City of Silver (24 page)

“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.”

His mouth softened for a moment as if he would give in, then it hardened again. He uttered a phrase she did not hear but that shook his body as it escaped him.

“What?” she said, trembling.

“I said,” he enunciated slowly, “that Barco is my son. Beatriz cannot marry him. He is her brother.”

THE AROMA OF beef, meat the padre had not eaten for months: The hunger for it made his temples throb. He inhaled it and other, strange smells. Musty clothing. Dust. Boot polish. A woman’s perfume.

Padre Junipero sat up and shook himself. “Stop.” He tried to shout, but his voice was weak. The door to the hall was open, and the actor was nowhere in sight.

The priest rose unsteadily to his feet and peered down the corridor. He brushed off his cassock and cloak and found his flat, wide-brimmed hat among the baskets and costumes strewn on the floor. He made his way back to the auditorium, where the rehearsal was still in progress. Not surprisingly, Sebastian Vázquez was absent from the company. The priest demanded to know his whereabouts. At first, no one admitted knowing where he had gone. Then General Velarde left the company of his actress friends and whispered to the priest that the young man had gone to the monastery of San Augustín to seek sanctuary. “What has he done?” asked the portly former magistrate.

“I have reason to believe—” The priest caught himself before he gave himself away. Too much could be made of his suspicion. In this city, in an hour, a tiny rumor could surge into a tempest of revenge. If the Alcalde found out that Sebastian had killed his daughter, the actor would not be safe, not even in the sanctuary of San Augustín. Years ago, Morada had dragged a Mestizo miscreant from the Church of San Martín in order to bring him to justice. There would be no telling what he might do to avenge the murder of his beloved Inez. “I am not sure,” the priest answered, and quickly left.

Certainly the actor needed to be brought to justice, but not until after his testimony had thwarted DaTriesta’s destruction of the Abbess.

The priest hurried through the bitingly cold evening. The streets were thronged with Indian workers who, having collected their wages on Saturday, came into the city from the outlying villages to shop. In the open-air market in the Plaza de la Fruta, goods that had been set out by the Indian women blew about in the violent wind. In the Calle de los Mercaderes, a long pack train goaded by muleteers was just arriving to unload wine,
charcoal, sacks of flour, and jars of oil for the feasting that would begin with Easter tomorrow.

Rather than plow through the milling, shouting confusion, the priest doubled back to the Plaza Mayor and along the east wall of the Mint to the monastery of the Augustinians. He rang and was let in by the Brother Porter. “I must speak to Fray Vincente. It is urgent.”

The Brother Porter left Padre Junipero to wait in a room bare except for a long wooden bench and a statue covered with purple muslin. After just a few minutes, the tall and powerfully built Vincente came rushing into the room and embraced his friend. “Junipero, tell me why you honor me with this visit.” There was considerable bulk beneath Vincente’s cassock of coarse-woven gray cloth. Never slender, he had gained weight. He was too fond by half of the pleasures of the table. If he continued, he would soon be totally unfit for the strenuous life at this altitude.

“I am sure you already know,” Padre Junipero said. Vincente was a good priest and one Padre Junipero knew he could trust. “Within the past hour, a young Castillian nobleman presented himself here and asked for sanctuary. Knowing you, I am sure you have encouraged him to confess—”

Vincente held up his hand in protest, as if he believed the padre were about to ask him to divulge some secret.

Padre Junipero dismissed such worries with a wave of his hand. “I do not want to know what he told you. I just want you to hand him over to me.”

The Augustinian took Padre Junipero by the shoulders and drew him to the bench. “Sit down and let me give you the message he sends to you.”

Reluctantly, Junipero acquiesced. “I haven’t a lot of time.”

“What is the great hurry? The whole city has seen you rushing about since Inez de la Morada died.” Vincente’s eyes gave him a knowing, pitying glance that said he remembered the
conversation the padre hoped he had forgotten, which had revealed Junipero’s hopes for Inez. Vincente had counseled him then to draw away from the girl, that perhaps he was becoming too attached to her. Junipero had ignored the warning, knowing in his own heart that after that grave sin of his youth, he would never, never again be able to be with any woman.

He explained to Vincente the circumstances of Inez’s death and DaTriesta’s threat against the Abbess.

“And how do you know she didn’t take her own life?”

Junipero looked directly into his friend’s eyes and let him see into his heart. “I know.”

Vincente sighed. “You have convinced yourself, but your personal conviction will not save Maria Santa Hilda.”

Junipero gripped his friend’s arm. “But the man you have here, Sebastian Vázquez, can. I have reason to believe he murdered Inez de la Morada.”

Vincente looked amazed. “How could he when she was in the convent? You yourself just told me she was locked in a room, and no one could have gotten in or out.”

“He would have had to have an accomplice. The way he acted when I questioned him revealed his guilt.”

Vincente shook his large head. He lifted his skullcap, scratched under it, and replaced it. “It is not what he told me. He did not ask for the sacrament of confession. He merely talked to me.”

“And?”

“He gave me permission to tell you the truth. For one thing, he is Portuguese—”

“Castillian,” Padre Junipero objected.

“No. He has been posing as a Castillian, but he is not.”

They both knew that while many would imitate a Castillian for the social advantages of being of the highest class of Spaniards, no one in Perú would say he was Portuguese unless he really was. All Portuguese were suspected of being Jews. Portugal had exiled
all her Jews, and many had made their way across the Atlantic to Brazil and thence by smugglers’ routes to the rest of Spanish America. Jews had three choices: to lie about who they were, to renounce their religion, or to die in the flames of the Inquisition.

“His accent is perfect. His blond hair. It’s difficult to believe. Still, he would be condemned as quickly as a Jew or as a murderer. It must be the truth.”

Vincente nodded gravely. “Of course he did not openly admit religion, but he knew what we would conclude.”

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

Vincente’s benign face took on an indignant edge. “You must promise me first that you will not denounce him to DaTriesta. I will not be party to a man’s death.” A glint of insistence hardened his kind, dark eyes.

Like Junipero, this monk had devoted himself to lifelong repentance for a sin of his youth. Vincente’s was the wrongful death of his own brother. A few years ago, the two friends had confessed to each other their deeply buried grievous deeds. Though they never spoke again of their shared torment of guilt, they continued as friends in the strangely comforting knowledge that there was one other person in the city who knew and loved anyway. “I will not reveal him,” Padre Junipero promised. “Now, tell me what the Portuguese said.”

“At first, he thought you were the agent of Inez, someone come to tell him when and how they would meet and marry.”

“Like a priest in a play.” Padre Junipero shook his head in sad amusement.

Vincente smiled. “He is an actor, after all.” The smile faded. “When you told him Inez was dead, he was horrified. He thought you might be Morada’s agent, come to kill him for defiling his daughter.”

“So, he thinks the Alcalde knew about his liaison with Inez?”

“He wasn’t sure. He said she would have done anything to get her father to give her what she wanted.”

“The Alcalde would have given her anything.”

“Perhaps not marriage to a Jew.”

Junipero threw up his hands. “Inez was far from stupid. Even if she knew the actor was a Jew, which I doubt, why would she have told her father?”

Vincente shrugged. “All I know is that Inez said her going into the convent had something to do with getting money to marry him. It had something to do with some documents. He didn’t really understand what she meant by that.”

Documents again. Pilar Tovar claimed that her husband’s
barretero
was killed over documents. But he couldn’t go off on that tangent. “So the actor claims, but perhaps when she got to Santa Isabella she changed her mind about marrying him. Perhaps she succumbed to God’s grace and jilted him. He might have killed her for that.”

“I suppose.” Vincente’s doubt clouded his eyes.

“Or perhaps he was afraid she would reveal his identity to her father. The Alcalde would certainly kill him. Yes. Yes. The Portuguese could have killed her to protect his own identity.”

Vincente grasped him by the shoulders. “You are letting your imagination run away with you, Junipero. You should not be involving yourself so passionately in this. That girl was a temptation to you in life. Don’t let her endanger you in death as well.”

“I told you. I am trying to save the Abbess from the auto-da-fé.”

“Can the Abbess not appeal to the Bishop?”

“The Bishop is siding with DaTriesta.”

Vincente looked dubious. Bishops resisted the Holy Tribunal since it sapped their episcopal power. “Is there no way the Bishop can turn a profit by protecting the Abbess?” They both knew silver, and not much else, motivated His Grace.

The padre shook his head. “Perhaps the Commissioner has something in his Sumaria about the Bishop.”

“If you can open a rift between the Bishop and the Commissioner, perhaps you can save the Abbess that way.”

Padre Junipero rose. “I am going to find out if the Alcalde knew about Inez’s liaison with the actor. Please keep him here and guard him well.”

Fear blazed in Vincente’s eyes. “How can you ask questions of the Alcalde? You would have to reveal too much. If he finds out, he will come here and take the actor by force.”

“I have another source of information.” The padre embraced his friend and quickly left.

THE BITTER COLD streets were still crowded with Indians, many addled with strong drink. God give him grace, the priest did not blame them for their excesses on Saturday night. No white man could do the work they did at this altitude without dying of fatigue.

Junipero stopped at a
pulperia
in the corner of the Plaza de la Merced and ate a piece of hard bread and a bit of strong yellow cheese. He allowed himself a glass of wine to ward off the chill. As he chewed the first salty bites, he realized he had not eaten all day. A fast at the end of Lent. Perhaps he should have forgone even this. He drained the wineglass and left the counter.

He made his way quickly to the Casa de la Morada.

The inner courtyard was jammed with people, including Ramirez, the Tester of the Currency. Strange that a nobleman would be left to wait with the rabble.

Perhaps because he was piqued about being snubbed by Morada, on seeing the priest, Ramirez grasped his sword hilt and grumbled something hostile but unintelligible. Junipero pretended not to notice and quickly moved away. He wanted no noisy confrontations.

Also among the crowd, the padre saw Juana, one of the maids from the convent, sitting on a bench with her back against the wall, asleep. He had heard that she was trying to save her brother
from the mine—that mouth of hell that consumed the poor, peaceful Indians in their thousands every year. What the galleons carried to Spain was not silver, but the sweat and blood of innocents.

“The Alcalde is not here,” the guard at the inner door told him before he had a chance to say a word.