Hearts of Three 45

Hearts of Three 45

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.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XXI

 

 

Two thoughts flickered in Torres’ mind as he was sucked down. The first

was of the great white hound which had leaped after him. The second was

that the Mirror of the World told lies. That this was his end he was

certain, yet the little he had dared permit himself to glimpse in the

Mirror had given no hint of an end anything like this.

 

A good swimmer, as he was engulfed and sucked on in rapid, fluid

darkness, he knew fear that he might have his brains knocked out by the

stone walls or roof of the subterranean passage through which he was

being swept. But the freak of the currents was such that not once did he

collide with any part of his anatomy. Sometimes he was aware of being

banked against water-cushions that tokened the imminence of a wall or

boulder, at which times he shrank as it were into smaller compass, like

a sea-turtle drawing in its head before the onslaught of sharks.

 

Less than a minute, as he measured the passage of time by the holding of

his breath, elapsed, ere, in an easier-flowing stream, his head emerged

above the surface and he refreshed his lungs with great inhalations of

cool air. Instead of swimming, he contented himself with keeping afloat,

and with wondering what had happened to the hound and with what next

excitement would vex his underground adventure.

 

Soon he glimpsed light ahead, the dim but unmistakable light of day;

and, as the way grew brighter, he turned his face back and saw what made

him proceed to swim with a speed-stroke. What he saw was the hound,

swimming high, with the teeth of its huge jaws gleaming in the

increasing light. Under the source of the light, he saw a shelving bank