A Ballad of Love and Glory(78)
* * *
For two weeks, half-dead with fatigue, he and Ximena trudged on, along with the remnants of Santa Anna’s army, braving hunger and thirst, freezing rain and scorching sun, sickness and despair, but each night, they found solace in each other’s arms, their lovemaking urgent and desperate, as if it were their last day on earth. But mostly they simply held each other, making sure they were both still breathing come dawn. Finally, the city of San Luis Potosí came into view. With barely enough strength to stand, on the verge of desperation, Riley looked upon the beautiful domes of the Templo del Carmen in the distance. For a moment he allowed himself to rejoice, but his elation turned to fear. Was his mind playing tricks on him again? Was he seeing a mirage? The scorching sun beat down on him. His brain was a potato crisping on a gridiron. His tongue was swollen, and he could no longer spit. He scarcely knew what to think—was he alive or burning in hell, paying for his infidelity? As he squinted at the bright light, the city blurred and the ground opened beneath his feet. He heard Ximena calling his name, but his tongue was too heavy to speak. The last thing he remembered was the sound of the cathedral bells and the sight of pigeons taking flight. He wanted to follow them, let his spirit soar into the clouds above…
When he woke up, he didn’t know where he was. He was lying on a cot in a corridor, amid rows of other cots and straw mats filled with the living skeletons of Santa Anna’s troops. They were coughing and moaning, crying and praying. Ximena was sitting by his side, dozing on a chair. She seemed utterly fatigued, her skin sunburned, her lips parched.
“Ximena?” he whispered, hating to wake her. She opened her eyes. They were swollen, her cheeks pale and hollow.
“How do you feel, John?” She reached to grab his hands. Hers were calloused and rough to the touch, but he clung to them, let the warmth of her skin seep into his. He felt faint and had a pain in his head.
“Where am I?” he said, rubbing his eyes, struggling to recover his senses.
“In the convent.” She handed him a cup of tea, and he sipped from it. Between the march, the battle, and the retreat, fifteen thousand men had perished or vanished, she told him, and the nuns had taken in what remained of Santa Anna’s army.
“How long have I been here?”
“Two days.”
“How—?”
“We barely made it to the city. You were very deshidratado, cari?o,” Ximena said, brushing his hair back. “But you’re better now.”
He looked at her and the memories came rushing back, the two of them intertwined, clinging to each other out in the merciless desert. What had he done? She bent over him to give him another sip of tea, and when her breath fanned his brow, his body became as taut as the strings of a fiddle, and he knew he could never have enough of her.
“What news is stirrin’?” he asked.
“Santa Anna is leaving for Mexico City. There is a civil war in the capital. Can you believe it, John? While we were fighting for our lives, the caudillos began another insurrección. Blood is spilling on the streets of the capital, the moderados against the radicales. What madness is this? Even now, instead of uniting to fight our enemy, we are fighting each other!”
“And unite now you must,” Patrick Dalton said as he walked down the corridor toward them.
Riley couldn’t believe how happy he was to see his friend. “Pat, you are well! And the men?”
Dalton came to stand beside the cot. “We lost many, but you are alive, and so is the Saint Patrick’s Battalion.”
Riley peeled the blanket off and made to get up.
“You should rest,” Ximena said.
“No, there’s no time,” Dalton said, helping Riley up. “The commander has called a council of war. Things have taken another turn. The Yankee general Winfield Scott has landed on the shores of Vera Cruz with nine thousand soldiers and is about to besiege the port city.”
“Perhaps we deserve to lose,” Ximena said. “Since our own leaders are incapable of creating peace, only disturbios, they deserve to have no country left to rule!”
“Whist, lass. Don’t say such things,” Riley said as he put on his uniform jacket. “Mexico is a young nation and not yet used to its newborn freedom. Twenty-five years of independence isn’t sufficient time for your leaders to figure out the best way to govern. One day they’ll realize that they must stand together, and that the blood of the Mexican people should flow only on the battlefield repellin’ invaders, not takin’ up arms against each other.”
He made his way down the corridor, stopping to check on the twelve men who had spent the night in there with him. “They will be fine in a day or two,” Ximena reassured him. She looked at the cot farther down the corridor and shook her head. “Cheno is there fighting for his life.”
Even from where he stood, Riley saw plain enough that the sergeant’s condition was grave. It was a miracle he hadn’t perished during the retreat, considering his already weakened state after the battle. His comrades had managed to carry him on a makeshift litter, sometimes even on their shoulders, until they made it to the city. Juan Cortina was a fierce fighter and as loyal and dependable as Mexican sunshine.
“Go mind your friend, lass,” Riley said. “And I shall see you tonight.”
* * *