Conquistadora (28 page)

1844–1863

Leonor was proud that over the thirty-two years of their marriage, she’d made a home wherever Eugenio was posted, but she had resisted the move to Puerto Rico. She swallowed her misgivings, but premonitions continued to agitate her even as she adjusted to her new life.

At first she couldn’t get used to the smallness of San Juan—only eight by seven blocks for businesses and residences, the rest a fortress. But she soon found much charity work to keep her busy, and good society for leisure. Because of the many functionaries and soldiers living and working in Puerto Rico’s capital, active or retired officers of the military and their families were among the elite, along with businessmen and merchants. Much to her surprise, after just a few short months, she came to love the city and its people.

San Juan was a microcosm of Spain, whose regional dialects, prejudices, partisanships, and quarrels traveled across the Atlantic Ocean but were diffused by forced intimacy in the citadel. Catalan bankers, Basque mariners, Galician priests, Andalusian ranchers, and Castilian artists lived and worked alongside French dance masters, Venezuelan coffee planters, Irish grocers, Corsican tobacco growers, and North American accountants.

It was possible to learn how long someone had lived on the island by the wearing, or absence of, regional dress. The local climate was warmer, the sun brighter than the European arrivals had experienced before. Wool ceded to cotton and linen, felt yielded to jipijapa for hats, cravats loosened their stranglehold on men’s necks, and the stays on women’s corsets slackened.

There was a constant flux in the population. Entire regiments
came from Spain, and so did
desterrados
—political exiles serving their sentences. Refugees from civil unrest in South America and the nearby islands stayed long enough to terrify the locals with their stories. Sailors made mischief along the waterfront. Gamblers, quacks, and charlatans sought their marks, found them, swindled them, and disappeared, their exploits adding drama and color to conversations.

San Juan was a lively, gay city if Leonor didn’t look too closely at the dismal infrastructure, the frequent droughts, and the nonexistent sewerage. She learned that almost everything she needed to keep a comfortable household had to be imported, including essentials like olive oil. The locals used lard or coconut oil for cooking, which weighed heavily on her palate.

Her mornings were spent at her desk, composing letters. The very morning that Ramón and Inocente left, Leonor dispatched a barrage of warnings and instructions for surviving the rigors of their endeavor based on her extensive experience as a military wife. Their responses, weeks later, were chatty and impersonal and didn’t address her main concerns. Leonor knew that Ana wrote them, even if they were in Ramón’s and Inocente’s hand. After all, she’d composed Eugenio’s letters to his family after she married him; this was a wife’s chore. She resented it, however.

She was sure that her sons’ lives were harsher than Ana’s letters allowed. She knew that if her sons visited San Juan after living in the
campo
, they wouldn’t return. She’d introduce them to the friends she’d made in the capital. They’d persuade her sons to do what they did: live in the city and visit the hacienda once or twice a year for a few weeks of riding and leisure.

Leonor’s friends in San Juan were the husbands and sons of planters, some of whom had heard of Hacienda los Gemelos. When she mentioned it, however, the men’s faces hardened, and their women lowered their eyes and suddenly found need of the breeze provided by their fans. They knew something she didn’t know, but they wouldn’t talk about it. When she mentioned it to Eugenio, he claimed not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. Elena looked at her pityingly but would not explain.

The day Elena received a letter in Inocente’s formal style, not in Ana’s cheery voice, and with trembling fingers handed it to her, Leonor cried with happiness when she read of his intention to return to
San Juan, marry Elena, and help his father with the farm in Caguas. If Inocente lived near San Juan, Ramón would soon follow, no matter what Ana said or did. Her two boys, Leonor knew, couldn’t live without each other.

After Inocente’s murder Eugenio and Elena tiptoed around her as if she’d explode into curses and recriminations every time Los Gemelos was mentioned. But Leonor mourned her son with quiet dignity, arranging novenas, attending Mass, spending hours in prayer with Padre Juan or with the nuns at the Convento de las Carmelitas, and donating to religious charities in Inocente’s name. She no longer reminded Eugenio and Elena about her premonitions. Inocente’s death had vindicated her. She didn’t cry if he was mentioned, nor did she tell them that she blamed Ana for Inocente’s death. Now that her worst fears had come true, Leonor didn’t wish to jinx her remaining son’s life by constantly talking about the unease she still felt, fears that she tried to banish with prayer and with the sweet sherry she sipped to calm her nerves and help her sleep. She was glad that after Inocente’s death Ana was no longer writing Ramón’s letters. Each page was full of sorrow, and he answered her questions thoughtfully, although he was still unspecific about when he, Ana, and Miguel would come to San Juan.

Another year passed. Ramón reported that Miguel was a healthy little boy interested in everything around him. His letters, however, seldom mentioned Ana, and Leonor noticed that correspondence to Elena from Los Gemelos was more and more infrequent. She interpreted this as a sign that Ana’s influence over her son was diminishing, but still she couldn’t understand why they didn’t come.

Leonor and Eugenio had often discussed a trip to Los Gemelos, but when they wrote to their sons, and later to Ramón, there was always a reason why it wasn’t the right time. At first, it was because the trip via merchant ship followed by a long ride on horseback was arduous, especially for Elena, who was not as accomplished a horsewoman as Leonor. The land route required traversing a mountain range where many of the roads were little more than paths cut through the vegetation with machetes.

The specter of an ambush further advised against land travel during the spring and summer of 1848, when San Juan was in a state of high alert as news about uprisings in nearby islands poured into the
capital. The Bando Negro was instituted. Volunteer militias were formed to supplement the professional soldiers in El Morro. Rumors about trouble in Puerto Rico circulated at every economic and social level.

Eugenio, who’d tried the life of the gentleman landowner with mixed results, responded when the Field Marshal, the Conde de Reus himself, asked him to lead the volunteer militia sworn to protect the capital against possible uprisings.

“But you’re retired, Eugenio,” Leonor protested.

“I’m only fifty-seven,” he said, “still young and strong enough to protect you and Elena from arsonists and murderers. Don’t be so alarmed, my dear. Trust the courage of our Spanish soldiers, and the leadership of our Field Marshal. Besides, you know by now that I can’t resist the call of the bugle.”

He took command of the militia and spent the next six months in training exercises and early morning musters. Leonor admitted that Eugenio seemed happier and more settled now that he again wore gold epaulets and his hands found reassurance in the ornate pommel and hilt of his sword.

Leonor’s worries intensified as events in the interior of the island further unnerved the capital’s residents. In July, a slave conspiracy was discovered in the southern city of Ponce—fifty kilometers from Hacienda los Gemelos. The slaves planned to ransack and burn their estates and kill their owners. The leaders were found and shot. Two others who knew about the conspiracy but didn’t alert the authorities were sentenced to ten years in prison. Others known to be a part of the plot were punished by one hundred lashes each.

A month later, a slave in Vega Baja, closer to the capital, alerted his master that a group was scheming to revolt and escape to Santo Domingo. The leader was arrested and executed and two others were imprisoned.

The news and rumors magnified Leonor’s disquiet. Nightmares about her sons, murdered in the jungle, broke her fitful sleep. In San Juan, surrounded by soldiers and Eugenio, she and Elena were protected. But who was watching for the safety of her remaining son? Who was protecting her grandson? They could all be dead already,
and the news, like Inocente’s, might arrive weeks after she could see them one last time.

In November 1848, the Conde de Reus was replaced by a new governor, Juan de la Pezuela, who abolished the Bando Negro but established other restrictions, such as forbidding the machete by slaves who weren’t actively using them at work.

As unrest subsided, life returned to normal but Leonor’s nightmares increased. A racing heart that she knew was caused by forebodings over her son and grandson plagued her.

“Another year, Leonor,” Eugenio said when she asked for the umpteenth time when she’d see Ramón again and meet Miguel. “The commitment was for five years, remember? One more year and we can all return to Spain.”

“I can’t wait another year! I wish to see my surviving son and my grandson. I want to place flowers on my dead son’s grave. Is that too much to ask?”

“No, my dear,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “I, too, wish to do those things. But we agreed.”

“Please, Eugenio,” she said. “They will not come to us. Let us go to them.”

When Eugenio started to repeat the same reasons, Leonor placed a soft hand over his mouth and gently pressed his lips. “I won’t hear that it can’t be done.”

He kissed her hand, took it from his lips, and wrapped it in his fingers.

“I’ve never defied you, Eugenio,” she continued. “Not in thirty-four years have I challenged your decisions. I’ve followed you wherever you’ve asked me to go, and I’ve also waited for you. I’ve waited in dismal rented rooms, in cold cities in Europe, and in dusty villages in North Africa. I’ve not questioned your judgment about what was best for our family. But now … I will not give in on this, Eugenio. I will not give in.”

He looked into her gray eyes. She was fifty-two, still pretty and vibrant, but he was saddened by the sorrow that dimmed her sparkle.

“I’ll consult Captain de la Cruz. Perhaps he can recommend some men as escorts.”

“Thank you, my love,” she said, kissing him.

“But you must prepare yourself, my dear. They live humbly.”

“I just want to see Ramón and our grandson. I want to hold him before he grows too big to carry in my arms.”

Their journey began in late June. The ladies traveled in a battered but sturdy coach purchased from the estate of Gualterlo Lynch, Irish citizen, engineer, whose name and crest were emblazoned on the doors in vivid green edged with gold. Eugenio and the hired escort went on horseback. As soon as they learned of their plans, friends offered their country estates, and those of relatives and friends along the way, so that the Argosos need not spend a single night in rented lodgings with dubious reputations and unpredictable services.

She appreciated their friends’ generosity as soon as San Juan was behind them. Wind-driven rain pounded the dry, cracked earth and turned the ruts on the road into deep puddles filled with a claylike mud that neither coach nor horses could easily maneuver. Rain pursued them on their journey south, making it impossible to see anything through the foggy windows of the vehicle. Leonor’s impatience to reach Los Gemelos was further tested as she, Eugenio, Elena, and their escorts spent more days than anticipated waiting out the rain in borrowed rooms, in a true test of the hospitality of their hosts and servants.