The Sisterhood Page 29

  “I knew I must establish my rightful place in this embattled household at once or the dragon on the veranda would make my life intolerable. After all, Tomas was master of the estate now, and as his bride, mother-to-be of his children, and mistress of the hacienda, I must make it clear that I was in charge and I would never be bullied. I raised my head as high as I could, and looked her haughtily straight in the eye—something I had noticed her daughters and even Tomas avoided. Then I looked around me and sniffed disdainfully, as if the hacienda had a bad smell. ‘The estate is smaller than I expected. Much smaller. And the family far less well-bred than I had been led to believe. I am disappointed.’ Holding her gaze, I held out my hand imperiously for Tomas to help me dismount. I strode up the veranda steps, back ramrod straight, staring coldly at her as I gave her a curtsy so perfunctory it was an insult. ‘Dona Maria Isabella Beltran de Vilar d’Ascension, at your service.’ Then I swept silently into the house ahead of her, head held high like the royal princess some believed me to be. This rude little performance left the three girls gasping, and silenced my mother-in-law. I think she expected me to cry and wring my hands and beg forgiveness. Señora Beltran and I now have a daily battle of wills but I usually win. Tomas is in awe of us both.”

  “And Marisol,” Sanchia exclaimed, “we will call you Marisol when we are together, not Dona Maria Isabella. You’re expecting a baby!”

  “Yes, even Tomas’s mother is pleased he will have a legitimate heir.” A shadow crossed Marisol’s face. Her expression changed fleetingly and I saw that something gives her pain and that she struggles against it. Her big emerald-and-diamond ring on her finger sparkled and we all leaned over to admire it.

  Marisol said that she would stay several days with us, that Tomas had business nearby. She returned the bows of several other wealthy women of her acquaintance also staying in the convent—evidently as the wife of Don Tomas Beltran she is someone to be bowed to.

  “I must tell you a story,” she whispered, turning back to us after her bowing. “The ladies over there have built at their own expense a special chapel in town for repentant fallen women. As you know, there are many brothels and prostitutes and concubines in the city but”—she giggled—“men here are notoriously generous, and fallen women often live very well. So”—she giggled even harder, and nodded in the direction of a group of finely dressed young women fanning themselves in a far corner—“those fallen ladies are reluctant to abandon their lifestyles permanently. They come to stay at the convent for the festivals or just to have a rest. None, however, will set foot in the new chapel, because it would be embarrassing for them to declare themselves fallen so publicly. So the new chapel stays empty.”

  We were all surprised to hear such easy talk of brothels and concubines, but Zarita looked unconcerned. “Yes, the men have many mistresses among the mestizas, and live openly with them as if they were married. The women have children and go about very finely dressed, even to church.” Zarita leaned over to tuck a stray lock of hair behind Pia’s ear and the two smiled at each other.

  I, too, had a great many things to tell Marisol, beginning with the fact that Sor Beatriz had had a daughter who was among the nuns who had founded the mission over thirty years before.

  “No!” Marisol exclaimed. “Do you suppose they sent her here to keep her existence a secret? I mean, a nun with a child? It must have been awkward for Sor Beatriz. I wonder who the father was.”

  And so we passed the next few days very pleasantly, gossiping in the courtyard between prayers and meals, speculating on who the father of Sor Beatriz’s child might have been, and wondering what sort of person Salome is. I told the others her story and said that I was determined to meet her. Finally Don Tomas sent a servant to say that he had completed his business and they must leave. In parting Marisol said she was rich enough and we must divide her dowry between us. She also promised to send the carriage soon so we could pay her a visit before the baby came. Mother was as happy as we to learn that Marisol’s kidnap ordeal had ended well, though she shook her head over Don Tomas’s scandalous behavior.

  CHAPTER 26

  From the Chronicle of Las Sors Santas de Jesus, by the pen of Esperanza, the Beltran Hacienda, July 1553

  Marisol kept her word. A servant brought an invitation to visit and Mother sent for a dressmaker because our gowns were shabby and ragged at the hems. The dressmaker, an impoverished Spanish widow, was to make us each three new gowns—one for morning, one for afternoons and visiting, and one for evening parties. We accompanied her to the market where she bargained hard with the merchants for fabrics and lace, and a shoemaker took the measure of our feet for new leather slippers. Mother said that her price was fair, though our new finery ate up an alarming amount of our dowry money. Mother herself purchased Chinese fans as gifts for us, saying all ladies carried them nowadays.

  Mother said that the Beltrans have a large circle of acquaintances among the local landowners, many of them single men.

  The Beltran carriage arrived, with two armed outriders and a maid to look after us. Our trunks with our new dresses and laces and fans were tied on the top. My trunk also contained this Chronicle. Though I should give it up to the convent, I cannot bring myself to part with it yet and dare not leave it for others to find in my absence, especially as the length of our visit is uncertain. Here people seem to be very casual about their visits, and Mother expects we will stay with the Beltrans for weeks. Pia and Zarita were sad to part, but Zarita assured Pia that divorces always took a long time and that she would still be at the convent when Pia returned. They embraced farewell, like two flowers kissing in the breeze.

  The Beltran hacienda is a four-day journey from the convent. We have been here for two weeks, and Mother was right, Marisol and Tomas have invited a number of men to call on one pretext or another. In the gloomy sala with its heavy furniture and holy images and crucifixes crowding every available space, we sit silently on display every afternoon, sipping sugar water, our eyes modestly cast down. The fine clock Tomas’s father brought from Spain at unimaginable expense ticks loudly in the background and keeps the wrong time. The men drink a fiery alcohol made of some local plant and talk among themselves, walking up and down the sala like prize cocks, looking us over haughtily, as if we were livestock.

  It is horrid!

  The men circle Pia like wasps around a honeycomb. Dona Luisa, Tomas’s mother, watches us like a hawk, and if we so much as speak to one of the men, purses her lips and complains that we are shameless hussies. Dona Luisa especially disapproves of Pia, possibly because Tomas’s eldest sister Rita is not only the same age as Pia, but is considerably plainer. Dona Luisa makes sure they do not sit next to one another on the settee when we have callers.

  Pia is genuinely indifferent to the men, although they write her poems and bring her flowers and languish pointedly in her presence looking sick with love. Marisol points out the advantages of this one or that one and tries to arouse some interest, but with no success. Pia misses Zarita.

  Sanchia has suddenly become quite pretty. She has grown tall for her age, and quite graceful, with a lovely complexion and dark eyes full of mischief. She looks much older than thirteen and does her best to flirt with Pia’s suitors. The child should never have been allowed a fan—she has found she can summon a man to her side in minutes simply by fluttering her eyelashes over the top. I am alarmed to see that they do not regard her as a child, and Tomas has been forced to remonstrate with several inflamed young rascals that Sanchia is not yet old enough to marry. This makes Sanchia very cross. She loves attention.

  Marisol has offered to have Sanchia live there. But Sanchia, much as she loves Marisol, does not wish to live where there is so little excitement. Especially in the same hacienda as watchful, censorious Dona Luisa. She wants to return to the convent with Pia and me and see what the future brings. She means she will see whom we marry and make her decision then.

  We had been with Marisol a month and should have gone sooner, but t
here was to be a ball at the regional governor’s home and all the local landowners for miles around were obliged to attend with their wives and daughters. Marisol was very large now, but overrode Dona Luisa’s objections and insisted on going to chaperone us. She would not hear of the two younger Beltran girls staying behind as their mother wished, either, much to their joy. A social outing was a rare treat for them.

  The day of the ball we rose very early to bathe and dress and Marisol unlocked her leather chests of jewelry and said we must all borrow what we liked. Tomas has given her a king’s ransom in jewels and we spent an entire morning playing with the glittering pile, trying pieces on and debating about what would suit our new dresses or match our eyes.

  There is a tall looking glass with a gilded frame in our room, and when we were dressed we took turns scrutinizing our reflections, amazed at our own and each other’s transformations. I am tall, like my father, but the seamstress was skillful and my new dress disguises my awkward height. I think it is very pretty—deep-blue silk with an underskirt of pale yellow edged in lace. My hair was braided and coiled round my head, with waxy white flowers that smelled heavenly, and a pearl-and-sapphire necklace and earrings grand enough for a princess. I picked up my fan and practiced furling, unfurling, half-furling it over the lower half of my face, leaving only my eyes visible over the top—this is how Sanchia does it. The girl in the looking glass staring back at me over her fan is not the least beata-like.

  By the time the eight of us were crowded into the carriage early that afternoon, even black-clad Dona Luisa could not dampen our spirits with her lecture about proper behavior that she kept up all the way to the governor’s.

  The journey seemed endless, but finally we arrived to a splendid, festive scene. There was a garden filled with tall sweet-smelling plants, a fountain, and torches everywhere. There was a group of musicians and a troupe of performers making a display of lively peasant dancing and singing. We followed Marisol and Dona Luisa inside to make our curtsies to the governor’s wife. The house blazed with candles, and servants in elaborate livery and bare feet handed around trays of delicious cordials. Around us the women were sparkling with jewelry. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. Sanchia’s eyes flashed as she flirted over her fan when she thought I wasn’t looking, and even Pia was laughing at a story a young man was telling her.

  When the ball began there were so few unmarried girls we were engaged for every dance and did not sit down once. Dona Luisa took a chair among a group of other dowagers close to the dance floor where they could keep a close watch on all the girls. Every time there was a break in the dancing, Dona Luisa grabbed poor Rita and hurried her off for a lecture.

  Later, after a splendid supper had been served at midnight, I was sitting alone waiting for Dona Luisa to return with Rita when a gentleman stopped and bowed and wished me good evening. I looked up. “Don Miguel!” I exclaimed. Don Miguel Aguilar—now that I knew whose son he was, I tried to discern a resemblance to Sor Beatriz in his face, but I could not. His native blood has shaped his features. He has heavy brows and piercing dark eyes, and his brown skin is set off by the whiteness of the ruff around his neck. He was dressed in black with many gold chains and looked very distinguished.

  I said that I understood we had him to thank for Marisol’s unusual marriage, that had he not sworn to drag an unwilling Don Tomas home for the betrothal arranged by Dona Luisa, Don Tomas would never have carried off Marisol the way he did. Don Miguel unbent and smiled a little, saying that courting in the colony was conducted in a different manner than in Spain. “Evidently,” I said, laughing, “but Marisol is very happy all the same.”

  Don Miguel is serious, rather intense and proud. I was surprised that he continued to sit by my side, but then he is very courteous. I was grateful to him for not leaving me to sit alone without my friends. I asked him to tell me more about the country and he grew quite passionate in telling me. It became clear, as the ladies said on our first evening in the country, that he resents Spanish treatment of the natives. He is very eloquent on the poor souls forced into the silver mines, slaves and peasants alike, and the massacres and looting by the Spanish. It is shocking to hear such stories, and he must have seen it in my expression because he fell silent.

  Then I said that Mother had written to his mother to ask if I might visit and pay my respects when her mourning was over, if that would not be too great an intrusion, because I had messages to deliver from the nuns in Spain. He said that he was sure she would be delighted to receive me. I wondered if he knew he was Sor Beatriz’s grandson, whether Salome had ever told him of the circumstances of her birth. Most of the fine Spanish ladies speak and act with exaggerated propriety, so perhaps Salome has said nothing.

  Then Dona Luisa interrupted us and thrust Rita toward Don Miguel, elbowing me out of the way. Don Miguel stood, bowed, murmured his compliments, and withdrew. Dona Luisa humpffed indignantly. “He should marry again,” she said, looking after Don Miguel’s retreating back. “Only half Inca, but his father was a prince. A good Spanish wife would soon put an end to his nonsense about the natives. You might have said something to make him notice you, Rita! Don’t stand about like a donkey! He was taking enough notice of Esperanza when she talked to him.”

  Poor Rita is completely under her mother’s thumb, at her beck and call day and night, and would willingly marry the devil himself if it would take her away from home. “Yes, Mama.” She sighed.

  I thought Rita and Don Miguel would be a most unfortunate combination. There is a sense of contained anger and power in Don Miguel that is somehow at one with this place, the vast mountains, the brightness of the light, the great plateau. He is fiercely proud of the fact that his father was a descendant of the Inca emperors, the sun gods on earth they called them. A heathen deity and a cruel one by all accounts. Giving sweet, inoffensive Rita to such a man would be sacrificing her, just as they say the Incas once sacrificed maidens.

  As the dancing began again Dona Luisa whisked Rita away as Pia hurried over to me with an alarmed look on her usually placid features. “Sanchia has disappeared,” Pia whispered. A cluster of young men hovered nearby, waiting to ask Pia to dance, gazing at her like a herd of lovesick llamas. She ignored them completely.

  “Sanchia was dancing, and while Dona Luisa was busy trying to get Rita a partner and not watching, Sanchia and her partner escaped onto the veranda. Now I cannot find her.”

  Pia and I edged away from the throng of adoring beaux to look for Sanchia. Perhaps she too had been kidnapped—a willing victim if ever there was one. God help her kidnapper! But at last we discovered her behind the stables with the musicians and their dancing girls. Her face was flushed and her skirts hitched up. She said she had been learning native songs and dances.

  Pia and I kept her between us for the rest of the night.

  It is September and we know we should return to the convent, but news has reached us of an outbreak of smallpox. Marisol wishes for our company and will not allow us to return until the danger is past. She is so large and round now she can barely move, and we have all felt the baby kicking vigorously. Tomas waits on her hand and foot, and even Dona Luisa grumbles more quietly. Rita is to be the baby’s godmother and Don Miguel to be godfather—Dona Luisa’s idea. She hopes it will bring them together.

  Marisol dreads the coming ordeal. She remembers her mother. Though I do not say so, I, too, think of my mother who died giving birth to me and feel frightened for my friend. Pia and I are saying a novena for Marisol.

  Life has grown very quiet on the hacienda as every hour we expect a sign the baby is coming. There are few visitors, so Sanchia has prevailed on Tomas to send for the musicians and the dancing girls she befriended to amuse us in the sala. They are installed in the servants’ quarters, to Dona Luisa’s annoyance—but Marisol enjoys the way they enliven our evenings after dinner, so she countermanded Dona Luisa’s order they leave. Sanchia now dances as well as any of the troupe, as she demonstrates at every opportuni
ty.

  Pia is anxious about Zarita. We get little news here save for the fact that the epidemic has been very bad and many have died.

  Marisol has been screaming for two days in her darkened room. I take my turn to sponge her face and hold her hands, until I cannot bear it any longer! Tomas paces to the stables and back, unable to be still for a moment. There are many children on the estate who are plainly his. How many times has he been responsible for this agony? I begin to hate Tomas. And all men. Dona Luisa says the natives and peasants do not feel pain in the way that high-bred Spanish women do. At mealtimes she regales us with her descriptions of childbirth—what Marisol suffers is nothing in comparison, she insists.

  Marisol has a son and a daughter, both healthy. Deo gratias! She, however, was frighteningly white and weak, bleeding heavily, and feverish after the birth. Nothing I could remember from the medical texts was efficacious and I was in despair until one of the native women servants pushed her way into the room with a poultice and an herbal drink that stank horribly, and refused to move from Marisol’s side to make sure Marisol drank a little throughout the day. Otherwise I am sure she would have died. Dona Luisa has kept a priest at the ready, for baptism and last rites. Tomas has dark circles under his eyes and looks much older suddenly. The babies have been christened Marianna and Teo Jesus. When Dona Luisa told Marisol what names she had chosen for them, Marisol only opened her eyes for a second and closed them again, too weak to argue.