Whirr spindles on my rushing reel
Leap thread from out my fingers feel.
Time dwindles! Fate will cut the thread
Sleep dead! Before her grinding wheel
Kindles life's spark again for woe or weal.
Birbal paused on Atma's threshold listening to her deep voice backed
by the burring hum of her spinning wheel, and as he listened he
shivered. This thought of unending life aroused from death or ever the
tired eyes were fast closed appalled him. Not for him such slight
slumber!
Then he knocked. There was a sound of quick uprising from within, a
swift echo of footsteps and then Atma's voice at the door said with a
breathlessness in it:
"What is't? Hast brought news--is all well?"
"Well or ill matters naught" he replied cavalierly. "Open! I come from
the King."
But the phrase had lost its charm, "Go thy way, Chamberlain of
Princes!" came the mocking answer. "Once bit, twice shy."
"Thou mistakest, sister" urged Birbal, who knowing Mirza Ibrahim's
reputation, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of Atma Devi's
refusal. "I am Maheshwar Rao, disciple by birth of thy dead father."
The reassurance was deft, and the door held ajar upon the chain showed
Atma's figure, tall, low-browed, defiant.
"What wants my lord?" she asked, and her voice trembled as if from
some secret perturbation. "A kiss like my Lord Ibrahim, ere I turned
him out, close clipped in an embrace for which he cared not? Yet
enter--in the King's name enter to the house of his Charan."
Something there was of strain, of anxiety, in face and manner, that
made Birbal's keen eyes seek round the roof for its cause. Then he
laughed. "Nay! I seek no kisses, widow, where a lover has just left
his lips."
She stared at him haughtily. "What means my lord?"
He pointed easily to a pair of man's shoes which stood in a corner
beside the door. "Smagdarite's, sister! Ah I have your secret. He is
here, for yonder are his shoes!"
Atma's eyes following his, grew puzzled in their anger.
"Shoes!" she echoed superbly. "I see them not, my lord."
This time the laugh came more coarsely. "None so blind as the blind
beggar! Bah! woman, do I not know what woman is? He is here I
say--hath been here always, and thou didst delude me last time with
the child's voice."
He paused, for suddenly a tremulous sweet song as of some mating bird
rose on the air.
My singing soul has its nest
Near the great white Throne
Where the roses of Paradise rest
On its Corner Stone,
And the scent of those roses seems
To bring idle dreams
Of Life and Love and the Endless Quest.
Oh bird! arise
Lift up thine eyes
To the Heaven that lies
Beyond Paradise.
Once again the man who doubted all things felt a thrill almost of
fear; but Fate promptly gave him back his self-confidence, for a voice
behind him said as the song ceased.
"If my lord seeks me, I seek my lord."
He turned to find the _rebeck_ player on the threshold; but with bare
feet. So the cynical laughter rang out this time in frank amusement.
"Well designed, musician! But the shoes lie yonder." And then he
hummed gaily the refrain of a popular song.
Love to her mind
Came like the wind,
All stealthy as the cat is.
But those not blind
Next morn will find
Footsteps beneath her lattice.
A flickering smile showed on the _rebeck_ player's lips. "My lord has
learnt that of lust in the bazaar. If he desires to learn of love he
should go--to Bayazid!"
The faintly inflected play of words was out of keeping with the man
who made it; but the vague questionings concerning him which for days
past had been in Birbal's mind seemed to have vanished with his first
look at the miserable, almost squalid figure, the dull eyes, the
deathlike mask of the face. What could the fellow be but street
musician? Except--since women were incomprehensible--the widow's
lover!
Something of curiosity, however, remained.
"Bayazid?" he echoed haughtily. "What knowest thou of the drunkard who
calls himself King of Malwa?"
"That he is King of Musicians, my lord, and this slave's master. He
could tell my lord all concerning love. Aye! even as well as the Sufi
from Isphahan."
Those dull eyes seemed to take on a leer and Birbal stared at them,
startled back into questionings.
"The Sufi? What dost know of him?" he asked quickly.
"Naught!" replied the musician evasively. "Save that the servants said
he sups at the river palace this night; he and another king--Payandar
of Sinde mayhap."
He looked up again with that leer in his eyes, and the wonder died out
of Birbal's. The man was palpably a trickster; palpably trying to play
on credulity--credulity in Birbal, prince of doubters!
"Then will they sup in hell, slave," he said curtly "since Payandar
hath been dead these fifteen years. So farewell, Smagdarite, lest I
disturb love. Stay--let me see thy talisman once more."
"This dustborn atom in a beam of light resigns it," came the reply,
and for an instant Birbal stood paralysed by dim remembrance. But the
green stone on its greasy skein lay in his hands, all inert, without
perfume, without, charm.
It was like nothing so much, he told himself, as half chewed cud, and
he tossed it back contemptuously, a gold piece following it.
"That for thy pains. Farewell, widow! Luck to thy love!"
He turned to go, but the _rebeck_ player who had stooped to pick up
the coin, still stood in the doorway, and the sun flashing on the gold
he held betwixt finger and thumb seemed for a second to blind Birbal's
eyes to everything else.
"If the Most Excellent desires to hear of love," came the musician's
voice softly, "he might go to the King Bayazid's river palace--this
night--when the moon is waning. The river palace, my lord, when the
moon is waning."
The words echoed down the stairs after Birbal who seemed not to hear
them. They had, however, the opposite effect on Atma Devi; who all
this time had stood silent, apparently engrossed in listening. Now she
roused herself and turned accusingly to her companion.
"So thou has been here all the time, and it was to thee the child
talked in gray dawn and gray dusk! Wherefore did I not see thee?"
"Because thou wouldst not, sister! Because thy mind has been
elsewhere--whither God knows." She started and looked at him
half-fearfully but he went on unregarding. "It is what the will wishes
to see that is seen. To all else we are blind."
Something in the words seemed to strike a new note in her, and the
half savage, half anxious look on her face vanished. "Yes! mayhap I
have been blind," she muttered to herself despondently. "But
wherefore--Oh ye dear Gods! wherefore am I blind!"
She turned to lean over the parapet, as if to rest her eyes, her very
heart, upon the dim blue distant haze betwixt earth and sky.
"Because thou wilt not see the Truth, sister"--the voice seemed to her
to belong to that dim earth and sky--"because thou hast denied love.
Yet naught else will save the King."
She gave a startled cry but, looking round, saw that the Wayfarer had
gone. "May Shiv-jee protect me" she murmured to herself. "He is
magician for sure. Yet is he wrong. I am no woman, but the King's
Charan, I have done my duty!" So, clenching her hands she sate and
dreamed for him of safety, honour, empire.
Birbal, meanwhile, dreamt the same dream as he plunged into the
increasing intricacy of cabal which centred round his master.
So he gave no thought at all to so contemptible a person as the
opium-drugged, song-besotted Bayazid who still styled himself the King
of Malwa, though he had fled from royalty for the sake of a dead
dancing girl; as if any woman were worth such a sacrifice! True, the
tragic tale of Rupmati, the poetess, musician, singer, ultimate
artist, who had made her King forget even statesmanship for seven long
happy years, had its aesthetic beauty. One could picture the
consternation of the dove-cot when Adham Khan, Akbar's general and
foster-brother put the royal lover to flight; picture still more
easily, knowing Adham Khan's nature, his defiance of orders, and the
proposals he made to Rupmati. While the rest was pure poetry! The
beautiful woman dressing herself as a bride is dressed for the
conqueror's assignation, and then leaving nothing but dead flesh
awaiting him on the couch strewn with flowers. That was fine! But
Bayazid? Even though Akbar's own hand had brought retribution on
libertine Adham's head for this and other offences, he, Birbal, would
never have come cringing to the Emperor's court, to spend his time in
singing love _ghazals_. That was contemptible.
And yet as the day wore on, the memory of the _rebeck_ player's words
returned inconsequently, almost annoyingly. What was it to him,
Birbal, if Bayazid had a supper party or no? He had other corn to
parch. And he parched it consistently until, late on in the evening,
having excused himself, he knew not why, from an entertainment at the
palace, he fell asleep peacefully.
The gongs were sounding eleven when he woke suddenly to a new resolve,
which admitted of no reconsideration.
He would go to the river palace. After all, there might be something
in what the _rebeck_ player had said--he might be in the right. At any
rate there was no harm in seeing. He clapped his hands and ordered his
fast trotting bullocks. But the river palace lay some miles away in an
orange garden down by the sliding yellow stream which flows past Agra
and it was nigh on midnight ere he reached its wide open gateway.
Bidding his rath await him outside, he passed inward. A sentry slept
in the scented shadow of the archway, so he went on unchallenged into
the scented garden where the faint shadows of the waning moonlight
slept also across the broad paved walks, and on the conduits of
running water that was hastening to slake the nightly thirst of the
sun-wearied plots of pomegranate and orange trees on which the ripe
fruit hung obscure. The dim clearness seemed to show the darkness;
above all the utter darkness of the great pile of the palace.
No signs here of a supper party! The fact whetted his curiosity, and
he went on, feeling himself the only live thing in a world of drugs
and dreams.
In the hallway another drowsy servant showed, curled up half asleep
upon the floor.
"Your master?" asked Birbal.
"Roofways," came the answer with a yawn.
The whole place seemed opium-soddened; there was a cloying savour of
poppy and dead roses in the narrow turret stairs which led upward; so
narrow that the stone wall on either side was polished by the elbows
of the passers up and down.
The first floor was dark save for the fading moonlight seen through
the open window archways, so he went up again, until the wide roof set
amid the encircling shadowy trees through which the pale gleam of the
river showed, lay beneath his feet.
And overhead were the stars beginning their watch of the night.
One seemed to have fallen from heaven to burn in a silver filagree
shrine, in shape like a domed mausoleum, which was the only thing
dimly visible in the darkness; that, and still more dimly the lute
with broken strings which lay before it illumined by the twinkling
light.
"Bayazid!"
He stood and called; till from the night beyond the light came a
chanting, drowsy, half coherent voice--
None knows the Secret! Therefore take the cup
Lightly with laughing lip and drink it up.
Though it be heart's blood!--just one little sup
So ... That is good!... Now die!
"True wisdom, Hafiz, prince of poets," murmured Birbal as he went
forward and called again.
This time the answer came from near, "Yea! I am Bayazid. Welcome
friend!"
He was resting on cushions behind the shrine and the light from its
little lamp showed him, long, lank, listless. But the wide eyes in
which burnt the dull fires of the Dreamgiver, recognised the visitor,
and the man who had been King of Malwa roused himself to give
salutation with stately ceremonial courtesy, and motioned Birbal to a
seat beside him. As the latter sank into the cushions they gave out a
scent of roses, and swift memory--swiftest of all for perfumes--made
him look round hastily; but the roof showed no sign of other living
soul.
"It is good of my lord to come so far and so late," murmured Bayazid.
"In what can I help my Lord?" The words came drowsily. He seemed in
danger of falling asleep once and for all.
"I came to see Payandar, King of Sinde," said Birbal sharply. If that
did not rouse the besotted fool nothing else would. The result was, in
its way, excellent. Bayazid sate up instantly and laid his hand on
Birbal's arm.
"What of Payandar?" he queried, his face working. "What of the Master
of Love? Does he indeed live, as some folk say?"
"That Bayazid should know, better than some folk," replied Birbal
dryly, "since he was to have supped here to-night."
"To-night" echoed Bayazid. "Nay, not to-night, or she would have told
me. She knows the Secret now!"
Birbal laughed lightly. "As we shall all know it--or not know it some
day! As Payandar knows it also, since he died in the desert."
A sudden bitter exaltation came to the half-seen haggardness of the
face, the voice rang almost militantly.
"Aye! in the desert, driven thither as we dreamers of love are driven
ever, by lust--man's lust! Lo! thou knowest of my own seven happy
years--of my songstress who sang of love--of the viper who slew her
and slew the King in me. Ohi Rupmati, Rupmati! Were it not that thou
comest to me ever in the song of birds, in the breeze of the night, in
God's sunshine and in his flowers, I too would seek the desert and
save myself from the deadly companionship of my kind. So I wait for
thee and thy broken lute." He sank back into his cushions stilled by
the very violence of his emotions; but after a while his voice went on
more and more drowsily. "That the world knows. All know the tale of
Bayazid and Rupmati. But who knows the story of Payandar? Shall I tell
it as she told it me? How he loved a Rose in a garden of roses; naught
but a gardener's daughter--and he a Prince of the Tarkhans. What do
the Tarkhans know of Love? But he knew. He loved her--aye! though he
was Heir. So, vile utterly, his father betrayed him. A bastard younger
brother did the deed one night in the Garden of Roses, and when dawn
came the Rosebud had been plucked, despoiled! He left Kingship, and
died mad in the desert--so they say! But Love cannot die. Even in the
Wilderness there is a Rose Garden ready for it. So he took the Rosebud
thither, plucked, despoiled, soiled, bruised, and broken. And out of
Death came Life. Out of Lust came Love, though the child was a
crippled thing, despoiled, spoiled, bruised, and broken by its birth.
But Death came also to the Rosebud in the Rose Garden of Love, amidst
the perfume of roses. Is it not even now in the air? Is not the
darkness full of the Essence of Love. Ohi, Ohi Rupmati! let me hearken
to thy broken lute."
Was it fancy, or mingled with the faint sighing of the night wind
amongst many leaves, and the fainter rush of the sliding river was
there a sound as of jangled music?
Birbal sate arrested for a second, then, seeing from the supineness of
the figure beside him, that all hope of further speech with the
drug-eater was over, rose impatiently and made his way downstairs,
asking himself why he had come.
He paused astonished, however, to find the lower story no longer dark.
It was, on the contrary, brilliantly lit, servants were flitting
about, and in the central room, whose twelve arches gave on
surrounding arched aisles, which in their turn gave on overshadowing
trees and river gleam, a supper cloth was laid for two.
And by all the Gods! The figure which sate there holding a cup of wine
in its raised right hand was the Sufi from Isphahan!