Then cried the Vizier, 'Hear him! is not that a fair simulation?' So he
called to the guard, 'Shackle him!' When that was done, he ordered the
house to be sacked, and the women and the slaves he divided for a spoil,
but he reserved Bhanavar to himself: and lo! twice she burst away from
them that held her to hang upon the lips of Almeryl, and twice was she
torn from him as a grape-bunch is torn from the streaming vine, and the
third time she swooned and the anguish of life left her.
Now, Bhanavar was borne to the harem of the Vizier, and for days she
suffered no morsel of food to enter her mouth, and was dying, had not the
Vizier in the cunning of his dissimulation fed her with distant glimpses
of Almeryl, to show her he yet lived. Then she thought, 'While my beloved
liveth, life is due to me'; and she ate and drank and reassumed her fair
fulness and the queenliness that was hers; but the Vizier had no love of
her, and respected her, considering in his mind, 'Time will exhaust the
fury of this tigress, and she is a fruit worth the waiting for. Wullahy!
I shall have possessed her ere the days of over-ripening.'
There was in the harem of the Vizier a mountain-girl that had been
brought there in her childhood, and trained to play upon the lute and
accompany her voice with the instrument. To this little damsel Bhanavar
gave her heart, and would listen all day, as in a trance, to her luting,
till the desire to escape from that bondage and gather tidings of Almeryl
mastered her, and she persuaded one of the blacks of the harem with a
bribe to procure her an interview with the porter Ukleet. So at a certain
hour of the night Ukleet was introduced into the garden of the harem, and
he was in the darkness of that garden a white-faced porter with knees
that knocked the dread-march together; but Bhanavar strengthened his
soul, and he said to her, ''Twas the doing of Boolp the broker: and he
whispered the Vizier of thee and thy beauty, O my mistress! Surely thy
punishment and this ruin is but part payment to Boolp of the price of the
Jewel, the great Jewel that's in the hands of the Vizier.'
Then she questioned him: 'And Almeryl, the Prince, my husband, what of
him?'
Ukleet was dumb, and Bhanavar asked to hear no more. Surely she was at
the gates of pale spirits within an hour of her interview with Ukleet,
and there was no blessedness for her save in death, the stiffer of ills,
the drug that is infallible. As is said:
Dark is that last stage of sorrow
Which from Death alone can borrow
Comfort:--
Bhanavar would have died then, but in a certain pause of her fever the
Vizier stood by her. She looked at him long as she lay, and the life in
her large eyes was ebbing away slowly; but there seemed presently a
check, as an eddy comes in the stream, and the light of intelligence
flowed like a reviving fire into her eyes, and her heart quickened with
desire of life while she looked on the Vizier. So she passed the pitch of
that fever, and bloomed anew in her beauty, and cherished it, for she had
a purpose.
Now, there was rejoicing in the harem of the Vizier Aswarak when Bhanavar
arose from the couch; and the Vizier exulted, thinking, 'I have tamed
this wild beauty, or she had reached death in that extremity.' So he
allowed Bhanavar greater freedom and indulgences, and Bhanavar feigned to
give her soul to the pleasures women delight in, and the Vizier buried
her in gems and trinkets and costly raiment, robes of exquisite silks,
the choicest of Samarcand and China; and he permitted her to make
purchases among certain of the warehouses of the city and the shops of
the tradesmen, jewellers and others, so that she went about as she would,
but for the slaves that attended her and the overseer of the harem. This
continued, and Aswarak became urgent with her, and to remove suspicion
from him she named a day from that period when she would be his. Meantime
she contrived to see Ukleet the porter frequently, and within a week of
her engagement with the Vizier she gazed from a lattice-window of the
harem, and beheld in the garden, by the beams of the moon, Ukleet, and he
was looking as on the watch for her. So she sent to him the little
mountain-girl she loved, but Ukleet would tell her nothing; then went she
herself, greeting him graciously, for his service was other than that of
self-seeking.
Ukleet said, 'O Lady, mistress of hearts, moon of the tides of will! 'tis
certain I was thy slave from the hour I beheld thee first, and of the
Prince, thy husband; Allah rest his soul! Now these be my tidings.
Wullahy! the King is one maddened with the reports I've spread about of
thy beauty, yea! raging. And I have a friend in his palace, even an
under-cook, acute in the interpreting of wishes. There was he always
gabbling of thy case, O my Princess, till the head-cook seized hold on
it, and so it went to the chamberlain, thence to the chief of the
eunuchs, and from him in a natural course, to the King. Now from the King
the tracking of this tale went to the under-cook down again, and from him
to me. So was I summoned to the King, and the King discoursed with me--I
with him, in fair fluency; he in ejaculations of desire to have sight of
thee, I in expatiation on that he would see when he had his desire. Now
in this have I not done thee a service, O sovereign of fancies?'
Bhanavar mused and said, 'On the after-morrow I pass through the city to
make a selection of goods, and I shall pass at noon by the great mosque,
on my way to the shop of Ebn Roulchook, the King's jeweller, beyond the
meat-market. Of a surety, I know not how my lord the King may see me.'
Said the porter, ''Tis enough! on my head be it.' And he went from her,
singing the song:
How little a thing serves Fortune's turn
When she's intent on doing!
How easily the world may burn
When kings come out a-wooing!
Now, ere she set forth on the after-morrow to make her purchases,
Bhanavar sent word to the Vizier Aswarak that she would see him, and he
came to her drunken with alacrity, for he augured favourably that her
reluctance was melting toward him: so she said, 'O my master, my time of
mourning is at an end, and I would look well before thee, even as one
worthy of being thy bride; so bestow on me, I pray thee, for my wearing
that day, the jewels that be in thy treasury, the brightest and clearest
of them, and the largest.'
The Vizier Aswarak replied, and he was one in great satisfaction of soul,
'All that I have are thine. Wullahy! and one, a marvel, that I bought of
Boolp the broker, that had it from an African merchant.' So he commanded
the box wherein he had deposited the Jewel to be brought to him there in
the chamber of Bhanavar, and took forth the Serpent Jewel between his
forefinger and thumb, and laughed at the eager eyes of Bhanavar when she
beheld it, saying, ''Tis thine! thy bridal gift the day I possess thee.'
Bhanavar trembled at the sight of the Jewel, and its redness was to her
as the blood of Zurvan and Almeryl. She stretched her hand out for it and
cried, 'This day, O my lord, make it mine.'
So the Vizier said, 'Nay, what I have spoken will I keep to; it has cost
me much.'
Bhanavar looked at him, and uttered in a soft tone, 'Truly it has cost
thee much.'
Then she exclaimed, as in play, 'See me, how I look by its beam.' And in
her guile she snatched the Jewel from him, and held it to her brow. Then
Aswarak started from her and feared her, for the red light of the Jewel
glowed, and darkened the chamber with its beam, darkening all save the
lustre that was on the visage of Bhanavar. He shouted, 'What's this! Art
thou a sorceress?'
She removed the Jewel, and ceased glaring on him, and said, 'Nothing but
thy poor slave!'
Then he coaxed her to give him the Jewel, and she would not; he commanded
her peremptorily, and she hesitated; so he grasped her tightened hand,
and his face loured with wrath; yet she withheld the Jewel from him
laughing; and he was stirred to extreme wrath, and drew from his girdle
the naked scimitar, and menaced her with it. And he looked mighty; but
she dreaded him little, and stood her full height before him, daring him,
and she was as the tigress defending a cub from a wilder beast. Now when
he was about to call in the armed slaves of the palace, she said, 'I warn
thee, Vizier Aswarak! tempt me not to match them that serve me with them
that serve thee.'
He ground his teeth in fury, crying, 'A conspiracy! and in the harem!
Now, thou traitress! the logic of the lash shall be tried upon thee.' And
he roared, 'Ho! ye without there! ho!'
But ere the slaves had entered Bhanavar rubbed the Jewel on her bosom,
muttering, 'I have forborne till now! Now will I have a sacrifice, though
I be it.' And rubbing the Jewel, she sang,
Hither! hither!
Come to your Queen;
Come through the grey wall,
Come through the green!
There was heard a noise like the noise of a wind coming down a narrow
gorge above falling waters, a hissing and a rushing of wings, and behold!
Bhanavar was circled by rings and rings of serpent-folds that glowed
round her, twisted each in each, with the fierceness of fire, she like a
flame rising up white in the midst of them. The black slaves, when they
had lifted the curtain of the harem-chamber, shrieked to see her, and
Aswarak crouched at her feet with the aspect of an angry beast carved in
stone. Then Bhanavar loosed on either of the slaves a serpent, saying,
'What these have seen they shall not say.' And while the sweat dropped
heavily from the forehead of Aswarak, she stepped out of the circle of
serpents, singing,
Over! over!
Hie to the lake!
Sleep with the left eye,
Keep the right awake.
Then the serpents spread with a great whirr, and flew through the high
window and the walls as they had come, and she said to the Vizier, 'What
now? Fearest thou? I have spared thee, thou that madest me desolate! and
thy slaves are a sacrifice for thee. Now this I ask: Where lies my
beloved, the Prince my husband? Speak nothing of him, save the place of
his burial!'