Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  Many of the other men were not much better off than David. Segovia developed a nasty abscess on one foot that made him hobble painfully. They might have left him and David and a few others behind except that Segovia had been specifically named as a Spaniard friendly to the rebel cause in the spurious dispatches sent ahead to Aguinaldo. In addition, to lose him and David both meant that the Americans would have no communication whatever with any Tagalog-speaking people they might encounter except through the doubtful auspices of the Macabebes, whose translations were often far from accurate.

  They would all stagger up shivering in the wet gray dawns, have a breakfast of hot spoiled corn that for all their hunger they could barely choke down, rest from ten until one in the afternoon, and struggle on until darkness, when they would have the second meal of the day, an exact duplicate of the first. Because they were all on less than half rations even of the sickening com, the Americans especially became ravenous and increasingly weakened.

  As they neared Palinan in a week’s time, the expedition had scattered itself over a mile along the beach, some men literally staggering as they walked. The Macabebes fared best, for it took less to fuel their delicate bones and light bodies, but the solid flesh and heavy bones of the Americans required far more than the handful of all but indigestible corn to keep them going. David alone felt no hunger, for he was off in a fiery torment of his own, kept going only by the by now instinctive drive to reach Palinan. Idiot phrases rang in his head like gongs, and he muttered ceaselessly to himself, completely unaware of the worried looks he received from Funston and Segovia and the others.

  When it seemed that even the Macabebes might lie down in their tracks and give up, they came upon an outpost of Aguinaldo’s that might have put paid to the whole expedition had they not sent word ahead. They were led to a place — there was no village — called Dinundungan, where they were put into the dubious shelter of grass sheds and told that the prisoners must stay there the next day while the others went the final eight miles to Palinan. Even David came out of his trance long enough to realize that if the prisoners stayed at Dinundungan, he might just as well not have come on this nightmare journey. Without the officers, there was no telling what the Macabebes would do, especially if opposed strongly. He groaned. Would they all now be shot?

  The next morning Funston attempted a desperate ploy. Although he himself was almost too weak to stand, he was determined that the officers would have to be in at the capture. Accordingly, he and Segovia made up a letter in Tagalog which Segovia and the supposed insurgents took with them when they left for Palinan, the prisoners being left in the charge of an old Tagalog and some Negritos. Before long two runners from Segovia’s force came back and handed the old Tagalog the letter, which said that orders had been changed and that the prisoners were also to be escorted to Palinan.

  David thought of telling the old Tagalog that it was all a ruse, but was afraid that the two messengers would be able to overpower the Negritos. Surely there would be something he could do when they reached Palinan.

  In the end it took them six hours to make the eight miles. David was going on nerve alone, and even Funston was so weak that he had to lie down every hundred yards or so to rest for a few minutes. Partway there they were met by several frantic Macabebes, who warned them that there was a party of real insurgents coming down the trail to take charge of the prisoners supposedly still at Dinundungan. The prisoners discovered an immediate second wind and fled into the woods, where they hid while the insurgents came along laughing and talking among themselves — as they passed not thirty feet away.

  When they came to the final crossing of the Palinan River, they found waiting for them a small banca, as agreed with Segovia, in which they hurriedly paddled across the river. The five of them and their Macabebe guards broke then into a shambling run up the beach toward a house that from its situation seemed likely to be Aguinaldo’s headquarters. David reached into the molten recesses of himself and outstripped the others, meaning to run ahead and call out a Tagalog warning. In those last moments, however, he found that he was incapable of betraying that handful of men with whom he had suffered so much. Helpless tears ran down his face as he ran.

  As he approached the doorway of the house, he was met by Segovia running out, his clothing spattered with the blood of the officers he had wounded inside. Segovia called out exultantly in Spanish, “It is all right, we have him!”

  David stood there swaying and stared at him, unable to believe that so much effort and torment could have been for nothing. The scene before him darkened, and the clanging in his head turned to a thin high shriek before he crumpled unconscious on the ground.

  *

  The palm trees along the drive seemed to have doubled in size since he had last seen them. Duster’s hoofs made almost no sound in the moist sponginess of the ground as he rode slowly toward the house. There was an emptiness in him that had lasted all through his convalescence in the hospital in Manila, an emptiness that allowed him to accept calmly his being invalided out of the Philippines and out of the navy as well. The doctors said he might have recurrences of the typhoid, sick as he had been, and they couldn’t say that he would ever be fit for active duty. It was all right with him; he had planned to resign his commission anyway.

  When Maria opened the door to him and led him down the hallway into the sitting room lighted still by the late-afternoon sun shining through the thin slats of the bamboo blinds, he could hear Valerie’s sudden intake of breath as she saw him.

  “I didn’t expect you.”

  He smiled. “I can see. I came to apologize. You were right, you know, though it took Emilio himself to convince me. I had several long talks with him when I got out of hospital. Would you believe it, he’s relieved to have been captured — the suffering had finally become more important to him than his own cause. He is a gallant and gentle man.”

  Her face had softened. “It was good of you to come. I hated having us part the way we did. Are they sending you home?”

  “That depends, Valerie, I want to stay — with you.”

  She took a deep breath. “I can’t — you must see that I can’t. Anyway,” she went on, “I am going back to England. There is nothing for me here anymore.”

  “Marry me, Valerie.”

  “No, David,” she said sadly. “When people have come to as fundamental a split as we did, you can’t just glue the pieces together and go on as if it hadn’t happened. I gave you up that night for good, as you did me.”

  “I’ve said I was wrong.”

  “Right or wrong doesn’t really matter, it happened. Go back to your wife and children, my dear. Guilt is nothing on which to build a relationship, either.”

  “For the last time, Valerie, come with me. I need you.”

  “Not as much as they need you. I’ll think of you often when I’m in England. It is time for me to go home. This time of year the roses will be in bloom. Just remember that you were very dear to me and always will be. I’d ask you to stay, but that would be difficult for both of us. I’m sure you’ll find quarters in Malolos. Forget me, David — it would never have worked.”

  David looked at her for a long moment, the emptiness now so complete that it threatened to drown him. With no further word he turned and half ran out of the house and down the steps where Duster stood waiting.

  As his footsteps receded, the other sitting-room door opened and a handsome major of cavalry with a thin scar on his forehead entered. “Are you really going to England?” he asked, one hand touching the side of her neck in a gesture both intimate and possessive.

  “No,” she said wearily. “No, I’m going to stay right here, and one day I’ll be one of those addled, eccentric old Englishwomen who drink too much and shock their fellow countrymen.” She gave him a sad, distant smile. “Perhaps I shall take to smoking cigars …”

  Janice

  1899-1902

  Chapter I

  OCTOBER 3, 1899

  I have never kept
a journal before, and I don’t suppose I would now except that Dr. Connors suggested I try it. I’m afraid I burst into tears right there in his office when he told me that Francis had chicken pox and that Elisabeth would probably get it.

  “Chicken pox isn’t really dangerous, Mrs. Hand. Unpleasant but not dangerous.” He patted my back and then snatched his hand away as if it had been burned. Surely doctors are allowed so innocent a comforting?

  “It — it isn’t the chicken pox, it’s that I feel so trapped,” I blurted shamelessly. “I do the same things over and over again all day every day — boil the diapers, grind and mash the food for the children, make the beds, wash the dishes, mop the floors, scrub the clothes, heat the iron on the stove to press the clothes, clean and lime the outhouse, weed around the house, bake and sew, and all with the children underfoot, and over and over and over again until I think I’m going mad. The only adult conversation I ever have is with the iceman and the milkman and the man with the vegetable and fruit cart and the fish peddler and the meat-market man. We wish each other good morning or good afternoon and comment on the weather and — Oh God, I understand so well the women who desert their families! I only wonder that so few do it.”

  The doctor looked at me as if my hair had suddenly turned purple. I realized that his consternation was caused not by my tears but by hearing a woman forget to pay lip service to Motherhood. My tears were dried by a sudden rage compounded of loneliness, too little sleep, and the prospect of endless, grueling, boring, dirty labor.

  “Astonished, aren’t you, doctor, that any of us would dare complain about our lot? Even the lowest scullery girl gets something in the way of pay and an occasional day off. She can go to bed without knowing she’ll be wakened sooner or later in the night by a child who’s had a nightmare or wet the bed or has asthma or a fever. In our house I’m an unpaid cook, nursemaid, and scullery maid all rolled into one, and I’ll be that for the next fifteen years — longer, if my dear husband gives me another child when he returns, if he returns. He could have come home last month, would you believe it, but he volunteered to stay. Volunteered! Now heaven only knows when I’ll see him again. Do you know, there are times when I hate him, when I hate him and all of you smug masculine creatures who’ve maneuvered so skillfully that you have us women to wait on you hand and foot for nothing. One of the most stupid things women do is marry.” I would have gone on, only I ran out of breath and could only stand there gasping and shaking with a sick helpless rage. Where was the dutiful, timid wife I had always pictured myself to be?

  Surprisingly, as I had become more incensed, he had become more calm. At last he spoke. “Do you think I have never heard that before? I must say, I have never heard a more eloquent rendering, but you aren’t alone in how you feel. I sympathize, I really do.”

  “Why you smug, patronizing hypocrite! How could you possibly sympathize? Until you’ve stood there dead tired on a rainy morning boiling dirty diapers that you’re then going to have to scrub and hang up dripping all over the house so that you can mop the floors again, you couldn’t possibly sympathize.”

  “Stop feeling so sorry for yourself!” It was his turn to snap. “Do you think you’re the only one who has it hard? I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since I can remember, and most of the time it’s for children who would have gotten along quite well until morning. If it isn’t children, it’s a woman who’s gone into labor or sewing up a drunk who was hit over the head with a frying pan by the wife he was in the midst of beating. My wife left me and went to live with her parents in Los Angeles because she couldn’t take it, and I get to see my children once every six months, if then. All day long I deal with nothing but complaints and people expecting me to work miracles and children who scream at the sight of me. And all the time I’m terrified that I’ll misdiagnose something and lose somebody needlessly. I’ve done it before, and any doctor who tells you he never has is a liar. I’d trade boiling some diapers for all that any day.”

  I really looked at him then for the first time. He is a big man, taller even than David, and heavily built. He usually looks like a friendly tired bear. Now he only looked tired. I smiled. “People never think anyone else can understand their problems, do they? For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  He smiled back. “Don’t be. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give your problem some thought and see if I can come up with anything. Meanwhile, why don’t you start a journal? I did, and it has seemed to help a great deal. Not a journal for anyone else to see, but a place where you can put down all of your private thoughts and hopes and unhappinesses without having to worry about how it all sounds. Somehow writing it down seems to make it bearable, as if you had talked with an intimate friend. Do you have any friends here?”

  I shook my head. “We used to see a great deal of the Blairs and the Hollisters — I liked Sally Blair especially. But then the children came along, and all of those people are gone anyway, transferred. Military wives regard a lone woman the way they would a hammerhead shark, and I haven’t the time or energy left to pursue a social life even if I could leave the children.”

  All this time Francis had been regarding us with round eyes, for once forgetting to shriek. He had seen we were angry with each other, and apparently it had frightened him into being still. Now Dr. Connors ruffled his hair. “You’ll be fine, Francis, only promise you won’t scratch. If you itch too much, your mother will put some baking soda on a piece of wet cotton and make those bumps stop itching.”

  “You say Elisabeth will come down with it too?”

  “Be glad. The younger they get these things, the lighter the case.” He was once again his steady, reassuring self.

  I wanted to tell him how much his listening to me had meant, but I knew that from beginning to end our exchange was hardly proper, and I didn’t want to embarrass him further. I wonder what a man does without his wife. Now there is something I could never ask except in a journal. I wonder what David is doing without me. At least I don’t have to worry about his becoming involved in a thundering love affair with a dusky maiden — he’s hardly the type. As for myself, I feel relieved that those awkward gropings of his are over for now — it’s the one reason I have for being glad that David decided to stay over there. Were our physical relations as distasteful to him as they were to me? I don’t suppose I shall ever know.

  OCTOBER 7, 1899

  I was just reading a letter from Kate telling me how hard Double has been taking Stephen’s death when there came a knock at the door and there stood Dr. Connors grinning like a Cheshire cat, while standing beside him was a jolly-looking Mexican woman with a big smile and a lot of gold teeth. I recognized the pattern of rosebuds on her dress as being from one of the popular brands of flour sacking.

  “Hullo,” Dr. Connors said as if they had been expected. “This is Esperanza, which means ‘hope’ in Spanish. She needs you and you need her.”

  I was dumbfounded. “But I can’t afford to have her help me,” I protested. “We barely make ends meet as it is.”

  “Can’t your parents or your in-laws help you out?”

  “They’ve offered, but David wouldn’t have it. He’d throw a fit if he ever found out I was taking money from anyone.”

  “Even so, she’ll teach you to make those ends meet much better, and you can pay her out of what you save.”

  I didn’t believe him, but his air of complete confidence made me strangely shy of saying so. “All right,” I said reluctantly, “I’ll try it. But only for a week,” I added quickly. “How much do you charge to work?” I asked her.

  She grinned and shrugged. “How much you like,” she said.

  “Ten cents an hour will do for a start,” Dr. Connors broke in. “And meals. If you like her, you can pay her more later on.”

  “Ten cents! I’d feel like a slave trader.”

  “Suit yourself,” he replied casually, “but they were only paying her three dollars a week to wash clothes all day.”

  I gave in, and s
oon we were alone face to face in the kitchen. She patted my shoulder and without a word went to work on the dishes, hauling the water by bucket from the pump on the back porch.

  “But you can’t do them in cold water,” I protested. She merely smiled and went on cleaning them. At that moment Francis howled for attention and I went to him. When I returned not twenty minutes later, the dishes were done and put away and the floor mopped. That was the way it went all day. She insisted upon getting the day’s fruit and vegetables and came back having paid only about half of what I had been paying. I have to suppose that inexperienced young housewives are a grocer’s dream. She also had what looked like a very unpromising little lump of meat. She put some dried beans on the stove without even soaking them and proceeded to cut up the meat in small chunks to put in with the beans. She pulled a whole fresh green chile from her basket, seeded and peeled it, and dropped it in, then cut up several onions. In two to three hours, she announced, it would be done for lunch.

  “But we always eat lunch at twelve,” I argued.

  She looked disapproving and shook her head firmly. Of course — we had lunch at two, as I knew somehow we would. Francis cried, and this time she came with me. When he saw her, he suddenly stopped in mid-howl.

  “Don’t know you,” he announced.

  She answered him in Spanish, which fascinated him, and from that moment on never as far as I know addressed him at all in English. When she saw that he not only still wore diapers but that they were wet, her eyebrows shot up. She casually took him by the hand and led him out into the backyard, where she left him stripped to the waist, much to my horror.