by Helen Bryan
An alcove in the schoolroom held our six precious books from Spain: three missals that had survived their soaking and, except for a few pages, were intact; one illuminated prayer book; one on the distillation of herbs; and another on the treatment of diseases. I used the book on herbs to teach them Latin.
Although we had consecrated Mother Maria Manuela, we had yet to conduct a similar ceremony for the four of us novices to take our final vows. My heart ached when I remembered how I had expected my mother to be present, but that could not be helped. We had begun our preparations and were only awaiting the return of two of the beatas. They had left us to travel to a distant village where a peculiar sickness the local doctors did not understand had caused many deaths and debilitated the entire populace to the point that they could not plant their crops.
We consulted our books and thought it sounded like something brought on by the constant rain and cold of the time of year, and to our surprise had been given permission to try one of our herbal remedies. It was a sign that we had advanced in local trust, and the beatas took the medicine and departed.
But our consecration did not take place as we had hoped. Alas, the two beatas drowned when their raft overturned as they made their way back. It was a sorrowful blow to our little community and we had no heart for joyful celebrations. We remembered them in our prayers and hoped that in time our shrinking numbers would be swelled by local girls who felt a vocation. The commander’s daughters were joined in the classroom by five other noble girls. Noble or not, there was much giggling, and with the loss of two pairs of hands, we were even busier than before.
We continued to postpone the service of profession. The death of the beatas was followed by another disaster, a terrible famine. For an entire year the rains did not come and it was terrible to watch the unripened maize wither. The tubers that are a main foodstuff were diseased, and game disappeared. The people began to suffer as the storehouses emptied. The people shared what food there was, but many died. Another bad year followed. All grew thin and weak. Children had swollen bellies and hung listless in slings on their mother’s backs. Animals perished in the road for want of fodder.
Then we began to see and hear processions of priests going into the mountains. Our serving women confirmed they took children to be sacrificed to plead with the gods to end the famine.
Before the famine we had attempted the delicate task of persuading the priests and officials to end this horrible practice, on the grounds that rather than sacrifice girls to the gods, it would be more useful to give the girls to us to intercede with heaven. Although the priests were generally well disposed to us, this time they grew angry and warned that our insolence would offend the gods further. It was terrible to stand by and do nothing.
Then the commander’s wife came to give us the news, and persuade us that this was an honor, that the priests had selected the commander’s daughters for sacrifice. The poor mother! The girls were to be permitted a last visit to us on their way to the mountains and she begged that we would support them, to strengthen them for what lay ahead. This was the way of their land and their god. Faced with our reaction to the news, she, proud woman, nearly broke down. She and the commander had no other children.
We waited sadly for the farewell visit of these two dear children. It came soon. On a long dry day we were working in the garden, attempting to kill the weevils that eat the little the drought had left us, as always keeping an eye on the road, waiting. It was unnaturally quiet that day; even the swallows ceased their chatter. We were all uneasy, then we heard the awful drums in the distance and knew the priests and the commander’s daughters were beginning their walk into the mountains. The procession with banners flying came into view, with the two girls in the middle. In the unnatural silence the drums and singing were as harsh and cruel as if they welcomed Satan himself.
Outside our house the singing stopped and the two girls stepped away from the procession to us where we waited for them. Smiling, they embraced us one by one. Their eyes were bright and glittering and they seemed in a trance. We knew they had been given the special drink that prepares the victims. We were almost overcome with grief at such a terrible parting, but tried to do as their mother wished. The Incas love flowers, and despite the drought we had managed to find a few to give the girls when this moment came.
Mother Maria Manuela turned to take them from a clay pot of water. She was lifting them out when the pot began to shake of its own accord. As she exclaimed and started back, it fell to the ground and smashed, and suddenly the ground began to shake and the silence was broken by a distant rumbling sound that became a horrible roar. The earth heaved up and down with a sickening force so violent that we were thrown about the garden and the procession scattered, priests and people screaming as rocks began to tumble down from the mountain above us.
Clutching the drugged girls we ran for our house. Just as we got inside, the ground heaved and shook again, followed by rattling showers of pebbles, then the thunder of boulders crashing down, and avalanches of earth and rocks. The terrified serving women pushed behind us into our little chapel where we had dragged the girls and were kneeling in prayer around Mother Maria Manuela. She held her crucifix high so we all might rest our eyes on it in the moment of our death. Outside, landslides thundered and we knew people and animals were trapped and crushed and buried, and every minute we awaited the same fate as our house shuddered and shook. Part of the roof gave way and things crashed against the walls. Then the ground steadied beneath us, but just as we began to look around at each other, marveling at our deliverance, there was another movement that triggered more landslides.
This occurred at intervals during that long and terrible night, so that we dared not leave the chapel to see what help we might give. We stayed tightly packed together, the girls between us and the servants praying to their gods, we to ours.
When we ventured outside again the next morning, a horrible sight met our eyes. Houses and empty granaries and stables and fields—whole villages had disappeared, buried under a ton of rocks and earth. There were bodies or parts of bodies of people and animals, and tattered remnants of the banners carried by the priests the day before. We did our best to find survivors, but were not strong enough to do much. A day later a party of soldiers arrived to carry on the rescue, but it was slow work, and though some were dragged alive from the destruction, most were dead of horrible injuries. We learned even the great temple and house of the virgins of the sun had been damaged, killing many.
Our servants and slaves who had pressed into the chapel with us described how we had passed the night, and word spread of the power of our prayers and our God’s protection. A week after the earthquake, it began to rain, and the crops that had not been buried recovered somewhat. We took the injured into our infirmary and kept the commander’s daughters out of sight. The priests did not return for them, to our great relief. But they had been chosen for the “honor of the sacrifice” as people here would have it, and what would happen to them concerned us greatly.
A few weeks later the commander himself arrived. He was a kind of viceroy of the region and had been assessing the extent of the damage. We went to receive him, prepared now to argue against his taking his daughters back to the priests to be sacrificed.
He greeted Mother, calling her mamacunya, and congratulated us that we were favored by our gods who had prevented our destruction. He spoke with dignity of the fact that the priests had chosen his daughters for a sacrifice, but the gods had not willed it. We all began to breathe easier and I looked up quickly at him and realized that although warriors and princes would suffer the most horrible and bloody torments without admitting pain or weakness, his daughters are precious to him. Only the terrible discipline of this place and what was demanded of the royal family if chaos was not to engulf the kingdom prevented his showing the relief he felt.
I was touched by the vulnerability I had glimpsed behind the warrior façade. It affected me so deeply I had to force myself to k
eep my eyes down, away from his. He was married and heathen and of a people who practice the most dreadful cruelty, but his presence dazzled me. I stared hard at the ground, as if a miracle were about to take place at my feet. Though somehow my eyes strayed of their own accord from the ground to his legs, strong and bare under his tunic. I forced myself to rejoice on his wife’s account that her children had been spared.
And he, too, was speaking of his wife, to say she and his concubines all lay dead after the earthquake! There were exclamations of sympathy from all of us. We felt grief for them all, especially for his graceful and gracious wife.
Then he said something that sent the blood rushing to my head and set my heart pounding. Because our gods kept us safe while so many others had perished, he had come to take a concubine from among us, as was permitted to a prince of royal blood. I gasped and lifted my head. He was looking straight at me and his dark gaze was like a spear into my heart. A concubine? But his wife was dead—and I had an idea.
Mother Maria Manuela was saying with tact but unyielding firmness that his royal rights did not extend to us. “Our virgins,” she began, and I knew she was about to say “would be obliged to choose death instead,” so before she could do so, I sprang to her side and whispered urgently that I had not yet taken my vows and could abandon the novitiate if the commander chose me.
“Certainly not, Salome! Has lust made you mad?” hissed Mother.
“No Mother, wait,” I begged. “God may have sent this opportunity to achieve what we cannot accomplish otherwise. I think the commander is bargaining, one of us for his daughters. You, the mamacunya, must bargain in turn, to demonstrate the value of what he seeks.” Mother looked so shocked I rushed on. “First, you can truly say that Christian virgins may never be concubines. Their God permits them the status of wives, provided they are given to men in accordance to our laws and ceremonies, and never where there is another wife or concubine. And a man who would have one of our virgins as his wife must observe our custom, which is to grant her a wish, otherwise…er, otherwise to dispense with this formality will incur the wrath of her powerful God.”
Mother Maria Manuela snapped, “Salome, you are talking nonsense!”
“No, Mother. If the commander agrees to leave his daughters with us, the priests may follow suit and send girls here to intercede with God instead of sacrificing them. And a good Christian wife might persuade her husband that many wives and concubines are…unnecessary.” I blushed when I said that.
Mother gave me a look that said I was a demon’s changeling, sighed, and turned back to the commander to explain her conditions. He nodded and dispensed with any pretense about which of us he preferred. He pointed to me and asked what wish I had, promising that his honor demanded he grant it. When Mother told him about giving the sacrificial victims to us it was his turn to look shocked, as if he had been tricked and betrayed. I held my breath. The power of his religion and his obligations as a royal prince warred mightily with his inclination, and even more with his sense of personal honor, which would not permit him to revoke his word. But only for a moment. Then he nodded and held out his hand to me. I stepped forward, and clasped it.
That same day a heavy rain began, as if heaven approved our union, although it would be months before the crops that were hastily sown would flourish. With the famine not yet over, would the sacrifices continue? The answer came a few weeks later when three beautiful girls of different ages were taken into the house from the hands of the native priests who delivered them with inscrutable faces.
The commander and I were married a month after the earthquake, by Mother of course—there was no one else to officiate at a Christian wedding. She conducted the ceremony with lengthy prayers begging heaven’s blessing on our union. There was nothing else to do. I wore a plain linen shift hastily made for me by the sisters, over which, in the native style, I wore a wedding gift from the commander—a fine tunic of beautiful native embroidery, clasped on the shoulders with gold serpents’ heads with emerald eyes. My hair had grown and I washed and brushed it out to hang down my back, tucking a large red flower over my ear. I could feel my face flushed with happiness and knew my eyes were bright with joy. I hoped the commander would approve.
We were married before as many people as could travel gathered to watch. After the sisters had sung every psalm, every hymn in their repertoire—Inca ceremonies are not official without music, sometimes many days’ worth—Mother blessed us. Then it was time for the Inca part of the ceremony the commander insisted upon, saying people would not accept me as his wife otherwise. He bent and put new sandals made of vicuña wool and gold thread on my feet. I took a new tunic I had made from fine soft wool, and placed it over his shoulders. One of the members of the royal family joined our hands to signify that we were one.
He led me away to this Hacienda of the Sun and the Moon, which was badly damaged by the earthquake. Servants carried my few possessions, including a crucifix my husband particularly wished to hang in our home. There was another sparse wedding feast at our hacienda—corn beer and a few vegetables with the spicy sauce that accompanies everything. I could eat nothing. I was very nervous about the step I had taken, yet very happy on my wedding night. And I wished my mother could give us her blessing.
Salome’s face had softened as she spoke—even now the memory of her wedding to the commander warms her heart. She quickly had three children, the boys, Miguel and Matteo and a girl she named Beatris in honor of her mother. She took care to have them all baptized immediately with as much ceremony and singing as possible, to claim them for the powerful Christian God. The youngest, Beatris, was eight before the stonemasons and workmen finished repairing the hacienda. Salome said proudly that the commander insisted the peasants’ houses, the terraces for the fields, and the roads be repaired before his own home. She praised him as a just man, devoted to his duty to the people and the Sapa Inca, fearless, and good to her and their children. He sought her advice as an equal as well as her intercession with the Christian God. The commander’s daughters passed through the novitiate and took their vows two years later, the first native nuns. The commander and Salome attended their service of profession, and she had the satisfaction of hearing Mother Maria Manuela tell her privately that she had been wise to follow her heart.
Salome followed the example of the commander’s first wife, taking food and blankets woven by the servants, often helping in the school, the infirmary, and the orphanage that had been filled after the earthquake. While orphaned boys were taken to be raised as soldiers, it quickly became established that orphaned girls should be brought to the nuns. From time to time the priests left beautiful girl children at their gates when they wished to supplicate the gods. In due course these little girls became nuns just as the orphans in Spain did. There was no other option for girls who would have been sacrificial victims—once selected, they could no longer remain among ordinary people.
Then Salome drew her story to a close, describing the night that changed their lives forever. A runner had come with an urgent summons for the commander and his soldiers to hurry to the capital. Men with carapaces of metal and strange beasts that breathed fire had flown over the sea with great wings, and there had been signs and omens in the sky to warn of the strangers who had brutalized and slaughtered many of the people en route to the capital. The messenger said the leader was Francisco Pizarro and she was afraid. It was a Spanish name.
Revulsion was plain on Salome’s face as she described the events that had happened as if she had become more Inca than Spaniard. The Sapa Inca, Atahualpa—a ruler so powerful the people did not dare look at him directly—was captured by trickery and executed, garrotted—a “mercy,” since at the last hour he recanted his faith and accepted baptism. Otherwise he would have died at the stake. His death had sown terror among the Inca. They believed that now the sun would withdraw, the world would grow dark and cold, and all would perish. When the sun continued to rise every day, resistance to the fearsome invaders cru
mbled. The harvest was plentiful, a sign that the gods favored these ruthless invaders.
The Spanish claimed this Kingdom of the Four Corners of the Earth for Spain, sacking and killing and looting all the while. The nuns sent messengers to the nearby house of the virgins of the sun to offer them the protection of a Christian convent. But the messengers found the virgins gone, carried off like prizes, the great blocks of stone still tumbled about by the earthquake. A bishop sent slaves to rebuild it for use as a Christian convent, and the Holy Sisters of Jesus, being terribly crowded in their old house, seized the opportunity and swiftly moved themselves and the children into the rebuilt part.
Salome was sickened by the Spanish and frightened for her husband. She persuaded him to accept baptism for the sake of the region, and the Spanish conquerors thought it advantageous to appoint a member of the Inca royal family and a Christian convert acting governor of the region. It was in the course of his duties as governor that he died last year in a distant province. Salome clings to the part of her life that is Inca and has little to do with the Spanish colonists.
It seemed that Salome had welcomed the opportunity to tell her story, but at the end of three weeks I could see that she becomes tired easily and we thought it best to go. In fact, she seemed almost eager for us to go, and something she let slip made me think her anxiety for us to leave was connected to her expectation of Don Miguel’s return. I tried to put the disappointment of not seeing Don Miguel out of my mind.
CHAPTER 29
From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, by the pen of Esperanza, the Mission Convent of Las Golondrinas de Los Andes, March 1554