by Helen Bryan
When we returned to the convent we learned that Pia is calmer but will not leave her cell, even when the beatas open her door and try to coax her out. She does not sleep for the battles waged by angels and demons for her soul. She is so thin her skin is translucent. It makes Sanchia and me cry to see her.
I have delayed writing to the Abbess and Sor Beatriz. It is impossible to know if letters reach their destinations, or whether letters from me will pose a danger to the convent, or whether they will be able to write back. I long to know if Luz is safe. I have her handkerchief still.
But to business…Mother called me to her parlor to discuss my future. After our visit to Marisol there were more inquiries about Sanchia, Pia, and me, especially Pia, with a view to marriage negotiations. Pia was in no state to marry anyone and I was reluctant for the three of us to be separated, so I managed to avoid the issue.
However, when we returned from our visit to Salome, Mother said someone has particularly inquired about me. I experienced a moment of foolish hope that it might be Don Miguel but Mother said, “Don Hector Santiago. He is sixty and has never married, so you would not have to manage stepchildren. He is a distant cousin of the Beltrans. He was very particular about selecting a wife—so long as she is Spanish he is prepared to consider one with no dowry, provided she is plain, devout, modest, submissive, quiet, not given to fine dressing, and likely to breed. Preferably a simple girl not educated beyond reading her prayer book.”
I tried to match the name to one of the haughty landowners. When I did my heart sank. “Oh. I remember him, Mother—a little pinch-faced, sharp-nosed bantam of a man who thinks highly of himself, with dreadful breath, as if his teeth were rotting.”
“He is very rich—the family own many silver mines,” said Mother severely. This news makes him even less appealing. Don Miguel told me how natives are worked to death as slaves in the mines.
“His grandfather was one of Pizarro’s generals. Naturally the family will consider your background before a formal offer is made, but I trust they will find no obstacle?”
Worse and worse, I thought.
I had already told Mother as little as I could about my family, saying only that my mother had died when I was born and that my father had been a scholar. But now I protested vigorously that I did not fit Don Hector’s requirements as I had been rigorously educated at home.
Mother made a dismissive motion with her hand as if to say, “Let us ignore that.” She is anxious to have our futures secured, and I feel sure she will set this information in the best possible light when she replies to Don Hector. She told me to think Don Hector’s proposal over seriously. The idea made me shudder, though it would enable me to keep another promise—to give Sanchia a home before she gets into serious trouble.
Sanchia grows more and more restless in a way that alarms me. She slips out of the convent from time to time to join troupes of traveling players and musicians and dancers who entertain on platforms in the public squares and the new theaters. This is dangerous behavior. There are too many men, too many adventurers and drunkards, who think all women and girls are theirs for the taking. Especially the dancing girls that she befriends. She insists that the performances are religious in nature, morality plays to educate and Christianize the natives, but they draw unruly crowds all the same.
Sanchia has also begun to speak of her family, very painful memories that make her cry, but she says that now she is growing up, it is her duty to remember them, however terrible it is, “or they will die again, Esperanza. I understand that they died horribly because they were Jews. I want to be a Jew, too.” I shushed her and said that whatever we think, we must be careful what we say.
“Don’t be such a prig, Esperanza! You have a secret of your own. Anyone who has a secret can tell when others do also,” retorted Sanchia.
This is true.
In addition to her newly acquired performing skills Sanchia surprised me by taking a studious turn. And a dangerous one. On one of her illicit excursions she has acquired a printed Old Testament in Spanish from a mestiza bookseller who they say deals in forbidden merchandise. It is very beautiful. Sanchia spent half her dowry on it—without my knowledge—and reads it assiduously. She tells me it was the work of Italian Jews. I warned her that these Bibles in the vernacular are banned by the church. I cannot reason with her and carelessly said that she had no inkling how dangerous they are. Sanchia retorted, “Oh, but I have.” She pulled up her skirt and peeled down one stocking. The purple scars are terrible. “These remind me that I must find a way to be my parents’ daughter. That is why the Almighty has allowed me to live. I do not know how yet, but I will think of something. In the meantime, I will learn the story of my people.”
Meanwhile Don Hector is pressing Mother for my answer. Mother grows impatient that I do not give one. I would have delayed until the sky fell into the sea, except that last night Sanchia narrowly escaped being caught by a night watchman. Today I have agreed to marry Don Hector on the condition he is willing to have my sister to live with us. His answer was that he is willing to have Sanchia provided she is a godly and obedient young woman. Fortunately he knows nothing of Sanchia or he would refuse. How I shall manage them both when we are married, I have no idea.
I make Sanchia hide the Bible in her mattress. I told her of my decision to accept Don Hector’s proposal and that she must come with me to my new home. Sanchia looked at me in horror. “Not the one with breath like rotten fish! Ugh. And he is old, like a desiccated beetle. Imagine those dry little beetle hands all over you! Even Dona Luisa did not push Rita his way. Esperanza, you cannot!”
But I must. My own dowry is nearly gone, and I do not know what else to do.
I must not think of Don Miguel now, but oh, how I wish he had been present when we visited Salome.
The banns are posted for my marriage. Sanchia is gone again, the wretched girl! I am put to great trouble concealing her absence, which is a strain just now. My wedding day approaches far too quickly. I should prepare my trousseau, but my heart is too heavy and my hands too unwilling for such work. Mother has reminded me to pack a nightdress at the top of my trunk. I will never survive my wedding night!
I went to tell Pia of my marriage. Pia only responded in a dreamy voice that she is married to a heavenly bridegroom. The beatas who look after her persuade her to eat a little by telling her it is heavenly manna. She pointed to the jug of water in her cell and whispered it was God’s tears. At least she seems calm.
I pray for strength and remind myself that at least I will fulfill my promise to my father. Sanchia and I have few choices. We cannot stay at the convent indefinitely without embracing the religious life in some form. Our money is nearly gone. We can neither of us become nuns; it would involve too much pretense and betrayal of what we are.
I hope Sanchia returns in time for my marriage. I need one friend by me.
CHAPTER 30
From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, by the pen of Esperanza, the Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon, Late October 1554
I spent a sleepless, wretched night before my marriage to Don Hector was to take place, and the dawn came too quickly. Sanchia had not returned, and Don Hector’s carriage waited outside the convent walls. I had a wreath of flowers and a new gown as a wedding present from Mother, and as I dressed I wished with all my heart it was my burial shroud instead. My trunk was waiting by the gate, packed with my small trousseau, and I had put this Chronicle—my friend and confidante—in the bottom, wondering if I would ever have the heart to write in it again.
Suddenly there was a great commotion outside the walls, and the Aguilar carriage and a host of outriders stopped at the convent gate. Nuns and even Mother hurried out to welcome our patroness, who to my amazement entered the gate demanding a word with me. When I ran to see what Salome wanted, she begged me to come with her to the Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon at once. She would explain on the way.
Mother protested that I was about to get married, poi
nting to my trunk ready and waiting to be put in Don Hector’s carriage. Salome looked surprised, then gave me a piercing look and raised her eyebrows slightly as if to ask if this was what I wanted. I shook my head. “Then come, I beg you,” said Salome. Her coachman flung open the carriage door and she pulled me in, ordering the two female servants with her to fetch my trunk. In front of the chapel Don Hector spluttered furiously while the servants tied my trunk behind Salome’s carriage and shook his fist as we drove away. I collapsed in tears of relief at my escape.
Then I heard a giggle and looked up to see the imp Sanchia.
Relieved to see her alive and unharmed, and furious with her for the worry she had caused me, I shook her hard, demanding to know where she had been.
Sanchia has been my deliverer! She had slipped out of the convent and made her way to Salome, going most of the way with her friends the traveling players, and the rest of the way alone. Such a perilous journey for a young girl along a road where bandits lurk that I cannot think of it. Besides viewing Don Hector with distaste as a possible husband on my behalf, Sanchia says that she would sooner be buried alive than have to live in his house as his sister-in-law. She had begged Salome to help. “I did not want to worry you, Esperanza, and you would have found a way to stop me. And there is a good reason, now, for you to come with us.” She wouldn’t tell me what it was, and I almost did not care. It was enough to be rescued from Don Hector.
Salome was quiet and on edge. She ordered the coachman to drive through the night and was impatient when we stopped to change horses. We arrived in less than two days and I wondered at the anxiety she could not hide as we approached her hacienda. A servant hurried to open the carriage door and muttered something in an urgent voice. Salome turned to me and said abruptly, “Thank God he is still alive! Don Miguel needs your help.”
I felt my heart quicken. “Of course,” I said.
Salome led us inside and into the quarter where Don Miguel lived. “Here,” said Salome over her shoulder, and we entered a bedroom, where candles burned on either side of a bed, and a person whose beaten disfigured face I did not recognize lay moaning. The Indian servant sitting at Don Miguel’s side glided away. “Sanchia says that you are skilled in medical matters, that you may know something I do not. Please, help my son if you can!”
If anyone ever looked as if he could not live from such injuries it was Don Miguel. Salome turned back the covers to show me a gaping suppurating wound in his side. It was an ugly color. I could also see he had many broken bones—there was terrible swelling around some of them and his body was a mass of bruises. I looked at Salome with horror. “What happened?”
“Miguel is his father’s son, and the Spanish treatment of his people roused him and his cousins to action. Some of the Inca princes, his cousins, raised an army in the mountains and led an uprising. They killed a Spanish governor and many of his soldiers, but in the end the Spanish crushed the rebels brutally. Those who were captured were flung off a high precipice, and only because Miguel was badly wounded and fell out of sight of the Spanish did he escape the same fate. One of his cousins managed to drag him away into the darkness before he was recognized and executed.”
I stared at him helplessly, my mind a blank.
“Esperanza!” It was Sanchia’s turn to shake me. “I told Salome that you had knowledge of old medical books. You told me yourself that you and your father read them. You must remember something! Think!”
I shut my eyes and thought hard…the beautiful Moorish texts that had been fed to the flames…Ibn Sina the Persian’s Book of Healing. In my mind I opened it, saw the Arabic words flowing across the page…My father’s voice as he read aloud…The connection between mind and body…the pharmacopoeia…the careful treatments…I had no book. I must force my memory. What treatment for wounds and fevers and broken bones? And for who knew what damage inside?
I asked for water and sent Salome and Sanchia for clean linen and herbs, ashes and smooth splints. I said, “God is great,” and begged the spirit of my mother to guide my hands. Then I set to work on the man I loved.
Splints on the broken bones, not too tight—there was a danger of putrefaction. Native ointments on the wounds before bandaging lightly to let the air through…aromatics on a sponge under Don Miguel’s nose. Cool compresses for the fever.
We sat by his bedside for four long days and nights, and his fever did not abate, but it grew no worse. He was a mass of splints which I checked continually to make sure they had not grown tight with swelling. I changed his dressings and sponged his face. We made infusions to ease the pain and dripped them into his mouth. I knelt by his side and spoke into his ear, begging him to summon his great strength of will and recover. On the fifth day he was quieter and I feared he was dying. On the sixth day he opened his eyes as I changed his bandages. On the seventh his fever seemed less. On the ninth day he took some broth and I fell into an exhausted sleep by his side.
When I woke Don Miguel’s eyes were open, watching me. I held his dark gaze, and his expression changed. He smiled. I put out a hand and touched his cheek, now cool instead of feverish. He turned his head and kissed it.
We looked deep into each other’s eyes and I knew my fate as surely as Salome had known hers when she saw the commander.
Salome is pleased in her dignified way. She kindly says that as her mother’s protégée I am dear to her already. Our wedding will not take place for many months, until after Easter to allow Don Miguel to recover. Word of his injuries must not get about. But he continues to mend. God is great.
Salome’s younger son, Fr. Matteo, will perform the ceremony, and her daughter, Beatris, and her large family will attend. In the meantime I am learning to weave. I want to surprise Don Miguel with the traditional Inca bride’s present to her groom, a fine tunic woven by her hands. Sanchia teases me incessantly, saying my weaving is crooked. Alas she is right.
The day has come and we are married. Fr. Matteo is a very genial priest and Dona Beatris is as graceful and lovely as her mother. When Fr. Matteo had finished, Don Miguel performed an Inca marriage rite, putting new sandals on my feet. He bent stiffly, still feeling the aftereffects of his injuries, but the touch of his hands sent a shiver up my body and looking down I saw him smile at my reaction. He was pleased and surprised by the cloak I had woven, though I told him any other Inca husband would have scorned it and the bride who wove it so inexpertly. Fr. Matteo joined our hands in the way Incas do to symbolize the marriage has taken place. We all stood quietly for a moment. Salome thinking of the commander, I thinking of my father. But when I looked up, I could see that Don Miguel was thinking only of me.
Then one of Beatris’s children said he was hungry and we had a great feast that I could scarcely taste, thinking of the night to come. I feel very happy and only wish my father knew. Perhaps he does. God is great.
CHAPTER 31
From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, by the pen of Dona Esperanza Aguilar, the Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon, March 1555
I am with child, and frightened, remembering my mother and Marisol. Salome takes great care of me and Don Miguel will scarcely let me move. I used to think him rather forbidding. Now I see only dignity and passionate pride that he strives to keep under control. I pray he will not return to the mountains where they say the spirit of resistance to the Spanish lives on. A mistress would have been far less dangerous—almost preferable.
A year to the day we married I have a daughter. Deo gratias, the birth was easier than I dared hope and we are well. The baby is named Maria Caterina after my mother. Don Miguel dotes on her, and small as she is he tells her stories—how the god Viracocha rose out of a lake and created the sun and the stars, how he created the Inca to be lords, how the flute-playing herder of white llamas fell in love with the daughter of the sun. Swaddled to her chin, Maria Caterina stares at him with eyes as dark and steady as his own. Salome laughs at him and says the Incas were much harder on their children than he is likely to be. Do
n Miguel says there is time for strictness later.
Sanchia is devoted to the baby, and dances her round and round, humming and singing, until Salome and I protest she will be sick. Sanchia seems happy here, and Salome and Marisol are matchmaking by messenger and letters, but Sanchia seems uninterested.
The Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon, December 1557
I have little time to write in my beloved Chronicle! Salome is often tired and able to do less and less here, so I assumed her role as patroness of the convent’s orphanage and school for Indian girls. I have written to Marisol to say that she must set up a similar school on her estate. She and I both know—everyone knows—that Don Tomas is the father of many children there, as many born after his marriage as before it. And whatever her feelings, Marisol has a duty to see they have enough to eat and wear, and are taught to read and say their prayers. Between the convent, the household, Maria Caterina, Don Miguel, and Sanchia, the days pass before I realize they have begun.
Don Miguel is settling a portion of his estate on Maria Caterina to prevent more Inca land being snatched by the Spanish settlers.
Sanchia is gone! She accompanied Don Miguel to the city on some errands, then disappeared. Don Miguel was beside himself thinking she had been snatched, and tried everything and everyone he knew trying to find her. When he returned, exhausted, I told him about the note she had left on her bed, saying that she has not forgotten what she owed her parents. Sanchia’s Old Testament is missing, too, along with her best shawl, some silver hair combs, and my Chinese fan. I fear for her. I am also with child again.
The Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon, October 1560
It has been almost three years since Sanchia left. Don Miguel has sought her everywhere, and each time he travels to the city he asks the convent if any news of Sanchia has reached them. So far none has. He also brings back word of Pia, but the news is no happier. She has never left her cell, prays night and day, mortifies her flesh, and eats and drinks almost nothing, only a little bread and fruit. The last baby, little José, has begun to walk and I am with child again, and this time, wretchedly ill.
