Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  The pack train stopped for the night at the barracks in Malolos, but David rode on. Though the sun was setting now, he felt no better and wondered if he should have stayed in San Miguel for a few days. Even if he reached the plantation now, which he was beginning to doubt, he would be a sad excuse for a lover. He thought of all the nights when he had longed for Valerie until it hurt, and he groaned aloud. By the time Duster began to plod between the rows of young palms, David was literally reeling. His head sunk on his chest, he stayed in the saddle only by instinct.

  “David! David, what’s wrong?”

  The voice kept calling him. Why wouldn’t it leave him alone? … Slowly his last reserves of strength drained from him and he slid from his horse into an unconscious heap on the ground.

  For days — weeks? — he drifted in and out of consciousness, coming to when they bathed him and for a short time he stopped burning up. Sometimes it was Valerie, sometimes the Filipino maid, but it never occurred to him to care that they saw and touched the most private parts of his body, nor that they supervised the removal of his body wastes, either. He was like a baby, helpless, blindly accepting whatever care was given him.

  One morning he opened his eyes and actually saw his surroundings. He could see through the slatted bamboo blinds the garden outside his window, and knew that he must be in a ground-floor room. He felt cool and languid, as if the lifting of a finger were too strenuous to attempt. He realized that he was naked except for a diaper of heavy toweling that told him he had been so ill as to be incontinent. With an enormous effort he sat up and swung his legs off the bed, but felt weak almost to faintness.

  “Here now, what in heavens name are you doing? Get back in bed, David, or you’ll pass out on the floor and I’ll have a time getting you back up again.” It was Valerie, carrying a tray.

  He gave a wan smile and sank thankfully back on the bed. “How long have I been ill?”

  “That’s only the twelfth time you asked me that. The better part of two weeks. The army surgeon from Malolos says it was typhoid. I must say, you certainly did give us all a turn. What have they been doing to you up north?”

  He took her hand in his. “When I came to you this time, I was sick in my mind and my soul as well as in my body, love. Have you ever seen a man ridden down? He dodges and twists just like a rabbit, but in the end he tires, and if he turns to fight, he is clubbed down. We wanted prisoners live, you see, to make them tell where the others were.”

  “Hush,” she said. “When you were so ill you didn’t know what you were saying, I heard it all. Wait until you’re stronger, my dear. Here is some nice broth. Now be a good boy and eat it all for once.”

  He fell asleep even as she was spooning it into his mouth.

  Before long she would put him out in the garden for several hours at a time in the shade of the big banyan tree by the wall that had survived the shelling, some of its aerial roots actually falling outside the wall. He felt so light that he wondered if he mightn’t rise slowly up off the wicker chaise on which he was lying and float off among the banyan branches. Because their branches were high off the ground and very thick, banyans made poor hanging trees, he thought.

  One day he heard voices from inside the house and wondered who was there. Suddenly something in the tone alerted him, and quietly he slipped across the lawn and stood on the veranda outside an open window.

  The man’s voice was a little slurred, a little overcareful. “We unnerstand you was shacked up with some navy boy a while back,” the voice was saying. “Can’t have the navy git ever’thin’ now, can we? Anyways, we thought we jest might try some of thet there poontang ourselves. What d’ya say, girlie? Me and Jaimie here’ll give ya a right good time, promise ya thet.”

  “Get out of here, you drunken oafs,” Valerie said in a steely voice. “Your commanding officer will hear about this if you don’t leave right now. The door is behind you.”

  “Got lots of spunk, ain’t she?” The other voice was admiring. “You was right, Jed, she’s a purty piece and thet’s a fact.”

  David went around the house the other way and crawled through his window. His army .45 was hanging by its cartridge belt on a hook in the closet. He took it from the holster, thumbed a shell in the chamber, and cocked it. Then he crept out across the living room toward the entrance hall, where the voices could still be heard. Valerie was facing him and the two men had their backs to him. Her eyes narrowed briefly when she saw him. Without saying a word he stepped to the side to get her out of his line of fire, aimed at the first man, and pulled the trigger.

  The heavy bullet destroyed the man’s head, and he was flung forward almost at Valerie’s feet. He swung the gun toward the second man, who had turned toward the explosion but seemed paralyzed.

  “No, David!” Valerie shouted.

  He paid no attention to her but calmly shot the other soldier in the face. A hole appeared in the bridge of his nose and a spray of blood and matter splattered the wall behind him as he slammed back against it. David lowered the gun and stood there looking at Valerie with dead eyes.

  “Oh, David,” she moaned, “what have you done?”

  “They were going to rape you and I killed them.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

  “I don’t think in the end they would have touched me. I could have talked them out of it.”

  His eyes seemed to focus on her for the first time. “They would certainly have raped you and probably killed you as well, especially after what you said about telling their commanding officer. I’ve seen what men have done, men on both sides,” he went on bitterly. “You wouldn’t believe human beings were capable of such monstrous acts. We burned people alive, did you know that? Those nipa huts burn like pyres, and there are often some who can’t get out in time, or who are afraid to leave, or who refuse to leave. Once I saw a child the age of my children run screaming down the village street with her dress on fire. Before anyone could catch her she ran into another burning house, and finally the screaming stopped. The guerrillas like to bury people alive. They also skin them, mutilate them, chop them to pieces, and pull them apart. These men today were no different from the rest or they wouldn’t have been here to begin with.”

  “Oh, David,” she said helplessly, “before you went to San Isidro you couldn’t have killed in cold blood like that.”

  His eyebrows raised. “In cold blood, my love? Quite the contrary. A man is supposed to protect his lady fair, is he not?”

  “You’ve become so hard …”

  He reached out and touched her cheek gently. “You have to become hard, love, or you break. That’s part of what war is all about.”

  “You didn’t hear yourself weeping when you thought you were out again looking for guerrillas.”

  “Ah well, I can’t argue with that, can I? But never forget that I’m capable of cruelties now that I never used to be. Call Manuel and have him bring some men to take this trash out and bury it.”

  “Aren’t you going to report it to Owens? He may wonder what happened to them, you know.”

  “Better if they just disappear. Who knows, perhaps the insurgents captured them. After all, they were drunk and wandering about by themselves.”

  However, when he lay down once more on the wicker chaise out in the shade of the banyan tree, his hands refused to stop their shaking.

  When he was well enough, they resumed their lovemaking, but now there was a desperate reckless air about it as if each time would be their last. They explored each other’s bodies with a feverish intensity, trying to make time not only stop but back up to the place where they had been when they could still confide in each other, when each still thought he or she knew what the other was thinking and could sympathize. Yet for all their efforts there was an invisible glass curtain between them. He had walked through hells that she could only try to imagine, and she could not follow any longer where his mind and memory took him. He turned morose again, and they were both almost relieved when he was well enough to continue
his way to Manila.

  “My God, David, what did they do to you up there? You’re down to skin and bones,” Burns exclaimed when he saw him. “Are you sure you’re well enough to be back on duty?”

  “I’m well enough. Whom do we interrogate today?”

  “I must say, I’m glad you’re back. I was told to have you report to Colonel Funston as soon as you turned up.”

  “You mean return to San Isidro?” David was dismayed.

  “No, he’s here. There’s some kind of hush-hush project all the high mucky-mucks are into — Funston and Wheaton and even MacArthur.”

  “What am I supposed to be doing?”

  “Damned if I know, but it has something to do with the Macabebe scouts. I’m not even supposed to know that much. So get along with you; they’ve been champing at the bit.”

  Bemused, David reported to the designated barracks, where he found Colonel Funston and a Spaniard talking to the Macabebes in Spanish. When he entered, Funston looked up and then surprisingly rose and walked over to shake hands with him.

  “Welcome back, David. I must say, you look like hell — how do you feel?”

  “All right, sir. What’ve we got here?”

  “I’m damned glad to see you, I’ll say that. Before I explain, I should tell you that whatever goes on within these walls must never be discussed outside them. Not with Burns, not with anyone. Do you understand?”

  David nodded, curious now.

  Funston proceeded to outline an audacious plan to trap Aguinaldo in Palinan, a plot involving captured documents and forged letters. Americans, among them Funston, were to pose as prisoners of war, and loyal Macabebes as their victorious insurgent captors.

  “That’s where you come in,” Funston added. “You and Segovia here” — he indicated the Spaniard — “are to sift out the Macabebes, leaving only those whose Tagalog is fluent. We can’t use Tagalogs for that, because Aguinaldo is one and we couldn’t be sure of their loyalty.”

  David shook his head, unbelieving. “They’ll never swallow it, sir.”

  “They might. You remember, we captured Lacuna’s documents and official stationery, such as it was. We will send ahead a message in the proper code — I’ll tell you, we had a hell of a time decoding it, too — saying that Lacuna is sending reinforcements along with a few prisoners. When we show up, he’ll already be expecting us.”

  “You’re really going to try this, aren’t you?” David said wonderingly.

  “Damn right we are. I’d try anything to stop this chickenshit little war that no one can win. Want to come along? I can’t order you to, but you’d come in mighty handy, knowing the language as you do.”

  “As long as you can give me a couple of days to settle my affairs upcountry before we go,” David answered. “Yes, I’ll go along.”

  In his mind’s eye David saw Aguinaldo: small, delicate, young, but with a steel in him the others didn’t have. It was he and he alone who kept the pitiful remnants of his army fighting. It seemed monstrous that this gallant stubborn little man with his ragtag following should in the end be taken by a ruse, by plain downright treachery — in fact, for if the insurgent Segismundo hadn’t put the fatal dispatches into the hands of the Americans, there would have been no hope for such a deception. There was little enough hope for it as it was, but the scheme was just desperate enough to work. He had somehow to get to Aguinaldo.

  As his mind fastened upon that decision, he realized how far he had come. He was actually seriously contemplating treason. But we were wrong to come here, just as the Spaniards were wrong to come here, he thought, yet at least the Spaniards had never promised independence — we did. Cynically and cold-bloodedly, we allowed Aguinaldo to think that if he fought for us against the Spaniards, the Philippines would be free to determine their own government.

  And Wee Willie? Are they so much better than we, they who torture and slaughter prisoners and murder their own people as well? They wouldn’t be like that, they wouldn’t do those things, if not pressed to desperation by us. He thought of the villages he had seen burned and looted by one side or the other, the refugees plodding brokenheartedly away from their homes, their few belongings on their backs, into an uncertain future in which it was likely they would have to watch their children starve.

  It was sunset when David arrived at the plantation outside Malolos, his pony’s coat stiff with dried lather. At the sound of his hoofs, a stable hand ran out to take the horse, and he mounted the steps of the house wearily. David looked up to see her standing in the doorway.

  “You’ve come back,” Valerie said. “I wondered if you ever would.”

  “Of course I came back.”

  Her expression was enigmatic. “You’re just in time for a drink before we eat.”

  The talk during drinks and dinner centered on Funston’s scheme to capture Aguinaldo. “Listen to me, David,” Valerie said finally. “Do you really think that if Aguinaldo is captured the war will be over?”

  David looked at her thoughtfully. “Perhaps not right away,” he replied, “but it would take the heart out of the resistance.”

  “You’ve seen the starving children, the slaughtered women, the burned villages. You know as well as I do that even if Germany or another country didn’t take over when the Americans left, the Ilocanos would war with the Tagalogs and the Negritos and Mindanao pirates with both. Had the republic been proclaimed when the Spaniards left, it would have been accepted, but now so many sides have been taken it is too late. My advice is to see that the Americans stay and hope they won’t be as cruel as the Spaniards.”

  “Valerie, what are you saying?” David was shocked.

  “I am saying that to give up now when there is still something left to save is for the best.”

  “But it’s wrong!” he protested.

  “Is it? Wrong for whom, now? For most of these people it doesn’t matter if it is the Americans or the guerrillas, except that the Americans are kinder to them than are their own people. Look at you. You look ten years older than you are, you’ve learned to do things that would have horrified you a few years ago. Is what you want really worth it?”

  That night by tacit consent Valerie and David slept apart. A chasm had been opened between them that neither wished to attempt bridging with physical closeness, and yet both lay awake aching for the other’s body. At midnight David rose and collected what few belongings he had left at the house, always before knowing that he would return. Valerie appeared silently in the doorway, her hair in two long braids over her shoulders.

  “You’re going.” It was a statement.

  He nodded and went on packing things into his saddlebags.

  “This time I think perhaps you won’t be back.”

  He looked at her then. “I don’t know if I can explain this to you, Val. When I first came to you, I was young and green and ignorant and an insufferable prig. I also thought I knew what I was doing and believed in it. It was you who changed everything. You gave me to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and there is no way I can go back to what I was before. Perhaps you can change your mind about Aguinaldo, but I cannot. What you taught me, I cannot unlearn, and we are now on different sides. I am going on Funston’s expedition. Somehow I’ll try to warn Emilio to retreat into the mountains again. They’ll never catch him then.”

  “If Funston’s scheme doesn’t work, they’ll kill all of you, even you yourself. You know that and yet you’re going anyway?”

  “It won’t be the first time in this war that the wrong man was killed for the wrong reason,” he said bitterly and hoisted the saddlebags to his shoulder. “Goodbye, Valerie.”

  “Goodbye, David. Try not to hate me — or your own people, either.”

  She touched his arm briefly and he was gone. It wasn’t long before she heard the hoofbeats of a cantering horse dwindle down the long palm-lined drive.

  Chapter VIII

  It was dark and raining when they went ashore at Casiguran Bay in the Vicksburg’
s own boats. Funston, Mitchell, and the other Americans, including David, were dressed in tattered privates’ uniforms, the Macabebes in a ragged assortment of native clothes.

  The march to Casiguran, an easy ten miles as the crow flies, turned into a nightmare as mangroves crowded them into the water that dragged at their legs and sapped their energy. At last they found a small banca, a native sailing craft, that had been left at the mouth of a creek. Funston sent the traitor Segismundo ahead in the banca with some Macabebes to the insurgent village of Casiguran, and before long a guide met the straggling little expedition and guided them to the settlement. As they stumbled into the place, David realized that his teeth were chattering, though it was now the middle of the afternoon and muggy. They entered Casiguran to the jaunty music of the village band and were welcomed with open arms by the inhabitants. These were the first Americans they had seen, and their status as prisoners was immensely reassuring to the insurgent sympathizers.

  The “prisoners” had to stay in the building where they were billeted for two days waiting for sufficient rations to take on the hundred-mile journey still ahead of them to Palinan. Surprisingly, no rice was grown along this coast, and they had to make do with cracked corn. Meanwhile, Casiguran messengers were sent ahead to apprise Aguinaldo of their triumphant expedition, and the Macabebes were wined and dined to a fare-thee-well. The scouts took great delight in outdoing each other in outrageous lies to their hosts about their wartime experiences as insurgents.

  Though March should have been the middle of the dry season, when they finally set out it was in a drizzling rain again. The rest had restored David, but it wasn’t long before he was shivering once more, and he stumbled in an increasing fog along endless miles of soft sand interspersed with stretches of naked boulders and headlands that jutted out so steeply they were forced to climb them and scrabble down the other side. All the time it rained, day after day, and their food turned into a fermenting mess to which an occasional small fish or rock limpet was added.