Burke in the Land of Silver

by Tom Williams

  James raised himself from the bed where Pedro had insisted he rest.

  ‘I have come, señor, because I believe you to be a true patriot. I needed an honest man who loves his country to take these letters. You will know what to do with them.’

  James reached into his pocket and withdrew the despatches, crumpled and bloody but still readable. He handed them to Paco Iglesias and then, his duty done, he fell into unconsciousness.

  *

  By the time he was able to leave his bed the next day, riders were already on their way from the estancia to the ranches of the other patriot leaders.

  As James entered Paco Iglesias’s study, his host leapt to his feet, crossing the room to shake him by the hand.

  ‘Captain Burke, I always knew in my soul that you were an honourable man. Now you have repaid my trust a thousand fold.’

  James was so taken by the other’s expression of emotion that he didn’t even bother to explain that he was now a major.

  ‘You have exposed de Liniers as a traitor, unfit to lead our patriotic movement. I have already sent word to the other commanders. We will meet here to decide our new leader.’

  ‘De Liniers is finished, then.’

  ‘His power is ended. In a few days, he will know that we have evidence of his treason. His viceroyalty is finished.’

  ‘What of the future? Another viceroyalty?’

  Paco Iglesias looked out of the window at the pampas and James thought of the story of Moses looking out over the Promised Land. At that moment, he knew that there would be no principality in Monte Video. There might, he supposed, be one more viceroy. Great changes do not happen overnight. But with de Liniers destroyed, new leaders would arise: men like Iglesias who would lead their country to freedom and independence.

  ‘This land,’ said the criollo, ‘is not Spanish any more. This land is ours.’

  He clapped his hands and the Indian servant, Maria, entered with a bottle of the local wine. Behind her, James saw a tall man, almost a giant, standing in the shadows of the room.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a new manservant,’ he said.

  His host looked puzzled.

  ‘There’s still just Maria, though I suppose she could do with some help. What made you think there was anyone else?’

  Burke looked again at the shadows. There was no one there but it seemed that there was a trembling in the air and James imagined a black giant of a man saying, ‘You have found your road.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long journey.’

  Paco smiled and poured two glasses.

  ‘To our country,’ he said. ‘To Argentina.’

  James raised his glass and drank.

  *

  James stayed at the estancia to see the gathering of the criollo leaders. Trestle tables were set up outside the house so that they could all sit and eat together while they discussed de Liniers’ betrayal and how they were to deal with it. At first, he sat with them but he found himself feeling strangely detached. He had brought this meeting about but it was not for him to decide the future of the country. That was a task for its own people.

  He began to think of what the future held for him. He had fulfilled the destiny laid on him by the voodoo priest all those years ago. Now he had to form his own destiny.

  At the next break in the discussions, he spoke to Sr Iglesias.

  ‘Paco,’ he said, ‘I have to go to Monte Video.’

  *

  A week later, James was sitting in his room in Monte Video, looking out across the great estuary of the Plate. On the horizon, he imagined he could see a smudge of land that he already thought of as Argentina. He picked up the glass on the table beside him and raised it, echoing Paco Iglesias’s toast in his mind. His thoughts, though, were closer to home. That morning, he had visited the main inns of the town to see if Ana had yet arrived, but she had not.

  James felt safe in Monte Video. The town had rebelled once against de Liniers, and the man who had escorted Burke on his journey had brought the news of the Viceroy’s treachery to the rebel leaders there. De Liniers was still viceroy in name but his authority was already slipping in Buenos Aires and any command to arrest James in Monte Video would be ignored.

  James had argued that de Liniers should be dragged from office immediately but Sr Iglesias had explained convincingly why this could not be.

  ‘He was our leader against the British. He has ruled us with scarcely concealed contempt for Spain. He has allowed us to believe that we are strong enough to protect ourselves and to govern ourselves. If we tell the people that he was an agent of Napoleon, they will lose that belief. They will tell themselves that only Spain or England can protect us: that we are not fit to rule ourselves. No, we cannot take that risk. We will control de Liniers with what we know, and in a few months he will resign.’

  The rebel leader had seen the disappointment on Burke’s face and hastened to reassure him.

  ‘Don’t worry, James. His power is ended. Soon he will be driven from office and, be sure, we will be certain that, when he leaves, not a single real that he has stolen from his country will leave with him. This is a man who has lived for power and now he will be left powerless. Trust me, James; you have had your revenge.’

  James smiled as he recalled that little speech. De Liniers was, indeed, destroyed, but James needed one more thing before he could be satisfied.

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Lady downstairs, sir, asking after you.’

  James was on his feet in an instant. Pausing only to straighten his jacket, he hurried down the stairs.

  The lady waiting downstairs was talking to the landlord as James entered the room. Her back was to him, but he knew at once that it was not Ana. Then she turned and saw him.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Burke,’ she said brightly.

  ‘Molly, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you, mostly.’

  Molly saw the look of confusion on his face and took pity.

  ‘When William didn’t come by, I knew something must be amiss, so I made enquiries. I knew he had been living in the O’Gorman household when he was last there, and I thought they might have news of him. The servants there do gossip, so I made enquiries of Mrs O’Gorman. I found her about to leave the city and – well, she’s an innocent in some ways, isn’t she?’

  James had never exactly thought of Ana as ‘an innocent’ before but he realised now that Molly was right. For all her sexuality and her pursuit of position, Ana retained a child-like naivety.

  ‘I thought she had best have a travelling companion,’ Molly concluded, as if there was really nothing else to say.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘At the Two Swans, half a mile up the road.’

  James bent to Molly’s face and kissed her.

  ‘Best save that for her, I reckon,’ said Molly. But she said it to herself. James had already left.

  Afterword

  James and Ana were reunited and travelled to Rio de Janeiro together. It would be nice to say that they were happy ever after and, perhaps, in their own way, they were.

  William had boarded ship safely in Buenos Aires and waited for James in Rio. When he found Molly in their party, he was, as he put it, ‘as happy as a man might reasonably expect to be.’

  Burke’s llamas never did make it to England. They stayed in O’Gorman’s stables and he became quite attached to them.

  De Liniers finally lost his position as viceroy four months later in August, 1809.

  The next year, on 25th May, the citizens of Buenos Aires (including a prosperous and contented Thomas O’Gorman) met in the town hall and voted that they should no longer recognise the new viceroy, paving the way for independence. De Liniers was one of the leaders of a counter-revolution and was shot as a traitor later that year.

  In 1816, at the Congress of Tucuman, the State of Argentina was officially founded as an independent country.

 
; Historical Note

  When I came to write this book, I started to research the early history of Argentina. What soon became obvious was that many of the incidents recorded by the chroniclers of that nation’s birth either never happened or happened in ways that were significantly different from those described. Yet it is the stories, not the historical facts, that have defined the spirit of that still-young country.

  In the end, it is stories that give us our sense of who we are and where we come from. Alfred never burnt the cakes, Harold didn’t die with an arrow in his eye, but these are the myths that sustain us.

  Which is my way of saying that when the historical facts and my feeling of what should have happened were in conflict, history went out of the window.

  James Burke was born in Dublin, not Kilkenny. His early life seems to have been very comfortable but he did leave Ireland to join the Regiment of Dillon. This regiment was an Irish unit in the French army as described. He did sail to Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) to put down a slave rebellion but he couldn’t have met the Book Man (or Boukman), who was killed a year earlier. The regiment really did surrender to the British and Burke’s career as a spy started then. He was a very good spy, so we know very little about his life. I am very grateful for an article by Peter Pyne (‘A soldier under two flags,’ published in Etudes Irlandaises in 1998) as this seems the best source of information available on him in English.

  The political background in Argentina is closely based on fact. The implausible romantic entanglements are based on truth as well. Ana O’Gorman, Princess Carlota, and Queen Maria Luisa were all real people and Burke’s name was linked, more or less explicitly, with all three. The love triangle of Ana, Burke, and de Liniers also really happened.

  A significant inspiration for this book was the city of Buenos Aires, one of the most exciting places on the planet. I am grateful to all the people I have met there who have made my visits so happy.

  There are a few buildings from 1806 still standing in Buenos Aires and a walk around the backstreets off the Plaza Victoria (now the Plaza de Mayo) can give you an idea of what the town must have been like. Visits to the Museo Casa Rosada (on the site of the old fort – now the presidential palace), the Museo de la Ciudad, and the Museo Historico Nacional all helped. There is also an excellent small museum in the Cabildo (the old town hall) where, amongst other things, you can see the flag of the 71st Infantry, captured in 1806.

  Fans of military history may notice that, although my account of the British invasion of 1806 is true (details of their defeat have been fictionalised), I haven’t mentioned the invasion of 1807. Truth here, unfortunately, is not just stranger than fiction but so ridiculous as to be entirely implausible. The fact that one incompetent invasion of Buenos Aires ended with an ignominious defeat and the court martial of the commanding officer is just about believable. The fact that there was an exact repeat a year later (except that this time the British didn’t even get as far as capturing the fort) would stretch the credulity of the reader.

  The accounts of gaucho life draw heavily on the writings of Charles Darwin, who visited the pampas on his way to the Galapagos. Darwin is so identified with the theory of evolution that it is often forgotten that he was a brilliant writer and his accounts of his travels are well worth reading. There is nothing like direct experience, though, and my day riding with the gauchos at El Ombu is one I will treasure for ever. The museum of gaucho life at San Antonio de Areco was also valuable (and the estancia there is my model for Sr Iglesias’s home).

  I spent an interesting couple of days recreating Burke’s crossing of the Andes in similar conditions. We never made it to the pass: we were travelling in spring, rather than autumn, and the winter snows that still blocked the path made it too dangerous to push the horses on. As a result, my description of the walk down into Chile draws heavily on the account of Patrick Fermor, whose book, Three Letters from the Andes, describes just such a journey.

  For a historical account of the liberation struggle throughout South America, I recommend Robert Harvey’s Liberators, which helped me put Argentina’s history in some sort of context.

  Anyone looking for ‘Upper Peru’ on a modern map should turn instead to Bolivia. Named after Bolivar, the revolutionary leader, this country did not exist under Spanish rule.

  The riot that William started in Madrid really happened (and did, indeed, lead more or less directly to the Peninsular War). The incident is the subject of one of Goya’s paintings.

  Tom Williams

  June 2013

  Burke will be back …

  I hope you have enjoyed Burke in the Land of Silver. This is just the first of five books about James Burke that will be published over the next few months. The next one, Burke and the Bedouin, should be out in July 2020. It’s set during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt (for some reason a campaign that isn’t much talked about these days). It has evil French spies (of course), a beautiful woman, desperate night-time rides across the desert, and even pyramids. It’s a lot of fun.

  If you want to learn more about the books and the world that James Burke lived in, I recommend that you have a look at my website: http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk. You can also follow me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTomWilliams) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/TomCW99).

  I’m sure you’ve seen notes from authors before asking that you review their books on Amazon, but it really makes a huge difference. Without a huge marketing budget (and hardly any authors get those), Amazon reviews are crucial to getting books to an audience. If you have enjoyed Burke in the Land of Silver and would like other people to have a chance to enjoy it too, it would be so helpful if you could just write a few words on Amazon. Just a sentence or two saying that you liked it and you think others might is all it takes – we’re not talking about the Times Literary Supplement here. I do read all my reviews (writers who say they don’t are almost certainly fibbing) and I love getting them.

  Thank you again for reading. I hope we’ll meet up in Egypt.