Hunger's Brides (116 page)

It was don Carlos who'd partly succeeded in changing the subject. Carlos? Partly … He pointed out that recent days were
not
the worst in memory. The year 1611 had still to be given the edge. Many of course had heard about the earthquake, the most devastating in over a century.
A few had heard of the eclipse. The hall grew quiet. The empire's greatest scholar since Juan de Mariana was in his element. When Carlos had finished his relation, no one noticed for several minutes that even the musicians had stopped playing and were raptly listening. It might have amused him to speak up for me in the very place where I had once been the most at ease and he the most miserable. But I refused to suspect him. And I knew perfectly well what he had been thinking—to strike a final, fatal blow against superstition everywhere, in all its guises. It was such a terrible way to come to my defence, only Carlos could have tried it.

I tried to put a brave face on this for Sálazar. 1521, 1611, 1691 … note the pattern of declinations in the intervals of calamity, I said. Sálazar put in something about mutations and musical intervals, I answered in downward spirals and rates of fall. Sálazar gave more details. I knew others.

In 1608 one of the most gifted Princes of our Church reached Mexico. Fray García, the new Archbishop, was learned, eloquent, dedicated, a lover of music and bullfights, a man at ease in the world—and to whom, on the evidence of his having risen so quickly to his station, it seemed almost nothing untoward had ever happened. On the day his Viceroy met him at the outskirts of the city, the carriage they were sharing overturned suddenly on a flat, well-travelled road. Later, at the Dominican monastery, the dais of welcome collapsed, hurling Fray García again to the ground, and with him the others on the platform, crushing an Indian beneath it. On another day the mules drawing the Archbishop's carriage stampeded, for no discernible reason. Fray García acted on an impulse to leap to safety, but caught his foot in the carriage step. The fall was heavy, but he was still considered lucky not to have been killed. At the news of his appointment to succeed the outgoing Viceroy, Fray García laid plans for the most elaborate of triumphal entries parading the trappings of both offices. The Archbishop's pallium alone required twenty-two men to hold aloft. As a further extravagance, he declared that a grand program of bullfights be held every Friday for a year to celebrate this rare convergence of the two offices. The next Friday was Good Friday. There were murmurs. There was a nun who took it upon herself to warn the Archbishop-Viceroy personally. Inés de la Cruz was a musician whose convent he visited regularly, but despite her admonition the Good Friday bullfight went ahead. The very next Friday, a strong tremor rocked the plaza just before the spectacle commenced, and this time the event was
postponed. As the
corrida
began on the third Friday, a quake destroyed the grandstand and several of the buildings nearest it. From just above Fray García's balcony a section of stone masonry broke free and killed a dozen spectators below, missing him by the narrowest span. Soon after, as he entered the Plaza del Volador at the approaches to the Viceregal Palace, one of the Indian fliers performing there for his benefit lost hold of his tether and plunged from a great height, crushed to the ground at the Archbishop-Viceroy's very feet. That same month, June, a total eclipse of the sun. In August, the quake of 1611, and forty aftershocks of nearly equal violence. Forty exactly. At Christmas, an eruption of El Popo, the city choked in ash, flash floods that same afternoon. His mood sombered, his injuries, never fully healed after the leap from the carriage, worsened. Turning to Sor Inés de la Cruz for consolation, he was told only to prepare for death, which preparations he put into effect on February 12th.

Vexed by all the superstitious chatter, Carlos had only thought to turn to account a parlour game played by the foolish and anxious and bored—I did not judge, I had been one—and I knew beyond a doubt that at some point the game had entirely ceased being an entertainment. In the art of Aeschylus there are stories in which what happens to the individuals tells the fate of a people. But though the fate of the Archbishop-Viceroy in 1611 involved many others, and though many died and suffered throughout the valley, our Viceroy took all this to be about one person, himself. It was not hard to picture him, his darkling thoughts returning to the year of ostentation in honour of the king's wedding, the exaltation of his offices as the King's representative, the balls and debauches, the Church's dire warnings.

And if Carlos had told his tale to such stunning effect at the palace, I thought it only a matter of time till the recital reached the Archbishop. Twenty or thirty courtiers, as many servants—in a week the news would be spreading from every church and brothel in the capital. Like the Viceroy, His Grace would find lessons to draw from it.

They came a few days later. Two lackeys in the Archbishop's livery. Safety in numbers, it would seem. By the Archbishop's dispensation they entered into the cloister, entered this cell without knocking. But so swiftly does word fly through the alleys and corridors that we were already waiting for them. This is a women's place—no man enters here without this warning.

Wordlessly one of the lackeys handed me the order, under the Archbishop's seal. Silently, mercifully, they turned and left. After a moment to compose myself I followed them to the door to make sure they'd gone. My sisters in the cells across the way stood gaping in their doorways.

The game was obvious enough, if subtle for a man of the Archbishop's temperament. The inventory would reveal the cell to be too full and therefore inadequate to its purpose … until an as yet undetermined number of items had been auctioned to raise funds for the Archbishop's ferocious campaigns of charity. The people's need was insatiable in these trying times. Who would deny it, who would refuse? Even if she could.

I wondered if he would next send Carlos, his Chief Almoner, who knew the contents of these rooms as well as any man. Almost thirteen years I had been waiting to buy this cell. All these years without a response, and yet the request had been neither forgotten nor lost. Was the Archbishop's secretary so very competent, or were they aided by a memory in which nothing is forgotten or lost?

I had begun to wonder if there had ever been a rift between Núñez and His Grace.

But the cell, Your Grace, is it too full or instead too small …? For I have so far found no room for a botanical garden, or pleasaunces such as those of Versailles. A full astronomical observatory would be a splendid addition, and a bestiary, too. If not so large as that kept by the great Khans, then something more modest, such as Moctezuma's own….

The soul of Teresa of Avila is a palace, one of the most beautiful that has ever been. That we may understand a little, she presents it as a palace of passageways reaching inward, an enchaining of seven chambers or abodes. In the innermost, on a priceless rock-crystal throne, waits her Beloved.

My soul waits at the top often steps, behind a lacquered folding screen in the Japanese style, in a long narrow room that houses my
studiolo
and library. Here is where the Inspector will wish to begin his list; it is this room that contains the most priceless of marvels; in this chamber my Beloved rests.

But before entering, the gentlemen may wish to get their bearings, to fix this particular arrangement in their minds. At the top of the stairs, there, to the left, is one of three doors connecting this room to the other two. Just inside the doorway is a second folding screen, also in the Japanese style but decorated with scenes from Mexico's past and streets.

Nine
varas
in width by ten in length, the upper storey is six
varas
high. Three rooms: on the east side, a sitting room with dining table, a bedroom with a desk; the third room runs the full length of the west side and occupies a third of the total width. The geometry will not be difficult, though the accounting may so prove. While there are writing desks in every room, here by the window is the largest. The window has been altered, is large and low; as the Inspector sees for himself, the view across the rooftops is to the south. Note the step-ladders, the shelves built to line the walls from floor to ceiling—the workmanship is excellent. Note carefully the openings cut to the exact contour of the window, the fireplace and doorways; see the hooks set in the dim top shelves from which to hang a lantern while one searches. The four transverse display cases stand at two-
vara
intervals, each successive case from the south window a little wider than the last to catch the light. Take note that all must be dismantled if they are to leave this room. Yes the cot and the reading chair by the fireplace, these come out easily.

That space beside the stairs, there behind the low shelf? No, not a hidden stairwell, I assure you, just a chimney shaft.

If we think of the library as a window looking out from an enchanted palace, then the prince's
studiolo
is the world brought in to stock the cave of the magician, the workshop of the alchemist.

Its elements are to be deployed with care, in sections and harmonious intervals. The
studiolo
is a theatre of the soul, the mind is its orchestra; its sweetest solos are played on its finest instrument,
admiratio
. We may imagine this instrument of wonder as a slender violinist seated, a little nervously, among the reeds and flutes and clarions. In the ideal arrangement featured here, in which the library and
studiolo
flow one into the other, the two chief sections—perhaps think of these as the strings and
the winds—consist of instruments of spirit and sense, the upper and lower choirs. And yet this business of upper and lower is really a convenience, for the instruments are free to move about, and really owe it to themselves to do this. So it happens that we so often find
logica
down in the kitchens, where the knives come out.

But you will want to get under way. First, the musical and audible instruments, since this is a sort of auditorium. No, I do not play them all unfortunately, but quite a few. Clay flute, clavichord,
vihuela
, violin … There you see an echo chest, here two automatons that dance and sing. Try them if you like, they are very lifelike. One pendulum, which, courtesy of Signor Galilei, we can use to regulate the tempo by lengthening and shortening the string. One musarithmetic box such as in the famed
studiolo
of the Reverend Kircher at the Jesuit College in Rome. Oh yes, the Jesuits have these too. Bigger. One music box, one speaking trumpet, one conch shell trumpet, yes, a
caracol
. I was just coming to that.

If you don't mind, I really must sit down, I really must stop a moment. You would not consider coming back another day? Surely the Inspector must see this will take a little while. What you are asking is the inventory of my soul.