The Furies Read Free

about four thousand people. He raised the red flag on the church. Those Texans determined to resist had already retreated to the Alamo. So began the siege, the president steadily advancing his fortifications at night, his goal to ultimately storm the mission on the east side of the winding San Antonio River—
    All of the resulting turmoil and uncertainty seemed summed up for Amanda in the rubble pile she now circled with quick, precise steps. Moving briskly required effort. She was tired. She felt unclean. She wished she had a brush for her lusterless hair.
    And coffee.
    But somehow, as she walked on, a hardness that had been forged within her by years of risk-filled living reasserted itself. She wanted to survive this siege. But failing that, she could at least end her life in a way she could be proud of—
    I don’t want to die here, she said to herself. I’ve come so close to death so many times, I thought I’d earned a reprieve for a few years. But if this is the end, I ought to face it the way my own grandfather did when he fought against the British king —
    Her grandfather had survived the American rebellion and died of natural causes in 1801, two years before her own birth. Yet because her father, Gilbert, had told her so much about Grandfather Philip—whose rather stern portrait she remembered from the library of the house in the east—he remained a very real presence. So real that she often thought of him as if he still lived and breathed.
    I wouldn’t want him to be ashamed of how I die. I would never want him to be ashamed that I belong to the Kent family.
    That she was probably the family’s last surviving member was perhaps the saddest part.
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    The Alamo chapel dated from the 1750s. Franciscan friars from Spain had built it, as part of a doomed effort to win Christian converts among the predatory Indian tribes. Unfortunately, the tribe the fathers chose as their chief target was notorious for a lack of belief in higher powers. Of all the Indians Amanda was familiar with, the Comanches came the closest to uniform atheism.
    The chapel was located on the southeast corner of the sprawling complex of stone and adobe buildings that had grown to cover almost three acres. Invisible beyond the chapel’s stout doors was the two-story long barracks, which ran roughly northeast to southwest. The barracks formed one wall of the great open rectangle known as the Alamo main plaza.
    On the plaza’s ramparts and in the rooms below, the defenders were awaiting the inevitable final assault by several thousand Mexican foot soldiers and cavalry. Some said there were a hundred and eighty-two men in the mission. Others put the number at one more than that. It included thirty-two who had ridden in from Gonzales knowing there was almost no chance of escape.
    On Friday, Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis had called them all together in the main plaza and given permission for any man who wished to leave to do so. Only one had accepted the offer.
    Strangely, hardly anyone called the man a coward. Perhaps it was because gnarled little Louis Rose was a friend of Colonel Bowie’s. Or perhaps it was because he had long ago proved himself in combat. Rose had fought with Napoleon in Russia before taking ship to the Americas. He was no longer young, he explained, and he’d faced death too often. Once more would be pushing his luck too far.
    Clearly the little soldier had no innate loyalty to the cause that held the rest of them together. Travis told him to collect his belongings and go over the wall while there was still time. By first light, Rose had vanished.
    Amanda paused to glance into the sacristy, one of the few rooms adjoining the chapel that still had a roof. The sacristy, where most of the women and children slept, was dark and still.
    She moved on, her expression pensive. How would the president treat the wives and youngsters after the battle? That the rebels would lose the battle hardly seemed in doubt any longer.