CHAPTER XIX
“Somebody’s got to marry that crazy woman,” Leoncia spoke up, as they lolled upon the mats of the room to which the priest had taken them. “Not only will he be a hero by saving our lives, but he will save his own life as well. Now, Senor Torres, is your chance to save all our lives and your own.”
“Br-r-r!” Torres shivered. “I would not marry her for ten million gold. She is too wise. She is terrible. She – how shall I say? – she, as you Americans say, gets my goat. I am a brave man. But before her I am not brave. The flesh of me melts in a sweat of fear. Not for less than ten million would I dare to overcome my fear. Now Henry and Francis are braver than I. Let one of them marry her.”
“But I am engaged to marry Leoncia,” Henry spoke up promptly. “Therefore, I cannot marry the Queen.”
And their eyes centered on Francis, but, before he could reply, Leoncia broke in.
“It is not fair,” she said. “No one of you wants to marry her. The only equitable way to settle it will be by drawing lots.” As she spoke, she pulled three straws from the mat on which she sat and broke one off very short. “The man who draws the short straw shall be the victim. You, Senor Torres, draw first.”
“Wedding bells for the short straw,” Henry grinned.
Torres crossed himself, shivered, and drew. So patently long was the straw, that he executed a series of dancing steps as he sang:
“No wedding bells for me,
I’m as happy as can be …”
Francis drew next, and an equally long straw was his portion. To Henry there was no choice. The remaining straw in Leoncia’s hand was the fatal one. All tragedy was in his face as he looked instantly at Leoncia. And she, observing, melted in pity, while Francis saw her pity and did some rapid thinking. It was the way out. All the perplexity of the situation could be thus easily solved. Great as was his love for Leoncia, greater was his man’s loyalty to Henry. Francis did not hesitate. With a merry slap of his hand on Henry’s shoulder, he cried:
“Well, here’s the one unattached bachelor who isn’t afraid of matrimony. I’ll marry her.”
Henry’s relief was as if he had been reprieved from impending death. His hand shot out to Francis’ hand, and, while they clasped, their eyes gazed squarely into each other’s as only decent, honest men’s may gaze. Nor did either see the dismay registered in Leoncia’s face at this unexpected denouement. The Lady Who Dreams had been right. Leoncia, as a woman, was unfair, loving two men and denying the Lady her fair share of men.
But any discussion that might have taken place, was prevented by the little maid of the village, who entered with women to serve them the midday meal. It was Torres’ sharp eyes that first lighted upon the string of gems about the maid’s neck. Rubies they were, and magnificent.
“The Lady Who Dreams just gave them to me,” the maid said, pleased with their pleasure in her new possession.
“Has she any more?” Torres asked.
“Of course,” was the reply. “Only just now did she show me a great chest of them. And they were all kinds, and much larger; but they were not strung. They were like so much shelled corn.”
While the others ate and talked, Torres nervously smoked a cigarette. After that, he arose and claimed a passing indisposition that prevented him from eating.
“Listen,” he quoth impressively. “I speak better Spanish than either of you two Morgans. Also, I know, I am confident, the Spanish woman character better. To show you my heart’s in the right place, I’ll go in to her now and see if I can talk her out of this matrimonial proposition.”
One of the spearmen barred Torres’ way, but, after going within, returned and motioned him to enter. The Queen, reclined on the divan, nodded him to her graciously.
“You do not eat?” she queried solicitously; and added, after he had reaffirmed his loss of appetite, “Then will you drink?”
Torres’ eyes sparkled. Between the excitement he had gone through for the past several days, and the new adventure he was resolved upon, he knew not how, to achieve, he felt the important need of a drink. The Queen clapped her hands, and issued commands to the waiting woman who responded.
“It is very ancient, centuries old, as you will recognize, Da Vasco, who brought it here yourself four centuries ago,” she said, as a man carried in and broached a small wooden keg.
About the age of the keg there could be no doubt, and Torres, knowing that it had crossed the Western Ocean twelve generations before, felt his throat tickle with desire to taste its contents. The drink poured by the waiting woman was a big one, yet was Torres startled by the mildness of it. But quickly the magic of four-centuries-old spirits began to course through his veins and set the maggots crawling in his brain.
The Queen bade him sit on the edge of the divan at her feet, where she could observe him, and asked:
“You came unsummoned. What is it you have to tell me or ask of me?”
“I am the one selected,” he replied, twisting his moustache and striving to look the enticingness of a male man on love adventure bent.
“Strange,” she said. “I saw not your face in the Mirror of the World. There is … some mistake, eh?”
“A mistake,” he acknowledged readily, reading certain knowledge in her eyes. “It was the drink. There is magic in it that made me speak the message of my heart to you, I want you so.”
Again, with laughing eyes, she summoned the waiting woman and had his pottery mug replenished.
“A second mistake, perhaps will now result, eh?” she teased, when he had downed the drink.
“No, O Queen,” he replied. “Now all is clarity. My true heart I can master. Francis Morgan, the one who kissed your hand, is the man selected to be your husband.”
“It is true,” she said solemnly. “His was the face I saw, and knew from the first.”
Thus encouraged, Torres continued.
“I am his friend, his very good best friend. You, who know all things, know the custom of the marriage dowry. He has sent me, his best friend, to inquire into and examine the dowry of his bride. You must know that he is among the richest of men in his own country, where men are very rich.”
So suddenly did she arise on the divan that Torres cringed and half shrank down, in his panic expectance of a knife-blade between his shoulders. Instead, the Queen walked swiftly, or, rather, glided, to the doorway to an inner apartment.
“Come!” she summoned imperiously.
Once inside, at the first glance around, Torres knew the room for what it was, her sleeping chamber. But his eyes had little space for such details. Lifting the lid of a heavy chest of ironwood, brass-bound, she motioned him to look in. He obeyed, and saw the amazement of the world. The little maid had spoken true. Like so much shelled corn, the chest was filled with an incalculable treasure of gems – diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, the most precious, the purest and largest of their kinds.
“Thrust in your arms to the shoulders,” she said, “and make sure that these baubles be real and of the adamant of flint, rather than illusions and reflections of unreality dreamed real in a dream. Thus may you make certain report to your very rich friend who is to marry me.”
And Torres, the madness of the ancient drink like fire in his brain, did as he was told.
“These trifles of glass are such an astonishment?” she plagued. “Your eyes are as if they were witnessing great wonders.”
“I never dreamed in all the world there was such a treasure,” he muttered in his drunkenness.
“They are beyond price?”
“They are beyond price.”
“They are beyond the value of valor, and love, and honor?”
“They are beyond all things. They are a madness.”
“Can a woman’s or a man’s true love be purchased by them?”
“They can purchase all the world.”
“Come,” the Queen said. “You are a man. You have held women in your arms. Will they purchase women?”
“Since the beginning of time women have been bought and sold for them, and for them women have sold themselves.”
“Will they buy me the heart of your good friend Francis?”
For the first time Torres looked at her, and nodded and muttered, his eyes swimming with drink and wild-eyed with sight of such array of gems.
“Will good Francis so value them?”
Torres nodded speechlessly.
“Do all persons so value them?”
Again he nodded emphatically.
She began to laugh in silvery derision. Bending, at haphazard she clutched a priceless handful of the pretties.
“Come,” she commanded. “I will show you how I value them.”
She led him across the room and out on a platform that extended around three sides of a space of water, the fourth side being the perpendicular cliff. At the base of the cliff the water formed a whirlpool that advertised the drainage exit for the lake which Torres had heard the Morgans speculate about.
With another silvery tease of laughter, the Queen tossed the handful of priceless gems into the heart of the whirlpool.
“Thus I value them,” she said.
Torres was aghast, and, for the nonce, well-nigh sobered by such wantonness.
“And they never come back,” she laughed on. “Nothing ever comes back. Look!”
She flung in a handful of flowers that raced around and around the whirl and quickly sucked down from sight in the center of it.
“If nothing comes back, where does everything go?” Torres asked thickly.
The Queen shrugged her shoulders, although he knew that she knew the secret of the waters.
“More than one man has gone that way,” she said dreamily. “No one of them has ever returned. My mother went that way, after she was dead. I was a girl then.” She roused. “But you, helmeted one, go now. Make report to your master – your friend, I mean. Tell him what I possess for dowry. And, if he be half as mad as you about the bits of glass, swiftly will his arms surround me. I shall remain here and in dreams await his coming. The play of the water fascinates me.”
Dismissed, Torres entered the sleeping chamber, crept back to steal a glimpse of the Queen, and saw her sunk down on the platform, head on hand, and gazing into the whirlpool. Swiftly he made his way to the chest, lifted the lid, and stowed a scooping handful into his trousers’ pocket. Ere he could scoop a second handful, the mocking laughter of the Queen was at his back.
Fear and rage mastered him to such extent, that he sprang toward her, and pursuing her out upon the platform, was only prevented from seizing her by the dagger she threatened him with.
“Thief,” she said quietly. “Without honor are you. And the way of all thieves in this valley is death. I shall summon my spearmen and have you thrown into the whirling water.”
And his extremity gave Torres cunning. Glancing apprehensively at the water that threatened him, he ejaculated a cry of horror as if at what strange thing he had seen, sank down on one knee, and buried his convulsed face of simulated fear in his hands. The Queen looked sidewise to see what he had seen. Which was his moment. He rose in the air upon her like a leaping tiger, clutching her wrists and wresting the dagger from her.
He wiped the sweat from his face and trembled while he slowly recovered himself. Meanwhile she gazed upon him curiously, without fear.
“You are a woman of evil,” he snarled at her, still shaking with rage, “a witch that traffics with the powers of darkness and all devilish things. Yet are you woman, born of woman, and therefore mortal. The weakness of mortality and of woman is yours, wherefore I give you now your choice of two things. Either you shall be thrown into the whirl of water and perish, or …”
“Or?” she prompted.
“Or…” He paused, licked his dry lips, and burst forth. “No! By the Mother of God, I am not afraid. Or marry me this day, which is the other choice.”
“You would marry me for me? Or for the treasure?”
“For the treasure,” he admitted brazenly.
“But it is written in the Book of Life that I shall marry Francis,” she objected.
“Then will we rewrite that page in the Book of Life.”
“As if it could be done!” she laughed.
“Then will I prove your mortality there in the whirl, whither I shall fling you as you flung the flowers.”
Truly intrepid Torres was for the time – intrepid because of the ancient drink that burned in his blood and brain, and because he was master of the situation. Also, like a true Latin-American, he loved a scene wherein he could strut and elocute.
Yet she startled him by emitting a hiss similar to the Latin way of calling a servitor. He regarded her suspiciously, glanced at the doorway to the sleeping chamber, then returned his gaze to her.
Like a ghost, seeing it only vaguely out of the corner of his eye, the great white hound erupted through the doorway. Startled again, Torres involuntarily stepped to the side. But his foot failed to come to rest on the emptiness of air it encountered, and the weight of his body toppled him down off the platform into the water. Even as he fell and screamed his despair, he saw the hound in mid-air leaping after him.
Swimmer that he was, Torres was like a straw in the grip of the current; and the Lady Who Dreams, gazing down upon him fascinated from the edge of the platform, saw him disappear, and the hound after him, into the heart of the whirlpool from which there was no return.
CHAPTER XX
Long the Lady Who Dreams gazed down at the playing waters. At last, with a sighed “My poor dog,” she arose. The passing of Torres had meant nothing to her. Accustomed from girlhood to exercise the high powers of life and death over her semi-savage and degenerate people, human life, per se, had no sacredness to her. If life were good and lovely, then, naturally, it was the right thing to let it live. But if life were evil, ugly, and dangerous to other lives, then the thing was to let it die or make it die. Thus, to her, Torres had been an episode – unpleasant, but quickly over. But it was too bad about the dog.
Clapping her hands loudly as she entered her chamber, to summon one of her women, she made sure that the lid of the jewel chest was raised. To the woman she gave a command, and herself returned to the platform, from where she could look into the room unobserved.
A few minutes later, guided by the woman, Francis entered the chamber and was left alone. He was not in a happy mood. Fine as had been his giving up of Leoncia, he got no pleasure from the deed. Nor was there any pleasure in looking forward to marrying the strange lady who ruled over the Lost Souls and resided in this weird lake-dwelling. Unlike Torres, however, she did not arouse in him fear or animosity. Quite to the contrary, Francis’ feeling toward her was largely that of pity. He could not help but be impressed by the tragic pathos of the ripe and lovely woman desperately seeking love and a mate, despite her imperious and cavalier methods.
At a glance he recognized the room for what it was, and idly wondered if he were already considered the bridegroom, sans discussion, sans acquiescence, sans ceremony. In his brown study, the chest scarcely caught his attention. The Queen, watching, saw him evidently waiting for her, and, after a few minutes, walk over to the chest. He gathered up a handful of the gems, dropped them one by one carelessly back as if they had been so many marbles, and turned and strolled over to examine the leopard skins on her couch. Next, he sat down upon it, oblivious equally of couch or treasure. All of which was provocative of such delight to the Queen that she could no longer with-strain herself to mere spying. Entering the room and greeting him, she laughed:
“Was Senor Torres a liar?”
“Was?” Francis queried, for the need of saying something, as he arose before her.
“He no longer is,” she assured him. “Which is neither here nor there,” she hastened on as Francis began to betray interest in the matter of Torres’ end. “He is gone, and it is well that he is gone, for he can never come back. But he did lie, didn’t he?”
“Undoubtedly,” Francis replied. “He is a confounded liar.”
He could not help noticing the way her face fell when he so heartily agreed with her concerning Torres’ veracity.
“What did he say?” Francis questioned.
“That he was the one selected to marry me.”
“A liar,” Francis commented dryly.
“Next he said that you were the selected one – which was also a lie,” her voice trailed off.
Francis shook his head.
The involuntary cry of joy the Queen uttered touched his heart to such tenderness of pity that almost did he put his arms around her to soothe her. She waited for him to speak.
“I am the one to marry you,” he went on steadily. “You are very beautiful. When shall we be married?”
The wild joy in her face was such that he swore to himself that never would he willingly mar that face with marks of sorrow. She might be ruler over the Lost Souls, with the wealth of Ind and with supernatural powers of mirror-gazing; but most poignantly she appealed to him as a lonely and naïve woman, overspilling of love and totally unversed in love.
“And I shall tell you of another lie this Torres animal told to me,” she burst forth exultantly. “He told me that you were rich, and that, before you married me, you desired to know what wealth was mine. He told me you had sent him to inquire into what riches I possessed. This I know was a lie. You are not marrying me for that!” – with a scornful gesture at the jewel chest.
Francis shook his head.
“You are marrying me for myself,” she rushed on in triumph.
“For yourself,” Francis could not help but lie.
And then he beheld an amazing thing. The Queen, this Queen who was the sheerest autocrat, who said come here and go there, who dismissed the death of Torres with its mere announcement, and who selected her royal spouse without so much as consulting his prenuptial wishes, this Queen began to blush. Up her neck, flooding her face to her ears and forehead, welled the pink tide of maidenly modesty and embarrassment. And such sight of faltering made Francis likewise falter. He knew not what to do, and felt a warmth of blood rising under the sun-tan of his own face. Never, he thought, had there been a man-and-woman situation like it in all the history of men and women. The mutual embarrassment of the pair of them was appalling, and to save his life he could not have summoned a jot of initiative. Thus, the Queen was compelled to speak first.
“And now,” she said, blushing still more furiously, “you must make love to me.”
Francis strove to speak, but his lips were so dry that he licked them and succeeded only in stammering incoherently.
“I never have been loved,” the Queen continued bravely. “The affairs of my people are not love. My people are animals without reason. But we, you and I, are man and woman. There must be wooing, and tenderness – that much I have learned from my Mirror of the World. But I am unskilled. I know not how. But you, from out of the great world, must surely know. I wait. You must love me.”
She sank down upon the couch, drawing Francis beside her, and true to her word, proceeded to wait. While he, bidden to love at command, was paralyzed by the preposterous impossibility of so obeying.
“Am I not beautiful?” the Queen queried after another pause. “Are not your arms as mad to be about me as I am mad to have them about me? Never have a man’s lips touched my lips. What is a kiss like – on the lips, I mean? Your lips on my hand were ecstasy. You kissed then, not alone my hand, but my soul. My heart was there, throbbing against the press of your lips. Did you not feel it?”
“And so,” she was saying, half an hour later, as they sat on the couch hand in hand, “I have told you the little I know of myself. I do not know the past, except what I have been told of it. The present I see clearly in my Mirror of the World. The future I can likewise see, but vaguely; nor can I always understand what I see. I was born here. So was my mother, and her mother. How it chanced is that always into the life of each queen came a lover. Sometimes, as you, they came here. My mother’s mother, so it was told me, left the valley to find her lover and was gone a long time – for years. So did my mother go forth. The secret way is known to me, where the long dead conquistadores guard the Maya mysteries, and where Da Vasco himself stands whose helmet this Torres animal had the impudence to steal and claim for his own. Had you not come, I should have been compelled to go forth and find you, for you were my appointed one and had to be.”
A woman entered, followed by a spearman, and Francis could scarce make his way through the quaint antiquated Spanish of the conversation that ensued. In commingled anger and joy, the Queen epitomized it to him.
“We are to depart now to the Long House for our wedding. The Priest of the Sun is stubborn, I know not why, save that he has been balked of the blood of all of you on his altar. He is very blood-thirsty. He is the Sun Priest, but he is possessed of little reason. I have report that he is striving to turn the people against our wedding – the dog!” She clinched her hands, her face set, and her eyes blazed with royal fury. “He shall marry us, by the ancient custom, before the Long House, at the Altar of the Sun.”
“It’s not too late, Francis, to change your mind,” Henry urged. “Besides, it is not fair. The short straw was mine. Am I not right, Leoncia?”
Leoncia could not reply. They stood in a group, at the forefront of the assembled Lost Souls, before the altar. Inside the Long House the Queen and the Sun Priest were closeted.
“You wouldn’t want to see Henry marry her, would you, Leoncia?” Francis argued.
“Nor you, either,” Leoncia countered. “Torres is the only one I’d like to have seen marry her. I don’t like her. I would not care to see any friend of mine her husband.”
“You’re almost jealous,” commented Henry. “Just the same, Francis doesn’t seem so very cast down over his fate.”
“She’s not at all bad,” Francis retorted. “And I can accept my fate with dignity, if not with equanimity. And I’ll tell you something else, Henry, now that you are harping on this strain: she wouldn’t marry you if you asked her.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Henry began.
“Then ask her,” was the challenge. “Here she comes now. Look at her eyes. There’s trouble brewing. And the priest’s black as thunder. You just propose to her and see what chance you’ve got while I’m around.”
Henry nodded his head stubbornly.
“I will – but not to show you what kind of a woman-conqueror I am, but for the sake of fair play. I wasn’t playing the game when I accepted your sacrifice of yourself, but I am going to play the game now.”
Before they could prevent him, he had thrust his way to the Queen, shouldered in between her and the priest, and began to speak earnestly. And the Queen laughed as she listened. But her laughter was not for Henry. With shining triumph she laughed across at Leoncia.
Not many moments were required to say no to Henry’s persuasions, whereupon the Queen joined Leoncia and Francis, the priest tagging at her heels, and Henry, following more slowly, trying to conceal the gladness that was his at being rejected.
“What do you think,” the Queen addressed Leoncia directly. “Good Henry has just asked me to marry him, which makes the fourth this day. Am I not well loved? Have you ever had four lovers, all desiring to marry you on your wedding day?”
“Four!” Francis exclaimed.
The Queen looked at him tenderly.
“Yourself, and Henry whom I have just declined. And, before either of you, this day, the insolent Torres; and, just now, in the Long House, the priest here.” Wrath began to fire her eyes and cheeks at the recollection. “This Priest of the Sun, this priest long since renegade to his vows, this man who is only half a man, wanted me to marry him! The dog! The beast! And he had the insolence to say, at the end, that I should not marry Francis. Come. I will show him.”
She nodded her own private spearmen up about the group, and with her eyes directed two of them behind the priest to include him. At sight of this, murmurs began to arise in the crowd.
“Proceed, priest,” the Queen commanded harshly. “Else will my men kill you now.”
He turned sharply about, as if to appeal to the people, but the speech that trembled to his lips died unuttered at sight of the spear-points at his breast. He bowed to the inevitable, and led the way close to the altar, placing the Queen and Francis facing him, while he stood above on the platform of the altar, looking at them and over them at the Lost Souls.
“I am the Priest of the Sun,” he began. “My vows are holy. As the vowed priest I am to marry this woman, the Lady Who Dreams, to this stranger and intruder, whose blood is already forfeit to our altar. My vows are holy. I cannot be false to them. I refuse to marry this woman to this man. In the name of the Sun God I refuse to perform this ceremony – ”
“Then shall you die, priest, here and now,” the Queen hissed at him, nodding the near spearmen to lift their spears against him, and nodding the other spearmen to face the murmuring and semi-mutinous Lost Souls.
Followed a pregnant pause. For less than a minute, but for nearly a minute, no word was uttered, no thought was betrayed by a restless movement. All stood, like so many statues; and all gazed upon the priest against whose heart the poised spears rested.
He, whose blood of heart and life was nearest at stake in the issue, was the first to act. He gave in. Calmly he turned his back to the threatening spears, knelt, and, in archaic Spanish, prayed an invocation of fruitfulness to the Sun. Returning to the Queen and Francis, with a gesture he made them fully bow and almost half kneel before him. As he touched their hands with his finger-tips he could not forbear the involuntary scowl that convulsed his features.
As the couple arose, at his indication, he broke a small corn-cake in two, handing a half to each.
“The Eucharist,” Henry whispered to Leoncia, as the pair crumbled and ate their portions of cake.
“The Roman Catholic worship Da Vasco must have brought in with him, twisted about until it is now the marriage ceremony,” she whispered back comprehension, although, at sight of Francis thus being lost to her, she was holding herself tightly for control, her lips bloodless and stretched to thinness, her nails hurting into her palms.
From the altar the priest took and presented to the Queen a tiny dagger and a tiny golden cup. She spoke to Francis, who rolled up his sleeve and presented to her his bared left forearm. About to scarify his flesh, she paused, considered till all could see her visibly think, and, instead of breaking his skin, she touched the dagger point carefully to her tongue.
And then arose rage. At the taste of the blade she threw the weapon from her, half sprang at the priest, half gave command to her spearmen for the death of him, and shook and trembled in the violence of her effort for self-possession. Following with her eyes the flight of the dagger to assure herself that its poisoned point should not strike the flesh of another and wreak its evilness upon it, she drew from the breast-fold of her dress another tiny dagger. This, too, she tested with her tongue, ere she broke Francis’ skin with the point of it and caught in the cup of gold the several red blood-drops that exuded from the incision. Francis repeated the same for her and on her, whereupon, under her flashing eyes, the priest took the cup and offered the commingled blood upon the altar.
Came a pause. The Queen frowned.
“If blood is to be shed this day on the altar of the Sun God – ” she began threateningly.
And the priest, as if recollecting what he was loath to do, turned to the people and made solemn pronouncement that the twain were man and wife. The Queen turned to Francis with glowing invitation to his arms. As he folded her to him and kissed her eager lips, Leoncia gasped and leaned closely to Henry for support. Nor did Francis fail to observe and understand her passing indisposition, although when the flush-faced Queen next sparkled triumph at her sister woman, Leoncia was to all appearance proudly indifferent.