Hunger's Brides (149 page)

But we do not continue. The evening is warm, the first stars are out, and Venus and a sliver of moon. Bats flit through the branches, their cries a glimmer of sound less heard than imagined. And so I walk in the quiet with my not quite sister, not quite daughter, barefoot in the soft, deep earth, sandals in one hand. Left again at the chapel wall, past the refectory, toward the kitchens. Vanessa's slim form in the doorway. Concepción's round bulk appearing behind her.

It has been thirty years since my carriage ride with Magda, thirty-eight since the hex in the classroom of Sister Paula, thirty-nine since my father left us. I have resented, hated, then feared the Holy Office of the Inquisition for almost a lifetime, even it seems before I knew what it was, and even now I suspect I may yet find new reasons why. But it seems that there are times when to look back is to see more clearly ahead, for precisely there, where Magda and I neared the end of our first and final journey together, I see another about to begin. A cortège, duly consecrated at the rose-coloured church, sets out from the Plaza de Santo Domingo. In all, four outriders, a wagon and a carriage whose coat of arms bears a rough wooden cross that matches the banner above the iron gates through which the convoy departs. In the wagon, otherwise empty for the outward passage, are implements for digging. In one of the trunks lashed to the carriage roof is a quantity of
sambenitos
. Inside the carriage will be at least one senior official of the Inquisition. I cannot prevent
myself imagining it to be Dorantes, though I have never seen him. But Magda I see clearly enough. And over the past few days and nights, her journey is like a waking dream.

The holy officers with their shovels and
sambenitos
will not be embarking from Mexico in canoes as I did. But departing from the village on the far shore, where the deadheads lie high on the strand—dry now amidst the flood wrack—the path is the same. There is only one way for carriages and carts to take. At this time of year they should have no trouble fording the river at Mexicaltzingo, to arrive in Chalco by nightfall. Even setting out well before dawn, the cortège will not enter the highest valley before mid-morning. When they turn off the main road, they will be heading east, the mountains towering high above, seeming almost to lean down over the path. Beyond the oaks along it lie orchard rows. Apples and mangoes, peaches, pomegranates. By mid-day the first rays of the sun reach this side of the hacienda, with its square watchtower on the north. And in the watchtower a little bronze cannon. If the day is clear, the sun strikes a stained-glass rosette set high in the chapel face, and in the rosette the image of the angel Uriel framed in gold. It was my grandfather's idea that should the little cannon fail, the hacienda should be defended by a higher, purer fire.

My grandfather's first child was born here at the hacienda, and here she was baptized, Isabel. So it is here that the first of the
sambenitos
is to be raised, up behind the glass, to take the light. And as with the firstborn, so it shall be done with my aunts, and finally a
sambenito
will be hung in the church in Chimalhuacan where I had my baptism. But there is other work to do here first, once the outriders have unloaded the digging implements.

Recant or refuse. Choose well, choose carefully. The letters are the same, but the sentence now is changed. Recant, and protect the place while betraying its spirit. Refuse, and preserve an idea of justice but see its site desecrated. It is not a dilemma to be solved by a simple defiance. I have come back for a clue, a way to relinquish a fable of truth that once lived here, or that I brought back with me at fifteen. Perhaps I am to find it in a story I ignored then, for I had not let the Poet himself have his say.

When the enchantress Circe sent Homer's Odysseus into the underworld to know his fate—if he would ever make his way back to Ithaca—she gave precise instructions. Beyond the stream of Oceanus, which forms the outermost limits of the living world, they would find a level shore. Enter Hades' house by the groves of Persephone.
To call the one you
seek, the blind seer of Thebes, you must sacrifice a black ram there at the entrance and fill bowls for the bloodthirsty shades who assuredly will come
. Odysseus was to stand just within the gates, the ram's head facing into the Underworld. But as the beast's throat was slit, he was to cast his eyes back, to Oceanus.
Don't look back
is not the injunction of poets, but against one poet by the Judges of the Dead.

After the meal under the trees outside the refectory, as Antonia and I are making ready to leave, comes the moment for the surprise I have been expecting. With a nod at Vanessa, Concepción disappears inside, to return a moment later with it held out solemnly before her: a candle easily the thickness of her wrist and the length of her forearm. To cover my emotion I ask what such a thing could be for, a sure occasion for the sort of ribaldry Concepción tries to shock us with. But the two of them are as solemn as children with a handmade gift—and this gift they have made for me themselves.

“Madre Juana is permitted a candle a week,” Concepción offers. Clearly they have heard something of the chaplain's news. Knowing them to be my friends, perhaps he has told them, to make me see sense. They are trying to keep me from giving up.

Vanessa too has rehearsed an offering. “Maybe now, Juana, you'll take the time to learn Basque.”

“How far is Concepción ahead of me?”

“Leagues.”

“For Madre Juana we can make one bigger next week.”

“No this will be big enough. I don't think Basque so difficult.”

I am eager to be away. We say our good-nights. There is no mistaking Antonia's elation. I am regretting not having pursued our quarrel in the orchard, now to have to dash her hopes. She carries the candle for me like a spear or a standard clutched in her fist, a gesture of defiance to a patio almost deserted; the women are preparing for Compline.

“You could carry that more discreetly.”

She begins to ask how it would look to be caught with it underneath … then sees that I am serious. I tell her that nothing has changed, that what I said was for Vanessa. For Vanessa, she says, but not for her.

“No 'Tonia, you don't understand.”

She detests hearing this from me. By the time we reach the cell we are each close to saying things we would regret, and are fortunate to be called
by the bells to prayer. She argues now with a kind of desperation, perhaps senses that tonight will be her last chance. What can I still find to say to help her now, how will I explain? It is not so much giving her reasons to leave, but to convince her that she leaves for the right reasons. Once, I had been more persuasive.

The vigil after prayer is less bloodthirsty than it can be. It is too hot for the extremities of piety. Our argument is not long in starting up when we return—I am barely halfway up the steps. It is Antonia who has found a new tack. She agrees to leave—but only if I will. An opening that permits her to take up all the past weeks' arguments in reverse and turn my own against me. We should be at it most of the night. And so, although she has been accusing me of being cruel to drive her away, it is only tonight that I explain what Bishop Maldonado was anxious to make clear, that my hatred of the Holy Office risks blinding me to the more immediate and perhaps greater danger: an ecclesiastical tribunal, its rules of evidence and procedures entirely at the discretion of the convening bishop, or in this case, archbishop. Unlike the Holy Office, the Archbishop has little in the way of contacts or reputation to cultivate across Europe, so the Inquisitors here are pleased to allow His Grace to take the lead, and will limit themselves initially to deposing evidence. Only after what remains of my own reputation has been destroyed will the Inquisition instigate its own proceedings. It is the tribunal's composition that Archbishop Aguiar summoned Bishop Maldonado from Oaxaca to discuss. His Grace wants one judge of the
Audiencia
, to represent the Crown, and wants Church representation at the level of bishop and provincial, particularly since His Grace hopes evidence will be heard that implicates a bishop. Maldonado's cold relations with the Bishop of Puebla make him a leading candidate but as my friend hastened to add, they have also given him leeway to decline.

The tribunal will be constituted to investigate errors of doctrine, insubordination, alleged violations of the nun's vows and the holy sacraments, but also—and most worrisome to my friend Maldonado—accusations of secular and political abuses committed within the walls of a holy sanctuary. What sort of abuses? I wondered. In such times as these, he said, hints of sedition are heard with the same hostility as is the mere suggestion that the Crown has ever been susceptible to private influence. Surely a rarity, I put in, the tribunal constituted to hear, in the same proceeding, not just charges of sedition but also the peddling of
influence. A point Bishop Maldonado willingly conceded, to make his own: The Crown, too, will be pleased to let the Archbishop proceed. Evidence, grievances, denunciations of every possible stripe will be entertained—and what will emerge, as much as any particular crime or sin, is a portrait.

And so, I tell Antonia, whatever my success against the other charges, breaking my vow of enclosure is the one I would find impossible to contest.

“Only if you're caught—we could just disappear.”

“I can disappear in here, 'Tonia.”

“No, Juana. You only think that.”

I answer that the threat of an ecclesiastical trial is what Núñez holds in reserve. He too is fond of surprises. So I have become cruel, it seems.

Maldonado insists Núñez is my only chance. For while Núñez cannot claim to control the Inquisition, he holds sway over the Archbishop. It cannot be stopped once begun. A general confession is the one way to keep it from starting. Bishop Maldonado seems to know nothing about the manuscripts of Manuel de Cuadros.

Mail is lighter than plate, but stronger only if it can be made more supple. There are so many unknowns. Does Núñez control Magda, or only think he does, or pretend to, and what if Dorantes in the meanwhile finds the very manuscript I only pretend to have, or hope to? And what if I cannot manoeuvre Núñez into betraying what it contains before he detects that I do not have it? And what of Panoayan? For unless I learn to play at his game more deftly than I so far have, and unless Fortune takes a friendlier hand, the ways of the false dilemma and the true lead to the same terminus, and the shades and judges of the dead will have their bowls of blood. Down the path of confession it is Núñez who waits at the pyre to extract my contrition. Down the path of defiance it is Dorantes, with Núñez lashed beside me. The paths are not separate. For one way or the other Magda would have her chapter—and while I may succeed in destroying Núñez, it is a resolution—even should my courage not fail me—not a
solution
, not an escape. At the end, Manuel de Cuadros did not escape his fate, and far braver than I, could not even cling to his defiance, but changed his mind before the brushwood even fully caught fire. If I am to go there, at least let me have found one resolution I can keep.

For himself, Núñez
has
a solution—more dangerous than if I had collapsed, yet a path with at least one acceptable outcome. For once I have
submitted myself to his power and protection, if it seems I have evidence that may be used against him, it is within the setting of an ecclesiastical trial that he can have the Archbishop negotiate immunities with an Inquisitor General pleased to let His Grace take the lead. And then Núñez will have solved, once and for all, the problem of the missing manuscripts.

I have shared no more of this than I thought strictly necessary to persuade Antonia. But it is myself I have thought to spare most of all, for it can be more disturbing to see her frightened than to face some things myself … she has been my Camilla. She was upset, pale, but on the whole I thought she had taken it well. On even this subject I can be persuasive after all. But well after Matins, when I think she has surely fallen asleep, she comes upstairs in her nightdress to see the new candle. I am caught, sitting at the table by the bed. The flame flutters lightly next to the window open to the west. For the breeze I have left the door open on the upstairs colonnade over the patio.