The Maleficio Chronicles

By Clint Westgard

Luisa is more than she appears. Rumor and mystery surround her. And strange events seem to follow wherever she goes. The Maleficio Chronicles is her 'true' confession, though her truth, as with so many things, is never quite what it seems.

Born in Lima, City of Kings, in the 16th century to a noble family, Luisa is marked as different from the beginning. Servants avoid her, whispering behind her back, while her father so fears her true nature that he banishes her to a convent. There she falls under the suspicion of the Inquisition and decides to flee.

Disguised as a man, she embarks on a series of adventures, dueling, carousing, and gambling her way across colonial Peru. But everything changes when a stranger recognizes her for what she truly is, and soon she finds herself fighting for her very survival.

In a world where she will always stand apart, Luisa undergoes a strange journey that will take her from from the stolen splendor of Lima to the fading remnants of the Incan Empire, and to all the towns and villages being built in its place. The Maleficio Chronicles is about the stories we tell about ourselves, the lives we construct from those stories, and the price of the lies at the heart of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Quarter Books
• Release date: Jan 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781928035015

Clint Westgard

Clint Westgard is the author of The Shadow Men Trilogy and the science fiction epic The Sojourner Cycle, the first volume of which, The Forgotten, was published in 2015. In addition, he has published a work of historical fantasy set in colonial Peru, The Masks of Honor, and a retelling of the Minotaur legend, The Trials of the Minotaur. Clint Westgard lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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THE MALEFICIO CHRONICLES

CLINT WESTGARD

The Maleficio Chronicles

Published by Lost Quarter Books

December, 2013

The Maleficio Chronicles by Clint Westgard is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.  

ISBN: 978-1-928035-01-5

Cover image from Marriage of Martin de Loyola to Princess Dona Beatriz and Don Juan Borja to Princess Lorenza, 1718.

For Cataline de Erauso, for the inspiration.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE MALEFICIO CHRONICLES

AUTHOR'S NOTE

MALEFICIO IN THE CLOISTER

THE ACCURSED NECROPOLIS

CITY OF THE VANISHED

A MAIDEN'S HONOR

THE EDICT OF SUPERSTITION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY CLINT WESTGARD

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The discovery of the strange record that follows is one of happenstance, as always seems to be the case in such matters. It was some years ago now, back in my days as a graduate student, that I passed a summer researching my dissertation at the Archivo General de la Nación in Lima. The moment was actually one of personal crisis for me, as I had begun to question the very path I had chosen. The completion of my dissertation, some trifling matter on the Inquisition in Peru, had become an insurmountable burden to me, the subject only becoming staler the further I burrowed in. Making matters worse, I knew I had nothing original to say; I would simply be echoing, with a few minor tweaks here and there, the consensus established in all the books I had read on the period.

At the end of that summer I would abandon my studies, not returning to my university that fall and embarking on a journey, the details of which are irrelevant to the matter at hand. To ensure that I had left the land razed and well salted over, I did not inform anyone at my institution of my plans. I simply, as far as they were concerned, disappeared. Readers who follow the story below will perhaps understand where I got my idea from, though at the time I had no sense of the author’s influence over me.

I discovered the record mixed in with some of the regular court documents of the Inquisition, accusations of heresy and witchcraft and the like. Those familiar with the institution will no doubt realize this is a singular document. In the brief period of my research I cannot recall coming across anything similar. It is a confession of sorts, though it does not seem to be associated with any case that I could find and has the form of more a personal correspondence. Based on the year the narrator gives for her birth, and some of the other incidental things she mentions, I would place the main events in the record as taking place beginning in 1600 or 1601 in colonial Lima.

A few notes on the historical context follow for those who are unfamiliar with the period in question. The conquest of Peru by Pizarro and his men took place beginning in 1532. Lima, the City of Kings, was founded in 1535. Though the Spanish Crown established the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1542, their control of the territory was tenuous, with the remnants of the Incan empire in a state of revolt for decades. Their authority over even the Spaniards who immigrated to the new colony was nominal, as thousands sought to make their fortunes by any means necessary, while those who had succeeded in that enterprise attempted to transform their humble beginnings into a noble lineage. Into such a family our narrator was born.

MALEFICIO IN THE CLOISTER

I HARDLY KNOW WHERE to begin in a task such as this. I have not written much since my youth in the convent, although then I flattered myself with thinking I was quite skilled at the practice. There was some writing when I was in the employ of Don Tadeo, but it was not of this kind. I have never been interested in stories—beginnings and middles—for one has to arrive at an end from which to gain a vantage point to scan the whole proceedings. I am not the kind to look back or dwell on past moments and their significance. That sort of thing is always changing anyway; the morning has a different hue come evening.

So it is a foreign thing I am doing here, and I beg your forgiveness should the telling go poorly. But you have insisted and I shall comply. I owe you that much anyway. Owe you that and so much more, but these inadequate phrases shall have to suffice. Perhaps you can understand something of this burden that shadows my every step.

I was born into a family of some standing, in the year of Our Lord 1585 in Lima, whose name I will not mention, for their honor will have suffered enough from my various transgressions. We had a large estate in one of the finer neighborhoods of that fair city, surrounded by towering walls that sheltered us from any prying eyes. Those walls delineated the universe of my childhood, for I rarely left the estate, and my only time out of doors was spent in the crafted and manicured gardens of the estate grounds.

My childhood was one of shadow and darkness. The sunlight gave my mother severe headaches and she spent most her days in bed. The windows in her wing of the estate had to be shuttered and covered with blinds in case she should happen to emerge, leaving most of the house off-limits to her. I was her only child and, with no real friends or companions among the rest of the household, I spent most of my days near her quarters in the often vain hope that she would be well enough to invite me into her chambers. There I would listen as she recounted tales of our family’s remarkable history.

My father I remember as a distant, pained figure who rarely strayed to my mother’s rooms. I cannot recall more than three words that he said to me directly. My very presence seemed to wound him. He had two other daughters, both older than I, whom the servants and my cousins doted on. Me they avoided, whispering to each other when I would pass them in the hall.

One of my clearest memories of that time is of a conversation I managed to overhear in my father’s quarters. I cannot call to mind how I came to be there, hidden in the cove beneath his writing desk and behind the desk’s chair—no doubt I was in the midst of some childish game, for I was no more than ten—but there I was as two of the house servants stole an embrace and then shared a confidence.

That woman is a seductress. She has used sorcery on the Don. This from the woman, a scullery girl and a mulata, who should not have been in my father’s quarters, though the same could have been said of me.

Yes, she has clearly done evil to him with her spells. This was one of my father’s servants, an Indian boy.

And that child is of the same kind. Those words have never left me; they come to my thoughts unbidden, in those moments when I am unguarded from drink or despair. That was the first I became aware I was different from others in some fundamental way and that this was the reason for the unkindness, the whispers and the evil glares. How they feared me! Their hatred gave me strength that still carries me through my days, even as my steps have grown heavier with each year.

Mother was never long for this world, so it seemed to me. I have been told she was once one of Lima’s most beautiful women, but she had faded from that glory by the time I can remember her. Her skin was always a spectral shade, her breathing labored and her eyes unfocused. In her last year of life she was rarely coherent, subsiding often into a fever-like state where she would rave about those in San Sebastién, who had conspired against her and condemned her to this exile. She told me, in one of her final lucid moments before she succumbed to the pox that swept through Lima that winter, how sorry she was that she would not have more time with me. Though I was young, I understood what her meaning was.

There was so much I was going to teach you, she told me. So much you needed to learn. The world will be difficult for you. It was for me. That is our lot. I only hope you do more than I have with what you have been given.

I do not know if I have succeeded in this regard. My life has been a series of wrong turns, each leading me further astray. Who knows what the future offers, though I fear you will have more to say in that regard than I. Perhaps that is for the best, given all I have done.

I fear my thoughts have overwhelmed me, this pen, so burdensome; it has dragged my spirit down to a step before damnation. What a punishment you have devised for me! You would say it is no such thing, that it is for my and your edification. I have not thought of these times in many years. They were not kind to me, though few times have been, as you shall see. Onward.

Following my mother’s death I was sent to pass the remainder of my days in Convent of La Encarnación. I was eleven or twelve perhaps, and my father had long determined that I was not suitable material for marriage. His family name was at stake. I would have been sent to a monastery earlier, I am certain, had my mother not opposed it. I was her only true companion in those last years. With her gone there was nothing left for me in that home and there had been so little happiness, even when she was alive, that I went to the convent gladly. Our family was important enough that my dowry was easily paid for and I was ensconced as a novice in its enclosure.

But I should say something of the convent itself before I continue with my tale, for I know from our discussions that these things hold some interest for you. La Encarnación, as you no doubt know, was one of the oldest monasteries in the City of Kings, and it was situated to the east of the Plaza de Armas and the government buildings, near the Rimac River. As with all convents, it had the look of a fortress to it, with stout and resolute walls surrounding all except the church itself. The only windows to be seen were in the church, and these were stained with images of the apostles so that no one could see in or out. The cloister within held our gardens, where herbs and some vegetables were grown. The buildings around the cloister were vast, all interconnected, so that it sometimes seemed, in those early days when I still lost my way, as though they consisted of no more than series of passages leading one into the other. Because of my family’s wealth and importance in the city I was given one of the larger cells. It covered two stories, the upper my main quarters with my chambers and a library, the lower the rooms where I could receive guests, as well as a servants’ quarters, though I had none.

Though it often drew consternation from the Abbess and the other Sisters, I read inveterately, whatever I could lay my hands on. In fact, the only acknowledgement from my father that I existed came in the form of the volumes he would send to the convent for me. These were my only conduits to the outside world, of which I had seen so little, confined as I was away from those who might damage my honor. They also provided my only pleasure during those early, solitary years, for, as in my own home, most of those at the convent would have little to do with me. The other Sisters of the Black Veil had heard tales of me and my mother from their families, and they soon spread them to those of the White Veil and even among the servants. I have to admit I did not help matters with my own actions, giving everyone I passed the evil eye and making strange noises and gestures during mass. The more frightened their reactions, the more amused I was, and the more I tried to elicit from them.

In those days, before I had taken the veil, I was constantly called before the Abbess and our Father Superior to explain myself. There were even threats of calling in the Inquisition to investigate certain rumors, which never materialized. Probably they understood I was nothing more than a foolish child, lonely and hurt and without a friend in the world. Or perhaps they were afraid of me and what I might do, I cannot say.

I found my way among them, eventually becoming an accepted, if not beloved, part of that family of Sisters. After my outbursts in those early years, I put myself to the task of living harmoniously with my fellow Sisters, having one heart and one soul seeking God. And if I was given to despair in certain private moments at what the life that lay before me was, now that I had left the tempests of the profane world, never to return, I did not let it overwhelm me. I tell myself now that I would have stayed among them for all my days had events been allowed to transpire differently, but perhaps that is not true. I have always been given to restlessness and sin.

The deepest sorrow comes from the most profound joy, there can be no other way, and so it was for me in La Encarnación. My friendship with Sister María de Gentileza, and the love I had for her, doomed me to misery when it was ruined. That I played my part in that destruction only cuts the wound deeper, even still, all these years later.

I believe we arrived at the convent near the same month, certainly the same year, though our paths never crossed. She was of the White Veil, those whose duty is service to the monastery, being without a dowry to offer. No doubt she knew of me long before we ever had occasion to speak. Perhaps we even had spoken and I just do not remember doing so; it was often so for me and those beneath my station, unless they did something to attract my attention. And this she did, not long after we had both taken the veil.

I recall the first time I noticed her as we all sat for morning prayers in the nun’s choir. We were in the same row, though she was on the other side of the choir with the rest of the Sisters of the White Veil. I had a feeling throughout our prayers of someone watching me and when, at one point, I raised my head from my devotions to look about the choir, I saw another head raised above the sea of bowed veils. Our eyes locked and held for an eternal moment, before we both ducked our heads, returning to our supplications. It was like a tremor through the earth, that shared glance, all the more disorienting because it lasted but a heartbeat.

I caught her at it again that evening, and the next morning too. It became a dance, each of us trying to find a moment when we might risk that stolen glimpse of the other. She had roused in me a hunger I did not know existed, a curiosity beyond my books, to know her, to understand what was behind those looks. Although I say that I had found my way among the other Sisters, I passed my days alone for the most part, as I preferred it. But now here was someone who looked at me not with revulsion or anger, but with a desire to know me, and I found myself hungering for her companionship.

The next days were exhilarating, as our game at prayers continued, but I soon grew tired of it, especially as it became clear the girl did not have the courage to do more than she already was. I have never lacked for courage, and one morning after prayers I engineered a chance meeting between us, in one of the passageways where I knew she would pass by on her way to the infirmary to carry out her morning duties. There was a storeroom of some sort nearby, little used, and I marked my steps to ensure that we met at its door.

She was alone, as I had hoped, and she looked frightened when she came around the corner and saw me waiting for her, as though I had appeared from the very air. Before she had a chance to do anything, I grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her close and then led her, trembling, into the storeroom. With the door closed there was little light, but my eyes have always been keen to the dark and I kept her close so that I might easily see her. She had the face a painter might give to Our Holy Mother or the saints, innocent and beautiful. The look of a generous soul, and that she was.

I slacked my grip on her a bit and then, breaking our vow of daily silence, whispered to her, Sor María, what are your intentions with me?

She would not answer and struggled against me, trying to free herself and flee before she fell further into what she knew was sin. I did not let loose my hands from her wrists, brushing my thumbs against their insides to try to calm her. At last she relented, seeing no other path before her.

I have none, she said, her voice edging with tears.

Then why have you been looking at me during prayers, I asked her.

They say you are too much in your books, that you have no mind to others or to God.

I was taken aback by this. Yes, I told her. They say that and more. Does it bother you?

No, she said, no. It is only that I do not have my letters.

I could see the tears running down her cheeks, and though I longed to brush them away I dared not loosen my grip upon her.

Something like a sob escaped her. I know it is not my place. I know it is disobedient of me and that I should find my happiness in our service to God and the convent.

She could not give voice to the thought, so I did. I will teach you, if you like, I said to her.

She fell to her knees in what I worried was a faint, but she was only weeping, her whole body trembling. I comforted her until she had regained herself and then told her what she should do if she wished to give in to this desire.

That night she did not come, but the next she did. It was well into the evening, when those in the dormitory had mostly settled again for the