City of Silver by Annamaria Alfieri Page A

convent. Evidently, she had told her father that the priest urged her to live her life at the highest level, but Padre Junipero had not urged Inez into the convent. In fact, it had never occurred to him that she would contemplate such a move. He had been as surprised as anyone when the girl had presented herself there. In fact, Inez had never discussed her intentions with him, not even in confession. Until the Abbess told him Inez was in the convent, he would have doubted the girl’s commitment to a spiritual life. He had sensed a wrestling within Inez’s soul. He never succeeded in learning what it was she struggled with, but whatever it was, she was settling it now before the Almighty.
    Had the girl perhaps taken her own life? Sor Olga was right—Inez’s note could be interpreted either way. But that seemed impossible. The taboo against such an act was so strong. Besides, when she had confessed after entering Los Milagros, she had told him that she wanted to repent for the sins of the world. Her eyes were clear and earnest, her countenance luminous with the peace of true contrition. She would never have committed the ultimate sin. The passion of her dedication burned away any doubt.
    “Is there more you want to tell Our Lord?” he had asked her in that last confession.
    He had seen her shy smile in the dim light of the confessional. “Not if you must hear it, too, Padre.”
    “The impression you make on God’s poor servant is nothing. What is important is the impression you make on Him. Make a good confession, my child.”
    “Give me penance as if I had committed the worst sin you can think of,” she had said. “Perhaps the grace I receive from it will give me the courage to tell you everything the next time.”
    He had given her passages from the scriptures to contemplate and admonished her to mortify her flesh as was seemlyduring the holy season of Lent. He had felt safe in the knowledge that she was intelligent and serious. Whatever troubled her would come out, and he would help her rid her soul of it. Now, it was too late. He had failed her in the most important task she had asked of anyone.
    By the time he reached the Casa de la Morada at the angle of the Calle Linares and the Calle de la Paz, his pace had slowed to a funeral march.
    A man leaving the Alcalde’s house greeted him, and distraught as he was, the priest responded without recognition until the man had mounted his mule and ridden off. Only then did Padre Junipero realize it had been Domingo Barco, the mayordomo of Tovar’s refinery. Strange that he was at Morada’s. Morada and Beatriz’s father were sworn enemies. And Barco was a Mestizo—a group Morada was well-known to despise.
    The priest approached the Alcalde’s enormous wooden door. It was studded with bronze nails and framed in stone carved with rosettes and garlands, with a coat of arms on the lintel. Though Morada lacked noble blood, like many of his rich compatriots in this city, he had invented this insignia over his portal to give an aristocratic air to the house. In truth, an ancient coat of arms was the only thing the Alcalde’s lordly mansion lacked.
    Nothing grew or was manufactured in Potosí. The city produced only silver, but for a hundred years it had done so in such quantities that all other products flowed in, making its market the best supplied in the Americas. Stuffs arrived by mule and llama pack either through Lima as the law allowed or smuggled through the back door from the Atlantic ports in Brazil or Buenos Aires. Men like Morada, who had the cleverness to bring in goods, earned a return of as much as a thousand percent and made themselves richer even than the miners. It would be easy to condemn such a man for his well-known vanity, but the priest who entered under the red shield, which bore a Maltese cross and twolions, held nothing but pity for the coming grief of the rich commoner who pretended to nobility.
    Immediately inside was a torchlit entrance patio,