City of Silver (14 page)

Even as a child, she had wanted the convent—at first as her only escape from the strife she found at home. But she grew to
love and desire her beautiful vision of tranquillity and a simple life of prayer. She did not even speak to her father of her wish. Girls of her breeding and station had only one duty—to marry the man of their fathers’ choosing, to seal alliances, to secure property.

Then that happened which made marriage impossible and sealed the fate she so willingly embraced. She buried her screams and accepted the notorious crime as God’s way of sending her to the life He intended for her. She found the peace she sought. For a while.

On the day she professed, the Cardinal Archbishop had smiled benignly down on her in the lofty stone church of the Mother House. “What do you request, my daughter?” he had asked.

“I ask for the blessing of God and for the favor to be received into this congregation,” she had answered. “I offer Our Lord my liberty and my family, and I ask only for His love and Holy Grace.”

The Cardinal had placed his hand on her head. She had kept her eyes closed. She easily offered God what was left of her family. Her mother was dead and her dear brother, Juan, gone off to the court in Madrid. At that point, a husband was impossible for her, but she wanted none anyway. She had seen in her father and in her brother-in-law, Luis, what husbands were. In place of children of her own, she took God’s. The babies of the poor, and the girls who came to the convent to learn. The willful Inez, who might have been the daughter of her heart, who had come so close to confiding in her.

“Are you resolved to despise the honors, the riches, and all the vain pleasures of the world in order to pursue a closer union with God?” the Archbishop had asked at her investiture.

“I am so resolved.” She had heard the determination in her own firm, clear young voice. But now she possessed what she had promised to sacrifice. Honors in her position as Abbess, and
riches, too—at least as much material comfort as she ever needed. Vain pleasures? She used to think they were dresses and pretty jewels. Vain pleasure was really the exercise of her will. A will about to break under the strain of having to choose between evils. She straightened her back. No. She would not admit defeat. She bore her weight on her knees.

“Veni Creator Spiritus,”
the choir of nuns had sung at her investiture. Come, Holy Spirit. Never in her life had she so required inspiration as she did on this Good Friday in Potosí.

Creaking shoes in the passage outside warned her that one of the sisters approached. She blessed herself and, still lacking the answer to her prayers, went out to find the Sister Porter, who kept watch at the convent’s door. “The Commissioner of the Holy Tribunal asks to speak with you, Mother Abbess.”

“You may show him into my office.”

The Sister Porter folded her arms into her sleeves and bowed her head. “He wishes you to come to the locutory,” she said apologetically.

“Yes, of course.” Maria Santa Hilda knew well Fray DaTriesta’s distaste for the company of women. Whenever they occupied the same room outside the convent—as they had yesterday in the Bishop’s mansion—he never looked her in the face. He cleaved to the conviction of many priests—that women were the source of all evil. It was true, she thought petulantly, if you considered that women were the source of all men.

She went to the entrance of the convent, to the place where the nuns received visitors who could not or would not come inside. She entered the box—like a confessional with a heavy grille—and lowered her black veil over her face. Actually, it suited her to speak with DaTriesta here, where he could not read her thoughts in her eyes. She, on the other hand, saw him very well. She had had this part of the convent constructed so that the visitor’s compartment contained a window facing north that threw maximum light on his face.

The dry, waspish Commissioner had the kind of severe and ugly looks—a high forehead, little hair, a pointed nose, a big pale mouth—that made him seem much older than his years. He was probably not more than thirty, and the energy of his relative youth gave him a threatening air of being always on the verge of a violent fit of temper.

The Abbess leaned toward the heavy iron grille. “God be with you, Father,” she said, wishing with all her might that the Lord’s grace would soften DaTriesta’s heart but despairing that it was possible.

“And with you.” There was a sarcastic edge to his thin, tinny voice.

She waited for him to tell her what business had brought him to her portal, but he did not speak for such a long time that it became impossible to bear the silence. “How can I serve God in your person this day?” The sharpness of her voice outmatched the disdain she had heard in his.

“I come to condole with you over the death of your sister de la Morada.”

Behind the veil and the grille, she allowed herself a wry smile. “Thank you for your kind sympathy, Father.”

Silence fell again. She realized he wanted information about how Inez had died, but she was determined to make him work for it. She closed her eyes and counted the piercing seconds.

“I understand there were irregularities in the way she died,” he said finally.

Maria Santa Hilda started. How could he know that? Padre Junipero was the only one outside the convent who could have told him, and he never would have. She twisted her fingers in her lap and blessed the veil that hid her fear. “We do not know what took her from us, but we are sure her soul is with God.”

“From what I know, we must assume that she took her own life.”

The Abbess forced her breath to stay calm. “No, Father. We need make no such assumption.”

His sparse eyebrows rose. “Have you then determined what killed her when she was locked alone in her cell? Pray tell me what it was.”

“We have evidence that she locked her door because she feared for her life.”

“Do you mean you harbor a murderer, Sister?”

“You have no jurisdiction in my convent.” The sharp words flew out of her mouth. She regretted the wrath they would incur.

His pale lips curled in a smile. “You have a weakness for intemperate speech, my daughter.” When she encountered him face-to-face, he always averted his small, dark, hard eyes. Here, herself hidden, she saw them clearly. They were brilliant with hate.

She fought to compose herself. The Grand Inquisitor was coming in three days. If DaTriesta accused her, his superiors could order her to Lima. The convent would have to pay the cost of her journey and the expense of her jailing. Worse, the order would never recover from the disgrace. If the Tribunal decided against her, they could excommunicate her. Nobody on earth could remove the interdiction but them. Without the Holy Sacraments, her very soul would be in danger. “I have done nothing to warrant the wrath of the Holy Tribunal.” She tried to say it simply, but her voice shook.

“Nothing definitive yet, but I already have several pages on you in the Sumaria, Lady Abbess.”

Indignation stiffened her spine. “What is it that I have done that so interests you?”

“I guard this corner of our Holy Empire against Satan’s encroachment.”

“Satan? What could I possibly want from him? There is
nothing he can tempt me with.” She knew the words were proud and a sin of themselves. “What could I ask? Prowess in battle? To win at cards?” Freedom from the likes of you, she thought. She made the sign of the cross on the back of her hand with her thumb. She did not want him to see her bless herself against the sins he drove her to.

His nostrils narrowed, as if he caught the scent of a decaying animal. “What do I know about what a woman wants from the devil. Perhaps health. The intelligence of a man.”

“I already have those.” Pride again, but she could not help it.

“How do I know where you got them?”

“From the same place you got your gifts, Fray DaTriesta. From Almighty God.” It was folly to defy him, but impossible to forgo her own defense.

Noise intruded, of a procession approaching to visit the church attached to the convent. Moans of penitents. Children and women reciting the rosary. Their presence gave the Abbess an opportunity to change the direction of the interview. “Perhaps we should not be thinking of these things on this holy day?”

DaTriesta turned away, as if he had caught a glimpse of her face and could not bear to look on it. “Every day is the right day to preserve the integrity of the Holy Faith.”

“To be sure,” she said. He put her in mind of those thugs who fought in gangs on the hill of Munaypata—bloodthirsty out of reason. She held up her hands, folded as in prayer. “Individualism, materialism, violence. These are the real evils of our city, Father Commissioner. Can we not fight these together?”

“Those are the faults of men, Lady Abbess. I do not see how you can fight them.”

“With prayer, Father.” She lowered her voice and spoke with the false sanctity that marked his every word. It came out sounding like a mockery of his voice. She flinched at the gravity of having given such an insult.

His seething anger boiled to the surface. “Beware. You have
brought our notice on yourself by teaching women to read and write, by putting ideas of independence in their young heads. You would do better to support the feminine virtues: modesty, seclusion, chastity, fidelity.” He named them as if they were mountain peaks no woman could properly climb. “You put your very soul in danger. I do not threaten you lightly.”

She gripped her arms to her sides and hoped he did not see the chill of fear shake her. “Inez de la Morada came here to repent and serve God. I believe she died in the state of grace. I intend to give her a Christian burial.”

“I will require you to prove she deserves it. We men of the Inquisition are trained to look for facts. If you cannot substantiate your claims, you will be subject to our censure.”

She knew what that meant. Once they got her, they would find a way to keep her. Only her selfish and dissolute father would be able to save her. And she would never give him the satisfaction of asking.

DaTriesta smirked as if her silence meant his victory. “Go to your cell, Lady Abbess. Betake yourself to prayer. You still have time to mend your ways.”

“I will struggle to be holy,” she said.

“A struggle that goes on forever,” he said sanctimoniously. “Like all struggles between good and evil.”

SOR MONICA HAD never threatened a living thing. She regretted having suggested to the Abbess this experiment with the cat. Now her Mother Superior, whom she had vowed to obey, who was also the person she most loved and admired in this world, had asked her to feed the cat the water from Inez’s carafe. And she would have to do it.

In her bones, her blood, she still remembered when, as a young child, she had sat up on the top of her father’s carriage with Pedro, the driver, on the way to Sevilla. It was forbidden for the noble little girl to sit there. She was supposed to ride inside
as befitted a child of the aristocracy, but on the country roads, with no mother or father present to enforce the rule, Gelvira, her nurse, had given her a treat. The little girl saw the world as a bird might have seen it, flying above the ground. Then suddenly a rabbit darted from the ditch beside the road and ran under the wheels.
Thud! Thud!
The heavy carriage rolled over it. She stood and turned and saw it lying in the dust. Brown and white and bloody in the searing Spanish sunshine. It seemed to her it was her fault.

“Stop,” she had cried. She wanted to go back, to fix the rabbit. She sobbed so long and hard that Gelvira had to lie to her mother that she had a cold. Her mother wept and worried that she would die. They kept her in bed for many days and made her drink nasty-tasting things the doctor prescribed. One sin of disobedience and so much turmoil.

She had prayed to St. Francis to make the rabbit well. Sometimes she imagined it had gotten up and scampered away. The older she became, the more certain she was that no such miracle could have occurred. She still felt that childish guilt. Now she was about to feed what might be poison to the cat. He might expire in her hands.

Death did not frighten her. She had seen people die. Old nuns, mostly, like Sor Elena, who lay now over on the cot near the window. Death would come as a relief for that old woman’s pain. When one of them was dying, Sor Monica was able to ease her sister’s suffering until she passed peacefully into the arms of Jesus. Human beings had immortal souls that lived on after death. But when animals died, they were completely obliterated. Forever.

She crossed the cluttered infirmary to Sor Elena. The pale gray light of that Good Friday dawn shone on the old woman’s already ghostly face. Sor Monica broke silence and confessed her fears about the cat. “Even if the cat dies, I still will not know if Inez took poison on purpose or if someone else put it in her
water. I am sorry I thought to do this test. I do not want to destroy one of God’s creatures.”

“You should give the water to me to drink.” Sor Elena’s voice was weak but determined. “If it sends me more quickly to my Maker, I will be glad.”

Sor Monica blessed herself and whispered, “Do not say such things, my sister,” but her heart knew what a relief it would be to speed Sor Elena on her journey and spare her the waves of torment she suffered more and more often. The Sister Herbalist felt herself a sinful woman to think such a thought.

“In a way, the cat belongs to Juana, the maid,” Sor Elena said. “She brought it here as a kitten. Ask her permission. Perhaps that will put your conscience at ease.”

“Juana would certainly say yes,” Vitallina, Sor Monica’s assistant, called from across the room. The big African woman, who had come to them from Brazil, had ears that could hear a straw break in the next street.

“Go and fetch Juana to me, please, Vitallina, and bring the cat also. It is probably sleeping in the corner of the postulants’ refectory.”

The stately Negress bowed gracefully and left the room. She was the most gifted person with medicines Sor Monica had ever met, but she was also the most superstitious. She had carried many pagan beliefs from Africa and learned many new ones from the Indians of the Amazon where she had lived. Now she was incorporating the beliefs of the Andeans into her weird cosmology. But she practiced no black arts.