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.'
'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, halffull 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 w r ere 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 slended-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 th 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 alloted 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.
