my comrades defiled, but that girl was so like the Abbess in innocence and station, she could have been her. I cannot undo what I did. But I can try to save the life of another such innocent victim. I would die to save her.”

  THAT AFTERNOON, BEFORE the light faded, the city’s rich and noble Indians presented another splendid and colorful masque in which all the nations of Perú appeared in native costumes, some elegant, some savage. The chiefs rode in richly decorated carriages of state, the last of which was made of silver and drawn by fifty forest dwellers dressed in the skins of different animals. Under sumptuous canopies, mine workers carried images made of feathers representing the great monarchs who had been kings of both Spain and Perú—Carlos I, his son Felipe II, and his grandson Felipe III—and also the Inca King Túpac Amaru, who had received holy baptism.

  Beatriz Tovar saw none of this. The maids had still not returned from their search for Padre Junipero. Mother Maria’s time was running out. And all Beatriz could do was watch impassively in the mirror while her mother parted her thick dark hair in the middle, braided it with precious silver ribbon, and wound it into circlets over either ear. Her mother attached a chain that crossed the upper part of Beatriz’s forehead and carried the word amor, but the girl tore it out and threw it on the table. Love was nothing to her anymore. She was devastated . . . mortified . . . outraged. How could it be? Domingo was her brother. All those impure thoughts she had had about him. Not only sinful. They were odious, revolting.

  The maid was just beginning to apply her makeup when a knock came at the door and her mother entered with Gemita de la Morada. Gemita was carrying a small canvas parcel sloppily sewed up with blue thread. She had a wild look in her eyes, as if at any moment she would begin to scream and would not stop for a long time. But she curtsied courteously and kissed Beatriz’s hands and let hers be kissed in turn.

  She went to the estrado, which ran along under the windows, and sat down and said
nothing. When Beatriz asked if she was all right, Gemita eyed Beatriz’s mother and remained mute.

  “I will bring you some maté,” her mother announced, and went out.

  When they were alone, Gemita whispered, “I am in danger.” Her voice sounded old and dry, like the voices of the ancient Indian women in the market. “I ran away.”

  Beatriz gasped. Wayward daughters could be killed by their fathers, and Captain Morada was known to be fierce in defense of his honor.

  Gemita put the tip of her pudgy little forefinger to her lips. She tiptoed to the door, opened it and looked out, and then came back. “The proof is in here.” She still whispered in that raspy voice. She placed the packet in Beatriz’s lap. It was the size of an ingot of silver, but not as heavy. “They are letters from my father’s escritorio. Inez was always stealing them and reading them.” Her fingers fumbled, trying to pull out the blue thread. “I read them. I was curious. Only curious. Because Inez said these letters could protect me. I wanted to know what she meant.” She began to sob. “Now I know. Letters can kill you.” She let out a wail that sounded as if it would split the mountain.

  Beatriz’s own fingers, trembling, undid the thread. Inside were many letters and papers that bore the red Morada seal and remnants of the seals of many noble families.

  Gemita pressed her fists to her mouth. “Read,” she choked out. “Read this one.” She pointed to one written on folded parchment.

  The paper was signed by many of the city’s ministers and officials. It carried twelve silver traders’ seals. “We agree,” it said, “to make coin of alloy—” Beatriz’s heart thumped. This was the problem her mother had just explained to her—the danger that faced the city in the person of Visitador Nestares. Beatriz’s eyes scanned the page. “. . . mutual profit . . . the assayer Ramirez . . .” According to what was written here, many men had conspired to debase the city’s coins, but Francisco de la Morada was the one who had hatched the scheme.

  “Look at the date,” Gemita said, somewhat recovered now. “The forgery lasted for six years. The coins were only three parts silver, eight parts copper. And read this part.”

  Fake companies had been set up to conceal the fraud. The recipients of the money formed a partnership, and these papers were drawn up. The missing silver would never show on anyone’s ledgers.

  “Did you understand this all by yourself?” Beatriz was disbelieving. Gemita had always seemed such an innocent, silly thing.

  “Inez was always telling me about it. The secret compartment in his escritorio, the one he never revealed to anyone but her. She told me how to open it.” Gemita looked down into her lap. “She told me that if I ever needed protection, I should take these from their hiding place.” She unfolded another letter. “There are worse ones.” She pointed to a phrase written on one page in a thick masculine script. “See? They plan an uprising against the King.” She opened another. “And here. The worst. They wrote it just four days ago. They plan to poison the envoy Nestares, and even the Viceroy.”

  She was becoming hysterical again, opening the pages and strewing them on the floor. “Here. This one. Read this one.”

  Beatriz felt her blood solidify with terror, but she read on about a plot to bribe Visitador Nestares’s black slave woman to poison him. Don Felipe Ramirez had written to Morada that the slave had accepted some silver and a mixture of deadly herbs. When he wanted the deed done, all Morada had to do was send her breakfast on a silver tray. As soon as she received it, she would poison Nestares.

  Beatriz’s whole body was frozen with fear. “Oh, dearest God. You are right, Gemita. A person could die from knowing this.”

  “There is a letter from Inez,” the terrified little girl said. “Here.” She scooped it off the floor.

  “Father,” it read, “I am going to the convent to keep myself safe from you. I heard you talking to Ramirez about the Visitador the King will send. If I cannot have my way, I intend to send the letters to the King’s envoy. You will never find them where they are hidden. And if you do, I will personally reveal your plot against Nestares. Just give me half of your silver, and I will go away forever.”

  Gemita unfolded another letter. “Here is one he wrote to her, but I guess he never sent it. It wasn’t hidden with the packet, just inside his desk with her letter to him. It is in his hand.”

  In the same script as the document about the forgery, Beatriz read, “My lost darling Inez, By tomorrow night I will have the letters back. Come home and I will forgive you and you will live. Otherwise, know that you cannot escape me, no matter where you hide. If you do not . . .” The letter was unfinished and dated two days before Inez died.

  “He killed her,” Gemita rasped out.

  “I cannot—” Beatriz began, but she stopped. She was about to say she could not believe such a thing. But she did. “Where is your mother, Gemita? Does Doña Ana know this?”

  “My mother went to the lake at Tarapaya.”

  “And left you?”

  Gemita nodded.

  At that moment, Beatriz’s mother came in carrying a tray in her own hands. “I sent the last of the maids to look for the padre. I can’t understand why one of them hasn’t found him by now.” She stared at the papers strewn about the floor and the estrado. “What—”

  “Oh, Mama,” Beatriz cried. “The Alcalde murdered Inez.”

  The cups rattled on the tray.

  “We must get my father,” Beatriz said.

  Beatriz’s mother’s eyes were huge with fear. “But he is at the mine. And there is no one here but us—not even one maid.”

  Twenty

  SOR MONICA STOOD before Sor Olga with Vitallina at her side, holding the dead cat. Words flew out of the Sister Herbalist’s mouth like a flock of unruly pigeons. In Sor Olga’s eyes, she saw disgust. Her argument was having the same effect the birds would have had. Monica closed her mouth and stopped the flying.

  “I must pray for guidance about what to do with this knowledge,” the acting Abbess said. She regarded the cat in a way that made Monica’s breath come faster and then said precisely what Monica feared: “The sacrificing of animals is pagan and blasphemous.”

  “Will you at least send for Padre Junipero so that I may tell him what I have discovered?”

  “No,” Sor Olga said curtly. Her small, wizened face had turned smug.

  “He is my confessor. I request an opportunity to receive his spiritual advice.”

  “Your vow is obedience.”

  “But—”

  “Sister, your spiritual adviser is about to be arrested by the Holy Tribunal for his own sins.” Delight replaced disgust in Sor Olga’s eyes.

  AT THE DINING room table at the Casa de la Morada, the Alcalde shifted in his chair, looking for a position that would not torture his weary back. His closest allies on the Cabildo, men who were bound to one another by pacts of mutual guilt, sat tense in their seats. If one was punished, they all would be. And they sensed the sword over their heads. “My friends,” Morada said, “whatever independence and power the Cabildo used to have is long gone. We have all seen it narrowed and weakened for decades.”

  Taboada raised his hand like a boy in school. “Perhaps if we tried to write again to the King or even to send an envoy to the Council of the Indies. They may not understand the difficulty of mining today. That the shafts now flood because the miners have to dig so deep.” His thin voice was pleading. He was the weakest of the conspirators. He had not even been able to find and kill that scrawny, stupid priest. If Don Jerónimo didn’t begin to show a little backbone, he too would have to be eliminated.

  “Enough.” Morada stood and stretched his spine to relieve his pain. “Getting better terms from the King has not been possible in the past. With the debasing of the currency, it is not even an option. Wresting control of the mines and city is our only path now. I send the silver breakfast tray tomorrow. Nestares’s death will look like a fever. Once he is gone, we will buy off or kill his guards and do away with the stro
nger Basques. The city—all of Alto Perú will be ours.” He held up the ostrich plume pen and they signed, one by one, and using the flame of the candle on the table dripped some red sealing wax next to each signature. Each man pressed his seal ring into the liquid and held it there until the wax hardened. Ramirez, the last to seal, pressed so hard and held his fist in place so long that the wax broke when he withdrew his ring, and the seal had to be made again.

  They had done this before, made documents that incriminated them all, to force them all, under pain of death for treason, to keep faith with one another.

  “We will meet in the Plaza Mayor, before the Alcaldía, at dawn,” Morada told them, and bade them farewell. It was dark by the time they all left.

  He carried the document to his small study for safekeeping. A few candles burned on the table and illuminated the gorgeous ivory face of the Virgin on the shelf in the corner. “My Inez was everything to me,” he said aloud to God’s Mother. “Why did you not send me a son? Why did Inez have to change? I would have given her anything if she had stayed.”

  He put the key in the lock of his escritorio and twisted it, but it did not turn. His breath stopped. He tried the lid. It was already open. The letter he had left on the slanted surface was gone. He took out the drawer and pulled the latch at the back. The panel under the drawer space popped up. He put his hand into the secret compartment. It was empty! He stashed the parchment he was carrying and ran out, through the dining room, to the balcony surrounding the patio. He flung open the door to Gemita’s room. Empty.

  He ran to the other bedrooms, to the sitting room. Empty. All empty.

  Carlos, the captain of his guard, came running. “I heard a commotion,” he said.

  “Where is the señorita?” Morada demanded.

  “I—I—Isn’t she in her room? She went there for siesta.”