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KING-ERRANT
[Illustration: "I would the court painter were not a fool," she said
regretfully.]
KING-ERRANT
BY
FLORA ANNIE STEEL
_Author of "On the Face of the Waters," etc_.
_WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR AND TWO
ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE
BY THE AUTHOR_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1912, by_
Frederick A. Stokes Company
* * *
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_.
PREFACE
This is not a novel, neither is it a history. It is the life-story of
a man, taken from his own memoirs.
"_Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy,
thief_."
So runs the jingle.
The hero of this book might have claimed as many personalities in
himself, for Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar, Emperor of
India, the first of the dynasty which we mis-name the Great Moghuls,
was at one and the same time poet, painter, soldier, athlete,
gentleman, musician, beggar and King.
He lived the most adventurous life a man ever lived, in the end of the
fifteenth, the beginning of the sixteenth centuries; and he kept a
record of it.
On this record I have worked. Reading between the lines often, at
times supplying details that must have occurred, doing my best to
present, without flaw, the lovable, versatile, volatile soul which
wrote down its virtues and its vices, its successes and its failures
with equally unsparing truth, and equally invariable sense of honour
and humour.
The incident of the crystal bowl, and the details of Babar's
subsequent marriage to Maham (the woman who was to be to him what
Ayesha was to Mahomed), are purely imaginary. I found it necessary to
supply some explanation of the curious coincidence in time of this
undoubted marriage with the pitifully brief romance of little Cousin
Ma'asuma; for Babar was above all things affectionate. I trust my
imagining fits in with the general tone of my hero's life.
If not, he will forgive me, I am sure. He forgave so many in life that
he will not grudge forgiveness in death, to his most ardent admirer.
F. A. Steel.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
Seed Time--1493 to 1504.
BOOK II
Blossom Time--1504 to 1511.
BOOK III
Fruit Time--1525 to 1530.
BOOK I
SEED TIME
1493 to 1504
KING-ERRANT
CHAPTER I
".... for I know
How far high failure overleaps the bounds
Of low successes--"
_Lewis Morris_.
The fortified town of Andijan lay hot in the spring sunshine. Outside
the citadel, in the clover meadows which stretched from its gate to
the Black-river (a tributary to the swift Jaxartes which flows through
the kingdom of Ferghana) a group of boys and men were playing leap-frog.
"An _ushruffi_ he falls," cried one watching the leaper.
"A _dirrhm_ he doesn't!" retorted another who had a broad, frank,
good-natured face.
"There! He's done! I said so," continued the first not without
satisfaction, for he was rival for championship.
"Not he!" asserted the second gleefully as the stumble was overborne
by an extra effort. "Trust him and his luck! He wins! Babar wins!"
And Nevian foster-brother's voice was the loudest in acclaim as
the frog-like figure with wide-spread legs, after successfully
backing the long row of bent slaves arranged--with due regard to
difficulty--adown the meadow-path, finally overtopped the last and
with a "_hull-lul-la la!_" of triumph subsided incontinently into the
white clover. And there it lay on its back gazing at the blue sky
cheerfully.
It was that of rather a lanky boy; to western eyes a well-grown one of
at least fifteen, with a promise of six feet and more of manhood in
its long, loose-jointed limbs. But Babar, heir-apparent to this little
kingdom of Ferghana was only in his twelfth year. His face,
nevertheless, was extraordinarily intent, with an intentness beyond
his years, as he lay silent among the clover; for something had come
between him and his game, between him and the work-a-day world.
Something that came to him often with the sight of a wide stretch of
blue sky, a narrow stretch of blue river, or even with the sight of a
flower upon that river's brim.
How glorious! How splendid it was--this world in which he, forsooth,
played leap-frog! The clover on which he lay, how sweet it smelt, how
soft it was! It was just like a mantle of lambskin, covered as it was,
till you could hardly see a speck of green, with its white, furry
blobs of blossom.
A lambskin mantle!--that was a good description!
And the sky was like the turquoises that folk brought down from the
higher hills in the summer when they were not weaving the purple
cloth, which somehow always got mixed up in his mind with the pale
blue. Why both recalled the multi-coloured tulips on the mountain
slopes was a puzzle, except that one beauty recalled another. At that
rate, however, memory in Ferghana would be unending, for though it
was, as everyone knew, situated on the extreme boundary of the
habitable world, it was abundantly pleasant!
The lad's amber-tinted hazel eyes darkened as he ran over in his mind
the excellencies of his native valley hidden away at the back of the
Pamirs.
Its snow-clad hills clipping it on all sides save the west; its
running streams; its violets--so sweet, but not piercing-sweet like a
rose;--its profusion of fruits! Truly, that way they had over in the
township of Marghinan of removing apricot stones and putting in
chopped almonds instead was excellent indeed--
"Most Mighty!" came a voice breaking in on his thoughts. "There is
news--bad news!"
The voice was breathless, yet full of concern, and Babar sprang to his
feet, alert in a second. A messenger stood before him; one who had
come far and fast. And in his hand was a blue kerchief; therefore he
was a messenger of death.
Death? Incredible in this splendid joyful world! A sudden surge of
resentful life-blood seemed to stop the boyish heart with its
tumultuous claim for free passage.
"Well?" he asked thickly.
The answer came like a blow; dully, yet with stunning force.
"Your father, O King!"
His father! And he, Babar, was King! In the rush of realisation
incredulity came uppermost.
"But how--?"
He stood there bare-headed, unbelieving, while the others crowded
round to listen.
It was a simple enough tragedy. Omar-Shaikh, his father had been
feeding his tumbler pigeons on the scarp of a precipice which overhung
the steep ravine below the fort at Akhsi. He had been watching them
against the blue void, throwing golden grain to make them play their
antics, when the ground had given way beneath his feet and he had been
precipitated on to the river rocks beneath. That was all. The little
group of listeners showed shocked faces, but Babar, even as he heard
the tale with dismayed grief, seemed to see the fluttering white wings
of the startled pigeons, to see the startled soul amongst them, taking
its flight--
Whitherwards?--Gone!... Never to be seen again! Yet how clearly he saw
him now ... short, stout, a bushy beard hiding a humorous mouth ...
the turban without folds and with such long ends ... the tunic all
over tight ... how often the strings had burst and how angry he had
been at consequent childish gigglings ...
A sudden spasm of remorse for idle thoughts sent the son's memory back
to his father's kindness ... a good sportsman too, though but a poor
shot with the bow ... still with uncommon force in his fists--everyone
he had ever hit had gone down before father's....
The last word brought memory of a still dearer tie.
"My mother?" asked the boy swiftly, "my mother? How--"
Then the real meaning of what he had heard came to him. He gave a
little short, sharp cry and cast himself face downwards on the
sweet-smelling white clover.
And all the joy of splendid life passed from him.
Nevian foster-brother who worshipped him, went over to him and
crouched beside him.
"It is God's will, sire," he mumbled mechanically. "Kwaja Kazi says
so, and Kwaja Kazi is a saint."
But saintship did not interest that young human heart, face to face
for the first time with the deprivation of death.
Meanwhile those others, the bearded nobles and broad-faced courtiers
who had crowded out at the news, looked at each other in doubt.
What had best be done? The times were troublous. Their new King was
over-young. The King of Samarkand, the King of Tashkend, his paternal
uncles, were already on the war-path. The former almost within
striking distance; and this news of death would hasten, not retard.
In such case, might not refuge in the hills be wise? At any rate till
Kasim-Beg, most faithful of Governors, and Hassan-Yakoob, wiliest of
advisers, could be recalled from the front?
But, while they still cogitated, Babar, who even at that age was not
to be handled, rose suddenly, the tear-stains still on his sun-tanned
cheeks. His voice, however, was firm.
"To horse, gentlemen!" he cried. "I go to secure my kingdom!"
He was on his lean-necked, goose-rumped Turkhestan mare Zulaikha
almost before the words passed his lips, and ere two minutes had sped
the low arched gateway of the city echoed and re-echoed to the hoofs
of horses, as--the riders low bowed upon their saddles--they swept
through in a stream of tails and tassels. So had it echoed many a time
to the wild Turkhoman cavalry, since life in those days was one long
war and rumour of war.
"My King!" said Shiram-Taghai spurring close as Barbar drew rein on
the citadel terrace, and laying a detaining hand on his bridle. "That
way lies death! Thine uncles mean evil! Come with us to the hills."
For an instant the boy hesitated and his eyes sought the distant blue
of the mountains.
There, doubtless, lay safety--but what of that unknown
quantity--kingship?
He had no ideals of it. He had not even been brought up to expect the
chiefship. In those days succession was too uncertain for
anticipation. But it was something now within his grasp. What if he
lost it?
Still the faces around him were anxious and their owners were old;
they had experience. And he was so young! How young none knew but
himself. As this thought came he felt inclined to cry out-loud for his
mother as in his heart he was crying for her loving care.
Then from the citadel came a running messenger to bid him enter
without fear.
"It is a trick, Sire," protested Shiram-Taghai. "Safety lies with us."
And others echoed his words; so the lad wavered, uncertain, till an
old man seated in the sunshine mumbling to himself, his long white
beard wagging the while, spoke chance words that gave him the clue.
"Whatever happens is God's will, as the saints say."
Five minutes afterwards the young King knelt before Khwaja Kazi, the
saint of his family, for his decision. He was a thin ascetic-looking
man whose sunken eyes, hollowed by many fasts, hardened by much
thought, but softened by the unshed tears of a lonely life, dipped
critically into the clear, shadowless youth of the hazel ones and
appraised the character of the young face with its fine-lipped mouth
that tempered the strong square of the chin. And Khwaja Kazi knew the
inside of the boy as well. He had watched him from birth; and lawyer
and judge by profession, had accurately gauged the volatile, versatile
vitality which would carry him triumphantly over all the obstacles in
the leap-frog race of life. But he saw the dangers ahead also, and he
loved the lad as his own soul; as indeed, despite all his faults, most
people did love Babar in fortune and misfortune, in sickness and in
health.
And the keen observer noticed how firmly the young hand closed over
his scimitar-hilt. It was enough for one accustomed to weigh evidence
and give verdicts.
"Draw thy sword, my son! and stand firm!"
The decree fell on glad ears. The boy was on his feet in a second and
the war-shout of his race rang through the smoke-grimed old hall.
Kingship lay before him.
As yet, however, the tragedy of death clouded his outlook. His dead
father awaited burial at Akshi, thirty miles distant; but ere he could
start thitherwards many arrangements and new appointments had to be
made. The novelty of power carried him far from thought. It was
dream-like to be giving orders when but an hour before he had existed
solely by the pleasure and permission of his father; as every other
son in Moghulistan lived in those quaint old days.
It was dark, therefore, ere he and his galloping party stumbled over
the stone causeways leading up to the high-perched citadel at Akshi.
Too late to disturb the women-folk, who, outworn by wailing, had gone
to rest. But a little knot of long-robed physicians showed him the
dead body of his father, lying ready for the funeral on an open bier
in the Audience Hall. Babar had often seen death before, but never in
this guise, with watchers and flaring torches and all the insignia of
chiefship discarded, before the poor deserted shell of power.
It impressed his emotional nature vividly, and the mystery and the
pity of it went with him to the dim royal room--so rough in its
ancient royalty--where his father had been wont to sleep, and where
the very touch of the royal quilts, surcharged with the personality of
the cold dead in whose place he lived, seemed to burn in upon his
young body and keep it awake. Not with concern or regret for things
past, but with keen curiosity as to what was going to happen in the
future to one Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar.
Lineal descendant of Timur the Earth Trembler; also of the Great
Barbarian Ghengis Khan, was he to follow in their footsteps of
conquest? Or would he be snuffed out at once by Uncle Ahmed of
Samarkand? Wherefore, God knew, since he, Babar, had never done his
uncle any harm. On the contrary; if he lived, he would have to marry
that uncle's daughter Ayesha.... Here his vagrant thoughts wandered to
remembrance of how sick he had been from overeating himself on sweets
at the betrothal ceremonies;--that was his very earliest _real_
recollection--when he was five years old.
Then there was Uncle Mahmud of Tashkend. Even in the dark the boy's
cheek flushed at the mere remembrance of him; equally devoid of
courage and modesty, of unbelieving disposition, keeping buffoons and
scoundrels about him who enacted their scurvy and disgraceful tricks
in the very face of the court, and even at public audiences!--of no
outward appearance either, but all rough-hewn and speaking very
ill ...
The lad, always unsparing of epithet, painted the portrait with
remorseless hand. So his thoughts passed to Mahmud's sons, his first
cousins. He knew them well, but Masaud the eldest was a nincompoop,
and as for Baisanghar? What was there that jarred at times in
Baisanghar? Baisanghar who was so charming, so elegant, so clever, so
sweet-tempered?
Here the lad's mind passed swiftly, without conscious cause, to his
own sister, Dearest-One as he always called her; for he was given to
caressing nicknames for those he loved. And he loved none better than
the tall, straight girl, five years his senior, who hectored him and
petted him by turns. But she ought really to get married; it was
nonsense to say you preferred being a sainted Canoness!
Baisanghar did not say that, though, he, too, refused to marry. He
said women were unnecessary evils. Was that true? Not that it
mattered, since he, Babar, would have to marry, because he was
King ...
King! Would it make him happier, he wondered? Could anyone be happier
than he had been in this splendid world? Supposing it was to make him
unhappy? Supposing it took the charm from life ...
The idle thoughts went on and on. He felt sleepy, yet he could not
sleep. And by and by the glimmering oblong of the unglazed window kept
him watching the slow growth of light.
Out on the hills, the still dawn must be stepping softly so as not to
waken the world too soon ... soft, sandalled feet among the snow-set
flowers....
The mere thought of it was sufficient to rouse him thoroughly. He
rose, passed to the window, and thrust his young body into the chill
air of dawn. All shadow! A deeper shadow in the valley, a lighter
shadow in the encircling hills, and above it all the clear, grey,
pellucid shadow of the sky.
Hark! That was the dawn cry of the wild fowl on the marsh and he held
his breath to listen like the young Narcissus, while the whole joy of
splendid life seemed to fill his world once more. He did not
realise--few humans do--that he was but listening for the echo of
himself; the self which came back to him from sights and sounds, that
many a better man might have seen and heard unmoved.
So he waited and watched till the eastern sky showed pale primrose,
and the unseen sun encarnadined the distant snows, and separated the
white morning mists from the blue shadows of the hills.
It was a new day, and yonder over the brow of the road were pennons
and lance-points. The tribesmen were coming to bury the dead, to do
homage to the living.
It was a busy day, filled up with long-drawn, intricate ceremonial.
Bare time for more than one tight clasp of tearless mother and
tearless son, while that Dearest-One, his sister, stood by silent, the
tear-stains still on her cheeks. But that did not matter; those three
understood each other.
And old Isan-daulet, his maternal grandmother, had set emotion aside
also, and, stern old disciplinarian as she was, had bidden him--in
high staccato phrases which betrayed her effort to keep calm--take his
father's place as bravely as he could.
And he did what he could, though it was a strain upon his twelve young
years, for the long night had left him feverish and the long day with
its need for initiative had outwearied him. So that when at last the
ordeal was over, and he was free to seek the women's apartments for
rest, his nerves were all a-rack, his pulse fast and irregular.
He found his grandmother alone by the big coal fire. Mother and
sister, outwearied also, had gone to bed; the best place, the old lady
said oracularly, for sore eyes and broken hearts. And Babar felt it
was better so. The company of the stern-featured, soft-hearted old
woman of whose sagacity and clear-sightedness he stood somewhat in
awe, would be more bracing than the tears which must come sooner or
later.
People said he was like his grandmother. Was he, he wondered, as he
lay prone on the sheepskin rug watching the firelight on her fine old
face.
"Tell me!" he said suddenly, "the tale of thy youth--of Jaimal and the
lover who was slain."
But Isan-daulet, though she smiled, shook her wise old head.
"Nay, child! Such tales do to stir phlegm. They are not meet when the
humours are already disturbed."
The boy leaned over on his elbows and looked up at her.
"Like cures like by comparison! 'Twould steady my pulse to know others
throbbed. Feel mine, Grandam--how it beats!"
She took the thin, muscular wrist held out to her and appraised it
judicially.
"I will give thee a purge the morrow's morn," she said shortly. "That
will keep thy head cooler than idle tales; there is nothing for hot
boy's blood like a purge."
Babar's face showed obstinate yet whimsical. "I will not take it,
_nanni_, if thou wilt not tell--so there! And Kings are not to be
coerced, see you, by black draughts, as mere boys are. And 'tis the
first boon I have asked from thee--_as I am_."
The ring of almost apprehension in the last words was too much for the
old woman, who loved the lad as the apple of her eye. She laid her
hand caressingly on the boy's hair. It was cut, Florentine fashion, to
the ears, and the ends, outsweeping in a gentle curve were sun-burned
browner than the rest of the dark head.
"It is little to tell, sweetheart, save that it shows how even
womanhood may confound strength by being resolute. It was not many
years after my lord, your grandfather, married me in my father the
Khan's tents upon the Steppes. He was a bold, brave man, was my lord,
and like all bold, brave ones, he fought sometimes and won, and
sometimes he fought and lost. 'No battle is ended save by Death,'
remember that, O! Zahir-ud-din Mahomed! And once when he lost, his
women--I was one--fell into the hands of Jaimal Shaikh, his enemy.
And he--low-bred hound who knew not the first principles of
politeness!--did not even keep me for himself!--I was not ill-looking
in those days, my child--but sent me to his officer. I, the wife of
Yunus Khan, Chagatai, of the house of Timur the Earth Trembler! Well!
the fool came decked as for a bridal with blandishments and perfumes,
and I welcomed him. Wherefore not? for the supper was good and he
played on the lute passably. But when that was over, and we withdrew
smiling to the inner room, my maids locked the door by my orders,
stabbed the silly rake to death and flung his be-scented body through
the window to the gutter. 'Twas its proper place."
The old voice which had gained strength and fire in the recital,
dropped to cold, hard finality.
"And Jaimal Shaikh?" queried Babar unwilling to lose a word.
"He sent for me and I went. 'Why hast thou done this evil thing?' he
asked. 'Because thou didst worse,' I answered. 'Because thou sentest
me, the wife of a living man, to another's embrace. Therefore I slew
him. Slay me also, if so it pleases thee.'
"But it did not please him. 'Take her to her husband's prison,' he
said, 'and leave her there. They are one flesh indeed.' So I stopped
with thy grandfather and comforted him until his star rose again. Now,
get thee to thy bed, child, and see thou take the draught without
demur. Remember 'God is no maker of the promise breaker.' 'Twill make
thee feel sick, doubtless; but what matter if the result be good."
Babar made a wry face and laughed. "Thou hast done me more good with
thy tale, revered one! Lo! I can see thy would-be lover in the gutter
and my esteemed grandmother, all beautiful as a bride, peeking through
the lattice for a glimpse of his corpse--"
"Go to thy bed, child," put in the old lady, delighted. "There be more
than pictures for thy sight now; so may the Great Maker of Kings guard
thee, his creature."
And that night Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar, forgot that
he was King in sound, dreamless, boyish sleep.