_The current of a deed will work its way
Through the wide world and cannot be resisted,
'Twas seasonably done--the seed is sown
And in due time will bear the fruit of discord_.
--Kalidasa.
The wide mosque lay empty save for a group of long-bearded doctors of
the law, who, lingering after service was over, discussed as ever the
unfailing topic of the King's innovations. Such purposeless
innovations too! Leading to nothing, to absolute nescience; for what
else was all this talk of freedom, of equality, of universal
brotherhood? Were not kings, kings, and nobles, nobles, since the very
beginning?
These reverend seigneurs surcharged with pride of race, the pride of
the conqueror, fiercely fanatical in faith, felt resentfully that in
religion, in manners, in morals, Akbar, their King, stood absolutely
aloof from them.
Yet they, in their turn, stood as absolutely aloof from the real heart
of India which beat placidly in the simple lives of the husbandmen
toiling in the ample fields which, seen through the great Arch of
Victory receded into a dim blue distance that lost itself in a dim
blue sky. So each, the conqueror, the conquered, went on his way,
while a man dreamt of blending the two into one.
"Yes! it is true," murmured Budaoni the historian regretfully; "from
his earliest childhood his Majesty hath collected everything in all
religions that is worth remembering, with a talent of selection
peculiar to him, and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every principle of
our Faith."
"_Sobhan-ullah!_" assented the Makhdum-ul'-mulk, who had been the
highest religious authority in the land until the King, with one sweep
of his pen, had made himself the Head of the Church. A direful offence
to the orthodox who refused assent to Akbar's reasoning that since
there was but one law, the law of God, there could be but one
authority; therefore the intervention of a priesthood between the
people and God's vice-regent on earth was unnecessary, impolitic.
An old man, white-bearded, high-featured, murmured to himself, "Yet
is he King indeed," then fell hurriedly to the telling of his beads;
but Ghiass Beg, the Lord High Treasurer--a stout, good-humoured
looking man, whose fat paunch stood evidence for his love of good
living--shook his head and sighed.
"It cometh of abstinence, see you," he mourned. "When the stomach is
empty wind rises to the head. And, were it not for that damned sense
of duty which leaveth the King neither by day nor by night, Akbar
would give up food and sleep altogether. So far hath he wandered from
the Sure Pivot of Life that the very question of dinner ariseth not in
his mind; he eats but once a day, and leaveth off unsatisfied, nor is
there even any fixed hour for this food. Sure! 'tis the life of a very
dog."
"So he keep it, and his dogs, and his uncircumcised friends to
himself," muttered a sour-visaged elder, "I quarrel not with his
starvations. Belike they may bring the Heir-Apparent to his rights
sooner, and that would be a glad day for Islam."
The old man with the white beard who was telling his beads murmured
once more under his breath: "Yet is he King indeed," and went on with
his prayers still more hurriedly.
"Lo! mullah jee!" yawned another sour-visaged one, "Prince Salim will
be in the idolaters' toils ere then. With a Rajput to wife there is
small hope for a Ruler of the Faith."
In the hot sunshine where they sate whispering like sleepy snakes,
ready, yet too lazy, to strike, a leisurely groan ran round the whole
assembly. That the first wife--practically the only real wife--of the
Heir-Apparent should be a Hindu was simply an outrage. It was bad
enough that the King himself should have taken the Rajput daughters
and sisters of his conquered foes into his harem, in order--heaven
save the mark!--to cement friendship between the races; but he, at
least, had been first married in orthodox fashion to a daughter of
Islam. Could he not do even so much for his son?
Ghiass Beg heaved another fat sigh and his face took on obstinacy.
"True," he assented, "and 'tis not that as fair a bride could not be
found----"
"In the House of the Lord High Treasurer," interrupted a sneering
voice. It came from Mirza Ibrahim, who, at that moment, followed at a
little distance by a posse of courtiers and others, came from the
cloisters full upon the half-drowsy group of malcontents.
"God forbid!" gasped the horrified High Treasurer weakly. In his heart
of hearts he had been thinking--and not for the first time--of his
little daughter Mihrun-nissa, as a future Empress of India. But this
was an outrage on decorum, an indignity! He began to splutter
remonstrance.
"Prayers are over! Up with the carpet!" interrupted the Mirza
irreverently. Whereupon the Makhdum interfered with pompous frowns and
craved to know what my Lord High Chamberlain meant by the unseemly
remark.
"Nothing, Most Holy," replied the latter cheerfully, "save that if the
pious deliberations of the wise are ended the ignorant have a point of
law which they would fain lay before authority. Is it not so, oh,
sahiban?"
He turned as he spoke to a little knot of curiously
distinctive-looking men who, having separated themselves from the
remainder of his following, stood together in the full blaze of
sunlight. They were singularly alike. Small, fine-drawn, with watchful
eyes, and a little stoop forward of the head, reminding one
irresistibly of a bird of prey. In truth the Syeds of Barha were wild
hawks indeed; and to-day, still travel-stained with their quick march
from their eyrie of a fortress far in the distant plains, they were
ready to swoop fiercely on any cause of offence. For they were red-hot
with anger at the exile of that ill-doing scion of their house
Jamal-ud-din. Not that they defended his choice of a wife--it was one
which sooner or later might necessitate a sack, and the nearest
river--but, if Siyah Yamin was the lad's wife, what right had even the
Great Mogul to interfere?
They assented with a scowl; but Khodadad (he who called himself by
another name when he wrote to Sinde) smiled urbanely. He was evidently
prepared to play the indispensable Eastern part of applauder and
general backer-up.
"Even so, Most Holy!" he replied effusively, "a point of law which can
only be settled by God's most chosen Judge, before whom even these
lineal descendants of our Great Prophet bow humbly."[10]
---------------------
[Footnote 10: The Syeds as lineal descendants of Mahommed.]
---------------------
The speech was full of malicious intent, purposely provocative, and
succeeded in its purpose.
"Then let them go to the King," began the Makhdum acrimoniously, when
Ibrahim cut him short, concealing a yawn as he sought a comfortable
place for himself where his feet could be in sunshine, his head in
shadow.
"Who hath usurped the Judge's seat? Nay! Most Holy! It is only
time-servers and idolaters who yield such function to Akbar. We
faithful ones and true----"
"Had best keep silence in a public place," put in Budaoni eyeing the
other with a glassy stare. He himself might take his own part in
discontent, but being, by virtue of his voice, precentor in the Court
Mosque, he did not choose to encourage Ibrahim, whose evil life was
notorious. The latter smiled and skilfully drew another red-herring of
provocation across the path.
"Public?" he echoed with a leer of malice. "Sure there is no more
private place than the Court Mosque since the King started his Divine
Faith! Hast heard, Most Holy, what the idolatrous pig Birbal jested
last Friday when the King, for a marvel, put in an appearance at
prayers--that he came not in order to listen to what you preached as
of God, but to hush the slanders you borrowed of the Devil."
The Makhdum spat solemnly, the senior canon let loose a thundering
"God roast him," which echoed and re-echoed through the wide arches.
"Except," remarked Budaoni with a sneer, "when his Majesty reads
prayers himself; then he comes to stutter!"
This allusion to the day not so far past when Akbar, assuming the
Headship had--whether from nervousness or emotion history sayeth
not--broken down in repeating the _kutba_ composed for the occasion by
Faiz, the poet-laureate, produced snorts and smiles of assent.
"Yes! yea!" assented the sour-visaged elder fiercely "he stuttered
indeed--mayhap because the words were by Faiz, the dog poet--may God
rot him for defiling His Holy Place."
The old man with the white beard looked up suddenly.
"Yet, sirs, was there ought wrong with the words?" he asked; so
stretched out his lean old hand, and his wavering old voice rang out
through the sunshine:
Lo! from Almighty God I take my Kingship
Before His Throne I bow and take my Judgeship
Take Strength from Strength and Wisdom from His Wiseness
Right from the Right, and Justice from His Justice
Praising the King I praise God near and far
Great is His Power, Al-la-hu Akbar.
The echoes died away and there was silence. Then Ibrahim indulging in
a yawn of contempt for the digression his words had caused, said
patronisingly, "The question we ask is not of _kutbas_; it is of a
marriage, most Enlightened-One."
But Budaoni's virulence was incorrigible. "His Majesty hath propounded
not a few such problems to this poor court already," he remarked
caustically; "doth he perchance propound another?"
This further allusion to the hot dispute between the King and the
doctors concerning the legality of the former's political marriages
with Rajput princesses, would have met with equal favour, but for
Ibrahim's quick frown. To him, as chamberlain, the King's present
austerities and general asceticism were a continual grievance.
"Thy wits must wander, Budaoni," he interrupted sharply, "or thou
wouldst know the very name woman is at a discount at court! Mayhap the
translation into civilised language of the Hindu Scriptures proves too
much for thee!"
The historian scowled, for his task of translating religious books
from the Sanskrit into Persian for the King's benefit was utterly
abhorrent to his orthodoxy.
"And small wonder," he replied hotly. "These useless absurdities
confound the eighteen worlds! Such injunctions! Such prohibitions! A
whole page against the eating of turnips! May God forgive the enforced
spoiling of orthodox pen, ink, and paper over such puerilities!"
It was the Syeds' turn to shift impatiently. "Good sir historian,"
said one, handling his sword as it lay on his knee, "we come not
hither to discuss literature, but to ask an opinion. Hath the King
right to exile a man for the marrying of a woman?"
"What man, and what woman?" asked the Makhdum portentously. "On that
hangs law. Hath the man already four wives?"
"The King hath nigher to forty," interrupted the incorrigible Budaoni.
"Peace, preacher!" reproved the great man, wagging his head. "Cloud
not perspicacity with allusions. And the woman? Is she virgin, widow,
or duly divorced?"
There was a general sort of chuckle from the hawks-brood.
"None of them i' faith," said the head of the clan at last, "'tis
Siyah Yamin whom all know; but she hath said the Creed and the lad
hath married her."
"By legal marriage?"
"How else?" asked the spokesman hotly. "We of Barha, descended of the
true Prophet--may His name be exalted--deal not with customs borrowed
of the idolater."
"Then are they true wed, and none can dissolve the tie save the
husband himself by----"
"Traa!" interrupted Ibrahim impatiently, "that is for them to settle
between them! These gentlemen desire to know by what right the King
forbids this virtuous young man to bring his screened and lawful woman
into the town? Such cupolas of chastity are beyond the power even of
majesty; is it not so, most learned doctors?"
A little stir shifted through the assemblage; it sate up literally,
metaphorically, keen for ground of offence against any of the King's
decisions.
"Of a truth," pronounced the Makhdum pompously, "he hath no right. By
all the laws of Islam a screened and lawful woman belongs only to her
owner."
So in the sunshine the enmity of the Old against the New rose hot as
the sunshine itself, and conspiracy sprang into being.
It was a good half-hour ere Mirza Ibrahim summed up the situation in
these words:
"We meet again then, in the Hall of Public Audience to-day, and demand
revision of the sentence as being contrary to the Revealed Word; and
if the King----"
Khodadad broke in on him with a sudden laugh--"Nay! my idolatrous
quarry will be Birbal! God and His Prophet! how I loathe the dog!" He
paused, seeing the unwisdom of his confidences, for the Syeds of Barha
rose, to stand packed, fingering their swords.
"God's truth," said their leader, turning insolently to the speaker,
"keep thy carrion to thyself, Tarkhan! We of Barha mix not in court
cabals--we be not buzzard-cocks to whom the smell of death brings but
gluttony. No! if the King rescind not his order we fling our
allegiance at his feet, we and our goodly following; so, escaping free
of false law to our strongholds, there to defend ourselves against
tyranny. But for quarry! Stab whom thou willst, Tarkhan, but reckon
not on our knives."
Khodadad, deprecating a scowl at his indiscretion from Mirza Ibrahim,
smiled lightly:
"Quarry for my craft is all I ask, though God knows His world would be
better without the Hindu pig who, see you, comes yonder defiling the
sanctuary and hatching new plots against our pockets, with the accurst
Khattri, Todar Mull, the Finance Minister."
It was a deft distraction, for the constant cutting-down of
perquisites and fees in Akbar's efforts to ameliorate the condition of
the poor, was a continual source of irritation to the upper classes.
But the Syeds of Barha were large landowners, and they knew on which
side their bread was buttered. So they salaamed respectfully to the
two statesmen as they passed at a distance arm in arm, and the oldest
of the little group said sharply, "Hindu or no, he hath his grip on
the collector of taxes. So good luck go with him--aye! And with the
King, too, in such matters. Save for this about Jamal-ud-din we find
no fault in him."
"Neither see I fault in him," came a sudden voice loud yet wavering.
It came from the white-haired old man who had been telling his beads,
and who now stood, his thin bent figure outlined against the distant
blue of India that showed through the Arch of Victory.
"Neither see I fault," he repeated, his tone breaking in his
vehemence. "God give him ever what he prays for--'a tranquil mind, an
open brow, a just intent, a right principle, a wide capacity, a firm
foot, a high spirit, a lofty soul, a right place, a shining
countenance, and a smiling lip.' Of such are kings indeed!"
They looked at the old man in haughty scorn, as stumblingly, his old
eyes half-blind with tears, he passed through the archway, so down the
steps to disappear as it were in the heart of India widespread,
remote, indefinite. But Budaoni murmured under his breath, "Lo! the
glamour of the King is upon him. God knows one can scarce live in
sight of him and not feel the very soul of one go out toward what lies
beyond. Even I myself----" he paused and was silent, knowing that
through all his diatribes, all his wanton misreadings of Akbar's
character, ran admiration.
Meanwhile Todar Mull had in passing given a quick glance in return for
the salutation which had come from the Syeds of Barha.
"That bodes--what?" he had asked of Birbal, who had shrugged his
shoulders and given a still keener glance at the group in the
sunshine.
"Since Khodadad is in it--mischief! Mirza Ibrahim ever equals
immorality, and the Syedan--I wist not they were here--bode--with
Jamal-ud-din and his chaste spouse in exile--marriage! As for the
Learned of the Law, they contribute 'Mahommed is His Prophet.' The
whole doubtless forming conspiracy--what else is there in the court
with this accursed peace of Akbar's giving time for the cooking of
cabals? Would to God----" He broke off, his mind besieged in a rush
with the fierce regret which had been his ever since, but a few hours
before he had heard the words of self-renunciation fall unconsciously
from his master's lips. But--fate willing--there should be no more
such talk! He, Birbal, would force on war; he would make Akbar, as
unconsciously, play his part in common-sense, grasping Kingship.
"Yea," he continued urbanely, "were it not that the poor, thriving,
are content, thanks to Todar Mull's wise ruling----"
The Kattri's face, yellow of tint, fleshy of contour, seemed to take
on bone and muscle, and his oiliness of manner roughened into swift
decision. "Aye!" he returned, "they grow more content, poor souls,
but, 'tis the King who starts me on the trail. I go even now to
discuss a new idea of his with Abulfazl, whose head truly hath no peer
for detail."
"Yea!" put in Birbal, "but the King's Diwan is even now using it in
showing the details of the King's work to the Englishmen, while the
Portuguese priests scowl at the intrusion of new claimants to
commerce. Lo! I grow weary of these strangers. Why should Akbar make
their way smooth?"
Todar Mull, his inherited aptitude for the problems of money showing
in the eyes which were keen even for fractions in a man's character,
looked at Birbal doubtfully.
"Wherefore not?" he asked. "Lo! I have had speech with these new men,
and there is that of free-trading, unfettered by aught save gold or
the lack of it, in them which compels approval. For see you, in the
end gold is the essence of all things. I tell thee were it not for
piety I myself would bow down to it and worship with a 'Hallowed be
thy name.'"
Birbal's mimetic face became preternaturally grave, but there was a
twinkle in his eye: "'Twould not"--he bowed courteously--"be so bulky
a divinity as Todar Mull's present pantheon, which, if rumour says
sooth, already runs to cart-loads."
The financier flushed. This allusion to his habit of carrying
waggons-full of household gods about with him when on tour brought a
quick reproach: "Jest not at the Gods, O! Brahmin-born," he said.
Birbal's whole expression changed. "Not at the All-Embracing One, for
sure; but for the little brass god-lings."
Todar Mull edged away nervously. "Let be--let be! Rajah Sahib. Each
for his own belief, and the Almighty's curse lodge on the hindmost, so
it be not me! Now go I to the statistic makers; for see you, without
figures man is lost in this world."
They parted company, and Birbal looked after the retreating Finance
Minister with a frown.
What was the use of it all! Was it not better far to eat, to drink,
knowing that to-morrow one must die? So his thoughts turned, as they
always did, to the present; to the one portion of time which even Fate
could not filch from a living man. The advent of the Syedan of Barha
meant, doubtless, appeal to the King. An appeal to which the King must
not, of course, listen. As to that, Abulfazl must be seen, and at
once.
He found him in the royal storehouses, his yellow-brown eyes clear
with pride as he pointed out the system on which they were worked to
the three Englishmen who stood, centring, with the curious
half-contemptuous gaze of another world, the leisured bustle in the
wide courtyards.
"His Majesty," explained Abulfazl grandiloquently, "having acquainted
himself with the theory and practice of every manufacture, is thus
able to distinguish between good and bad work. So, the intrinsic value
of each article being settled by the State in reference to a certain
fixed standard, neither worthy labour nor true art can fall into
discredit."
Ralph Fitch looked queerly at the carts unlading and lading, at the
groups of experts settling true values, at the artificers waiting
patiently for the verdict; certain, if their work were up to the
standard, of immediate sale.
"And what of the merchants?" he asked sharply. "Where does their
profit----?"
"Their profit is settled also," interrupted the Diwan with simple
pride, "and they are content." His voice took on sternness as he
added, "They have, indeed, no choice; since all articles unstamped by
the testing houses are liable to confiscation, and the possessors
thereof to fine."
"Cheer thee up, Ralph," laughed John Newbery into his companion's
appalled face as they moved on to a new court, "and thank heaven we be
not thus tied by the apron strings! Though, by our Lady, this King
Echebar has a trick o' keeping cables taut which would make me almost
wish to enter his service would he but command some adventure to the
Poles."
William Leedes looked up quickly. "Nay," he said, "before God I would
rather quit this land and leave it--as it is."
He paused, for John Newbery's attention had passed as his roving eyes
settled themselves surprised, yet approvingly, on the long lines of
light which followed the rows on rows of steel lance heads, swords,
and matchlocks lining the walls of the vast armoury into which they
entered. It was full to the brim with every conceivable instrument of
war, many of them strange to Western eyes. But Abulfazl gave no time
for inspection. With the brief explanation, "The Most-Excellent is
yonder at work," he passed through one of the wide arches fitted with
massive doors which were now set open to the sunlight, and joined a
group of men who stood in the courtyard beyond.
A sharp report, followed by the whistling ping of a bullet as it
struck a target outlined on the farther wall, cut the hot air keenly,
and Akbar, who had been kneeling for better aim, stood up rubbing his
shoulder. He was dressed in a white overall, not unsmirched with
grease, and his grizzled hair showed free of covering.
"It hits hard enough behind anyhow, sir smith," he said
good-humouredly to a swarthy half-naked workman who looked down the
still smoking barrel of the newly tried gun with a doubtful air. "Nay!
'tis not the grooving. That idea holds good. It is something in the
chamber. Bring it this evening to the Palace, and we will see to it.
Hast aught else for trial?"
The next instant, after one careless salute to the newcomers he was
deep in the mechanism of a complicated gun, and his face lit up as he
looked. "See you," he went on--apparently as much for himself as for
those others who, left behind by his imaginings, stood patient,
half-comprehending--"if this moving wheel duly loaded, could fit the
one barrel what need for more? The twin cannon fired by one match
which we made last year works well, but this will be better--if it can
be compassed." And then suddenly as his hands fingered ratchet wheel
and eccentric, bolt and socket with sure practical touch, his eyes
grew full of dreams.
"Lo! we work in the dark," he murmured, "since none know why the
bullet curves, and so the worst may do as well, nay better than the
best. 'Twas an old matchlock snatched from a sleepy sentry which gave
me empire."
He paused, back in thought to that false dawn before the trenches at
Chitore when, going his rounds after his wont, alone and in darkness,
he had seen upon the ramparts of the besieged town the figure of his
foe also going his rounds, but by the light of lanterns.
It had been a long shot, but in the dawn Chitore was his, and he was
Emperor of India. Yet, once again, almost overmastering regret came
over him for the past horrors of that sun-bright dawn. The awful
onslaught of saffron-robed heroes, doomed to desperate death, which he
had seen against the rolling clouds of dense white smoke that rose
from the very bowels of the earth, where, in dark caves, the Rajput
women were burning--self-immolated!
Then as he stood there fingering the outcome of his uncontrollable
desire for success, all his victories seemed to slip from him for the
moment; he remembered--as, nearly two thousand years before him
another great King of India had remembered--nothing but his regret. At
the moment he, also, could have inscribed an edict for all time
setting forth his sorrow for "the hundreds of thousands of God's
creatures needlessly slain." But the next instant the mood passed and
he turned with almost insolent regality to the English adventurers.
"Yet tell your queen, sir travellers," he said, "that Akbar holds the
best gun to be the best key to empire."
John Newbery looked at Ralph Fitch, who bowed his answer:
"Most Excellent, we will give the message without fail."
As they passed on, Birbal paused a moment beside Abulfazl to whisper
in his ear:
"The Barha hawks are in. Hast news of them?"
The Diwan nodded: "The King sees them at audience to-day to
consider----"
Birbal interrupted with a bitter laugh: "Before God, Abul," he said,
with his habitual shrug of the shoulders, "when the Most-Excellent
thinks of himself as Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith, he
is too excellent for this world. Better sure a little injustice than
that the King should back on himself. It is not time for weakness.
What does he say?"
"'The Law-maker cannot break the law,'" replied the Diwan softly, and
in his voice there was a touch both of irritation and of pride.
So in the sunshine the eyes of those two followed the King who dreamt
such strange new dreams of duty and responsibility toward his
subjects.