"He may be, but he lived to-day," was Nur Mahal"s careless answer.
"Living or dead, his hour has pa.s.sed. Others, too, can think and plan.
Not plotters now, but swords are needed. I would that Sainton-sahib were here. Why did you let him go?"
"He is hard to restrain when set on anything. But you would not have him and me, with twenty troopers, fight for our own hand "gainst all India!"
She came nearer to the listening men. In her eagerness she grasped each by an arm and whispered:--
"Jai Singh is within call with two hundred. A few determined men to-night are worth thousands to-morrow. Three hoots of an owl from the wall behind the _baraduri_ will bring him and them. You have the leaders of the revolt gathered in the summer-house, whence they will soon send a messenger to summon you to council. They know I am here and await my pleasure. Above them--" and now her voice dropped so low that the words only just reached their ears--"you have Jahangir himself and his princ.i.p.al minion, Ibrahim, the Chief Eunuch!"
Her eyes blazed with the intensity of her emotion. Great though her power of self-control, she quivered slightly, and the action, trivial in itself, told that this woman was the nerve-center of an empire. She waited no comment. The moment long looked for had come at last. India, with all its potentialities, was within her grasp.
"Doubt not, but act!" she murmured, pa.s.sionately, seeing the incredulity in the men"s faces. "In the roof of the _baraduri_ there is a secret chamber, contrived there, for their own purposes, by Akbar and my father. From it, in fancied security, Jahangir and Ibrahim can see and hear all that pa.s.ses beneath. I took care they should know of it. "Twas too good a bait to pa.s.s, and they swallowed it. What joy can equal the Emperor"s when he hears his enemies plotting with you and me to place us on his throne, knowing full well that ere many minutes have pa.s.sed we shall be slain or, far better, captured, so that he may glut his vengeance on us? Come with me! Let a Rajput give the signal to Jai Singh. Without any fear of failure, almost without a blow, you will have both Jahangir and Khusrow"s adherents in your power to do with as you will."
They could not choose but believe her. Here was a counter-stroke, worthy indeed of the daughter of one who entered India a pauper and died Prime Minister. Walter"s head swam, and Fra Pietro shook as if with a palsy.
"There is no other course open," she murmured, vehemently. "It is your death and mine, or Jahangir"s. Decide quickly! Do you flinch from the ordeal?"
"No," said Mowbray, recovering himself. "If such be the alternatives, may G.o.d prosper those who are in the right!"
Nur Mahal released them. Walter would have sent for Devi Pershad, and in a few fateful seconds the irrevocable step must be taken which should plunge India into an era of turmoil and bloodshed. But a tumult of alarm among the household servants, and the clatter of hurried footsteps in the interior of the house, betokened some new and unforeseen commotion.
Then the door by which Nur Mahal and Mowbray had entered the room was flung open and Roger appeared, carrying in his left arm the apparently lifeless body of the Countess di Cabota. His long sword was dripping blood, and his clothes were rent by cuts and lance thrusts, but his genial face, never downcast when a fight was toward, broke into a broad grin when he saw Walter.
"By the cross of Osmotherly!" he roared, "I have had the devil"s own job to reach thee, lad. I have fought every inch of a good mile, and been ambushed times out of count. Poor Matilda fainted at the last onset. I had to hug her with one arm and slay with the other. Gad! it was warm work. She is no light weight!"
He deposited his inanimate burthen on a _charpoy_ and cleared his vision of blood and perspiration, for he had been wounded slightly on the forehead. Then he set eyes on Nur Mahal.
"Oh, ho, my lady, art thou here?" he said. "Small wonder there were such goings on without! By gad, thou art the herald of storm on land as the petrel is at sea. Walter, my lad, give us a grip of thy hand! I"m main glad to meet thee again. But Matilda needs tending. Bid this glittering fairy see to her. Whether Portugee or Hindee, I suppose women are much alike in such matters!"
CHAPTER XVIII
"Gregory, remember thy swashing blow."
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act I, Sc. 1.
But there were matters of graver import afoot than the Countess"s fainting fit. Already the conspirators in the summer-house, alarmed by the commotion, must be devising means to protect themselves, and the Emperor, ensconced in a hiding-place after the fashion invented by Dionysius of Syracuse, was probably doubting the wisdom of his Haroun-al-Raschid escapade. For Roger, bursting through the hostile cordons like an infuriated blue-bottle fly caught in the outer strands of a spider"s web, had applied a premature spark to a gunpowder train.
The silence of the night was jarred into fierce uproar. The imperial troops, thinking the revolt had broken out before its appointed hour, were hurriedly closing in around the rebels. The latter, strenuously opposing Sainton"s pa.s.sage up the hill leading to the Garden of Heart"s Delight, communicated a panic for action, which is the next worst thing to a flight, to those of their comrades who knew not what was happening.
In a word, the left bank of the Jumna was ablaze, and sharp encounters occurred wherever the Emperor"s men met those who fought for his would-be supplanter, Khusrow. At the gate Devi Pershad and the Rajputs, manfully aided by the house servants, were even then resisting the efforts of the rebels previously hidden in the wood to break open the door and go to the aid of their leaders within. Indeed, Roger had barely ceased speaking, before a sowar, one of his own small escort, ran in and breathlessly announced the desperate nature of the attack on the gateway.
Sainton, of course, knew nothing of the real cause of all this riot. Nor was there time to tell him. Mowbray grasped the excited soldier.
"Canst hoot like an owl?" he cried.
"Aye, sahib, that can I," was the reply, for the man guessed the portent of the question.
"Come, then, Roger! Thou knowest the summer-house? Smite any man who leaves it! Nur Mahal, bide you here till I return! Fra Pietro, bolt the doors and open only to me or Roger!"
"One word, brother, ere thou goest," cried the friar in English. "A chosen ruler, be he Christian or heathen, is the Lord"s anointed. "Curse not the King, no, not in thy thought.""
Walter, hurrying forth, darted a single glance at the speaker. Somehow, the Franciscan"s words gave ordered sequence to a project which flitted vaguely through his mind as he listened to Nur Mahal"s thrilling recital. It seemed to him that this beautiful woman, "who offered herself twice to no man," harbored a certain spite against Jahangir because of the treatment he had meted out to her. Once she had vaguely hinted at bygones as between Mowbray and herself; otherwise her utterances were those of unsated and insatiable ambition, and the style of her raiment alone showed that she had quitted the palace that night prepared to fill the stage in whatsoever part fortune allotted her.
Now the two Englishmen were in the garden, running towards the summer-house, which, it will be remembered, stood on an island in the midst of a small lake, and was approached by four narrow causeways, each at right angles with its neighbors. There never was a darker night. It was barely possible to distinguish the tops of the trees against the sky; beneath, they pa.s.sed through a blackness so dense that they could not see each other.
Under such conditions rapid progress was impossible. Mowbray called a halt, and bade the Rajput use his skill in imitating owls. Thrice the long-drawn ululu vibrated in the scent-laden atmosphere; at the third screech came an answering hoot, lanterns twinkled of a sudden at the farther end of the lawn, and Jai Singh, with his rabble of swashbucklers, perched expectantly on the wall, tumbled pell-mell into the garden.
"We come, sahib!" they heard his exultant cry. "Every man carries a light and wears a black turban. Spare none other!"
"Ecod!" said Roger, "that is good talking. Jai Singh is thin in the ribs, but he hath the liver of a bull. Yet there seemeth no urgence for killing. What is toward, Walter? "Smite," say you. "Spare not," yelps Jai Singh. Nur Mahal shoots lightning from her eyes. Even the good friar points a moral with a text on cursing the king. Who hath cursed him? Whose throat is to be cut? My soul, there"s battle in the very air!"
Sainton was appealing to unheeding ears. The _baraduri_, being a roofed entablature supported on slight columns, became vaguely silhouetted against the dim glow of the advancing lantern-bearers. Walter saw several armed men rushing towards the house along the nearest _chaussee_. It went against the grain to strike any man who came to him trustingly, no matter what the ultimate intent, and among the foremost he thought he recognized Raja Man Singh.
"Back, there!" he shouted. "We are for Jahangir! Back to your covert and lay down your arms!"
There could be no mistaking his meaning. The conspirators, dumbfounded by the discovery that he whom they reckoned an ally was a declared foe, stopped, hesitated, and then broke, left and right.
"They must not escape!" said Mowbray to his companion. "After them, Jai Singh!" he vociferated to the Rajput, and forthwith there was a scurry in which several fell. Nevertheless, two, at least, got away through the trees and scaled the wall. Raja Man Singh remained, gasping his life out, but he of Bikanir and one other reached the reinforcements outside.
Hastily despatching Jai Singh and his followers to defend the main gate, Mowbray retained only two men of his own little troop. Equipping them with lanterns, he led Roger to the summer-house and cried in a loud voice:--
"Come forth, Jahangir!"
There was no answer. The hollow roof, exquisitely painted with frescoes representing forest life, echoed the command, and the slight scrutiny rendered possible by the weak light of the lamps gave force to Roger"s query:--
"Dost think to find him, like Mahmoud"s coffin, slung "twixt heaven and earth, Walter?"
But Nur Mahal was to be trusted beyond the credence of eyes alone.
Unless the Emperor had flown, or changed his mind at the latest moment, he was surely there, for the doorkeeper said two strangers had pa.s.sed by the watchword "Safed-Kira." And the vital need of hurry made stern measures necessary.
"Jahangir!" cried Mowbray again, "I know that thou art here, thou and thy pimp, Ibrahim. Nur Mahal hath sent us to save thy life, and thy throne if need be. Descend, therefore, else Sainton-sahib shall pull thee down together with thy lurking-place."
A moment"s pause brought only the racket of desultory firing in the roadway, the thuds of a battering ram against the iron-studded door, and the yells of a.s.sailants and defenders as the high boundary wall was sought to be carried by escalade, for the Maharaja of Bikanir, now that his desperate scheme was unmasked, urged his adherents ere they marched to sack the palace to extirpate the brood of vipers in the Garden of Heart"s Delight.
"Roger," said Walter, calmly, resolved to be sure of his quarry, "try thy strength on a pillar!"
The summer-house, an elegant hexagon, had a carved pillar at each angle.
Sainton placed his foot against one, gave a mighty push, and the stones yielded. Some fell with a clatter onto the mosaic pavement, others splashed in the water of the lake.
"Hold!" came a m.u.f.fled cry, "I come!"
A fine creeper had entwined its stout tendrils round three of the pillars. In one of these, cunningly hidden by the vine, were small holdfasts, by which an active man might climb to the roof. Once there, a section of the blue enameled tiles slid back and gave access to a small apartment with a grille floor, the interstices being invisible from beneath owing to the painted foliage.
Jahangir, followed by Ibrahim, made an undignified descent. Obviously, he feared a sword thrust as he neared the ground. Yet he was no coward.
Disdaining to jump he came down slowly, and faced Mowbray without laying hand on the pistol or jeweled tulwar he carried. If treachery were intended he could not guard against it, and he was too proud to exhibit his secret thought by useless action.
"Have I heard aright?" he asked, with well-feigned coolness. "Did you say that Nur Mahal had sent you?"
"Yes. How else should I, a stranger, know of your retreat?"