Hafzan"s shrill laugh rang through the arches.
"No names, Mirza sahib, no names! And "tis no news surely to have folk poisoned in the fort; as thou wouldst know ere long, may be, if Hafzan were spiteful. But I name no names--not I! I carry news, that is all."
So, with a limp, showing that the woman within was a cripple, the formless figure pa.s.sed along the tunnel through the inner barrier, and so across the wide courtyard where the public hall of audience stood blocking the eastern end. It was a ma.s.sive, square, one-storied building, with a remorseless look in its plain expanse of dull red stone, pierced by toothed arches which yawned darkly into a redder gloom, like monstrous mouths agape for victims. Past this, with its high-set fretted marble _baldequin_ showing dimly against the end wall--whence a locked wicket gave sole entrance from the palace to this seat of justice or injustice--the Pathan veil flitted like a ghost; so, through a narrow pa.s.sage guarded by the King"s own body-guard, into a different world; a cool breezy world of white and gold and blue, clasping a garden set with flowers and fruit. Blue sky, white marble colonnades, and golden domes vaulting and zoning the burnished leaves of the orange trees, where the green fruit hung like emeralds above a tangle of roses and marigolds, chrysanthemums and crimson amaranth. Hafzan paused among them for a second; then, all unchallenged by any, pa.s.sed on up the steps of the marble platform, which lies between the Baths and the Private Hall of Audience. That marvelous building where the legend, Cunningly circled into the decorations, still tells the visitor again and again that, "If earth holds a haven of bliss, It is this, it is this, it is this."
Here, on the platform, Hafzan paused again to look over the low parapet. The wide eastern plains stretched away to the pale blue horizon before her, and the curving river lay at her feet edging the high bank, faced with stone, which forms the eastern defense of the palace-fort. Thus the levels within touch the very top of the wall; so that the domes, and colonnades, and green gardens, when seen from the opposite side of the streams cut clear upon the sky, like a castle in the air at all times; but in the sunsettings, when they show in shades of pale lilac, with the huge dome of the great mosque bulging like a big bubble into the golden light behind them as a veritable Palace of Dreams.
She looked northward, first; along the sheer face of the rosy retaining wall to its trend westward at the Queen"s favorite bastion, which was crowned by a balconied summer-house overhanging the moat between the fort itself and the isolated citadel of Selimgurh; which, jutting out into the river, partially hid the bridge of boats spanning the stream beyond. Then she looked southward. Here was the sheer face of rosy wall again, but it was crowned, close at hand, by the colonnade and projecting eaves of the Private Hall of Audience.
Further on it was broken by the carved _corbeilles_ of the King"s balcony, and it ended abruptly at a sudden eastward turn of the river, so giving a view of rolling rocky hillocks sweeping up to the horizon where, faint and far like a spear-point, the column of the Kutb showed on a clear day. The Kutb! that splendid promise, never fulfilled,--that first minaret of the great mosque that never was, and never will be built; symbol of the undying dream of Mohammedan supremacy that never came, that never can come to pa.s.s.
As she paused, a troop of women laden with cosmetics and combs and quaint baskets containing endless aids to beauty, came shuffling out of the baths, gossiping and chattering shrilly, and clanking heavy anklets as they came. And with them, a heavy perfumed steam suggestive of warm indolence, luxury, sensuality, pa.s.sed out into the garden.
"What! done already?" called Hafzan in surprise.
"Already!" echoed a bold-faced trollop pertly, "_Ari_, sister. Art grown a loose-liver? Sure this is Friday, and the King, good man, bathes apart, religiously! So we be religious too, matching his humor.
That is the way with us women."
An answering giggle met the sally.
"Thou art an impudent hussy, Goloo!" said Hafzan angrily. "And the Queen--where is she?"
"In the mosque praying for patience--in the summer-house playing games--in the King"s room coaxing him to belief--in the vestibule feeding her son with lollipops--he likes them big, and sweet, and lively, and of his own choosing, does the prince, as I know to my cost." Here a general t.i.tter broke in on the unabashed recital.
"_Loh!_ leave Hafzan to find out what the Queen does elsewhere,"
suggested another voice. "We speak not of such things."
"Then speak lower of others," retorted Hafzan. "Walls have echoes, sister, and thy mistress would fare no better than others if thy talk reached Zeenut Maihl"s ears."
"Tell her, spy! if thou wilt," replied the woman carelessly. "We have friends on our side now, as thou mayst understand mayhap ere nightfall, when the answer comes."
Hafzan laughed. "Thou hast more faith in friends than I. _Loh!_ I trust none within these four walls. And out of them but few."
So saying she limped back into the garden, giving a glance as she pa.s.sed it into the Pearl Mosque, which showed like a carven snowdrift against the blue of the sky, the green of the trees. Finding none there, she went straight to the Queen"s favorite summer-house on the northern bastion.
It was a curious fatality which made Zeenut Maihl choose it, since all her arts, all her cunning, could scarcely have told her that it would ere long be a watch-tower, whence the chance of success or failure could be counted. For the white road beyond the bridge of boats, and trending eastward to the packed population of Oude, to Lucknow, to all that remained of the vitality in the Mohammedan dream, was to be ere long like a living, growing branch to which she, the spider, hung by an invisible thread, spinning her cobwebs, seemingly in mid-air.
"Hush!" The whispered monition made Hafzan pause in the screened archway till the game was over. It was a sort of dumb-crambo, and a most outrageous _double entendre_ had just brought a smile to the broad heavy face of a woman who lay among cushions in the alcoved balcony. This was Zeenut Maihl, who for nearly twenty years had kept her hold upon the King, despite endless rivals. She was dark-complexioned, small-eyed, with a curious lack of eyebrows which took from her even vivacity of expression. But it was a man with experience in many wives who remarked that favor is deceitful and beauty is vain; he knew, no doubt, that in polygamy, the victory must go to the most unscrupulous fighter. Zeenut Maihl, at any rate, secured hers by ever-recurring promises of another heir to her octogenarian husband; a flattery to which his other wives either could not or would not stoop. But the trick served the Queen"s purpose in more ways than one. Her oft-recurring disappointments could have but one cause: witchcraft. So on such occasions, with her paid priest, Hussan Askuri, saying prayers for those _in extremis_ at her bedside, Zeenut Maihl"s enemies went down like nine-pins, and she rose from her bed of sickness with a board cleared of dangerous rivalry. For none in the hot-bed of shams felt secure enough to get into grips with her.
Ahsan-Oolah, the physician, might have; she had cried quarter from his keen fence before now; but he did not care to take the trouble. For he was a philosopher, content to let his world go to the devil its own way, so long as it did not interfere with his pa.s.sionate greed of gold. And this master-pa.s.sion being shared by Zeenut Maihl they hoisted the flag of truce for the most part against mutual spoliations. So the Queen played her game unmolested, as she played dumb-crambo; at which her servants, separated like their betters into cliques, tried to outdo each other.
"_Wah!_" said the set, jubilant over the _double entendre_. "That is the best to-day."
"If you like it, a clod is a betel nut," retorted the leader of another set. "I"ll wager to beat it easily."
The Queen frowned. There was too much freedom in this speech of Fatma"s to suit her.
"And I will be the judge," she said with a cruel smile. "Fatma must be taught better manners."
Fatma--a woman older than the rest--salaamed calmly; and the fact made the other clique look at each other uneasily. What certainty gave her such confidence as she plucked a gray hair from her own head and placed it on the black velvet cushion which lay at the Queen"s feet?
"That is my riddle," she said. "Let the world guess it, and honor the real giver of it."
What could it be? Even the Queen raised herself in curiosity; a sign in itself of commendation.
"Sure I know not," she began musingly, when Fatma sprang to her feet in theatrical appeal.
"Not so! Ornament of Palaces," she cried. "This may puzzle the herd; it is plain to the mother of Princes. It lies too lowly now for recognition, but in its proper place----" She s.n.a.t.c.hed the hair from the cushion, and, with a flourish, laid it on the head of a figure which appeared as if by magic behind her. A figure dressed as a young Moghul Prince, and wearing all the crown jewels.
"My son, Jewun!" cried the Queen, starting angrily. And the adverse clique, taking their cue from her tone, shrieked modestly, and scrambled for their veils.
Fatma salaamed to the very ground.
"No! Mother of Princes, "tis but my riddle--the heir-apparent."
Zeenut Maihl paused, bewildered for an instant; then in the figure recognized the features of a favorite dancing girl, saw the pun, and laughed uproariously, delightedly. The English sentry on the drawbridge leading to Selimgurh might have heard her had there been one; but within the last month the right to use the citadel as a private entry to the palace had been given to the King. It enabled him to cross the bridge of boats without the long circuit by the Calcutta gate of the city.
"A gold mohur for that to Fatma!" she cried, "and a post nearer my person. I need such wits sorely." As she spoke she rose to her feet, the smiles fading from her face as she looked out along that white eastward streak; for the jest had brought her back to earnest, to that mixture of personal ambition for her son and real patriotism for her country which kept her a restless intriguer. "I need men, too," she muttered. "Not dissolute, idle weatherc.o.c.ks or doting old pantaloons!
There are plenty of them yonder." So she stood for a second, then turned like lightning on her attendants. "What time----" she began, then seeing Hafzan, who had unveiled at the door, she gave a cry of pleasure. ""Tis well thou hast come," she said, beckoning to her, "for thou must know G.o.d! if I were free to come and go, what could I not compa.s.s? But here, in this smothering veil----" She flung even the gauze apology for one which she wore from her, and stood with smooth, bare head, and fat, bare arms, her quaint little pigtail dangling down her broad back. Not a romantic figure truly, but one in its savage temper, strength, obstinacy, to be reckoned with. "What time"--she went on rapidly--"does the King receive his initiates?"
"At five," replied Hafzan. Seen without its veil, also, her figure showed more shrunk than ill-formed, and her pale, thin face would have been beautiful but for its look of permanent ill-health. "The ceremony of saintship begins then."
"Saints!" echoed the Queen, with a hard laugh. "I would make them saints and martyrs, too, were I free. Quick, woman! pen and ink! And stay! Fatma"s puzzle hath driven all else from my head. What time was"t that Hussan Askuri was bidden to come?"
"The saintborn comes at four," replied Hafzan ceremoniously, "so as to leave leisure ere the Chief Eunuch"s return with the answer."
Zeenut Maihl"s face was a study. "The answer! My answer lies there in Fatma"s riddle; take two gold mohurs for it, woman, it hath given me new life. Write, Hafzan, to the chamberlain, that the disciples must pa.s.s the southern window of the King"s private room ere they leave the palace. And call my litter; I must see Hussan Askuri ere I meet him at the King"s."
An hour afterward, with bister marks below her eyes, and delicate hints of causeful, becoming languor in face and figure, she was waiting the King"s return from the latticed balcony overhanging the river, where he always spent the heats of the day; waiting in the cl.u.s.ter of small, dark rooms which lie behind it, on the other side of the marble fountain-set aqueduct which flows under a lace-like marble screen to the very steps of the Hall of Audience.
"Is all prepared?" she asked anxiously, as a glint of light from a lifted curtain warned her of the King"s approach.
"All is prepared," echoed a hollow, artificial voice. The speaker was a tall, heavily built man with long gray beard, big bushy gray eyebrows, and narrow forehead. A dangerous man, to judge by the mixed spirituality and sensuality in his face; a man who could imagine evil, and make himself believe it good. It was Hussan Askuri, the priest and miracle-monger, who led the last of the Moghuls by the nose. It was not a difficult task, for Bahadur Shah, who came tottering across the intervening sunlit s.p.a.ce, was but a poor creature. The first impression he gave was of extreme old age. It was evident in the spa.r.s.e hair, the high, hollow cheeks, the waxy skin, the purple glaze over the eyes. The next was of a feebleness beyond even his apparent years. He seemed fiberless, mind and body. Yet released at the door of privacy, from the eunuch"s supporting hands, he ambled gayly enough to a seat, and exclaimed vivaciously:
"A moment! A moment! good priest and physician. My mind first; my body after. The gift is on me. I feel it working, and the historian must write of me more as poet than king."
"As the king of poets, sire," suggested Hussan Askuri pompously.
Bahadur Shah smiled fatuously. "Good! Good! I will weave that thought with mine into perfumed poesy." He raised one slender hand for silence, and with the fingers of the other continued counting feet laboriously, until with a sigh of relief, he declaimed:
"Bahadur Shah, sure all the world will know it, Was poet more than king, yet king of poets."
Zeenut Maihl gave a cry of admiration. "Quick! _Pir_-sahib, quick!"
she exclaimed. "Such a gem must not be lost."
"But "tis yet co be polished," began the King complacently.
"That is the office of the scribe," replied Hussan Askuri, as he drew out his ink-horn. He was by profession an ornamental writer, and gained great influence with the old poetaster by gathering up the royal fragments and hiding their lameness amid magnificent curves and flourishes.