by Blake, J
“Day or two, hell!” Harney thundered. “The bastard will not outlive the morning! Get that sorry son of a bitch out here right now! If any goddamned doctor interferes, tell him I’ll hang him too!” The lieutenant rode off at a gallop.
The carts were aligned under the gallows and the prisoners made to stand and the nooses put around their necks. They would wear no hoods. Harney wanted them to witness what was happening at Chapultepec. “You sons of bitches see that Mex flag on the tower?” he said, pointing toward the castle where the infantry assault had begun and riflefire crackled and smoked and the army band marching behind the troops had Struck up “Yankee Doodle” with all its might. “When that piece of shit comes down and the Stars and Stripes go up, that’s when you’ll hang, the whole bastard lot of you. Now you just think about that in the time left to you.”
Dominguez glanced at Spooner and Edward. “Pero que modo de matar es este?” he said in a low voice. “A man does not kill like this. Is no a children’s game.”
“If we got to wait till your flag flies over that tower,” a goateed Saint Patrick called out, “we’ll by God live to eat the goose that fattens on the grass over yer fucking grave, ye damned blowhard bastard!”
The other Patricks laughed and the three companeros exchanged grins. Harney hupped his horse over to the cart holding the Patrick who spoke and slashed at him with his saber, gashing open the man’s face.
“Damn ye!” the Patricio shouted. “Damn ye for the cowardly rascal ye are!” Blood poured off his rent face and his teeth were visible through the open flap in his cheek.
“He’s ruined yer looks for sure, Larry!” a Patrick in a neighboring cart yelled out. “Ye’ll not turn the head of a pretty girl the rest of your born days, I’ll wager!” The bleeding man called Larry laughed along with his comrades.
Harney was redfaced with fury but knew he could not make them cease their mockery nor their mirth, not short of shooting them, which would but deprive him of the pleasure of seeing them hang.
“Laugh, you whoreson bastards!” he said. “We’ll see how you laugh when Old Glory rides up that pole and you’re dancing on the air. We’ll see who’ll be laughing then!”
They carried on in jocular fashion, these condemned men, as the American infantry advanced steadily up the Chapultepec hill through the fierce defending fire and made the castle walls.
The legless Saint Patrick, O’Connor, now arrived in a hospital wagon and was transferred to a hanging cart where a board was laid across the slat sides to set him upon with his hands bound behind him. A noose was snugged round his neck and the rope made taut to keep him from toppling. The bandages around the man’s leg stumps were red-brown with blood and stained yellow with pus and gave feast to a growling riot of flies. His eyes were black hollows and he looked nearly dead where he sat.
Now the infantry had breached the walls of the castle and a pale haze of smoke and dust rose from within where the fighting was hand to hand and the bayonet would decide the day. For nearly another half-hour the battle raged at Chapultepec. When some of the Patricks mockingly complained that they were awful damned tired of standing, others of them joked that they’d be a far sight more discomforted if they tried to sit down. And then the last of the gunfire fell off and a minute later a faint but prolonged cheering from the castle came to the men on the hill. Harney came alert and stood in the stirrups as if he might thus be able to see over the distant walls.
And now the Mexican flag began to descend and Harney reined his mount around and trotted his horse along the front of the gallows and grinned up at the array of condemned men fallen silent who only a moment before had been joking about their tired legs.
“Ready your whips!” Harney ordered the muleteers at the wagon reins.
“Look there now!” he shouted at the condemned and pointed toward the castle tower where the Mexican flag was now gone from sight. “Look there at the last sight your traitorous eyes will ever see. Look there at the flag you betrayed, damn your souls!”
Over the tower of Chapultepec castle now rose the Stars and Stripes, shining in the sun. And every noosed man stared at it and beyond to his own eternity.
“Laugh now!’ Harney bellowed. And cackled like a lunatic. And slashed the air overhead with his saber to send the wagons clattering forward and in the next moment the renegades were kicking wildly at the emptiness under their feet like crazed marionettes—all but one who lacked the legs to kick with—and then the thirty were dangling dead in the haze of that ancient Mexican hill.
There followed the floggings and brandings of the eight whose death sentences had been commuted and who would be made to bury their hanged comrades. And as those punishments were taking place Edward told Dominguez he wanted his help and Dominguez asked for what and Edward told him, “To help my brother escape from prison.”
16
In the North American, yet another American newspaper publishing in Mexico City at this time, appeared the following editorial:
We can paint no man, however cursed by conscience and despised by all, so perfectly unmanned, so infamously degraded, as the deserter; There is no punishment too severe for the traitor; no infamy too blackening for his name. There is no word in the language that implies so much shame as that of deserter. With Americans it expresses more than all the epithets of the language; for if all crimes were bundled together and stewed down into one, they could not convey the strength of the blackest of all—DESERTER!
And on the eve following the executions at Mixcoac, an editorial in the Diario del Gobeirno, a Mexico City newspaper, proclaimed thus:
Mexicans: Among the Europeans whom the American army has hired to kill us, there are many unfortunate men who are convinced of the injustice of this war, who profess the same Roman Catholic religion that we do, and who, following the noble impulse of their hearts, passed over to our army to defend our just cause. From them the president formed the Foreign Legion, known under the name of the San Patricios. At Angostura and Churubusco they fought with utmost bravery and after the enemy took this last place, they were made prisoners. Well then, would you believe it, my countrymen? This day, in cold blood, the barbarian American army, from an impulse of superstition, and after the manner of savages and as practiced in primitive times, have hanged these men as a holocaust.
Mexicans: in the name of our dignity as men and of God Himself, we should all unite in one unanimous and continuous effort to revenge those great outrages….
Such was the opposition of American and Mexican sentiments on the subject of the San Patricios. Americans everywhere castigated them as damnable traitors while Mexicans of all stations venerated them as heroes. Scott refused the Mexican entreaties to free the Saint Patricks from prison. But he did permit the city council to send a team of inspectors to see for themselves that the Saint Patricks were being humanely treated. They were locked up in the Acordada penitentiary, an imposing whitewashed colonial building that covered almost a whole city block on the wide and lovely Calle Patoni. Armed guards manned the walls of the large central courtyard where the prisoners passed their days playing cards, exercising, writing letters, napping in the shade of the ahuehuete trees around the fountain. In the early evening they were locked into a common cell that took up half of the second floor. Tall barred windows afforded them a clear view of the busy sidewalk and street below and of the lovely Alameda with its smooth stone walkways and dense green trees and flower gardens bursting with colors. The inspectors saw that each man had been given a shirt and pair of trousers, shoes, and a sleeping mat and blanket, and they verified that the men were adequately fed. The council requested that the prisoners be permitted to receive social visitors and gifts, and against the protests of his advisers Scott consented. Newspapers began to report on the daily parade of people, mostly priests and women, let into the prison to visit with the San Patricios and bestow upon them rich foods and pastries and clean clothes and books. Every man of them had been presented with a bunk with a soft mattress and re
ceived a daily change of freshly laundered linens. One of their benefactors had furnished the cell with a long table and benches where the men might sit to write letters and consult with their attorneys. All this generosity to the traitors made the editor of the North American wax choleric:
The guard over these prisoners is importuned daily by persons apparently occupying a respectable position in society, who drive to the place in their carriages, and carry in to these miserable apologies for humanity, these fat rascals, all sorts of luxuries, while their own countrymen, prisoners also, the sick and wounded officers and privates, are utterly neglected. The greater portion of these ostentatiously benevolent people are women.
One such woman was the Señora Olga Maritza Martinez de del Castro, a wealthy widow of middle age and regal aspect whose father was a retired ambassador and whose husband, a colonel of lancers with Ampudia’s army, had died a hero’s death at Monterrey. Señora del Castro would evermore dress in mourning and vehemently despise all things American but for the men of the San Patricio Battalion, whom she regarded as saints for their devoted defense of her beloved country. She had contributed lavishly to the Mexican war effort, and as one of the capital’s leading social luminaries she was often quoted in the Mexican press regarding her views on American barbarities and San Patricio heroism. She made regular visits to the Patricios and was afforded every deference by the prisonkeepers on directive of General Scott who’d been informed of her social standing. She had shaken the hand of each Saint Patrick in the Acordada and ensured that they were fed on ample cuts of meat every day. It was she who arranged for them to have mattressed bunks to sleep upon. And because she was a woman of liberal sensibilities who well and frankly understood the needs of men, she sent an emissary to General Scott with a special petition. Scott had already quietly granted to the half-dozen married Saint Patricks the same right of weekly conjugal visitation that Mexican law conferred on its own convicts, and now Señora del Castro asked that he extend to the unmarried Patricios an equal right of intimate relations with their sweetheart or, lacking one, with a woman of the trade. She herself would arrange for the women and bear all costs associated with their visits. On learning that such amatory privileges were routinely sanctioned by Mexican penal authorities, Scott shrugged and acquiesced to the señora’s request. The Mexican newspapers applauded her efforts on behalf of more civilized treatment for the San Patricios but the American papers excoriated Scott for extending his excessive benevolence to the traitors to such lengths as this immoral Mexican practice.
Came a morning when a trio of men—two Americans and a Mexican and all three in well-tailored business suits—presented themselves at her door and informed the mayordomo that they desired an audience with Señora del Castro. They claimed to be friends of the San Patricios and in possession of information about them which the señora might find of great interest. The mayordomo asked them to wait and while he was within they wondered if he might be sending for the authorities to arrest them for trespassers or worse. Then he was back and politely ushered them into the parlor where the señora awaited them. Her appraising look at the two Americans was openly suspicious, yet she bade all three sit and had a servant pour tea. The Mexican spoke for the visitors, applying his most formal Spanish although it was well known the señora owned a flawless English. He introduced himself as Captain Jorge Amado and his two friends as Lieutenant James Walker and Corporal William Meese, all three of the San Patricio Battalion, lucky survivors who had eluded capture at Churubusco and were now under Santa Ana’s direct order to reorganize the unit as quickly as possible for return to action against the Yankees.
The señora was thrilled by this revelation and there followed much expression of mutual admiration, on her part for their valorous struggle in the defense of Mexico, on theirs for her generosity toward their imprisoned comrades and fierce public support of their organization. The two Americans apologized for their wretched Spanish but the señora dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand and said in English, “In the language of bravery you are both supremely fluent.”
The visitors shortly came to the point. Their new unit was almost fully manned and was eager to resume operations against the Yankee supply lines between the capital and Veracruz but it lacked an explosives expert, and the best explosives man they knew of was now among the prisoners in Acordada. Although there was absolutely no chance to free all their imprisoned fellows, it might yet be possible to help one to escape. And that was why they had come to her. If she were willing, she could be of great service to her country.
But of course she was willing! Just tell her what to do!
Barely an hour later the mayordomo brought before them a half-dozen men closely fitting the description given by the youngest of the three Patricios, he with the gouged face who limped on a cane and wore a black bandanna over his crown. The six men were lined up in front of this young man who carefully studied each of them in turn before pointing out his selection. The señora smiled and nodded. Like everyone else on her staff, the chosen man, Luis by name, was completely devoted to her and would do whatever she asked.
17
Edward had several times gone to the Alameda park and stared across the street at the Acordada and pondered his brother’s plight but he had not yet been to see him. He felt at fault for John’s present circumstance. He was certain his brother had not voluntarily enlisted in the army and so must have been pressganged in New Orleans. If they had been at each other’s side that wouldn’t have happened—or at least they would have been forced into the army together. But he had abandoned his brother in Dixie City and John had been dragooned. And then had deserted. And then for some damn reason joined the Mexicans and had narrowly missed being hanged for it. But he had been whipped and branded and locked up in prison, and Edward had felt he could not face him without some ready offer of atonement.
On the morning after he’d gone with Dominguez and Spooner to the house of Señora del Castro he went to the Acordada in his Spy Company uniform and presented himself to the officer of the guard as Sergeant Edward Boggs of General Scott’s Life Guards and said he wished to see John Little, a former comrade in the Fifth Infantry who might know what became of some old friends they once had in common. He was granted admission and labored up the stairway on his stiff knee to the second floor and was allowed to pass through the barred door at the landing and then permitted to go to the wall of iron bars that sealed off the prisoners’ common cell. The heavy wooden floor was swept clean and was bright with soft yellow sunlight falling through the tall windows. Visiting hours began early and already a dozen people were at the bars—wives and sweethearts, reporters, Mexican lawyers. The room hummed with low conversations. The prisoners would not be let out to the courtyard for another hour yet and from various braziers within the neatly ordered cell came the aromas of coffee and grilled chorizo and fried eggs. He scanned the cell as he approached the bars but didn’t see John. Men were playing cards or reading newspapers or talking in small clusters or simply standing mute at the sunlit windows and staring out at the world beyond.
He took a place at the bars that gave him the widest berth on either side. A few feet to his left a Mexican woman whispered low to a San Patricio who listened glumly. To his right a lawyer in an expensive suit and bearing sheaves of legal documents was murmuring with a prisoner whose raw cheeks were flayed from cheekbone to jaw. Edward recognized him as John Riley. He had picked the flesh off his face to rid himself of the brands.
“Used to be he was called Handsome Jack.”
The first words Edward had heard from his brother except in dreams since a rainy night in New Orleans a lifetime ago. John stood at the bars and looked at him, studied his uniform, smiled. The D brand on his face was crusted darkly red and his other cheek bore a deep cresent scar. His eyes were shadowed hollows. He regarded the cane in Edward’s hand, the disfigured cheekbone, the bandanna showing under his black hat. “Had you some near times, looks like.”
“Bout
near as yours, I guess.”
They gazed upon one another.
“Listen,” Edward said. “Maggie’s dead.” He’d meant to tell him later, under better circumstances, but he’d suddenly felt the need to say something of import and it was the thing that came to mind.
John’s face seemed to go hollow. He stepped back from the bars. “Dead?” He ran a hand through his hair and looked about as if searching for the word’s meaning. Then he looked back at Edward. “Dead how? Where?”
“Some bad sickness,” Edward said. “I buried her. Five, six months ago. Up near Linares.”
John clutched the bars and then released them. He turned in a circle, looked up at the ceiling, heaved a huge breath and rubbed his eyes hard with both hands like someone trying hard to wake fully from a bad dream. Edward thought he would reserve the fact of their sister’s whoredom for another time. “She ought not of come to Mexico,” he said. The words sounded lame in his own ears.
John looked off to the sunbright window for a long moment and then turned back to Edward. “Aint nobody ought come to Mexico. Place aint all that kind even to the Mexicans.”
They stood in awkward silence for a time and then Edward took off his hat and put his face close to the bars and whispered, “You’re coming out.”
John looked at him without expression.
“Tomorrow night,” Edward said. He glanced to either side of him to ensure that no one was paying them mind. “The Castro woman’ll be here. Do like she says. I’ll be waiting with a ready mount for you. Come sunup we’ll be sixty miles gone.”