Cup of Gold (27 page)

And Cœur de Gris—where was he now? He had seen Ysobel—that was fairly sure—and she had noticed him. Perhaps she loved Cœur de Gris, with his bright hair and his curious way with women. And how could he keep this young man from knowing his defeat, from hearing the adventure of the pin and all the ignominy of Henry Morgan’s dealings with La Santa Roja? The pistol which had killed Jones was lying on the floor. Henry picked it up and methodically went to loading it. He did not fear ridicule from Cœur de Gris, but rather sympathy and understanding. Henry did not want understanding now. His lieutenant would look at him with compassion and some pity; and there would be something superior about the pity, something faintly ironic. It would be the pity of a young, handsome man who condones the amorous failure of one not so handsome. And then, Cœur de Gris was something like a woman for knowing things—something like Ysobel. He gathered information with a mysterious hidden eye.

And the Red Saint. Henry must take her away with him, of course. He could do nothing else. Perhaps, after a long time, she would fall in love with him, but not, surely, because of merits in himself. Her contempt had convinced him that he had no merits; that he was a monstrous being, set apart from other men by unmentionable ugliness. She had not said so much, but she had intimated it. No, he had not the qualities like to draw a woman to his side when there were other men about. But perhaps, if she saw no other men, she might ignore the qualities so lacking in him. She might come, at last, to build on something he possessed.

He thought of the last scene with her. Now that he was calm, his wild action seemed the showing off of a thick-legged little boy. But how could any man have done otherwise? She had beaten assault with laughter—sharp, cruel laughter which took his motives out and made sport of them. He might have killed her; but what man could kill a woman who wanted to be killed, who begged to be killed? The thing was impossible. He rammed a bullet into the muzzle of his pistol.

A draggled, unkempt figure came through the doorway. It was Cœur de Gris, a red-eyed, mud-spattered Cœur de Gris with the blood of the battle still on his face. He looked at the heap of treasure.

“We are rich,” he said without enthusiasm.

“Where have you been, Cœur de Gris?”

“Been? Why, I have been drunk. It is good to be drunk after fighting.” He smiled wryly and licked his lips. “It is not so good to stop being drunk. That is like child-birth—necessary, but unpleasant and unornamental.”

“I wanted you by my side,” said Henry Morgan.

“You wanted me? I was informed that you wanted no one— that you were quite complete and happy in yourself—and so I got a little drunker. You see, sir, I did not want to remember your reason for being alone.” He paused. “It was told me, sir, that the Red Saint is here.” Cœur de Gris laughed at his own ill-concealed emotion. He changed his manner with an effort of will. His tone became jocular.

“Tell me the truth, sir. It is a small gift to a man to know what he has missed. Many people have no other gift during their whole lives. Tell me, sir, has the sweet enemy fallen? Has the castle of flesh capitulated? Does the standard of Morgan float over the pink tower?”

Henry’s face had flushed. The pistol in his hand rose quietly, steadied by an inexorable madness. There was a sharp crash and a white billow of smoke.

Cœur de Gris stood as he was. He seemed to be intently listening to some distant, throbbing sound. Then a grimace of terror spread on his face. His fingers frantically explored his breast and followed a trickle of blood to its source, a small hole in his lung. The little finger edged into the hole. Cœur de Gris smiled again. He was not afraid of certain things. Now that he knew, he was not frightened any more.

Captain Morgan stared stupidly at the pistol in his hand. He seemed surprised to discover it there, startled at its presence.

Cœur de Gris laughed hysterically.

“My mother will hate you,” he cried ruefully. “She will practice all her ancient curses upon you. My mother—” he choked over his breath. “Do not tell her. Make some gleaming lie. Build my poor life up to a golden minaret. Do not let it stop like a half-finished tower. But, no—you need build only a foundation. If you give her that, she will continue the structure of heroic memory. She will make for me a tomb of white, inaccurate thoughts.” His throat filled with blood. “Why did you do it, sir?”

The captain looked up from his pistol.

“Do it?” He saw the bloody lips, the torn breast; he started up from his chair and then fell back again. Misery was writing lines about his eyes. “I do not know,” he said. “I must have known, but I have forgotten.”

Cœur de Gris went slowly to his knees. He steadied himself with his knuckles on the floor. “It is my knees, sir; they will not bear me any more,” he apologized. He seemed to be listening for the throbbing sound again. Suddenly his voice rose in bitter complaint.

“It is a legend that dying men think of their deeds done. No— No— I think of what I have not done—of what I might have done in the years that are dying with me. I think of the lips of women I have never seen—of the wine that is sleeping in a grape seed—of the quick, warm caress of my mother in Goaves. But mostly I think that I shall never walk about again—never, never stroll in the sunshine nor smell the rich essences the full moon conjures up out of the earth— Sir, why did you do it?”

Henry Morgan was staring at the pistol again. “I do not know,” he muttered sullenly. “I must have known, but I have forgotten. I killed a dog once—and I have just killed Jones. I do not know why.”

“You are a great man, captain,” Cœur de Gris said bitterly. “Great men may leave their reasons for the creative hands of their apologists. But I—why, sir, I am nothing any more— nothing. A moment ago I was an excellent swordsman; but now, my being—that which fought, and cursed, and loved—it may never have been, for all I know.” His wrists weakened and he fell to his side and lay there coughing at the obstruction in his throat. Then, for a time, there was no sound in the room save his uneven gasping for breath. But suddenly he raised himself on one elbow and laughed; laughed at some cosmic joke, some jest of the great rolling spheres; laughed triumphantly, as though he had solved a puzzle and found how simple it was. A wave of blood rode to his lips on the laughter, and filled up his throat. The laugh became a gushing sigh, and Cœur de Gris sank slowly to his side and was still, because his lungs would no longer force breath.

Henry still stared at the pistol in his hand. Slowly he raised his eyes to the open window. The streaming rays of the sun made the treasure on the floor glow like a mass of hot metal. His eyes wandered to the body in front of him. He shuddered. And then he went to Cœur de Gris, picked him up, and sat him in a chair. The limp body fell over to one side. Henry straightened it and braced it in an upright position. Then he went back to his serpent chair.

“I raised my hand like this—” he said, pointing the pistol at Cœur de Gris. “I raised my hand like this. I must have. Cœur de Gris is dead. Like this, I raised it—like this—and pointed— How did I do it?” He bowed his head, then raised it with a chuckle.

“Cœur de Gris!” he said; “Cœur de Gris! I wanted to tell you about La Santa Roja. She rides horses, you know. She has no womanly modesty at all—none at all—and her looks are only moderate.” He peered at the propped figure before him. The eyes of Cœur de Gris had been only half closed, but now the lids slipped down and the eyes began to sink back in his head. On his face was the frozen distortion of his last bitter laughter.

“Cœur de Gris!” the captain shouted. He went quickly to the body and laid his hand on its forehead.

“This is a dead thing,” he said musingly. “This is only a dead thing. It will bring flies and sickness. I must have it taken away at once. It will bring the flies into this room. Cœur de Gris! we have been fooled. The woman fences like a man, and she rides horses astride. So much labor lost for us! That’s what we get for believing everything we hear—eh, Cœur de Gris?—But this is only a dead thing, and the flies will come to it.”

He was interrupted by a tramp of feet on the stair. A band of his men entered, driving in their midst a poor frightened Spaniard—a mud-draggled, terrified Spaniard. The lace had been torn from his neck, and a little stream of blood ran from one sleeve.

“Here is a Spaniard, sir,” the leader said. “He came to the city bearing a white flag. Shall we respect the white flag, sir? He has silver on his saddle. Shall we kill him, sir? Perhaps he is a spy.”

Henry Morgan ignored the speech. Instead he pointed to the body in the chair.

“That is only a dead thing,” he announced. “That is not Cœur de Gris. I sent Cœur de Gris away. He will be back soon. But that is— I raised my hand like this—do you see?—like this. I know exactly how I did it; I have tried it again and again. But that is a dead thing. It will bring the flies to us.” He cried, “Oh, take it away and bury it in the earth!”

A buccaneer moved to lift the body.

“Don’t touch him! Don’t dare to touch him! Leave him where he is. He is smiling. Do you see him smile? But the flies— No, leave him. I will care for him myself.”

“This Spaniard, sir; what shall we do with him? Shall we kill him?”

“What Spaniard?”

“Why, this one before you, sir.” He shoved the man forward. Henry seemed to awaken from a deep dream.

“What do you want?” he asked harshly.

The Spaniard struggled with his fright.

“It—it is my wish and the wish of my padrone to have speech with one Captain Morgan if he will have the goodness. I am a messenger, Señor—not a spy, as these—these gentlemen suggest.”

“What is your message?” Henry’s voice had become weary.

The messenger took reassurance from his changed tone.

“I come from one man very rich, Señor. You have his wife.”

“I have his wife?”

“She was taken in the city, Señor.”

“Her name?”

“She is the Doña Ysobel Espinoza, Valdez y los Gabilanes, Señor. The simple people of the city have called her La Santa Roja.”

Henry Morgan regarded him for a long time. “Yes, I have her,” he said finally. “She is in a cell. What does her husband wish?”

“He offers ransom, Señor. He has reason to wish his wife with him again.”

“What ransom does he offer?”

“What would Your Excellency suggest?”

“Twenty thousand pieces of eight,” Henry said quickly.

The messenger was staggered. “Twenty thous—viente mil—” He translated fully to comprehend the enormity of the amount. “I perceive that Your Excellency also wants the woman.”

Henry Morgan looked at the body of Cœur de Gris. “No,” he said; “I want the money.”

Now the messenger was relieved. He had been prepared to think this great man a great idiot. “I will do what may be done, Señor. I will come back to you in four days.”

“In three!”

“But if I do not arrive, Señor?”

“If you do not arrive, I shall take the Red Saint away with me and sell her in the slave docks.”

“I shall strive, Señor.”

“Give him courtesy!” the captain commanded. “Do not mistreat him in any way. He is to bring us gold.”

As they were leaving, one man turned back and let his eyes lovingly caress the treasure.

“When is the division to be, sir?”

“In Chagres, fool! Do you think I would divide it now?”

“But, sir, we would like to be having a bit of it in our hands— for the feel of it, sir. We have fought hard, sir.”

“Get out! You’ll have none of it in your hands until we come to the ships again. Do you think I want to have you throwing it to the women here? Let the Goaves women get it from you.”

The men went out of the Hall of Audience grumbling a little.

The buccaneers were rioting in Panama. Barrels of wine had been rolled to a large warehouse. The floor had been cleared of its clutter of merchandise, and now a wild dance was in progress. Numbers of women were there, women who had gone over to the pirates. They danced and flung about to the shrieking of flutes as though their feet did not sound on the grave of Panama at all. They, dear economists, were gaining back some of the lost treasure, using a weapon more slow, but no less sure, than the sword.

In a corner of the warehouse sat The Burgundian and his one-armed protector.

“See, Emil! That one there— Consider to yourself her hips now!”

“I see her, ’Toine, and it is good of you. Do not think I do not appreciate your trouble for my pleasure. But I am silly enough to have an ideal, even in copulation. This proves to me that I am still an artist, if not a gentleman.”

“But see, Emil. Notice for a moment the fullness of her bosom.”

“No, ’Toine; I see nothing that endangers my rose pearl. I will keep it by me a while yet.”

“But, really, my friend, I think you lose your sense of beauty. Where is that careful eye we used to fear so on our canvases?”

“The eye is here, ’Toine. It is still here. It is your own little eye which makes nymphs of brown mares.”

“Then— Then, Emil, since you persist in your blindness, perhaps you would condescend to loan me your rose pearl. There— I thank you. I shall return it presently.”

Grippo was seated in the middle of the floor, sullenly counting the buttons on his sleeve.

“—eight, nine— There were ten. Some bastard has stolen my button. Ah, this world of thieves! It is too much. I would kill for that button. It was my favorite button. One, two, three— Why there are ten. One, two, three, four—” About him the dancers rocked and the air was reeking with the shrill cries of the flutes.

Captain Sawkins glowered at the dancers. He firmly believed that to dance was to go to hell by a short route. Beside him, Captain Zeigler sadly watched the flow of liquor. This Ziegler was called the Tavern Keeper of the Sea. It was his practice, after a raid, to keep the men at sea until they had spent their plunder buying the rum which he supplied. Once he had a mutiny, it is said, because for three months he sailed around and around one island. He could not help it. The men still had money and he still had rum. This night he was saddened by these barrels of liquor which were being drunk without any obbligato of coins ringing on the counter. It was unnatural to him and mischievous.