Aztec Rage (47 page)

¡Ay! I wondered how much the city putas charged.

SIXTY-FOUR

I
SLEPT IN
an inn that night, the same one that I was supposed to have stayed at upon arrival. From the looks I received, I'm sure that everyone in the place was assigned to watch me. Rosa woke me at the break of dawn. “You have time for some bread and wine, and then we are off.”

“Off where?”

“To make deliveries.” She had two packs loaded with kitchen knives.

“You're off to spy,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “Say that loud enough, and you'll quickly be in the hands of Bailly, the French general in charge of the secret police. He's in charge of collecting both taxes and Spaniards who oppose the French. He puts the heads of guerrilla fighters in the same baskets as the taxes he collects.”

It was good to have someone like Rosa around to keep me from losing my head because my tongue wagged too much.

Toting one of the bags, I accompanied her along the city streets and up a long, wide boulevard called Las Ramblas. She would occasionally stop at a home or shop to make a delivery. I waited outside and never knew if she was passing information or knives.

We passed a French patrol, and she greeted the men with a smile and stopped to introduce me as her cousin to the corporal in charge. She spoke fluent French. As we proceeded on, she said, “They feel safer on Las Ramblas than in the Barri Gótic. You can't fire a cannon around corners.”

“Pardon?”

“Las Ramblas was once a riverbed, in fact the word means something like that in Arabic. In the old days, the avenue followed the meandering course of the dry bed. It was turned into this broad, straight street by the king to keep us Barcelonans in line. Many small, narrow streets were razed to make a broad thoroughfare that is almost as straight as an arrow.”

When we went past the Ciutadella fortress, bodies were hanging from high gallows outside the massive gates. Across the road, people were lined up before a guard station. Few young men were among the group, which was made up mostly of women, children, and the elderly. Like mourners at a funeral, the people were tearful and grief stricken. They waited in line to learn the fate of relatives in French hands.

“They execute people every day,” Rosa said. “The French think they can control us with fear, but it only infuriates us and escalates the violence against them. You see the grief of our people everywhere, not just in the
city but in the smallest towns and villages. All over Catalonia people grieve for their loved ones: fathers and sons and even daughters taken out of their house, then killed, raped, or imprisoned where the families can't find them or even know if they're alive. The French can jail you for any reason, even a sullen glance at a Frenchman or a complaint that a loved one is missing. Sometimes a whole village is summarily executed in retaliation or carted off en masse to a prison.

“Bailly's spies are everywhere: on street corners, in inns and taverns. You cannot even be sure that the priest you whisper confession to isn't a French spy. The invaders are especially brutal toward the family of anyone they suspect sympathizes with the guerrillas. If they harbor the slightest suspicion that a family member is a guerrilla, the entire family is arrested and tortured for information. I've sent my own mother out of the city to stay with her brother in case my activities are discovered. I only permitted her to come into town when we thought Carlos was coming home.”

“Is Casio the leader of the guerrillas in Barcelona?”

“No, he's just one of the leaders in the Catalonian region.”

I was truly impressed by the courage and resolve of the people resisting the invaders. “It must bother Casio and you and the others to know that you risk not only your own life but also the lives of your family.”

She stopped and locked eyes with me. “Casio has no family to worry about; he found his wife, children, and elderly father hanging from a tree on the outskirts of their village.”

She told me more about the life of a guerrilla. They lived like wild animals in the forests and mountains, always on the move, frequently on the run, cold in the winter, melting under the summer heat. The leader got volunteers when the weather was good and the fighting went well, but few takers when the wind or battles turned bad. Sometimes no one would fight because they had to return home and harvest the crops.

In the same way the French tracked the fishing boats, their spies reported if a son or husband from a village was missing from home for long periods. When such reports came in, the families were arrested and sometimes arbitrarily murdered.

The instinct for violence was rampant on both sides.

“The resistance fighters must both admire
and
fear Casio and other leaders,” Rosa said. “The bands are run like wolf packs: any sign of weakness by a leader and someone who covets the leadership will slip a knife between his ribs. Casio got his first musket when he killed a French soldier with a kitchen knife. The man had raped Casio's wife.” She shook her head. “Unlike my brother who fought revolutions in his head rather than with his hands, guerrilla leaders are sometimes more akin to bandit leaders than political scholars. But they have to know how to deal with people on all levels.

“That is especially true when seeking support from the villages and
small towns. Just as the French tax these places, so do the guerrilla bands in order to have money to buy food and weapons. If the leader is too harsh—and some bands have become nothing more than brigands robbing and murdering our people—the communities close their doors to them. Casio had to kill one of his own lieutenants, a childhood friend, because the man was excessively brutal toward villagers when he collected taxes. If he hadn't done it, that village and its neighbors would have frozen us out. And it's not just food and money we need from the towns and villages, we also need intelligence about troop movements and a place to hole up when the pursuit is hot.

“The same thing is true about dealing with the church. Most common priests are anti-French because of Napoleon's anticlerical policies. His troops have turned monasteries and convents into barracks and stables, murdered priests and raped nuns. But the priests have to be careful, too, because they're watched closely by the French. Given the slightest provocation, the French will hang the village priest.”

I never thought about the logistics, the need to recruit, train, pay, and supply guerrilla forces. In my mind, a guerrilla was a man—and sometimes a woman—who left home in the morning with a musket to fight the French and returned home that night. But in truth they had the same problems with supplies and arms that regular armies had. Their needs were fewer but their resources were more strained.

Rosa said her first assignment had been making musket balls in a chicken coop behind a French army officer's mess.

“Obtaining supplies is a constant struggle,” she said. “Less than half our men are equipped with muskets, and we rarely have sufficient ammunition for them. In Navarre, the guerrilla leader Mina employed a one-bullet strategy that Casio and other leaders have adopted. When they ambush a French unit, they move in as close as possible before firing. Then, as soon as they've fired their muskets
once
, they rush the French with bayonets and fight hand to hand. Some of our men are kept in reserve. When we need to disengage, the reserves fire another volley to cover the retreat.

“Even when we have enough musket balls, we continue the same strategy because we are better off with a quick attack, engaging the French with bayonets rather than sitting back and exchanging musket fire while the French wait for reinforcements to arrive.”

“The French came to Spain expecting to live off the land, stealing what they could, paying only when they absolutely had to. They have found that they have to tighten their belts. Our people flee into the hills with their herds rather than let the French take them, and our guerrilla bands buy the grains as soon as they are harvested and burn the rest to keep them from the invaders.

“Another advantage we have is speed. Because our units are small, lightly armed, and know the territory, we can move much faster. Our biggest advantage is always in the mountains. Either the Spanish army never had good maps or they hid them from the French, because the French rarely know the mountain passes like we do. Wherever we go, the partisans show us the secret routes over the mountains and the best places to ambush the enemy.

“The most effective tactic has been to hide in the high rocks and shoot down on the French troops below,” she said. “All rough terrain—mountains, hills, forests—work to our guerrillas' advantage because it hinders the enemy's cavalry.”

I listened in silence while Rosa described their tactics. All the while, my admiration for the guerrillas was growing. A French officer requisitioned muskets, lead balls, and powder from the quartermaster, while patriots like Casio fought with a kitchen knife against a musket . . . and fight the guerrillas they did, with rare courage and determination, the kind that sent David armed only with a sling and stone against Goliath.

SIXTY-FIVE

R
OUNDING A CORNER
, we approached a house where Rosa was to make a delivery. She grabbed my arm and whispered, “Soldiers!”

Ahead of us a group of French soldiers with muskets milled in front of a house. I turned around; more soldiers came up behind us.

“Here.” She pushed open a wooden gate that closed off a narrow alleyway between the walls of two houses.

I followed her in, telling her that they'd spotted us. The passageway was no more than a few paces long, dead-ending at the wall of a house. We were trapped. She dropped her pack and pulled a knife from it.

Knives wouldn't work against a French patrol armed with muskets. Surrendering was also not an alternative. They hanged most of the people they got their hands on, letting God sort out the innocent from the guilty.

She bent over, looking through a crack in the gate, her rump shoved back at me. I don't usually get aroused when soldiers with muskets are breathing down my neck, but having her well-rounded bottom shoved against my manhood put me into an instant state of excitation. I knew this was a character flaw on my part, but my garrancha had no morality. My libidinous urges, however, did give me an idea that could save our lives.

I grabbed her dress from behind and lifted it.

“What are you doing?”

“Shhhh,
act like a bitch in heat.”

Like most women of her class, Rosa was naked under her petticoats. As a man who considers himself an expert on women's derrières, I can attest that Rosa's was of the finest quality: smooth and firm, warm to the touch. Hearing boots approach, I did not have time to fully examine her prurient bounty. Backing her up against one of the houses, I instead unbuckled my pants.

The sword of my lust was hard enough to cut up diamonds, but—ay! still it could not penetrate the vise of her vixen's treasure. She was tighter than the garrote the French would throttle us both with if they arrested us.

The gate crashed open from a kick, and I was staring into the muzzle of a French musket. The soldier gawked at me, his eyes like saucers, as our hips pumped and gyrated in a lurid display of simulated sex.

“Es-tu, le mari?”—Are you the husband?—I asked, our hips still pounding, writhing, and rotating, while Rosa moaned with electrifying authenticity.

Shouting erupted on the street. Giving me a sly grin and a knowing wink, the soldier slapped me on the back and grunted, “Trés bien!”—Very good—and left, letting the gate swing shut behind him.

“We have to remain in this position,” I whispered. “They may return . . . if nothing else just to watch.”

“French bastards,” she snarled under her breath, shaking with fear but, as much as she detested me, still too frightened of the soldiers to risk withdrawing from our embrace. She even continued to move her hips, though not as provocatively as before.