Hunger's Brides (113 page)

And yet with every word it had gotten worse. Dishes still cradled against her side, she stood, head bowed, hair veiling her face. Her shoulders heaved—she set down the dishes violently. The bowl of salad
tipped onto its side.“You wouldn't defend yourself from him!” Her hands shot up—the long blunt fingers splayed, tendons standing out in the strong wrists.“Someone had to.”

The gesture was of imprecation or pleading, but it was only when I said his name that she would look up at me.

“Who—
Santa Cruz
…? 'Tonia, what is it? Why are you crying?” I got up and rounded the table to her side. I took her hands, folded the angry fingers up against her palms. “Toñita, look at me. Tell me …” I smoothed back her hair, with a fingertip touched the fine scar at her cheek, the damp tip of her nose, raised her chin. Her eyes brimmed.

“I sent it.”

“Sent what? What did you send?” But already I knew … I was remembering her in the locutory—turning from the clavichord the day of his last visit as the thought had flickered through my mind that she'd been crying.

“The Seraphina letter, to Santa Cruz.”

Our letter—did she have any idea what she'd done? There was much more she tried to tell me. No, Antonia, not now. I had never asked to know about her and the Bishop. I already knew where she had come from. Of course there was more, Antonia, there was always more. I did not need to hear it. I had chosen to trust her—
chosen
. I would not live my life racked with suspicions. Their gossip, their stories, their envies, I did not hear them. I did not listen. No, Antonia, I am too angry to hear it tonight—it was cruel but I would not give her the relief of confessing it. I do not care right now to hear what he has done to you—do you have any idea what you've done to
me?
If you hate him so, if he has done so little for you that you should find yourself trapped in here with me, then write your own letters—don't send him
ours
—or go to Puebla yourself and tell him how you feel, for you are not nearly so trapped in here as I.

No, Antonia. I will ask you when I am ready. Not before. Just now, I do not have time to help you with your conscience.

Now there really was work to do. Now let Santa Cruz have my answer. And in it let the Inquisition know I would not go without a struggle. Let them take their time, make their preparations, polish their arguments, for they would have such a fight.

And tell the shades of your fathers the one who sent you was a woman
.

R
EPLY TO
S
ISTER
P
HILOTHEA
†

My most illustrious señora, dear lady:

It has not been my will, my poor health, or my justifiable apprehension that for so many days delayed my response. How could I write, considering that at my very first step my clumsy pen encountered two obstructions in its path? The first (and, for me, the most uncompromising) is to know how to reply to your most learned, most prudent, most holy, and most loving letter…. The second obstruction is to know how to express my appreciation for a favour as unexpected as extreme, for having my scribblings printed, a gift so immeasurable as to surpass my most ambitious aspiration, my most fervent desire, which even as a person of reason never entered my thoughts….

This is not pretended modesty, lady, but the simplest truth issuing from the depths of my heart, that when the letter which with propriety you called
Atenagórica
reached my hands, in print, I burst into tears of confusion (withal, that tears do not come easily to me)….

I cast about for some manner by which I might flee the difficulty of a reply, and was sorely tempted to take refuge in silence. But as silence is a negative thing, though it explains a great deal through the very stress of not explaining, we must assign some meaning to it that we may understand what the silence is intended to say, for if not, silence will say nothing …

And thus, based on the suppostion that I speak under the safe-conduct of your favour, and with the assurance of your benignity and with the knowledge that like a second Ahasuerus you have offered to me to kiss the top of the golden sceptre of your affection as a sign conceding to me your benevolent licence to speak and offer judgements in your most exalted presence, I say to you that I have taken to heart your most holy admonition that I apply myself to the study of the Sacred Books … I confess that many times this fear has plucked my pen from my hand … which obstacle did not impinge upon profane matters, for a heresy against art is not punished by the Holy Office but by the judicious with derision, and by critics with censure…. I wish no quarrel with the Holy Office, for I am ignorant, and I tremble that I may
express some proposition that will cause offense or twist the true meaning of some scripture….

I have prayed that He dim the light of my reason, leaving only that which is needed to keep His Law, for there are those who would say that all else is unwanted in a woman … I deemed convent life the least unsuitable and the most honourable I could elect if I were to ensure my salvation. I believed I was fleeing from myself, but—wretch that I am!—I brought with me my worst enemy, my inclination, which I do not know whether to consider a gift or a punishment from Heaven…. it seeming necessary to me, in order to scale those heights, to climb the steps of the human sciences and arts for how could one undertake the study of the Queen of the Sciences if first one had not come to know her servants? How without Geometry, could one measure the Holy Arc of the Covenant and the Holy City of Jerusalem, whose mysterious measures are foursquare in all their dimensions, as well as the miraculous proportions of all their parts? … And without being an expert in Music, how could one understand the exquisite precision of the musical proportions that grace so many Scriptures, particularly those in which Abraham beseeches God in defence of the Cities, asking whether He would spare the place, were there but fifty just men therein; and then Abraham reduced that number to five less than fifty, forty-five, which is a ninth, and is as Mi to Re; then to forty, which is a tone, and is as Re to Mi; from forty to thirty, which is a diatessaron, the interval of the perfect fourth; from thirty to twenty, which is a perfect fifth, and from twenty to ten, which is the octave, the diapason….

In this practice one may recognize the strength of my inclination…. What have I not gone through to hold out against this? Strange sort of martyrdom, in which I was both the martyr and my own executioner.

Often on the crest of temples are placed as adornment figures of the winds and of fame, and to defend them from the birds, they are covered with iron barbs … the figure thus elevated cannot avoid becoming the target of those barbs; there on high is found the animosity of the air, on high, the ferocity of the elements, on high is unleashed the anger of the thunderbolt, on high stands the target for slings and arrows. Let the head that is a treasure-house of wisdom expect no crowning other than
thorns…. Seeing so many varieties of crown, I was uncertain what kind Christ's was. I think it must have been obsidional, which (as you, my Lady, know) was the most honoured and was so called from
obsidio
, which means siege…. The feat of Christ was to make the Prince of Darkness lift his siege, which had the whole world encircled….

I confess that I am far removed from wisdom's confines and that I have wished to pursue it, though
a longe
. But the sole result has been to draw me closer to the flames of persecution, the crucible of torture, and this has even gone so far as a formal request that study be forbidden me …
¹²

[And yet] I find a most wise Queen of Saba, so learned that she dares to challenge with hard questions the wisdom of the greatest of all wise men, without being reprimanded for doing so … I see many illustrious women; some blessed with the gift of prophecy, like Abigail; others of persuasion, like Esther; others with pity, like Rahab …

If I again turn to the Gentiles, the first I encounter are the Sibyls, those women chosen by God to prophesy the principal mysteries of our Faith, and with learned and elegant verses that surpass admiration … I see the daughter of the divine Tiresias, more learned than her father. An Hypatia, who taught astrology, and read many years in Alexandria … I find the Egyptian Catherine, studying and influencing the wisdom of all the wise men of Egypt …

Then if I turn my eyes to the oft-chastized faculty of making verses—which is in me so natural that I must discipline myself that even this letter not be written in that form—I might cite those lines,
All I wished to express took the form of verse
. And seeing that so many condemn and criticize this ability, I have conscientiously sought to find what harm may be in it, and I have not found it, but, rather, I see verse acclaimed in the mouths of the Sibyls, sanctified in the pens of the Prophets, especially King David…. The greater part of the Holy Books are in metre, as in the Book of Moses; and those of Job … are in heroic verse. Solomon wrote the Canticle of Canticles in verse; and Jeremiah his
Lamentations…
.

And if the evil is attributed to the fact that a woman employs them … what then is the evil in my being a woman? I confess openly my own baseness and meanness, but I judge that no couplet of mine has been
deemed indecent. Furthermore, I have never written of my own will, but under the pleas and injunctions of others … That letter, lady, which you so greatly honoured … I believe that had I foreseen the blessed destiny to which it was fated—for like a second Moses I had set it adrift, naked, on the waters of the Nile of silence, where you, a princess, found and cherished it—I believe, I reiterate, that had I known, the very hands of which it was born would have drowned it … for as fate cast it before your doors, so exposed, so orphaned, that it fell to you even to give it a name, I must lament that among other deformities it also bears the blemish of haste … If I ever write again, I shall as ever direct my scribblings towards the haven of your most holy feet and the certainty of your most holy correction, for I have no other jewel with which to pay you …

B
y spring, the fears of winter had faded, yet the atmosphere had scarcely changed—the winds might change from excitement to anxiety to giddy folly, but unrest and shifting alliances had become our constants. It felt as if we might wake any day to a new state where stones would rise up and floating bodies fall. One had only to glance away for the kettle to come to a boil.
¹³

She should not have sent our Seraphina letter, but it had taken Antonia to rouse me if even a little from my latest bout of melancholic humours. In fanning sparks Antonia had struck, I found the flame flickered up and fed itself a while—the letter ran to over fifty pages, which I had only just sent off when Carlos at last published his panegyric on the Spanish naval victory over French perfidy and piracy—a testament writ on water to Spanish valour and overwhelming numerical superiority. To thank me for my verses of dedication the Viceroy came in person. Our relations were entering, it seemed, an unusually cordial phase, even as mine with his wife had decidedly cooled. The Count de Galve left his guard to take up positions in the street and came in without attendants, a small man under a small hat on a massive periwig, which only made him seem all the younger, more forlorn. Not without humour, he praised the lines inspired by our weather, and was interested to hear me confirm that the cloud serpent of the verse took its source from Mixcoatl, FeatherSerpent's father.

The rain had not stopped since the naval battle, nor indeed at any time during the dry season. It been raining for ten months. And in the Viceroy's face the strain showed. He'd acquired the habit of gnawing at the inside
of his cheek, and by his winces I gathered it had become cankerous. The flooding in the outlying neighbourhoods was grave enough that Carlos had agreed to lend a hand designing new diversion schemes, though he knew the risk as well as anyone, a risk he had made clear to the Viceroy. Floods in our valley and the failures to control them had been ruining careers for as long as anyone here could remember. Corruption scandals, bankruptcies, colossal earthworks of shifting blame and dirt. Each viceroy at his inauguration was beseeched in verse, implored in speeches to please deliver us, as each year the lake shrank a little and yet the floods grew worse—the waters sluicing swiftly down denuded stretches of mountainside. This year was already the worst since '29, and the wet season had scarcely started.

Then a new danger. During the dredging operations, the men working under Carlos had discovered in the foul ooze at the bottom of the canals thousands upon thousands of small clay dolls in European dress, men and women in various postures of torment—pierced by lances, cleft at throat and chest. Though there was no saying how or when these effigies had found their way into the canals, Carlos had promptly warned the Viceroy that an Indian uprising might be imminent, thus dredging up the oldest fears of our colony.

The blight had continued its spread through the wheat. Bread prices had doubled for loaves halved in size. If the same were ever to happen with corn … But the growers did not even want to sell at the official price, which the officials had been rightly afraid to let rise. And yet that he, the Viceroy, was blamed for the onset of the rains seemed the height of injustice, was it not? A king's wedding was an occasion to be celebrated! Even the Church raised no objection for a year. And yes, Excellency, the Countess's parties were said to be stunning. The longer the Count de Galve stayed in the locutory, the more it seemed we sat together as two people who no longer knew who our friends were.