“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?”