"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 pa.s.sed 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.
CHAPTER XVII
_Yet when from off the table of G.o.d"s grace He gives what each may carry to their place Satan draws nigh, "Even for me" he says "A portion has been portioned in G.o.d"s ways_."
--Sa"adi
The Most Ill.u.s.trious, the Mighty in Power, the High in Pomp, the Exalted in Splendour, the Father of his People, the Conqueror of the Age, the Pole Star of Faith, the Sun of the World, Jalal-ud-din Mahommed Akbar, Great Mogul, Emperor of India, sate enthroned on a dais which had been erected for the purpose of the festivities on the uppermost terrace of the Palace Gardens.
The violet blackness of the sky above him was ablaze with stars, as only an Indian sky can blaze, when the dust held in the atmosphere has been laid by recent rain. And, to the infinite relief of the town and all concerned in its welfare, rain had fallen--fallen in torrents, suddenly sharply, during the later hours of dawn, leaving every tank full, every street washed clean under the vivid blue sky which the storm seemed to have washed also.
Relief had come from heaven, but no one looked at the stars, for the blaze below held all eyes. A circle of Bengal lights so arranged that the King"s head should show against them, shed veritable sunlight on his golden throne and on the white-robed figure that sate on it; for, as ever, Akbar was dressed with studied simplicity. True, the Benares muslin with its fine st.i.tched edging of silver had taken years in the loom, the ropes of pearls he wore over it were worth a king"s ransom, but there was no note of colour anywhere, and the turban, guiltless of all ornament save the heron"s plume of chieftainship, showed dull without the calm radiance of the great diamond. Yet all things centred on the man who sate enthroned, because it was his thought, his imagination which had inspired the whole marvellous spectacle that was being held in the terraced garden surrounded by distant half-seen palaces.
And it was marvellous, indeed! The dais (behind which in darkest shadow rose the latticed vantage ground of the court ladies) was semicircular, round-fronted and was superabundantly lit by that crown of twelve Bengal lights (representing the twelve solar months) which hung like a halo round the man who claimed to be the Sun of his World.
A big claim, but in this instance it was made with such magnificent straightforwardness, such clear perception of all that the claim entailed, as to disarm criticism. This dais, some ten feet high, rose from a semicircular round-fronted plinth which was lost in shadow, partly because of a projecting eave which prevented the light from above striking on it, and partly because seven equi-distant lights (representing the seven days of the week and in varying colours showing the tints of a rainbow) were so cunningly set in shades round the dais that their light left the plinth in darkness and shot out, in ever widening rays, through the garden, growing less and less distinct until at its farther end colour seemed lost in a general mist of light.
And in six of these rays, red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet, widening with the light, sate, in ordered rows, on the red side the Hindus and Buddhists of the court, upon the violet side the Mahommedans, the Jains, the Jews. Only the central green ray, compounded of these two factors blue and yellow remained empty, showing nothing but a narrow marble walk bordered on either side by wide water ways, out of which fountains shot high into the still, dark air; shot, illumined so far by the lights, then, rising high above them, mere ghostly shadows on the darkness, to fall again in drops that grew iridescent as they fell.
There was no other illumination in the garden; but the distant palaces were outlined in every curve, every detail, by little soft flickering lamplets like stars.
The running water in the waterways came out of the dark plinth below the dais, and about fifty yards from it, ran under a wider crossways marble platform which ended the narrow pathway; emerging from this short hiding to fall rippling over a marble slope, where (safe-sheltered from every drop in deftly cut niches) cunning little coloured lamps shone, converting the whole cascade into a rainbow.
Hence, united, the stream of the two waterways merged into one, and flowed to disappear from the garden through a low archway tunnelled beneath the palace; thence to find its way by underground pa.s.sages to the tank at the bottom of the Sikri ridge.
Even as a mere spectacular effect the scene was striking, but once the inner meaning of it, so clear to the mind of the white-robed figure on the throne, was grasped, it became of absorbing interest as representing the vast empire which Akbar had so far succeeded in welding together. First the surging misty radiance of the crowd at the end; then, strengthening as each ray narrowed, the broad demarcations of the various religions professed by Akbar"s subjects. Rajputs in their red robes on the one side elbowing the Brahmins in the orange of the ascetic; Shiahs in purple beside the Sunnis in indigo; while in the yellow ray sate Buddhists in their devotional colour; in the blue the Sufis, the Jews, the Jains, all the smaller cults that are to be found in India.
Between them, centring all, shone the green ray of the true faith, the perfect equality of toleration and freedom which was Akbar"s ideal--and it was empty!
Perfect as the scene was, every soul in the garden that night felt a consciousness of vague depression, vague expectation. Eyes wandered as they were not used to wander from that central figure on the throne.
""Tis the talisman which the scapegrace wears," whispered Aunt Rosebody ruefully from behind the latticed screen to little Umm Kulsum who was holding her hand--she had been holding it practically ever since the fatal moment, a few hours back, when they had seen the Prince walk away unconcernedly with the hidden diamond in his turban of state. "Oh! Ummu, I feel so cold down my back. But there is no remedy against one"s own acts! Though why such temptation should be put in the way of an old woman only G.o.d and His Prophet knows! But "tis always so. He had but one eye and the grit fell in it."
"We did what we thought best, auntie!" whimpered the Mother of Plumpness, "and we can take it back when the Audience is over--or we can die!"
Aunt Rosebody shook her head mournfully. "Dying is no good" she protested, "but why doth not the scapegrace come and have done with it! If oil isn"t ready when the frying pan"s ready, it had best go away!"
"In truth it appears long waiting, mayhap, for the last day," sighed Umm Kulsum tragically.
"Last day!" echoed Aunt Rosebody snappishly. "Lo! who wants a last day? Not I. Sure I am betwixt and between. Earth too hard, sky too far like the swallows. Please G.o.d they"ll hurry up and let me get to my prayers. Lo! there goes Khodadad with a smile on his face. True is it that lies only shine in the dark."
In truth Khodadad stepped jauntily and his face shone with content as he pa.s.sed to his place in the light-screened plinth where the court officials were gathered awaiting the signal which was to summon them to the dais above, there to range themselves behind the Emperor for the coming audience.
"It is nigh time," said Mirza Ibrahim, who as Court Chamberlain had charge of the ceremonies. "Gentlemen are you ready?"
Then he bent forward to the newcomer and whispered something. The whispered reply brought such satisfaction to Ibrahim"s face also, that he stared with open contempt at Birbal, who lounging in, lazily late, was making his way toward him.
"My lord has nearly missed his chance," he said meaningly.