Also by
James Alexander Thom
FOLLOW THE RIVER
FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
LONG KNIFE
PANTHER IN THE SKY
THE CHILDREN OF FIRST MAN
THE RED HEART
SIGN-TALKER
with Dark Rain Thom
WARRIOR WOMAN
Saint Patrick’s Battalion
Saint Patrick’s Battalion
——————— A N O V E L ———————
James Alexander Thom
Saint Patrick’s Battalion is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by James Alexander Thom
Interior maps and illustrations copyright © 2006 by James Alexander Thom
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Thom, James Alexander.
Saint Patrick’s Battalion : a novel / James Alexander Thom.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-979-92407-1
eISBN 978-1-935-62895-8
1. Riley, John, b. 1817—Fiction. 2. Mexico. Ejército. Batallón
de San Patricio—Fiction. 3. Mexican War, 1846–1848—Fiction.
I. Title: St. Patrick’s Battalion. II. Title.
PS3570.h47S25 2006
813’.54—dc22 2005057171
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
www.ballantinebooks.com
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Edition
Text design by Laurie Jewell
FOR KURT VONNEGUT, JR.
who knows a thing or two about war whoopee
and those who make it.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
BOOK I
The Northern Campaign
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
BOOK II
The Southern Campaign
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I THANK historian Peter Guardino of Indiana University for finding insights and specific answers for me during his regular trips to Mexico, and for vetting the novel’s awkward “phrasebook Spanish” to protect me from embarrassing myself.
I am grateful to Peter F. Stevens, historian, author of The Rogue’s March, for his insights into the severe treatment of Catholic immigrant soldiers during those times of vicious Nativism.
Thanks to Linda Arnold at Virginia Tech for her data on correspondents and news transmission during the Mexican War.
For certain facts about President Polk’s selling of that war in the Capitol, I thank my pen pal Andy Jacobs, Jr., who remembers what it’s like to force fellow Congressmen to examine skeptically the bombast of warhawks—a lesson still having to be relearned.
And thanks to my editor, Mark Tavani, for seeing how a war story might be told more truthfully by boys than by men.
PROLOGUE
April 1861
Why does Mexico matter? Have not our Anglo-Saxon
race been land stealers from time immemorial . . . ?
When their gaze is fixed on other lands, the best
way is to make out the deeds.
—GENERAL WILLIAM WORTH
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation,
whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,
and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say
he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow
him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any
limit to his power, after you have given him so much.
—CONGRESSMAN ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
DISSENTING AGAINST PRESIDENT JAMES K. POLK’S
AGGRESSION TOWARD MEXICO, 1846
Near Mexico City April 1861
ON A SUN-HEATED road to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a freckled young man with red hair and long legs hurries up a hill, carrying a wooden writing portfolio under his left arm and a knapsack slung over his right shoulder, squinting ahead, stepping around the black-clad penitentes who are crawling toward the cathedral on their knees. Most of them are old men and crones. Their progress is excruciating to see, and they have miles to go. The expression on each old face could be trance or torment.
After so many years away, the young man is immersed anew in the sense of Mexico’s heart: the thin air of this altitude, sunbeams leaning through arid haze, blue mountains beyond his shoulder, and a haunting intuition that every incline in the road mounts some ancient Aztec temple obliterated by the conquistadors. From shadowy doors and iron-grille gates come wisps of speech he cannot understand, though he can distinguish Spanish accents from Aztecan and loves the lyric beauty of both.
As for the aged penitentes in the road, he glances down with pity and awe at each one he overtakes.
The hurrying youth is looking ahead for a different kind of pilgrim, one who is neither old nor poor. From what has been said, there will be no mistaking him among the others. His clothing is described as elegant, his hat of glossy beaver, he is guapo, the people say. He might be smoking a cheroot as he goes along, he might be singing, he might even be un poco borracho. He is well known to most of the people who live along this pilgrimage road. He comes by every year about this time. He is considered a bit eccentric, but is full of charm and generosity, most of the time. He is crippled and deaf; it is known that he was one of Los Niños Héroes of Chapultepec in the past war, and their behavior is always indulged. Many people who live along the pilgrimage road take the penitentes in at night to shelter them, and some of those people boast that they have been host to him. They have told the red-haired young man that it was their honor to do so, and that, furthermore, he would leave una propina, a peso or more, if he remembered. Also, he is said to have sired a baby or two in passing through. He carries a flask and two silver cups, but is not known ever to have been robbed along the way. To rob pilgrims is of course a despicable offense, but it happens.
In the narrow world of this holy road, this particular pilgrim is a celebrity: the deaf cripple, the laughing penitente, easy to follow.
The man following him is a correspondent, a writer and illustrator, who has come to Mexico on an advance allowance he wheedled out of the editor of a New York magazine known as Harper’s. The correspondent had proposed to write and illustrate two articles of a historic nature, both pertaining to the U.S.A.’s last war, which was the invasion and conquest of Mexico. With a war of secession building up in the United States, he had argued that readers would be receptive to curiosities about that prior conflict, which had been the fiery baptism of all the new comm
anders, Union and Confederate alike. The new president, Abraham Lincoln, as a young congressman had opposed that invasion. The correspondent had suggested to the editor that his readership might now have matured to a more sympathetic view of the Mexican cause. And in that preceding war as in this new one, the role of the slave states had been pivotal. His spiel had convinced the editor to let him try.
The American strides along through the traffic of the road, peering ahead, weaving among farmers with their loaded burros, carts whose iron-rimmed wheels rattle and rumble, graceful women in rebozos carrying bundles or pots on their heads or babies on their hips, boys wearing sandals and loose white cotton, their dark eyes furtively glancing at him, horsemen riding in pairs, their faces and shoulders shaded by broad sombreros. And all these people, going both ways along the shade-dappled road, maneuver around the hunched little black-clad pilgrims who creep tediously onward along the roadsides, all going his way. Hooves clank on stone, soles shuffle, voices murmur and laugh, somewhere a tenor is singing and somewhere else there is a flute, somewhere else the bleat of a goat, languid strumming on guitar strings, birdsong, a crying baby. Yellow dust drifts, full of sunrays, and the correspondent smells hot meat grease, baked cornmeal, charcoal, horse manure. He is thirsty, but not hungry. His feet are sweaty, blistered. He limps, but is ashamed that his trifling discomfort vexes him so much while the ancient pilgrims go on and on upon their suffering knees, their toes dragging through grit and pebbles behind them.
The man he is pursuing has no feet to drag. There he is, it must be the one, a few hundred paces ahead, almost in the middle of the road. He looks more like a toddling dwarf than a crawling penitente. The journalist studies him as he catches up. The pilgrim is actually walking upon his knees, which are his extremities. There are no shins or feet. Closer, it appears that the stumps are fitted into some sort of padded leather device, hoof-shaped. His black trousers are cut off uncuffed to reach the tops of the bootlets. The journalist slows a bit, intently observant. Unlike a dwarf, the man is not squat or burly, but rather slender, with a trim waist, and his arms and hands are long. His suit is neat and well cut, black, but dusty. A leather satchel with buckles hangs at his left side, its strap crossing over his right shoulder. He looks like a stylish traveler, but appears to be less than four feet tall. He tips his hat now and then to people coming toward him, showing a head of thick, wavy hair, and some salute him in return. This is not the demeanor of a penitente. Some of the people coming down the hill look at the journalist, that quick, polite appraisal a red-haired foreigner gets in these parts.
The cripple senses that they are looking at someone behind him. He stops, turns his head to reveal a long-nosed, delicate profile, neat mustache, then a pair of nearly black eyes, looking up from under the brim of the beaver hat. He notices the writing portfolio, the red hair, the other peculiarities of this foreigner.
The journalist stops beside the cripple and bows slightly, touches his forelock in salute, then draws from his pocket the handwritten note he has prepared for this moment.
Con Perdón. Esta tu Señor Agustin Juvero? Espero que sí.
If the cripple is surprised, his eyes do not reveal it. A sardonic half smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. He says, “Clearly it will be better if I speak in your tongue, Señor Gringo. Why do you come to accost Agustin Juvero in the sacking and ashes of his penitencia? What do you want of me?”
The red-haired one writes another note, this one in English, explaining who he is, the magazine he represents, and the topics of the last war that he hopes to cover in his interview. That is, if Señor Juvero will be so kind. He apologizes for interrupting him on his pilgrimage. The young Mexican reads the note, his lips moving. He looks up, eyes glittering, smile mocking, and says:
“¿Y luego? You want to hear the war story about me. And you want to hear about Don Juan Riley. What a remarkable coincidence, me parece . . . But my question to you, Señor Reportero, is:
“Do you bring me anything good to drink? If so, I might pause for a refreshment, even with a Yanqui. And of course, it would strengthen my memory. I have forgotten as much of all that as I could.”
BOOK I
The Northern Campaign
CHAPTER I
AGUSTIN JUVERO
SPEAKS TO THE AMERICAN JOURNALIST
ON THE PILGRIMAGE ROAD
THERE IN THE shade by the wall is a bench. Let us sit on it so that I need not look up at you while I talk. Eventually looking up hurts my neck. And as you can see, I cannot stand as tall as you.
¿Bueno, y qué? Please let me taste what you carry in your flask. Thank you.
¡Uf! This Norteamericano liquor is so bad, I might almost leave some! But no, I will drink it all, in order not to insult you in my country. ¡Salud!
What you want from me you will have to take in the way I give it. I will talk, you will listen. You may not mitigate my story with quibbles or protestations, for I cannot hear them. As you know, I am deaf. From your guns, when your soldiers came here. The one good part of deafness is that I can say all I want without hearing interruptions. All I hear since your guns fourteen years ago is inside my head, like the scream of an eagle and the roar of the ocean. I can feel church bells, but not hear them.
So, Señor Periodista. Here is what I tell people like you, so that you can be comfortable looking at me, and we can smile and be at ease together:
When I was small boy, I was taller than I am now as a man. ¿Aunque parezca extraño? Funny enough? It goes better if we are amused. If not, it goes nowhere.
So! A new war is beginning, up in your country! It is a matter of much interest to us, if not all a matter of delight. We are satisfied that you deserve it. No, forgive me. Your President Polk deserves it, but he is already dead anyway. Your new president does not deserve it, I suppose. It is to be seen whether he will earn such desserts. ¡Vale! Providence sees to it that there are enough wars, say two or three in a man’s lifetime if he lives through them, that the human race doesn’t forget how to murder on a grand scale. Practice is always needed. God forbid that wars should be fought by beginners only, or that weapons should rust, or wounds fully heal, or that women should be denied the rich emotion of lamenting lost sons to compensate for the pain of giving them birth.
Your war now gathering up there promises to be an enormous event, which will solve some long-festering problems, and create new ones. We in Mexico know that is always the case. I have read in your newspapers of your armies forming under generals who learned war right in this Valley of Mexico. Many of them who fought shoulder-to-shoulder against us will now fight face-to-face against each other. How they must be remembering, dreading, anticipating! Señor, I am a scholar of American wars. But we were to talk of me.
You were told that I am one of Los Niños Héroes of Chapultepec, eh? True. I was one who survived. Thirty-five cadets were captured. Three of us were severely wounded. Five boys died on your bayonets, and one leaped from the castle with our flag to prevent its capture, and died far below.
I meant to die with those. Unhappily, I lived. As I did not expect. As no one expected. It was not God’s will for me to die that day. That is a mystery. I was deafened by shell bursts, I was bayoneted, my legs were shot off.
I received el viatico sacramento. After the rites, however, I failed to die. So it would seem that I am prepared to do so if it occurs, and I have no fear, therefore.
Si, Señor Reportero, some say I deserve to be honored among those who gave their young lives, because I earned the last rites. That would be una cuestión formal, a technicality of law.
Likewise it was a technicality of law that determined the fate of our beloved Coronel Don Juan Riley, he of your other story besides mine.
What a remarkable coincidence it is that in seeking those two different stories you came to me! Or did you somehow learn from someone that he is in my story, as I am in his? How could that be? To my knowledge, no one still lives who remembers. No one told you then, eh? No?
&
nbsp; Take a drink of your awful whiskey, so I don’t have to drink it all by myself. Heheh! You drink like a soldier! I have heard that Yanqui journalists do drink like soldiers. Excuse me while I climb down from this bench and go piss against the wall. Uh! I do not piss noisily from a height. My pene nearly drags the ground. For you to say such a thing would be boastful, with those long legs. Ah.
I am told by persons who have been in the United States that many of your Mexican War veterans, trimmed down as I am, have to beg in the streets to live. That some go out on a little cart into the street crowds every day and plead for alms. And perhaps sleep in crates in the city alleys. In particular, the veterans who are Irishmen. You Yanquis do not love the Irish as we in Mexico love them. Don Juan Riley told us that is why he deserted your army.
Mexico does not abandon me to beg, or to sleep in a crate in an alley. Though a short crate would suffice for me! I should fit comfortably in an artillery caisson. One would suit me well for a coffin, too, if that time ever comes. I would be honored to be buried in a caisson box from Coronel Riley’s own cannon battery. I have in fact reserved one for that eventual purpose. You appear to doubt. But no, Señor. It is in a military museum in the city honoring his battalion, the San Patricios. At my request, an uncle of mine made arrangements with the curator, a man who had served under him against the Texans. Tío Rodrigo, my excellent uncle, didn’t scoff at my fancy. He said that he, too, would be honored to be interred in a caisson upon which Coronel Riley had ridden to battle in defense of our country. But of course Tío Rodrigo died too tall to fit in such a thing.
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