As I came up to the abandoned winery, Padre Hidalgo came out of the building. At the sight of me, his anxious frown broke into a joyous grin.
“What did you think, padre, that the viceroy’s constables had returned?”
He laughed and gave me a big hug. “I’m surprised that you didn’t come back the same way you arrived, with constables hounding your trail.”
“That may not be far from the truth.”
As we walked slowly along the road that had once been lined with grape vines, I described how I had left Méjico City. He didn’t appear surprised that I had fled the city with blood on my sword and warrants in my wake.
“I know about your adventures already,” he said. “Raquel keeps me well informed. Of late, you’ve been the main subject. She sent me a communiqué two days ago telling me to expect you.”
I threw my hands up in mock frustration. “Everybody knows what I’ll do next except myself. Have no fear, padre, I won’t burden you. I stop only to say hello to you and Marina and will move on before first light, unless of course, my miracle medical abilities are needed.”
He laughed. “We shall see, we shall see.” He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze to the ground. “Since your return from Spain—no, pardon, señor, since your birth—the gachupines have treated you abominably. When they abuse those they deem beneath them, the gachupines offend that great lady, Señora Justicia herself. One cannot fault the gachupines for the acts of the man who claimed to be your uncle, but the abuse they have heaped on you because you’re not pure-blood Spanish is injustice in its purest form. And you stand in the same shoes as most people in the colony: our Aztecs, mestizos, mulattoes, africanos. And even criollos like myself must in their own way pay tribute to the gachupines.”
My indifference to the plight of New Spain’s masses must have registered on my face.
“Satisfy an old priest’s curiosity,” he asked, shaking his head. “Look into your heart and tell me what you believe.”
“Unlike you, padre, I don’t believe that men are intrinsically good. I don’t believe in bringing justice and freedom to people who don’t even know the meaning of the words. Liberty, equality, fraternity—these are words that the French gave the world but then guillotined people by the thousands. I saw with my own eyes how the French raped and plundered another country. And I see the valiant Spanish peasants—poor fools that they are—fight to return to the throne a notorious tyrant and a craven traitor. I won’t fight for a cause because I don’t believe the people I fight for deserve it or give a damn about me.”
“Then you believe in nothing?”
“No, padre, I believe in Raquel, in Marina, and you. I believed in a young scholar named Carlos, who was willing to die for me. I believe in a guerrilla fighter in Barcelona named Casio and a whore in Cádiz who was braver and more patriotic than all the nobles in Spain. I believe in people, not causes or slogans, not flags or kings. I believe in a love for a love, a truth for a truth, a death for a death, an eye for an eye.”
“My son, an eye for an eye leaves us dead and blind.”
“Padre, I treat people as they would treat me. I know no other way, and if necessary—if I must fight—I will strike first.”
“You say you won’t fight for a cause. Will you fight for your personal right to be treated as an equal?”
“Padre, I’m a man. I expect to be treated with the respect and dignity that all men should be treated with. I’ll kill any man who challenges that right.”
“Excellent, señor. I am in need of experienced fighting men. Why you fight is less important than your willingness to fight. Come with me, I want to show you something.”
He led me back to the winery. He pushed open the big wood door, and I followed him inside. It was a beehive of activity. Two dozen men and women, mostly Aztecs along with a few mestizos, were busy working. They sawed, planed, and shaped wood into long, slender poles.
“You’re making lances?”
“Yes, my friend, lances with which to battle the savage beast, the beast that walks on two feet.”
I followed the padre to the building that had been the pottery factory. Inside, more weapons were being produced: clubs, military slings, bows and arrows. I picked up a bow and tested its strength. I had hunted many times with a bow and arrow, one that was made by the Apache indios in a desert region far north of the Bajío. The Apache bows I used were far superior to the ones the padre’s people produced.
So far the padre had not told me why he was assembling this arsenal and why he needed fighting men. I had come to a conclusion about the “why,” but it was so bizarre that I kept my thought to myself and waited for the padre to tell me. But first, he had one more building to show me, the adobe warehouse where silk was once processed.
“¡ Dios mío! Cannons!”
I stared incredulously at the work being done. The “cannons” were not cast from bronze or iron but made from stripped hardwood tree trunks throughout whose centers the workers had bored a hole. To reinforce these wood cannon barrels, the padre’s people wrapped tight iron bands around them.
The padre took me by the arm. “Come, amigo, taste some nectar of the grape with me. I still have a few bottles of wine pressed from my own grapes.”
Marina was waiting at the rectory house, her hands on her hips, a defiant look that said, “The bastardo has returned.” We greeted each other formally, almost as adversaries. I could see in her eyes, however, she was glad to see me.
“You have grown more beautiful, transcending even that eternal loveliness you exhibited the last time I was here,” I said.
“And you are an even bigger liar than I remember.”
“Marina, where are your manners? Juan is our guest.”
“You should tell your housekeeper to hide the silver, padre.”
As I passed, she grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. She fought back tears. We were jesting in good humor, but the last time I saw her I was defending her against the attack of two-legged beasts. The memory of that brutality was not something she would forget. Nor would I.
The three of us sat at the table in the padre’s kitchen. He poured wine for each of us and set the bottle in the middle of the table.
“First a toast. To our americano hero in the war against the French.”
“I’m no hero.” I did not protest strongly, but I wished people would make up their minds as to what I was. In Guanajuato I was lépero scum. In Cádiz, I was a colonial. In Veracruz, a mejicano. In Méjico City, a peon. In Dolores, I was an americano.
Both the padre and Marina had changed in my absence. They had become grimmer, less optimistic. I said, “When I was here before, you exuded high hopes and noble dreams.”
“Those dreams are dead,” the padre said, “and a more violent vision has taken its place.”
The padre and Marina exchanged looks before he continued.
“You can trust him,” Marina said.
“I fear not his loyalty but that he will challenge my sanity. Juan, you must have heard that the junta in Cádiz has given the colonies the right to political representation.”
“I heard that the viceroy ignores the junta’s proclamation.”
“The junta is insincere as well. The proclamation is only meant to pacify us. After Spanish people drive the French from the peninsula and we once more have a king, he will repudiate the proclamation as well. Their promises of freedom are nothing more than bones thrown to a whipped dog.”
I grinned. “I reached the same conclusion, but people in the capital place importance on Spain’s lies.”
“I’ve spent most of my life pondering the relationship between Spain and we americanos. The first time I appreciated the tight stranglehold the Europeans have on us, I was fourteen years old. I saw my Jesuit teachers ordered out of the colony because the king did not want them educating the indios. That was over four decades ago. Now I’m a man approaching the sixth decade of life. Since that time, the bulk of the populati
on of the colony—the Aztecs, mestizos, and other mixed-bloods—has not improved their lot one iota.” He spread his hands on the table. “Frankly, señor, in the almost three hundred years since the great conquest by Cortés, little has changed for americanos. The gachupines don’t want things to change.”
“The padre thought he could change the way the Spanish treated us by showing them that we were as capable they are.” Marina shook her head. “You saw how they dealt with the padre.”
“The gachupines will never free us without a fight.” The padre stared at me intently. “To win our freedom, we must defeat them in the field.”
“Padre, I have the greatest respect for your humanity and your intelligence. But wood cannons, lances, and slings are not the weapons of modern war. Are you aware of the killing range of a good Spanish artillery piece? Of a musket?”
“These things you speak of we will discuss at length, mi amigo. But what we have in our armory is what God provides.”
“God won’t fight this war.”
“The padre’s not a fool,” Marina said. “He knows lances aren’t better than muskets.”
The padre patted her arm. “It is all right; he asks questions we must answer. We do have a plan, however, not one Napoleon would like, not one that even my criollo allies who are officers in the militia like, but this plan represents the only realistic chance we have. Americanos in the colony outnumber the gachupines a hundred to one, and most are peons. Criollos have the money and resources to drive out the gachupines. They won’t do it, however, because they have too much to lose.
“That terrible task of bloody warfare falls on the people who have nothing to lose but their lives: the Aztecs and other peons. Unfortunately, they’re also the ones without the weapons and training to fight a war, but they alone have the will to throw off this tyranny. Once the indios take up arms and prove that the gachupines can be defeated, the criollos will join and help us win the fight. Together, as brothers, all classes of people will join together to govern the new nation.”
“When is this insurrection to begin?”
“We had planned it for three months from now, in December, but the plans have changed.”
I listened quietly as the padre plotted his war against the gachupines. He had already confided his revolutionary intentions to Marina and to the loyal indios and mestizos who had worked in his wine, silk, and pottery workshops. Bringing workers into the fold was necessary to make weapons. The stockpiling had been going on for several months. He and a small group of criollo militia officers—none higher than a captain—would lead the revolt.
“We had wanted to begin our campaign at the fair at San Juan de los Lagos,” the padre said.
I had been to the fair many times. An enormous event in the Bajío, it took place over the first half of December. Thirty to forty thousand people attended, the great majority, peons. The padre might well recruit thousands of them to his cause, not to mention that he could “requisition” enough horses and mules to outfit a cavalry.
“I’m sure,” the padre said, “you’ve observed the ceremony of the Virgin de Candelaria.”
“Miraculous” representations of the Virgin Mary, usually linked to a healing, cropped up throughout the colony. The Candelaria Virgin was originally a crude statuette, credited for miraculously saving the life of a little girl who had fallen and impaled herself on knives.
These miraculous representations of the Virgin awed the indios in particular. In times of great danger—famine, hurricanes, plague—the authorities hauled out their region’s Virgin effigy and called upon it for deliverance.
“The fair would supply mounts, recruits, and a miracle worker,” I said, not hiding my admiration for the cleverness of the padre’s plan.
“I fear, however, the three-month delay would jeopardize our cause. We’ve made many weapons. If loose tongues betray us, months of work will be for naught. When word leaked out, the authorities crushed a similar conspiracy by Valladolid militia officers. Thus, we will begin in early October, just a few weeks from now. I’ll do everything in my power to avoid shedding innocent blood, but there will be a time when blood must be spilled so liberty can take birth.
“And there will be a time when, like Caesar, we will have to cross the Rubicon and fight, or live out our lives under tyrants.” He banged his fist on the table. “If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that people must fight to be free.”
The enormity of the padre’s intentions finally sank in. I was sitting in a parish house in a small town, listening to a parish priest and an india explain how they were going to drive the Spanish from the colony. They already had a cache of crude weapons, and the war would commence in weeks.
¡Dios mío! María Mother of God.
“You believe our plan is foolish, that a priest is not capable of raising and commanding an army, of winning battles against trained troops,” he said.
“Padre,” I said, shaking my head, “a year ago I would have howled with laughter at the notion of a priest driving out the gachupines with indios armed with lances and slings. But I was recently in Spain. Many guerrilla leaders were priests, and often the bands had weapons no better than what you are producing. And the armies they fought—and still fight—have been ranked as the finest in the world, not the ill-equipped, poorly trained conscripts that the viceroy commands.”
His features brightened at my description of the war on the peninsula.
I lifted my goblet of wine. “I salute your courage and determination. I told you I wouldn’t fight for a cause, but I will fight for you and Marina. You are my cause.”
That night, Marina and I came together, eager but hesitant, lovers long apart. After our lust was spent, I lay back in the bed, Marina in my arms, her warm breasts pressed against my chest.
“Can a simple parish priest from Dolores,” I asked, “truly drive out the gachupines and change the colony?”
“An insignificant young man from Corsica brought kings to their knees and seized the French throne. It’s not the size of a person’s shoulders or riches that shakes the world but the size of his ambitions. All our people need is a dream of freedom and the faith that they can win. The padre can give them the dream. He can bring them the faith.”
SEVENTY-NINE
DOÑA JOSEFA ORTÍZ de Domínguez, la Corregidora of Querétaro, was at home preparing for company: her young friend, Rachel, was expected from Méjico City. Entering her drawing room, her husband startled her with shocking news. As the corregidor, he was the most powerful administrative figure in Querétaro and the best informed.
“They know,” Miguel Domíguez told her. “The plot has been betrayed to the gachupines.”
“How?”
“A traitor. I have a suspicion, but it doesn’t matter; too many people were involved.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
“Arrest the plotters. Allende’s name was the most prominent. He’s in San Miguel. I’ll send a messenger to the alcalde there with instructions to arrest him.”
“You can’t do that; we’re among them!”
“I can’t do otherwise. For their sake and ours, I have to go through the motions of making arrests. It’s better I take them into custody rather than the gachupines. I’ll stall the proceedings and help them work on their stories before . . . more drastic measures are taken.”
Doña Josefa crossed herself. “We must warn our friends in San Miguel and Dolores, give them time to take action before they’re arrested.”
“It’s too late. We can only hope that the authorities will blunder in their investigation.”
“I—”
“No, you can’t get involved. I’ll see to that.”
He locked her in upstairs. She was furious but helpless. Worried, she paced back and forth. The conspirators had to be warned. Allende had to be told that his arrest was imminent. He had to get to Dolores and protect the padre. If he didn’t, the revolt was doomed.
“Ignacio,” she said to herself.
Because her husband Miguel was the chief judicial officer, Ignacio Pérez, the alcalde of the jail, lived beneath them. She took the broom handle and tapped on the floor a code she and Ignacio had selected in case she or her husband needed him. He came upstairs quickly and spoke to her through the keyhole.
Leading a spare mount by a long braided mecate, Pérez rode to San Miguel with the wind at his back and fear in his chest. His world was crashing down around him. He had talked treason with others, and now he feared his own jail would imprison him. Not only was his life at stake, he also had compromised the welfare of his family by attending meetings in which he, Doña Josefa, Allende, and others dreamed of a New Spain where people were free and equal. Now, he was an outlaw.
Ignacio Allende was not in San Miguel when Pérez arrived, but he located Allende’s friend and coconspirator, Juan Aldama.
“Allende has gone to Dolores to speak to Padre Hidalgo,” Aldama told Pérez.
“Then we must flee there.”
EIGHTY
I WAS IN a deep sleep when pounding on Marina’s door awoke us. I jumped out of bed, grabbing my sword.
Someone shouted from outside, “Señorita, it’s Gilberto.”
“The padre’s stableman,” Marina said. “Something must have happened.”
“The viceroy’s men must have tracked me here.”
“If so, you must leave. The padre will not tell them you were here, but others might have spotted you.”
I quickly dressed as she went to the door, a blanket wrapped around her nakedness.
When she came back, she said, “He brought a message from the padre.”
“In the middle of the night? What is it?”
“The padre says it’s time to wet our feet in Caesar’s river.”