City of Silver (6 page)

They tolerated violence, mayhem, drunkenness, and debauchery. Every day, irritable young men fought duels over the most trivial points of honor. Murders and rapes were constant occurrences. Yet Potosinos had built some of the most beautiful churches in Christendom. They gave dowries to poor maidens. Some achieved a religious mysticism that in its most extreme seemed to the priest, God forgive him, indistinguishable from madness. Others gave alms with abandon. A beggar in the right place at the right time might receive ten thousand or even twenty thousand pesos. A white beggar, that is, with nothing to recommend him but his white face. Yet the city’s pillars of generosity paid their
mita
Indian workers only ten pesos a month, barely enough for food. From these meager wages they had to buy their own tools, even the candles they carried in the mine. Nothing was left to feed their families.

A rock of disgust weighed in the priest’s stomach. Sins piled up like the slag beside the mine openings in this miserable and wonderful city.

As the agitated crowd in the plaza dispersed, Pilar Tovar approached him. He whispered a prayer he knew would be in vain that she would not raise again her pleas for justice for that dead miner.

He greeted her warmly and received her greetings. Just as she began making her demands, Mother Maria Santa Hilda and Sor Olga descended the steps of the cathedral and also approached. He interrupted Pilar’s words with a greeting to the sisters. Of the two difficult tasks these women asked of him, the Tovar woman’s was by far the more frustrating. He had made an effort to find
out from the workers in the Corpus Christi lode any word about these mysterious documents that Santiago Yana had supposedly hidden in the mine, but the Indian’s fellow
barreteros
denied any knowledge. And since none of them was literate, it seemed impossible they could have understood what the papers, if they existed, could have meant. And where would he go with suspicions that Yana had been murdered? The powerful men in the city were not likely to redress the grievance of an Indian’s widow.

He much preferred to leave off this subject and speak to the Abbess about Inez de la Morada. He stood by while the sisters and Pilar exchanged pleasantries and Doña Tovar withdrew.

As Inez’s confessor, he was responsible for the well-being of her soul. Beyond that, he had great hopes for her. He saw in the spirited girl a powerful intelligence and an irresistible energy of character that were the makings of greatness. If he could mold these gifts, he might guide her toward a spirituality that one day might rival even Maria Santa Hilda’s. If this was ever to be so, Inez needed to remain—as she was now—removed from her father’s influence. No doubt Alcalde Morada loved his daughter, but he treated her too much like a son, involved her in worldly pursuits. If she was going to turn her considerable talents to godly interests, she must remain in the sphere of the holy women of Los Milagros.

A few minutes ago, he had seen Alcalde Morada’s footman hand the Abbess a note. It must concern Inez. The padre was curious to know its contents.

“What do you think of the proclamation?” the aristocratic Abbess asked immediately.

“If the money is devalued, it will ruin this city. If Potosí’s coins are rejected, we are nothing but an imitation Spanish city in the most desolate spot on earth.” A sigh he would have preferred to suppress escaped him. “The poor will suffer far, far more than the rich.”

The wizened Sor Olga gave a knowing grin. “You are always thinking of your Incas.”

He forced a smile in response to hers. She was just an old woman. She did not mean to be unpleasant. She just enjoyed sparring with him. But it annoyed him that she called the Indians Incas and trivialized the distinctions among their tribes. And that she called them his, not only because he defended them, but because he was a Criollo—a person born on this side of the Atlantic. He did not bother to remind her that despite the location of his birth, he was not a Mestizo. His mother was not an Indian. Though she lived in Hispaniola, she was as Spanish as Sor Olga’s mother in Andalusia had been. It irked him that she ignored his pure Spanish blood, and it pained him that he was so proud of it.

“The King himself has decreed that the Indians must not be enslaved. Yet we treat them no better than pack animals. Doña Tovar and I were just speaking about the death of one that will in all likelihood go unpunished, no matter how hard I try to help his widow.” The rock in his stomach pressed on his guts. He had again let her draw him into this same old argument.

“You will try to get justice for him? My dear padre, you might as well try to get justice for a mule that dies at the treadmill in the Mint.” The old nun’s face glowed with the thrill of verbal battle.

“The Indians are human. The Vatican established that over a hundred years ago,” he said with all priestly sanctimony. “There are those who believe that the natural state in which our countrymen found the Indians was life as God intended it to be.”

She gave him a look of genuine shock. “Father! That they should live without the Holy Faith? If they are human, I am sure God did not intend that. Besides, you yourself have reminded me that there was a great civilization here: weavers, potters, builders of massive buildings. Not simple men living in
nature.” The corners of her mouth curled again in that smug smile.

He refused to acknowledge her triumph. She could best him in these little debates, but she was wrong in her heart. He would give her extra penance at her next confession. He forced away the thought as petty and sinful in itself. Pride and vengeance in one conversation. How did this holy old woman bring out the worst in him?

He turned to the Abbess. “The proclamation the Alcalde read did not tell the whole story.”

“What more is there?” The Abbess’s brown eyes showed more fear than curiosity. Hidden information always meant danger in the Byzantine world of the colonial government.

He lowered his chin and whispered, “The Grand Inquisitor is coming, too. There will be an investigation into more than just the currency.” DaTriesta, the local Commissioner of the Inquisition, had bragged to him about it, though it was supposed to be a secret.

Sor Olga folded her thin, reptilian hands in an attitude of prayer. “May God speed their holy work. What would be the point of controlling the purity of our coins if we did not also control the purity of souls?”

The fear in the Abbess’s eyes turned to annoyance. “Reforms are sorely needed, but we are unlikely to get the ones we most desire.”

He knew she referred to the Bishop and his money-grubbing practices. “Be very careful, Mother Abbess,” he said. “The Bishop feigns carelessness, but he is a formidable enemy. And you have something he wants.”

“Inez.”

“More than the return of the girl herself, I think he wants to be seen to have you in his command.”

The Abbess’s eyes flitted sideways toward her companion and back to him. A warning not to be so open in Sor Olga’s
presence. “He is the Bishop,” the Abbess said lightly. “He is infinitely more powerful than I.”

The sisters went off then, toward the Bishop’s door, without telling the padre what Morada had written to the Abbess.

MARIA SANTA HILDA entered the Bishop’s drawing room just as his Dutch clock chimed the quarter hour. She shuddered to find the local Commissioner of the Inquisition in the room. The combination of the proud and opulent Bishop and the pious and cruel DaTriesta boded no good for her. Apprehension stiffened her neck. She and Sor Olga crossed the room to kiss the Bishop’s ring. His fleshy fingers were warm. “Good morning, my lord.” In a city where the air was so thin as to be hardly breathable, the atmosphere in this sitting room was oppressively heavy.

“God be with you, my daughters,” the Bishop said. “Please forgive me if I come right to the point. I have to be in the cathedral in a few moments to say the Holy Thursday Mass. I am afraid I must order you, in no uncertain terms, to return Inez de la Morada to her father.”

Maria Santa Hilda suppressed a smile and reached into her pocket for the Alcalde’s note. “My lord, I have—”

“His Lordship here has told me that you harbor some strange ideas about protecting young women from their duty to their fathers,” Commissioner DaTriesta interrupted her.

Fear, like the footfalls of a spider, crept across the Abbess’s shoulders. DaTriesta was sniffing for heresy. She bristled at the threat. Showing him the note would stop him, but she was tempted to let him stumble into a losing fight. She withdrew her hand from her pocket. “We live in a licentious and quarrelsome city, Father Commissioner,” she said with forced humility. “My sisters and I devote our lives to prayer that we may be a wellspring of grace to serve God’s people.”

“Is it true, as I have heard,” DaTriesta said, “that you harbor
opinions about women that are very liberal—almost Protestant?”

The Abbess looked to the Bishop for some defense. He suppressed a belch and turned to the Commissioner. “Come now. The Lady Abbess . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he could offer nothing but her nobility to credit her.

“I think the Lady Abbess should answer my question,” DaTriesta said, and licked his thick, dry lower lip.

Sor Olga’s face worked. She looked as if her tongue were scraping something off the roof of her mouth. Her eyes gloated that her repeated warnings to the Abbess had come to pass.

An excess of temper forced the truth from the Abbess. “I merely reminded His Grace that it often falls to convents to take problem women off the hands of the wealthy.” She refrained from saying such as poor wretched girls who had lost their virginity and were no longer marriageable. The insane. The deformed. The merely ugly. Women considered useless because they would make no nobleman a desirable wife.

“Be careful of pride, my daughter,” DaTriesta said.

“May I respectfully remind you, Father, that I am answerable only to the head of my order in Madrid.” She looked to the Bishop, but his small, round eyes deferred to DaTriesta.

The Commissioner held back his haughty head. “If you are thinking of appealing to your Mother House, remember it will take six months for your letter to cross the ocean and a reply to return. Much can transpire in such a time.”

She met DaTriesta’s gaze and struggled to hide her disdain.

“Shall I tell Captain de la Morada that he may come and get his daughter?” the Bishop asked.

She withdrew the paper from her pocket. “In fact, my lord, he writes me that he has relinquished her to the convent. He begs only that I keep her safe and to pray for both of them.”

The Bishop took the paper and read. His mouth opened and closed in shock. He fell silent.

The Abbess took back the letter. “Perhaps Captain Morada has seen that in this regard, it is best to allow his daughter some time in my convent to come to peace within herself.” Mother Maria did her best to hide the triumph in her voice. “I will seek to restore Inez’s former attachment to her father, the Alcalde. However, if she comes to believe that her soul’s salvation lies in a life of contemplation, I will welcome her as my Sister.”

The Bishop’s pale lips drooped in a dyspeptic frown. “With Inez de la Morada and Beatriz, the daughter of the mining Captain Tovar, your convent may soon be collecting two very large dowries.”

“Be careful, Lady Abbess,” DaTriesta said evenly. “With all that wealth, your convent will become the envy of other religious orders in the city.”

The Bishop nodded in agreement.

She bowed to him. “Perhaps, Your Grace, but I think Beatriz Tovar may soon leave us.”

IN HER CELL at the Convent of Santa Isabella de los Santos Milagros, Beatriz Tovar sat listening to the brooding silence of the cloistered garden, where the last leaves and one forgotten shriveled apple clung to the branches of a lone tree. Fear shone in her dark eyes. Two possible fates awaited her: endless days as empty as this in the convent or, if she gave in to her father, a life at the beck and call of some odious man chosen because he had money and connections. Both choices filled her with dread. The rock of fear in her heart flamed into molten anger. She would not give her body to anyone but Domingo Barco. If she could not have him, she would be the bride of Christ. She would never submit to a husb—

Her heart went cold again. Her breath faltered. This wish might come true. Her stubbornness might condemn her to spend the rest of her life here, with nothing but her woolen habit and God to keep her warm.

God was supposed to be enough. Sor Olga, the Mistress of Novices, said so. To be a worthy person, she must leave off her
selfishness and take on the cross of humility. She was willful. Her prescribed penance—a flail—lay on the table beside her narrow bed. She should mortify herself as Christ was tortured—loosen her novice’s habit, expose her back, take the silver handle, and swing the chains so that the barbs on the ends bit into her skin. Punish herself for her pride.

She fell to her knees before the crucifix on the wall and begged Jesus to forgive her unwillingness to use the flail.

Her father would want to see her whip herself. “Marry Rodrigo or I will put you in the convent,” he had said. He had commanded her in a harsher tone than he used with his Indian miners.