Oh! fathers who have sung I sing
With woman's lips
Yet shall your sword hold honour for the King
Till my blood drips
To cover failure with red blazoning,
Of set defiance, deathful-triumphing
Ohe the King
Challenge I bring
Ohe the King, the King!
The huge silver hilted, cross-handled sword she had been holding--its
point skyward--smote the stone at her feet as the wild chant ended,
and the clang of the tempered steel rang out over the roof as Atma
Devi, turning to the north, the south, the east, the west, repeated
her challenge. She had put on her father's silvered coat of mail, and
her long black hair bound with a silver fillet about the brows, made
her look like some Valkyrie of the West, ready to avenge the slain.
A water-bright ripple of laughter came from the door opening on to the
small square of roof, and Atma turned toward it fiercely to see a pink
and yellow lollipop of a woman, respectability, in the shape of a
thick white _burka_ veil,[8] flung at her feet, leaning against the
door lintel and watching her amusedly.
---------------------
[Footnote 8: The ordinary outside-veil with eye-holes in it.]
---------------------
Her fierce frown faded. "Yamin," she said slowly, "What dost thou
here?"
Siyah Yamin, pampered darling of the town, sank down, like a snake
coiling itself, amid circling billows of soft scented satin and
jingling fringes of silver and pearls. She was a small woman,
extraordinarily graceful, extraordinarily beautiful, with a tiny oval
innocent-looking face on which neither pleasure no pain left any mark
whatever. From the crown of her head to the sole of her feet she
looked, and was, prepared at all points for her trade; a dainty piece
of confectionery ready to satisfy any sensual appetite.
"Here?" she echoed, and the one word showed her a passed-mistress in
polished elocution. "Didst fancy I would stay in Satanstown because
his Majesty the Monk chose to lump me with other loose livers and
exile us beyond his city's walls? Not I!" Here the water-bright laugh
rang out derisively. "Lo! many things have happened since Siyala
played with Atma--what a bully thou wast in those days to poor little
me; and thou lookst it now, thou sister of the veil!--for did we not
drink milk together out of one vessel and under one veil, see you,
before I drifted to the temple--and so hitherward? Yea! leaning on thy
sword so--why! thou lookst beautiful! Could but some of my men see
you----"
"Peace, woman!" said Atma sternly. The tall cross-hilted sword held
point downward formed a support for her elbow as she rested her head
on her hand and gazed thoughtfully at Siyah Yamin.
"Thou hast not changed much, Siyala," she said, more softly.
"Come! that is more like," laughed the little lady. "Those were merry
old days! A pity thou didst not come with me to the temple, Atma!
Better anyhow than widowhood ere womanhood began."
"Peace, child!" repeated Atma sternly. "What canst thou know of that
high fate which makes of womanhood something beyond itself--but I
waste words. Wherefore hast thou come?"
Siyah Yamin pouted her pretended sulkiness. "Because from my roof
yonder--lo! how well we have kept the secret that thou didst not know
the Companion-of-the-Court was thy next neighbour!--it hath been such
fun, Atma! beguiling the beadles whom his Monkey Majesty----"
"Have a care, Siyah Yamin!" interrupted Atma hotly--"the King----"
Siyah Yamin coiled herself to closer laughing curves. "The King!" she
echoed, "Oh yea! Atma and the King--the King and Atma!"
The woman hidden within the sword-bearer shrank back and paled.
"Well! What of Atma and the King?"
"Naught! Naught!" laughed the little lady, "but I have heard of thy
success to-day. What is there that Siyah Yamin does not hear? So when
I saw thee from my roof up yonder with the old man's armour and the
sword--frown not sweet sister, it becomes thee mightily--I just caught
up my veil, and ran downstairs (for we have many entrances see you,
and this tenement of yours is one of them) to offer thee
congratulations--since if the King cast even the wink of an eye on a
woman that is something! And they _say_ he raised thee by the hands!"
The hot blood surged into Atma's face. "And if he did, what then?" she
asked.
Siyah Yamin rose, and yawning took up her veil. "Touching comes before
tasting," she replied airily, "even with Kings. And so, having offered
my gratulations on good luck--farewell."
Atma stood frowning at her. "Thou playest a dangerous game, Siyala; if
the King discovers that thou--the darling of the town--hast set his
rule at naught----"
Siyah Yamin burst into a perfect cascade of laughter. "Fie on thee,
Atma! and me a married woman, veiled, secluded, a perfect cupola of
chastity!" Wrapped in her white burka, all one could see of the
devilry within, was two eyes brimming over with malignant mischief.
"Married!" gasped Atma, "what man has dared----?"
"Aye! He is brave," assented the courtesan, "and I love him--as much
as I love most! And he is the best-looking of them all--is
Jamal-ud-din."
"Syed Jamal-ud-din of Barha?" echoed Atma incredulously.
The veiled head nodded. "Yea! He is Syed, and set on his religion. So
I said the Creed and he gave me one of the eight marriages--I forget
which. These Mahommedan ceremonials are not awe-inspiring like the
Seven Steps and the Sacrificial Fire; lo! even with no man, but a
dagger, that gave me shivers. Thou wilt come and see me, Atma. It is
pleasant up there. We have joined four roofs. Ask for the Persian
_bibi_ from Khorasan and if needful give the password--'Kings-town.'
Rage not, virtuous beloved! 'Tis better anyhow to live under Akbar
than under Satan!"
So with a tinkling of silver and pearl fringes she passed upward.
Atma stood for a while lost in thought, then rousing herself in quick
impatience, put aside the sword in its appointed corner, removed her
hauberk, laid it on the ground in front of the sword and on it set the
two lamps which all night long kept watch and ward over the weapon,
placed between them the death-dagger of her race, and so, her new-come
evening task finished, went toward the parapet of the roof and,
leaning her arms on it, looked out over the fast-fading horizon of
India.
In her dark eyes still lay some of the unrest, the resentment which,
since her father's death, had made the townsfolk call her mad: for
those words with which the King had gifted to her the Charanship,
"I'll treat thee not as woman, but as man," had curiously enough
brought home to her all the limitations of that womanhood.
How little she could do--except die--for the King's honour. Still the
roof was no longer voiceless. The challenge had rung out from it once
more, obliterating the sad echoes of that last dying effort of the old
man. She looked round as if listening for that feeble whisper.
No! It had gone. She was the Charan now! and the edge of the
death-dagger was keen enough for woman's flesh; she might yet join the
great and noble company of the self-immolated.
Her heart stirred in her at the thought of their deeds enshrined in
old bardic verses that had been handed down from father to son from
generation to generation.
They were in her keeping now at any rate, and she must not forget
them.
So, half-kneeling by the low parapet, her chin resting upon her
crossed arms, she said them over to herself rough, rude, almost
unintelligible, yet still instinct with fire, with courage, with
defiance.
She lingered lovingly over one: that tale of how the young
ten-year-old Heera when his father was treacherously slain and his
master falsely accused of high treason to his suzerain, was sent forth
by his mother to seek his father's body in the wilds, and having found
it, to take the death-dagger from the bleeding corpse, and so, all
travel-stained and weary, his young face blistered with tears, to
appear before the hasty tribunal and give the champion's cry--
It is a lie!
I, Heera, I
I take the lie!
Ye Bright-Ones see me die!
Avenge the lie!
And thus by his death force upon the conspirators a full inquiry. So
she knelt dreaming, her chin upon her hand while the glow of the set
sun faded from the sky.
Yet with all her dreaming she was very woman, and in every fibre of
her being she still felt the touch of the King's hands upon hers.
Such hungry hands! Dimly, in her sexless soul, she recognised that
quality in them. What did they want? Not womanhood certainly. But who
wanted that? No one. Motherhood was one thing and widowhood was
another, but sexual womanhood was nescience.
With a sigh she rose to fetch her Dharm-shastra and read her nightly
portion from its pages, choosing it at random, so many _slokas_ this
way or that way from the one on which her eye fell first. Yet despite
this superstitious selection, she was learned beyond the learning of
most women, beyond even that of many learned men, for her father had
taught her as he taught his sons--all save the Sacred Text, that
privilege of Brahmanhood. The limitation, however, left Atma smiling,
since her widowhood outweighed for her the repetition of many
_gayatris_.
By it she gained a privilege greater than her brothers. By its very
virginity she became their ancestress, the ancestress of all her race.
That voluntary yielding up of sex brought her eternal motherhood,
because through her renunciation those heroes had found life
everlasting.
Her barren breasts--sucked of no child's lips--had nurtured
them--nurtured them all!
Shiv-jee, Rajindar, half a hundred others, were all her children. Aye,
it was her hands which had sent little Heera into the wilderness to do
his duty. His childish face full of tears of courage was hers!--was
hers!
There was no death; nothing but unending life that "cannot slay that
is not slain." So to her, as she sate reading the Sacred Book came
spirits innumerable, until in the vast multitude of men, her own
womanhood was lost.
A low knock came to the door. Holding the light by which she had been
reading in her hand, she rose and went toward it.
"Who enters?" she asked, and started at the reply.
"It is I, Birbal. Open, my sister. I come from the King."
He stood within the threshold unfolding the shawl with which he was
enveloped, and disclosing his keen face lit by a satirical smile.
"A good password, by all that's holy," he said airily. "Nay! frown
not, sister, I am of thy tribe."
"True," she replied gravely. "My father spoke often of Maheshwar
Rao"--she gave Birbal's tribal name with intent--"and said that could
he but learn not to jest----"
The faint laugh, the little shrug of the shoulders came, unfailing as
ever.
"Were the world less amusing, sister," he said, "Birbal might have
more chance!" He passed lightly to the parapet, and sate on it
dangling his legs "Padre Rudolfo, the Jesuit, hath it," he continued,
"that I am the fool who saith 'There is no God'; but Birbal propounds
no such proposition. He hath an open mind. His very errand here this
night, my sister, shows--shall we say credulity? I come, sister, for
thy _rebeck_ player. I need him."
"Wherefore?" asked Atma quickly.
Birbal's mouth quivered cynically. "Shall I say the King desires him,
sister? Nay! I will not lie. I want him, because of a talisman stone
he wears around his neck. He called it smagdarite. I wish to see it
again."
"A stone?" echoed Atma surprised, "what stone? He wears no talisman,
for sure."
Birbal's feet came down the roof in sudden excitement. "He wears none!
Better and better! Tell me where he lives, sister. I would see for
myself. Come! quick, the night goes on, and it is time the King's
Charan was abed."
He looked at her in frank mockery and she flushed slowly.
"If it be not for harm," she began, "he is but a poor player."
"Harm!" he echoed impatiently. "If what I think prove true, it is not
likely Birbal would harm one possessed of--smagdarite! Out with it,
sister. I have tramped from well to water, and water to well, these
two hours seeking the Sinde envoy, but it comes ever from each clue
that he has gone--disappeared beyond the city. So I bethought me of
smagdarite and thee. Come! where lives he?"
"I will take my lord thither," she said evasively. "Nay! 'tis no
trouble; he lives--he lives here in this very house."
She raised the light above her head and passed down the stairs. It was
a many-storied tenement house, that circled round a central stair, and
then broke away from it and wandered in labyrinthine passages to
return once more to the same flight of steps; or was it another and
she was purposely deluding him?
On and on they went through the dark silence, going down and down.
"He is in the cellars," she said, pausing at a corner to show with her
lamp a flight of smaller, steeper steps. "He is so poor, he cannot
pay. Have a care! the steps are broken!"
They stood before a small low door at which Atma knocked. There was no
answer. "Wayfarer!"[9] she cried softly. "O! Wayfarer!"
---------------------
[Footnote 9: This is a fair translation of the name Payandar.]
---------------------
Still no answer.
"I have a key," she said, and drew one from her bosom. Birbal followed
the light into the dark room. In that hot climate a cellar is no bad
place wherein to live, and this one struck pleasantly cool,
deliciously scented as by a thousand roses in blossom.
Birbal was conscious of a sudden elation. He was on the track
assuredly! The next instant he was standing beside a string bed on
which lay, wrapped in a white sheet, the figure of the _rebeck_
player. The clear, fine profile turned upward almost as if he lay
dead, and he did not stir when Atma touched him on the shoulder.
She gave a vexed sigh. "It is the Dream-compeller," she said, "he
takes it at times, and lies like a log, and then----"
But Birbal, eager in his quest, had drawn the sheet aside, and now
started back with a swift exclamation. For, on the drugged man's
breast was no talisman; but, upturned as his, there lay the most
beautiful face surely in the whole wide world. It was that of a girl
apparently not yet in her teens, yet still close on womanhood;
perfect, delicate, pure, like some scented lily. Her breath coming and
going regularly exhaled the perfume of a thousand flowers.
"'Tis Zarifa--his daughter," explained Atma softly. "She is a cripple
utterly. Naught shows of her scarcely save her face, but when her eyes
are open, one forgets." She gathered the sheet together so as to hide
all that should be hidden. Only that perfect face remained asleep upon
the Wayfarer's breast.
"Does he give the Dream-stuff to her also?" asked Birbal, feeling
his voice unsteady. Poet, artist, to his finger-tips, the sight
before him stirred him in every fibre, bringing with it a sense of
half-remembered dreams.
She shook her head. "He sends her to sleep first with flower essences.
She is like a deer for scent--a rose makes her unconscious, and then
they sleep, and sleep, and sleep."
Slumber seemed in the air. They stood beside the low string bed,
silent, almost drowsy. Atma roused herself with an effort.
"He promised he would not; but they must have been given money
to-day," she said regretfully. "There is no use waiting, my lord--they
will sleep for hours--perhaps days."
"Days?" he echoed interrogatively.
She passed her hand over her forehead again. "It seems as if it were
days. Then, when he goes out, I carry Zarifa up to my roof. She is so
light. There is nothing of her but the face. Yet she sings like a
bird."
Birbal's hand went out to the lamp Atma held and turned its light full
on her face.
"You are but half-awake yourself, sister," he said gravely. "And it is
all hours of the night. See, I will wait until I note your light pass
on the uppermost stair, lest danger lurk for you in the dark."
He waited for her to lock the door, then standing in the dark archway
watched her twinkling light circle the stairs, then disappear, circle
again higher up and disappear, until he judged from the failure of the
twinkle to return that she had reached her roof. And, as he watched
his mind was busy.
Who was this man? And did he really possess the art which some deemed
magic, but which he, keen rational thinker, found to be inextricably
mixed up with the whole problem of life? What was it that all the
great ones of the earth had possessed? What gave them their power,
their influence? What was it, for instance, which made his own
clear-seeing eyes fall at times before those dreams in Akbar's? What
was it, what?
His whole life was one ceaseless questioning; and finding no answer,
he jested at the very question itself. What was reality? Not surely
the death-like profile he had just seen, the death-like form with that
flower-face upon its breast.
He was turning to go when a burst of half-sober laughter rose close
beside him and a voice answered tipsily.
"Ts'sh, Dhari, thou art not safe yet in Siyah Yamin's paradise, so
lurch not, fool, lest the watch seize thee! Take my arm, lo! I am
steady."
A sound as of confused tumbling against the wall belied the assertion.
Every atom of blood in Birbal's body seemed to leap to his hands in
anger, for he recognised the voice. It was that of his only son, his
spendthrift son Lalla--the son of so much promise, so many regrets.
And the other was his boon companion Dhari--another bad son of a good
father--Todar Mull the man whose financial skill had saved the Empire
from the oppression of bribery. Where then was the third of this
precious trio of young rakes? Where was the Heir Apparent, Prince
Salim? Not far off, that he would warrant!
Slipping off his shoes, he followed up the stairs, keeping at a
respectful distance to be beyond reach of the lurches, yet close
enough to hear the password given at the closed door, not far he
judged from Atma's square of roof. Allowing a decent interval he
knocked again and briefly saying "Kings-town" found himself admitted
to an inner, scantily-lit staircase which, however, showed a brilliant
light at its end.
A minute more and he stood looking with a curious amusement at Siyah
Yamin's paradise. The jade had taste! Here on the highest roof in all
the city she had set a terraced garden open only to the stars. The
little coloured lights, edging the rose beds and the tiny splashing
fountains, scarcely sent their diffused radiance higher than his knee.
It did not reach the edge of the trellised walls, and above that was
night; cool, quiet, night. A liveried servant salaamed to him
profusely, then returned to his solitary game of cards. A white
Persian cat rose, hunched up its back and clawed viciously on the
Persian carpets laid along the paths, then yawned showing its needle.
like teeth. From a confused heap of silks and satins under an awning
came loud snores, but at the farther end of the far roof there was
wakefulness; for a half-tipsy, wholly-discordant voice made itself
heard singing a song--
Why am I drunken, fools? Because I sup
The wine of love from out the bosom's cup
And the soft scented tresses of dark hair trip up
My fuddled feet.
Because my wine-stained mouth has found her lips
Too close for kisses, so their nectar drips
To brain and heart, and body, in slow sips
Of passion sweet.
"His Royal Highness, the Heir Apparent," murmured Birbal, cynically
as, looking half-mechanically to the sit of his turban, he went
forward. Time was when love--but never wine--had tempted him also;
_this_, however, was flagrant disobedience of the King's orders and he
must see to it. Siyah Yamin was the town's darling, but even she had
her limits and must confine herself to them.
He smiled sardonically, thinking of the torrent of words he was about
to face, since she, likely, would be the only one with her wits about
her.
And he was right!
As he set aside the silken curtains which hid the interior of her
painted pavilion from sight, he found the place half-full of drowsy
girls and sodden revellers; but she, raising herself from her cushions
on her elbow, greeted him instantly with shrill jest.
"The King himself! Oh! the honour! Nay, 'tis not the King, but the
King's Counsellor. Sir! I would rise," she continued pointing and
making a graceful wriggle of apparent effort, "but that my treasure,
my lover, my husband, lies dead-drunk at my feet."
Birbal gave a quick glance at the prostrate figure among the cushions.
"Yea!" she continued, her baby face at strange variance with her
words, which came, clipped hard and fast with defiance, from her
soft-parted lips. "'Tis Syed Jamal-ud-din, of Barha, sure enough. A
good soldier to the King though at this present somewhat overcome with
love for poor me and liquor; as indeed is the Prince of Proprieties
yonder. Ah! Most Revered! Oh! Most Excellent of Heirs Apparents! rouse
thee to greet this Select Emissary of a Fateful Father."
Prince Salim, a big, heavy looking lad, stared stupidly at the
newcomer, his cup arrested at his lips.
"What'sh devil he coming here for?" he muttered fiercely. "That's what
I wan'ter know. What'sh a devil----" Then his ferocity subsided amid a
titter from Siyah Yamin.
"Heed him not, Birbal, Prince of Jesters. Slaves, bring a cushion! Sit
thee down, so, beside me--we be the only two sober ones. Cupbearer,
the cup! And bring the snow from holy Himalya to cleanse it; for see
you most Brahman Birbal, Siyah Yamin is fast Mahommedan since she
married! _La-illaha-il-ullaho_."
"Madam," said Birbal interrupting her mocking creed impatiently, "if
you would play your part as the wife of a Syed of Barha----"
Siyah Yamin gave a little shriek of dismay. "My veil! Here! women, my
veil! lo! I was forgetting."
"A truce to jesting, madam," said Birbal sternly. "Time will show if
what thou sayest be true; meanwhile----" he glanced round, hastily
taking in the company. "So! Meean Khodadad! Hide not thyself behind
the Prince as ever! God! if I could kill thee 'twere better for us
all!"
Khodadad, on whose face sate enthroned all the evil which in the
younger revellers showed as yet fleetingly, roused himself to laugh
insultingly.
"What! Kill a Tarkhan? Lo! Brahman, even thy caste in that case would
not save thee from the hangman's noose. None can punish me, fool, I am
Khodadad--'God given.'"
"God given!" echoed Birbal passionately. "That brings _one_ balm--no
man need shrink calling thee son! And as for thou, Lalla!--go!
accursed by thy father!"
"What'sh all this," murmured Prince Salim rising unsteadily. "What'sh
all this fush?"
"My Prince," said Birbal, restraining his voice to respect, "this is
no place for you--no place for the Heir to India--no place for one who
will be King when his great father----"
Prince Salim dashed his cup down with a curse.
"Let be a shay! I tell you I am King here! Am I not King, and the
Shadow of God? Am I not a shay?"
He looked round on his company triumphantly; but Birbal, utterly
exasperated, bowed.
"No, my Prince," he replied politely, "thou art drunk, boy, and the
substance of a fool!"
Siyah Yamin's tinkling laughter led the chorus of mirth in which for
the time even Birbal's anger passed.