A Ballad of Love and Glory(85)
Undaunted, Riley pressed on. “This is no place for fine soldiers such as yourselves. I can offer ye food, lodgin’, clothin’, and fair wages, but my best offer is this—a chance to live a life with honor and dignity, a life where ye’ll be respected and recompensed for your skills and bravery. Join the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, and I promise ye your merits shall be recognized. This isn’t like the Yankee army. Here with the Mexicans, ye’ll be promoted for your skills and your contribution to the war, as ye deserve.”
“Leave us be, John Riley. A bigger coward never set foot in this prison,” an Irishman said.
“Listen to me, fellas. The Americans will soon be makin’ their way upon the National Highway. Ye all know what’s goin’ to happen to ye when they get here. All of ye are already doomed men. But if ye stand with us and fight for Mexico against the wicked invaders, the Mexican government will reward ye—”
“That’s all very fine talk, Captain,” another prisoner said. “But how do we know to believe ya?”
Riley pulled out the paper he’d brought with him and waved it before the men. “I have negotiated a contract with the Mexican government, signed by President Santa Anna himself. At the war’s end, they will give you lands to cultivate. Or, if you do not wish to settle in this country, you shall be embarked for Europe at the expense of the Mexican government with all your pay.”
Riley saw some of the men nodding in approval. But others refused to look at him. He directed his words at them. “?’Tis better to stand up and fight than to sit in a cell and wait for death to come to ye, brave fellas. There’s no honor or glory in that. Ye must decide if ye are goin’ to wait for the Yanks here, sitting helpless, or come and man one of my cannons.”
He let his words linger in the air, and he and Dalton waited for the men to make their choice. When they left the prison, they had twenty-three men enlisted in the battalion. Riley expected them to report the next day, and he put Dalton in charge of the new recruits.
* * *
After his errands, Riley made his way to the barracks up the wide principal streets, relishing the sights of the metropolis. Mexico City was unlike any city he’d ever seen. It was breathtaking. The capital boasted the finest houses, churches, and public buildings, especially the Palacio Nacional, which stretched for an entire city block. Then there was the glorious beauty of the Catedral Metropolitana in Gothic style, with its interior decorated with gold, silver, and copper. At fourteen acres, the main square, the Plaza de la Constitución, was the largest in the country. The private residences nearby were two or three stories high, with terraces on their roofs and high windows and balconies decorated with intricate ironwork and brilliant flowers.
He would have loved to have seen the city, with its population of one hundred and eighty thousand souls, with its normal hustle and bustle. Now, the movement in the streets was mostly that of the troops, priests, and monks, and the Indian vendors and their droning cries. In anticipation of the impending battle, little by little families were leaving the Valley of Mexico to avoid the hostilities. Every day, Riley would see carriages or carts loaded with all manner of possessions, horses and mules packed with boxes and crates, men, women, and children making their way on foot with baskets and whatever else they could carry. Those who remained secluded themselves in their homes and emerged only to purchase their necessities from the shops that were still open and from the ambulant peddlers with clay pots of charcoal, lard, cheese, or baskets of tortillas hanging from their backs.
There was a multitude of Indian beggars and lepers, bundles of rags and deformities and squalid misery. When he saw their arms stretching out for alms, asking him for “un tlaco, por favor, ni?o,” Riley handed out some copper coins and thought of the mendicants back home, and how Mexican and Irish poverty were not so different at all. Having this glimpse of another country’s misery made him feel less alone. What could he do to help the destitute escape their condition, this degrading poverty that seemed so similar in both lands?
When he passed by an old Indian woman selling herbs from a basket, she looked so much like Ximena’s grandmother that Riley thought he was seeing a ghost. She gave him a gap-toothed smile and handed him a bunch of epazote, which Nana Hortencia and Ximena used for cleansings. He bought the herbs from the old woman and brought the bundle to his nose. For a moment, he was back in Ximena’s arms. He leaned against a wall, the yearning for her so intense his knees weakened, and he could not take another step. He buried his face in the herbs, reeling from the smell of her. He’d been an utter fool, he knew that now. And he’d probably lost her forever. What if he went in search of her? She was perhaps back in the northern frontier, back on her beloved ranch and too busy restoring it to think about him. He wanted to imagine her happy. Even if he could never forgive himself for losing her, he prayed God would at least grant her some happiness.
When Riley finally reached the battalion’s barracks, which were in an abandoned monastery near the Alameda in the outskirts of the city, the Mexican guard handed him a note. “Capitán Riley, this arrived for you while you were gone.”
“Who left this here for me?” Riley asked, his heart pounding as he read it. Meet me in the Alameda, X. “?Quién dejó la carta?”
“Una mujer, mi capitán,” the guard said. “No dio su nombre.”