Hunger's Brides (111 page)

I could keep Baron Crisafi no longer.

I hoped he might come back, and gave a little wave as I stood at the grille, which was as close as I might come to seeing him out.

The fourth of October, 1683, was among the greatest days of my life, but also of the Archbishop's.
¹⁰
At the time I did not give much thought to this, but without a doubt he
chose
that day, knowing perfectly well….

The city had been awaiting the new Archbishop's entry from Michoacan for weeks. The speculations were endless as to the reasons for the delay. His selection had been mysterious enough, for Bishop Santa Cruz's election had already been announced. But now all the talk was of my
Trials of a Noble House
, an entire festival authored exclusively by me. María Luisa and I had been rehearsing the actors for weeks here in the courtyard outside the locutory. A professional theatre company within the walls of a convent—truly a testament to María Luisa's influence, as actresses are known to be prostitutes and actors thought to be men.

The Archbishop chose Monday, October 4th. On short notice the cathedral chapter threw together an uninspired triumphal arch to celebrate his entry. A solemn Mass of reception was celebrated in the cathedral. A stirring
Te Deum
was sung. It had all been quite nice, no doubt.

My festival ran for hours, an entire evening of festivities, well past midnight, and dances until dawn. A
loa
to begin,
sainetes after
each act, and another play within a play to conclude. Usually these are all written by different authors; all were written by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor. Monday, October the fourth, 1683.

Trials of a Noble House
. He would have died rather than come, I would have given ten years of my life to be there. Perhaps, in some way, I had.

Gutiérrez did not come until Thursday morning. From Sunday to Thursday it snowed. I could not remember five consecutive days of snow down in the valley. As he entered the locutory the enormous capuchon of the Augustinian habit was drawn up, obscuring his face. It was the cold, I knew, but I could not help thinking he did not want to be seen entering. The hem of his habit was sugared in snow, even the long black cincture that hung at ankle-height was white-tipped, like a tail. He shrugged back the hood. His face was ruddy with the chill. I remembered that his mother was Flemish and, as I recalled, a Lutheran.

He was sorry to have been so long. It was a busy time at the Holy Office. He said this as only Gutiérrez could, the tone light. I apologized for my pique in the locutory last week. He answered that I was holding up better than most.

Today the novices were hopeless, dropping things in the back, hands trembling as they set down cups of hot spiced chocolate for us. Again I told myself it was the cold. And again there were no platters of convent delicacies for our guest. The kitchen says no, Tomasina whispered, wide-eyed. They won't say why.

I asked Gutiérrez if he thought Xavier Palavicino was doing someone else's bidding. My defender was of course a learned fool, bent on showing us how much he knew. But did he not perhaps know too much? How many people knew of the carols for Saint Catherine—was it not conceivable that Palavicino was acting in concert with Bishop Santa Cruz?

“Well if he is,” Gutiérrez ventured, “he should look to himself.” He looked down gratefully at the cup of chocolate warming his hands, bent his head to sip.

“But then,” I added, though not quite believing it, “perhaps everyone's forgotten the sermon already—with the vanished Viscount and the murdered treasury agent to gossip about.”

He looked up at me sharply. “Hardly. Since one of the last places either was seen was here in the chapel on Friday.”

“The treasury man was
here?”

“As was a convicted seditionist called Samuel, also a foreigner, I believe. And who, like the Viscount, has also disappeared. It
would
have been a convenient place to exchange messages.”

“But were they seen together?”

“People have seen all manner of things—including horns on the Frenchman and a halo on the poor fellow from the treasury.” Gutiérrez scratched speculatively at the scruff of his beard. “Such rumours are sometimes of some use to us, but I would not want to be the secular authorities trying to find out what actually happened.”

It had been two months, and I had never congratulated him on his promotion. Examining Magistrate. Something of a change from correcting and censoring texts. Was it more awkward for him to come here? No, not so far. Lowering my voice I asked if he had ever heard of any arrangements to intercept my mail. He looked startled that I would ask such a thing of him so baldly. Before answering he glanced over at Antonia and the novices.

“No, but I'll look into it,” he said quietly. “You know I can't tell you what I learn….”

“Of course not.”

“But you would feel better if I knew.”

“Much.”

“You've been careful.”

“About doctrine, yes, careful enough. About certain personages, I'm not so sure. If Núñez, for example, has intercepted certain letters and shown them to Santa Cruz …”

“I see. As I said, I can't tell you what I learn. But I can let you know
when
I know—if and when.”

“Gracias
, Gutiérrez. Don't take too many risks. San Jerónimo can hardly be considered neutral ground at the Holy Office these days.”

“No, Sor Juana,” he said, “but then it never was.”

He set down his empty cup, and added after a moment that if I could think of anything to do to help myself, I should do it. It came out a little coldly, but he was anxious to be going. There was some checking he needed to do. For me but also for himself, I saw. He did not credit the poisoning story. The Archbishop had been crying poison for ten years. But to the possibility that I had raised—that the Archbishop's madness might be a device of some kind—this, Gutiérrez was giving some sober thought. It was not often I saw that insouciance falter. I could only imagine how many of his own actions he was re-examining in this light. And he confessed now that one thing had been bothering him for weeks: the rift one might have expected between Núñez and the
Archbishop over the Vieyra affair … there was as yet no sign that it had opened.

He promised to return soon. The last time he promised this he was gone six weeks.

If I could think of anything to do to help myself …

Yes, and if Bishop Santa Cruz was still thinking of swooping in as my Redeemer, he should swoop very soon.

Antonia, who had doubtless heard every word Gutiérrez said, insisted we finish our Seraphina letter and send it to Santa Cruz. I did not have the heart to tell her the letter was ridiculous.

Satirical verses are like wolves: once loosed they close straight on the weakest, fattest offering. Whoever the second soldier proved to be, the first still stood every chance of having been His Grace. If in my letter on the Vieyra sermon I had struck the Archbishop a glancing blow, the Seraphina letter was making straight for His Grace's throat….

Worse, I was no longer at all sure who the second Soldier was. It had startled me to hear Palavicino protesting that he was not the Soldier. Not once had it occurred to me that people could suppose it was anyone but Núñez. The thing was so obvious—Sapphic hymns—the phrase was his; the charges of heresy, especially that of Arian, were precisely those Nunez had threatened me with. It had to be him. Or someone wishing to sound like him….

But who could have managed this? Master Examiner Dorantes could.

Dorantes did not come to Palavicino's sermon, did not want to seem to be involved, though this had not stopped him offering to help Cantor de Ribera—what, rewrite,
repair?
—my lyrics on Saint Peter.

Why had no rift appeared between Núñez and the Archbishop? Could the second Soldier have been Dorantes, doing Santa Cruz's bidding? But then what if Núñez had never been involved? Just listen to me—such contortions to believe Núñez was not the one. Why could I not bring myself to think the worst of him? Why after all these years, after everything that had come between us, had I not rid myself of my affection for him?
Father Antonio Núñez de Miranda was not my father
.

I had been walking in the snow.

When Gutiérrez left, I set out for the kitchen to see Sor Vanessa and Concepción, who were among my few friends within these walls. That
there were no platters of
delicias
today for my guests was a painful turn, and yet I found myself stopped outside, standing in the lightly falling snow. I looked back.

I'd come out along the high temple wall, the cool stone slots we confess through partly snowed in. Parting from the wall, tracks wound through the orchard and ended with me, here in the midst of the winter growing season. After a moment I added to them, wending through the branchless lances of papaya trees, green goads in massy cluster at the tips—a line of maces groaning beneath the extra weight of moistened snow. I ducked in among the pomegranates and apples, ruddy-cheeked amidst the little hods and barrows of snowy leaves … in through branches broken where not bowed or bent to their stays like Bedouin tents. A finch startled ahead of me and, catapulting into the air, freed the softly nodding bough—such glory for that tiny weight, such masses to dislodge … launched not up but down.

There was such a stillness out here now, and for a moment, I was not sure how long … it had come inside. A cool, a quiet in my mind. Thoughts falling to rest, not memories quite, but everywhere falling, the presence of what was past piling up in drifts…. The quiet in the orchards after snow in Panoayan.

As I came in through the refectory it seemed I had quite forgotten my grievances. I did not come to visit the mistresses of the kitchens often enough. Vanessa, descended from the aristocracy of Navarre, small-boned, elegant. Concepción, an Indian servant old enough to be her mother, round and bent. And yet they were very much a couple, a partnership in here. It was like another country, indeed one in which Spanish was rarely used, since it would have returned to Sor Vanessa the very advantage she had chosen to surrender. What speaking they needed to do, Vanessa did in the Nahuatl she had learned, and Concepción in her few set phrases and words for food in Basque.