by Oakland Ross
“You there,” the Spaniard said. “Prepare a horse for your master. He is coming with us.”
They departed in short order, Ocampo surrounded by Cajiga and his five companions.
In a matter of days, news of these events reached the offices of Benito Juárez, the president, who spoke at once with a new minister of state, Francisco Zarco. It so happened that Zarco was also publisher and editor of the liberal newspaper El Siglo XIX, to which Diego was a frequent contributor. As one of only two survivors of the Massacre of Tacubaya, he was deemed to be a man of grit and promise, and so it was his name that cropped up when Zarco required someone to seek out the kidnappers, determine their demands, and, if possible, negotiate with them.
Diego departed the capital the following day, in company with Baldemar, who had also survived the killings at Tacubaya and had long been his closest friend. El gordo y el indio, they had been called at school. The fat one and the Indian.
They set off through waving fields of blond grass, their horses scaling the pine-clad heights north of Mexico City. Later, the highland conifers gave way to groves of Mexican oak and mesquite scrub. The two men rode past maguey plantations and rolling cornfields, bordered by fences of organ pipe cactus.
Three days it took them to reach the hills of Michoacán, and they argued every step of the way. They called each other the worst names they could think of, and disagreed about everything imaginable, from the attractions or defects of women they both knew to the dismal state of Mexico. To Baldemar, the country’s condition resulted entirely from the predations of conservatives—conservatives in alliance with the Holy Roman Church. But Diego wondered if liberals did not share their portion of the blame as well. He was a liberal. They both were. Both had fought on the liberal side. But, so far, the vaunted reforms instituted under Juárez had produced no improvement in the lives of the people. Yes, ecclesiastical property had been seized from the grip of the Church, but to what end? So that looters could sack the churches and convents, melting crucifixes down for the gold? Where was the advantage in that? But it had happened. And, yes, el Cinco de Mayo had been a glorious victory, but what difference had it made in the end? The French had returned in greater numbers, and this time there had been no stopping them.
But Baldemar had an answer for that, one that effectively cut off all discussion. After all, he had fought in the battle of el Cinco de Mayo, whereas Diego had not. One-armed as he was, Diego had stayed behind in Puebla to work in an improvised medical clinic and had suffered the French bombardment, same as everyone else, while Baldemar had ridden out to fight. That seemed to mean that nothing anyone else had to say on the subject warranted any attention at all.
“Muy bien,” said Diego.
He pressed his heels into his horse’s flanks, she broke into a loping stride, and the two men cantered across a broad plain stippled by scrub trees and saguaro cactus. It was nearing sunset, and clouds drifted in thin purple rafts above the low range of hills to the west.
They picked up the trail of Ocampo’s kidnappers at the town of Maravatío. From there, they followed a trail of cooking fires and spoor. The men who had abducted Ocampo were either deeply inept or unimaginably brazen. A child could have tracked their route. It occurred to Diego that these men wanted to be followed. But why should that be so?
Two more days of riding brought them to the village of Huapango, where the local people said that, yes, a party of riders had shown up not two weeks earlier, with a prisoner in their power. General Leonardo Márquez had been waiting, along with his own party of riders. The two bands had merged and ridden off as one, making no secret of their destination. The villagers pointed the way to a hamlet named Tepeji del Río. There, the locals provided Diego and Baldemar with further guidance, and they took up the trail once again. Two hours later, they rounded a crest of rocks and rode into a forest clearing.
“Ay Dios,” said Baldemar.
A man’s bloated and shirtless body dangled upside down in the middle of the clearing, strung by the ankles from the branches of a Mexican oak tree. The dead man’s head was suspended a good five feet from the ground, and his arms hung freely beneath him, the shoulders having dislodged themselves from their sockets by the force of their weight.
Baldemar kicked his heels, and his horse scooted forward. He drew a long-bladed knife from his belt and cut the rope, letting the cadaver fall. The two men dismounted and briefly observed what Márquez had done. The corpse was badly swollen and had started to decompose, but it did not seem that Ocampo had been mutilated in any way prior to his death. He had simply been strung up by his heels and left to dangle in the nighttime cold or burn in the late-day sun. It would have been a slow and miserable death.
Diego’s eyes stung, and he blinked them repeatedly. “They couldn’t have hanged him properly?” he said. “By the neck? Like civilized men? They couldn’t have shot him in the head?”
“Guess not.”
Baldemar looked away, out across the broad green valley that unfolded to the west. He said nothing. What could he say? For a long while, neither man uttered a word. They just glared off in different directions, both too angry to talk. They’d known the journey would end in something like this. Now that it had, they were in no way prepared. Diego closed his eyes, as if all of this could simply be willed out of existence—this path, this clearing, the corpse on the ground. But, when he opened his eyes again, nothing had changed.
“Pinche cabrón.” Baldemar turned away and spat, as though the taste of the obscene words was itself an affront.
Soon, they set about the task of binding the corpse in the blankets they had brought for their own comfort. Baldemar’s horse was much the larger and sturdier of the two, and they draped the body behind his high-backed saddle and rode to Tepeji del Río. They stored the corpse of Melchor Ocampo in a disused shed of mud and wattles to protect it from the disrespect of dogs. The following morning, they set out to retrace their route. They wore kerchiefs over their mouths and nostrils, knotted behind their necks. The reek was vile beyond belief.
In due course, they reached the former minister’s estate, where they delivered the body of Melchor Ocampo to his wife, doña Ana María Escobar de Ocampo, who was Baldemar’s aunt. The nine days of mourning commenced.
Later, after Ocampo’s body had been laid to rest, the government of Benito Juárez dispatched a succession of armies, each commanded by yet another in a seemingly endless series of inept generals, all charged with identical orders: to capture General Márquez alive, if possible, or else kill him in battle. One after another, the armies accepted the challenge but failed to meet it. Two of the generals gave their lives.
General Márquez remained in his mountain redoubt, biding his time and awaiting some change in his fortunes. In the meantime, Mexico was at peace at last—if you could call it that. What passed for peace in Mexico was really just a respite between wars.
CHAPTER 5
STILL WEAK AND UNSTEADY, Diego returned to the Hotel Universal near the plaza de armas of Veracruz. Immediately, the manager informed him that Salm-Salm and his wife had departed in a hurry. They’d taken all their baggage and ridden away in a hired cart bound for the harbour. The manager cleared his throat. It was his understanding, he said, that Señor Serrano would be settling the account on Salm-Salm’s behalf.
“He told you this?”
“Sí.”
“And you believed him?”
The man gave Diego a sorrowful look. “The gentleman is a European,” he said. He narrowed his gaze for a moment before raising his eyelids again and slightly rolling his eyes. He reached beneath the desk. “Here. He left you this.”
He produced a grimy flax-paper envelope. Diego reached inside and withdrew a single leaf of paper. The letter bore no seal but was evidently from Salm-Salm, who conveyed his greetings and begged his new friend to indulge him by underwriting certain expenses he and his wife had incurred while in Veracruz. Owing to the unavoidable haste of their departure, it had been i
mpossible for Salm-Salm to locate the funds on his own. But there was no cause for alarm—he could be trusted implicitly to settle the matter once they both found themselves in Mexico City. Meanwhile, he assured his esteemed acquaintance that he remained determined to promote Baldemar Peralta’s cause with His Imperial Majesty.
Diego released a long, tired sigh. What choice did he have? He settled the prince’s account. That done, he retired to his room and collapsed onto the bed, dog-tired and sore in every fibre, every bone.
The following morning, the imperial party—a group that numbered more than a hundred—finally made a proper landfall. A French military band and a small honour guard were mustered for the occasion, along with a smattering of curious city folk. Diego was not among them. He learned what had happened only later, from the manager of the hotel. Instead of hurrying out to confront the newcomers, he lay prone on his bed, barely able to move. His head felt as if hammers were pounding through his skull, and his entire body ached, alternating between burning heat and shivering cold.
Eventually, he managed to rouse himself, dress, and find his way to the railway station, where the Austrian had by now been conveyed, along with his wife and the members of their considerable entourage. The newcomers milled about the station’s entrance, all finely dressed, gawking and jabbering, apparently in an immense hurry to board the train, the only such vehicle in Mexico. Crews of Mexican labourers struggled to attend to what seemed a colossal quantity of appurtenances, all of which—someone said—represented no more than the tenth part of the goods the Europeans had carried with them and that remained aboard the Novara, to be transported to Mexico City at some future date.
Hundreds of veracruzanos had ventured out to have a look at these exotic creatures, these European courtiers and this man who called himself emperor. They pushed and jostled against each other, straining for a better view. Diego soon caught a glimpse of the self-styled emperor—Maximiliano I—a tall, hatless figure, going prematurely bald. His broad dome shone in the sweltering sun, and he strode about by the station entrance, clad in a naval dress uniform. He pointed this way and that, issuing orders, as if giving a theatrical performance. He held himself utterly erect, almost as if his frame were suspended from the shoulders by a pair of invisible wires. He had a pale complexion, and a long, slender nose, but what most distinguished him was his beard, a great ruddy mass of whiskers combed into a long french fork.
Diego tried to make his way closer. He side-stepped, shoved, and struggled, hoping somehow to get close to the man, near enough to draw his attention and then to confront him head-on and make his case—amnesty for Baldemar Peralta! Over and over, he had rehearsed the words he would say. But the crush of onlookers grew steadily more suffocating, and he felt dizzier and fainter with each moment that went by. Just as he thought he might pass out, he sensed a flurry of movement on the part of the Europeans, followed by a ripple of renewed excitement among the crowd. Somehow, he willed himself to remain upright.
He watched as the Austrian disappeared into the station, along with a pale and severe-looking young woman whom Diego took to be his wife, the empress. Their entourage quickly followed. Soldiers took up positions behind the new arrivals to keep the rabble away. A quarter hour groaned past, and Diego could do nothing except stand where he was and helplessly watch as the locomotive released a piercing whistle. Soon, coils of smoke and vapour twisted against the blue sky laced with cumulus clouds, and a procession of wooden cars shuddered into motion. They chugged smartly away to the west, past a blind of royal palms.
Diego watched the train recede. It was strange that the Europeans had chosen to make their journey by these means. He knew perfectly well the tracks extended inland only a short distance, a matter of forty kilometres or so, not even as far as Paso del Macho. Further work had been suspended, owing to attacks by bandits and liberal partisans. As a result, this trek by rail would accomplish nothing at all, except to demonstrate that Mexico possessed a train. The Austrian’s party would be obliged to disembark within a couple of hours, and Diego could easily imagine them grumbling in the leaden heat while they awaited the delivery of horses and carriages from Veracruz. Only then would they continue their journey to Mexico City. That was bad luck for them but an opportunity for him. He believed he could catch up with the Austrian at the railway’s end.
He stumbled back to his hotel and collected a few belongings. A bottle of mezcal stood by the large ceramic bowl on the dresser. In two quick gulps, he drained what was left, shuddered, and let the liquor’s warmth rise through his chest. Feeling somewhat restored, he staggered downstairs and into the lobby. He paid his own bill, and a groom was dispatched to fetch his horse.
He set off, riding westward along the lush coastal plain, but he had underestimated the effects of his illness. He felt dazed, light-headed, and slow. He found he could not properly sit his horse at more than an ambling gait, and even that was troublesome. It was clear to him now he had no hope of making up the distance that separated him from the Europeans. From what little he knew of the yellow fever, he expected to suffer like this for several more days at least. He forced himself to think of Baldemar, rotting away in the Martinica, and he tried to increase his pace, but it couldn’t be done. More than once, he slid from the saddle and collapsed onto the ground, retching what little bile remained in him.
He had not yet reached Paso del Macho when darkness fell, but he knew he could ride no further. He made his bed on the hard ground of a forested hillside, with his saddle for a pillow and with his Colt revolver clutched at his side. He passed a fitful night, awakening the next day in a poor temper with a sore back, a worsened fever, and the distinct impression that something else was wrong. Even before he managed to open his eyes, he realized that his pistol was gone and that someone’s shadow was blocking the dim morning sunlight.
He forced his eyes open. Not one but two men stood at his feet, both wearing large round-brimmed hats and each aiming at him with a handgun.
“Take off your clothes,” said one of the men. He had a long scar running down the left side of his face, partly obscured by a dark moustache.
“What?” Diego slowly raised himself onto his one good arm. His pistol, he saw, was stuffed into the belt of the man who’d just spoken. He struggled to remain calm. If they were going to kill him, they’d have done it by now.
“Your clothes. Take them off. All of them.”
Soon he was naked, a familiar condition for those who travelled between Mexico City and Veracruz, for the way was rife with thieves.
“Can I keep my boots?”
“A common request,” said the man with the scar. He tilted his head and lowered his voice. “My name is Octavio. And yours?”
“Diego Serrano.”
“I see. What is your purpose here?”
Diego’s head still throbbed, and his heart still raced, but he managed a halfway steady voice. He thought he might as well tell the truth, and that was what he did.
The one named Octavio inclined his head again to listen, then nodded. “A friend in the Martinica?” he said. “Well, in that case, you are in luck. We won’t kill you. We will spare your life in the expectation that you will also plead for the release of comrades of our own who now reside in that same place. They were taken a few weeks ago. Their names are Sánchez, Quiñones, and Rivera. Can you repeat the names?”
“Sánchez, Quiñones, and Rivera.”
“Very well. In exchange, we shall spare your life and also leave you your horse.”
“What about my clothes?”
“Sadly, that is beyond my authority.” The man shrugged in commiseration. “You are liberal or conservative?”
Diego knew that bandits along this corridor liked to think of themselves as soldiers in the liberal cause. “Liberal,” he said.
“Is it so? We are liberals too. Thanks to this happy coincidence, we shall also leave you your gun and your boots. Good luck.”
The two men bundled Diego’s clothes together,
along with his saddle and almost all of his money. Out of habit, Diego kept a quantity of bills in one of his boots as a hedge against exactly this set of circumstances. The robbers mounted their horses. The one named Octavio led Diego’s own horse a distance away, then wound the reins around a tree branch. He tossed the Colt pistol to the ground.
“Adiós,” he said. “Que le vaya bien.”
Both men soon vanished on their horses into a dense copse of trees.
Diego watched them go. Here he was, naked, alone, a long way from Mexico City, and too sick to greatly care. He stumbled over to his horse and picked up his gun, wondering where to put it.
Naked but for his boots, he swung himself up onto her back. He tucked his pistol into his right boot, wedging it there as securely as he could. He gathered the reins in his only hand and kicked his heels. “Vamos.”
He began to ride west, but he got only as far as Paso del Macho before he collapsed near a wayside inn. He was vaguely aware of a pair of servants hurrying out to his aid. They darted from the building with two blankets, evidently accustomed to having their guests arrive without the luxury of a wardrobe.
After spending four days in bed, mostly delirious, Diego was finally well enough to continue his journey. Dressed in a second-hand suit of cheap cotton, he hauled himself up onto a broken-down saddle with a cracked tree that he had salvaged from the livery stable adjoining the inn. He set out for Mexico City, well aware that he had failed in every aspect of his plan. He had failed Baldemar, he had failed himself, and he had failed Ángela. It was her reaction he feared the most. He could barely speak in her presence at the best of times. What in God’s name would he say now?
He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and she broke into a canter, following a rutted trail that meandered to the west. Eventually, the ground grew more rugged and soon began its rise toward the highland interior. The sodden green plains of the eastern coast gave way to an abrupt and rocky ascent. The sky darkened with clouds, and the air turned damp. Diego and his horse scaled a narrow, serpentine trail that wound upward through sheer granite outcroppings, while a thin drizzle—the chipi-chipi—spattered down amid rolling waves of mist.
