Aztec Rage

by Gary Jennings

  Not long ago, the priest had captured a French general who was on his way back to France after another general had replaced him. The fool had an escort of just a hundred, and the unit was slowed down by the general’s insistence that his war wagons, packed with booty, go with him.

  To elicit tactical information—and to exact retribution for his atrocities—he ordered the general lowered into a cauldron of boiling water . . . slowly. While the general parboiled, the priest had ten captured French soldiers and officers castrated in retaliation for the rape of Spanish women. Whether the men being punished had actually raped any women was irrelevant. He turned them loose to convey their agony to their fellow soldiers.

  Guerrillas routinely left captured French soldiers by the wayside, their eyes gouged, their tongues cut out, their limbs broken but still alive so they could think about the atrocities that had been inflicted on Spanish men, women, and children. It was up to their comrades to put them out of their misery.

  As he waited to attack the French unit, he thought for a moment about the schism between what he once was and what he was now, but he quickly shrugged off the thought. He was a shepherd, and he had to protect his flock from wolves.

  CÁDIZ

  FIFTY-SIX

  Cadiz, 1809

  WHEN WE WERE in the Golfo de Cádiz, two days from the great port city, a passing ship dropped a floatable packet for us, which our captain fished out of the sea. In it were newspapers and pamphlets reporting on the war in Spain. The captain and crew knew something of the events already—and I’d heard many discussions during the voyage—but as the news indicated, the situation turned more critical each day.

  Since the central junta governing Spain was in Seville—because Madrid was in French hands—Napoleon’s army had besieged the city, and it was expected to fall any day to the overwhelming forces. The junta had relocated to Cádiz, because that city was easier to defend. Lying on a long, narrow peninsula, Cádiz was vulnerable by land from only one direction, and the British navy controlled approaches by sea.

  Gerona, in the far north near the French border, and Zaragoza, along the Río Ebro, both suffered under long, murderous sieges. Each time they defeated a French army, another came over the Pyrénées and began another siege, battering the cities and their defenders with the world’s finest artillary.

  “Ay!” I muttered under my breath. I was entering another hornet’s nest. The Spanish battled a French invader who seemed to have the upper hand. Almost the whole country was in French hands. Napoleon himself had led an enormous army into Spain to restore his brother Joseph to the throne after the Spanish had sent Joseph racing back to France.

  I didn’t care if the country was in the hands of the devil. I owed the Spanish nothing but grief and had nothing against the French. I just didn’t want the war to affect me. Eh, I might as well have pretended to be Napoleon himself, as much good as my current guise might do me. Carlos was a French spy, and the authorities in New Spain might very well have uncovered that fact by now. A hangman with a rope could easily await my landfall when I got off the ship.

  The newspapers and pamphlets demonstrated that any support for the invaders—even dressing in French fashions—could be deadly. Since the French massacre in Madrid on the second of May, from one end of the country to the other, Spanish patriots had executed traitors and malingerers.

  The ship’s captain told me Cádiz had been one of the major cities where the people seized control of the government because the city’s notables refused to act.

  “It was the common people who took to the streets, not the rich or the nobles,” the captain said. “They marched on the Marqués del Socorro, the captain-general of the city, when he failed to immediately declare for Ferdinand. When he called out the garrison to drive them off, the marchers broke into the armory to confiscate weapons. Then they returned to the marqués’s house, dragged him out, and executed him as a traitor. When they finished with the marqués, they aimed artillery pieces at the homes of the wealthy along Calle de la Caleta. The priests only barely persuaded them not to massacre the city’s elites. Since that time, the people of Cádiz have been leaders in the war of independence.”

  The captain told me that all across the country the common people had taken control in Zaragoza, Seville, Córdova, León, Mallorca, Cartegena, Badajoz, Granada, La Coruña. In Valencia people took to the streets and crowded in front of the municipal offices, demanding that their leaders recognize Ferdinand as king and reject the French usurper, Joseph. But the civil leaders refused, perhaps as fearful of enfranchising the common people as they were of French retaliation. The insurgents exploded when faced with such treason, killing hundreds of people they believed to be in league with the French.

  “In the city of El Ferrol,” the captain said, “the site of an important naval base and arsenal, a group of women insurgents seized the governor and distributed weapons to the people.”

  Holy Mother! Petticoats with muskets. What was the world coming to?

  A decree of the junta legalized the attack on the French by the bands of what were being called “land pirates.”

  “More accurate to call them privateers,” the captain said, “on land.”

  Privateers were civilian ships outfitted as war vessels and given commissions to attack enemy shipping and keep whatever they were able to steal as spoils of war. The attacked ships considered them nothing more than pirates. In essence, the junta authorized the guerrillas to attack the French units and take any material goods as “prizes.”

  The captain told me that the goods taken from the dead French soldiers had in turn been stolen when the French ravaged Spanish cities.

  He went back to his duties while I remained at the railing and read. The decree vindicated—even validated—the “land pirates” because French soldiers had violated Spanish homes, “with the rape of mothers and daughters, who had to suffer all the excesses of this brutality in sight of their dismembered fathers and husbands . . .” It went on to describe how French soldiers impaled Spanish children on their bayonets and carried them around in triumph as “military trophies.” They sacked convents, raped nuns, defiled monasteries, and murdered monks.

  Dios mío.

  “It’s how he pays his soldiers,” a voice next to me said.

  “Señor?”

  The speaker was a fellow passenger, a merchant returning from a trip to the Caribbean. He gestured at the proclamation.

  “Napoleon rewards his generals and his soldiers with booty,” the man said. “That’s why they’re raping our country. From generals right down to the lowest musketeer, they’re stealing everything they can get their hands on because that’s how they get their pay.” He wagged his finger at me. “But it will bring them down in the end. Have you ever tried to aim a musket or run for cover when you’re loaded down with loot?” The man jeered. “We’ll kill them all, first the French invaders, and when we’ve cut the throat of the last of them, we’ll go back after the lovers of the French who betrayed us and rip out their throats, too.”

  My hand instinctively went to my throat.

  When the ship docked at Cádiz, custom inspectors came aboard. They searched my meager possessions, as they did everyone else’s. I was tempted to give another false name to the inspectors, but a ship’s officer who knew my name was standing nearby. I waited tensely, half-expecting the man to put me in chains, but he just wrote down my name and said nothing.

  I left the ship a free man, stepping into a strange city in the midst of a war. My only plans were to stay alive and out of the hands of the authorities.

  As I wandered down city streets, Cádiz appeared to be a fine city, smaller than México City, and hemmed in, nearly surrounded by water. The city was compact and pleasing to the eye, with a tall watchtower and many white buildings in the Moorish style, the city having been occupied by that infidel people for many centuries. I learned aboard ship that Cádiz was one of the oldest cities in Europe, founded by the Phoenicians nearly a centur
y before the birth of Christ. Since that time it had been occupied by the Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and Spanish. It had replaced Seville as the main port for trade with the colonies, but with that wealth came attacks by pirates and the British. Now, of course, it was the turn of the French to test the city’s defenses.

  From the docks I strolled to the center of the city and took a room at an inn. I was in a quandary as to what my next move should be. An ocean’s distance from the viceroy’s men would not protect me from them forever. Ships continually brought dispatches from the viceroy’s administration. Authorities in Cádiz would learn that a notorious colonial bandido had fled to their jurisdiction. And there was the problem of money. I would have to turn to thievery when my last piece of eight was gone.

  I ordered wine and something to eat and was chewing on a tough piece of beef when I looked up at two men wearing military uniforms.

  “Carlos Galí?” one inquired.

  I shook my head. “No, señor, I am Roberto Herra. However, I know of this man you ask about, his room is near mine.” I pointed up the stairs. “Second floor, first room on the right.”

  The two soldiers started for the stairway, and I started for the front door. I was halfway to it when the landlord pointed at me. “That’s him!”

  The devil take him for not minding his own business.

  One of the soldiers pointed a pistol at my face. “You are under arrest, Señor Galí.”

  “For what crime?” I demanded.

  “The one the executioner whispers in your ear.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  TO MY SURPRISE, I was not taken to a dungeon but to the city’s military headquarters. A frenzied facility, staff officers and couriers came and went, always in a hurry, some bristling with self-importance, others with worried expressions as they brought word of the war’s progress. Officers took me down a stone stairway into the bowels of the building and shoved me into a dark room. The door slammed behind me, and I was in complete darkness. I hadn’t seen anything in the room except stacks of papers, as if the room was used for storage of records. I made myself comfortable on the papers and tried not to think about my predicament. Not thinking about it was as easy as forgetting to breathe.

  Was I to be taken out and summarily shot? If I were given the chance to explain myself, I might buy some time. I could confess to being a fraud—as well as a notorious colonial bandido and murderer—rather than a spy and traitor. That might buy me a few hours while they decided the best way to execute me.

  I don’t know how long they kept me in the storage room. I awoke when I heard the lock clicking.

  “Come with me,” an officer said. He spoke with the arrogance and authority of a soldier who had spent his military career in staff assignments rather than facing an enemy in the field. Two soldados flanked him.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Hopefully to hell.”

  “When we meet there, I’ll be mounted on your wife, giving her a taste of a real man.”

  The devil must make me say these things. The officer stood perfectly still, frozen in place. His face went pale. The two soldiers gawked.

  The officer’s pale color faded, and his face went red. “You—You—I’ll have you—”

  “Whipped? Hanged? You wish to redress the insult? Give me a sword, amigo, and we will settle the matter of your wife’s affection for my manhood.”

  “Put him in chains!”

  A moment later I was taken into a room on an upper floor of the headquarters building—chained. Behind a desk sat an officer, this one in a uniform that told me he outranked the dog I had insulted. Unlike the pansy, this one looked like a man who would have my male member cut off and stuffed down my throat if I spoke ill of his wife or daughters.

  “Unchain him and leave,” the ranking officer told the men who had brought me in after the young officer had conferred with him in private. He glared at me as soon as we were alone. “I should put you immediately before a firing squad for your insults to my lieutenant.”

  I sneered. “He’s a woman.”

  “He’s my son.”

  Santo mierda! “I apologize, Señor General.” I didn’t know his rank, but calling him a “general” sounded like a good start. “I find that when I am falsely accused of crimes, I must defend myself against whomever is closest. Your fine young son was unfortunately the closest target available when the door opened.”

  “And exactly what crimes have you been falsely accused of?”

  “I’m not a spy!”

  “And why do you find it necessary to defend yourself against such a charge?”

  “Well I—I—”

  “Perhaps you come prepared to defend against such a charge because you are in fact guilty of it. Is that the case, Señor Galí?”

  Frantic strategies for getting my foot out of my mouth flew through my head, but none reached my tongue. I tried a lie. “The soldiers last night, one of them called me a spy.”

  “You’re lying. They didn’t know why they were arresting you.”

  “Sí, I am lying.” I leaned forward and spread my hands on his desk. I could not fool the man, so I resorted to the truth . . . or at least a small piece of it. “I have been an admirer of France, an afrancesado, as they say. I believed that some factions in Spain restricted free speech—even the freedom to think—and those are still my feelings. But now I spit on the French!” I banged my fist on the desk. “When the people of Madrid rose up and fought the invaders with their bare hands, I could no longer call myself an admirer of the French. I am first a patriot of Spain. Give me a sword, señor, and you will see French blood running down our gutters.”

  He stared at me and pursed his lips. “A report from the viceroy in New Spain names spies who conspired to send to the French plans for our fortifications.”

  “I know of this matter. While on a scientific expedition in the colony, two of our people were arrested as spies.”

  He grinned like one of the sharks I ate in Termino. “Your name is one of those accused.”

  I made the sign of the cross and gestured to the heavens, somewhere above the cracked plaster ceiling overhead. “Señor General, may God strike me dead if I lie. I swear to you, I know nothing of these foul deeds except what I heard.” I hoped the good Lord realized there was more than a little truth in what I said. “Personally, I had never spied!”

  “I suspect you’re lying. Something about you shouts to me that you’re a bad hombre. Before you were brought before me, I expected you to be a timid, frightened scholar, a man of books and ideas. Instead, you have a foul mouth, you challenge an officer to a duel, and you lie as easily as if you were raised by gypsies.”

  “I come from a good Catalán—”

  “Which is the only reason you are alive.”

  I looked at him in puzzlement. “Señor General?”

  “I am a colonel, not a general. My name is Colonel Ramírez, so please stop inflating my rank. You come from Barcelona, where you’re known to have French sympathies, perhaps even to have been a spy for the French before you went to the New World.”

  “I—”

  He held up his hand. “Please stop thundering your innocence. There were suspicions about you, not proof, from the colonial authorities. But now that I’ve met you, I wouldn’t be surprised if the accusations had included acts of murder, banditry, blackmail, blasphemy, and the defilement of women, to say nothing of treason. So let’s not waste time with protestations, which will simply tighten the noose I wish to loop around your neck.”

  I involuntarily felt my neck and cleared my throat.

  He shark-grinned again. “Yes, that very neck. But you may be able to save it if you cooperate.”

  “What do you want of me?” I assumed he wanted me to implicate my alleged coconspirators. I didn’t know any, except for the countess, and I was ready to name her and make up a few others just to make it sound good.

  “You have qualities that we need at the moment. You’re from Barcelona, a
nd you speak Catalán and French fluently.”

  “Sí, most excellently.” I was suddenly elated. They wanted me to translate for them! What a soft job that would be, especially when the alternative was to be ripped apart by a team of horses. My mastery of both languages was questionable, but I could fake it.

  “We need you for a mission,” he said.

  “A mission?”

  “We must obtain information from Catalonia. We need a man who can travel to Barcelona and beyond, to Gerona near the French border.”

  “Gerona?” I squeaked. I knew enough about the geography of Spain to know that Cádiz was near the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and Gerona was hundreds of leagues away, beyond Barcelona, near the French border on the northern edge of the country. In between, several hundred thousand French troops ravaged the country. The French occupied Barcelona and were storming the gates of Gerona.

  His grin tightened. “I can see that your passionate feelings of patriotism immediately ignited when I mentioned the need of your country. As you said a moment ago, just give you a sword and French blood would run in gutters.”

  “Of course, General—Colonel—Naturally my first thought was to ask myself . . . what can I do for my country? And I’m sure there are many valuable things I can do,” I cleared my throat, “right here in Cádiz—”

  “Your choices are to go north or be executed immediately.”

  I nodded and smiled. “Naturally, the atrocities those French bastardos have committed has inflamed my patriotic fervor. I am eager to go north for my country. What exactly is it you want me to do?”

  “Several things. The first step is that you will be transported to Barcelona by boat.”

  “By boat? What of French warships?”

  “The British are our allies, and their ships dominate the sea.”