_A thousand ships have foundered here before
So lost, no chip of them came back to shore.
I, too, on those waves wandered many a night,
Till terror plucked my sleeve, and cried "No More!
Back to the land! God's wide horizon rings
Thee and the worlds. Thinkst thou the King of kings
To compare by conjecture? Ah! poor wight,
Wisdom itself, wists not His hidden things_."
--Sa'adi.
When Mihr-un-nissa fled from the Prince in the garden, she did not fly
far. Just round the corner waiting for her return, stood her covered
palanquin, her dutiful duenna. For Mussumat Fatima had long since
given up attempting to control her young mistress. To begin with, she
had found out that Mihr-un-nissa was not as other girls. She was wild
as a young hawk, but there it ended. Except in so far as uttermost
mischief went, she was to be trusted; there never was any fear of love
letters or any improprieties of that sort. So, if she chose to fancy
sitting beside a fountain by herself in the women's garden, where was
the harm? She was a mound of sense; so much so, that on this hot
afternoon (heaven knows why the child had insisted on coming out--to
ruin her complexion, doubtless, if she could--but she couldn't--from
the crown of her head to the sole of her foot there wasn't a speck or
a freckle) no one could blame a body for dozing in the dhooli and
dreaming.
"La! child! How thou didst frighten me," gasped Fatima, as a tornado
of yellow and purple draperies flung itself breezily on the top of her
fat person.
"Oh! Futtu! Futtu!" panted the girl, half laughter, half tears. "I
have seen him!"
"What, again!" shrilled the duenna, waking instantly to a sense of her
responsibilities. "Impudence! knowest thou not that paper boats don't
float for ever, and that who lacks modesty lacks conscience?"
"Oh! have done with second-hand wisdom," said the girl, superbly. "And
it was not him--It was the Prince--Prince Salim."
Fatima let loose a shriek. "Oh! my liver! An' thou darest to tell me!
'Tis bread and water for a week, miss----"
"And I spoke to him and he spoke to me," continued the culprit,
calmly; out of sheer perversity, reversing the order of events.
Fatima let loose a louder shriek. "What! Lo! the noose is round thy
neck, and mine too! May the devil be deaf! If folk hear----"
But the girl who had drawn aside with distaste and was now seated half
in and half out of the palanquin, interrupted the duenna
contemptuously. "Futtu, thou art a full-weight fool. Why dost not
remember it needs skill to do wrong instead of making thy nose red
with wrath?"
Suddenly she stood up, a curiously defiant figure. "Lo! I am sick of
saws and sayings. I want to know at first hand! And I will know. Call
the carriers. I go to Atma Devi. Lo! I have tried, as thou knowest, to
see in the ink again; but it comes not. I lack the charm she said; she
shall teach it me. Nay!" she continued stemming Fatima's rising flood
of denials, "See here, fool. If thou deniest me I go straight home,
and tell--not _my_ mother, she would be pleased--but Sher Afkan's, and
then----" She clasped the old woman's neck with both hands and
squeezed it tight. "Does it feel nice, Futtu?" she asked solicitously.
So it came to pass that just as the sun was setting, its last rays
sparkled on Mihr-un-nissa's jewelled hair, as she sate on the Charan's
roof waiting for the drop of ink to fall into her palm. She was more
woman than child now, since she had watched the birth of desire, and
of something more than desire, in Prince Salim's eyes. So that was
love! A queer thing, at best, it must be to feel as he must have felt,
before he could look so poor a slave. If that was love, she could not
give it back. What! give homage to a lout of a lad? And yet the
Queenship! Oh! if it had been Akbar himself, then she would have known
what to do, for he was King indeed! Or if--yes! if it had been
"_him_," for he was a man indeed!
Drop ink and hide my flesh,
Cover my worldly ways.
Then let God's light afresh
Mirror God's praise.
Drop ink, drop deep,
Cover in sleep
My night of nights and bring the day of days.
This time the chanted words thrilled little Mihr-un-nissa through and
through. For once--and perhaps for the first time in her young life
she was in deadly earnest. But, once again poor Atma's mind was far
from her spell. Ever since Deena that morning had brought her word of
Diswunt's death, regret, remorse had warred with her defiance. It was
strange. What did it mean? Had he regretted? And wherefore? At times
absorbed with fear lest she should have betrayed the King, she had
been ready to seek out Birbal and tell him the truth, risking her own
life. But there was her promise, her sisters-troth with Siyah Yamin.
That cut both ways. It forced her to silence, so long as the courtezan
kept troth. And had she not? Had not Atma Devi seen with her own eyes
Aunt Rosebody's hand close on the diamond? Could it be in better
keeping?
"If the gracious child will complete the circle of magic," she began,
when Mihr-un-nissa's laugh rang out disdainfully.
"What! to see what thou thinkest? Not so! What I shall see, what I
shall do, is of my own gift. Stand back woman!--touch me not!"
Drop ink, drop deep,
Cover in sleep
My night of nights and bring the day of days.
She chanted the words lingeringly and for an instant there was
silence while those two women, the fat, worldly duenna, and the
passion-distraught denier of her sex, listened and looked with
long-drawn tense breathings. It was deadly earnest to them also. Would
she see? Could she see? Such things were, they knew, beyond the magic
frauds of fortune-tellers.
And then suddenly the sweet round voice rose eagerly.
"I see! Holy prophet! I see--It is the Prince; but Lord! how fat he
hath grown and how old--I think he is the King----"
Fatima under her breath muttered "An old King's better than a young
Prince."
Mihr-un-nissa flashed round on her. "'An egg to-day's better than a
hen to-morrow,' so there! saw-sayer!" Then she looked again. "Sher
Afkan this time. He hath a scar upon his face that suits him well, and
a drawn sword."
"'The soldier gains his bread, by the risking of his head,'" murmured
the irrepressible Fatima.
"'Lie you must, or your belly will bust,'" quoted Mihr-un-nissa
shamelessly, too interested, really, to do more than fling a reply in
this war of wise sayings. "Lo! clouds--clouds--nothing but clouds
again. What's this? Crossed swords and someone fighting for his life.
Holy Prophet! save him! save him! Clouds again. That is my face grown
old--and I am all in white," the girl's voice seemed to shrink in on
itself; her eyes, startled, looked indeed as if across the chasm of
the years she saw herself as she would be. "Surely I am widow--and
there's the King once more." She drew back from her own hand as she
might have drawn back from fate. "Then _he_ was not killed," she
muttered in a low whisper. "It must have been the--the other. Oh help!
help! help!"
She started to her feet, and as if in answer to her scarce audible
cry, a violent knocking shook the door.
"Open! Open! in the King's name, open!"
The command reduced even Mihr-un-nissa to the conventional quiet which
on such occasions sinks on an Indian woman's house, when those are
within who should not be seen.
You might have heard a pin drop.
"Atma Devi, Charan of the King, open to his demand," came Birbal's
voice, clear, unmistakeable, followed quickly by the order--"Break
open the door, slaves, I must see if she be within ere seeking
elsewhere."
There was no time to lose. Instinctively Fatima, holding fast to her
charge and dragging her with her, fled noiselessly to the closed door
of the slip of a room where Zarifa lay sleeping, and Mihr-un-nissa
herself seeing no other way out of the _impasse_, allowed herself to
be dragged, as stealthily, as noiselessly.
None too soon, for as the latter motioning her duenna arbitrarily to
the farther corner of the darkness was limply closing the door so as
to allow a crack for hearing, a crash told that one bolt of the outer
one had given way, and Atma Devi's voice rang out--
"Hold! I will open to my Lord Birbal."
His voice in return came through from without. "So thou wouldst spare
thy lock, widow! See that thou spare thy life also! Slaves--get you
gone--await me on the landing below, and if I call, come."
A moment after he was facing Atma Devi, his face pale with
contemptuous passion.
"No lies, widow," he began at once. "I have come for the truth. Old
Deena, the drumbanger, hath blabbed somewhat! I have gathered more in
the bazaars. Thou art in this plot of the King's Luck, or thou knowest
something of Siyah Yamin's part in it. Speak or----"
The flash of the poniard he held met an answering flash, as Atma
slipped forward, the death-dagger of her race ready on the instant,
her passion roused instinctively at the sight of his.
"The King's Charan," she replied haughtily, "knows how to die--knows
how to protect the King's Luck; and as for Siyah Yamin she is my
sister of the veil. Between us lies troth--to death."
That had been her chief thought during the past few hours. It had
indeed been her consolation in the vague regrets which had assailed
her. Siyah Yamin was hand-fast to her. The courtesan had repeated the
oath solemnly when Atma Devi in restless anxiety had gone to her
again; what is more she had given words of warning against Birbal,
against the faction which he and Abulfazl represented. She had
stigmatised them as self-seeking, as those who led the King astray.
And had he not gone astray? Was there not, to begin with, this new
edict forbidding widows to burn with their husbands? Would not the
next step--if these two remained his advisers--be the forbidding of
women to be widows indeed?
Every atom of womanhood in her, all tangled and torn apart by the
plucking fingers of natural instinct and inherited ethics, rose up in
revolt against herself, against everybody, everything in the world
save that one thing--the King's honour, the King's Luck.
She stood surging in uttermost rebellion, and Birbal realised that a
deftless word, almost a deftless look, would send the dagger of her
race to her woman's heart.
So, realising also his mistake in having thus driven his last chance
of discovery into such sharp antagonism, he shrugged his shoulders,
strolled over to the parapet, and sate dangling his legs in his usual
debonair fashion. But his keen eyes were on hers.
"Thy pardon, sister," he said. "Who can doubt that the King's Charan
has his luck at heart, and it is for this, that I have come to thee.
Now listen."
He paused and but for his intentness those keen eyes of his might have
seen the faintest quiver of the door opposite him, as if someone
behind it wished to hear better.
"The King's Luck, given to the stranger to be cut, hath been stolen
from the lathe, and a false gem put in its place. Shall I tell thee
how?" his questioning eyes found hers with a baffling stare in them
and he went on. "A thief--Pahlu, prince of thieves most likely, but I
have naught against him as yet--managed entry to the empty workshop
next to the diamond by scarce-seen clamps in the outer brick wall. He
must have worked hard, and risked his life many dark, midnight hours;
but he did it. The clamps remain. And doubtless he had a silken rope.
Then Diswunt, the King's painter, beguiled the foreign jeweller out of
his cell for a second or two. So the deed was done. But who beguiled
Diswunt? Siyah Yamin doubtless. I have proof of that--but the boy was
loyal. It would need some sense of duty, of devotion, to beguile him;
that I know. Now, thou didst go to his house, not once but twice--of
that, also, I have found proof. Wherefore? That is what, in the King's
name, I ask?"
He paused for a reply, but none came, and his face hardened.
"Now listen further," he went on again. "Of another thing I have but
too much proof. The court is astir. But now, I passed that hell-doomed
cur Khodadad, and he smiled at me--at me, his bitterest enemy! So he
is content. Some plot is afoot, and the foundation of all plots is the
Prince Salim--they seek to oust Akbar and place the drunken lout,
slave to his own passions and so slave to theirs, upon the King's
throne."
Atma laughed scornfully. "That will they never do--my Lord the King
hath too many friends."
"And too many enemies, also," retorted Birbal. "Fool thou dost not
see, thou dost not understand--thou art but a woman of whom men expect
naught!"
It was growing dusk rapidly so a faint widening in the door-chink
passed unnoticed.
"Now listen again!" he went on yet once more. "Thou hast been often to
Siyah Yamin's of late, and Deena hath a tale of two veiled women at
the Palace last night----"
There was the faintest flicker of a flinch in Atma's eyes, and he was
on his feet in a second, stretching out an accusing hand toward her.
"Thou wast there--thou and that accursed harlot--deny it not!"
She withdrew a pace and set her back to the wall. "I deny nothing, and
I affirm nothing, my lord," she replied coolly, obstinately, though
she felt torn in two by the conflict of her doubts.
"Fool!" he blazed out again. "I tell thee every second may be
precious! Listen--if thou canst listen, being but woman! Not only the
court, but within the last hour or so the soldiery, the people, show
unrest also, and we may be undone this night! I myself can scarce
understand.--It has come in a second like a miracle--as of some
talisman----" his quick wit caught at his own words--"I have it!--The
King's Luck! the Prince hath it."
In a second he had gripped both Atma's wrists with his lithe hands and
held her pinned to the wall. "Tell me, fool! All things rest on it
mayhap--all things for which we have worked and hoped--for which he
hath worked and hoped--the peace, the unity of India. Say! woman!
Didst give it to the Prince?" Then seeing the utter obstinacy of her
face, he realised the futility of wasting time with her, when he had
found a cue which might lead to much elsewhere, and throwing her hands
from him with a curse on all womanhood, he turned to go relying on his
own keen wit.
But another keen wit joined to a mind capable of comprehension had
been at work behind the chink. There was a faint scuffle, a muffled
shriek, as Fatima, who had heard nothing, made a dive at her little
mistress's dress as she flung the door wide, and stepped out. Fate
forced the duenna to grip the veil, so she only made matters worse;
for Mihr-un-nissa stood bare-headed before the strange man.
Birbal, however, even in his hurry to seek help elsewhere, did not
need such trivialities as veils to make him pause with instant
consideration for the dignity of the slim young figure which barred
his way.
"My lord," came the full rich young voice, "need not rail at all
womankind. Here is one who will tell him the truth for the sake of
Kingship. Peace! Atma!" continued the girl, turning hotly on the
Charan who would have interrupted, "thou understandest not, so be
silent! My lord! I judge the talisman of the King's luck to be at this
moment in Prince Salim's turban. For at the palace this morning, I saw
Khanzada Umm Kulsum sewing somewhat into a relic bag for this purpose,
and she denied me knowledge. Nay! I am sure of it----."
She paused and Birbal asked quickly:
"Will the Queen-of-Women give reason?"
The girl's face suddenly dimpled into smiles, a mischievous twinkle
took her eyes captive.
"Because the Most-Excellent the Heir-Apparent straightway came out of
the Palace and fell in love with me."
A shriek of horror from Fatima who was employed in attempting to
re-enshroud the young girl's beauty emphasised the absolute
impropriety of the remark, but Birbal bowed to the very ground.
"That is Luck beyond the Luck of Kings, madam," he said, "and reason
beyond question. This Speck of Dust in the Court of Intellect gives
thanks for the Truth, and withdraws his earthly clay"--he paused, for
as he turned to go he saw the _rebeck_ player standing on the
threshold. "Back slave!" he cried at once impetuously--"this roof is
sacred to a Queen."
But the musician's pale face lit up suddenly. "A Queen suffers
no ill from the eyes of a King," he replied, fixing his gaze on
Mihr-un-nissa. So for an instant they stood, measuring one another;
then the man turned quickly to Birbal, "Come, my lord," he said, "the
Sufi from Isphahan desires to see the Most Excellent!--when he can
withdraw his earthly clay from the presence of the Queen of Queens."
Mihr-un-nissa stood looking after them as they disappeared, nodding
her head with a superior air. Then, in sudden change, she clapped her
hands together joyfully like a child. "That is good," she cried.
"It is lovely to be called that. Lo! I would do most things for
that--except marry the Prince! Yea! most things so that it was the
Luck of a real King!" Something in her own words made her pause. "That
must be safeguarded," she murmured, as if to herself. Then she wheeled
round and caught the fat duenna by both hands and tried to force her
to her knees.
"Kneel, Fatima, or I will hurt thee! Kneel, dost hear? What! thou
disobeyest me!" A stamp of her foot emphasised her order, and brought
the fat duenna down in a hurry.
"Say! didst hear aught?" asked the girl superbly. "In the room, I
mean, not here."
"Highness, not a word!" protested Fatima; "but what I heard here--what
I saw here--have made me deaf and blind for ever."
"So much the better, Futtu, so much the better," nodded Mihr-un-nissa
wisely. "Still 'tis always best to be on the safe side. So put thy
mouth in the dust and say after me:
"May crows pick out mine eyes.
"Say! dost hear?
"May crows pick out mine eyes."
An ineffectual murmur came from the dust.
"May pigs devour my thighs."
The dust had evidently got into the speaker's mouth, for the words
became more and more inaudible, as the stern young teacher went on:
"My heart rot carrion wise,
My liver be eaten with flies,
My lights blown up with sighs,
Myself, my son, and all that I prize
Burn in a fire that never dies
If ever I open my lips to say
The things I have heard and have seen to-day."
"So!" said Mihr-un-nissa when the formula was over, "that's done. And
as for thee?" she passed quickly to Atma Devi, who, half stunned by
the swift mastery with which the girl had taken the whole business out
of her hands, still stood leaning blankly against the blank wall and
looked her curiously in the eyes. "Why wouldst thou not tell? And
wherefore didst thou steal the diamond?"
Then as she stood childishly curious, comprehension came to her and
she smiled half-contemptuously half-mysteriously.
"So, thou also lookest a slave," she said, "poor slave!"
But as she and Fatima went whisperingly down the stairs, the faint
clatter of their loose slippers mingling like castanets amid the soft
swishing of silk, the jingling of jewels, she paused to listen to a
bird-like voice singing:
Love dost live in the red rose garden?
Love dost grow from a red rose root?
Dost set thy springe with th' boughs that harden
Or twine it soft with the young green shoot?
Love! dost thou lurk in the red rose-bud?
Love! is thy throne in the rose-heart's crown?
Love! does the perfume of red rose flood
In on the soul till the senses drown?
Nay!
Love lives not in a garden of roses,
Root nor bough nor the young green shoot,
Bud nor chalice the perfume encloses
Of Love lying lowly at Love's own feet.
For Love is the Rose, Love is the Star
Love is the heart of things near and afar,
And afar--and afar--and afar!
Mihr-un-nissa shook her head, as the whispering descent began again.
Of a truth Love was far, very far, away.