A Ballad of Love and Glory(49)
“Don’t you fret about me, lass. I’m not that hungry.”
She gave him a look and sent him to gather twigs and branches while she made a circle with stones. When the fire was ready, she passed each prickly pear over it to singe the spines on the fruit. She yelped when they pricked her through a hole in her buckskin glove.
“Nothin’ comes easy in this place, does it?”
She shrugged. “Vale la pena,” she said. “The effort… is good, I promise.”
She looked at him then, and their eyes locked for a few seconds. Her gaze made him burn inside. Riley looked away and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. He felt light-headed, and he hated the feeling of losing control of his senses, his feelings, his body. His brain was in a mist whenever he was around her. Intoxicated by her scent, the sound of her voice, the sunrise in her amber eyes, and there was naught he could do about it.
“Tunas are good for aches of the head, from too much drink,” she said. “Tell your men to eat before the pulquerías.”
“Aye, they’ve taken a fancy to pulque and mezcal.” Riley had tried pulque, a milky spirituous liquor the Mexicans relished, and hadn’t cared much for its odor or taste. Maloney, on the other hand, drank it as if it were the best thing that ever went down his throat.
“You see there?” She pointed to one of the plants in the distance, though Riley wasn’t sure which. “The one with spiky leaves?”
“The one with spiky leaves, let me see, which one could that be?” They laughed, and she pointed again to the green-gray plant with long, narrow leaves, thorny edges, and wicked spines on the tips, saying it was called a maguey. Although he’d seen local ranchers use hedges of maguey to fence in their property, and had seen it cultivated in large tracts of neat rows, he hadn’t known its use.
“That’s where pulque and mezcal and tequila are from, and aguamiel.” She took out her knife and returned her attention to the prickly pear. “Ahora, teniente, atención, por favor.” She sliced off both ends and then cut along the skin in a vertical line up the length of the fruit. “You remove the tough skin.” As she peeled it back, he gasped at seeing the flesh of the prickly pear—so red and shiny and moist. She offered it to him, and he put the fruit in his mouth, enjoying the combination of sweet and tart, similar to the raspberries growing wild in the brambles near his childhood home.
“Some people no like the seeds. Spit them out, if you wish,” she said as she ate her fruit.
“I don’t mind them,” he said. “I don’t mind the thorns either. Right you are, lass, they are worth the effort.”
She laughed and shook her head and then tossed him another one. He peeled it the way she had taught him and ate it, relishing the flavor of the fruit. The sun was beginning to descend, and the delicate shadows of the shrubs and cacti were lengthening around them. Cerro de la Silla, rising majestically above them, was becoming tinged in red. He was loath to return to the city. He wanted to stay here in this open land eating prickly pears with the lass by the campfire, watching the sun’s inevitable surrender to the moon on the other side of the sky.
* * *
They made their way back in the dim twilight at a delightful gallop across the plain. The civilians were beginning to congregate in the public plaza for the night’s festivities. The following day was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mexican Independence, but the celebrations would begin that very evening with a speech by General Ampudia, followed by a mass. Together they rode past the cathedral fronting the plaza where vendors were selling food—tacos, roasted corn, and baked yams. Flower arches in red, white, and green adorned the entrance to the cathedral. Colorful paper hanging on strings floated above the plaza where a band was playing, and the wind carried the music over to them.
Riley accompanied her to the door of the Hospital de Nuestra Se?ora del Rosario, a couple of blocks east of the cathedral.
“Thank you for the help, teniente,” she said as he helped her untie the baskets of supplies.
“Anytime, lass. Anytime. I’ll see ya in a bit.”
He watched her go into the hospital and went in search of his men.
18
September 1846
Monterrey, Nuevo León
Later that night, Riley and his men were sitting around the fountain in the public square with Ximena, eating tacos de cabrito and machito as they watched the city folk stream in.
“?’Tis a joyous occasion, the independence of your country,” John Little said to Ximena.
“Pray tell us, lass, tell us about your country’s independence,” Maloney said.
“Well, thirty-six years ago, a priest—his name is Miguel Hidalgo—he gave the cry for revolución. For the people to fight Spain. His cry for independence is called ‘El Grito de Dolores.’?” She finished her taco and continued, “There was eleven years of fighting. So much blood. So much death. But in the year 1821, this is when I was born, we took our country back from the Spanish. New Spain was now los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, or Mexico.”
“?’Twas a lucky year to be born, in an independent country,” Riley said.
“One day, we shall have our own ‘El Grito,’?” Mills said, looking at his comrades.
“One day, we’ll be the Republic of Ireland!” Little said.