The Sisterhood (44 page)

We were objects of curiosity and reverence, and we hoped, not suitable concubine material. The handsome woman who visited us with her daughters was not the queen but the commander’s wife. Both had royal Inca blood and it was the custom for such women to maintain close ties to the virgins of the sun, just as the Spanish queen was patroness of Las Golondrinas.

But despite the hospitality shown to us, we learned this is not a gentle land. Many people were sacrificed during the great ceremonies, especially captives of war, and in times of famine or other hardship, their priests would choose the most beautiful children from among the noble families and take them away to the mountains, where they were anointed and blessed, then sacrificed to act as intermediaries with the gods and plead for the humans down below.

Sor Maria Manuela came to believe God’s purpose in bringing us here was to end this practice. We knew we must set an example of virtuous living before we could hope to exert any influence among the people. She ordered the women who served us to forego the daily banquets on golden dishes, insisting we would eat as simply as the peasants, maize porridge with vegetables and fruit. The gold and silver ornaments and cups and plates were exchanged for simple pottery bowls, though we kept the beautiful wall hangings for their warmth. We fashioned new wimples of plain native cloth, and mended our habits. Our days had structure and purpose.

Our preference for plain living met with approval. The next step was to let it be known through our serving women that our virgins were required to serve God not by weaving cloth but by teaching and helping the sick, caring for the poor and crippled and orphans, devising medicines and cures, and instructing girls in these ways of helping others. We gathered that our unusual behavior as virgins was tolerated because the sun god permitted us a certain license not allowed to native virgins.

This emboldened us to take another step we had decided was necessary if we were not to be enclosed against our will. We sent word to the commander’s wife that it was the custom of our virgins to go about among the people, as God protected us and no harm had ever come to any man from gazing on us. We asked her to intercede with the priests. After a time, a message came back that
as we had so far demonstrated our virtue, our customs, though unknown to the Inca, would be honored. Little by little we cautiously ventured outside the building.

We arranged one of the rooms as our chapel. We filled it with the finest wall hangings of the house, made an altar of a carved block of stone from the garden, and hung a crucifix above it. We used a beautiful hammered native silver bowl as a font for holy water, and torches of the kind the natives use in place of candles. Like the Abbess, Sor Maria Manuela heard our confessions, and the natives referred to her as
mamacunya
, the term given to the novice-mistress of their virgins. We decided that she should be formally consecrated as the first Mother Superior of the Holy Sisters of Jesus in the Land of the Four Quarters of the World in the Year of Our Lord 1526. It was the first service held in our little chapel, and the ladies of the royal household, including the commander’s wife and daughters, were invited to attend.

The Inca ladies came dressed for an important ceremonial occasion, in beautiful embroidered robes with trains and jewels and feathers, and watched and listened attentively, gratified to see that our virgins had ceremonies. We had new habits and sang the psalms, anthems, and the prayers of the consecration. The visitors seemed to appreciate our choir, though they were puzzled by the lack of instruments and dancing, which always accompany their ceremonies. When the moment came to consecrate Sor Maria Manuela, we all gathered around her and one at a time laid our hands on her head. She is officially Mother now.

Afterward the queen and all the ladies withdrew and did not join in our simple feast of celebration. But we all felt deeply satisfied, as if we had somehow established our presence in an official manner. We had turned two rooms into an infirmary and soon it slowly began to fill with cases beyond the patience or competence of the local doctors—mostly children who were disfigured
or feeble-witted, a few who were lame, and several elderly childless widows. In a land where all were responsible for the welfare of others, our efforts met with approval.

Yet we proceeded cautiously, judging our words and actions against the orderly way things were done here, before the Spanish came. The people lived in a way that reminded us of the bees the nuns kept in Spain, with their workers and their queen bee. Peasants worked hard at their fields for the Sapa Inca. The local authorities ensured that every family had enough for its needs, and if one family fell ill or could not work, others looked after their fields until they recovered. Authorities were punished if any in their supervision were hungry or naked or unprovided for. Young couples received what they needed to marry. Our care for the chronically ill or lame or elderly or those too infirm to work was a contribution to the general welfare, though we had to avoid anything that could be construed as an attempt to usurp the priests’ authority.

After two years we could survey our progress with satisfaction. We had laid out an herbary and begun to study the native medicines and illnesses that prevailed in order to expand our apothecary. We had set aside a room for a school, had a small flock of goats, some ducks, and had begun digging a vegetable garden when scandalized local women arrived to insist on doing it for us. They planted seeds for gourds and maize and shoots of the tuberous vegetable called “potatoes” that are delicious when roasted in the coals. The swallows made nests in the roof, and sang to us of Spain.

We tried to persuade the local nobles to bring their daughters to our school, but were only successful with the commander’s two daughters because their father wished them to learn to read and write in our language. They were delightful girls, very pretty, quick to learn, and sweet natured. They could calculate and do sums rapidly using an intricately knotted piece of string, and we taught
them to read and write in Spanish using lives of the saints—they were fond of stories of the martyrs, the more gruesome the better.

An alcove in the schoolroom held our six precious books from Spain: three missals that had survived their soaking and, except for a few pages, were intact; one illuminated prayer book; one on the distillation of herbs; and another on the treatment of diseases. I used the book on herbs to teach them Latin.

Although we had consecrated Mother Maria Manuela, we had yet to conduct a similar ceremony for the four of us novices to take our final vows. My heart ached when I remembered how I had expected my mother to be present, but that could not be helped. We had begun our preparations and were only awaiting the return of two of the beatas. They had left us to travel to a distant village where a peculiar sickness the local doctors did not understand had caused many deaths and debilitated the entire populace to the point that they could not plant their crops.

We consulted our books and thought it sounded like something brought on by the constant rain and cold of the time of year, and to our surprise had been given permission to try one of our herbal remedies. It was a sign that we had advanced in local trust, and the beatas took the medicine and departed.

But our consecration did not take place as we had hoped. Alas, the two beatas drowned when their raft overturned as they made their way back. It was a sorrowful blow to our little community and we had no heart for joyful celebrations. We remembered them in our prayers and hoped that in time our shrinking numbers would be swelled by local girls who felt a vocation. The commander’s daughters were joined in the classroom by five other noble girls. Noble or not, there was much giggling, and with the loss of two pairs of hands, we were even busier than before.

We continued to postpone the service of profession. The death of the beatas was followed by another disaster, a terrible famine. For an entire year the rains did not come and it was terrible to watch the unripened maize wither. The tubers that are a main foodstuff were diseased, and game disappeared. The people began to suffer as the storehouses emptied. The people shared what food there was, but many died. Another bad year followed. All grew thin and weak. Children had swollen bellies and hung listless in slings on their mother’s backs. Animals perished in the road for want of fodder.

Then we began to see and hear processions of priests going into the mountains. Our serving women confirmed they took children to be sacrificed to plead with the gods to end the famine.

Before the famine we had attempted the delicate task of persuading the priests and officials to end this horrible practice, on the grounds that rather than sacrifice girls to the gods, it would be more useful to give the girls to us to intercede with heaven. Although the priests were generally well disposed to us, this time they grew angry and warned that our insolence would offend the gods further. It was terrible to stand by and do nothing.

Then the commander’s wife came to give us the news, and persuade us that this was an honor, that the priests had selected the commander’s daughters for sacrifice. The poor mother! The girls were to be permitted a last visit to us on their way to the mountains and she begged that we would support them, to strengthen them for what lay ahead. This was the way of their land and their god. Faced with our reaction to the news, she, proud woman, nearly broke down. She and the commander had no other children.

We waited sadly for the farewell visit of these two dear children. It came soon. On a long dry day we were working in the garden, attempting to kill the weevils that eat the little the drought had left us, as always keeping an eye on the road, waiting. It was
unnaturally quiet that day; even the swallows ceased their chatter. We were all uneasy, then we heard the awful drums in the distance and knew the priests and the commander’s daughters were beginning their walk into the mountains. The procession with banners flying came into view, with the two girls in the middle. In the unnatural silence the drums and singing were as harsh and cruel as if they welcomed Satan himself.

Outside our house the singing stopped and the two girls stepped away from the procession to us where we waited for them. Smiling, they embraced us one by one. Their eyes were bright and glittering and they seemed in a trance. We knew they had been given the special drink that prepares the victims. We were almost overcome with grief at such a terrible parting, but tried to do as their mother wished. The Incas love flowers, and despite the drought we had managed to find a few to give the girls when this moment came.

Mother Maria Manuela turned to take them from a clay pot of water. She was lifting them out when the pot began to shake of its own accord. As she exclaimed and started back, it fell to the ground and smashed, and suddenly the ground began to shake and the silence was broken by a distant rumbling sound that became a horrible roar. The earth heaved up and down with a sickening force so violent that we were thrown about the garden and the procession scattered, priests and people screaming as rocks began to tumble down from the mountain above us.

Clutching the drugged girls we ran for our house. Just as we got inside, the ground heaved and shook again, followed by rattling showers of pebbles, then the thunder of boulders crashing down, and avalanches of earth and rocks. The terrified serving women pushed behind us into our little chapel where we had dragged the girls and were kneeling in prayer around Mother Maria Manuela. She held her crucifix high so we all might rest our eyes on it in the
moment of our death. Outside, landslides thundered and we knew people and animals were trapped and crushed and buried, and every minute we awaited the same fate as our house shuddered and shook. Part of the roof gave way and things crashed against the walls. Then the ground steadied beneath us, but just as we began to look around at each other, marveling at our deliverance, there was another movement that triggered more landslides.

This occurred at intervals during that long and terrible night, so that we dared not leave the chapel to see what help we might give. We stayed tightly packed together, the girls between us and the servants praying to their gods, we to ours.

When we ventured outside again the next morning, a horrible sight met our eyes. Houses and empty granaries and stables and fields—whole villages had disappeared, buried under a ton of rocks and earth. There were bodies or parts of bodies of people and animals, and tattered remnants of the banners carried by the priests the day before. We did our best to find survivors, but were not strong enough to do much. A day later a party of soldiers arrived to carry on the rescue, but it was slow work, and though some were dragged alive from the destruction, most were dead of horrible injuries. We learned even the great temple and house of the virgins of the sun had been damaged, killing many.

Our servants and slaves who had pressed into the chapel with us described how we had passed the night, and word spread of the power of our prayers and our God’s protection. A week after the earthquake, it began to rain, and the crops that had not been buried recovered somewhat. We took the injured into our infirmary and kept the commander’s daughters out of sight. The priests did not return for them, to our great relief. But they had been chosen for the “honor of the sacrifice” as people here would have it, and what would happen to them concerned us greatly.

A few weeks later the commander himself arrived. He was a kind of viceroy of the region and had been assessing the extent of the damage. We went to receive him, prepared now to argue against his taking his daughters back to the priests to be sacrificed.

He greeted Mother, calling her
mamacunya
, and congratulated us that we were favored by our gods who had prevented our destruction. He spoke with dignity of the fact that the priests had chosen his daughters for a sacrifice, but the gods had not willed it. We all began to breathe easier and I looked up quickly at him and realized that although warriors and princes would suffer the most horrible and bloody torments without admitting pain or weakness, his daughters are precious to him. Only the terrible discipline of this place and what was demanded of the royal family if chaos was not to engulf the kingdom prevented his showing the relief he felt.