City of Silver (22 page)

“Doña Ana is a very troubled lady,” the priest said diffidently.

Sebastian smiled with an easy amiability that further annoyed the priest. “I would say that is putting it mildly, Padre. Anyway, the ladies de la Morada found two other women in the
seats they normally occupy. Doña Ana walked up and slapped the face of one of the other ladies—a Basque woman, I believe.”

“Yes,” the priest said. “I remember hearing about this. It was Doña Inmaculada de Aguirreya. There is a certain animosity between the Basques and the other Spaniards in this city.”

“You
are
given to understatement, Father. Animosity? It is pure hatred.”

“They fought a civil war. With many battles and many dead. About twenty-five years ago. The enmity goes on. Please finish your story.”

“Another Basque—a man—came to the slapped lady’s rescue.”

“Don Luis de Medina.”

The actor shrugged. “Whoever. A great outcry ensued. Priests came out to stop the shouting and jostling. In the melee, I saw that Inez was distressed over her mother’s behavior. I offered my services to escort her home.”

“And she accepted.” The priest saw how it must have been. “And then you took advantage of her.”

Sebastian lifted his head. “She was a very willing participant. She fell in love with me.” The actor pointed to the mirror that hung on the wall behind the priest. “She gave me that looking glass from Flanders as a gift. She wanted me very much.”

Bile rose in the padre’s throat. How dare this handsome, careless wastrel speak so about a dead girl! “Do not try to shift the blame to her. You seduced her.” The priest knew too well the guilt Vázquez should feel.

“It is an actor’s prerogative.” He said it as if it were a joke.

Padre Junipero leapt to his feet and shook his fist. “To despoil virgins?” He fought to control his rage.

“Oh, come now, Father. It is well-known that you priests seldom sleep within the walls of your monasteries. Perhaps you’d do better to repent for your own sins rather than scolding me for mine.”

The padre poked his chin up sideways. “I am not that sort of priest.”

“Ah, yes, Inez told me what a holy man you are.”

His muscles rigid with rage, the priest stood over the seated larger man. “Inez never confessed the sin you led her into. She went to her death soiled with it.” It took all of his strength not to pummel the actor’s golden head.

“Dead? Is she dead?” The actor gazed up at Padre Junipero with incredulous eyes.

“Yes. She is dead.”

The man sank back against the wall. “How? She was so young. So healthy.”

The priest lowered his fists but kept them clenched. “That is what I am trying to find out. What do you know about her death?”

Sebastian’s eyes went blank. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? You have admitted you were her lover.”

Now Sebastian rose to his feet. He flattened himself against the wall and was silent for a second. Fear filled his eyes. Then he stood up tall. “We planned to marry.”

The priest snorted derisively. “Ridiculous. You? A penniless bastard? Her father would never allow that.”

“She said she could make him agree. I believed her. She was very persuasive.”

The priest shook his head, but in his heart he too believed she might have convinced Morada. The Alcalde denied her nothing.

“Instead, she got into an enormous argument with him. About some papers or something.”

“Does her father know about you? Who you are?”

Guilt and fear intensified in the actor’s face. He did not answer.

“If her father knows you seduced his virgin daughter, he will
surely kill you.” A glimmer of another idea was beginning to dawn on the horizon of Padre Junipero’s mind.

The actor eclipsed it. “She was not a virgin when she came to me.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Padre.”

“I do not believe you!” the priest shouted, but he knew he would not have protested so loudly had he been perfectly sure. Then suddenly the cause of the actor’s fear dawned on him. “You killed her,” he blurted out. And having said it, he was sure it was true. “You murdered her because you were afraid she would reveal your identity to the Alcalde and cost you your life.” The priest stood up to the actor, certain he had him.

The handsome face contorted. His mouth opened and closed. His breath quickened. He raised his powerful arms.

The priest saw the blow coming but did not have time to avoid it before everything went black.

ALONE IN THE infirmary for the first time since Sor Elena fell ill, Sor Monica peered into the vial she had confiscated from Juana’s trunk. She poked at the brown mass with a long needle. If the substance were hard, she might have thought it was a bezoar stone. It was the right color and size. Though where Juana would have gotten the money to afford such a thing, the nun could not imagine. Bezoar stones were found in the entrails of llamas and vicuñas and used as powerful medicine for the heart and as an antidote for snakebite. They were so rare that one of this size would have cost many months of Juana’s salary. She could never have afforded it. Besides, this stuff was soft and sticky, not hard like a bezoar stone.

Sor Monica did not want to feed it to the cat.

It probably wasn’t poison any more than the water in Inez’s carafe had been.

She would taste it herself. Perhaps just a little to see if it had any effect.

It was probably just another Indian herb—like coca or the
gum of that tree that took away pain. Perhaps it was an intoxicant, like
chicha
or wine, but stronger.

If she tasted it, she might become intoxicated herself, and that was against the rules.

If she tasted it, she might die.

She put it aside. Vitallina had gone out to gather the last of the garlic, onions, balm, and mint from the garden in the cloister. Monica did not want to risk dying alone.

Tomorrow was Easter Sunday. In thirty-six hours, the Visitor General and the Inquisitor would arrive in Potosí. At dusk, the crier had called out that there was snow in the mountain passes. Perhaps Visitador Nestares and his entourage would be delayed. Perhaps the day of reckoning for Mother Maria would be postponed.

Sor Monica spooned some yerba maté into a gourd and ladled in some boiling water. Even if the snow slowed their arrival, it would not stop it. Even if Nestares and the Inquisitor had to wait for spring, they would still come to bring the city to justice for the false money and to arrest the Mother Abbess. Sor Monica had heard of prisoners of the Holy Tribunal being kept for six, eleven, even thirteen years before they were brought to trial.

She put a silver straw with a small strainer on the end into the gourd and swirled the yerba tea.

She took a taper and lit three candles against the gathering gloom. They treated candles as if they were nothing in this city. Tomorrow for Easter, more wax would be burned here in a day than they burned in her home church in Sevilla in a year.

She held up Juana’s vial to the light. She took her notebook from the shelf and a quill and ink. On a blank page, she scratched a description of the sticky brown mass. She pulled the cup of maté toward her.

If the Inquisition indicted Maria Santa Hilda, might they also take her? As a woman, she could be accused of sorcery for
curing diseases. They might confiscate the notebooks in which she had recorded the actions of almost three hundred herbs. She had found many that were useful. With what she had learned, she could cure rheumatism, gallbladder, colds, and diarrhea. Her herbs were powerless against hereditary diseases, like sickness of the heart, or diseases that had become too advanced. Still, if DaTriesta wanted to, he could make a case against her. There might even be substances on her shelves that, unknown to her, were illegal. Ordinary coca, as common as bread in Potosí, was banned in Lima. People could be excommunicated for using it.

She dipped the pen and wrote out her own state of health and age. “Strong. A virgin. Thirty-one.”

If the Inquisition took her, they would strip her, lash her, try to make her confess to witchcraft for the medicine she practiced. Many times she had asked Padre Junipero if it was a sin for a woman to do what she did. He always said it was not.

Still, the Holy Tribunal had its own ideas. They might arrest her. And keep her forever. Some men were allowed to escape the Inquisition. They paid handsomely for it. They gave up all their wealth, even their identities, and became fugitives. They were allowed to disappear from the cells and then were declared dead and burned in effigy. But she had never heard of a woman doing such a thing. Where could a woman go without an identity?

People in Spain said that the discovery of silver in Potosí was the most important event since the birth of Christ. When she came to the New World, she felt she was participating in history. Now, her role might be recorded in the annals of the Inquisition.

She stirred the tea again to make it strong. She had used it many times to help people cast up whatever incommoded their stomachs. But would it bring up poison? Would it bring it up
fast enough? If she vomited the stuff too soon, would she falsely conclude that it was not poison?

She ought to have someone with her when she did this, to testify about the poison if she died. Inez had died very quickly, she was certain of that. She had not thrashed about. She had fallen dead in a second.

Monica took up the quill again and wrote what she was about to do, as a record for those who might find her. She could not have anyone with her in this, because no one would permit her to do what she intended. They would make her kill the cat. But trying the poison on the cat would not tell the story. Many substances acted differently on animals than they did on human beings.

She uncorked the vial. If she ate this substance, would her soul be condemned forever for suicide? She wanted only to help her Abbess. To save the life of the holiest, most intelligent, most useful person she knew. Christ willingly gave His life. Wasn’t this similar?

She blessed herself, hoping that it was not a sin to compare her sacrifice to the Lord’s. “God have mercy on my soul,” she wrote at the bottom of the page. She inserted a glass rod in the vial, took a bit of the substance, as much as might fill the end of a small spoon. She grasped the gourd of maté with her left hand, and with her right, she raised the glass rod and put it in her mouth.

AT THAT SAME hour on the eve of Easter, Maria Santa Hilda found herself pacing the halls of the convent, waiting for the tolling of the Vesper bell. In less than thirty-six hours, Visitador Nestares would enter the city and receive a hero’s welcome, despite the dread the citizens had of him. Fear consumed the Abbess. Fear and guilt.

She had spent the holiest days of the year trying to find a
defense for herself against Commissioner DaTriesta’s accusations. She had discovered nothing to ward off his threat, but in the process she had caused the women in her care to give evidence against one another—perhaps false evidence. And she had neglected all the other duties of her office. No texts were chosen for reading aloud at meals during the Easter season. No arrangements were made to transport the winter supply of charcoal from Cochabamba.

From the arched upper story of the rear cloister, she watched the Cerro change colors in the sunset and finally darken in the gathering twilight. She had not given a thought to the damage devaluation of the currency would wreak on the convent’s finances. Less than a week ago, she had been worried about Captain Morada withdrawing his support from the missions. Now, the convent itself faced potential financial crisis. The Abbess’s life before she took her vows had never required her to pay the slightest attention to how one managed in the face of want. She ought to be planning how to continue the convent’s charities and the hospital even if the money lost its value. More important, she ought to be examining her soul for taints of the sins of which DaTriesta would accuse her. Perhaps she was guilty. Perhaps there was no explanation for Inez’s death, except that God was testing the Abbess. Evil dwelled within her walls, of that she was certain. The convent’s aura of holiness was a sham, like the decoration in the chapel that was painted to look like carved wood but was gesso underneath.

The sun had set. When it rose again, it would be Easter morning—a day for the greatest rejoicing of the year. But what joy could there be here, with a dead girl moldering beneath the choir floor and the taint of the demon in the air?

Vespers finally rang, and she started toward the chapel. A commotion below slowed her steps. She leaned over the balustrade to see the normally lazy maid Luisa running along the corridor, black braids flying behind her. The girl looked up, saw the Abbess,
and let out a wail. “Ayeee! Oh, Mother, we are all doomed. Ayee! Ayee! She is dead. She is dead!”

The Abbess grasped her skirts and took the stairs at a full run. She caught Luisa. The girl’s round face was twisted with terror. Her eyes were wild. She sobbed hysterically. The Abbess shook her. “Stop. Luisa. Tell me what you found.”