A Ballad of Love and Glory(33)

12


April 1846

Matamoros, Río Bravo

“I miss him terribly, Nana,” Ximena said, as she and her grandmother walked arm in arm out of the Catedral de Nuestra Se?ora del Refugio into the morning light. It was here, in this temple, where she and Joaquín had married. But now, she had been forced to sit through a different kind of service—a mass for the repose of his soul. This wasn’t the future she’d imagined for the two of them when they promised to love each other until death tore them apart. “I should have tried harder to stop him.”

“He would have resented you for keeping him from doing what honor demanded of him,” Nana Hortencia said, wrapping her rebozo around her shoulders, her silver braids shining as bright as two moonbeams. “He was a good man and a good husband. But just because he isn’t with you in the flesh doesn’t mean he isn’t still with you, mijita. His spirit will always live.”

Ximena stared at the ground and said nothing. Her grandmother gently raised her chin and looked up tenderly at Ximena. “Let God help you to let go of your sorrow, mijita. Accepting loss and grieving what is no more takes time, but you have the strength to heal. You always have.”

“I wish I could believe as you do, Nana.”

“One day you will. Right now, you must work through your grief.” Nana Hortencia hugged her tightly and said, “Come, let us gather some estafiate by the river, and I will give you a limpia to lift the sorrow from your heart and restore your harmony.”

As they started down the steps, Ximena noticed the Irish lieutenant leaving the church behind them. He seemed deeply preoccupied. When he glanced up at her and their eyes met for a second, she could feel a negative energy in him, his troubled aura. Inside the church, she’d seen him lighting a candle to Saint Jude, the patron saint of desperate cases. Now, as he hurried past them with urgent steps in the direction of the river, Ximena wondered what was distressing his soul.

They followed a group of peasant women carrying empty earthen jars to collect water. Despite the enemy’s encampment directly across, the river was busy. Several women were washing clothes and bathing themselves or their children. Ximena observed the Yanqui soldiers up in their fort, gaping at the young women splashing playfully in the water, naked to the waist. The soldiers whistled and called out to them, “Little bonitas! Beautiful se?oritas! Can we be friends?”

As she guided Nana Hortencia along the banks, they admired the willows and tepehuajes, which threw their shadows upon the river. Then the old woman pointed out the clear amber sap on the honey mesquite trees, warmed by the sun, and lamented not having a pot to collect it.

“The trees look as if they’re crying,” Ximena said.

Nana Hortencia patted her shoulder and said, “There’s no shame in crying, mi ni?a. Even the trees know that.”

Ximena wanted to tell her grandmother that it wasn’t that she was ashamed to cry. It was that she couldn’t, as if her tears had hardened inside her.

“You can’t let your suffering overwhelm you, mijita. Nor your anger. Don’t let them darken your soul. Release them through your tears, your prayers. It is true that the path God has chosen for you is one full of thorns. But to despair is to turn your back on Him.”

From the banks, they observed a patrol of Mexican mounted militia boarding the ferry from the opposite shore to cross to the southern bank. When the vessel approached, Ximena looked at the men’s faces, wondering if Cheno might be among them. Instead, she recognized another face.

“Nana, is that who I think it is?”

“It’s Juan Seguín,” her grandmother replied.

The man on the ferry was the commander who had once convinced her father to take up arms against Mexico during the Texas Rebellion. She remembered how, six years later, in March 1842, when the Mexican Army tried to retake San Antonio de Béxar, the attack fanned the distrust the Texians felt for anyone of Mexican descent, and reprisals against defenseless Tejano families soon followed. Even Juan Seguín—the town’s mayor and a hero of Texas Independence—was a victim of a conspiracy to ruin him. After being physically attacked, he had no choice but to flee south to Laredo for fear of his life after being accused of disloyalty. But he was captured by Mexico and forced to join the Mexican cause so as not to be executed as a traitor to the motherland. This is why, in September 1842, when the Mexican Army attempted to reclaim San Antonio once again, among their commanders was none other than Juan Seguín.

At the sight of him, Ximena’s father had said, “The Anglos see us as traitors, but so do the Mexicans. So where does that leave the Tejano? Mark my words, Ximena, as soon as the Mexican troops leave, the Anglos will come for us seeking revenge. But we won’t be here when that happens.”

And so, when the occupation of San Antonio ended, Ximena, her father, and Nana Hortencia, along with two hundred other families, loaded what possessions they could into carts and followed Seguín and the Mexican troops south to the Río Bravo.

Ximena had once resented him for pulling her father into the rebellion and allying himself with the Texians, but her father was gone now and this Tejano was her one connection to her past in San Antonio de Béxar. So when the ferry finished the crossing, and the steersman jumped off at the landing to tie the ropes and allow the riders to disembark, Ximena rushed to intercept the group. He was the last one off the ferry, and as he was paying the ferryman, she called out his name.