The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,51
lie. He is guilty of assaulting me. I will never change my story. That is the truth.”
“Don’t be so hasty, Miss Cisneros. Think of what we’ve just told you. Is that really how you want to spend the rest of your life? There are consequences to your actions. A much better future could await you if you would confess that Berriz came to your room that night at your invitation, that you sought to entrap him. A word from you and this could all be over. You could go home to your family. To your friends.”
For a moment, I imagine what my future would look like if I went along with this plan they’ve concocted. Would I go home to my family, would I have a chance to marry Emilio? Could I be happy? Could I live with myself knowing the truth was buried?
“Some of your compatriots, those men who came to your rescue so valiantly that night, will testify against you,” the Marquis of Cervera adds. “They’ve been released from La Cabaña. They’re prepared to say that you lured Colonel Berriz to meet you. That you conspired to have him killed.”
A sinking feeling hits my stomach. I can’t entirely blame my friends for changing their stories in favor of leniency, but it is another reminder that I am truly alone.
“Emilio Betancourt is among those willing to testify against you.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out in hurt and fury as a piece of my heart breaks at the sound of his name. After all the times I’ve thought about him in prison, the affection I felt for him, for him to betray me like this—
If you are willing to sacrifice the woman you professed to love, the country that has your heart in order to save your own skin, what sort of person are you? That is not a man, nor is it the action of a man I could ever care for.
The dream I had of a life for us in Cuba is lost forever.
“See what we can do for you if you cooperate with us? We could grant you a pardon as well. Wouldn’t you rather have us as friends instead of enemies?”
His words are so close to the ones Berriz said to me that night; they are etched in my memory, sneaking into my dreams when I am asleep at night, and a tremor racks my body as I am transported back to that night for one awful moment.
These fifteen months in prison have been the hardest of my life. And if it is as they say, all hope of escape is behind me. I have lost my friends—both the Americans who said they’d help me and my rescuers on the Isle of Pines. My family is gone, my fiancé a traitor. And now, my future hangs on the goodwill of people who hate me.
All is lost.
There’s no choice to be had.
I look the Marquis of Cervera in the eyes.
“I would rather die in Recogidas.”
Fourteen
Grace
Bryson files his first story about Evangelina on August 17 under the byline of Marion Kendrick. The piece is filled with glowing adjectives describing her beauty and equally damning ones decrying the conditions of Recogidas.
For two weeks, the Journal is filled with Evangelina Cisneros.
Our attempt to secure signatures calling for Evangelina’s release has resulted in more than ten thousand names, including such prominent figures as Clara Barton, President McKinley’s own mother, and the wife of Secretary of State Sherman. The author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” has written to Pope Leo XIII asking him to intervene with the queen regent on Evangelina’s behalf. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many support a previously unknown figure. Regardless of how this ends up, in making Evangelina a celebrity, Hearst has undoubtedly succeeded.
It must infuriate Pulitzer that Hearst has scooped him on this story, using Evangelina to stir up such public fervor. George Eugene Bryson, who brought the story to Hearst, once worked for Pulitzer at the World before jumping ship to write for his rival.
Hearst has done so much to shake up the newspaper business recently that Pulitzer’s newspaper looks sedate and outdated in comparison. It’s difficult to remember that a little over a decade ago, Pulitzer was the newspaperman revolutionizing journalism in New York amid a lightning rod of controversy. But the higher Hearst climbs, the more others set their sights on taking him down.