Aztec Rage (76 page)

Guadalajara

Y
OU SHOULD BE
dead!
“

Ay, women are never satisfied. I come back with my wounds still raw, my pains still sharp, returning from death's other river on behalf of the revolution, and Marina still wasn't satisfied. Was she saying that it was too bad I wasn't dead because I returned without the gold . . . or that my wounds were so bad, it's a wonder I didn't die from them?

Isabella, the woman I had loved for so long, had tried to murder me. She had ripped another piece from my soul. If I found out that Marina felt that the gold for the insurrection was more important to her than my life, she would have crushed me, too.

I had explained to a sympathetic padre and an unsympathetic Marina why I returned empty handed. I told them that I knew where the gold was hidden but that I hadn't been able to recover it because of my wounds. The padre had understood, but Marina had eyed me with unalloyed suspicion.

“I left the gold in order to retrieve it later, not for myself but for the
padre and his army,” I told the cynical señorita. “I've told the padre where it is. He can get it if I'm killed.”

The padre acknowledged that he knew where the gold was, but right now that was irrelevant. His army's fate was even more precarious than when I'd left. He listened with greater concern about my description of Calleja's forces and was grateful for the work I'd done.

His gratitude did not stem Marina's ire.

“If that gold doesn't go for the reconquista, I will personally cut out your lying tongue,” she said.

The padre patted her hand. “Juan did his best. He was betrayed.”

“Had he done his best, he'd have the gold.”

“I can return immediately for the gold,” I said. She had stung my pride. I would retrieve that treasure if I had to crawl with it strapped to my back.

“The treasure will have to wait,” the padre said. “We have a battle to fight and no use for gold at this late moment unless we were to make cannon balls out of it.”

Marina and I left so he could continue the preparations for the battle to come, and it was approaching quickly. The armies had already maneuvered near Calderón Bridge east of the city.

I would be at the battle but only with a loaded pistol in hand in case a royal soldier got close enough for me to shoot. On my way back to Guadalajara, I took a fall from Tempest after running from a royal patrol I had encountered near Atotonilco. The fall ripped open my wound, and it turned raw and ugly. By the time I made it to Guadalajara, the wound was red and swollen. My whole body felt hot.

We retired to Marina's room at an inn where she was staying near the battlefield. I learned she'd taken the room for my comfort.

We drank wine and made love . . .
¡Ay de mí!
I confess, I wasn't up to my usual mucho hombre standard in bed. To my shame, my garrancha rose, only to lose its power almost immediately. Marina had no sympathy. In fact, she had contempt.

She examined my groin. “It didn't matter where you were hit. You lost your manhood to that bitch years ago.”

I groaned silently. I had to keep my mouth shut. I was still weak and in pain, in no condition to take on Marina, mentally or physically. The fact that Isabella had tried to and nearly did murder me, didn't soften Marina's rage. Marina would have been more pleased if Isabella had succeeded in taking my life. She acted like a woman scorned. And she was right; she was an Aztec witch who saw through my black lies and dirty deeds.

“What happened at Aculco? Why did we lose the battle?” I asked to get her off my back. Aculco was the battle in which the bandido leader said the padre's army had suffered a defeat.

“There was no battle. Meeting up with Calleja's army was as big a surprise
to the royals as it was to us. He was proceeding south to relieve the capital when we were on our way north. We were in no condition to do battle. After breaking camp at Cuajimalpa, perhaps half of our force melted away. They had about five or six thousand royal troops, while we had perhaps four to five times that many, almost all Aztecs, of course.

“Suddenly the two armies were facing each other. We didn't have time to even organize into battle formations. The padre ordered a retreat, which turned into a rout when we couldn't maintain order. We lost most of our artillery, some supply wagons—”

“The putas?”

“Yes, we lost our whores, too. Is that all that matters to you?”

I groaned, aloud this time. “Since I can't say anything to please you, cut off my tongue.”

“That's not the only thing I will cut off if I find out you lied about the marqués's treasure.” She gave my cojones a squeeze that made me sit upright. She pushed me down. “I like you this way, too sick to fight back.”

“Tell me about the battle.”

“I told you, it wasn't a battle. We pretended to prepare to fight, but retreated instead. We fought skirmishes, and our retreat was disorderly. Still, Calleja didn't pursue us with his main force because he couldn't maintain ranks, either. The man is Satan incarnate. You witnessed his atrocities in Guanajuato, but every place he marches, he leaves behind people hanging from trees. His intent is to terrorize our supporters into abandoning the revolt.”

“Has he?”

“He puts fear into people, but we're stronger than ever. Our soldiers make gachupine prisoners suffer the same fate as Calleja's victims. The padre wanted to stop their revenge, but he couldn't control them. Spanish prisoners were executed, but it hasn't stopped Calleja's slaughter.”

“The chino is a beast,” I agreed. I told her how he held a lottery of death, hanging innocent people because it was more expedient than trials.

She said that when the padre ordered the army to turn away from the capital, he led them back to the Bajío. They had traveled only a few days when they nearly collided with Calleja's army at Aculco.

“Calleja was so close, we saw the padre was right when he refused to proceed to the capital. Calleja's army would have attacked us in the rear while we were besieging the city.”

But that possibility had not stilled the criollo officers' displeasure at the padre's refusal to attack the capital.

“Allende, the Aldama brothers, all of them are angry at the padre. They once again claim that a priest isn't fit to command the army.”

“But they have no army; the only army is the padre's indios.”

“True, but the criollos keep thinking like jackasses. They've never been able to come up with a way of maneuvering tens of thousands of untrained
indios. They only know how to lead trained troops. It always falls back on the padre because only he knows how to command their passions.”

After the debacle at Aculco, they marched to the Bajío, moving in the direction of Celaya and Querétaro. To allay the animosity between the padre and the criollo officers, Allende split off and took a large force to Guanajuato.

“He believed he could manufacture cannons and other munitions there,” Marina said, “and fortify the city to withstand a royal siege.”

In turn, the padre went to Valladolid to recruit fresh troops and supplies.

“We had no sooner arrived in Valladolid when we got word that Torres had taken Guadalajara.” Marina then said the padre's expectations changed after he had turned away from the capital. “He had always hoped that thousands of criollos would join us and that large units of the militia would defect to our side. He knew now for certain that that was not going to happen, that he would have to rely solely upon indios who had courage and heart but lacked training and weapons.”

He saw the capture of Guadalajara as an opportunity to once again raise an enormous army of indios. Torres pleaded with him to come to the city, to use it as his base.

“We arrived there with less than eight thousand troops, but our ranks began to swell again from the first day.” Marina's eyes glowed with pride. “The city greeted the padre as a conquering hero with marching bands, troops of dragoons, cannon fire, church bells, even a ‘Te Deum' sung with full orchestra.”

Good news about the reconquista came from other parts of the colony. Much of the north—Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, and the sparsely populated arid region beyond—strongly favored the revolution. All over the Bajío, royal authority had broken down, and royal messengers were being waylaid by revolutionaries and land pirates. The priest Morelos in the tropical Acapulco region had made spectacular achievements.

“The padre sent him with just twenty-five men and no guns to raise an army. He already had several thousand fighters, but he refused to meet the royal forces on battlefields. Like your peninsular amigos, he fights as a guerrilla.” Marina laughed. “Morelos had been an even poorer priest than the padre. He nearly starved to death attending the seminary before he was accepted by the church. Now he leads an army.”

The eve of the great battle that was to take place tomorrow with Calleja's army was four months to the day that the padre proclaimed the independence of the colony.

A few days earlier, we had learned that Calleja was advancing with the largest Spanish force ever assembled in the colony. Marina had spied on Calleja's progress, and she estimated his strength at about seven thousand
troops. We would have ten times that many, but ours would be an unwieldy mass pitted against seasoned, well-armed troops.

Knowing that the battle was at hand only increased the conflict between the padre and the criollo officers. Allende said they couldn't control and direct such a massive multitude effectively. He advocated dividing our forces and throwing seven or eight units of ten thousand each at the royals in successive waves, rather than risking all with one massive attack.

Padre Hidalgo disagreed.

“He said it would just make control many times harder, that we'd suffer mass desertions if the horde was divided up,” Marina told me. “The padre believes that our best chance is to overwhelm the royals with our vastly superior numbers. If we keep pushing at them, he believes they will be the first to break and run.”

I agreed with the padre's plan. If the army was split into a number of parts, it would be even harder to control. If the lead unit broke and ran under fire, the troops behind it wouldn't stand their ground either. The great human mass didn't respond to commands but to the flow of the mass as a whole: if the head turned, the rest of the body went with it.

Allende had even suggested abandoning Guadalajara and retreating again to continue to arm and train soldiers. But that would mean the loss of tens of thousands of indios from our ranks. Besides, Padre Hidalgo was a warrior priest. Unlike the criollo officers, he believed that right would triumph over might.

Once again—as it had when the padre refused to rape the capital—rumors about an officer-led coup d'état raced through the camp, and stories of another poison plot against the padre raged. Marina was in command of the indios assigned to protect the padre amid the chaos. I told her which officers to keep an eye on. I still didn't believe that Allende or the Aldama brothers would harm the padre, but not all the officers were as honorable or as intelligent. If they killed the padre, the Aztecs would wreak vengeance on every criollo they saw, and the army would evaporate.

No one knew exactly how many poor, landless peons had flocked to the padre's banner. I estimated eighty thousand, but most of them were armed only with knives, clubs, or wood pikes. We had gathered nearly a hundred cannon and a huge quantity of black powder and balls, but the cannons were all of inferior quality: some iron, a few bronze, and many nothing but wood bound with iron straps. We were still plagued by the lack of trained cannoneers to fire them.

Our cavalry was still composed of vaqueros armed mostly with wood lances, though a number had machetes and a few rusty pistols. We didn't have warhorses for our dragoons; their mounts were an odd assortment of undernourished hacienda nags, stolen silver-train mules, and indio donkeys, many of which bolted at the roar of guns, the crash of cannons, the sight and smell of blood.

We marched out of Guadalajara, an endless parade of citizen-soldiers, only a handful with uniforms, few with real weapons, but all with heart and courage, the most courageous of all leading us. Dressed in a dazzling blue, red, and white uniform adorned with glittering gold braid, the padre was the conquering hero, raised to apotheosis.

“We're carrying enough supplies with us for a march on the capital,” he told his assembled officers before the parade. “As soon as we have routed Calleja, we shall claim all of New Spain for americanos.”

I choked up from the passion of his words, the elegance of his manner and speech, the way he rode tall on a spirited white stallion that pranced down the street as the people of Guadalajara cheered.

The armies faced each other near a bridge spanning the Calderón River. We were eleven leagues east of Guadalajara, a long day's ride for a man on a horse. It was an area of arid fields and hillsides, sparse vegetation, dry grass, and stunted trees.

The padre had our troops occupy the bridge and, on the approach to Guadalajara, take command of the high ground. He positioned the army cleverly: Calleja would find an assault from our front or our rear, which was protected by a barranca—a deep ravine—equally difficult.

That night we sat in the darkness, tens of thousands of us, with more campfires dotting the hills than stars igniting the sky.

Early the next day we learned that Calleja would move quickly against us.

I said, “Calleja's coming into this battle with two things in his favor: He has no respect for our army as a military unit, and he saw it turn tail and run once before.”

Marina glared at me and scowled.

I still bridled at her dismissal of me as a “defeatist.” In truth, I believed we would beat the Spaniard. We were superior to him in size, position, and we possessed the
spirit
to win. But I also knew Señorita Fortuna is one fickle puta.