The Empire of Yearning

by Oakland Ross

  “And proud of it.”

  By now, the Indian man had straightened up. “Excuse me,” he said to Baldemar. “You owe me three clacos.”

  “What? What for?”

  “I was to be paid that much by the Church.”

  “Paid for what? For being spat on? You’re joking.”

  The Indian shrugged. “Besides, it was a penance.”

  “What for?”

  “I steal money for drink. I beat my wife. I neglect my children. You want more?”

  “No. Never mind. Here. Never let it be said I cheated Judas Iscariot out of a few coins.”

  Baldemar gave him several clacos, which the man hurriedly stuffed somewhere in the damp folds of his rags.

  “Are you el Gordo de las Gafas?” he said.

  “Could be,” said Baldemar. “Who are you?”

  “A sinner. A humble servant of the Lord. Why are you dressed like that?”

  “Just as I said. I’m in disguise.” Baldemar tilted his head toward the man he’d just rescued. He lowered his voice. “Would you like to join me? I have an army in Xalapa. You could lead a different life.”

  “A different life? You mean, kill conservatives? Live off the land? Fight for the honour of my country?”

  “Yes. All that—and no more spittle. Are you willing?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d rather drink pulque and beat my wife.”

  Without another word, the man turned and trotted away on stubby bare feet. Diego and Baldemar watched him go.

  Baldemar sighed. “You can rescue a man from servitude,” he said. “But you cannot set him free.”

  “Come on,” said Diego, “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Before long, they were huddled once again by the gouged wooden countertop at Memorias del Futuro. The first subject that came up between them was Ángela. Baldemar said that his sister was safe. Just as Diego had suspected, she was hiding out in Taxco in the presbytery occupied by Padre Buendía. Baldemar did not say how he knew this, and Diego chose not to pursue the matter. It was clear to him that his friend had his networks and his ways. Besides, everyone knew there were liberals in the clergy still, despite the staunchly conservative sentiments of the hierarchy.

  “What about the boy?” he said.

  “That will resolve itself. Eventually.”

  “How do you know?”

  Baldemar tapped his forehead. “You watch. The French and the Church will come to blows. Labastida will let the boy go. He’ll have no choice.”

  “And the child will be returned to his mother?”

  “I hope so.”

  For a time, there was silence. They attended to their drinks.

  Then Diego set down his glass. “And what about you? The war?”

  “Better … and worse.”

  “Worse how?”

  Baldemar shrugged. “Nothing a few rifles wouldn’t solve.”

  They emptied their jars and ordered two more. Baldemar explained that Márquez had graduated to even greater acts of bloodshed and brutality on his rampages through the hamlets and villages near the eastern coast. “The truth is, he’s losing the war—and this is his response.”

  “And what’s yours?”

  “Ah, that,” said Baldemar. “That is what I came to talk about.”

  He put down his glass and spoke in a whisper. He set out what he had in mind. Those Spencer rifles, he said. They were needed. Now.

  Diego nodded at intervals as his old friend explained what was required. The surprising thing was that he already knew. He had known this part all along, even before Baldemar began to speak.

  CHAPTER 34

  HIS EXCELLENCY MONSEñOR PEDRO Francisco Meglia, nuncio of the Papal See, arrived in Mexico City on the last day of June in the year 1865, accompanied by a complement of Swiss guards, as well as a force of African Zouaves.

  Soon after reaching Mexico City, Meglia communicated news of his presence to Her Majesty the Empress Carlota, who was carrying out the duties of the crown in her husband’s absence. Maximiliano was again in Cuernavaca, availing himself of the sunshine and the warmer climate. Diego remained at Chapultepec, serving Carlota in the office of personal secretary, much as he had done with the emperor but with fewer demands on his time. Many who observed her said they were impressed by the empress’s conduct, implying without saying so that she was a better monarch than her husband.

  But this did not mean the empress was a match for the newly arrived papal nuncio. Carlota granted the man an audience at eleven o’clock in the morning, a week after his appearance in the city. It was rumoured the Italian had spent most of this period in solitude, working out chess problems on a miniature magnetized board he had brought with him from Rome.

  Diego was among those who attended the meeting. The encounter took place in the Red Room at Chapultepec. Meglia made a cursory bow, issued a formal but barely audible greeting, proffered his letter of introduction, and then stood in silence, gazing about as if he had recently purchased the building and all its contents and was only now putting a number to their true worth. He projected an air of displeasure, as though concluding he had grossly overpaid.

  Carlota cleared her throat and initiated polite conversation, but Meglia made only the most cursory of replies.

  Had Monseñor enjoyed an agreeable crossing?

  Reasonably so.

  What were his principal impressions of Mexico thus far?

  It was hot upon the coast, rather less so here in the interior.

  What news did he bring of great events in Europe?

  All was unfolding according to the will of the Almighty.

  He offered these curt replies in a feeble monotone that emerged from a pair of lips that were as thin as wires and barely moved when he spoke. He had a sallow complexion, a long and narrow nose, and dark patches around his eyes, so that he somewhat resembled a plucked raccoon. His black hair was slicked back with a sweet-smelling pomade, and he wore voluminous purple robes. When addressed, he allowed several seconds of silence to precede his response. His manner suggested that he had never in his life been as monstrously bored as he was right now.

  “You would like tea?” said the empress. “Or perhaps wine. It is nearly noon.”

  “A glass of milk,” said the nuncio. After an additional pause, he added, “If you please.”

  Milk was provided, along with a selection of pastries. Carlota squeezed a wedge of lemon into her tea. She cleared her throat, apparently signalling that the time for small talk was done. She gazed at the nuncio and inquired how in his view the imperial government of Mexico and the Roman Catholic Church could narrow the not inconsiderable gap that, lamentably, had opened between them.

  “Well …” Meglia said. He reached into a leather valise to withdraw a document bearing the Vatican seal. “Allow me to explain …”

  He placed a pair of reading spectacles upon the bridge of his nose and began to read from the sheaf of papers balanced on his lap. On and on he droned, always in his toneless, uninflected voice. It soon became apparent to Diego that the man had not travelled to Mexico to negotiate. He wondered whether Maximiliano’s recent penchant for absenting himself from Mexico City might not have had less to do with the coolness of the weather in the capital than with the grim prospect of meeting Meglia in the flesh.

  For her part, Carlota did her best, offering comments or objections in a tentative, diplomatic voice, but the man simply ignored her and carried on with his pontification, reading word for word from the documents he had brought with him. He concluded his performance by reciting a long and detailed list of apparently non-negotiable demands. He then withdrew into a sort of paralytic trance while Carlota embarked upon a response. It was clear to everyone that he was not listening.

  Prior to the meeting, Carlota had informed Diego that she intended to strike an agreement of some kind with Meglia, much as it offended her principles to do so. The crown of Mexico—its very survival—depended upon firm an
d reliable alliances, arrangements that must include an accord between church and state. Matters could not be permitted to go on as they were, amid mutual suspicion and acrimony.

  But she might just as well have said nothing at all. The prelate made no attempt to address her concerns. He simply declared, and subsequently repeated, that the document from which he had been reading would serve as a concordat between the Mexican Church and the imperial government—not the basis of a concordat, he said, but the final form of the treaty itself. Not a word might be changed. In short, the Vatican demanded the complete capitulation of the imperial government on every count, the repeal of every reform law, the restoration to the Church of every power it had ever possessed, and more besides. Even as a basis for negotiation, it was untenable. But Meglia did not propose it as a basis for negotiation. This must be the final agreement.

  Carlota attempted to shift the subject of their discussion. She mentioned the singer, Ángela Peralta, and her son. But Meglia wasn’t interested. This matter lay outside his purview. He had no mandate to discuss it. Carlota protested that, as she understood the situation, both the woman and the boy were, or recently had been, incarcerated against their will by Labastida and his agents. They were being held to ransom, used as pawns in the Church’s efforts to impose its demands upon the state. This was intolerable and must be condemned by all right-thinking people. Could Monseñor Meglia imagine such a travesty being committed in Rome?

  The prelate inclined his head, as though to address a child. “But, Your Majesty,” he said, “we do not find ourselves in Rome.”

  That night Carlota presided at a dinner that had been organized in the visiting dignitary’s honour. But Meglia did not turn up or even convey his regrets, and the dinner went ahead without him. Bazaine was among those who attended, and on this occasion he was squiring his new Mexican paramour, a girl of just seventeen named Josefa de la Peña y Azcárate. She preened behind an oriental fan and made coquettish eyes at her suitor, who was her senior by a good four decades.

  By long-standing custom, discussion of political affairs was prohibited during dinner, a fortunate practice in this instance, as nearly all of the guests would have sided vehemently with Meglia. Carlota would have found herself in a lonely minority, along with Bazaine, perhaps, and, of course, Diego.

  Late in the evening, several of the guests wandered out onto the terrace, the ladies in their wraps, everyone intent upon enjoying the cool evening air, while admiring the silvery moonlit view out over the bosky plains that separated the palace from Mexico City. Diego ventured out on his own. The Mexican men smoked cigars and stood about, knees locked and bellies distended, complaining bitterly that they had been saddled, it seemed, with a pair of outright liberals in place of a proper emperor and empress. Who could have predicted such a thing? It was unconscionable. Emperors preaching reform!

  Four days after his audience with Carlota, His Excellency Monseñor Pedro Francisco Meglia departed Mexico City. He was bound for Veracruz, and then for Rome. It was said that he did not cast a single backward glance from his carriage but departed the city with his head cast down, with his magnetized chess set close at hand and his attention focused upon a book that had been published the previous year in Paris—Bibliographie anecdotique du jeu des échecs.

  For her part, the empress informed Diego that she had never met a more contemptible man. After Meglia, it would seem a pleasure to deal with Labastida.

  CHAPTER 35

  IN THE END, it was Bazaine who came up with a way to free Ángela’s son. The French officer had lately been in noticeably better spirits, owing no doubt to his new romance. He seemed happy and at peace—a circumstance both rare and paradoxical. In such a state, he explained, there was nothing that appealed to him more than the prospect of a good, clean fight. And who better to lock horns with than Labastida? Bazaine loathed the man. It was time to trade words for blows.

  He explained his thinking in unusually candid terms during a meeting with Maximiliano, who had returned to Mexico City from Cuernavaca not long after the papal nuncio’s departure for Rome. On more than one occasion, said the Frenchman, Labastida had provoked him almost beyond endurance. Once, the archbishop had dared to bar a senior French officer from attending the celebration of Sunday Mass. It seemed the officer’s wife had failed on some occasion to dress in perfect accordance with the archbishop’s very particular ideas about feminine decorum. He had turned both the officer and the woman away. At the time, Bazaine had chosen to endure this insult to French honour, but he was bound to remember it.

  On another occasion, Labastida had threatened to close the doors of the cathedral to the entire officer corps of the French army, vowing to excommunicate every one of its members, because it was they who enforced the reform laws as they related to Church properties and privileges in Mexico.

  That time, the churchman had backed down, but only after a volatile exchange that Bazaine recalled even now with a mixture of pride and anger. He had informed the prelate that he possessed plenty of ordnance and would not scruple to make full use of it. If the cathedral was not opened at once to all his men, he would employ good French cannon to blast the doors from their hinges.

  The emperor laughed. “This is the first time I’ve heard the tale,” he said. “Marvellous.”

  “The events occurred before your arrival in Mexico, Your Majesty,” said Bazaine. “Those were wild times.”

  “And harsh words. Did you mean them?”

  “I did.”

  “You would have blown open the cathedral doors?”

  “Without hesitation. Or regret.”

  “Oh, well done. Good for you.”

  The two men were meeting in an austere salon at Chapultepec, with Diego again delegated to taking notes.

  “And did the tactic work?”

  “It did. He backed down. The cathedral is Labastida’s weak point, you see. He is besotted with the place.”

  The emperor folded both hands behind his head and rocked back in his chair. “So … you propose to try the same stunt again.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Give the boy up—or bang.”

  Bazaine nodded. “I intend to take down a bell tower at least.”

  “And what of the mother? The singer. You know …”

  Bazaine gave a dismissive wave. The mother was not a part of his brief. He proposed only to liberate the boy.

  “Serrano,” said the emperor. “Where is the woman? Where do you think?”

  Diego set down his pen. It was strange how lying could become almost automatic, a question of practice. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You’ve spoken to Labastida? You’ve spoken to Salm-Salm?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I don’t believe they know, either. It seems to be a great mystery.”

  Maximiliano turned back to Bazaine. “Well, I like your proposal immensely,” he said. “But I wonder, why did we not come up with this stratagem before?”

  “Timing,” said Bazaine. He slowly stroked his jaw.

  It was apparent to Diego that the Frenchman had something else on his mind.

  Bazaine adjusted the sleeves of his military frock coat. “I understand Your Majesty is contemplating some changes to your council of ministers.”

  “I have some ideas.”

  “Good. So do I.”

  What Bazaine had, it turned out, was a problem—and the problem’s name was General Leonardo Márquez. The Mexican officer had lately exceeded all conceivable limits on human savagery in his campaigns along the eastern coast. Even for Bazaine, it was too much. The pillaging and murders were counterproductive. You did not win a war by systematically bolstering the ranks of your enemies, and that was what Márquez was doing. However many Mexicans he killed, more took up arms against him. It was time to bring the man out of the field.

  “And put him where exactly?” said Maximiliano.

  “The very question I ask myself,” said Bazaine. “My inclination is to put him somewhere I can watch h
im, and give him a title he would be likely to accept.”

  “For example?”

  “Minister of war.”

  “What?” The emperor shook his head. “Not possible.”

  Bazaine narrowed his eyes and waited.

  “You can’t be serious,” said Maximiliano. “That heathen? He hanged that man by his feet.”

  Bazaine fumbled in his pocket for his watch. He glanced at the time and briefly frowned before easing the piece back into his side pocket. “Your Majesty could go on for a good long while,” he said, “listing the man’s crimes one by one. Such reservations are completely justified. But I speak to a different purpose. Márquez is a liability in the field. We need to take measures to bring him in.”

  “It was you who put him out there, you know,” said the emperor. “After he refused to go to Constantinople. That was your doing.”

  Bazaine sighed. “You are right, Your Majesty. It seemed like a sound decision at the time. But realities have changed, and we must change with them.”

  He reached for his cap on the table at his side, tucked it beneath his arm, and climbed to his feet. “With your permission, I will have a word with the archbishop, as we discussed. We are agreed upon that?”

  “Oh yes. Thank you. By all means.”

  “And Márquez?”

  “Ah,” said the emperor. “I shall have to ponder on that.”

  “Not for very long, I hope? Lives may depend upon it.”

  “Not long, no.”

  Bazaine seemed disinclined to leave the subject. “I take it Your Majesty appreciates the connection between these two measures. I confront Labastida. Márquez becomes minister of war. They are linked in my mind.”

  “Yes, of course. I see quite clearly what you are getting at. I shall communicate my answer shortly.”

  “Very well, Your Majesty.” Bazaine nodded and left the room.

  As Diego watched him go, he thought he detected the glint of a smile on the man’s face. And why not? The Tiger of Tacubaya would be named minister of war in the end. Maximiliano would accept the bargain. He would have no choice. But it was an outrage just the same. Diego could not believe that he would now serve the same government that employed the Tiger of Tacubaya as its minister of war. By rights, he ought to finish the job that Baldemar had begun and kill Márquez. Either that or leave Mexico entirely.