Her father’s face—dark and angry as she entered—turned indulgent, with a hint of triumph that chilled Beatriz’s joy. He came and embraced her. “I am glad to know you have learned your lesson,” was all he said.
Her body stiffened in his arms. She pulled her cheek away from his kiss. “Where is Domingo?” she countered brazenly. Her father made her so angry. He did not care for her at all, only for his will, that it be done. She looked right into his bright, black eyes and held them despite the terror his anger evoked in her. “I came home only to save Mother Maria from the pyre. I never intended to do what you say. I lied about marrying your Rodrigo. I just wanted to get out of the convent. I will run away. I will run away the first chance I get.”
He gripped her shoulders hard and held her at arm’s length. “You are as stubborn as a llama.”
“I take after you!”
He shook her. Her mother moaned. And she screamed, “I hate you!”
“This is your doing,” he said to her mother. He turned back to her, his stormy face inches from hers. “You will never leave this house. I will lock you up here for the rest of your life. You will not go out, not even to go to Mass. You can hear Mass in the chapel with the workers. You will never see another soul except your mother until you learn respect and obedience. Go to your room and stay there. Take her away, Pilar. Get her out of my sight.”
Her mother took her in her arms and led her down the hall. By the time they arrived at her room, Beatriz was sobbing. She threw herself on the recamier near the windows—where she had lain so often, dreaming of being loved by Domingo. “I hate my father.” She could hear the stubbornness in her own voice. “I hate him.” Her heart seared with humiliation and shame.
“He wants only the best for you.” Her mother stroked her back.
She shrugged off the touch. Her mother was on her father’s side. She had no one, no one who cared what was in her heart.
Her mother got up and went to the wardrobe. “Come, Beatriz, change into one of your own dresses. Let me have Rosa Yana bring you some tea and fresh bread and honey.” She rang for the maid and ordered a tray.
“You can’t bribe me with finery anymore,” she said, and looked away.
Dresses rustled softly as her mother rummaged in the wardrobe. Beatriz fingered the plain muslin front of her convent-made dress. She had to find Domingo. She would declare herself to him. It was the only way. There was no point in waiting for him to come to her. She was his master’s daughter. It would be impossible for him to declare himself to her. She had to speak first. She smoothed the rough front of her dress. She wanted to look beautiful when he saw her.
Trying to look reluctant, she stood and let her mother undo the modest muslin frock. She ran her hands over the dresses on the shelves—bodices laced with gold and silver, broad open sleeves of Holland and fine Calabrian linen. She smiled at them in spite of herself. She was vain. She knew it, but she couldn’t help it. Mother Maria had tried often—
“Mother Maria!” she exclaimed. What had she been thinking? Mother Maria relied on her. Only her. And she was here fussing with dresses, like a silly, shallow girl, when she had sworn to Mother Maria that she would carry out her mission like the Cid’s own page. “I must find Padre Junipero. I must go to him right now!”
Her mother continued to finger the dresses. “Do you want to confess?”
“No! I told you before in the office. No one listened. No one ever listens to me. I must get word to Padre Junipero. He is needed at—”
A sudden banging at the door stopped her words. “My lady!” Her father’s voice was urgent, even tinged with fear.
Her mother ran to the door. “What is it, Captain?” She opened, even though Beatriz was standing there in only her chemise and petticoats.
Her father did not even glance at her. “A cave-in at the mine of Prudencio in the Corpus Christi lode. I must go at once. They said they heard the noise of several explosions from collapsing works.”
Her mother crossed herself. “Dios mío, help us, dear Lord.”
“There could be more than thirty or forty men in there. We must attempt a rescue,” her father said, and disappeared.
“I thought—” her mother started to say to her father’s disappearing back. He was gone, but she finished her thought. “I thought the mine was supposed to be closed for the festival.” She stood for a moment as if transfixed, then closed the door and slumped back against it. “Madre de Dios, help us. Holy Mother Mary, protect them.” She clasped her hands before her breasts.
Beatriz moved toward her. “How can this be, Mother, if the mine was closed?”
“The workers go into the mine when it is closed, to take silver for themselves.”
“Steal it?”
“Not really. It is a custom. It has been that way for a hundred years. The mine owners turn their heads and pretend to ignore it. I think they allow it because despite whatever else they say, they know it maintains some sort of balance between what the Indians get and what they give.”
Outside her bedroom window, there was a sudden commotion in the ingenio yard—barreteros and pongos scrambling to assemble tools. Her father shouting brusque orders. In minutes, they all galloped off.
When the yard was quiet again, a thought dawned that chilled Beatriz’s heart. “Domingo? Mother, could Domingo have been in the mine?”
Her mother sank to the window seat and looked up at her, her face full of a strange mixture of exasperation and pity. “No, darling. Domingo certainly was not there.”
Beatriz fell to her knees and took her mother’s hands. “How can you be sure?”
“I am sure. Now tell me what you were going to say about Mother Maria.”
“Oh, Mama, she will be taken any minute by the Inquisition. They came to the convent and questioned us. I am sure that things I said made them think they should burn Mother Maria at the stake. I must try to help her. I must.”
Her mother took her hand. “Oh no, dear. That cannot be. How can anything you said be so harmful?”
“It was. I know it was. Listen to me. For once, listen to what I am saying.” As she explained the events at the convent, her mother’s grip tightened on her fingers.
“This is horrifying,” her mother said.
“Mother Maria said her only hope is for me to find Padre Junipero. Why don’t we go to the Compañia de Jesus? We can send Padre Junipero to the convent and stay to pray for the trapped miners.”
Her mother gave her a sad smile. “I cannot take you out. Your father has forbidden it.”
Beatriz stared in disbelief. “I have just told you. Mother Maria’s life hangs in the balance.”
“I will send the maids out,” her mother said gently. “They will look all over the city. They can go places we would never be able to go. They will find the padre for you. In the meantime, you must stay here. I cannot go against your father.”
A sigh of exasperation escaped Beatriz, but she kept her face soft. There was no arguing against her mother’s total obedience to her father. “Then let’s send the maids right now. All of them. We must find Padre Junipero immediately.”
At least her mother readily agreed to that. Once they had dispatched the maids, she and her mother went back to her room, and she changed into one of her own dresses, not caring which one. Her nerves jangled with anxiety.
Her mother dressed her as if she were a doll. “Shall we say an Ave for the safety of the miners?”
Beatriz lifted her arms and let her mother do up the laces of her bodice. “How can we be sure that Domingo was not in the mine?”
Her mother took her hands, softly now, and looked into her face with an intensity that was almost frightening. “I must tell you something about Domingo that I am afraid will shock you, my child.”
AT THAT MOMENT, when all thought of her duty to the Abbess was being driven from Beatriz’s mind, a solemn function was beginning in the cathedral. His Grace the Bishop officially acknowledged the Tribunal. The Inquisitor de la
Gasca asserted his authority by reading an Edict of Faith that called upon every Potosino to denounce all offenders against the laws of the Church.
Fray DaTriesta, the local Commissioner, stood before the gold-leafed altar, stretched out his long, skinny arms in the shape of Christ on the cross, and reminded those present that it was April 10, the anniversary of the founding of the Silver City. “Here in this harsh and restless landscape,” he intoned, “full of jagged rocky hills, fantastic in the sharp light of the overhead sun and the weird perspective of this altitude, one hundred and five years ago, brave knights found this source of wealth, to strengthen our Catholic monarch, to make Spain mighty in defense of the Faith. We must be no less harsh on offenders against the purity of our beliefs. No less restless in our pursuit of blasphemers. No less sharp in our vigilance. No less brave and mighty in our battle against the works of the Evil One.” On his last words, he raised his bony arms slightly and let them drop to his sides.
The Bishop on his gilded throne thought he would puke. That such a worm—so common and so ugly—should speak such words, as if DaTriesta’s ancestors hadn’t been groveling in some rocky mountain field in northern Spain at the time Potosí was founded. It was disgraceful how, merely by coming to the New World, a lowly peasant’s son could improve his condition nearly to that of a nobleman.
De la Gasca, the Inquisitor, then rose and, aristocratic as he was, offended the Bishop even more deeply by declaring the first monetary fine of the Tribunal’s campaign in Potosí. Two royal officials were to pay eighty ducats for some minor offense involving supplying food for poor prisoners. The guilty men, resplendent in the finery of their position and wealth, marched up the center aisle of the great church and laid their pieces of silver on two gold plates set out on the steps of the altar. A great, boring show was made of their repentance and their forgiveness.
The Bishop suffered seeing the money placed into the black velvet bag carried by one of de la Gasca’s lieutenants, and without a word—other than the final blessing of the congregation—His Grace made his way to his carriage and to his study, where he poured himself a glass of the strongest drink in his house.
Chicha, made by the Indians out of maize, was disagreeable to the Bishop’s sight and worse to his taste. But smoky and brown as it was, he preferred it to the harsh and hardly intoxicating wine they made in this benighted region, where they harvested grapes exactly at the time when in Spain they were just pruning the vines. He drained the glass and poured himself another.
Ocampo, his cook, entered with a tray of cold meat pie and boiled potatoes. His Grace nibbled at the food disconsolately. After forty days of eating almost nothing but dried eels from the coast that were the closest thing to fresh fish in this dreadful country, he could now not even enjoy his Easter meat—what with all this nonsense of DaTriesta’s.
A shout in the plaza outside drew him to the window. One of the endless bullfights that were being staged every afternoon in celebration of Nestares was in progress. Yesterday, one of the city’s halberdiers, who was posted at the door of the Alcaldía across the square, had been fatally gored. Today, the spectators were tense and excited in expectation of more blood.
The Bishop drew aside his curtain the better to see. A huge black bull pawed the earth that had been scattered over the paving stones for the occasion. A tall, lithe toreador on a beautiful white horse pointed his silver-tipped lance. The crowd clamored for the bull’s life. The Bishop was just becoming sufficiently engrossed to have nearly forgotten the fortune the Inquisition would collect, which he would never see, when a knock at his study door forced him away from the window. He groaned. DaTriesta, no doubt, come to gloat and fish for compliments about his words in the cathedral. “Come.”
It was José, the sacristan of the church, who doubled as his serving man. He carried a letter on a silver tray.
The Bishop tore open the seal. In the Abbess’s fine, ladylike script, the letter read, “To His Excellency Don Fray Faustino Piñelo de Ondegardo, by the Grace of God Bishop of Potosí—” He cut to the second paragraph. “I appeal to you as my Bishop and as my fellow nobleman to intercede for me and my poor companion, of stock as noble as mine, who has become seriously ill from the shock of these proceedings. In the name of my ancient and aristocratic family, I implore you . . .”
“Dear God,” the Bishop murmured, “what have I done to deserve this new cross?” If he interceded for that troublesome woman, he might fail anyway. Defending a blasphemer, he might himself be accused of blasphemy. He looked again at the fine, graceful script of the Abbess’s hand. She was of the highest birth. The true son of his father would help her. Were he a knight . . . But he was not a knight. He was a priest. For him, prayer must be the answer. “I will pray for her,” he said to the empty room. He dropped the letter onto the coals burning in the brazier and went immediately to kneel before the statue of the Holy Infant that stood on a pedestal in the corner. He bowed his head.
As THE BISHOP prayed, three priests in armor and carrying swords pounded on the door of the Convent of Santa Isabella de los Santos Milagros. When the Abbess and Sor Eustacia were brought to them, a man with a large beak of a nose and a powerful gaze of hate spoke. “By the authority of the Council of the Indies, I arrest you, Maria Santa Hilda, for having knowingly placed the corpse of a suicide in sacred ground. And you, Eustacia, for falsely administering the sacrament of confession. May God have mercy on your souls.”
Maria Santa Hilda stood impassive and repeated the creed to herself to keep her mind blank and her mouth silent while the soldier-priests drew from under their capes two saffron robes. They placed one over her head, the other over Eustacia’s. The stouter of the priests hung a chain around each of their necks.
Monica arrived at an unseemly run. She went and embraced them. “We will save you. We will.” She embraced Maria Santa Hilda a second time. “If they take you to the stake,” she whispered, “confess at the last moment, and they will strangle you and spare you the pain. God will forgive such a small lie.”
Maria Santa Hilda kissed her and whispered in return, “Complete the work you have started. And pray with all your might.”
Flanked by the stern soldier-priests, the Abbess walked through the cold morning, not knowing where they were taking her. There were rumors about a secret prison in DaTriesta’s house.
Bells began to ring all around them, bells that signaled yet another celebration for Nestares. The streets about them were deserted. The citizens were gathered at whatever meaningless event was taking place.
Suddenly they came upon Juana, the maid, walking swiftly toward the convent. The small, sturdy woman did not seem to recognize the two women in the saffron robes.
The Abbess thought to shout for help, as if Juana could know something to save them. But Maria Santa Hilda knew there was very little chance that anyone could save them now. She kept her silence. Despair had begun to leak into her heart.
THE INQUISITION WENT on to hear scores of secret informants, to collect information about many of the King’s subjects, to levy fines, and to make arrests. From Taropalca—a nearby town of Christian Indians—they took Doña Angela Carranza, revered as a mystic. DaTriesta and de la Gasca dubbed her an impostor and dragged her off to prison, where she could consider her ugly dilemma: Should she confess to the sin of heresy and seek absolution before she was burned or insist on her own saintliness and die anyway, but in defiance? In the first case, her detractors would think her saved and her followers would feel she had betrayed them. In the second, her accusers would think her in hell, but her faithful would revere her as a martyr.
In the Convent of Santa Isabella de los Santos Milagros, none of the holy sisters had ever heard of Doña Angela, but Vitallina, who had long put her faith in La Carranza’s mystical powers, trudged around the halls in a pair of the famous Indian woman’s old shoes, convinced they would protect her from those terrible headaches that had plagued her since her womanly flux had begun to wane.
Sh
e shuffled into the infirmary to find Sor Monica bent over some vials.
The scraping of the shoes on the tile floor frazzled the Sister Herbalist’s already overheated nerves. “Must you wear those things? They hardly fit over your toes, they are so small. I told you I would buy you any pair of shoes in the market.”
“I prefer these, thank you, Sister.” Vitallina proceeded to the cauldron over the fire and ladled hot water into a wash bowl. She then, seemingly making as much noise as possible, washed the crockery.
Sor Monica poked at the mysterious substance in the vial in front of her and tried to concentrate. Potosí was a place where, for a price, one could buy anything. Endless shiploads of forbidden wares were unloaded at Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Buenos Aires, made their way up the river system, through the lowland forests and rising highlands, and finally emerged on the high broken tablelands of the Altiplano. Along the way, products of local manufacture were stowed away among the contraband parcels. Eastern Indians were clever at many things, especially poisons.
Vitallina peered over her shoulder. “What is that?”
“Nothing,” Monica said. “I found it when we searched. And I ate some. It is harmless, whatever it is.”
“Why didn’t you show it to me?” The big black woman tried to take the vial from her hand.
Monica pulled it away. “I did not want to.” She meant her words to sound commanding, but they seemed to come from the mouth of a disobedient child.
Vitallina kicked off her silly shoes and ran barefoot out of the room.
Monica sighed. Now her assistant had gone off in a huff and left her to puzzle out this mystery alone while the Inquisitors marched the Abbess away. Maria Santa Hilda could spend years in prison. Even if she was acquitted, the Tribunal would not necessarily release her immediately. She could die of some disease while living in such conditions in this dreadful climate. Monica whispered a prayer for the Abbess’s and Eustacia’s protection.
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