Rossetti’s piercing black eyes stared back at me with an air of superiority from over his large nose. His smile was small and polite, barely making his neatly trimmed beard move. “A pleasure to meet you.” He bowed with a flourish as he reached out and lightly kissed my hand, his lips barely brushing my knuckles.
Garibaldi pointed toward the man standing on the other side of Rossetti. “This is our resident norte-americano, John Griggs.” Griggs wasn’t quite as tall as Rossetti. He had a pleasant air about him, with eyes that looked like he had just woken up from a deep sleep. His smile was charming as he tipped his hat, revealing a full head of curly dark-blond hair.
“So, this is the girl that you’ve had your eye on since we sailed into port?” Griggs’s smile widened as Garibaldi’s face flushed pink. I looked back and forth between the men. “Normally a man uses his telescope to look out over the ocean. Not up into the hills to spy on a certain lady who likes to spend her siestas on her balcony,” Griggs teased.
Before Griggs could say another word, Garibaldi led me by the arm to a spot by the fire. The flames burned brightly, casting an orange-gold light over everyone. The smell of roasting meats and smoke intermingled with the sweet sea air. There were people moving about, tending to their own fires and needs, but Garibaldi paid them no mind as he doted on me. Every few moments he stood to grab something more for me to eat or drink.
When he shifted his weight to stand up again, I reached out, putting a hand on his arm to calm him. I swallowed a bite of bread with concerted effort. “Please, Senhor Garibaldi, I am fine. Just sit.”
He smiled, settling back down. “My friends here call me José. You can do the same,” he stammered. “That is, I do hope you would call me a friend.” His face turned red before he dropped it into his hands. “I am making a fool of myself, aren’t I?”
I laughed. “No more a fool than I am being.”
He suddenly grew serious. His eyes bored into me. “I would never think of you as a fool.” This time it was my turn to blush.
Soon a group gathered around the campfire, consisting of myself, José, Griggs, and Griggs’s woman, Ruthie. Ruthie had joined the camp to be with Griggs. An Indian girl, she was so slight in stature she barely reached Griggs’s shoulder. She had a sly smile and hawk eyes that seemed to take in everything. Rossetti eventually joined us too, sitting at a small table a short distance from our little circle. His face was buried in a notebook that he furiously wrote in.
As we sat by the campfire under the dying light of day, Griggs rubbed his large callused hands together and began to tell the story of how he and José fought off a group of Austrian mercenaries employed by the Imperial army. They had managed to capture the colonel leading the division who was not the most amiable of people.
“Now, we thought we had this colonel secured, but the sneaky bastard broke free, scaring the horses to distract us. Like fools, we all went after our animals,” Griggs said, at the edge of his seat, his hand flailing about as he told the story. “Little did we know said distraction was a signal to his friends.”
“Meanwhile, I was with my cook. We were away from the rest of the camp,” José interjected, turning to me. “He got the finest yerba mate from Argentina. A rare variety that only grows in the north.” He turned back to Griggs. “That cook couldn’t do much, but damn could he make a great cup of tea.”
“I swear, I still dream about his feijoada—sorry, Ruthie.” Griggs gave Ruthie a kiss on her temple. “But he was godawful with a gun.”
“‘Godawful’ isn’t a strong enough word,” José responded. “Anyway, my cook and I are sitting down enjoying this tea.” He turned back to me. “He and I had been talking about it for weeks. We needed a nice calm moment to truly savor it. Cook pours the first bit of water and we are waiting on the edge of our seats for it to seep into the leaves when we hear the infantry call. I turn and there is this wall of Austrian cavalrymen racing toward us.”
I gasped, lifting a hand to my mouth, which encouraged José to go on. “Now, one would think that with all those targets, Cook would be able to hit one, just one of those soldiers on horseback, but he couldn’t do it!”
“No, surely he at least shot a horse?” I asked in amazement, looking from José to John Griggs. “I was five years old when I picked up my first gun and I could certainly hit the large targets.”
Both men laughed and shook their heads. “What is the saying you have in Nord America?” José asked.
“He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” Griggs said, still laughing. “We could have a target as big as a ship and still he would miss!”
“What happened then?” Ruthie asked Griggs.
“Well, yours truly came to the rescue. We wrangled up the horses, just after realizing they were a distraction,” Griggs said with a grin as he wrapped an arm around Ruthie. “My men were able to scare away those Austrian bastards.”
“Yes, you scared them, right into the surrounding buildings. Some of them even went into the outhouses!” José said, getting control of his laughter. “They thought they could hide in there and fire on us.”
“Joke was on them, though,” Griggs said. “Still, I always look twice before going into the outhouse.”
“Bloody Austrians.” Garibaldi sneered. “The outhouses were too good for them.”
“Why do you hate the Austrians?” I asked.
“The Austrians have my homeland by the neck, like a chicken being readied for slaughter. They take everything from us, leaving my brethren with scraps not even fit for dogs. To the Austrians we are second-class citizens, at best. If they have their way, all that is good about my home will be destroyed.”
“Hear! Hear! Death to Austria!” We turned to see Rossetti looking up briefly from his book. “May the devil have pity on their souls, because they will find none with the Italians,” he said before going back to his writing. “Gli stronzi,” he muttered. Assholes.
“What is he doing?” I asked, motioning toward his notebook.
“Recording his great memoirs. So that when we have a unified Italy they will know of his sacrifice,” José responded with a half smile. “It’s a bit of an obsession.”
“Why?”
José stood up, reaching a hand out to help me. “His one true love is Italy. She is his damsel in distress to be rescued from the dragon. Come, it’s getting cold out here in the open.”
José led me to his spacious canvas tent, set apart from the others to allow some privacy. To the left sat a neatly made bed. Clothing spilled out of the trunks that rested beside it. To the right was a table surrounded by four chairs, covered with maps and papers. In the center I admired a large oak desk that had thick books piled on it.
Shortly afterward an attendant arrived with a tea tray. He set it on the table and then slipped away. I watched as José picked a box wrapped in cloth off his desk. As if it were a fragile egg, he slowly unwrapped it. He opened the tin and scooped mate into his gourd, then shook it vigorously.
“You make mate like a real Brazilian.” I fumbled with my hands, not sure what to do with them.