Hearts of Three
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“Do it. I have never had it done to me before. I have never seen it done, save in my dreams and in the visions shown me in my Mirror of the World.”
And Francis bent and kissed her hand. And, because she did not signify to withdraw it, he continued to hold it, while, against his palm, he felt the faint but steady pulse of her pink finger-tips. And so they stood in pose, neither speaking, Francis embarrassed, the Queen sighing faintly, while the sex anger of woman tore at Leoncia’s heart, until Henry blurted out in gleeful English:
“Do it again, Francis! She likes it!”
The Sun Priest hissed silencing command at him. But the Queen, half withdrawing her hand with a startle like a maiden’s, returned it as deeply as before into Francis’ clasp, and addressed herself to Henry.
“I, too, know the language you speak,” she admonished. “Yet am I unashamed, I, who have never known a man, do admit that I like it. It is the first kiss that I have ever had. Francis – for such your friend calls you – obey your friend. I like it. I do like it. Once again kiss my hand.”
Francis obeyed, waited while her hand still lingered in his, and while she, oblivious to all else, as if toying with some beautiful thought, gazed lingeringly up into his eyes. By a visible effort she pulled herself together, released his hand abruptly, gestured him back to the others, and addressed the Sun Priest.
“Well, priest,” she said, with a return of the sharpness in her voice, “You have brought these captives here for a reason which I already know. Yet would I hear you state it yourself.”
“O Lady Who Dreams, shall we not kill these intruders as has ever been our custom? The people are mystified and in doubt of my judgment, and demand decision from you.”
“And you would kill?”
“Such is my judgment. I seek now your judgment that yours and mine may be one.”
She glanced over the faces of the four captives. For Torres, her brooding expression portrayed only pity. To Leoncia she extended a frown; to Henry, doubt. And upon Francis she gazed a full minute, her face growing tender, at least to Leoncia’s angry observation.
“Are any of you unmarried?” the Queen asked suddenly. “Nay,” she anticipated them. “It is given me to know that you are all unmarried.” She turned quickly to Leoncia. “Is it well,” she demanded, “that a woman should have two husbands?”
Both Henry and Francis could not refrain from smiling their amusement at so absurdly irrelevant a question. But to Leoncia it was neither absurd nor irrelevant, and in her cheeks arose the flush of anger again. This was a woman, she knew, with whom she had to deal, and who was dealing with her like a woman.
“It is not well,” Leoncia answered, with clear, ringing voice.
“It is very strange,” the Queen pondered aloud. “It is very strange. Yet is it not fair. Since there are equal numbers of men and women in the world, it cannot be fair for one woman to have two husbands, for, if so, it means that another woman shall have no husband.”
Another pinch of dust she tossed into the great bowl of gold. The sheen of smoke arose and vanished as before.
“The Mirror of the World will tell me, priest, what disposition shall be made of our captives.”
Just ere she leaned over to gaze into the bowl, a fresh thought deflected her. With an embracing wave of arm she invited them all up to the bowl.
“We may all look,” she said. “I do not promise you we will see the same visions of our dreams. Nor shall I know what you will have seen. Each for himself will see and know. – You, too, priest.”
They found the bowl, six feet in diameter that it was, half-full of some unknown metal liquid.
“It might be quicksilver, but it isn’t,” Henry whispered to Francis. “I have never seen the like of any similar metal. It strikes me as hotly molten.”
“It is very cold,” the Queen corrected him in English. “Yet is it fire. – You, Francis, feel the bowl outside.”
He obeyed, laying his full palm unhesitatingly to the yellow outer surface.
“Colder than the atmosphere of the room,” he adjudged.
“But look!” the Queen cried, tossing more powder upon the contents. “It is fire that remains cold.”
“It is the powder that smokes with the heat of its own containment,” Torres blurted out, at the same time feeling into the bottom of his coat pocket. He drew forth a pinch of crumbs of tobacco, match splinters, and cloth-fluff. “This will not burn,” he challenged, inviting invitation by extending the pinch of rubbish over the bowl as if to drop it in.
The Queen nodded consent, and all saw the rubbish fall upon the liquid metal surface. The particles made no indentation on that surface. Only did they transform into smoke that sheened upward and was gone. No remnant of ash remained.
“Still is it cold,” said Torres, imitating Francis and feeling the outside of the bowl.
“Thrust your finger into the contents,” the Queen suggested to Torres.
“No,” he said.
“You are right,” she confirmed. “Had you done so, you would now be with one finger less than the number with which you were born.” She tossed in more powder. “Now shall each behold what he alone will behold.”
And it was so.
To Leoncia was it given to see an ocean separate her and Francis. To Henry was it given to see the Queen and Francis married by so strange a ceremony, that scarcely did he realise, until at the close, that it was a wedding taking place. The Queen, from a flying gallery in a great house, looked down into a magnificent drawing-room that Francis would have recognized as builded by his father had her vision been his. And, beside her, his arm about her, she saw Francis. Francis saw but one thing, vastly perturbing, the face of Leoncia, immobile as death, with thrust into it, squarely between the eyes, a slender-bladed dagger. Yet he did not see any blood flowing from the wound of the dagger. Torres glimpsed the beginning of what he knew must be his end, crossed himself, and alone of all of them shrank back, refusing to see further. While the Sun Priest saw the vision of his secret sin, the face and form of the woman for whom he had betrayed the Worship of the Sun, and the face and form of the maid of the village at the Long House.
As all drew back by common consent when the visions faded, Leoncia turned like a tigress, with flashing eyes, upon the Queen, crying:
“Your mirror lies! Your Mirror of the World lies!”
Francis and Henry, still under the heavy spell of what they had themselves beheld, were startled and surprised by Leoncia’s outburst. But the Queen, speaking softly, replied:
“My Mirror of the World has never lied. I know not what you saw. But I do know, whatever it was, that it is truth.”
“You are a monster!” Leoncia cried on. “You are a vile witch that lies!”
“You and I are women,” the Queen chided with sweet gentleness, “and may not know of ourselves, being women. Men will decide whether or not I am a witch that lies or a woman with a woman’s heart of love. In the meanwhile, being women and therefore weak, let us be kind to each other.”
“ – And now, Priest of the Sun, to judgment. You, as priest under the Sun God, know more of the ancient rule and procedure than do I. You know more than do I about myself and how I came to be here. You know that always, mother and daughter, and by mother and daughter, has the tribe maintained a Queen of Mystery, a Lady of Dreams. The time has come when we must consider the future generations. The strangers have come, and they are unmarried. This must be the wedding day decreed, if the generations to come after of the tribe are to possess a Queen to dream for them. It is well, and time and need and place are met. I have dreamed to judgment. And the judgment is that I shall marry, of these strangers, the stranger allotted to me before the foundations of the world were laid. The test is this: If no one of these will marry, then shall they die and their warm blood be offered up by you before the altar of the Sun. If one will marry me, then all shall live, and Time hereafter will register our futures.”
The Sun Priest, trembling with anger, strove to protest, but she commanded:
“Silence, priest! By me only do you rule the people. At a word from me to the people – well, you know. It is not any easy way to die.”
She turned to the three men, saying:
“And who will marry me?”
They looked embarrassment and consternation at one another, but none spoke.
“I am a woman,” the Queen went on teasingly. “And therefore am I not desirable to men? Is it that I am not young? Is it, as women go, that I am not beautiful? Is it that men’s tastes are so strange that no man cares to clasp the sweet of me in his arms and press his lips on mine as good Francis there did on my hand?”
She turned her eyes on Leoncia.
“You be judge. You are a woman well loved of men. Am I not such a woman as you, and shall I not be loved?”
“You will ever be kinder to men than to women,” Leoncia answered – cryptically as regarded the three men who heard, but clearly to the woman’s brain of the Queen. “And as a woman,” Leoncia continued, “you are strangely beautiful and luring; and there are men in this world, many men, who could be made mad to clasp you in their arms. But I warn you, Queen, that in this world are men, and men, and men.”
Having heard and debated this, the Queen turned abruptly to the priest.
“You have heard, priest. This day a man shall marry me. If no man marries me, these three men shall be offered up on your altar. So shall be offered up this woman, who, it would seem, would put shame upon me by having me less than she.”
Still she addressed the priest, although her message was for the others.
“There are three men of them, one of whom, long cycles before he was born, was destined to marry me. So, priest, I say, take the captives away into some other apartment, and let them decide among themselves which is the man.”
“Since it has been so long destined,” Leoncia flamed forth, “then why put it to the chance of their decision? You know the man. Why put it to the risk? Name the man, Queen, and name him now.”
“The man shall be selected in the way I have indicated,” the Queen replied, as, at the same time, absently she tossed a pinch of powder into the great bowl and absently glanced therein. “So now depart, and let the inevitable choice be made.”
They were already moving away out of the room, when a cry from the Queen stopped them.
“Wait!” she ordered. “Come, Francis. I have seen something that concerns you. Come, gaze with me upon the Mirror of the World.”
And while the others paused, Francis gazed with her upon the strange liquid metal surface. He saw himself in the library of his New York house, and he saw beside him the Lady Who Dreams, his arm around her. Next, he saw her curiosity at sight of the stock-ticker. As he tried to explain it to her, he glanced at the tape and read such disturbing information thereon that he sprang to the nearest telephone and, as the vision faded, saw himself calling up his broker.
“What was it you saw?” Leoncia questioned, as they passed out.
And Francis lied. He did not mention seeing the Lady Who Dreams in his New York library. Instead, he replied:
“It was a stock-ticker, and it showed a bear market on Wall Street somersaulting into a panic. Now how did she know I was interested in Wall Street and stock-tickers?”
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.