Chapter 13

13

April 1846

Matamoros, Río Bravo

Together, they pul ed the man from the river and transported him to Carmen’s house. She begrudgingly al owed them the use of a room, where Ximena and her grandmother immediately took over his care. The lieutenant seemed to know the man and refused to leave his side.

“Wil he recover?” he asked when Nana Hortencia left the room to gather her supplies.

Ximena wanted to reassure him without giving false hope. The old man had now begun to thrash in the bed, and she turned to soothe him. He was burning up with fever.

“Riley, don’t let go of me,” he cried. “Help me, lad! Help me!”

“Shhh. We are here,” Ximena said in English. “You are safe. Shhh.”

“ ’Tis my fault,” teniente Riley said. “I was aidin’ him in crossin’ the river to brin’ him over to our ranks, and I, wel , as you can see, my fol y endangered his life.”“Is why you go to the river this morning?”

He nodded. “I was hopin’ against hope…”

She looked at him, wishing to put a comforting hand on his arm, but it wouldn’t be appropriate. “My grandmother, she wil cure him. No worry.” She touched the patient’s forehead, tracing a nger over the letters HD. “Who did this?”

“The Yanks. Punishin’ my countrymen is a favorite amusement of theirs.”

“They pay one day for this!” she said, and saw the same anger blazing in his blue eyes.

“Aye, we’l make them regret it,” he said.

“Dile que se retire,” Nana Hortencia said as she returned with the needed items.

“Please, we must work now,” Ximena told him.

“I’l go,” he said, “but pray do send for me at the barracks as soon as he wakes.”

As she escorted him out of the room, he turned to her and said, “I beg your pardon, but I do not know your name…” His voice trailed o , and the color in his cheeks deepened. He towered over her by a head, but for some reason, he didn’t make her feel smal .

“My name is Ximena Salomé Benítez y Catalán, widow of Treviño.” He coughed at hearing her long name, and she felt her lips twitch with suppressed laughter. “But please, cal me Ximena.”

“Hee-meh-na,” he repeated, drawing out each syl able as if tasting her name on his tongue. “I’m teniente John Riley. And that there is James Maloney.”

She nodded. “I see you tomorrow, teniente Riley.”

After treating the fever with white wil ow bark, Nana Hortencia lit the copal incense in her sahumador and asked God for his presence. She was about to perform a limpia on their patient to rid him of the susto from the trauma of nearly drowning. As Ximena watched her grandmother sweep their patient’s body with her sacred eagle feather and then with fresh sage, she knew retrieving the piece of his soul that had remained in the river would require several spiritual cleansings. Her grandmother wouldn’t give up until she persuaded that lost piece of soul to return to his body, and so she whispered his name in his ear and cal ed him three times.

When Nana Hortencia was nished with the ceremony, Ximena sat vigil through the night. The man would say words in the Irish tongue, and when he woke, he would grab her hand and cal her by a name she couldn’t understand.

“A ghrá! A ghrá! ” She knew he was cal ing for his wife. And she knew, without being told, that his wife was dead. Each time he cried out in his fevered delirium and insisted on going home, Ximena saw his pale, sorrowful countenance

contorted by the visions of his fevered brain. Suddenly, she felt something loosen inside her, and her own tears nal y gushed forth. She found herself crying along with him for the loved ones they’d both lost. For the home neither of them would ever see again.

“Mi niña, there’s someone here to see our patient,” Nana Hortencia said the next afternoon as she came into the room trailed by the tal , broad-shouldered Irishman. The light streaming in through the open window made his eyes glow like a eld of blue lupines.

Ximena moved aside to let him see the sleeping patient. “I’m sorry we no send for you before, teniente Riley, but he had fever and…” She pointed to her head, trying to get him to understand his friend had been too delirious, but she couldn’t think of the words in English. She wished she could speak the language better. The words got stuck in her mouth. It had been so long since she’d practiced with her tutor. Stil , it was better than nothing. “His fever is now away.

He wake before. Eat a little soup.”

“Wil he live?”

Upon hearing his voice, Maloney woke up. “Riley, is it you, lad?” His voice was a mere whisper, and Ximena leaned closer, taking the old man’s hand in hers. It was limp, but his pulse was much stronger than the day before and his color had improved. She was sure he was going to pul through. She watched the shock on the lieutenant’s face turn into utter felicity.

“You’re awake! I’m here, Jimmy, a chara. How do you nd yourself?”

“I thought I’d never see the blessed light of Heaven again,” he whispered.

“But I was saved by Saint Patrick himself! A miracle if I ever saw one.”

“A miracle?”

“A fal en tree. Put there by Saint Patrick. It caught me in its limbs.”

“You sit with your friend? I come back later,” Ximena said, pul ing up a chair for him.

Teniente Riley nodded. “Much obliged, lass.”

“I come with a little chicken broth for you,” she told Maloney.

“God reward you, jewel,” Maloney said.

“I’l see you out,” teniente Riley said. At the doorway, he added, “A thousand thanks for what you’ve done for my friend.”

“It was noth—”

“No, it means a lot to me. Truly, it does.”

The guilt in his voice told her he was stil berating himself for what had happened.

“He ght with you now, for my country, ¿sí?”

He smiled at her and nodded, then went back inside the room. Ximena stood in the doorway for a moment.

“ ’Tis good to see you alive, Jimmy,” he said. “I need you on the battle eld with me. Welcome to the Mexican Army of the North.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the old man said with pride. “ ’Tis an honor to ght by your side.”

That afternoon, Ximena watched, along with the townspeople and the troops, as General Torrejón and his lancers made their way into Matamoros escorting the Yanqui soldiers they’d captured in the altercation upriver at Rancho de Carricitos with a party of Taylor’s cavalry. They’d kil ed eleven Yanquis and injured many. The crowd cheered at the sight of the prisoners, and everyone knew ful wel what it meant.

The war had begun.

A few days later, at Ximena’s request, Cheno brought a uniform for her patient, who insisted he was wel enough to join his friends in the barracks.

“How do I look, lassie?” Maloney said as he came out of the room, dressed in his new Mexican artil ery uniform.

After his near-death experience, the man had become as skinny as cattle after a winter’s blight, but his eyes looked alive again and shone with the deep gray-

green of moss-coated rocks. She smiled and said, “¡Como un soldado valiente!

Like a valiant soldier.”

In the morning, she took him in the carriage to the outskirts of the town, where teniente Riley and his artil ery crew were practicing their dril s. Maloney wanted to surprise them. Seeing him, they al rushed to embrace him, picking him up onto their shoulders and cheering for him. Maloney laughed and burst into an Irish song. “Óró, sé do bheatha bhaile. Óró, sé do bheatha bhaile. Óró, sé do bheatha bhaile. Anois ar theacht an tsamhraidh…” His comrades joined him and soon al their voices rose in unison, everyone except teniente Riley, who stood removed from the group. Guilt and shame seemed to be permanently etched on his amiable face. He needed a good spiritual cleansing like the ones Nana Hortencia had given Jimmy Maloney to rid him of al that tormented him. He caught her watching him and touched the visor of his black o cer’s shako in salutation, then cal ed his crew to attention in order to resume the dril s.

She seated herself in the carriage but did not yet leave, remaining with the other onlookers, mostly local boys who’d come out to watch the foreign gunners manning the Mexican cannons. It was arduous work, the sun beating down on them relentlessly. Teniente Riley had separated the men into crews, and Maloney now joined one of them. She worried the old man was not yet strong enough to perform his duties. The lieutenant seemed to have known this as wel , because he gave Maloney one of the least strenuous jobs—lighting the charge with a long match, except they weren’t ring for real yet, but rather going through the steps, too many steps for her to keep up with. And she wasn’t the only one struggling.

The gunners were clearly beyond fatigued from having to push the heavy pieces into position and haul the ammunition. Teniente Riley shouted the orders as he walked the crews through each of the steps involved. Aligning, swabbing, loading, pricking, priming, and nal y ring.

“¡Fuego!” the spectators shouted along with teniente Riley. But when the cannons remained silent, the local boys shook their heads in disappointment.

“Why won’t they re for real?” they asked.

“Because rst they have to learn the steps so wel they can do it with their eyes closed,” she told them. “And gunpowder is expensive and cannot be wasted blasting away the shrubs.”

Final y, in the last dril before the crews were dismissed, the boys’ patience was rewarded when the cannons roared to life and spewed re out of their mouths.

Ximena covered her ears as the shots boomed. The diabolical sound made her tremble, but the boys cheered and clapped, clamoring for more.

“Fair play, fel as!” she heard teniente Riley say. The smoke hovered over the crews, and the stench of burnt gunpowder permeated the air. Through the haze, Ximena looked at the foreign soldiers, at Maloney and teniente Riley, and gave an involuntary shudder. She thought of the atrocities she’d witnessed rsthand during the rebel ion in Texas. She remembered the Battle of the Alamo, the cannons blasting, limbs strewn about, the rubble and chaos. This is what awaits these Irishmen, she thought. Carnage and bloodshed, mutilation and suffering, all for fighting a war that isn’t even theirs to fight.

If only this despicable war could be avoided. But how? The Yanquis were already there, right across the river. And the con ict had begun. The boundary line was already being drawn with blood and gunpowder.

Juan Seguín was right. The only thing they could do now was to try to survive it, and she couldn’t do it while wal owing in grief. But she couldn’t give in to her anger, either. So she had to turn to the only thing she knew would give her comfort and solace—her God-given gift of healing. Ever since she was a little girl, this is what she had wanted to be, a curandera like her grandmother. She would act upon the sacred cal ing to help the su ering. And by doing so, perhaps it would help her ease her own.

This time, Ximena would make sure not to be on the wrong side of the war.

This time—to honor Joaquín’s courage and to absolve her father—she would stand with Mexico.

“Surely you must have lost your senses,” Carmen said that evening when Ximena told her what she had decided to do. Al around them, the servants were rushing to nish packing up the house. “Have you told Cheno about this?”

“He was the one who told me the army has hardly any medical sta . He agrees I should help.” Ximena thought of the soldaderas—the soldiers’ wives,

mothers, and daughters who had fol owed the men to battle to provide an invaluable service to them as laundresses, cooks, nurses, and sometimes, when the need arose, even took up arms with the men. “He also suggested I could train the soldaderas to make herbal remedies and better care for the troops.”

Carmen sco ed, shaking her head again, waving Ximena’s words away. “This is madness. A battle is no place for us women.”

Ximena looked across the table at Carmen. She knew Joaquín’s sister wouldn’t understand her desire to stay in Matamoros and contribute to the war e ort. In her sister-in-law’s condescending attitude, Ximena saw her own mother, the way she’d objected to Nana Hortencia teaching Ximena the healing arts. She’d accused the old woman of l ing her little girl’s head with talk of plants and spirits, rituals and ceremonies. And how could her daughter one day be a desirable young lady if she was running around the countryside digging up roots with her bare hands?

“We have no medical facilities, no medication and supplies, no experienced nurses,” Ximena explained to Carmen. “My grandmother and I can help with that.”

“And what about Saltil o?” Carmen asked.

Ximena couldn’t bear the thought of going to Saltil o and sitting with Carmen in her parlor, sipping hot chocolate and eating buñuelos while her country was under attack. She couldn’t do it. She looked down at her hands.

They weren’t meant to be wrapped in white-laced gloves while fanning herself with expensive fans from Spain. Her hands were meant to heal.

“The war is here and the soldiers need us,” she insisted. “How can we run away?”

“A woman does not belong in a eld hospital,” Carmen repeated. “At least not any woman of our station. My children, my husband, and I wil leave for Saltil o tomorrow. You do what you want. Become a soldadera if that is what you wish. But if my brother were here—”

“He would give me his blessing,” Ximena said. “Joaquín didn’t run from the storm, and neither wil I.”