Fray Damián felt a tugging at his sleeve, and heard: ‘That’s the one. Walking alone. I think I ought to let her know I’m here.’
‘What?’ He had forgotten his carpenter’s mission.
When Simón explained his plot, that he would arrange to be near the woman when the bell rang, Fray Damián said: ‘That’s sensible. That’s very sensible.’ He coughed. ‘I’ll join you when the bell rings.’
In fact, he moved much earlier in order to gaze more directly at the lively child who had so attracted him, and when he had eased himself unobtrusively into the crowd of watchers, working his way to the front row, he felt his heart thumping whenever she came swinging along, whispering words both to her friends and to the passing young men. He was startled by her beauty, and well he might be, for she was the epitome of all the dark-eyed, laughing women who graced the cathedral towns of Spain, and who gave his homeland so much of its remarkable character.
And then his heart missed a beat, for he realized that Simón’s young woman was in the company of his girl, and that in attending to the courtship of his carpenter, he was abetting his own interest: How remarkable! It’s almost as if someone had arranged this curious thing.
The bell rang, the paseo ended, and the crowds dispersed, but Fray Damián did not intercept the carpenter’s woman and make the introduction, for he was preoccupied with the girl. ‘I’m sorry, Simón. I think it’ll be much better if we speak to her tomorrow.’ And on the next night, after again hovering by the cathedral to watch Benita, he did intercept the woman in whom the carpenter had evidenced such interest: ‘I am Fray Damián from the college, and I wish to present Simón Garza.’ The carpenter bowed, Juana smiled modestly, and the formalities were honored.
‘I am Juana Muñoz, of this parish.’
‘And your parents?’ Damián asked.
‘Farmers, of the parish to the north.’
‘I introduce a man of good repute,’ Damián said, and then he excused himself and hurried off to see where the saucy girl’s dueña had taken her, and he saw with uncharacteristic satisfaction that she was being led into the house of a family of some standing. He asked a passer-by whose house it was, and the man said: ‘Anselmo Liñán, official from Avila in Spain.’
Even though he was aware that he was becoming enmeshed in a very dangerous game, Fray Damián sought a dozen excuses for being in the plaza during the Spanish paseo: It’s as if the gears of a huge grinding machine were working to sort out the persons whom God intended to be married. That poor fellow over there will never find a wife. That lively girl by the cart had better find her husband soon, or she’ll be in trouble. And somehow, by God’s grace, it works.
He kept a close watch on Benita, whose name he now knew, and was pleased to see that she had formed no attachment of any kind, but he was worried about her flippancy and her predilection for flirting with almost any fellow who happened to catch her eye in the paseo.
He had not yet spoken to the girl, and she was unaware of his presence, but one night an unusually perceptive friend whispered to Benita as they passed under the church towers: ‘I think that one is watching you,’ and she snapped: ‘A priest? Nonsense!’ But upon careful inspection of the friar’s behavior, she had to conclude that he was watching her, and no others. The idea intrigued her.
In late July, Fray Damián finally had a logical excuse for appearing at the paseo, for his carpenter had asked him to speak formally to the servant girl Juana Muñoz, and Damián added, with grave propriety: ‘Your young man Simón would like me to conduct the wedding. Do you agree?’
‘I would be honored. My parents will come in from the country.’
So a wedding was announced. It would take place after the turn of the year, and as a gesture of good will toward Garza, Fray Damián sought permission for it to be held in one of the church’s chapels. He was directed to consult with Anselmo Liñán, who as a Spanish official helped direct the social affairs of the church, and when details were clarified, Liñán said: ‘Fray Damián, the colonel tells me he would like to talk with you about reinforcing the Franciscan presence in the northern areas.’
‘I’m ready to go, I assure you.’
‘Could you dine with us? This week?’
‘Oh, yes!’
Fray Damián was a tall man, very thin, with a sharp nose and beetling eyebrows, who had never paid much attention to his appearance. But on the day of the dinner he tried to make himself presentable. Using much water in an attempt to hold down his unruly hair, he also brushed his sandals and beat out his frock to remove the dust which had accumlated at the building site. Looking somewhat better than usual, he went to the Liñan home, and was delighted to find that Benita, now posing as a demure and well-behaved young lady, would attend the dinner with her mother. His seat was opposite hers, and although he tried his best to avoid her eyes, lest he betray his surging emotions, he could not prevent this from happening. When it did, he blushed so painfully that he was certain everyone at table must see it, but Benita seemed unconcerned, smiling at him as she might have smiled at some elderly uncle whom the family favored.
The talk this evening was mostly about the empty lands north of that river which the Spanish called variously El Río de las Palmas, El Río Bravo, or some other arbitrary name. Lately they had begun to call it El Río Grande del Norte, or simply El Río Grande. ‘The problem lies not with the lands themselves,’ an enthusiastic lieutenant was saying, ‘but the fact that they join us to the French in Louisiana. Mark my words and mark them well, one of these days we’ll be at war with the French over those border lands.’
His colonel, an imperious man, smiled condescendingly and said: ‘You’re a clever lad, Tovar. I received word yesterday that the French have already threatened our settlement at Los Adaes.’
‘Why would the French want to invade us?’ Liñán asked, but the colonel ignored the question, turning abruptly to Fray Damián: ‘Tell me, what plans do you Franciscans have for strengthening the north?’ But before Damián could respond, he banged on the table till the glasses rattled: ‘Best thing Spain’s ever done, the union of the friars at the mission and the army at the presidio.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Liñán asked.
‘Most effective way ever devised for settling and holding a virgin territory. It was originally used as a way of resettling Spain after the defeat of the Moorish invaders, you know.’
‘I would have thought bringing in farmers was the telling circumstance,’ Liñán argued.
‘Men like you will be welcomed in Tejas only when the friar here, and the soldier here’—and he slapped himself on his chest—‘only when we’ve pacified the place.’
The colonel jabbed a finger at Damián and asked: ‘What plans do you Franciscans have for helping your compatriots in the north of Tejas?’ and the friar responded: ‘We’re eager to send men forth tomorrow.’
‘I hear the missions you used to have up there accomplished little.’
‘Our early missions did falter,’ Damián conceded. ‘Founded 1690, abandoned 1693. That’s why I’d like to explore the north. To find a better site. To do a better job.’
‘You’d better take me along,’ the colonel joked, ‘or those Indians’ll eat you in a minute.’
‘It is the salvation of those Indians which will take us north,’ Damián said firmly, and as the discussion continued, with a good wine from Andalucía flowing, the three-pronged mission of Spain in the New World was made clear: Fray Damián to Christianize; the colonel to civilize; and Anselmo Liñán, the farmer-businessman, to utilize.
When the discussion reached this level the colonel proved a most sensible man, appreciative of the contributions his two colleagues could make, and willing to concede that he could not operate well without them: ‘How do you gentlemen assess the relative contributions of our three arms? I mean, in the problem of settling an area like Tejas?’
To his own surprise Fray Damián was the first to respond, and he did so vigorously: ‘The commis
sion we are given by His Majesty the King is so clearly stated that none can confuse it. Spain’s responsibility is to save souls, to bring new lands into the embrace of Jesus Christ.’
‘That’s always said first,’ the colonel agreed, ‘but let’s remember that our fundamental purpose is to find ourselves a new Mexico, a new Peru, and to conquer it and hold it for the empire.’
‘In the early stages, yes,’ Liñán acquiesced, ‘but after the first ten years the goal must be to use the pacified Indians in commerce, as we’ve done here—to make things, dig ore out of the ground, to farm, if you will, so that Spain can have the profits of trade.’
‘You’ll produce damned little without an army,’ the colonel said, and it was Damián who voiced the sensible approach: ‘We serve the king best when we serve Jesus Christ first. But my Franciscans would be powerless in Tejas without the support of you two.’
‘You’ll have it,’ the colonel said. ‘As soon as you’re ready to move out.’
‘I was ready at the age of ten,’ Damián said, and this encouraged the other two to ask where his family had lived, and he said: ‘In a lovely village named after our family—Saldaña—halfway between Burgos and León in the north of Spain.’
Anselmo Liñán, as the father of a marriageable daughter, was preoccupied with questions of heritage and could not help asking: ‘Were you of the nobility?’ and when Damián blushed furiously, those at the table concluded that he was not.
But his embarrassment stemmed from a much different cause, which he endeavored to explain as delicately as possible: ‘My father had seven sons in a row. I was the fifth. And by country custom dating back a thousand years, he was entitled to the dignified name Hidalgo de Bragueta.’ As soon as he uttered these words, the colonel and his lieutenant guffawed, but Don Anselmo blushed as deeply as the friar, and when Benita asked almost petulantly: ‘What’s he saying, Father?’ he hushed her with a stern ‘I’ll tell you later.’
Hidalgo de Bragueta, a most honorable appellation, could best be translated as Sir Knight of the Codpiece, for it proclaimed to the countryside that this prepotent gentleman had sired seven sons in a row without the intrusion or, as Damián’s father liked to put it, ‘the contamination’ of a single daughter.
‘You were the fifth son?’ Liñan asked, and Damián explained: ‘From time long past our family honored the custom of Mayorazgo. First son inherited all the land. Second son married a rich daughter of our neighbors. Third and fourth into the army, fifth and sixth into the church. Seventh son? Who knows?’
‘Then one could say that you are of the nobility?’ Liñán probed. ‘Sort of?’
‘My grandfather thought he was king, at least of Asturias. My father had more sense.’
‘Will you go back to Saldaña?’
‘I’m a Franciscan. I roam the world. My home is in heaven.’
At this profession of faith the local Spaniards sighed, for it was understood that every man in Zacatecas who had been born in Spain yearned to return there at the earliest opportunity; they might work diligently in far outposts like this, or along the real frontier in Tejas, but they certainly planned to take their savings back to some Spanish town as soon as practical, even the clergy.
‘I have a place at Málaga,’ the colonel said. ‘A vineyard … a few oranges. Nothing much, you understand.’ Turning to Liñán, he asked: ‘Where?’
‘Avila.’ He had to say no more, for his listeners could imagine that fair city perched upon its little hill, the heavy stone walls that enclosed it wandering up and down the slopes.
No one spoke, for everyone in the dining hall loved his or her corner of Spain, that fortunate land which God had created to prove that life on earth could be almost as favorable as life in heaven: Fray Damián could see his father’s shepherds bringing in their flocks at night; the colonel could see his silvery city nestled beside the Mediterranean, its streets crowded with revelers at bullfight time; and Liñán could see not only sanctified Avila but also the rich fields that lay beyond her walls.
‘To Spain!’ the colonel proposed, and the wine was passed, with even young Benita lifting her glass, for she, too, remembered Avila.
‘To Tejas!’ Fray Damián suggested, and they drank to this also, because the subjugation and settlement of that farthest frontier was their immediate concern; not until it was pacified and producing wealth could they sail back to Spain.
In the nights that followed this dinner Fray Damián began to acknowledge the emotional danger into which he had fallen, but he was powerless to protect himself. He continued to contrive excuses forgoing to the plaza at sunset so that he might see Benita again, swinging along, joking with her girl friends, trying to escape the surveillance of her dueña. Each night she became more haunting, and when he lay on his crude straw-and-hay mattress, he could not sleep, for she appeared in his cell, smiling and biting her lip, as she did so enchantingly when she sensed that older people were watching. When he rolled over and punched his pillow he fell into the habit of whispering her name: ‘Benita,’ and then looking about in terror lest some wakeful friar had heard.
He realized the wrong he was committing, but he could not drive her from his mind, and when there were marriages to be conducted in the town—mahogany-skinned farmers taking brides with nut-brown complexions—he fell to wondering whether any of these men felt the same emotions as he, and for how long into the marriage. Tormenting visions assailed him as he tried to imagine what marriage was, and he recalled the easy, robust relationship that had existed between his no-nonsense father and his strongly opinionated mother. ‘My dowry gave you the fields your peasants plow,’ she would shout at her husband, ‘and don’t you ever forget it.’
Whenever she said this his father would explode in laughter: ‘Have you ever seen those damned fields? A crop of rocks.’
‘You Saldañas!’ She never spelled out what she meant by this, but she did tell her seven sons: ‘Remember, you’re only half Saldaña. The good half comes from the Bermejos.’ His name was really Damián Vicente Ignacio de Saldaña y Bermejo, and he was proud of both halves.
He would die rather than prove false to the vow of chastity he had voluntarily taken, and he could never bring dishonor upon his family name, so he withdrew from any direct contact with Benita Liñan. But neither of these honorable restraints could drive the vision of Benita from his mind, and one night when the anguish was heavy he confessed to himself in his quiet cell: I am a miserable human being. I am as low as a man can fall.
The temptations were exacerbated in 1720 when the time arrived for the carpenter Simón Garza to marry the maid Juana Muñoz, for when Damián saw the couple standing before him he grew faint. Behind the bride stood Benita, and as he began to recite the words of the marriage rite the two women became intermingled, and he believed he was officiating at two marriages: Garza and Juana, himself and Benita.
Clearing his head, he mustered courage and stumbled through the ceremony, and seeing at last only the two good peasants, he fervently wished them well in their great adventure: ‘Simón and Juana, God Himself smiles on you this day. Know love with one another. Rear your children in the love and knowledge of Jesus Christ.’ And he lowered both his voice and his head, for he acknowledged how unqualified he was to speak on behalf of the Deity.
Fray Damián’s infatuation with Benita was solved, or rather alleviated, in a manner which he could never have foreseen. In the autumn of 1721 the young military officer Alvaro de Saldaña arrived at Vera Cruz, through which almost everything coming into Mexico must pass. Five years before, in the town of Saldaña, perched among hills in northern Spain, his practical-minded father had told Alvaro, his seventh son: ‘There’s no land left for you. Ildefonso will have it all. And I doubt if you would be a proper recruit for the church. What’s left but the army?’ Using his few remaining connections, Don Vicente had arranged for Alvaro to become an officer and had then pulled strings to have him sent to Mexico, where brother Damián could watch over him. Alvaro w
as twenty-six, unmarried, afire with ambition, and the bearer of a letter of commendation addressed to a former commander of his father: the estimable viceroy, the Marqués de Valero, considered by many to be the finest man in that office since the days of the great Mendoza, to whom he was distantly related.
The letter begged the viceroy to give consideration to a father’s request that Alvaro be permitted to serve in somewhat the same region as Damián, ‘it being a distinct honor for one family to provide two such manly sons to the service of our noble King and in a land so far from home.’
When the letter was placed before him, Viceroy Valero regarded it carefully; he had often hunted with the Saldañas; he knew the honorable history of that family; and he had been vaguely aware that one of its sons had been conducting himself favorably as a Franciscan in Zacatecas. But he had an entire country to look after, a job he had performed commendably for nearly six years, and now he rose from his ornate desk to study the large map which dominated so much of this thinking; it showed that impressive network of roads which fanned out across Mexico, binding the various scattered parts together. It was called in its entirety Los Caminos Reales (The Royal Road System), and now Valero inspected the critical segment running from Vera Cruz to Mexico City to San Luis Potosí to Saltillo to the miraculous ford across the Rio Grande at San Juan Bautista, then straight through Tejas to a tiny spot at the extreme northeast called Los Adaes. It was a route of conquest, a highway of poetic names, but once the traveler passed Saltillo, it was not a road at all, merely a poorly marked trail through empty land.
Not exactly empty, the viceroy thought. Apache Indians sometimes raid Saltillo, and everywhere in the north they lurk to slaughter my men.
Then he began to laugh, sardonic, bitter chuckles, when he thought of the final destination of El Camino Real: Los Adaes—soon to be the capital, and perched at the farthest edge of the region. Turning away in disgust, he growled: ‘Damn the French!’