HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (7 page)

“
Then your
captain will be moving on soon, I would think,” she said,
belying an intelligence not usually seen in ten-year-olds. “If
there is nothing here then it is not worth staying?” Oh, for
them to give up this horrid place and take her with them!

“
Well, the
search is not complete. My captain thinks the natives lie to him to
keep their treasure hidden. It’s getting more difficult for me
to stay his hand against the people.”

She shook her head.
“Your captain is mistaken. Tell him for me that I know for a
certainty there is no gold. No treasure. We are a poor people. We
do not even have boats or ships! You saw how we lived, in palm frond
huts, with little fires and no ship at all.” She felt enraged
at his stupidity and the greedy ignorance of his leader, but her
small face was a study in control.

He looked at her
suspiciously for the first time. She realized she should reign in
her anger and her tongue. She worked at looking demure and young
again. “I didn’t mean to dispute you, Lord. I am
nothing but a poor ignorant peasant. I am only trying to be of
service.”

That she had done.
She made herself useful, handing the priest his ink pot when he took
up a pen, tying the knot of his rope around his rough cassock, going
for cool drinks when he appeared to sweat. If she were indispensable
to him, he would not send her away or place her with the villagers.
She already knew she bewitched him the way he sneaked little glances
when he thought she would not notice. He was both baffled and
dazzled by the child. Once she was cleaned up and sweet smelling,
her hair brushed to a hard shine, he could see the real beauty. She
held a power over him—not one to do with lust--and not strong
enough unless she also served him and remembered to keep her tongue
in check. Children were not supposed to display such anger,
certainly not in the presence of a conquering invader.

“
It is all
right,” he said now, drawing her into the circle of his arms
and patting her paternally on the back. “Our captain will
discover on his own, in his own time, that there is nothing here and
he will leave. But…we—a group of soldiers and me--we
will stay. You know that, don’t you?”

She leaned back to
look up at his eyes. She put on a bright, smiling, happy face. “Of
course! You must stay! I would not want you to leave. You are very
kind and very smart. We are stupid. We need you. We need to know
more of…of your God.”

He heard what he
wanted to hear, smiling broadly now, and turned back to his large
book that lay open on the table before him. “I have a sermon
to write,” he said. “and my diary entry to make.”

She made herself
scarce, leaving the room to roam his little house attached to the
church. She went to the cook in the kitchen, who bowed to her. She
walked up to her as she had done several times already and slapped
her in the head and demanded she stop it. “Do not bow to me
again! I told you before.“ The cook did not understand her
queen, this new behavior that before demanded obedience, but which
now did not want any show of respect. She mumbled an apology and
offered the little queen a platter of sliced bananas and mango.

Angelique took the
plate and sat at the kitchen table to gorge. These treats were
really meant for the priest, but so what, the cook could procure more
ripe fruit and prepare another plate.

When will he leave,
Angelique thought. When will the great captain in the beautiful
silver breastplate leave the island and sail for a more civilized
country?

It would be another
long period of time before her question was answered to her
satisfaction.

CHAPTER 9

THE PRIEST OF
HISPANOLIA

His name was Las
Carasas. Though of humble origin he managed to join Columbus as one
of his soldiers. More than soldier, however, he proved to be the
most pious of the crew, his Bible always open and under consult. Due
to his ability to read and write, his knowledge of the scripture, it
was Columbus himself who officially made him their religious cleric.
On the island Columbus called Hispanola, Las Casas took up the charge
to build the island’s first Christian church. Later this man
would have a son, Bartholomew, who would go to university and become
a great friar who spent the latter part of his life fighting for the
rights of Indians to be treated as human beings and not as serfs or
slaves. But before Bartholomew was even a twinkle in his father's
eyes, Las Carasas was the one who showed some small pity for some of
the natives of Hispanola, especially the little girl he grew to know
as Angelique.

A beautiful child,
Angelique, orphaned and living wild in the jungle, he had found her
in hiding and quaking with fear. Little by little he had brought her
out of her shy shell by treating her with kindness. She was given a
place to sleep, little tasks to make her feel useful, food, and
protection from the otherwise barbaric soldiers who were building
Columbus’ new city. Even this child would certainly have been
raped, given her beauty, if Las Carasas had not taken her under his
wing.

Many of the natives,
the Indians as Columbus called them, were ignorant, backward
primitives, but Las Carasas thought the child Angelique showed an
intelligence that surprised him. She learned his language and within
weeks was able to understand his requests and speak with him about
her island. She was quick to make him comfortable and to supply at
his very hand the thing he was thinking of getting for himself. She
possessed an uncanny ability to know exactly what he wanted, when he
wanted it.

She seemed to be
more advanced than her age would belie, so he finally put her to work
translating his bad penmanship from the notes in his diary to scrolls
detailing the discovery of Hispanola and the building of the great
city, of which Columbus was governor. He would find her each day,
her small head bent over the pages, writing out in beautiful script
his notes that others could hardly decipher. Out of a feeling of
generosity, he began to lay one gold coin on his desk for her each
day that she worked so diligently. He thought that were she to save
these small monies, by the time she was grown, she would be worth
more than any islander or quite a few of the soldiers.

He never saw her
take the offerings, but when he returned to find his notes translated
to the scrolls and Angelique gone to the kitchen, he would find the
coin had disappeared. If he ever had a daughter in Spain when he
returned, he hoped she would be half as smart and useful as little
Angelique—and half as beautiful, for she was such a striking
creature with her cafe au lait skin and stunning black hair.

He sat now reading
over her careful work, making sure she did not misquote him. A
fragrant breeze saturated with the scent of wildflowers wafted
through the tall window over his desk. He could hear outside the
tumble and crash of building going on to the east where the city was
still under construction. Lucky for him that he had proven a better
cleric than soldier or he would be out there right now in the hot
sun, hauling stones, mixing mortar, and building sturdy structures
along with the others.

He put aside the
scrolls and lifted a glass of coconut milk spiked with lime juice to
his lips. Sweetened with honey, this was his favorite island drink,
chilled to perfection in a nearby stream behind the church.
Angelique always had it brought to his study just before she left,
her duties finished for the day. He sipped, smiling at the swaying
palms just outside his window. Shadows crisscrossed his face and
turned the top of his desk into a lovely puzzle work of light and
dark.

She was a dear
child, a treasure, his Angelique. It was such a sad thought for him
that she was so alone and so dependent on his good graces. What
would happen to the little orphan when he left? He shuddered to
think of it.

Angelique sat bent
over a scroll, translating the Spanish priest’s nearly
indecipherable notes into beautiful script that one day he would hand
to his Queen. Because she was concentrating so hard on being
precise, some long seconds passed before she noticed the light in the
study had dimmed and the temperature of the room had dropped.

She looked up with a
frown. Her gaze darted from corner to corner, adjusting to the
sudden gloom.

There he was.
Draped languidly on the blood red sofa against the far wall, his
smile wicked, his black wings sweeping the floor. Nisroc.

Angelique put down
the pen and pushed aside the scroll. She rose and crossed the room
to him. Nisroc, the most brilliant and at the same time the most
pesky of all the fallen angels she had once ruled in the outer
darkness. Before her descent into the human child’s body, it
was Nisroc who took all of her attention just to keep him from
wreaking havoc.

She stood over him
noticing the rippling effect of the air and how he wavered in and out
of her vision like a nightmare. He could not really come into this
world as his angel being. He was projecting it to her. But even to do
that, he was expending huge amounts of energy and willpower.

“
What do you
want here?” She knew the answer, but had to ask anyway.

“
You know and
yet you ask anyway.” He had been reclining and now he sat up
slowly, spreading his great wings behind him as props against the
wall. He read her thoughts as well as she read his.

“
I’ll
not help you today. Or tomorrow. Or the next.”

He sneered, ruining
the beauty of his splendid visage. “Why are you so desperately
vengeful?” He asked. “Can’t we all just get
along?”

“
You’re
wasting your time.” She turned her back on him and marched to
the desk once more, taking her place on the chair with the books
stacked in the seat so that she could reach the desktop. “Why
didn’t you show up before in the two hundred years I’ve
been stuck and bored on this primitive island?”

He ignored her
question. “Look at you.” He came after her, crossing
the room in two large strides, his great wings filling the space and
ruffling the air into a mild wind. “Stuck in the body of a
child. What does that say about your powers, Angelique? Just how
great do you think they are, that you end up this way?”

She shrugged,
ignoring his jibes. It was his way to be scornful. “For a few
seconds I was blinded before I entered this…this wee body. We
all make mistakes. This one is not as great as the one you made.”

He now stood in
front of her, hovering just inches off the floor. “Who would
have seen Brutus coming? He was my friend.”

Angelique looked
upon him with a fierceness that would have shriveled a lesser angel.
“You took the body of the man who ruled the world. I sent you
into that body, believing in you, trusting you. I should have taken
it myself! You enjoyed the greatest power over men than any of us had
ever been able to gain. But what did you do as Julius Caesar,
Nisroc? What did you do but whore and shave your groin and write
eloquently about your great campaigns so that your human doll would
be remembered?”

It was Nisroc’s
turn to shrug and when he did the wings lifted and the air stirred.
He repeated, “Who would have seen the traitor, Brutus, and his
cowardly cohorts, coming to dispatch me?”

“
Caesar would
have!” Angelique did not mean to shout, but the thought of
that lost opportunity to keep control of the greatest power in the
world was a disappointment she had never gotten over. Not once since
that time had the Angels of Darkness been in a position to influence
the outcome of human destiny. After his failure, she had sent Nisroc
to the far reaches to live alone, and refused him entry to the world
of man for thousands of years. His time was not up. How dare he
come from banishment to this place just to needle her. It had taken
great mental effort for him to materialize. And so solidly! But she
knew his will was great and hardly nothing could deter him.

“
Caesar was a
man riddled with seizures. Caesar would not have lived to even cross
the Rubicon and seize Rome.” Nisroc said this as if he knew it
was a poor excuse for his inattention to his true role as the human.

Angelique’s
gaze softened for she knew this was true. Caesar had died during one
of his seizures and had not she sent Nisroc to enter his poor dead
earthly form, history would have been written differently. It was
Nisroc who rose up from the tent floor, Nisroc who advanced on Rome,
Nisroc who took the dictatorship. And wouldn't Caesar have done the
same? Had that not been his intentions all along?

But still, Nisroc
had been overcome by his lusts for the pleasures of life on earth and
he had not been alert to danger. He had ruined everything. With his
position of power he could have thwarted all that God had created,
but with his failure, the followers of the prophet Jesus had
proliferated and filled the nations with hope and belief. It had
been the worst disaster in the annals of time.