The Empire of Yearning (27 page)

D
IEGO WALKED ALL THAT
day and most of the following night. As he proceeded northward, he encountered an almost constant stream of shirtless men trudging back south. It seemed the imperial army was collapsing. He counted hundreds of men. They paid him little mind, not much concerned with a one-armed, blood-encrusted fool who was going the wrong way on a bad road. Occasionally, one or another of the retreating men eyed him warily, shrugged, then returned to the more important business of leaving the war far behind.

Diego adjusted the weight of his haversack against his shoulders. In his mind, he heard that desperate keening, a stricken horse hobbling on three legs in the first light of dawn. His eyes smarted, and he clenched his jaw. He continued on his way toward Querétaro.

He must have trekked more than twenty hours straight when he first heard the reports of cannon fire—the liberal forces bombarding the city. Presently, he stumbled upon a large military encampment sprawling across several fields of blond grass. No one paid him any mind. Why would they? A man without a rifle shuffling along the perimeter of the
camp? He approached a trio of half-dressed soldiers who were bathing by a large wooden barrel. They told him this encampment was the army of General Mariano Escobedo. Diego thanked them and soon found his way to the general’s tent, where a young officer was making notes of some kind at a refectory table set out on the patchy grass. Diego introduced himself and declared he was looking for His Excellency Benito Juárez.

“You won’t find him here,” said the man, who had a rectangular face with a dark complexion beneath a wedge of dense black hair.

It turned out the president of the Republic had established his provisional capital in San Luis Potosí, a day’s journey on horseback to the north.

“Maybe you’ll find him there,” said the orderly. “If you do, please convey my regards—and tell him I want to be paid.”

Diego said he would try his best. He thanked the orderly and reshouldered his haversack. He departed the republican encampment and resumed his northward trek. Every few minutes, another blast shook the ground beneath his feet, followed by a whistling in the air and, later, a deep crash and the clatter of cracked stones and splitting wood. He barely reacted. Instead, he kept putting one foot in front of the other. He continued on his way, tracing a rutted track lined by thorn scrub and rows of organ pipe cactus on a trail that led north.

The temporary office of the president of Mexico consisted of a dark room, a row of wooden jalousies—almost completely shut—a large wooden desk, some cabinets, a few chairs, and a powdering of recent dust. Benito Juárez was at his desk. He adjusted the lapels of his jacket,
and then reached with both hands to align the edges of a sheaf of papers. A faint mustiness clung to the air.

“No,” he said.

“No?” Diego had expected exactly this response, but even so it was dismaying to hear. He had asked the president if he would consider issuing a pardon for Maximiliano.

“Not even if he surrenders?”

The president shook his head. “Not even if he surrenders.”

“And abdicates?”

“No.”

“And rescinds the Black Decree?”

“No. There are no circumstances in which I would consider such a step. None. The courts will decide the fate of your Austrian, assuming he is not killed in battle first.”

“And if the courts sentence him to death?”

“Then he will die. I won’t intervene.”

Juárez folded his arms on his desk. He was little changed from the last time Diego had seen him—aloof and stern to the point of severity, at least on the surface. Occasionally, he fidgeted with his hands, the only visible sign that he was not entirely sanguine, not entirely in control.

“The Republic,” he said, “is not something to be taken for the asking.”

He explained that he was not thinking only of the Austrian. More than four decades had passed by since independence—a wasted time, a time of puffed-up grandees who strutted across the national stage, men with private armies, vainglorious ideas, and inflated titles, men for whom Mexico was merely a sort of offering, something to be seduced, enjoyed, and tossed aside.

“When these men look upon Mexico, what they see is not a nation of citizens but an instrument for expressing their own vanity, a dark sky in which to cast a brief star. But the star burns out, and the darkness remains.”

Diego nodded. The wording was melodramatic, possibly rehearsed, but this was Mexico’s reality. He thought of Iturbide, Santa Anna, and
the other men who had held power over the land—men who believed they were gods. Was Maximiliano so different? He should never have come, but, having come, he should have abdicated and gone—long ago. Yet here he remained, and for what? To salvage his honour? To burnish a legend? Meanwhile, the war ground on, men died, and Mexico suffered. It was a harsh line that Juárez was taking, but it was just. Diego reached for his hat and rose from his chair.

“Wait,” said Juárez. “Sit. Stay.” He edged forward, and his low tone took on an unexpected warmth. “You did me a kindness once. Don’t think I have forgotten.”

Diego resumed his seat and set down his hat. “It was what anyone would do.”

“I disagree. It was a deeply personal act. That picture made all the difference, you know. It gave me strength I did not realize I had.”

Diego’s heart thudded in his chest, but he merely inclined his head. “
Mi presidente.
”

“And now,” said Juárez, “I have need of your services again. I take it you mean to seek out the Austrian—despite what I have said.”

“Yes.”

“You must be very careful, for it will be dangerous.” He paused. “Besides, there is something I wish you to do.”

“I know.”

“When we last met, in El Paso del Norte, I made a similar request—and you said no.”

“That is right,” said Diego. “But circumstances have changed.”

“So they have.” Juárez hesitated. “I know about your friend—Baldemar Peralta. You are speaking of vengeance, then?”

“No.”

“Good. Vengeance is a treacherous thing. But you will help us?”

Diego nodded. He had suspected all along that the conversation would come to this, but he had not known what he would say, or not until this moment. He remembered the keening he had heard on the road south of Querétaro, after his horse came down badly. There was just one thing he
could have done, and so he had done it. A final cruelty, a final kindness—they amounted to the same thing. He understood it now.

“Fine,” said Juárez. “I will prepare a
laissez-passer.
It will take you part of the way. For the rest, you are on your own.”

The outskirts of Querétaro were clotted by large encampments of republican troops, dimly illuminated by scattered bonfires. It was night, and a half moon glowered through a screen of broken clouds. At first, no one paid Diego any mind. But eventually a pair of sentries emerged from a thicket of mesquite scrub and ordered him to identify himself.

From the folds of his serape, Diego withdrew the letter drafted and signed by Benito Juárez. It offered him safe passage through republican lines at the city of Querétaro.

The taller sentry took the letter, broke the seal, and unfolded the leaf of paper. He held it before him in the negligible light. He frowned at the letter. “What is this?”

“I have just come from San Luis Potosí, where I spoke to President Benito Juárez.”

“Of course,” said the young man. “We ourselves have just been in Rome, where we got pissed with the pope. Come with me.”

The sentry pocketed the letter and led Diego away to be interrogated by his superiors. Security measures in the camp had evidently redoubled since he had last travelled this way. Now one interrogation followed another, and another followed that. The rounds of questioning resumed early the following morning, each session more energetic than the one that preceded it.

In the end, Diego was presented to General Mariano Escobedo, who
apologized for the discomfort his guest had suffered owing to an excess of zeal on the part of his interrogators. In war, mistakes are made.

By this time, Diego was missing several teeth and could see only with great difficulty. His back throbbed with pain, and he heard a ringing in his ears.

Escobedo tapped the letter of safe passage. It was spread out before him on a folding table that stood beneath a canvas awning. “Your purpose in Querétaro, I take it, is to visit the Austrian?”

“That is so.”

“Why?”

“To persuade him to surrender.”

“You think he will agree?”

“No.”

Escobedo reached up with both hands and smoothed his moustache. He smiled and tilted his head. “You seem to be caught in a contradiction.”

“I know.” Diego explained what he meant to do.

Escobedo lit a cigar, turning it around several times in the match’s flame until it was burning evenly. “That would be very useful.” He blew out a plume of smoke. “Oh, and you may wish to carry some dried beef with you. It could save your life.” He hesitated. “Your arm—I take it that’s an old injury?”

“Very old. Courtesy of General Márquez.”

“He escaped, you know. He and a dozen men, give or take. They ran straight through our lines two nights ago. Made off to the south. We managed to bring down one or two, but the rest got away. They won’t be back.”

“No.” Diego grimaced. This probably explained the tightened security in the republican encampment.

Escobedo tilted his head. “I’ll send a physician around,” he said.

With difficulty, Diego climbed to his feet and took his leave. Later, a doctor examined his injuries and did what little he could to blunt their impact. Before long, an orderly brought a quantity of dried beef wrapped in folds of oiled paper. Diego tucked the packet beneath the stump of his
left arm. It was mid-morning, and a pair of sentries accompanied him on foot to the edge of the encampment and then followed him partway down an earthen slope scribbled with tree roots. Upon reaching some invisible line—probably the perceived limit of enemy rifle fire—they halted and let him continue alone.

He picked his way ahead, limping and sore. He was glad to be making this leg of the journey by day rather than by night, for this was a terrible place, reeking of evil. He counted fourteen corpses, all dangling from the branches of trees. He supposed that these were the bodies of men who had tried to escape from the city. They must have been captured by the imperial forces, and their bodies were being displayed as an example and a warning to others, a desperate attempt to hold a disintegrating army together. The corpses were bloated, and carrion birds had started on their flesh. Diego kept his gaze low. He increased his pace.

Moments later, a great shadow darted across his tracks—something passing overhead—and instinctively he spun around to look over his shoulder, then peered up at the sky. What in God’s name was that? At first, the object seemed like nothing he had ever seen. But then the shape cohered into a recognizable image. It was the emperor’s balloon. The contraption sailed overhead, carried on a steady breeze, quickly ascending. The wicker basket clung to the taffeta globe by a netting of ropes, and the entire contrivance soared away to the south at remarkable speed. The sight was both exhilarating and unnerving. It actually flew. Diego felt dizzy. He kept watching the spectacle until the balloon disappeared into the cloud-flocked sky.

He wondered whether anyone had been riding in the basket that dangled beneath the device. From his vantage point, it had been impossible to tell. Had Maximiliano escaped into the sky? He couldn’t even begin to guess. Still shaky on his feet, his back sore, his eyesight diminished, he resumed his trek into Querétaro. Before long, he was challenged by several imperial sentries—haggard, hollow-looking men who stepped out from behind a crumbling adobe wall, aiming their carbines directly
at him. Who knew if they possessed bullets? Diego held up the dried beef, and their hunger got the better of them. Gaunt as skeletons, they yanked the stuff from him and fell upon it, moaning like animals. Too busy eating to care about much else, they waved him through. He could pass into the city if he had a mind to, if he were as crazy as that. They obviously did not suspect him of posing any danger. A lone man on foot, battered, bruised, and equipped with only one arm? What danger was that?

At once, he set about trying to locate Maximiliano.

“A
H
, S
ERRANO
…” The Austrian rousted himself from his travel cot and struggled to his feet. “What a surprise. How did you find your way here?”

Diego recounted his journey, a confusing trek that had involved much doubling back and mistaken turns but that had eventually led him here, to this large room on the second floor of the Convent of the Cross, a disused building long ago looted of almost everything it had once contained.

“Dear God. You came through republican lines?”

“Yes. I managed to obtain a letter of safe passage. From Juárez.”

“You spoke to him?”

“I did. Yes.”

“May I see it? The letter? You have it with you?”

Diego produced the document. Despite his show of bonhomie, Maximiliano was clearly in a miserable state, ashen-faced and sickly. He slumped back onto his narrow cot gripping the letter from Juárez as though it were a holy relic. It was as close as he would ever come to
meeting the man in the flesh. At the same time, of course, it was proof—if proof were needed—that Diego was on the other side. They were enemies now.

While Maximiliano pored over the letter, Diego examined his surroundings. Although nearly empty, the room was spacious, with high ceilings and ample light. A large window afforded a view of the chapel across a small interior courtyard ornamented with what might once have been orange trees but now were mere scrawls—a few scraggly branches attached to thin, barkless trunks. Maximiliano’s long-time retainers, his cook and his valet, rested on the floor atop large burlap sacks stuffed with straw. Diego was surprised to find the Prince of Salm-Salm holed up here, too. He rested on another pair of sacks, his arms clasped around his knees. Every few seconds, he shifted a little and moaned.

“Dysentery,” said Doktor Basch. “The poor fellow has an awful dose.”

The physician occupied a lone chair set in a corner of the room near the window. Once rotund, he was barely recognizable now, little more than a rumpled suit and patches of pallid skin wrapped over an appliance of bones. They were all starving. That was obvious. In a weak voice, Basch observed that Diego seemed to have suffered some reversals of his own.

Diego thought of his broken nose, his two black eyes, his limp. “A misunderstanding,” he said. “A reaction to circumstances.”

Just then, another shell whistled through the air, and the doctor hunched his shoulders. A thunderous boom resounded from somewhere not so far away, followed at once by a crunch of wood, a cacophony of tumbling rocks. Briefly, the walls shook.

“I must say, one tires of this very quickly,” said Basch.

“Well,” said Maximiliano. He held up the letter of safe conduct signed by Juárez. “The man possesses a handsome script. I admire that.”

He reached out with the missive and at once began to cough. Diego took the proffered letter, slipped it into the pocket of his jacket. He lowered himself onto a small wooden bench near Maximiliano. He didn’t imagine the man would remain attentive for long, and there wasn’t much
time. He went to work at once. He said what he had come to say. It was time to surrender. This war had ground on far too long as it was. Victory was impossible. It was better to let the dead rest and to allow the living to put down their weapons, to resume their lives. Nothing could be gained by fighting on.

But Maximiliano refused. No, he would not surrender. He would not abdicate. He was the emperor of Mexico, and nothing could alter this truth except the intervention of the Lord. If it were God’s will that he die, then so be it. But he would breathe his last breath as a monarch. He was a Hapsburg and had a lineage to uphold. He would fight to the end, for his own blood and for Mexico. That was his destiny.

Every several minutes another shell whistled overhead and crashed to earth with a deep rumpus, followed by the clatter of collapsing rock, the shriek of twisting wood, sometimes accompanied by the shouts of men, the cries of women, the wails of children.

“You will be staying here with us?” Maximiliano said. “Shall we make up another bed?”

“No. No, Your Majesty.”

The emperor frowned but said nothing. He was evidently reflecting on what had just been implied. At length, he nodded. It seemed he now understood the significance of this conversation. He must have understood that Diego knew his exact whereabouts … and Diego would be leaving.

“Very well,” he said. “So be it.”

Diego looked around at the room once again. Something was missing. Before long, the realization surfaced. Agustín. Ángela’s son. Where was he? A terrible thought gripped him—the child was dead. Pray God that it wasn’t so, that he was alive and that Maximiliano would surrender him into Diego’s care. He turned to the emperor. “Give me the child,” he said.

“I can’t.” Maximiliano rubbed his forehead. “Boy’s gone. This morning.”

Diego furrowed his brow. “What?”

“This morning,” said Maximiliano. Again he began to cough.

And Diego remembered. The balloon. He’d seen it as it rocketed above the alley of corpses. So, it had carried the boy. They’d packed the child off in the emperor’s balloon. He hadn’t known it then, but he had watched the child vanish into the cool blue air.

Maximiliano explained that the idea had come to him in a vision only the night before. They must salvage the child, the innocent boy. They must deliver him from evil.

“You sent him off in that device alone?”

The emperor nodded. Yes.

They stared at each other, and both then looked away, both contemplating what this meant—a three-year-old child hurtling through the clouds in a wicker basket. God knew how high the craft would rise or when it would descend—or where. It might as readily plummet to earth at a deadly speed as gently decline.

Maximiliano shook his head. “I’m very tired,” he said. “I can’t seem to stay awake.”

He settled back upon his cot and placed his head on a pillow encased by a discoloured linen slip that was stitched with the letters
MIM.
He glanced at Diego. Their eyes locked. For a time, his gaze did not waver. It seemed he understood. Surely he understood. Perhaps he welcomed this fate.

Diego rose from his chair, nodded to the others, uttered a few parting words, turned and withdrew. Outside the emperor’s chambers, in the amber light of the late afternoon, he stopped and leaned against a low wall of stone overlooking a small patio. He heard a shuffling of footsteps, a voice being cleared, and he turned to watch as Doktor Basch hobbled toward him. The physician put a pair of fingers to his lips and asked in a low voice if he and Diego might speak in private.

“Of course.”

The two men trudged along a corridor of arched stone porticos, past the interior courtyard and another grove of tatty, denuded orange trees. In a laboured voice, Basch described conditions in the city, the lack of food and water, the predations of disease, the death rattles of children.

“I, too, have begged His Majesty to consider the possibility of surrender, but he will not hear of it, any more than he will entertain the thought of abdication.”

“I don’t understand,” said Diego. “There was a time when I was sure he would renounce his crown.”

“As was I.” Basch stopped and supported himself against a pillar of stone. “But his wife persuaded him otherwise.” He paused. “She is mad, you know. We received reports of it in the early days of the siege. She had a breakdown in Paris, caused an unholy scene, they say. It happened again in Rome. Hysteria. Paranoia. I take it she’s been committed to an asylum.”

“And Napoleon? Did the empress change his mind?”

Basch gave a sour smile. “No. Of course not.”

“Maximiliano knows this?”

“He does now.”

“But still he won’t surrender?”

“He can’t. His is an ancient family—five centuries of nobility. That weighs on a man. Besides, his older brother would never let him forget it. Europe would be torture for him now.”

“He will die then.”

Basch nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, he will.” He swallowed with difficulty. “You are aware, I suppose, that Márquez has abandoned us? Three days ago, I think? He left with a dozen or so of his men. They fought their way out. They were supposed to round up reinforcements somewhere. But now I’m sure it was a lie.”

“So. Your fate is sealed.”

“I fear so.”

Basch coughed, a deep, crepitating cough, and it was clear he was seriously unwell. He wiped his lips, flaking from dryness. He eyes were shot with burst capillaries, slender rivulets of blood. His skin was mottled, peeling. His bones sagged. He looked half-dead.

“You can help, you know,” he whispered. “You can bring this story to an end. Please. Will you help?”

Diego surveyed his whereabouts and fixed them in his mind—Maximiliano occupied a suite of rooms on the second floor of the Convent of the Cross. The suite overlooked a narrow
plazuela
, a small grove of orange trees, now dead, and the ancient stone chapel, with its wooden entrance gates. He fixed the place in his mind. He felt he knew it exactly.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I can.”

Late that night, Diego slipped out of Querétaro. He encountered no difficulty with the imperial sentries, who might themselves have deserted by now. He clambered through a series of trenches and barricades and then picked his way through the wreckage and waste of the no man’s land that divided the two sides. He forced himself to avoid looking at the swollen, festering corpses still dangling from the branches of the fresnos. He saw their shadows though, cast upon the barren ground and gently rotating in the moonlight. He scrambled up the precipitous ravine, desperate to be away from this terrible place. Beyond the battered city walls, he climbed to the republican line and presented his
laissez-passer
, along with a password he’d been issued that morning by General Escobedo. A pair of sentries marched him directly to the quarters occupied by their commander. It was late at night on the thirteenth day of May in the year 1867.