A Ballad of Love and Glory(58)
“It is a terrible way to die, John,” she said. “This hunger, I feel like a… a zopilote is eating me inside.”
“Zopilote?”
She pointed in the distance, where the sky was thick with buzzards circling over the dead they had left behind.
“Hang in there, lass. We will soon arrive in the city.”
“Ampudia gave up Monterrey to protect the people and the soldiers. But this is hell. Too much death. Here on this road. Not in battle, with honor.”
“Aye, it would’ve been better. No soldier ever wants to die in a humiliatin’ retreat. I had always hoped that when my time came, I’d die fightin’ for my country, in the glory of death on a battlefield. Not like this, fatigued beyond conception and on the verge of starvin’, so close to despair. No, not like this.” They looked at the setting sun, the silhouettes of the shrubs and cacti stark against the crimson sky. Up and down the dirt road, he could see the flickering campfires of each corps, a short distance from one another. The fires were small, for there was not much firewood to be found except for clumps of scraggly sagebrush. The cavalry had been forced to burn their lance handles and the infantry the butts of their muskets.
“Walk with me?” he asked her.
They made their way beyond the camps, deeper into the vastness of the land. A colony of bats flew across the sky looking for food. Riley wondered if they would have better luck finding nourishment from the arid brushland than the troops would. Ximena took a deep breath and sighed. She turned to him, caressed his face, and he winced at her touch, his scorched skin not able to bear it.
“The sun has no mercy for you,” she said.
“?’Tis a hard place for us Irish to be sure. I’ve never seen so much of the sun.”
“Come.” She led him to a nearby spiky plant and took out her knife. He’d seen her use this aloe to treat the burns of the wounded. She cut off a leaf and sliced it open, revealing a clear gel inside, which she rubbed on his face and neck. Instantly, the burning on his skin was soothed. He licked a drop of the gel by his mouth and quickly spit it out. It was so bitter.
“You can eat it,” she said. “But I need to wash.”
She cut more of it and put them inside her bag. She turned to look back at the wagons full of sick soldiers, at the unsheltered troops sleeping off the side of the road. “If my Nana was here, she know how to save them.”
“Nay, she wouldn’t have attended to them better than you are under the circumstances. Those men are in want of nourishment and drink.” He thought about the small parties that had been dispatched to search for water. “Word is tomorrow we will finally reach a well. We can satisfy our thirst. Water our horses. You can wash wounds and make your remedies.”
“I hope we get there,” she said. “So many men give up and die. This is like Matamoros?”
“Aye. ’Twas a dreadful march. But this one is worse—we’re carryin’ the heavy burden of a second defeat and humiliation. ’Tis twice as hard. And what distresses me more is the heavy sorrow of havin’ lost yet another friend, of havin’ buried him—uncoffined, poor fella!—in a place I’ll never return to and where he’ll remain forever in a forgotten grave. Who will say a prayer for him? Who will brin’ him flowers?”
She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “He watches over us. His spirit is here with us. His body is in Monterrey, not his soul.”
He contemplated her words for a moment. He looked into her eyes, and they sought each other’s lips. Their kiss was tender at first, soft, and cautious, but then, Ximena gripped him closer to her with a strength he thought she no longer possessed. Her breasts pressed against his thick uniform. He growled under his breath as his mouth matched her hunger for hunger, want for want. She tasted as if she’d been drenched in seawater, her lips parting for him like the shell of an oyster, beckoning him inside. He wanted to take her, right here, in the middle of nowhere. Instead, he tore away.
“Ximena, listen to—”
“Shhh.” She put a finger on his lips to silence him. “When the war is over, you be with your wife and son, and I go to my rancho. I promise. But now, there is a war, and I am alone. And you are alone, too, no?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, lass.”
She spread out her shawl on the ground, and then pulled her blouse down beyond her shoulders, her breasts luminous from the silver glow of the stars above. Sweet Jesus. His knees weakened, from desire or hunger or both. He groaned and pulled her blouse back up and held her. That was all he would allow himself to do. The noises from the camp faded away, and all that remained was the two of them under the brilliance of the night sky. If only he could love her as she ought to be loved, but he was not free to do so.
22
October 1846
San Luis Potosí
It took three brutal weeks for the Army of the North to cover the three hundred miles from Monterrey to San Luis Potosí, and the troops staggered into the city scarcely alive. But there was no time to settle down and recover from their toilsome journey. The remnants of Ampudia’s army were lined up at the plaza for review. There they were greeted by the new commander of the Mexican Army—General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who was back in the country after being exiled in Cuba.
Riley observed Santa Anna as he surveyed the troops, seated on a handsome stallion, proud and erect, his silver stirrups and high saddle inlaid with gold glinting in the sunlight. He was dressed in a resplendent blue and red uniform embroidered with gold thread and decorated with epaulets and medals. From what Riley had heard, Santa Anna had not only led the Mexican Army against the Spaniards, the French, and the Texians, but had also been president of Mexico eight different times. A hero to some and a scoundrel to others, he was in his early fifties, with his entire career marked by intrigue and corruption. But the one thing everyone agreed on was his valor on the battlefield, and he had a wooden leg to prove it.