City of Silver Read Free

tried to persuade him to return to her, reminded him that it was their duty to procreate as God had ordained. She had even said she wanted to give him a noble son. Noble was a word that she thought would entice him, since noble was what she was and what he longed to be. But that common worm of a social pretender had had the gall to reject her.
    “I want no other child but Inez,” he had said, as if the second dainty pink infant in the cot were nothing to him. Inez was then barely four years old, yet father and daughter were bound in a potent rapport that was to grow and blossom and make Inez dearer to him than any son could be. Or any wife.
    Ana grinned. Weakling that he was under all his bluster, he adored his daughter. He thought he knew her.
    The mother rose and glanced through the shutters at the shadowy figure disappearing down the deserted street. When he discovered Inez had gone out into the night, it would wound him worse than the knife Ana dreamed of plunging again and again and again into his flesh.
    JUST BEFORE DAWN the next morning as she rose to go to the chapel to chant Matins and Lauds, Mother Maria Santa Hilda, Abbess of the Convent of Santa Isabella de los Santos Milagros, was called urgently to the door of her cloistered abbey. There she found Inez de la Morada begging in a shaky voice to be let in.
    The Abbess sent the Sister Porter to the chapel to ask the Mistress of Novices to lead the morning prayers. Then she led Inez into the refectory, lit a candle, and sat beside the girl.
    Inez’s beautiful oval face was pale, her blue eyes wary and red-rimmed. She had the face of a Madonna, except that she often betrayed emotions stronger than those ever portrayed in representations of Our Lady. “What is it, my child?” the Abbess asked.
    The girl paused and then began to sob. “I have seen the error of my ways, Mother Maria. I want to enter here and atone for the sins of the world.” She reached out and gripped the Abbess’s hand.
    Maria Santa Hilda held the girl’s small white fingers. Inez was seventeen, an age at which the self-sacrifice of the cloister held a romantic allure, when what seemed like a call to God’s service could be real or just a beautiful but superficial dream. And an age when fathers sought to choose husbands for their daughters and when some daughters preferred a life with God to submission to a man they found odious.
    The look in the girl’s eyes was fear, the Abbess thought. “Why today, at this hour, Inez? You are distraught.”
    The girl’s mouth opened and closed. She was struggling with the truth, it was clear.
    “Is it something your father wants you to do? Someone he wants you to marry?”
    Inez’s eyes brightened for a second, as if the Abbess had hit upon that which she did not want to admit. But they clouded again. She put down her head and wept quietly.
    The Abbess’s heart trembled like the girl’s lips. If defiance of her father, the Alcalde, was the girl’s purpose, aiding her could be dangerous. Francisco Morada would not tolerate anyone interfering with his wishes, especially if it meant coming between him and his daughter.
    The Abbess let go of Inez’s hand and groped for the rosary that hung at her waist. Several of the sisters in this convent had been put here by fathers who had failed to bend their daughters to their wills. But Morada was no ordinary case. He was the Alcalde—the Mayor of Potosí—and he loved Inez and indulged her beyond what most fathers allowed. Also, he was the convent’s greatest supporter. For the past three years, out of his own purse, he had supplied food and medicine for the hospital the sisters ran for Indian children. If the Abbess helped his daughter defy him, his beneficence might well evaporate.
    She reached out and lifted the girl’s chin. “Tell me the truth,” she demanded.
    “Please, Mother Maria,” Inez pleaded. “I must stay here. It is the only place I will be safe.”
    “Safe?” the Abbess said.