The Furies (6 page)

Her vision cleared a little. The man using his sword to drive the infantrymen into the chapel was a hatless officer in a red-faced blue coat stained with blood and dirt.

“His Excellency gave no orders for slaughtering women, you whoresons!” he shouted. “Get out! Leave these people alone!”

The officer’s fury sent the soldiers milling into the smoke. When they were all gone, he touched Jake Walker’s corpse with the toe of one boot, getting blood on the leather. His mouth twisted in disgust.

Amanda stood panting and rubbing her watering eyes. Finally she got a clear look at the officer. He was in his thirties, stout. His skin was swarthy, his hair black and wavy. His glance shifted from Walker to the dead boy tangled in the blanket. Looking pained, he tapped the flat of his sword against his trousers and turned his attention to the surviving women and children.

“I assume that most of you speak Spanish? I am here to help you—”

Still sickened by the brutality she’d witnessed, Amanda stepped forward. The officer pivoted. His round face might have been a merry face in different circumstances. Now it showed surprise as Amanda bent her head and spat on the officer’s boots.

One of the women groaned, obviously afraid that Amanda’s defiance would produce more violence. The officer’s jaw whitened. But he didn’t raise his sword.

He glanced down at the spittle glistening on his reddened boot. Then back at Amanda. “I will overlook your disrespect, señorita”—he’d glanced at Amanda’s left hand and seen no ring; she had put it away permanently after Jaimie died—“because I understand how you were driven to it by the excesses of our men. Sequestered in here, you undoubtedly have no idea of what they have been through. Indeed—”

A bitter amusement shone in his dark eyes. He had an almost boyish countenance, Amanda decided. But the essentially benign features had been hardened by weather, and by war. The officer was clearly no coward, but neither did he seem to be cruel. She began to hope she and the others might survive.

The officer shrugged in a tired way, continuing. “Indeed I doubt whether the army can withstand another such victory.” The last word was tainted with sarcasm.

“I am Major Cordoba,” he went on. “I must inform you that you are the prisoners of His Excellency General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President of the Republic of Mexico.” He pointed his saber at Angelina Dickinson. The little girl was leaning against her kneeling mother, crying and clutching her bloodied skirt to her wounded leg. “I shall attempt to secure a litter for the child—”

Still with a bitter edge to her voice, Amanda said, “Don’t trick us, Major. If we’re going to be taken somewhere and shot, I for one would just as soon get it over with right here.”

Cordoba’s lips compressed. He was angry. “Señorita—”

“My name is de la Gura. Señora de la Gura.”

Amanda’s insolent tone made Cordoba color even more. “Señora, then! You are foolish if you refuse to entrust yourself to me. I have been sent specifically—”

“How can we trust men who shoot children?” Amanda retorted, pointing at the fallen boy.

“The boy’s death is regrettable, but—”

“
Regrettable?
It’s inhuman!”

Wilting under her glare, Cordoba muttered, “Yes, granted—granted!” Louder then: “But it is impossible to control men who have just concluded an engagement such as this. I repeat—you have no idea of what our troops suffered at the hands of your people.”

There was grudging respect in Cordoba’s last statement. Amanda’s anger cooled a little. The man did seem intelligent—decent, even. That couldn’t be said of most of the soldiers.

“Major?” Susannah Dickinson said in English. “My husband was on the gun platform. I—I assume he’s dead, but—”

“Please,” Cordoba interrupted in Spanish. “It would be easier if you would speak in my language.”

“I don’t know it very well,” Susannah replied, her voice shaky. Amanda hurried to her side and cradled an arm around her shoulder. Clinging to her mother and crying softly, little Angelina looked ready to swoon with pain.

“Ask your question,” Amanda said to Susannah. “I’ll translate for him.”

“Will I have a chance to look for my husband’s body? I’d like to see him decently buried.”

Cordoba glanced at Amanda. She put the query into Spanish. When she concluded, Cordoba shook his head.

“His Excellency has instructed that only our soldiers are to be buried. Unfortunately, the señora’s husband is considered a traitor to the republic. Therefore—”

“For God’s sake spare us your lectures, Major!”

“I was only attempting to explain why the señora’s husband would be denied burial. I am afraid it will also be denied to yours.”

“My husband died four years ago.”

“I see.”

Cordoba eyed her speculatively while she told Susannah what he had said. Almeron Dickinson’s wife closed her eyes and shook her head, looking more defeated than ever.

Cordoba tried to be conciliatory. “For your own safety, I beg you all to remain here while I see about the litter. We will escort you out of the mission and back to Bexar as soon as possible. I suggest that as we depart, you do not look too closely at the sights in the main plaza. For the sake of your own sensibilities—”

The sentence trailed off into awkward silence. All at once Amanda felt completely drained of anger. She was exhausted, and desperate to get out of this death-choked place—

Cordoba started to leave. It was Señora Esparza who stopped him this time. “We will look our fill. Butcher.”

“Please, señora! You and I are not enemies. We are people of the same nation—”

“No. I am a Texan, like my husband, Gregorio. I hate your Santa Anna just as he did. When my children and I go out, we will see what your dictator has done—and remember it until another time. Then we will repay you.”

Cordoba smiled in a humorless way. “I don’t doubt His Excellency worries about that very thing. That’s why he is in such desperate haste to put an end to the rebellion.”

The major vanished into the sunlit smoke. A few seconds later, Amanda heard him summoning men—cursing in the process.

Cordoba’s command of obscenities made her wonder about him. Was his apparent concern for the welfare of the noncombatants only a pretense? Or was the bluster, the cursing, the false part? She supposed it didn’t really make much difference so long as Angelina received prompt attention, and no one else was hurt.

Another burst of musket fire drew her attention to the chapel. The Mexicans were still mutilating the dead. Laughing, even singing, in celebration of the slaughter—

Amanda’s face hardened. As Señora Esparza had said, it would be a long time before the people of Texas forgot the dreadful dawn just past.

In the final assault on the Alamo, Santa Anna’s army had pounded the walls with cannons, then scaled them with ladders and pushed the defenders back in hand-to-hand combat to last-ditch positions in rooms in the long barracks. But even Major Cordoba’s warning hadn’t adequately prepared Amanda for what she saw as armed soldiers escorted the survivors into the main plaza.

The plaza was literally a field of corpses, hundreds of them. For every American, there seemed to be ten of the enemy. There was a stench of blood and powder that the morning sun couldn’t burn out of the air. The faces and limbs of the dead were black with flies.

Several of the women began crying again. One of the Esparza children vomited. Amanda dug her nails into her palms and swallowed sourness in her throat. It was apparent that the Texans had given ground a foot at a time. The soldiers who had reached the chapel had done so over small mountains of bodies.

Amanda recognized almost all of the Texan dead. She had cooked for the men, joked with them—and now she saw them lying in grotesque postures, lifeless hands clenched around pistols and knives. She fought to keep from weeping herself.

By the time the captives and their guards were a quarter of the way to the open gate, Amanda’s shoes gave off a squishing sound. She glanced down, sickened. So much blood had been spilled, the hard ground couldn’t absorb it all. She had stepped in a sticky red pool of it.

Mexican soldiers searched for souvenirs among the heaped bodies. But near the wall, she noted an unusually large mound of corpses that the human scavengers seemed to be avoiding. Most of the dead appeared to be Mexicans, but she recognized one American among them. He lay on his back, his face a patchwork of bayonet cuts. At least two dozen other wounds had torn his hunting shirt and trousers.

Pacing at her side as he had since they left the chapel, Cordoba noticed her stare. “That man in the fur cap—is he the one called Crockett?”

“Yes.”

“I’m told it took a score or more to bring him down.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“You can see the soldiers fear to go near him even now—”

The sight of Crockett’s stabbed body unleashed new rage within her. It found a ready target in Cordoba’s continuing presence. “I don’t need your personal attention, Major. In fact I resent it.”

“Understandably.” Cordoba nodded. His brown eyes kept moving back and forth from one group of soldiers to another. Some of the soldiers watched the prisoners with sullen fury. “However, you must accept it until we are safely outside. I want no incidents—”

“What sort of incidents?”

“Noncombatants are to be spared—that was His Excellency’s order. But it won’t be obeyed voluntarily. I really think you still fail to understand the importance of this engagement, señora.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just this. Your General Houston has boasted too often that, with five hundred men, the province of Texas could be liberated from Mexico. His Excellency had to win this battle—at any price. To do so, he inflamed the passions of his men—”

Cordoba inclined his head toward a pair of soldiers busily plying knives. One soldier was sawing through the bone of a Texan’s ring finger in order to claim an emerald signet. His sweaty-faced companion had a different purpose. While Amanda watched, the soldier whacked off the ear of a dead man she recognized as one of Crockett’s twelve from Tennessee. With a gruff shout, the soldier displayed the souvenir to other Mexicans nearby. They laughed and applauded. Grinning, the soldier tucked the ear into his pocket.

“Indeed, señora, the very spirit with which your people resisted only heightened the desire for revenge. That’s why looting must be permitted. And why the faces are being cleaned—”

He pointed to other soldiers using rags to wipe the dirt from the fallen, Mexican and American alike.

Amanda shook her head, not understanding. Cordoba explained in a somber voice, “His Excellency wishes no mistakes made about the identity of each body. As I informed you, our soldiers will be buried. Your people will be burned.”

“Scum,” she breathed. “Murdering scum, that’s all you are—”

“Alas, señora, war is seldom an ethical business.”

“There could have been terms! Honorable surrender—”

“No. An example was needed. Besides, would your people have accepted terms?”

She pushed back a stray lock of dirty hair from her forehead, unable to reply. Thank God the gate was only a short distance away. Susannah Dickinson, accompanying the litter on which her daughter rested, had already reached the body-strewn ground between the mission and the river. Two black men were just following her out the gate. One was Sam, who had come from the sacristy. The other was Travis’ slave, Joe, captured in the long barracks. Both men were crying.

“Well, señora?” Cordoba prodded. “
Would
the Texans have accepted terms of any kind?”

She turned her head, gazing at the disheveled major. He was still something of an enigma. He had the erect bearing and outward flintiness of a professional. Yet there was a certain softness in his eyes that suggested another, more elusive man behind the façade. For the first time she noticed his tunic. It bulged noticeably; his belly was growing fat. And he looked tired.

Less angry, she answered, “I doubt it. When Anglos get pushed too far, they usually fight back. There’s a saying they use when someone threatens them—”

“A saying? What is it?”

“Turn loose your wolf.”

“In other words—do what you will?”

“Do what you will—but you’ll regret it.”

Cordoba sighed. “That was obviously the case here. However—”

Stumbling, Amanda uttered a little cry. The major caught her arm. One of the enlisted men walking with the captives noticed Cordoba’s quick reaction, and smirked.

Cordoba glared. The soldier blinked and swallowed, intimidated by the fury of the major’s eyes.

Amanda carefully disengaged her arm from Cordoba’s hand. He refused to look at her, staring instead at her cordage bracelet. His round face was still flushed.

By all rights she ought to hate him. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to it.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked finally.

“You and the Señora Dickinson are going to His Excellency. The Mexican women and children will be set free.”

A ripple of dread chased along Amanda’s spine. “And Susannah and I won’t be?”

“I can’t say. His Excellency received reports of non-combatants in the mission, and I was instructed to bring them to him for his personal disposition.”

“Where is he?”

“I am not certain of that either.”

“Maybe I’ll be lucky. Maybe he got killed.”

“General Santa Anna? Never. Do you imagine he would lead an assault in person—?” Was there faint contempt in his voice? If so, it was quickly hidden. “You may find yourself reasonably well treated, however. His Excellency has a certain fondness for attractive women.”

Amanda realized he meant it as a compliment. But this hardly seemed a suitable time or place. She didn’t bother to respond.

Cordoba then said, “You do know His Excellency took a wife in Bexar—?”

Startled, Amanda shook her head.

“It was the night we bridged the river. One of the general’s aides discovered a most charming young woman—and her mother—living just over there.”

Amanda’s eyes followed his pointing hand. She recognized the house he was indicating.