The Valiant Women (3 page)

This code, punishing the Irish for supporting James II, a Catholic Stuart, against the usurping William III of Orange back in 1690, had barred Catholics from voting, holding office, military and civil service, law and teaching. There were no Catholic schools, nor could a Catholic leave all his land to one son. He was compelled to divide it equally among all male heirs so that none could make a living and their holdings would pass into the hands of Protestants.

Patrick O'Shea, the twins' father, had died before they were weaned because he'd rebelled at a particularly spiteful part of the Laws. A Catholic couldn't own a horse worth more than five pounds. O'Shea did, a once weakling colt he'd taken as pay from a Protestant farmer.

He'd nurtured and tended the colt till it grew into a splendid beast the farmer coveted. The law was that a Protestant could take such a horse and force the owner to accept five pounds as payment. O'Shea had thrown the farmer's five pounds back in his face, followed with a brawny fist.

The farmer's help joined in and then there were soldiers. O'Shea died of his beating while the horse was led away, though the farmer, a church-goer, had left the five pounds for Rosaleen who'd been held back by three men while the others killed her proud young husband.

The twins grew up considering the farmer their father's murderer. When they were fourteen, Patrick slipped off from Michael one night and found the farmer eating alone in his kitchen. A strapping man in his prime, he was three times the size of the underfed boy, but Patrick scorned to attack him unwarned. Besides, he wanted the farmer to know why he was carrying a freshly whetted scythe.

As the farmer gawped at him, jowls reddening, Patrick gasped, “I've come to do ye for Patrick O'Shea, him ye killed and stole his horse!”

“Ye young whelp!” cried the farmer, starting up.

If his huge hands had closed on Patrick, that would have been all of it, but the boy swerved and swept the scythe with all his might.

It caught the farmer under the ribs and curved up. Patrick gave it a final tug before it was wrested from his grip. He retreated. The farmer took a few ponderous steps forward, grappling with the scythe, and then collapsed, driving the blade completely through him. He gave a choking, wheezing groan, his feet and hands groped, and he was still.

Patrick fought an urge to retch while sudden bright hope dawned. He'd been resigned to being taken for a killer and hanged, the main reason he hadn't let Michael in on his plan. But the way the corpse lay now—

It took only minutes to find the whetstone and put it where it looked as if the farmer had been sharpening his scythe and met with an accident.

That was what it was called. It was the one secret Patrick never told his twin.

He kept the mortal sin on his soul, even after leaving Ireland, because he was not sorry. And he would never be.

At Ft. Brown there'd been a sergeant who hated the O'Sheas' guts, who called them “micks,” “damn mackerel snappers” and more profane things. He had them at hard labor most of the time and there was no appeal from his edicts. To the young Irishmen and other Catholic volunteers, including Poles and Frenchmen, the sergeant became the army, became the voice and face of the country they'd hoped would welcome them, though indeed it was said that almost half of Zachary Taylor's men, encamped there on the Rio Grande that spring of 1846, were foreigners.

Of course there were things Shea liked. Major Ringgold's light artillery—now there was something to see! No monstrous long iron cannon on bulky carriages, but bronze barrels four feet long that could hurl a six-pound iron ball up to fifteen hundred yards. The two-wheeled caissons that carried them were attached to a two-wheeled limber that carried the ammunition. Six good horses pulled each gun and part of the crew hung on to the caisson while the others rode.

It was a joy to watch them drill and if Shea could have been with the guns, he might never have taken that fateful swim across the Rio. A battery of four guns would wheel at the order and the men dropped off, unlimbered the gun, and got out the things they were going to need.

While an officer arranged the gun, the men rammed in powder sewed up in oiled flannel bags, then the ball, shell or canister, a bagful of lead bullets. A slow-burning torch lit the quick match which set off the powder. The gun leaped, but the men swabbed it out and in ten seconds were ready to fire again.

But Shea couldn't even watch the drill in peace. The sergeant was after him like a great stinging horse fly.

Then one afternoon Sgt. John Riley of the Fifth Infantry, an Irishman said to have deserted the British Army in Canada and to have been a drillmaster at West Point, swam the river to Mass and never came back. That set the O'Sheas—and others—thinking.

Across the Rio were pretty girls, music and the Mass. Mexico was offering Catholics who would come over to its army special privileges and 320 acres of land, in contrast to the United States which had given the O'Sheas a cold welcome and considerable pain. One night the brothers swam across.

They weren't the only ones. Gradually, enough men, many Irish, deserted from the United States Army to form Mexico's fiercest fighting group, the Battalion of San Patricio. The nuns of San Luis Potosí made them a fine brave flag, green, with Saint Patrick himself on it, a harp and shamrock. Ah, that flag had seen glorious fighting! No wonder. The San Patricios knew that if they were captured, they would surely hang.

The end came last month at Churubusco on August 20, 1847. General Scott's grape, canister and muskets had raked the church and convent. The Patricios fought on long after the Mexicans tried to surrender, in fact they shot down men trying to run up white flags, but at last it was over. The lucky San Patricios were those who died fighting.

Though you had to admire the way the others had gone to even a dog's death like hanging. Out of the eighty tried for desertion, the fifty-four who'd deserted after war was declared were hanged on three different days, the last bunch put on wagons beneath the gallows, not to be hanged till the U.S. flag could be seen flying in victory from the Castle of Chapultepec.

“Oh, Colonel darlin,'” one condemned man had called out to redheaded Colonel Harney, the hangman who took such pleasure in his work. “Would ye be givin' me pipe a light from your fine whiskers?”

Harney struck the man across the face with his saber hilt, knocking out several teeth, but the Irishman cried through his blood, “Bad luck to ye, for I'll never hold my pipe again as long as I live!”

Another of those seated on the wagon shouted to Harney that if they waited to hang till the U.S. flag flew from the castle, they'd live to eat the goose that would fatten on Harney's own grave. Several complimented Harney on his skill at hanging. “For didn't you rape Seminole girls in Florida and hang them next morning, Colonel dear?”

For sure he'd hung the Patricios, even the one who'd lost both legs at Contreras and was dying.

And then … Shea's mind veered from the flogging, the red-hot iron biting into his flesh.

At least he hadn't hanged. Nor had Michael, though that would have been easier than this.…

With his last strength, Shea commended his soul to the Blessed Mother and began to ask forgiveness for his sins, but even with death upon him he couldn't repent of the farmer's death. Not with hell before him.

The Virgin had a smile like his mother's. He watched that, not the flickering fires of brimstone.

Then suddenly he was floating above his scarred body, purple-gray, gashed, still marked with the flogging. Like Michael, he could not bleed; his lips were scorched away from his teeth in a wolf grin. Skin baked to bone, except for red-gold hair, he could have been some poor devil of an Indian or Mexican.

Nothing to admire or linger around, that corpse, yet though it was dead, his spirit couldn't quite desert it. Though several times he tried to leave, something held his consciousness all that day near the wrecked body.

It never moved. Buzzards circled but didn't light. A gaunt coyote sniffed, gave the face a tentative lick, then trotted on.
Not good enough for varmints!
he chuckled at himself. Still his essence hovered as if it feared being lost in the distance between this hell and the next.

The sun plunged down. A cooling breeze waked, stirred the bright hair.
Poor lad
, thought his spirit with detached pity. Then, to the spirit's great surprise, the corpse began to move, set one scratched hand forward, clawing the lava, raised a bit on raw knees, inched onward, collapsed, then hitched jerkily, clumsily ahead.

The spirit hovered, disbelieving.

Craziness! Can a dead man move?

This one did, falling prostrate often, sometimes for so long that the spirit began to slip away when it was called back, disgusted, disbelieving, but unable to leave while the corpse struggled. All night, Shea's body crawled through lava and thorns. The sun rose in a flood of liquid fire, striking the shriveled form so that it curled into itself like a scorched spider.

Scornfully regretful, the spirit drifted, at last knowing the foolish battle was ended. Poor bones and flesh, to cling to torment! But that ruin had one more surprise in it.

Bruised fingers dug deep, the head raised. From the inner core of what had been a man, a great cry forced through charred throat and mouth, echoed on the rocks. Then Patrick O'Shea was still. At last his spirit was done with his body.

II

Sand was being forced down his throat. Wet sand, scratching, choking. His eyes fell open. Without comprehension, he saw a tender line of cheek and throat, dark eyes full of tears.

He tried to say, “Why do you give me sand?” but his lips rasped like old snakeskin and the inside of his windpipe felt as if that last shout had burned it with a white-hot poker.

“Drink,” the girl told him in Spanish.

The damp sand again.

She looked so kind! Why didn't she give him real water? Maybe if he sucked enough moisture from the grains he could wet his tongue enough to tell her what she was doing. But the stuff gagged him.

He retched weakly, spewing up what he'd swallowed.

“Perhaps it goes better if you only hold it in your mouth and let it slide down very slowly,” she murmured, wiping his face, urging on him more of the watery graininess.

If she could just understand! But he obeyed, didn't try to swallow the mass but let it seep gradually down his throat. In between doses, the girl applied deliciously soothing wet cloths to his skin, carefully trickled fluid from the jug over them.

It
looked
like water, brackish, but not the mud it tasted like. For the first time in his life as a male, he lay on a firmly soft and lovely breast without lustful thoughts, as if he'd been a babe.

He floated in and out of awareness, rousing at her coaxing, at last finding the contents of the jug tasting more like water and less like sand. After what must have been a long time, she placed a finely mashed tangy sweetness in his mouth.

“A cactus fruit. Can you chew it?”

He could, weakly, savoring the taste, but when he tried to swallow, he gagged and seemed to lose all the water she'd so painstakingly got down him.

“Pardon me,” he tried to say, but she soothed him, washing his face, and began once more to urge fluid into the rawhide skeleton he'd become.

The next food she tried was a very thin gruel. He kept a few cautious swallows of it down. Only when she smiled, eyes shining like stars, did he realize how fearful she had been; how beautiful she was.

After a judicious wait she fed him more gruel. This, too, stayed inside him. She kneaded water into his dry, leatherlike skin and kept giving him small sips. As it grew hotter, she kept wetting the cloths covering him.

He drowsed, still feverish, felt a hand touch his hair, glanced up to see her move shyly away. “When you can walk with my help,” she said, “we'll go down to the water hole where there is shade.”

For the first time he was lucid enough to wonder what such a woman was doing out here, apparently alone. He'd been in Mexico long enough to recognize that she was a
hidalga
, gently bred, and besides, this seemed no region for even the toughest wood-cutters or farmers to squeeze a living.

She was a miracle, he decided. Like his return from death. For he had died, he was sure of that, and his soul had watched all night while his body crept on.

The girl was a miracle. His miracle.

And it was a miracle, too, that a few mouthfuls of food and a jug of water could begin turning a mummy into a man, could restore his power to think.

If they were near water, their worst problem was solved, but the girl didn't seem to be eating too well. Her dress was so torn that she used her rebozo to cover what needed it, though Shea was feeling pesky enough to wish she'd forget.

Next time she gave him a drink, he tried again to speak, glad that unlike most of the San Patricios, he'd learned all the Spanish he could, and not just for courting the
señoritas
. He liked to know what was going on and what people were thinking, as much as they'd tell.

“How—” His tongue felt stuffed with sawdust and the words garbled. “How did you come here?”

Her eyes widened with such remembered horror that he tried to reach out with a calming gesture but lacked the strength. He wished he could take the question back. As the words came from her, painfully slow at first, then so rapidly that he could only catch the gist, he knew that this girl, his miracle, badly needed one herself, though he couldn't escape chagrin that she'd found water when he hadn't.

He suspected that she hadn't told him everything. Damned unlikely for a woman not to be ravished. The wonder was that she'd survived such treatment, used and left to die.

And this cousin she was going to marry—

Tears welled from those dark, beautiful eyes again. She shook her head determinedly as if she'd already thought that out. Then she seemed to think it was time
he
answered some questions.