He answered, 'The people of a province southward have raised the standard
of revolt and mocked my authority; they have been joined by certain of
the Arab chiefs subject to my dominion, and have defeated my armies. 'Tis
to subdue them I go; yea, to crush them. Yet, wallaby! I know not. Care I
if kingdoms fall away, and nations, so that I have thee? Nay, let all
pass, so that thou remain by me.'
Bhanavar paced from him to a mirror, and frowned at the reflection of her
fairness, thinking, 'Such had he spoken to the girl Nashta, or another,
this King!' And she thought, 'I have been beloved by the noblest three on
earth; I will ask no more of love; vengeance I have had. 'Tis time that I
demand of my beauty nothing save power, and I will make this King my
stepping-stone to power, rejoicing my soul with the shock of armies.'
Now, she persuaded Mashalleed to take her with him on his expedition
against the Arabs; and they set forth, heading a great assemblage of
warriors, southward to the land bordering the Desert. The King credited
the suggestions of Bhanavar, that Aswarak had disappeared to join the
rebels, and pressed forward in his eagerness to inflict a chastisement
signal in swiftness upon them and that traitor; so eagerly Mashalleed
journeyed to his army in advance, that the main body, with Bhanavar, was
left by him long behind. She had encouraged him, saying, 'I shall love
thee much if thou art speedy in winning success.' The Queen was housed on
an elephant, harnessed with gold, and with silken purple trappings; from
the rose-hued curtains of her palanquin she looked on a mighty march of
warriors, filling the extent of the plains; all day she fed her sight on
them. Surely the story of her beauty became noised among the guards of
her person that rode and ran beneath the royal elephant, till the
soldiers of Mashalleed spake but of the beauty of the Queen, and Bhanavar
was as a moon shining over that sea of men.
Now, they had passed the cultivated fields, and were halting by the ford
of a river bordering the Desert, when lo! a warrior on the yonside,
riding in a cloud of dust, and his shout was, 'The King Mashalleed is
defeated, and flying.' Then the Captains of the host witnessed to the
greatness of Allah, and were troubled with a dread, fearing to advance;
but Bhanavar commanded a horse to be saddled for her, and mounted it, and
plunged through the ford singly; so they followed her, and all day she
rode forward on horseback, touching neither food nor drink. By night she
was a league beyond the foremost of them, and fell upon the King encamped
in the Desert, with the loose remnant of his forces. Mashalleed, when he
had looked on her, forgot his affliction, and stood up to embrace her,
but Bhanavar spurned him, crying, 'A time for this in the time of
disgrace?' Then she said, 'How came it?'
He answered, 'There was a Chief among the enemy, an Arab, before the
terror of whom my people fled.'
Cried she, 'Conquer him on the morrow, and till then I eat not, drink
not, sleep not.'
On the morrow Mashalleed again encountered the rebels, and Bhanavar,
seated on her elephant, from a sand-hillock under a palm, beheld the
prowess of the Arab Chief and the tempest of battle that he was. She
thought, 'I have seen but one mighty in combat like that one, Ruark, the
Chief of the Beni-Asser.' Thereupon she coursed toward the King, even
where the arrows gloomed like locusts, thick and dark in the air aloof,
and said, 'The victory is with yonder Chief! Hurl on him three of thy
sons of valour.'
The three were selected, and made onslaught on this Chief, and perished
under his arm.
Bhanavar saw them fall, and exclaimed, 'Another attack on him, and with
thrice three!'
Her will was the mandate of Mashalleed, and these likewise were ordered
forth, and closed on the Chief, but he darted from their toils and
wheeled about them, spearing them one by one till the nine were in the
dust. Bhanavar compressed her dry lips and muttered to the King, 'Head
thou a body against him.'
Mashalleed gathered round his standard the chosen of his warriors, and
smoothed his beard, and headed them. Then the Chief struck his lance
behind him, and stretched rapidly a half-circle across the sand, and
halted on a knoll. When they neared him he retreated in a further
half-circle, and continued this wise, wasting the fury of Mashalleed,
till he stood among his followers. There, as the King hesitated and
prepared to retreat, he and the others of the tribe levelled their lances
and hung upon his rear, fretting them, slaughtering captains of the
troop. When Mashalleed turned to face his pursuer, the Chief was alone,
immovable on his mare, fronting the ranks. Then Bhanavar taunted the
King, and he essayed the capture of that Chief a second time and a third,
and it was each time as the first. Bhanavar looked about her with rapid
eyes, murmuring, 'Oh, what a Chief is he! Oh that a cloud would fall, a
smoke arise, to blind these hosts, that I might sling my serpents on him
unseen, for I will not be vanquished, though it be by Ruark!' So she drew
to the King, and the altercation between them was fierce in the fury of
the battle, he saying, ''Tis a feint of the Chief, this challenge; and I
must succour the left of my army by the well, that he is overmatching
with numbers'; and she, 'If thou head them not, then will I, and thou
shalt behold a woman do what thou durst not, and lose her love and win
her scorn.' While they spake the Arabs they looked on seemed to flutter
and waver, and the Chief was backing to them, calling to them as 'twere
words of shame to rally them. Seeing this, Mashalleed charged against the
Chief once more, and lo! the Arabs opened to receive him, closing on his
band of warriors like waters whitened by the storm on a fleet of
swift-scudding vessels: and there was a dust and a tumult visible, such
as is seen in the darkness when a vessel struck by the lightning-bolt is
sinking--flashes of steel, lifting of hands, rolling of horsemen and
horses. Then Bhanavar groaned aloud, 'They are lost! Shame to us! only
one hope is left-that 'tis Ruark, this Chief!' Now, the view of the plain
cleared, and with it she beheld the army of Mashalleed broken, the King
borne down by a dust of Arabs; so she unveiled her face and rode on the
host with the horsemen that guarded her, glorious with a crown of gold
and the glowing Jewel on her brow. When she was a javelin's flight from
them the Arabs shouted and paused in terror, for the light of her head
was as the sun setting between clouds of thunder; but that Chief dashed
forward like a flame beaten level by the wind, crying, 'Bhanavar;
Bhanavar!' and she knew the features of Ruark; so she said, 'Even I!' And
he cried again, 'Bhanavar! Bhanavar!' and was as one stricken by a shaft.
Then Bhanavar threw on him certain of the horsemen with her, and he
suffered them without a sign to surround him and grasp his mare by the
bridle-rein, and bring him, disarmed, before the Queen. At sight of Ruark
a captive the Arabs fell into confusion, and lost heart, and were
speedily chased and scattered from the scene like a loose spray before
the wind; but Mashalleed the King rejoiced mightily and praised Bhanavar,
and the whole army of the King praised her, magnifying her.
Now, with Ruark she interchanged no syllable, and said not farewell to
him when she departed with Mashalleed, to encounter other tribes; and the
Chief was bound and conducted a prisoner to the city of the inland sea,
and cast into prison, in expectation of Death the releaser, and continued
there wellnigh a year, eating the bitter bread of captivity. In the
evening of every seventh day there came to him a little mountain girl,
that sat by him and leaned a lute to her bosom, singing of the mountain
and the desert, but he turned his face from her to the wall. One day she
sang of Death the releaser, and Ruark thought, ''Tis come! she warneth
me! Merciful is Allah!' On the morning that followed Ukleet entered the
cell, and with him three slaves, blacks, armed with scimitars. So Ruark
stood up and bore witness to his faith, saying, 'Swift with the stroke!'
but Ukleet exclaimed, 'Fear not! the end is not yet.'
Then said he, 'Peace with thee! These slaves, O Chief, excelling in
martial qualities! surely they're my retinue, and the retinue of them of
my rank in the palace; and where I go they go; for the exalted have more
shadows than one! yea, three have they in my case, even very grimly black
shadows, whereon the idle expend not laughter, and whoso joketh in their
hearing, 'tis, wullahy! the last joke of that person. In such-wise are
the powerful known among men, they that stand very prominent in the beams
of prosperity! Now this of myself; but for thee--of a surety the Queen
Bhanavar, my mistress, will be here by the time of the rising of the
moon. In the name of Allah!' Saying that he departed in his greatness,
and Ruark watched for her that rose in his soul as the moon in the
heavens.
Meanwhile Bhanavar had mused, ''Tis this day, the day when the Serpents
desire their due, and the King Mashalleed they shall have; for what is
life to him but a treachery and a dalliance, and what is my hold on him
but this Jewel of the Serpents? He has had the profit of beauty, and he
shall yield the penalty: my kiss is for him, my serpent-kiss. And I will
release Ruark, and espouse him, and war with kings, sultans, emperors,
infidels, subduing them till they worship me.'
She flashed her figure in the glass, and was lovely therein as one in the
light of Paradise; but ere she reached the King Mashalleed, lo! the hour
of the Serpents had struck, and her beauty melted from her as snow melts
from off the rock; and she was suddenly haggard in utter uncomeliness,
and knew it not, but marched, smiling a grand smile, on to the King. Now
as Mashalleed lifted his eyes to her he started amazed, crying, 'The hag
again!' and she said, 'What of the hag, O my lord the King?' Thereat he
was yet more amazed, and exclaimed, 'The hag of ugliness with the voice
of Bhanavar! Has then the Queen lent that loathsomeness her voice also?'
Bhanavar chilled a moment, and looked on the faces of the women present,
and they were staring at her, the younger ones tittering, and among them
Nashta, whom she hated. So she cried, 'Away with ye!' But the King
commanded them, 'Stay!' Then the Queen leaned to him, saying, 'I will
speak with my lord alone'; whereat he shrank from her, and spat. Ice and
flame shivered through the blood of Bhanavar, yet such was her eagerness
to give the kiss to Mashalleed, that she leaned to him, still wooing him
to her with smiles. Then the King seized her violently, and flung her
over the marble floor to the very basin of the fountain, and the crown
that was on her brow fell and rolled to the feet of Nashta. The girl
lifted it, laughing, and was in the act of fitting it to her fair head
amid the chuckles of her companions, when a slap from the hand of
Bhanavar spun her twice round, and she dropped to the marble insensible.
The King bellowed in wrath, and ran to Nashta, crying to the Queen,
'Surrender that crown to her, foul hag!' But Bhanavar had bent over the
basin of the fountain, and beheld the image of her change therein, and
was hurrying from the hall and down the corridors of the palace to the
private chamber. So he made bare the steel by his side, and followed her
with a number of the harem guard, menacing her, and commanding her to
surrender the crown with the Jewel. Ere she could lay hand on a veil, he
was beside her, and she was encompassed. In that extremity Bhanavar
plucked the Jewel from her crown, and rubbed it, calling the Serpents to
her. One came, one only, and that one would not move from her to sling
himself about the neck of Mashalleed, but whirled round her, hissing:
Every hour a serpent dies,
Till we have the sacrifice:
Sweeten, sweeten, with thy kiss,
Quick! a soul for Karatis.
Surely the King bit his breath, marvelling, and his fury became an awful
fear, and he fell back from her, molesting her no further. Then she
squeezed the serpent till his body writhed in knots, and veiled herself,
and sprang down a secret passage to the garden, and it was the time of
the rising of the moon. Coolness and soothingness dropped on her as a
balm from the great light, and she gazed on it murmuring, as in a memory:
Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending?
Stay under that dark palm-tree through the night,
Rest on the mountain slope,
By the couching antelope,
O thou enthroned supremacy of light!
And for ever the lustre thou art lending
Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,
Silvery leaps and falls:
Hang by the mountain-walls,
Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,
For a danger and dolour is thy wending!
And she panted and sighed, and wept, crying, 'Who, who will kiss me or
have my kiss now, that I may indeed be as yonder beam? Who, that I may be
avenged on this King? And who sang that song of the ascending of the
moon, that comes to me as a part of me from old times?' As she gazed on
the circled radiance swimming under a plume of palm leaves, she
exclaimed, 'Ruark! Ruark the Chief!' So she clasped her hands to her
bosom, and crouched under the shadows of the garden, and fled through the
garden gates and the streets of the city, heavily veiled, to the prison
where Ruark awaited her within the walls and Ukleet without. The Governor
of the prison had been warned by Ukleet of her coming, and the doors and
bars opened before her unchallenged, till she stood in the cell of Ruark;
her eyes, that were alone unveiled, scanned the countenance of the Chief,
the fevered lustre-jet of his looks, and by the little moonlight in the
cell she saw with a glance the straw-heap and the fetters, and the
black-bread and water untasted on the bench--signs of his misery and
desire for her coming. So she greeted him with the word of peace, and he
replied with the name of the All-Merciful. Then said she, 'O Ruark, of
Rukrooth thy mother tell me somewhat.'
He answered, 'I know nought of her since that day. Allah have her in his
keeping!'