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Authors: Annamaria Alfieri

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BOOK: City of Silver
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Antonio’s jaw dropped. “Are you crazy? He is completely unsuitable for her.”

Pilar twisted the yellow ribbons that hung from the waist of her brocade dress. Her husband would never be able to understand what their daughter found attractive in Barco. But she did. “Beatriz does not see him the way you do. And he cares for her, too. Have you not seen how sad he is since you took her away?”

He threw back his head and groaned. “Have you lost your mind?” He went to the window, unglazed but shuttered against the wind. He fumed, “This is completely wrong. You do not know what this means. What makes you think you could have an opinion? There are issues at stake of which you know nothing.”

She stood, too, in defiance of him. “I know nothing because you keep me in ignorance.”

“I protect you from knowledge that would trouble you.” He was shouting now.

“I do not want such protection. You think I should devote myself to prayer and poetry, spend my days writing little notes to the other Basque wives, asking if they slept well or if the baby has cut his teeth. I cannot be so trivial. I am alone. I want Beatriz back, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get her.”

“Not if it means she will marry Barco. That is absurd. He is a Mestizo. He has nothing but what I pay him.” He turned and glared at her. “Never even entertain this idea. Do you hear me?”

Her hands went to her hips. She forced them behind her. “I will entertain whatever thought I wish. I am a woman, but I am still God’s child. He gave me a mind to think with.”

“You should be thinking about Him instead of Beatriz marrying Barco. She will marry whom I say or she will rot in the convent.”

The thought doubled her over. Now her hands clutched her stomach. She went down on her knees. “I beg you, Antonio. Do not do this. I traveled here and risked death. I said good-bye to my mother forever. For you, Antonio. But I will give you up before I give up my daughter.” The words, meant to shock him, shocked her, too.

“Please, Pilar, do not say such things.” His voice was gentle but shook, with fear or anger she could not tell. He came and lifted her from the floor, led her back to the chair. She let him do it. She knew his soul—its smallness as well as its depth, his pride and stubbornness, his secretive nature as well as his honesty and generosity. He was always the fairest of the
azogueros,
caring about his workers, magnanimous with their families. He had given a large stipend to Santiago Yana’s widow and children when the
barretero
was found dead at the bottom of the mine, even though Antonio insisted that they could never prove anything about the mysterious documents, that the man had probably gone down at night to steal ore to sell on the black market. Why, Antonio asked over and over, would anyone give valuable documents to Santiago Yana?

He took her hands again. “Have I not been a good husband to you? Do you regret following me here?” He watched her eyes. “I think you do, don’t you.”

She laid her hand on the side of his beautiful face. “No, Antonio. No, I do not regret it. It is my love for Beatriz that propels me, not any remorse over marrying you.”

“Have I not treated you well?”

“You have. In this place where so many temptations exist, you have been more loyal to me than most.” Other women had husbands who gambled, went with courtesans, drank to excess. Antonio spent every night in her bed.

He looked away, but he held her hand. “Completely loyal. No one could move me as you do.”

She drew his fingers to her lips.

He straightened up and affected a pose of relaxed command, the way he stood when she watched him from her window, giving orders to the
pongos
and
barreteros
in the refinery yard. “If you love me and Beatriz, how can you even imagine that marriage to Barco could be good for her? How can you help her defy me?”

“I know how happy a woman can be when the lover who pleases her is also her husband.”

He fell silent. They did not speak of these things.

“I followed the custom today,” she said softly. “I visited seven churches to pray on Holy Thursday. In every one of them, I asked God and His Blessed Mother for only one thing. To return my daughter to me. Perhaps Barco would not be a suitable husband for Beatriz in Spain, but here things are different.” Daring speculators came to Potosí, not conventional Spanish aristocrats. They vied with one another in making and wasting fortunes, and they had a great tolerance for departures from what was considered correct in Spain.

“It is impossible!” His voice was harsh again. “The needs of our family forbid it.”

“Needs of our family?” She shocked herself by shouting at him. Her hand went to her mouth.

“Yes. Needs,” he boomed back at her. At that moment, the thudding hammers of the mill stopped, signaling the end of the workday. In the stunning, sudden silence, other sounds quietly emerged—the trickle of water in the patio fountain, Sagrada in the kitchen, singing while she cooked.

“Explain it to me so I can understand, Antonio,” she pleaded with him. “You know I am a woman who can accept what she understands.” Though nothing could make her accept her separation from her child.

“It is complicated. It has to do with the mine.”

“Yes, of course.” She could not keep her impatience out of her voice. “Tell me. I will understand. Other women are given responsibilities by their husbands. Doña Clara Pastells is the administrator of Don Francisco’s estate. Doña Immaculada manages the mine when Don Bartolomé goes to La Plata for the Audencia.” Her voice rose with each example. “Isabella the Queen ruled with King Ferdinand.” She was half out of her chair.

He raised that ironic eyebrow. “The Queen?”

She smiled at her own grandiose thoughts. “Yes. The Queen. I may not be a monarch, but I am not asking to rule a country. Only to understand my own family’s business.”

He looked at her long and hard and finally sank into the chair behind his writing table and ran his hand over the inlaid pattern of the sun and moon on its surface. “I am in debt, Pilar.”

“In debt?” When he took so much silver from the mountain? When he did not gamble like other men?

“Yes. Deeply in debt.” Shame twisted his features as pain might contort the faces of tormented souls in a painting of damnation.

She waited, wrestling with her fear.

“Our mighty river of silver is down to a trickle.”

“Ours?”

“Not just ours. All the mines of Potosí.”

She did not understand, but she held her tongue, waiting for him to make it clear.

“The mine has been worked for a hundred years. They took the best ore at the beginning. Now we have to work much harder to take out ore of poorer quality.”

“But it still contains silver?”

“Yes, but hardly enough to cover our expenses.”

“Surely we can live more simply. Eat plainer meals, buy fewer—”

He chuckled, but his eyes remained sad. “We cannot save what we need by giving up a few dresses.”

“But where did such a debt come from?”

“I spent money—all the
azogueros
did—to build the lagoons and the aqueducts that store and bring the water to the city to run the waterwheels. When the dam broke at Caricari, we had to pay to rebuild the destroyed property.”

The devastating flood had happened the year after Antonio’s brother Jorge was killed in the war. People still feared another deluge from the reservoirs above the city. At the time, she and the women of the city were concerned with the dead and the dispossessed. “That was so long ago.”

He leaned forward, spoke in earnest. “Debts continue until they are paid. And there are other problems. You know we must have quicksilver to process the ore.”

“Mercury. It comes from Huancavelica on the mules.”

“Exactly. The King controls its price. To get the mercury, we must buy on credit, then we pay with the silver it extracts.”

“So when the silver is gotten, it is already owed.” She surprised herself by understanding quickly how that worked.

“Having enough silver left over to make a profit depends on the number of
mita
Indian workers we get. But there are fewer and fewer of them. Many Indians died of the pox. So we have to pay the local Indians more than the forced laborers. Our costs go up.”

“Padre Junipero says there are not enough
mita
workers because they die of overwork.” Again her sympathies for Rosa Yana surged through her, but she held that diversion at bay. If she was going to convince Antonio to let Beatriz come home, she would have to understand what troubled him.

“Workers do not die in my mine.”

“Santiago Yana died,” she let slip.

He turned away from her. “I have had to pay for that, too. Since Yana died, the workers are frightened. Local Indians do
not want to come to work for me. I have to pay them more and more. They use their superstitions to extract more pay from me.”

She gave him an ironic smile. “We have our methods for extracting silver from the mine, and the Indians have their ways of extracting it from us.”

He reached for her hand and smiled, too. “And they do not have to pay the King exorbitant prices for mercury.” He patted her hand and let it go. “There is more.”

“Go on.”

“You know that Don Francisco Nestares, the Visitador General, is coming. Do you know why?”

“Something about false money. I really don’t know what it means.”

“All over the city, men have found their fortunes dwindling because the mining is harder. To maintain their wealth, some apparently have cheated by making coins that are not real silver, but tainted with copper and lead.” He rose again and bunched his fists at his sides. “I do not see how they thought they could get away with it. The rest of the world was bound to find out.”

A small sun rose in her brain. Its light pained her already throbbing head. “If the world does not trust our money, we cannot use it to pay our debts.”

“And we will all be ruined.” His eyes held respect for her understanding as well as defeat over the very idea of such ruination. “If Nestares should declare that our money is worth one-third less than before, instead of owing the King sixty thousand pesos, I will owe him eighty. And I cannot pay the sixty.”

“What about the silver we put in the convent for safekeeping?”

“It is already gone.”

She gripped her chair. “And the ingots you hid in our bed?”

“They are Beatriz’s dowry.”

“Barco would not require a dowry.”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “I told you not to even speak of that,” he growled. “Beatriz must marry Rodrigo. It is our only hope.”

“Because he is rich? Can he save us?”

“He is not only rich. He is the Viceroy’s nephew. He can protect me from prosecution.”

“Prosecution?” Alarm tightened her grip on her chair.

“For the debt I owe the King. You don’t understand, Pilar. They are saying Nestares is coming to investigate the false money, but he will be much more powerful than that. He comes as Visitador General. He will be able to have anyone thrown into jail, even executed, simply by shouting an order from his balcony.”

“Why would he want to do such a thing to you? What have you done?” She was rigid with fear.

Antonio came and knelt at her side. “I have done nothing. But times are turning even more dangerous and nasty than before, Pilar. Nestares will have to show that he is controlling the problem. He will be a very dangerous man. And the Inquisitor is coming, too. Both of them arriving together means the King is doing the utmost to show his power and exert complete control over Potosí.”

“You once told me miners had royal protection from such things.”

“Not anymore.”

“And how will Rodrigo save us from Nestares if he is in Lima?” It was one of the reasons she had not supported his suit. She did not want Beatriz to live so far away.

“Rodrigo is here right now,” Antonio said. “He arrived two days ago with dispatches from the Viceroy.” He put an arm around her in a gesture he had never made before in daylight. “May I introduce him to you? Will you convince Beatriz of the importance of this match?”

She laid her hand on the embroidered breast of his doublet. “Let me meet him.” She prayed to the God whose houses she had visited all morning not to force her to choose between Beatriz’s future happiness and Antonio’s.

 

Five

 

 

FRAY UBALDO DATRIESTA saluted Padre Junipero Pimentel cordially as they passed each other in the Plaza Mayor. The local Commissioner of the Inquisition pretended not to notice the grief in the eyes of the Jesuit who hurried toward the Calle Linares. DaTriesta needed no explanation for the priest’s pained expression. Word of Inez’s death had come to him almost immediately from his source within the convent. He thanked his God that the Jesuit, not he, carried the dreadful news to Alcalde Morada.

In gratitude to his God, and under His gaze, the pious Commissioner of the Holy Tribunal dropped small coins into the outstretched hands of two beggars on the cathedral steps—Doña Clara, the ragged former courtesan, and the nameless mad, bearded hermit who mumbled to a human skull he had been carrying through the streets of Potosí for twenty years. It was edifying for the populace to see this poor creature constantly contemplating mortality. The Commissioner placed an extra coin in the hermit’s filthy hand. “Yes, my son,” he said. “Keep your
soul always ready for God’s judgment and continue to remind other sinners of death’s ever-present threat.”

BOOK: City of Silver
4.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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