THE TURQUOISE RING
The Prince of India, left in the passage of the Castle with Sergius,
was not displeased with the course the adventure appeared to be taking.
In the first place, he felt no alarm for Lael; she might be
uncomfortable in the quarter to which she had been conducted, but that
was all, and it would not last long. The guardianship of the eunuch was
in his view a guaranty of her personal safety. In the next place,
acquaintance with the Princess might prove serviceable in the future.
He believed Lael fitted for the highest rank; she was already educated
beyond the requirements of the age for women; her beauty was
indisputable; as a consequence, he had thought of her a light in the
court; and not unpleasantly it occurred to him now that the fair
Princess might carry keys for both the inner and outer doors of the
royal residence.
Generally the affair which was of concern to Lael was an affair of
absorbing interest to the Prince; in this instance, however, another
theme offered itself for the moment a superior attraction.
The impression left by the young master of ceremonies in the reception
at the landing was of a kind to arouse curiosity. His appearance,
manner, speech and the homage paid him denoted exalted rank; while the
confidence with which he spoke for Sultan Amurath was most remarkable.
His acceptance of the terms presented by the Princess Irene was little
short of downright treaty-making; and what common official dared carry
assumption to such a height? Finally the Prince fell to thinking if
there was any person the actual governor of the Castle would quietly
permit to go masquerading in his authority and title.
Then everything pointed him to Prince Mahommed. The correspondence in
age was perfect; the martial array seen galloping down the bank was a
fitting escort for the heir-apparent of the gray Sultan; and he alone
might with propriety speak for his father in a matter of state.
"A mistake cannot be serious," said the Prince to himself, at the end
of the review. "I will proceed upon the theory that the young man is
Prince Mahommed."
This was no sooner determined than the restless mind flew forward to an
audience. The time and place--midnight in the lonesome old Castle--were
propitious, and he was prepared for it.
Indeed it was the very purpose he had in view the night of the repast
in his tent at El Zaribah where he so mysteriously intrusted the Emir
Mirza with revelations concerning the doom of Constantinople.
Once more he ran over the scheme which had brought him from Cipango. If
Islam could not be brought to lead in the project, Christendom might be
more amenable to reason. The Moslem world was to be reached through the
Kaliph whom he expected to find in Egypt; wherefore his contemplated
trip down the Nile from Kash-Cush. If driven to the Christian,
Constantine was to be his operator. Such in broadest generality was the
plan of execution he had resolved upon.
But to these possibilities he had appended another of which it is now
necessary to speak.
Enough has been given to apprise the reader of the things to which the
Prince preferably devoted himself. These were international affairs,
and transcendently war. If indeed the latter were not the object he had
always specially in mind, it was the end to which his management
usually conducted. For mere enjoyment in the sight of men facing the
death which strangely passed him by, he delighted in hovering on the
edge of battle until there was a crisis, and then plunging into its
heated heart.
He had also a peculiar method of bringing war about. This consisted in
providing for punishments in case his enterprises miscarried.
Invariably somebody suffered for such failures. In that way he soothed
the pangs of wounded vanity.
When he was inventing the means for executing his plots, and forming
the relations essential to them, it was his habit to select instruments
of punishment in advance.
Probably no better illustration of this feature of his dealings can be
given than is furnished by the affair now engaging him. If he failed to
move the Kaliph to lead the reform, he would resort to Constantine; if
the Emperor also declined, he would make him pay the penalty; then came
the reservation. So soon after his arrival from Cipango as he could
inform himself of the political conditions of the world to which he was
returning, he fixed upon Mahommed to avenge him upon the offending
Greek.
The meeting with Mirza at El Zaribah was a favorable opportunity to
begin operating upon the young Turk. The tale the Emir received that
night under solemn injunctions of secrecy was really intended for his
master. How well it was devised for the end in view the reader will be
able to judge from what is now to follow.
The audience with Mahommed determined upon by the Prince of India, our
first point of interest is in observing how he set about accomplishing
it. His promptness was characteristic.
Directly the ladies had disappeared with the eunuch, the soldiers
poured from their hiding places in the Castle, and seeing one whom he
judged an officer, the Prince called to him in Turkish:
"Ho, my friend!"
The man was obliging.
"Present my salutations to the Governor of the Castle, and say the
Prince of India desires speech with him."
The soldier hesitated.
"Understand," said the Prince, quickly, "my message is not to the great
Lord who received me at the landing. But the Governor in fact. Bring
him here."
The confident manner prevailed.
Presently the messenger returned with a burly, middle-aged person in
guidance. A green turban above a round face, large black eyes in
muffling of fleshy lids, pallid cheeks lost in dense beard, a drab gown
lined with yellow fur, a naked cimeter in a silk-embroidered sash,
bespoke the Turk; but how unlike the handsome, fateful-looking
masquerader at the river side!
"The Prince of India has the honor of speech with the Governor of the
Castle?"
"God be praised," the Governor replied. "I was seeking your Highness.
Besides wishing to join in your thanks for happy deliverance from the
storm, I thought to discharge my duty as a Moslem host by conducting
you to refreshments and repose. Follow me, I pray."
A few steps on the way, the Governor stopped:
"Was there not a companion--a younger man--a Dervish?"
"A monk," said the Prince; "and the question reminds me of my
attendant, a negro. Send for him--or better, bring them both to me. I
wish them to share my apartment."
In a short time the three were in quarters, if one small room may be so
dignified. The walls were cold gray stone; one oblong narrow port-hole
admitted scanty light; a rough bench, an immense kettle-drum shaped
like the half of an egg-shell, and propped broadside up, some piles of
loose straw, each with folded sheepskins on it, constituted the
furnishment.
Sergius made no sign of surprise or disappointment. Possibly the
chamber and its contents were reproductions of his cell up in
Bielo-Osero. Nilo gave himself to study of the drum, reminded,
doubtless, of similar warlike devices in Kash-Cush. The Prince alone
expostulated. Taking a stand between the Governor and the door, he said:
"A question before thou goest hence."
The Turk gazed at him silently.
"To what accommodations have the Princess Irene and her attendant been
taken? Are they vile as these?"
"The reception room of my harem is the most comfortable the Castle
affords," the Governor answered.
"And they?"
"They are occupying it."
"Not by courtesy of thine. He who could put the hospitality of the
Prince Mahommed to shame by maltreating one of his guests."
He paused, and grimly surveyed the room.
"Such a servant would be as evil-minded to another guest; and that the
other is a woman, would not affect his imbruited soul."
"The Prince Mahommed!" the Governor exclaimed.
"Yes. What brings him here, matters not; his wish to keep the Romans in
ignorance of his near presence, I know as well as thou; none the less,
it was his royal word we accepted. As for thee--thou mightest have
promised faith and hospitality with thy hand on the Prophet's beard,
yet would I have bidden the Princess trust herself to the tempest
sooner."
Sergius was now standing by, but the conversation being in Turkish, he
listened without understanding.
"Thou ass!" the Prince continued. "Not to know that the kinswoman of
the Roman Emperor, under this roof by treaty with the mighty Amurath,
his son the negotiator, is our guardian! When the storm shall have
spent itself, and the waters quieted down, she will resume her journey.
Then--it may be in the morning--she will first ask for us, and then thy
master will require to know how we have passed the night. Ah, thou
beginnest to see!"
The Governor's head was drooping; his hands crossed themselves upon his
stomach; and when he raised his eyes, they were full of deprecation and
entreaty.
"Your Highness--most noble Lord--condescend to hear me."
"Speak. I am awake to hear the falsehood thou hast invented in excuse
of thy perfidy to us, and thy treason to him, the most generous of
masters, the most chivalrous of knights."
"Your Highness has greatly misconceived me. In the first place you have
forgotten the crowded state of the Castle. Every room and passage is
filled with the suite and escort of"--
He hesitated, and turned pale, like a man dropped suddenly into a great
danger. The shrewd guest caught at the broken sentence and finished it:
"Of Prince Mahommed!"
"With the suite and escort," the Governor repeated.... "In the next
place, it was not my intention to leave you unprovided. From my own
apartments, light, beds and seats were ordered to be brought here, with
meats for refreshment, and water for cleansing and draught. The order
is in course of execution now. Indeed, your Highness, I swear by the
first chapter of the Koran"--
"Take something less holy to swear by," cried the Prince.
"Then, by the bones of the Faithful, I swear I meant to make you
comfortable, even to my own deprivation."
"By thy young master's bidding?"
The Governor bent forward very low.
"Well," said the Prince, softening his manner--"the misconception was
natural."
"Yes--yes."
"And now thou hast only to prove thy intention by making it good."
"Trust me, your Highness."
"Trust thee? Ay, on proof. I have a commission"--
The Prince then drew a ring from his finger.
"Take this," he said, "and deliver it to the Emir Mirza."
The assurance of the speech was irresistible; so the Turk held out his
hand to receive the token.
"And say to the Emir, that I desire him to thank the Most Compassionate
and Merciful for the salvation of which we were witnesses at the
southwest corner of the Kaaba."
"What!" exclaimed the Governor. "Art thou a Moslem?"
"I am not a Christian."
The Governor, accepting the ring, kissed the hand offering it, and took
his departure, moving backward, and with downcast eyes, his manner
declarative of the most abject humility.
Hardly was the door closed behind the outgoing official, when the
Prince began to laugh quietly and rub his hands together--quietly, we
say, for the feeling was not merriment so much as self-gratulation.
There was cleverness in having doubted the personality of the
individual who received the refugees at the landing; there was greater
cleverness in the belief which converted the Governor into the Prince
Mahommed; but the play by which the fact was uncovered--if not a stroke
of genius, how may it be better described? The Prince of India thought
as he laughed:
"Not long now until Amurath joins his fathers, and then--Mahommed."
Presently he stopped, a step half taken, his gaze upon the floor, his
hands clasped behind him. He stood so still it would not have been
amiss to believe a thought was all the life there was in him. He
certainly did believe in astrology. Had not men been always ruled by
what they imagined heavenly signs? How distinctly he remembered the age
of the oracle and the augur! Upon their going out he became a believer
in the stars as prophets, and then an adept; afterwhile he reached a
stage when he habitually mistook the commonest natural results, even
coincidences, for confirmations of planetary forecasts. And now this
halting and breathlessness was from sudden recollection that the
horoscope lying on his table in Constantinople had relation to Mahommed
in his capacity of Conqueror. How marvellous also that from the meeting
with Constantine in the street of the city, he should have been blown
by a tempest to a meeting with Mahommed in the White Castle!
These circumstances, trifling to the reader, were of deep influence to
the Prince of India. While he stands there rigid as a figure marbleized
in mid action, he is saying to himself:
"The audience will take place--Heaven has ordered it. Would I knew what
manner of man this Mahommed is!"
He had seen a handsome youth, graceful in bearing, quick and subtle in
speech, cultivated and evidently used to governing. Very good, but what
an advantage there would be in knowing the bents and inclinations of
the royal lad beforehand.
Presently the schemer's head arose. The boyish Prince was going about
in armor when soft raiment would be excusable--and that meant ambition,
dreams of conquest, dedication to martial glory. Very good indeed! And
then his manner under the eyes of the girlish Princess--how quickly her
high-born grace had captivated him! Something impossible were he not of
a romantic turn, a poet, sentimentalist, knight errant.
The Prince clapped his hands. He knew the appeals effective with such
natures. Let the audience come.... Ah, but--
Again he sunk into thought. Youths like Mahommed were apt to be wilful.
How was he to be controlled? One expedient after another was swiftly
considered and as swiftly rejected. At last the right one! Like his
ancestors from Ertoghrul down, the young Turk was a believer in the
stars. Not unlikely he was then in the Castle by permission of his
astrologer. Indeed, if Mirza had repeated the conversation and
predictions at El Zaribah, the Prince of India was being waited for
with an impatience due a master of the astral craft. Again the Wanderer
cried, "Let the audience come!" and peace and confidence were
possessing him when a loud report and continuous rumble in the room set
the solid floor to quaking. He looked around in time to see the big
drum quivering under a blow from Nilo.
From the negro his gaze wandered to Sergius standing before the one
loophole by which light and air were let into the dismal chamber; and
recalling the monk as the sole attendant of the Princess Irene, he
thought it best to speak to him.
Drawing near, he observed the cowl thrown back, and that the face was
raised, the eyes closed, the hands palm to palm upon the breast.
Involuntarily he stopped, not because he was one of those who always
presume the most Holy Presence when prayer is being offered--he
stopped, wondering where he had seen that countenance. The delicate
features, the pallid complexion, the immature beard, the fair hair
parted in the middle, and falling in wavy locks over the shoulders, the
aspect manly yet womanly in its refinement, were strangely familiar to
him. It was his first view of the monk's face. Where had he seen it?
His memory went back, far back of the recent. A chill struck his heart.
The features, look, air, portrait, the expression indefinable except as
a light of outcoming spirit, were those of the man he had helped
crucify before the Damascus gate in the Holy City, and whom he could no
more cast out of mind than he could the bones from his body. His feet
seemed rooting into the flinty flags beneath them. He heard the
centurion call to him: "Ho, there! If thou knowest the Golgotha, come
show it." He felt the sorrowful eyes of the condemned upon him. He
struck the bloody cheek, and cried as to a beast: "Go faster, Jesus!"
And then the words, wrung from infinite patience at last broken:
"I am going, but do thou TARRY TILL I COME."
For relief, he spoke:
"What dost thou, my friend?"
Sergius opened his eyes and answered simply, "I am praying."
"To whom?"
"To God."
"Art thou a Christian?"
"Yes."
"God is for the Jew and the Moslem."
"Nay," said Sergius, looking at the Prince without taking down his
hands, "all who believe in God find happiness and salvation in Him--the
Christian as well as the Jew and the Moslem."
The questions had been put with abrupt intensity; now the inquisitor
drew back astonished. He heard the very postulate of the scheme to
which he was devoting himself--and from a boy so like the dead Christ
he was working to blot out of worship he seemed the Christ arisen!
The amazement passed slowly, and with its going the habitual shrewdness
and capacity to make servants of circumstances apparently the most
untoward returned. The youth had intellect, impressiveness, aptitude in
words, and a sublime idea. But what of his spirit--his courage--his
endurance in the Faith?
"How came this doctrine to thee?"
The Prince spoke deferentially.
"From the good father Hilarion."
"Who is he?"
"The Archimandrite of Bielo-Osero."
"A monastery?"
"Yes."
"How did he receive it?"
"From the Spirit of God, whence Christ had his wisdom--whence all good
men have their goodness--by virtue of which they, like Him, become sons
of God."
"What is thy name?"
"Sergius."
"Sergius"--the Prince, now fully recovered, exerted his power of
will--"Sergius, thou art a heretic."
At this accusation, so terrible in those days, the monk raised the
rosary of large beads dangling from his girdle, kissed the cross, and
stood surveying the accuser with pity.
"That is," the Prince continued with greater severity, "speak thou thus
to the Patriarch yonder"--he waved a hand toward Constantinople--"dare
repeat the saying to a commission appointed to try thee for heresy, and
thou wilt thyself taste the pangs of crucifixion or be cast to the
beasts."
The monk arose to his great height, and replied, fervently:
"Knowest thou when death hath the sweetness of sleep? I will tell
thee"--A light certainly not from the narrow aperture in the wall
collected upon his countenance, and shone visibly--"It is when a martyr
dies knowing both of God's hands are a pillow under his head."
The Prince dropped his eyes, for he was asking himself, was such
sweetness of sleep appointed for him? Resuming his natural manner, he
said: "I understand thee, Sergius. Probably no man in the world, go
thou East or West, will ever understand thee better. God's hands under
my head, welcome death!--Let us be friends."
Sergius took his offered hand.
Just then there was a noise at the door, and a troop of servants
entered with lighted lamps, rugs, a table, stools, and beds and
bedding, and it was not long until the apartment was made habitable.
The Prince, otherwise well satisfied, wanted nothing then but a reply
from Mirza; and in the midst of his wonder at the latter's delay, a
page in brilliant costume appeared, and called out:
"The Emir Mirza!"