by John Jakes
Surrounded by her four children—three boys and a girl—Señora Esparza prayed aloud in her own tongue.
Most of the other women were quiet, too terrified to speak or move.
All at once little Angelina Dickinson began to struggle in Susannah’s arms. Amanda stopped her pacing, held out her hands to the child’s mother. “Let me take her a while.”
Her face pale and streaked with dirt, Susannah Dickinson lifted the little girl. Amanda bent from the waist, picking Angelina up and closing her in a soothing embrace. The roofless chapel glared red again. Seated on a stone, Susannah began to sway, twisting her hands in her lap as she fought hysteria.
The child pushed against Amanda’s shoulder, whimpering. Amanda said softly, “Be still, Angelina. Put your head down. Close your eyes.”
But the words had small effect. Only the strength of Amanda’s arms kept the little girl from wrenching away.
Amanda concentrated on holding Angelina, and murmuring to her. Somehow that relieved her own anxiety and frustration. The yelling and the gunfire grew steadily louder—
How long had it been going on? Half an hour? An hour? She was losing track. The sacristy had grown stifling. The odor of human sweat mingled with the reek of burned powder.
Angelina finally realized Amanda wouldn’t release her. Her body went limp against Amanda’s breast. Amanda squeezed the child’s waist reassuringly, felt the small head droop to rest on her shoulder. The sound of firing lessened suddenly.
A lean shadow loped past the doorway. Susannah jumped up, ran forward. “Almeron?”
“Don’t come out!” Dickinson warned. “I’m going to the barracks to see what’s happening—”
A moment later, Amanda and the others heard the squeak of hinges. The great chapel doors had not yet been barred from within.
Susannah Dickinson turned back to Amanda. She ran a hand over her daughter’s hair, her voice panicky. “We’ve lost everything. Even if the men can hold out, we’ve lost our homes, our—”
“Don’t talk like that!” Amanda exclaimed. “We’re still alive. Nothing else matters.”
She wished she believed it. She was falling prey to the same despair that made Susannah tremble. Everything was gone. Her reasonably settled life in Bexar was over. God alone knew what would become of them—
Renewed firing, more shouts brought Amanda’s head up. One of the Mexican women cried out as someone lurched through the door. Amanda recognized the Fuqua boy, one of those who had ridden in from Gonzales. He was only sixteen. He’d been hit in the face by a musket ball.
The left side of the boy’s jaw was a glistening ruin of blood and bone. Weaving on his feet, he tried to speak to Susannah. His mouth produced only grotesque gurgling noises.
The harder the boy tried to speak, the more pathetic his attempts became. His lips kept moving, blood oozing from one corner—
“Galba, what is it?” Susannah Dickinson pleaded. “What are you trying to say?”
The boy’s jaws worked frantically. He grunted like an animal. Blood ran down to the point of his chin. All at once his eyes filled with tears.
“I can’t understand you!” Susannah cried.
Obviously in great pain, Galba Fuqua clamped hands on his lower jaw, as if he hoped to force the ruined bones to articulate properly. The result was the same as before—gibberish. With a sob and an angry shake of his head, he fled back into the smoke that now filled the chapel.
Amanda and Dickinson’s wife exchanged glances, both stricken silent by the boy’s suffering. Then Amanda looked out at the sky above the chapel walls. Light was brightening behind the smoke. Dawn—
The Mexican cannon rumbled again. Shrieks and shots and throaty Spanish yells came from every direction. How many assault columns had the Mexicans hurled against the mission? From the sound of it, many more than one.
Haggard and out of breath, Almeron Dickinson appeared. He swiped the back of his hand across his powder-blackened face as his wife ran to his side.
“Great God, Sue—” he panted. “The—the Mexicans are inside the walls!” Señora Esparza covered her face.
“Travis is dead on the north rampart,” Dickinson went on. “They’re coming over with ladders—climbing over their own dead—hundreds of them—my God, there’s no stopping them, Sue—get back inside and stay there!”
He shoved her, hard. Then he spun and vanished in the smoke. Moments later, one of the twelve-pounders thundered.
Several Mexican women besides Señora Esparza had understood Dickinson’s English. Two of them were on their knees, hands clasped in prayer. Susannah walked slowly back to Amanda, took her daughter from the other woman. Silent tears shone on Susannah’s face.
Susannah was clearly ashamed of her inability to contain her fear. Amanda glanced away, staring down at her own filthy, work-toughened hands. No matter how she struggled to fix her mind on something else, one thought asserted itself—
The Mexicans were inside the walls.
The shouts and gunfire in the main plaza seemed closer than ever. Bugles blared. Amanda closed her eyes, recognizing the notes of the deguello—
No quarter.
ii
The Alamo plaza fell first, then the individual rooms of the long barracks where some of the remaining defenders had barricaded themselves. The chapel doors, barred at last, shook and splintered under heavy cannon fire. Finally they crashed open.
The smoky chapel filled with Mexican infantry. The soldiers wore blue cotton jackets with shoulder-knots of blue and green, dirt-stained white trousers and white cross-belts. Their headgear—tall felt shakos with pompoms—showed their commander’s preoccupation with things Napoleonic.
Daylight had come, though the thick smoke weakened and diffused the brilliant sun. Some of the running infantrymen were little more than blurs. But Amanda could still see the bayonets jutting from their muskets—
Hunched over, a man hurled himself into the sacristy. Weeping, Sam hunted a familiar face. He stumbled forward, clutching Amanda’s arm. “The colonel’s dead, Miz Mandy—”
“Oh, God, Sam, no!”
“A whole bunch come after him soon’s they busted the doors. He killed about half a dozen ’fore they grabbed his knife away. I begged ’em to kill me too but they jus’ laughed—”
The crying slave grew incoherent. On the verge of tears herself, Amanda ran a hand back and forth over Sam’s black hair. She felt him trembling against her arm. She spoke as calmly as she could.
“Sam? Sam, you must answer me. Do you know what’s happened in the plaza and the barracks?”
“Dead, they—all dead. Colonel Crockett wen’ down with ten, maybe twenty on top of him. Santy Anny’s soldiers, they gone crazy. After our boys fall, the soldiers jus’ stand there shootin’ at the bodies. Shootin’ dead men an’ cuttin’ them with the bayonets—I swear I never seen anything like—like—oh, Jesus, Miz Mandy, Jesus—”
He flung his arms around Amanda’s neck and buried his wet face against her shoulder.
At Amanda’s side, Susannah whispered, “Almeron’s dead. I know he’s dead.”
“Stop that! We can’t be sure about—”
“But there’s no more cannonfire. Don’t you hear? The cannons haven’t fired for at least a minute. Almeron’s dead!”
Screaming it, she flung herself toward the door. Amanda wrenched away from the grieving slave, dashed after the younger woman, caught her and pulled her back from the entrance. As she did, she glimpsed a ghastly sight. Above the milling Mexican infantrymen, bodies were sprawled across the silent twelve-pounders on the rampart. She thought she recognized Jim Bonham. And Señora Esparza’s husband. She didn’t see Dickinson.
She pushed the half-hysterical Susannah back into the center of the sacristy, then glanced outside again. A man came lurching down the ramp from the platform, his clothing tattered, his skin blackened by powder. In his right fist Major Evans clutched a flaring torch.
Amanda put a hand to her throat. She knew wha
t Evans intended to do with the torch.
Ignite the remaining powder. Blow them all up—
He never had a chance. Before he reached the bottom of the ramp, kneeling Mexican infantrymen fired a volley. Evans literally flew upward, smashed by balls that pierced his forehead, blew out one eye, opened bloody holes in his belly before he fell.
Several soldiers charged the corpse. A moment later, Evans’ body was being tossed in the air, jabbed and kept aloft by dozens of bayonets. The Mexicans cried one word over and over: “Diablo! Diablo!”
Devil was one of their favorite epithets for Texans. Now they were yelling it as a joke. But Evans wasn’t the only victim of the barbarity. A quick glance toward the baptistry showed Amanda another group engaged in the same sport. She pressed her knuckles against her mouth, averted her head.
The body being lifted and stabbed was Jim Bowie’s—
Wild with grief, Susannah Dickinson tried to rush by. Amanda grabbed her.
“You mustn’t, Susannah! Stay here. Don’t let them see you—”
What a pathetic plea, she thought then. As she manhandled the younger woman back into the sacristy for a second time, she knew discovery was inevitable.
iii
The musket fire boomed and echoed in the dim, cramped room. A fatalistic calm had settled over the women and children. Señora Esparza stared into space. The eldest of her three sons, a handsome twelve-year- old named Enrique, gazed fiercely at the ceiling, his lips forming words no one could hear. Amanda understood the meaning, though. Very few times in her life had she seen such hatred on a human face.
Unbelievably, the soldiers were still riddling the corpses on the gun platform. Through rifts in the smoke, Amanda saw bodies jump and jerk as the balls struck. The crazed behavior of the Mexicans told her a good deal about the fury of the battle in the plaza. Only incredible losses could explain the savagery of the attackers.
Another bent figure came darting out of the smoke. How Jake Walker, a gunner from Tennessee, had thus far escaped death Amanda couldn’t imagine. Then she saw that he had been hit. He seemed to be looking for someone. Suddenly, he rushed forward.
“Miz Dickinson—if they let you live, you got to get a message to my wife. You got to tell her—”
“Jake, not so loud!” Amanda warned.
Too late, Walker whipped his head around. He realized his shout had attracted attention. Soldiers converged on the sacristy door, muskets raised.
Amanda flung herself at Susannah and Walker, hoping to thrust them out of the way. Walker took a step backward. Amanda drove Susannah to the ground, tumbling on top of her.
Walker gaped at the hostile faces in the doorway. He yelled something, raised his hands in front of his face—
The muskets exploded. Walker shrieked as a ball struck him in the throat. He fell, blood gushing down over his chest.
On hands and knees beside the gasping Susannah, Amanda watched a boy belonging to one of the Mexican women clamber to his feet. Tugging a blanket around his shoulders as if he were cold, the boy started to speak. A soldier aimed and shot the boy through the stomach.
The mother moaned and fainted as the boy struck the ground. Enraged, Amanda jumped up, running at the soldiers, shouting at them in the Spanish she knew so well: “Goddamn you for a pack of animals—!”
Muskets were leveled again. She ducked as two went off. Susannah cried out—and Angelina too. The little girl clutched her right leg where the ball had hit.
A soldier slammed the butt of his musket against Amanda’s forehead. She sprawled, hitting hard. As she struggled to take a breath, half a dozen soldiers crowded into the sacristy and surrounded Jake Walker. As they’d done with Evans and Bowie, they lifted the body on their bayonets and tossed it. Amanda gagged, averting her head. She felt warm blood from the corpse spatter her face—
Then, abruptly, she heard a new voice, loud and deep. Something whacked against skin. A soldier squealed.
Amanda pushed up from the ground, gained her feet. She was still short of breath, blinking from the thick smoke beginning to fill the room. Her head ached suddenly. She expected a bayonet stroke any instant—
It never came. A man she couldn’t immediately identify was flailing the soldiers with the flat of his saber. They fell back, muskets raised to parry the blows.
Her vision cleared a little. The man using his sword to drive the infantrymen into the chapel was a hatless officer in a red-faced blue coat stained with blood and dirt.
“His Excellency gave no orders for slaughtering women, you whoresons!” he shouted. “Get out! Leave these people alone!”
The officer’s fury sent the soldiers milling into the smoke. When they were all gone, he touched Jake Walker’s corpse with the toe of one boot, getting blood on the leather. His mouth twisted in disgust.
Amanda stood panting and rubbing her watering eyes. Finally she got a clear look at the officer. He was in his thirties, stout. His skin was swarthy, his hair black and wavy. His glance shifted from Walker to the dead boy tangled in the blanket. Looking pained, he tapped the flat of his sword against his trousers and turned his attention to the surviving women and children.
“I assume that most of you speak Spanish? I am here to help you—”
Still sickened by the brutality she’d witnessed, Amanda stepped forward. The officer pivoted. His round face might have been a merry face in different circumstances. Now it showed surprise as Amanda bent her head and spat on the officer’s boots.
One of the women groaned, obviously afraid that Amanda’s defiance would produce more violence. The officer’s jaw whitened. But he didn’t raise his sword.
He glanced down at the spittle glistening on his reddened boot. Then back at Amanda. “I will overlook your disrespect, señorita”—he’d glanced at Amanda’s left hand and seen no ring; she had put it away permanently after Jaimie died—“because I understand how you were driven to it by the excesses of our men. Sequestered in here, you undoubtedly have no idea of what they have been through. Indeed—”
A bitter amusement shone in his dark eyes. He had an almost boyish countenance, Amanda decided. But the essentially benign features had been hardened by weather, and by war. The officer was clearly no coward, but neither did he seem to be cruel. She began to hope she and the others might survive.
The officer shrugged in a tired way, continuing. “Indeed I doubt whether the army can withstand another such victory.” The last word was tainted with sarcasm.
“I am Major Cordoba,” he went on. “I must inform you that you are the prisoners of His Excellency General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President of the Republic of Mexico.” He pointed his saber at Angelina Dickinson. The little girl was leaning against her kneeling mother, crying and clutching her bloodied skirt to her wounded leg. “I shall attempt to secure a litter for the child—”
Still with a bitter edge to her voice, Amanda said, “Don’t trick us, Major. If we’re going to be taken somewhere and shot, I for one would just as soon get it over with right here.”
Cordoba’s lips compressed. He was angry. “Señorita—”
“My name is de la Gura. Señora de la Gura.”
Amanda’s insolent tone made Cordoba color even more. “Señora, then! You are foolish if you refuse to entrust yourself to me. I have been sent specifically—”
“How can we trust men who shoot children?” Amanda retorted, pointing at the fallen boy.
“The boy’s death is regrettable, but—”
“Regrettable? It’s inhuman!”
Wilting under her glare, Cordoba muttered, “Yes, granted—granted!” Louder then: “But it is impossible to control men who have just concluded an engagement such as this. I repeat—you have no idea of what our troops suffered at the hands of your people.”
There was grudging respect in Cordoba’s last statement. Amanda’s anger cooled a little. The man did seem intelligent—decent, even. That couldn’t be said of most of the soldiers.
“Major?” Sus
annah Dickinson said in English. “My husband was on the gun platform. I—I assume he’s dead, but—”
“Please,” Cordoba interrupted in Spanish. “It would be easier if you would speak in my language.”
“I don’t know it very well,” Susannah replied, her voice shaky. Amanda hurried to her side and cradled an arm around her shoulder. Clinging to her mother and crying softly, little Angelina looked ready to swoon with pain.
“Ask your question,” Amanda said to Susannah. “I’ll translate for him.”
“Will I have a chance to look for my husband’s body? I’d like to see him decently buried.”
Cordoba glanced at Amanda. She put the query into Spanish. When she concluded, Cordoba shook his head.
“His Excellency has instructed that only our soldiers are to be buried. Unfortunately, the señora’s husband is considered a traitor to the republic. Therefore—”
“For God’s sake spare us your lectures, Major!”
“I was only attempting to explain why the señora’s husband would be denied burial. I am afraid it will also be denied to yours.”
“My husband died four years ago.”
“I see.”
Cordoba eyed her speculatively while she told Susannah what he had said. Almeron Dickinson’s wife closed her eyes and shook her head, looking more defeated than ever.
Cordoba tried to be conciliatory. “For your own safety, I beg you all to remain here while I see about the litter. We will escort you out of the mission and back to Bexar as soon as possible. I suggest that as we depart, you do not look too closely at the sights in the main plaza. For the sake of your own sensibilities—”
The sentence trailed off into awkward silence. All at once Amanda felt completely drained of anger. She was exhausted, and desperate to get out of this death-choked place—