City of Silver by Annamaria Alfieri Read Free Book Online

Spanish blood, and it pained him that he was so proud of it.
    “The King himself has decreed that the Indians must not be enslaved. Yet we treat them no better than pack animals. Doña Tovar and I were just speaking about the death of one that will in all likelihood go unpunished, no matter how hard I try to help his widow.” The rock in his stomach pressed on his guts. He had again let her draw him into this same old argument.
    “You will try to get justice for him? My dear padre, you might as well try to get justice for a mule that dies at the treadmill in the Mint.” The old nun’s face glowed with the thrill of verbal battle.
    “The Indians are human. The Vatican established that over a hundred years ago,” he said with all priestly sanctimony. “There are those who believe that the natural state in which our countrymen found the Indians was life as God intended it to be.”
    She gave him a look of genuine shock. “Father! That they should live without the Holy Faith? If they are human, I am sure God did not intend that. Besides, you yourself have reminded me that there was a great civilization here: weavers, potters, builders of massive buildings. Not simple men living innature.” The corners of her mouth curled again in that smug smile.
    He refused to acknowledge her triumph. She could best him in these little debates, but she was wrong in her heart. He would give her extra penance at her next confession. He forced away the thought as petty and sinful in itself. Pride and vengeance in one conversation. How did this holy old woman bring out the worst in him?
    He turned to the Abbess. “The proclamation the Alcalde read did not tell the whole story.”
    “What more is there?” The Abbess’s brown eyes showed more fear than curiosity. Hidden information always meant danger in the Byzantine world of the colonial government.
    He lowered his chin and whispered, “The Grand Inquisitor is coming, too. There will be an investigation into more than just the currency.” DaTriesta, the local Commissioner of the Inquisition, had bragged to him about it, though it was supposed to be a secret.
    Sor Olga folded her thin, reptilian hands in an attitude of prayer. “May God speed their holy work. What would be the point of controlling the purity of our coins if we did not also control the purity of souls?”
    The fear in the Abbess’s eyes turned to annoyance. “Reforms are sorely needed, but we are unlikely to get the ones we most desire.”
    He knew she referred to the Bishop and his money-grubbing practices. “Be very careful, Mother Abbess,” he said. “The Bishop feigns carelessness, but he is a formidable enemy. And you have something he wants.”
    “Inez.”
    “More than the return of the girl herself, I think he wants to be seen to have you in his command.”
    The Abbess’s eyes flitted sideways toward her companion and back to him. A warning not to be so open in Sor Olga’spresence. “He is the Bishop,” the Abbess said lightly. “He is infinitely more powerful than I.”
    The sisters went off then, toward the Bishop’s door, without telling the padre what Morada had written to the Abbess.
    MARIA SANTA HILDA entered the Bishop’s drawing room just as his Dutch clock chimed the quarter hour. She shuddered to find the local Commissioner of the Inquisition in the room. The combination of the proud and opulent Bishop and the pious and cruel DaTriesta boded no good for her. Apprehension stiffened her neck. She and Sor Olga crossed the room to kiss the Bishop’s ring. His fleshy fingers were warm. “Good morning, my lord.” In a city where the air was so thin as to be hardly breathable, the atmosphere in this sitting room was oppressively heavy.
    “God be with you, my daughters,” the Bishop said. “Please forgive me if I come right to the point. I have to be in the cathedral in a few moments to say the Holy Thursday Mass. I am afraid I must order you, in no uncertain terms, to return Inez de la