A Ballad of Love and Glory(35)

“Nana, can you see that man or am I imagining him?”

“I see him, but I’m not sure if I am looking at a dead man or a live one,” her grandmother replied.

He was wearing a Yanqui uniform, and Ximena wondered if he might be one of the foreign soldiers in Taylor’s ranks who were deserting. Had this poor man died crossing over to join her country’s army?

“Nana, go find help! Pronto, ?por el amor de Dios!”

While Nana Hortencia hurried away, Ximena made her way down the sloping bank, sending the hundreds of bluewings fluttering into the heavens like a shimmering prayer. Please, God. Please. She waded into the water, holding on to a tree limb as she got deeper. Battling the current, she managed to reach the soldier whose hand was clutching a branch. He had pulled himself halfway onto the tree trunk, and his head and torso rested on it, but his lower body was still immersed in the cold water. On his forehead, she could make out two letters: HD. Who had branded this poor old man and why?

His hand felt cold and limp, and she wasn’t able to find a pulse. She grabbed him by his collar and shook him, already fearing the worst. “Hello? Can you hear me?” she said in English as she shook him harder. “Hello?” Finally, the man coughed faintly.

She heard a sudden splashing behind her and turned to see the Irish lieutenant swimming toward her. “Is he alive?” he yelled. “Tell me, does he live?”

“Yes! Hurry, please. Hurry!”





13


April 1846

Matamoros, Río Bravo

Together, they pulled the man from the river and transported him to Carmen’s house. She begrudgingly allowed them the use of a room, where Ximena and her grandmother immediately took over his care. The lieutenant seemed to know the man and refused to leave his side.

“Will he recover?” he asked when Nana Hortencia left the room to gather her supplies.

Ximena wanted to reassure him without giving false hope. The old man had now begun to thrash in the bed, and she turned to soothe him. He was burning up with fever.

“Riley, don’t let go of me,” he cried. “Help me, lad! Help me!”

“Shhh. We are here,” Ximena said in English. “You are safe. Shhh.”

“?’Tis my fault,” teniente Riley said. “I was aidin’ him in crossin’ the river to brin’ him over to our ranks, and I, well, as you can see, my folly endangered his life.”

“Is why you go to the river this morning?”

He nodded. “I was hopin’ against hope…”

She looked at him, wishing to put a comforting hand on his arm, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. “My grandmother, she will cure him. No worry.” She touched the patient’s forehead, tracing a finger over the letters HD. “Who did this?”

“The Yanks. Punishin’ my countrymen is a favorite amusement of theirs.”

“They pay one day for this!” she said, and saw the same anger blazing in his blue eyes.

“Aye, we’ll make them regret it,” he said.

“Dile que se retire,” Nana Hortencia said as she returned with the needed items.

“Please, we must work now,” Ximena told him.

“I’ll go,” he said, “but pray do send for me at the barracks as soon as he wakes.”

As she escorted him out of the room, he turned to her and said, “I beg your pardon, but I do not know your name…” His voice trailed off, and the color in his cheeks deepened. He towered over her by a head, but for some reason, he didn’t make her feel small.

“My name is Ximena Salomé Benítez y Catalán, widow of Trevi?o.” He coughed at hearing her long name, and she felt her lips twitch with suppressed laughter. “But please, call me Ximena.”

“Hee-meh-na,” he repeated, drawing out each syllable as if tasting her name on his tongue. “I’m teniente John Riley. And that there is James Maloney.”

She nodded. “I see you tomorrow, teniente Riley.”

After treating the fever with white willow bark, Nana Hortencia lit the copal incense in her sahumador and asked God for his presence. She was about to perform a limpia on their patient to rid him of the susto from the trauma of nearly drowning. As Ximena watched her grandmother sweep their patient’s body with her sacred eagle feather and then with fresh sage, she knew retrieving the piece of his soul that had remained in the river would require several spiritual cleansings. Her grandmother wouldn’t give up until she persuaded that lost piece of soul to return to his body, and so she whispered his name in his ear and called him three times.

When Nana Hortencia was finished with the ceremony, Ximena sat vigil through the night. The man would say words in the Irish tongue, and when he woke, he would grab her hand and call her by a name she couldn’t understand. “A ghrá! A ghrá!” She knew he was calling for his wife. And she knew, without being told, that his wife was dead. Each time he cried out in his fevered delirium and insisted on going home, Ximena saw his pale, sorrowful countenance contorted by the visions of his fevered brain. Suddenly, she felt something loosen inside her, and her own tears finally gushed forth. She found herself crying along with him for the loved ones they’d both lost. For the home neither of them would ever see again.