CHAPTER ONE

 

It was January 1852. In the United States, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin'" was about to be published, a book that would divide the North and the South in an internecine war that would pit brother against brother. E. G. Otis had just invented the elevator with safety appliances and Christopher Dorflinger had invented the lamp chimney. There were spiritualists' conventions held in Cleveland, Boston and Worcester. Five months later, the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore was to nominate Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire for President on the forty-ninth ballot, while some two weeks later, and in the same city, the Whig National Convention was to nominate old General Winfield Scott of New Jersey on the 53rd ballot. In San Francisco, the leading citizens had organised their Vigilante Committee to deal with lawlessness. But even they would have been helpless to cope with the marauding and rapine, the bloodshed and the agony being unleashed in the sister nation to the south.

It was January, the height of summer in the Argentine pampas. The small grey ornero (ovenbird) was busy making its own home of mud and straw with a curving entrance to protect it from the wind and rain which would sweep the great plains when winter came in June.

At the village of Lujan, thirty miles west of Buenos Aires, by noon the sun was already sweltering as the vii lagers prepared for the wedding feast of Maria Concepcian Villartes to Pedro Rosamonte. Already the altar boys were hastening into the adobe church of Nuertra Seņora de Piedad where Fra Sierro would perform the ceremony that would unite Sancho Rosamonte's handsome twenty-four-year-old only son Pedro with the most beautiful girl of the village. She was as slim as a reed, black hair glossy as polished jet, not quite eighteen, with a sweet, oval face radiant with that virginal glow which would soon, this very night, be transformed into the more ardent look of womanhood.

The alcalde himself. Manuel Villartes, vigorous and spry despite his sixty-two years, had announced that there would be a feast all afternoon following the wedding and that even the poorest villagers would be welcome. He had come to this tiny village as a wanderer some forty years ago, when the savage Chacabuco Indians had killed his father and ravished and tortured his lovely mother to death. Indigent and possessing only his health and his determination to conquer the pampas, he had taken a few humble acres, bought a few cows and a bull from a dying estanciero (ranch owner) and had thus begun his fortune. His first two wives, who had been barren, had died during the famines of 1813 and 1821. His third wife had been a fifteen-year old criatura, a timid indentured Corteleone Indian girl from the south. She had been sold into bondage at the age of five and destined to be the concubine of the brutal tavern keeper Manuel Durado who had bought her from her impoverished parents, members of a friendly tribe who often wandered to the north and worked in the fields and on the estancias to earn money for food, trinkets and clothing. She had been the best, the most faithful wife of all to him, and the old alcalde sadly reflected, as he entered the church and piously crossed himself at the sight of the altar, how lamentable it was that she could not be here, to see Pedro Rosamonte stand before Fra Sierro with their daughter Maria Concepcion. Alas, Triana had died of an undulant fever six months ago, in the prime of her life and beauty. And even though he prayed for the happiness of his son-in-law, he could not help coveting the beauty of his beloved daughter, for his bed was empty and yet he was still virile, still capable of carnal lust. How well he could recall the feverish eagerness of Triana when they came together in the night, her mouth and breasts and thighs seeking him, insatiable and fiery!

As he bowed his head before the altar and before he took his seat in the front pew near the rail, Manuel Villartes said a worried prayer. It was to be hoped that those accursed federalistas would not have heard the news of this impending marriage. If the terrible gaucho soldiers of Juan Manual de Rosas were to hear of the chest of golden coins which he intended to give his adored son-in-law as a wedding gift, they would swoop down and loot the village. Those coins represented arduous years of growing cattle on the pampas, fighting not only disease and bad crops but also the banditos from the nearby province, occasional forays by the warring Indian tribes and almost emasculated by the intolerable taxes levied by the tyrant.

The alcalde himself in secret shared the views of the federalistas whose leaders came from the pampas, even though they now ruled from Buenos Aires. But he abominated the bloodshed and the ferocity and the hatred which the tyrant Rosas had engendered. How long would it be before Nuestro Seņor Dias would purge that arrogant and bloodthirsty man who had governed the province of Buenos Aires from 1832 and then, after giving up his office, turned the heads of the stupid masses by leading a successful expedition against the Indians? Yes, they had welcomed him back with open arms, the poor idiots, in 1835. And now he was virtual dictator over all Argentina.

There was much to be said about the cause of the unitarios. If only the matter could be resolved by a popular vote of the nation, the old alcalde thought. As for himself, he had earned his livelihood and all that gold he was about to give unto his beloved son, from the pampas so he could understand the cause of a man like Rosas, who believed in national unity. Well, that was all very fine, if there were no taxes, no troops to ride despotically into the tiny villages of the south and the west and to seize prisoners without warrant, to torture and execute them, to rape the women and to kidnap the youngest girls to be taken back to Buenos Aires to serve as whores to these vile wretches who themselves once had been the lowliest of gauchos and who now held military rank and rode fine horses and lived off the fat of the land.

Let Buenos Aires be self-ruling, self-sufficient, he said to himself, as his lips moved in that urgent prayer. It is not a city already rich enough to subsist on its own fat, like the camel. And yet, in the name of the federalistas and unitarios, each new day brought terror and death and torture to the pampas.

The villagers thronged around the little adobe church as the proud alcalde, in frock coat and tall hat, with the silver chain of his office about his neck, led his daughter in on his arm, nodding and smiling politely to his neighbours. Every pew was crowded and some of the peasants had managed to squeeze into the back of the church where they stood agog with excitement, for an event like this was rare in this quiet little village. Then at last the hubbub of murmurs died down as the gentle, stoop-shouldered priest approached, smiling at the young couple who knelt beyond the rail awaiting his blessing and the start of the ritual which would make them one. But Fra Sierro had hardly begun to invoke the Creator's blessing when suddenly a peasant at the back of the church shouted, "They are coming! Los Lanceros Negros!"

Cries of horror rose and the priest himself went ashen-pale, crossing himself and mumbling prayers. "Quickly, my daughter, go to the quarters of the good priest and hide yourself," the old alcalde gasped. Maria Concepcion uttered a sobbing cry, clasped the hands of her sturdy young husband-to-be and then fled, clutching her bouquet and gathering up with the other hand the train of her gown as she took shelter.

And outside the church, thirty horsemen, dressed in the gaucho uniforms of the tyrant Rosas, black breeches and boots, black gloves and red tunics, wearing metal helmets to whose peaks were affixed plumes of horsehair, lifting the heavy wooden shafts of their lances whose last three feet were made of sharpened iron and dismounted to surround the little church. At the sight of these dread riders, the villagers who had clustered about the door of the church ran screaming down the street toward their homes.

The leader of this troop, Teniente Porfirio Gonzales, carried a sabre and on his red tunic was a silver medal cunningly shaped in the form of a sun with many rays circling it. It was a medal which Rosas himself had had struck for this intrepid and merciless officer, whose name alone struck terror into the hearts of every villager between Buenos Aires and the Uruguayan border.

He was stocky, with coarse, short black hair and a thick moustache, only thirty, but in a military career of a decade he had won the nickname of "The Bloody Butcher." He had begun his days under the Rosas regime as a private and Rosas himself had watched the recruit tied to an X-shaped wooden whipping post to receive seventy-five strokes with a heavy leather belt for having cheated at cards. But so bravely had the recruit taken his lashing that Rosas had been impressed and he had had Porfirio Goniales assigned to his personal bodyguard. A year later, when a hysterical widow had tried to stab the leader for having her daughter abducted and brought to his quarters to satisfy his rapacious lusts, it had been Porfirio Gonzales who had interposed his body between the dagger and the dictator, sustaining a flesh wound in the arm. He had wrested the dagger away from the woman and stabbed her in the heart. For this he had been made a corporal and given a small piece of land just outside the great city of Buenos Aires. From then on, his career was marked by splendid accomplishments in the service of Argentina's bloodiest dictator.

Whenever a village resisted or revolted against the heavy taxes imposed by the dictator, it was Porfirio Gonzales who led a punitive expedition of lancers against the dissidents. He became a sergeant two years later and last year been given the rank of Teniente in full command of these thirty expert fighting men.

"Diego, Jose, Manuelito and Hernando, follow me!" he barked as he strode into the church with drawn sabre. The spectators were rooted in their seats, their mouths agape with horror at this sacrilege. The kindly old priest, in a quavering voice, sought to placate the federalista officer.

"My son, you are in the house of God. So, sheathe your sword. We celebrate a wedding this day and there is no need for soldiers on so joyous an occasion."

"That is where you are wrong, viejo," Porfirio Gonzales sarcastically chuckled as he strode down the aisle toward the altar rail. "There is no sanctuary for traitors, no refuge for the accursed unitarios!"

"But you are mistaken, my son," the old priest persisted. "It is well known that the village of Lujon thrives under the rule of Rosas."

In this, his gentle way, he sought to retaliate for the officer's sarcasm as well as to tell the truth. Indeed, the village had angrily paid its tribute levied by the tyrant and been left in peace.

"Go mumble your prayers, you old fool and do not interfere in what does not concern you, or you will taste the fine edge of my sabre," Porfirio Gonzales sneered. "Who is the Alcalde? This dog who calls himself Manuel Villartes?"

"I am he," the white-haired father of the bride rose from one of the front pews.

"Then it is you I seek. There is word that you have hoarded much gold, Seņor Alcalde. When a man conceals a treasure, it can only be because he has not paid his just taxes. You will give this gold to my men at once."

"But that's not so, Teniente!" the old man protested. "All these years I have saved what money I could after I met the levies of your master. Today, on this blessed day when my daughter is to be wed to the son of our largest estanciero, I mean to give the young people's gift for the future."

"Give it rather to the state, that it may grow strong in crushing the traitorous unitarios!" Porfiri Gonzales sneered. "Where is this moneybox of yours hidden, old man?"

"But even the priest will tell you that ... what are you going to do?" For even as he spoke, the alcalde saw two of the lancers hurry towards the back of the church and through the door which led to the priest's quarters where his daughter had taken refuge. A moment later, the two grinning soldiers dragged out the screaming and weeping Maria Concepcion, her veil ripped away, her gown wrenched from her shoulders to expose the olive-sheened satin of her naked flesh, almost to the valley of her high perched, pear-firm breasts.

"Then, old man, we will take your daughter as hostage until you decide to give us the gold!" Porfirio Gonzales chuckled.

"No! Wait! In the name of human mercy -I will tell you where the gold is - it's in my house - at the bottom of a sewing basket."

"Jose, Hernando," Porfirio Gonzales turned to his other two subalterns, "ride to this old fool's house and take him with you to show you the way, so he will be pricked with the lance if he tries to trick you. You two -" gesturing with his sabre at the weeping girl held between them, "take her out to the public square, bind her wrists behind her back and keep her prisoner until your comrades return with the gold!"

So saying, he turned his back on the altar and strode out of the church, while two of the lancers shoved him forward, their two companions dragging the weeping and pleading Maria Concepcion along with them. She saw them drag her father over to one of the horses, force him to mount up behind one of the lancers and then the two rode off. Her captors, standing on either side other, caressed her bare neck and shoulders, as she groaned and wept in her shame as she heard their lascivious appraisals other young body.

"Captain, hola, amigo, what a lucky hombre will be the man who has this pretty wench to bed this night! -Si verdad, but what if the bridegroom is not there to take his right? Then, what would you do? Perhaps one of us, humble though we are, may be privileged to aid this muchachita to become a woman!"

The two lancers rode back with the alcalde, one of them lifting up the treasure box to show that he had achieved his mission. Porfirio Gonzales stepped forward and took possession of the box. Breaking it open forcibly, he stared avidly at the rows of shining golden coins. "By frugality and hard work, eh, you traitorous dog?" he jeered. Then, drawing his sabre, he thrust it to the heart of the alcalde.

Maria Concepcion uttered a shriek of incredulous horror and tried to run to her father, who had stumbled back, clutched at his bleeding chest, then crumpled to the ground. But one of the lancers beside her thrust out his booted foot to trip her and sent her sprawling in the dust amid the jeers and the salacious comments of the other soldiers.

"Take that bitch along, too," Porfirio Gonzales commanded. "And find me ten of the least ugly girls of this insurrectionist hamlet as tribute to El Supremo!"