City of Silver (29 page)

NO ONE AT the grand entrance parade of Nestares into the Villa Imperial of Potosí noticed that a lock of hair showing from under one of the elaborate Indian headdresses was a shade of light brown never found on an Inca head. Or that the eyes that looked out from the man’s feathered mask were blue.

Such small details were lost in the outpouring of pomp and grandeur. The world-famous spectacle of a royal emissary’s grand entrance into the Silver City mesmerized even its own citizens. The “white Indian” in the condor costume himself wondered at this reception—fit more for a viceroy than for a prosecutor.

A sudden clamor in the street ahead seemed to signal the Visitador’s arrival.
“Ahora,”
an Indian leader called, and the drums began. The troupe of forty gaudily clad men began to dance. The condor man moved his arms and legs in the complicated pattern he had hastily learned at dawn that day, all the while alert, scanning the crowd that lined the Calle de Santo Domingo. Death was ready to strike. He had a plan. He was ready. Even here. Even now.

The wave of breathless anticipation that stirred the crowd near the Dominican monastery turned out to be one of the many false alarms of the morning. Though Dr. Francisco de Nestares had started out before dawn, he would not arrive for another hour.

In darkness, a ceremonial squadron mounted on fine steeds had met him at his hospice six leagues from the city. Don Fernando de Almanza, the Viceroy’s nephew, led the group of three hundred nobles who represented all the various provinces of Spain and tribes of Peruvians. They had found the Visitador not quite ready. Most of his entourage, including the priests of the Holy Tribunal, had gone ahead the evening before, slipping quietly into the city. In order to enter with proper pomp, he, plagued by headache, breathless in the thin air, and exhausted, had spent one more night—his twenty-fifth—on the road.

Eschewing an effeminate man-carried litter, he had bumped along the rough trails for weeks, hours each day, in an ox-drawn cart or jogged on a cantankerous mule to saddle-sore exhaustion. Blessedly, the
tambas
along the route were placed close enough together so that he, if not all of his retainers, had passed nearly every night in a decent bed.

This morning, he saw in his looking glass a travel-weary man, his long, regal face drawn and pale, his eyes vacant and smudged beneath with exhaustion, his lips white from the lack of good meat. He called his barber to trim his hair and beard and tint his wan, chilled cheeks with pomegranate juice. He donned court dress and a gold chain bearing the jewels of his office. In the pink light of dawn, he greeted his honor guard and mounted a beautiful black Chilean horse they had brought for him. The magnificent beast was caparisoned with gold-plated silver and bristled with energy even in this killing climate. Nestares patted the horse’s neck and drew in its warmth, soothing in the chill air.

Up at the summit of the conical Cerro Rico—whose shape was unmistakable to him as it would have been to any educated person in the Spanish Empire—huge flags had been unfurled to greet him. They whipped in the harsh wind that looked as if it would tear the banners off their slender poles. The King’s envoy nodded to a cavalier carrying the mace, his symbol of authority, to lead on.

MARIA SANTA HILDA signed and folded her letter to Padre Junipero. She would give it to Beatriz Tovar to deliver. In defiance of the Grand Inquisitor, she had sent him one message already—by the boy who waited in the
plazuela
. In return, she had received only a cryptic note. It lay on her desk now: “I am in danger from Morada’s men, who think I killed Inez. I must conceal myself, but I am going to continue on a path that I am sure will lead us to the truth.”

He was in harm’s way because of her. And the note she was about to send him would intensify that danger. She pushed down the guilt that rose in her gullet. She had broken so many promises she had made to herself, and to God. She could not fathom what the implications might be for the future of her heart. Who was she that she could put other people’s lives in danger? She did not know herself anymore.

The events of the past few days had ripped from her soul a raiment that had felt like shining gold. What lay beneath it was dross. Her bones felt as if chunks of flesh had been torn away with her illusions.

Yet as if a veil had also been removed from her eyes, she saw at once the power of her person—a power she had always ascribed to the Lord, to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. If it was God’s power that worked in her, it worked in her in a particular way because she was who she was. No matter what happened, no matter the verdict of the Inquisition, she would never diminish herself again.

Her guilt and her new awareness of herself warred within her, and even still she saw everyone and everything more clearly now. All the unexplained facts she had learned so far must fit together in some way. Drop by drop, the truth trickled into her consciousness.

Inez had said she was threatened by knowledge of a secret. What information so dangerous could a mere girl know? But Inez was not an ordinary girl. She had been her father’s confidante. The Abbess herself and the padre both worried that her father had involved her in his worldly affairs to the detriment of her immortal soul. Inez had told her sister, Gemita, about some documents that could protect a person’s life. Could not letters that would save a life also take a life?

The Alcalde’s silver was in the convent vault. Everyone knew he had been hiding it, they thought out on the Altiplano. But it lay here, under the floorboards of the convent’s vault. Why had he decided to hide it in the first place?

The currency had been falsified. Ramirez was the Tester of the Currency. Could false money have been minted without his knowing? He was the Alcalde’s most loyal and closest supporter. Could Ramirez have tampered with the currency without Morada’s knowledge?

These events and Inez’s death must have something to do with one another. She could not prove it, but she was sure that the explanation of the one crime would also explain the other.

She had already charged Sor Monica with discovering who had carried out Inez’s murder and how. She was certain that all the parts of that puzzle of how were still here in the convent. Only by finding out who in the convent had committed the actual murder could they understand the motivation behind it.

The note she had just written charged the padre to find and recover the letters that Inez had talked of to Gemita. Somewhere in them lay the explanation.

This would all take time. De la Gasca had given her only a day or two, but he was unwell with altitude sickness. That could buy her an extra day.

Rather than waiting for Beatriz to be brought to her, she took her letter for Padre Junipero and went in search of the girl.

FRANCISCO ROJAS DE la Morada waited on horse back for Nestares and his honor guard to appear at the entrance to the city. He was certain this expensive charade would not save them. Nevertheless, he had attended—since Inez’s burial—to every detail, for he knew that given the fame of Potosí’s magnificent welcomes of royal envoys, the city could not slight Nestares by stinting today. Though a perfect ceremony would not ameliorate their situation, any misstep, any insult, however unintended, could bring harsher and speedier punishment.

Morada scanned the crowd for Taboada. His bone marrow told him Don Jerónimo was more dangerous as a friend than another man would be as an enemy. Taboada had hinted he would surprise the Alcalde today with yet another proof of his loyalty and friendship. The glint in his eye foretold murder. Morada had admonished him that nothing must happen to the Visitador General once he entered the city. Taboada had smiled and said the surprise he had in mind would free the Alcalde’s heart from a great burden. Morada again ordered Taboada not to harm Nestares. Taboada had a faithful soul, but his desire to please overruled his judgment. And there was no way any of them could survive a mistake now.

The cortege leading Nestares rounded the bend. Morada signaled the ceremonial bearers, who unfurled a canopy of crimson embroidered in gold with the arms of Spain and supported by stout staves of solid silver. The Chief Constable, the Public Trustee, the Inspector of Weights and Measures, and the Collector of Judicial Fines made ready to carry the canopy over
Nestares’s head until he reached the first of the triumphal arches erected in his honor. Don Diego de Ibarbarú, Don Baltasor de Salamanca y Lerma, Don Francisco de Sagardia, and Don Juan Bravo, the Count of Portillo—all carrying their glittering wands of office—the corregidors of the surrounding provinces, venerable members of the clergy, doctors and masters of the city, and priests of the nearby towns placed themselves information along the Calle Lima, the main street leading to the center of the city.

The cortege accompanying Nestares neared. At the Visitador’s side, a young nobleman carried in the crook of his right arm a gold-and-silver mace encrusted with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. This emblem announced that Nestares came on the King’s business, with full authority of life and death. Behind him rode the honor guard uniformed with blue hose and red doublets, gorgeously and profusely ornamented with gold braid.

A detachment of soldiers formed to the rear of the cortege. They carried harquebuses and held their heads up—to a man, maintaining a fierce expression. Safe in the powerful impression of his symbols of authority, Nestares himself affected a kindly aspect and a calm, steady gaze.

“His Majesty’s subjects of the Villa Imperial de Potosí welcome you, Dr. Francisco de Nestares, Visitador General, emissary of our Sovereign.” Morada pronounced the words with what he hoped was a thoroughly charming smile. At his signal, the squadron of nobles that had met Nestares that morning spread out into the field of San Martín, offered a volley, and then preceded the Visitador into the town.

As soon as Nestares began to move down the Calle de Contería, the form of the festival welcome took on a life of its own, and celebration of Nestares’s entry ruled the day.

At the first triumphal arch, the remaining members of the
Cabildo, attired in court dress, waited under a canopy of pearl-colored cloth. Nestares nodded benignly to all.

THE WHITE INDIAN in the condor mask remained unconvinced by that beneficent smile. He saw in the Visitador’s severe pointed collar the real indication of his character. In fact, everything about him was pointed—his chin, his nose, his gaze. And the condor man had heard from an unimpeachable source that whatever aspect the emissary from the King portrayed, he was arbitrary, irritable, and above all suspicious.

The band of dancing Indians followed Nestares as he passed down the cobbled street between the whitewashed brick-and-stone buildings. Cheering crowds filled every space. Thanks to the generosity of the Cabildo, even the poorest in the city were decked out in silk. The rich found they could afford to dress the destitute in vanities today.

Flags flying from the belfries whipped in the stiff breeze. The pealing of bells of every church and convent made an almost deafening din. The Alcalde and his friends bore all the cost of this pageantry. The members of the Cabildo, fearing for its power and prestige, had decided they must give their own money rather than tax the less fortunate. It was not charity that moved them. Devaluation, they knew, would punish the poor more than anyone. Poverty, if it became desperate, became dangerous.

Everywhere along the route of the march, the buildings were hung with inscriptions, symbols and devices, and emblems of the King. Nestares rode triumphant to the music of drums, horns, trumpets, timbrels, pipes, and flutes. The Mestizo musicians were dressed all alike in sandals and belts of silk and gold worked with pearls and rubies, shirts and jackets of fine brocade, and, as was their wont, many heavy chains and pendants of gold. Women and girls in brilliantly colored, fur-lined silk cloaks
jammed the wooden balconies overlooking the narrow streets. In this climate where no plants grew, they strewed Nestares’s path with flowers made of feathers.

The priest disguised as a dancing Indian despaired that all these tributes would not influence Nestares at all. Not the three triumphal arches that graced the Visitador’s route to the Plaza Mayor, not even the eight hundred silver ingots that had been paved into the street along which he passed. Since there had not been time to paint simulated jasper and marble, the constructions were draped with precious stuffs, costly embroideries, and rich silks. The first spanned the small plaza near the Church of San Martín, close to the eastern limits of the city. The second, and more magnificent, in the Plaza la Merced was constructed of Ionic, Corinthian, Doric, and Tuscan columns. Its architrave was decorated with mirrors, ribbons, and, on top, statues—some enameled, some dressed in fine cloth—that signified the moral virtues.

The irony of those virtues gazing down on this city was lost neither on the Visitador General nor on the priest dressed in feathers, so intent on his mission, so incapable of completing it with dispatch. How could a man save a life if he had to dance in a vain parade just to cross the town and speak to someone? And there was DaTriesta’s face in the watching crowd to remind him of the urgency of his task and the snail’s pace of his progress.

DaTriesta took no notice of the dancing Indians. He was focused on the triumphant expression on the face of Nestares. His own triumph had been postponed. The Abbess and her perverted sister were still in the convent, when by right they should be chained to the stone walls of the keeping room in the rear of his house. Standing on the steps of the Church of the Mercedarians, he felt himself completely at odds with the shouts of the joyous crowd as Nestares stopped under the arch. Just as His Excellency entered underneath, a folded cloud opened and disclosed a tiara, which dropped a good distance through the air
and stopped a few inches above his head and hung there. At that moment, the girls on the surrounding balconies showered the Visitador with beaten gold and silver that glistened in the blinding sunlight.