King-Errant
by Flora Annie Webster Steel · English · Gutenberg #39794 · 582,130 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: King-Errant
Author: Flora Annie Webster Steel
Release date: May 25, 2012 [eBook #39794]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39794
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by
Google Books (Harvard University)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KING-ERRANT ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by
Google Books (Harvard University)
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1. Page scan source:
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(Harvard University)
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.
CHAPTER II
"There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft To keep
watch for the life of Poor Jack!"
In truth, Babar needed such a cherub in the first days of his
King-ship, for Kasim and Hussan, his two advisers, fell foul of one
another. The former, bluff, honest, facetious, a pious, faithful,
religious Moslem who carefully abstained from forbidden meats and
drinks, and whose judgment and talents were uncommonly good though he
could neither read nor write, was for the forward policy. Hussan,
polished, active, a man of courage who wrote excellent verses and was
remarkable for his skill in playing polo and leap-frog, was for
diplomacy. And against these latter qualifications even honest Kasim's
ingenuous and elegant vein of wit could not stand.
At least in young Babar's judgment. Old Isan-daulet his grandmother
was, however, of a different opinion, and even Dearest-One, his
sister, ventured to rally him gently on his choice of Prime-minister.
"What," asked Babar hotly in reply, "is Hussan the worse for playing
games? Is a man the worse for doing all things well?"
"Nay! but rather the better--so be it that they be men's things," she
replied, going on imperturbably with the embroidery of a new pennon
for her brother. It was green and violet, his favourite colours, and
she was scrolling a text on it in crinkled gold. As she sat in the
sunshine on the flat roof of the citadel, her bare head gleaming brown
in the glare of light, her mourning garment of dark blue short in the
sleeves and low at the neck showing her wheat-coloured skin, she was a
pretty creature, though her nose was too long, her chin too short for
real beauty: that lay in her eyes, amber-tinted like her brother's.
"Man's things! What be man's things?" argued Babar irritably. "Is
cousin Baisanghar no man because he could help thee embroider two
years agone?"
The princess held her head very high. It was not nice of her brother
to import strange young men into the conversation, and distinctly mean
of him to mention that old breach of etiquette. Had she not heard
enough of it from her mother, ever since? Luckily grandam Isan-daulet,
being desert-born, had not been so shocked, or life would have been
unendurable. And as for Baisanghar! Everyone knew he was not at all a
proper young man, though he was so charming, so sweet-tempered, so ...
"Lo! brother!" she said with asperity, checking her vagrant thoughts,
"if one fool shook a baby's rattle better than another, he would be
wise man to thee. But 'tis not I only who find leap-frog Hussan a
smooth-tongued hypocrite. Grandmother has her eye on him."
"Then can no harm happen," said the boy-King cheerfully, rising,
however, with suspicious alacrity as if to escape from the subject. In
truth he was somewhat afraid of old Isan-daulet though he tried to
minimise his awe by asserting that very few of her sex could equal her
in sagacity!
Events, however, had marched with great rapidity, and Sultan Ahmed,
his uncle, was now with his army but sixteen miles from Andijan.
So something must be settled. Kasim was for defiance and defence,
Hussan for diplomatic and dutiful submission; since the King of
Samarkand was, ever, indubitably suzerain-lord of Ferghana.
"Words against works," quoth honest Kasim, who loved to be
epigrammatic. His experience told him that if you fought fair you
failed at times, but in the end you came out top dog in the general
scrimmage of claims and clans.
"Nay!" retorted Hussan, "I desire diplomacy, not dare-devil disregard
of common precautions."
Babar, however, frowned at both as he sat listening to the council of
war or peace. He favoured neither pugnacity nor deceit.
"Look you, gentlemen," he said, frowning. "All admit my Uncle Ahmed to
be a fool whom fools lead by the nose; but is that cause why I should
treat him foolishly, and so disgrace myself? I will neither fight nor
yield till I have made him understand how the matter lies. So, let a
scribe be brought and I will indite him a letter."
"No letter ever did any good," grumbled illiterate Kasim.
"Especially if it be not received nor read," suggested Hussan
sardonically. "The King of Samarkand is supreme and may refuse aught
but a personal interview."
Kasim shot furious glances: such talk savoured to him of treason; but
Babar only looked gravely from one adviser to the other.
"So be it," he said cheerfully. "If he refuse reception or
understanding, then--if so it pleases God--I can defeat him at my
leisure. Meanwhile write thus, O scribe!--with all proper titles,
compliments and reverences--'I, Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar, rightful
heir, and _by acclaim_ (underline that, scribe!) of this Kingdom of
Ferghana, do with courtesy and reasonableness point out that it is
plain that if you take this country you must place one of your
servants in charge of it, since you reign at Samarkand. Now I am at
once your servant and your son. Also I have a hereditary right to the
government. If therefore you entrust me with this employment, your
purpose will be attained in a far more easy and satisfactory way than
by fighting and killing a number of people (and horses) needlessly.
Wherefore I remain your loyal feudatory Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar.'"
He beamed round on the council for approval of this logical argument,
then added hastily, "And, scrivener! put 'Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar'
large; and 'King of Ferghana' larger still at the very end. That will
show him my intentions."
If it did, the effect was poor: for though the letter was duly
engrossed on silk paper sprinkled with rose-essence and gold-dust,
enclosed in a brocade bag, and sent to the invading camp at Kaba,
the only answer to its irrefutable logic was a further advance of
spear-points and pennons to within four miles of the citadel.
Kasim was jubilant. Jocose and bellicose he routed out armouries for
catapults, and kept long files of men busy in passing up stones from
the river bed, while forage parties raided the bazaars for provisions.
If there was to be a defence it must be the longest on record, even if
it were unsuccessful in the end.
Babar himself donned mail and corselet for the first time. But he
discarded the latter soon; it made him, he said, feel like a trussed
pheasant, and he preferred the wadded coatee which would turn most
scimitar cuts. It made him look burly as he strode round the ramparts,
so that the sentries smiled to themselves and felt a glow at the heart
remembering how young he was.
The stoutness, resolution, and unanimity of his soldiers and subjects
to fight to the last drop of their blood, the last gasp of their life,
without yielding, filled the boy with unmixed admiration. It was part
of the general splendidness of things which almost dazzled him.
"My younger troops display distinguished courage," he said gravely,
and Kasim hid a smile with difficulty as he replied, "They have youth
in their favour, Most Excellent. It is a great gift."
Then he went out and roared over the joke on the ramparts to the
sentries' huge delight. When next the young King went his rounds,
smiles greeted him everywhere. He was a King to be proud of, and his
family was worth fighting for--all of them! Especially the tall, slim
figure with close-drawn veil which would often accompany the King at
dusk. For Dearest-One was keenly interested in things militant, and
was free to come and go, as the Turkhi women were, with due
restrictions. And these were few in Babar's clan, which, as
Grandmother Isan-daulet would boast, was "desert born."
But, after all, the preparations were unnecessary. The little cherub
intervened, rather to the boy's chagrin, though he admitted piously
that Providence in its perfect power and wisdom had brought certain
events to pass which frustrated the enemies' designs, and made them
return whence they came without success, and heartily repenting them
of their attempt.
An exceedingly satisfactory but at the same time a disappointing end
to his first chance of a real fine fight; and he watched one reverse
after another overtake his foes on the other side of the Black-river
with almost sympathetic eyes.
"There is a murrain amongst their horses now," reported the chief
farrier one day, "my sister's son who is in service with the
Samarkandis crept over last night to beg condiments for Prince
Baisanghar's charger which is down--the same that the Most Excellent
gave him three years agone."
"Baisanghar?" echoed Babar hurriedly. "I knew not that he was--amongst
mine enemies!" Then he paused, and reason came to him. "Likely he is
with his father of Tashkend who hovers on the edge of invasion, and
hath ridden over--there is no harm in that. What didst give the
fellow?"
The farrier laughed. "A flea in his ear, Most Clement! A likely story,
indeed, that I should help our enemies."
Babar frowned and turned away. "'Twas a good horse, poor beast," he
murmured. And afterwards, he went over to the women's quarters, and,
as his wont was, retailed the story to those three, Isan-daulet, his
mother and Dearest-One. The grim old Turkhoman lady was sympathetic
about the horses, as a daughter of the Steppes must needs be, but
stern over the necessities of war. His mother, more soft-hearted than
ever by reason of her mourning, wept silently. But Dearest-One, was,
as ever, a joy.
"I would bastinado the farrier," she said vindictively. "The poor
brute; and then think of cousin Baisanghar. He loved the horse!"
Her beautiful eyes flashed and yet were melting, her long brown
fingers gripped her embroidery closer yet more caressingly. Her
brother sate and looked at her admiringly, yet with a certain
diffidence. Sometimes Dearest-One went beyond him; she seemed to
unfold wings and skim away into another world. And when he asked her
whither she went, she would smile mysteriously and say:
"Thou wilt unfold thy wings also, some day, O little-big-one, and find
a new world for thyself."
There was little leisure now, however, for aught but watch and ward.
Any moment of the day or night might bring assault; but the days
passed and none came. And then one morning broke and showed a smaller
camp than had been on the low lying river bank the night before; there
was a bustle, too, about the still-standing tent pegs, and with the
first glint of sunlight one Dervish Mahomed Turkhau rode over the
narrow bridge and demanded, on the part of his master, an audience
with Hussan. Old Kasim looked daggers, but there was no objecting. By
virtue of his position as Prime-minister Hussan was the man to go, and
he went. So out in the Place-of-Festivals beyond the gates, they met
and parleyed: thus patching up a sort of peace, as Babar reported
contemptuously to his faithful three. He was intensely disgusted and
disappointed, while Kasim looked sorrowfully at his piles of stones.
"They will do for next time," he said finally, cheering himself up
with the remembrance that there were many other claimants to the
throne of Ferghana to be reckoned with besides Sultan Ahmed. And by
evening most of the garrison had found solace for their disappointment
in overeating themselves, after the disciplined rations which
Kasim-Beg, mindful of the possibility of a long siege, had already
ordained; but Babar and his foster-brother Nevian were out all day on
their little Turkhoman horses, chasing the white deer and shooting with
their bows and arrows at a cock pheasant or two.
They brought home one in the evening which, as the boy boasted, was so
fat, that four men could have dined on the stew of it!
"'Twill do for our dinner anyhow," said Babar's mother, and
thereinafter she and Isan-daulet bullied cooks and scullions and
gently quarrelled with each other for a good two hours over the proper
family recipe for making "_ishkanah_."
And afterwards they sat together in an arched sort of balcony
vestibule between the women's apartments and the men's rooms and
talked happily, yet soberly of the future. Old Isan-daulet indeed,
waxed prophetic. "See you, my sons-in-law will come to harm, not good.
Ahmed has had to renounce his evil desires. Mahmud will have to do the
same; and let them pray God He send not punishment also." And she
pursed up her thin lips and looked as if she knew something.
But the Khanum, Babar's mother, said little; her heart was still
sad and she crept away early to her bed, followed after awhile by
Isan-daulet, leaving stern injunctions on Dearest-One not to sit up
over-long.
So brother and sister were left alone, and she went and sat beside him
as he dangled his legs over the parapet of the balcony; for he dearly
loved looking down from a height. It was to be a dark night so he
could see little even of the roofs below, or the slabs of stone let
into the wall at intervals to form a sort of ladder by which a bold
man could climb from one to the other. And beyond, all was shadow,
darker in some places than others. Besprinkled too with stars: the
moving star or two of a lantern in the earth-shadow, but in the sky
those changeless, changeful beacons, those twinkling tireless stars,
motionless in their constellations, yet ever moving on and on ...
Round what?...
"Look!" he cried suddenly, "the scimitar of the Warrior is sheathed in
the hills--my hills!"--
And it was so. Orion shone to the north, setting slowly behind the
mighty rampart of shadowed mountains in which the starry sword was
already hidden.
They sat silent for a little while, hand in hand, like the children
that they were. And then suddenly a noise below them, made Babar swing
his legs to the ground and stand firm before his sister.
"Who goes?" he asked and his voice rang through the darkness; but no
answer came.
"'Twas a falling stone, methinks," said his sister carelessly; yet
even as she spoke she also sprang to her feet, every atom of her, soul
and body alert for something, she scarce knew what.
She knew, however, in a second, for a darker shadow showed vaguely at
the end of the balcony, vaulted lightly over the parapet, and a
pleasant voice said gaily--
"Mirza Baisanghar of the House of Timur, cousin to the King of
Ferghana, at your service."
"Baisanghar!" echoed Babar. "How camest thou?--" then, even in his
confusion remembering, as he generally did, _les convenances_ for
others he added: "Thou hadst best retire, my sister, after making thy
appropriate salutation."
So, for one second the girl's eyes straining through the starlight
could see her cousin. A charming figure truly! Not dressed, like her
brother, in country clothes, but in the silks and satins of the town.
A dainty figure too, of middle height and slender make, yet manly
withal. The round face, unlike the faces of his cousins, showing
Turkhoman descent unmistakably, yet with such indescribable
attractiveness.
"May the Peace of the Most High be upon you, my cousin," she said
softly and her voice fluttered.
"And may His Peace remain with you, fair lady," he replied gravely,
with the finest of Court salutes. That was all; then she withdrew and
the shadows hid her going.
"By my soul, Baisanghar," said Babar joyously, when he had seated
himself and his cousin side by side among the cushions, "I am utterly
rejoiced to see thee again; though how, or wherefore thou camest--"
Prince Baisanghar interrupted him with a light laugh. "How, sayest
thou? By the roof of course; have I not been in Andijan before? and
did I not once climb hitherwards--but of that, no more! Only thou wilt
have to set thy masons to work, coz; for by God's truth my foothold
was but rotten more than once. Sure I must be born to the bowstring
since sudden death will not have me elseways! Yet of all seriousness,
I
came nigh to being dashed to pieces. And as for wherefore? Sure I came
in duty bound to thank my kingly cousin for his courteous gift of
horse-medicine. Aye! and for my horse too--for the second time--since,
thanks to the drugs, he is alive and kicking."
Babar sat back. "Horse-medicines?" he echoed. "What horse-medicine?--I
sent thee none."
Baisanghar turned his head instantly to the darkness, and his voice
rose perceptibly. "Yet it came from thee, my cousin," he replied
blandly, "with thy salutations. In a packet of silken paper--such as
ladies use for their trinkets, and tied with crinkled gold-thread such
as ladies use--"
"Yea! it was I, Mirza Baisanghar," came a voice from the darkness; a
voice clear, unabashed. "I sent it--I, the Princess Royal, so
there is no need for fine wit to beat about the bush. I sent it,
because--because my brother the King gave thee the horse and I was
loth--loth it should die."
The voice trailed away faintly, and Mirza Baisanghar's eyes brimmed
over with soft mirth; while Babar, forgetful of all save outraged
etiquette, said sternly:
"Sister! and I told thee to go."
"And I went," retorted the voice rebelliously, "so far as eyesight
goes. None can see me and 'tis the woman's right to listen."
Prince Baisanghar laughed aloud. "By the prophet! she speaks truth,
coz; ladies have the law of listening all over the world; aye! and of
speaking too. So let be, since we are cousins and free-born Chagatai
of the house of Ghengis."
But Babar stickled. "Aye, _we_ are; but thou art not--not on thy
mother's side."
"My mother!" echoed Baisanghar, his voice full of amusement. "Lo! I
admit it! On my mother's side I am beyond salvation, being of the wild
Horde-of-Black-Sheep! for which may God forgive me since 'tis not my
fault I was not born a White-Lamb!" He named the two great divisions
of his Turkhoman ancestry with infinite zest, then went on lightly:
"But I fail of myself in other ways--many of them. I made an ode
concerning it, a while past, that sets Baisanghar Black-Sheep-Prince
forth to a nicety!" and he began airily to hum a tune.
"Sing it to us, cousin," came that sweet voice from the darkness.
There was a moment of silence, as if the hearer were startled, perhaps
touched; then came the almost stiff reply:
"My fair cousin is too kind. The ode as verse is nothing worth. And
its subject is, beyond belief--bad! Still, since she is Princess-Royal
and I am but her slave, the order is obeyed."
So through the night and out into the stars his high tenor voice rose
and trilled in minor quavers.
[Illustration: Music notes for first and third stanzas.]
1. Some-times with pi-ous-ness I crawl
To-wards High Heav'n on whit-ed wall
3. Back to the dust and dirt I fly
Where un-sub-stan-tial shad-ows lie.
[Illustration: Music notes for second stanza.]
2. Or rest a-while on tree or flow'r
And dream but on-ly for an hour.
The quavers ceased, and there was silence from the darkness; but
Babar's boyish voice rose cheerful as ever.
"'Tis good, cousin, and, in a measure, true. Yet need it not be so,
surely. Thou hast no lack of parts. Who is more accomplished, of more
pleasant disposition or more charming manners?"
"I came not hitherto to be catalogued for sale," interrupted
Baisanghar curtly. "Of a truth I am admirable. I sing, I dance, I
paint--yea! I paint uncommon--I could paint one fair lady's portrait
could I but see her--"
Still there was silence from the shadows, and a frown came to the
laughter-loving face. "But I waste time," he continued, "and I have
much to say, for thine ear alone."
He spoke to the darkness, and he waited, his face softening while a
whispering sound as of light departing feet rose for a space then died
away in the distance.
It was a good half hour afterwards that Mirza Baisanghar, who knew his
way well about the palace at Andijan, came with buoyant step down the
spiral stairs which ended in a narrow vaulted passage that led to the
sally-port.
His cousin, from whom he had parted most affectionately, had given him
the pass-word, so, secure from molestation, he was carelessly humming
the refrain of his own ode ...
"Back to the dirt and dust I fly
Where unsubstantial shadows lie."
The light-hearted, cynical words echoed along the arches and on them
rose a curious sound, half cry, half sob, followed by a torrent of hot
denial.
"It is a lie! It is not true and thou knowest it. Why shouldest thou
say such things of thyself, O Baisanghar?--they--they--hurt!"
The young man stood still as if turned to stone.
"Dearest-One," he whispered at last, using the familiar name he was
accustomed to hear--"Dost really care--so much?--And I--" he paused
and a mirthless laugh rang false upon the darkness--"Princess--I
cannot even thank thee--I--I dare not--save for the horse-medicines--"
Here the artificial note left his voice and with a sudden cry "If I
could--if I could, beloved," his eager hands went out and found what
they sought, a lithe, warm, young body ready to his arms. But almost
ere he clasped it he thrust it from him roughly.
"Go!" he said briefly. "Go, girl--and forget me--if thou canst. Yet
remember this--if ever woman's lips touch mine, they would be
yours--but that will be never--never!"
The next instant he was gone. Dearest-One stood, straining her eyes
unavailingly into the darkness for a space: then she cowered down in
on herself and sat shivering, her wide eyes open, fixed. But there was
nothing to be seen in her heaven or earth: nothing to be realised,
save that he would not even touch her.
CHAPTER III
"Draw near, O Man! and lift thy dreamy eyes.
See! this the ball; this the arena too
Where, mounted on the steed of Love, the prize
Is to be won by him who--God in view--
Strikes skilfully.
The Goal is distant; narrow too the Field;
Yet strike with freedom. God will send the Ball
Thy hand as sped in faith, where it should fall.
Backwards and forward strike and if thou yield
Yield cheerfully."
Grandmother Isan-daulet proved true prophet. Ere forty days had passed
from that patched up peace, another hasty messenger bearing a blue
'kerchief of death had arrived at Akshi whither the court had gone to
celebrate the late king's obsequies. Ahmed, the King of Samarkand had
been seized with a burning fever and after six days had departed from
this transitory world.
Babar was sorry. His uncle, he said, had been better than most. A
plain, honest Turk not favoured by genius, who had never omitted the
five daily prayers except when honestly drunk. And that was but
seldom, seeing that when he did take to drinking wine, he drank
without intermission for a month or six weeks at a stretch and
thereinafter would be sober for a considerable time. So there had
always been periods for piety.
The womenkind wept, of course, for blood feuds enhanced blood
relationships when Death the peace bringer stepped in between the
combatants. Besides, mourning was already afoot; so they could kill
two birds with one stone. Even Fatima Begum, the late King's first
wife, who, losing her premier position through childlessness had
retreated in a huff to a separate establishment, joined in the chorus
of wailing. And she brought her belated son Jahangir--nigh three years
younger than Babar--to take his rightful place in the palace; much to
old Isan-daulet's indignation.
"Set her up, indeed," she said with a toss of her head, "her and her
belated brat. Mark my words, had the child been lawful, 'twould have
come betimes. But when 'tis hoighty-toighty and a separate house, only
God knows to what an honest man may be made father."
Still the function was a function, and the ladies enjoyed all the
ceremonies; for they were simple folk, content with little, and that
little rough and rude, for all they were Queens and Princesses.
Babar, however, wearied of all save the giving of victuals to the
poor. He loved to see joy at a portion of _pillau_ and butter cakes.
Indeed he surreptitiously ordered more sugar for the children's thick
milk. It made him feel hungry, he said, to see them eat it. And there
was no better enjoyment in the world than real hunger; provided always
that food was in prospect. For he was tender-hearted over frail
humanity. He could not see, for instance, why the Black-eyed Princess,
his father's last and low-born wife who was, of course, quite beyond
the circle of distinction, should not be allowed, if it pleased her,
to discover a roundabout relationship to the family of Timur. It did
not alter facts. But Isan-daulet sniffed.
"'Twill not alter her manners or her speech anyhow; though 'tis true
in a way. We be all descended from Adam, as I tell her morn, noon, and
night."
So Babar had to listen to the Black-eyed one's wails; which he did in
kindly kingly fashion, for he liked the good-natured, stupid, pretty
creature. He had, however, other things to think of. His Uncle Ahmed's
death had vaguely disturbed him; for Uncle Ahmed left no male heirs;
and the question of succession was a burning one, since, by all the
laws of Moghulistan, Babar had a double claim to the throne through
his maternal grandfather Yunus Khan.
"Of a surety," he said to Dearest-One who was ever _confidante_ of his
ambitions and innermost thoughts, "there is no doubt that, now, Uncle
Mahmud, as brother, succeeds of right. But at his death? Cousin Masaud
and Cousin Baisanghar are not so close to Yunus Khan as I. Then Masaud
is a nincompoop, and Baisanghar--" he paused.
"Well! what of Cousin Baisanghar?" asked the girl hotly.
Babar whittled away with his knife at the arrow he was making--for he
was ever useful with his hands--ere he replied slowly:
"Baisanghar will never make a king. Wherefore I know not; but there it
is. He is not fit for it."
Dearest-One was aflame in a second. "Not fit for it?" she echoed.
"That is not true. He is as fit for it really as--as thou art,
brother. Only he will belittle himself! He will talk of himself as a
shadow--an unsubstantial shadow! It is not true, it is not right, it
is not fair, and so I told him the other night."
Babar put down his knife and stared.
"Thou didst tell him so--but when?"
Dearest-One hung her head, though a faint smile showed on her face.
She had given herself away; but she was not in the least afraid of her
brother. Many youngsters of his age might, from their own experiences
in love affairs, have been seriously disturbed at the idea of their
sister speaking to a young man on a dark stair; but Babar was an
innocent child. To him it would be but a slight breach of decorum. Yet
something made her breath short as she replied coolly:
"I met him on the stairs. It was dark, so he could not see me,
brother; and I spoke to him as--as a mother to her son." The head went
down a little more over the last words; true as they were in one
sense, she knew better in her heart-of-hearts.
"And he--what said he?" asked Babar alertly, taking his sister
completely by surprise. With the memory of that cry "Beloved!
beloved!" in her mind--it had lingered there day and night--she
faltered.
"Dearest-One!" said the boy, grave, open-eyed, after a pause, "did he
kiss thee?"
The girl looked up indignantly, a dark flush under her wheat-coloured
skin. "Kiss me?" she echoed--"he did not even really touch me--"
And then, suddenly, she hid her face in her hands and burst into
tears. True--he had not touched her--he had shrunk from her eager
body. Why? oh, why?--
Babar was full of concern. He laid down his knife and arrow, and went
over to his sister. "Then there is nothing to weep about, see you," he
said stoutly, "save lack of manners, and for that thou art sorry. Is
it not so, dearest?"
The girl's sobs changed to a half-hysterical giggle. "So sorry--" she
assented, "and thou wilt not tell Grandmother--"
"The prophet forbid!" cried her brother aghast; "I should never hear
the last of it."
And Dearest-One's tears changed to real laughter.
"Brother," she cried, "thou art the dearest darling of all! I would do
aught in the whole world for thee."
"Nay," replied Babar gravely, "that will I never ask of thee. My
womenkind shall have no task to do that my hands cannot compass
alone."
He felt virtuous as he spoke; rather uplifted, too, by that same
virtue. He did not know what Fate held in store for him. He did not
dream that he would have to ask of her the greatest sacrifice a woman
can make, and that she would make it willingly.
Meanwhile it was gorgeous summer tide, and Hussan played forward in
the King's game of polo, down in the river meadows. He was the best of
forwards; the best of men consequently to the boy-King.
"Thou art a young fool, child!" said old Isan-daulet who never minced
her words, "as thou wilt surely find out ere long unless God made thee
stupid blind. Luckily mine eyes are open; so go thy way and knock
balls about after the manner of men."
Thus it was early autumn ere Babar's eyes opened; but then what he saw
made his young blood surge through him from head to foot. The
meanness, the deceit of it! To conspire with the ambassador from
wicked Uncle Mahmud at Samarkand who had come ostensibly to present an
offering of silver almonds and golden pistachio nuts, to depose him,
Babar, and put "the brat" Jahangir on the throne. And all the while to
be playing forward in the King's game! It was too much! It was not
fair! It was emphatically _not_ the game!
"Throw away bad butter while it's melted," said Isan-daulet firmly;
"Send Kasim-Beg and other trustworthy friends to strangle him with a
bow string! Then wilt thou be quit of such devils' spawn."
But Babar was a sportsman. Even if it came to killing the forward in
the King's game, he was not going to do it underhand. So he looked
round the assembly of loyalists who had met to convince him in his
grandmother's apartments in the stone fort, and said briefly: "To
horse, gentlemen! I go to dismiss my Prime-minister from his
appointment."
But that gentleman had already dismissed himself. When they arrived at
the citadel, they found he had gone hunting; and from that expedition
he never returned. Someone must have blabbed; for he had posted off to
Samarkand, rather to the boy-King's relief. It would have been a
terrible thing to imprison or blind the best forward in the kingdom.
And even when news came that the offender had paused by the way to
make an attack on Akshi, and in the consequent _melee_, having been
wounded in the hinder parts by an arrow from his own men, had been
unable to escape and so had fallen a victim to the loyalists the
boy-King was glad that Providence had taken judgment from his hands.
Hussan had but himself to thank. As the poet said:
"Who does an evil deed
But sows the seed
Of his own meed."
This was finely philosophic; but it did not quite comfort the
philosopher. The first actual experience of ingratitude and disloyalty
made its mark upon him and sobered him. He began to abstain from
forbidden and dubious meats and but seldom omitted his midnight
prayers.
Mercifully, however, the season for polo was past, and Nevian
Gokultash was almost as good at leap-frog as the deceased statesman.
Nevian Gokultash, who, as foster brother, was above the possibility of
suspicion.
"Truly," said Babar one evening, throwing his arm round his playmate's
neck affectionately, "rightly are thy kind named _Gokultash_--'heart
of stone.' Thy love is founded on rock, whereas my brother by blood--"
he broke off impatiently--"but there! 'tis not his fault--he is so
young--two whole years younger than I."
Despite the good-natured excuse which in all his chequered life, ever
came easily to Babar's kindly nature, he felt the first chill of the
cold world at his heart. He found to his great irritation and
annoyance, that his _milieu_ was not nearly so reasonable as he was
himself. It was the irritation and the annoyance which besets
capability and vitality. Other folk had not nearly such good memories,
were not half so nimble-minded, or straight-forward, as he expected.
When, for instance, he sent an envoy to a rebellious chief, in order
to remonstrate with him, before proceeding to arms, the wrong-headed
man, instead of returning a suitable answer, ordered the ambassador to
be put to death.
Such, however, not being in the pleasures of God, the envoy managed to
escape, and after having endured a thousand distresses and hardships,
arrived naked and on foot, to pour the tale of his wrongs into Babar's
indignant ears. Urged by wrath at such ill-manners, the boy-King
proposed instant reprisals, and set off; but a heavy fall of snow on
the encircling hills and a slight sprinkling on the clover meadows
warned him that winter was approaching, and his nobles added their
opinion, that it was no time in which to commence a campaign.
So he returned to Andijan and to a boy's life of study and sport. The
saintly Kazi was his tutor, and kept the boy to his Al-jabr (algebra)
and Arabic, and abstruse dialectic dissertations on the nature of the
Kosmos. There were not many books to be read in Andijan, but Babar
knew them all. He had the _Epic of Kings_ almost by heart, and used to
regret there were not more details about the great Jamsheed with his
wonderful divining cup; Jamsheed who reigned with might, whom the
birds, and beasts, and fairies, and demons obeyed; Jamsheed of whom it
was written "and the world was happier for his sake and he too was
glad." That was something like a King!
And Babar learnt also, in a rude, unrefined way, all the
accomplishments of a Turkhi nobleman. He could strum on the lute, bawl
a song fairly, and play with singlestick to admiration. The latter was
Kasim's care; Kasim who was the best swordsman in the kingdom and who
used to quarrel with the Kazi as to whether the young student's
strongest point was fencing, or the fine _nastalik_ hand-writing in
which Babar excelled.
As for sport, the snow falling early brought the deer down to the
valleys; and the undulating country about Andijan was always full of
wild fowl, while pheasants by the score were to be shot in the skirts
of the mountains.
The boy was growing fast and in his lambskin coat worn with the fleece
inside, the soft tanned shammy leather without all encrusted by
gold-silk embroidery to a supple strength that kept out both cold and
sabre cuts, he looked quite a young man; and his high peaked cap of
black astrachan to match the edgings of his coat and bound with
crimson velvet suited his bright animated face.
Dearest-One admired him hugely.
"I would the court painter were not a fool," she said regretfully as
he came in one day from the chase and held up for her inspection a
cock _minawul_ pheasant all resplendent in its winter plumage. "But he
cannot see. When he paints thee he makes thee all as one with Timur
Shah and Ghengis Khan--on whom be peace--but I want _thee_."
In truth it needed a better artist than Andijan held to do justice to
the fire which always leapt to the boy's face when beauty such as the
iridescent bird's struck a spark from his imagination and made the
whole world blaze into sudden splendour.
"Baisanghar might do it likely," replied Babar thoughtlessly; "he hath
a quaint turn with his brush that is not as others; and he said he
would love to paint thy portrait--" he broke off suddenly, aware that
this was a subject which had better not have been introduced. But,
indeed, there seemed a fate that he should always talk of Baisanghar
to his sister. Could it be her fault? He looked at her with boyish
reproach, but the girl's face was lit up with smiles and dimples.
"Aye! he said that. Did he say more after I had gone? Tell me,
brotherling."
But he walked off in dignified fashion with the cock pheasant. His
sister thought too much of Baisanghar. And it was time she married.
He talked to his mother quite seriously about it, and she met his
anxiety by the calm remark:
"Why should she not marry Baisanghar?"
Why not, indeed, now he came to think of it. Somehow it had not
occurred to him before. But when he suggested it to his sister she met
him with a storm of tears. She was never going to marry. She was going
to be a sainted canoness and pray for her brother. Why could he not
leave her alone; and Cousin Baisanghar also, who apparently was of the
same mind, since, though he was nigh nineteen, he had never taken a
wife. And, if it came to weddings, was it not high time that he,
Babar, King of Ferghana, bethought himself of bringing _his_ betrothed
home? That would procure festivities enow, if _that_ was what he was
wanting.
From which deft shaft in the enemy's camp, Babar fled precipitately.
The very idea irked him; he had no time for such nonsense. In fact he
wearied even of the three loving women who insisted upon consulting
him by day and by night.
But ere the winter was over yet another messenger of death arrived,
and this one made the boy-King feel like a caged young eagle longing
for his first flight.
Wicked Uncle Mahmud after disgusting Samarkand for six months with his
unbridled licentiousness and tyranny, until great and small, rich and
poor, lifted up their heads to heaven in supplications for redress,
and burst out into curses and imprecations on the Mirza's head, had,
by the judgment that attends on such crime, tyranny, and wickedness,
died miserably after an illness of six days.
The women wept, of course, though old Isan-daulet's tears were
considerably tempered by smiles at her own prophetic powers. Had she
not said that both the men who dared to attack the apple of her eye,
young Babar, would suffer? And so they had. And now ...
The old lips pursed themselves and were silent. But the old thoughts
were busy. Her grandson was, mayhap, over young to try his luck this
year, yet for all that he was the rightful heir to the throne of
Samarkand. In this way: Father Yunus Khan, Suzerain of all
Moghulistan, had been suzerain also of Samarkand. None questioned
that. Had not the triple marriage of Yunus Khan's three daughters with
the King of Samarkand's three sons been arranged especially in order
to put an end to the Khan of Moghulistan's undoubted claim, by joining
the two families? Well, one of those marriages had produced no son.
Mahmud who had married the younger daughter, had but one son by her, a
perfect child. But Babar, son of the eldest sister, was adolescent;
therefore, by every right, every claim, he was the heir.
But she was a wise old woman. There was no use being in a hurry.
Samarkand might as well seethe in its own sedition for awhile. By all
accounts the Turkhans were up in arms; and the Turkhans were ticklish
folk to deal with. Then Khosrau Shah, the late King's prime-minister
was an able man and might be trusted to fight for what he wanted. The
time for intervention would be when the combatants had weakened each
other.
And the shrewd old woman once more proved herself right. For Khosrau
Shah, having plumped for the nincompoop Masaud--doubtless because
he knew that with a nonentity on the throne, his power would be
absolute--the Turkhans declared for Baisanghar, sent for him express,
and having driven out Khosrau, who had attempted to conceal his
master's death until his plans were completed, placed the former on
the throne.
And here another factor came in to the wary old woman's mind. What if
her granddaughter were to marry Baisanghar? Babar could lay claim to
other kingdoms when he was fit to fight for them, and thus there would
be a down-sitting for both her daughter's children. So, most of the
affairs of importance at Andijan being conducted by her advice,
Kasim's swashbuckler instincts were held in check for the time.
Something however must be done to occupy the lad meanwhile; and the
news that his uncle by marriage and cousin by descent, Hussain, King
of Khorasan, meditated an expedition against Hissar, the neighbouring
province, prompted the suggestion that the boy-King should take
advantage of proximity to pay his respects and make acquaintance with
the premier prince of the age.
Babar's imagination was aflame in an instant. Tales of the splendid
court at Herat were broadcast in Asia. Folk said they had even spread
to Europe--that dim unknown horizon to which the boy's thoughts often
reverted. And Sultan Hussain was as his father and his elder brother.
It was always wise to make the personal acquaintance of such; it
dispelled misunderstanding on their part, and gained for yourself a
nearer and better idea of their strength and weakness.
So one day at the beginning of winter, with stout Kasim wrapped to the
eyes in furs and a hundred-and-a-half or so of hardy troopers equipped
for a mountain march, Babar started for the low passes by the White
Hills to the valley of the Oxus river.
"Have a care of thy soul, my son," said the saintly Kwaja, "and
remember what the poet sings:
"The soul is the only thing to prize;
Heed not the body: it is not wise.
The wiles of the Devil are millionfold,
And every spell is a fetter to hold.
Thou hast five robbers to keep at bay,
Hearing and sight, touch, taste and smell,
So chain them up and govern them well.
Some things are real and some but seem;
The mundane things of the world are a dream."
But Isan-daulet sniffed. "So be it that he keep the institutes of
Ghengis Khan as his forebears did, he will do. They be enough for a
brave man, and death or the bastinado sufficient punishment."
The Kwaja looked grave. "Yet be they not the law of Islam, sister; and
we, of the faith, are not heathens."
"Heathen or no!" retorted the old lady, "my grandson will do well if
he touch Ghengis Khan's height." And she sniffed again.
Perhaps her words put it into the boy's head, but in this, his first
flight beyond his hill-clipped kingdom his thoughts were with his
great ancestors. He rather swaggered it in consequence round the camp
fires at night, and was overbold in the chase; so that more than once
on the higher hills Nevian-Gokultash had to pick him out of a
snow-drift. But his dignity was always equal to the occasion, and when
at last Sultan Hussain Mirza's camp showed in ordered array on the low
ground beyond the passes, he took it as if he were quite accustomed to
see the large pavilions, the rows on rows of orderly tents, the
_laagers_ of chained carts.
He held his head very high too, as he rode down the central alley, his
pennant carried before him by two jostling troopers. The smart
soldiers, lavish of buckles and broideries, who lounged about, smiled
at the uncouth troop; but each and all had a need of praise for the
boyish leader who sat his horse like a centaur and whose bright eyes
seemed everywhere.
"He is a gay enough young cockerel," admitted a scented noble with a
smile. "Let us see if his uncle will make him fight."
But even if Babar had been more pugnacious than he was, sheer
astonishment at his first interview would have kept him quiescent.
Even Kasim-Beg, stickler as he was for etiquette, gave up the hopeless
attempt at ceremonial.
"Thou art welcome, nephew," said the old man whose long white beard
contrasted with his gay-coloured, juvenile garments, that better
matched the vivacity of the straight narrow eyes. The black astrachan
cap perched on the reverend head, however, suited neither. "Sit
ye down, boy, and watch my butting rams! Yonder is the Earth
Trembler--peace be on my ancestor's grave ... and this is the
Barbarian Ghengis--no offence meant to thine, young Chagatai! Three
_tumans_ of gold, Muzaffar, he smashes the other's horn first butt!"
The man he addressed, who had been, Heaven knows why, prime favourite
for years, and showed his position by the most arrogant of airs,
turned to his neighbour. "Not I; a certainty is no bet for me, though
by our compact, Excellence, I would get my fair share of two-thirds
back, if you won! But Berunduk Birlas here, having lost his best hawk
after bustard to-day, is in a mood for tears, and would like to lose
gold also."
Berunduk Birlas, the ablest man at the court, shook his head sadly.
"Of a truth, friend, my loss is great enough to content me. Had my
sons died or broken their necks I could not grieve more than for my
true falcon-jinny Brighteyes! No man could desire a more captivating
beauty."
Sultan Hussain went off into a peal of laughter. "Li! where is
Ali-Shir? Where is our poet? Brighteyes the captivating beauty who
catches hairs, eh? There is a subject for word-play. Out with a
_ghazel_ on the spot, friend Ali."
A thin, elegant-looking man with a pale, refined face, got up and made
a perfect salute. From head to foot he was exquisite, the Beau Brummel
of his age.
"Look," nudged one young courtier to another enviously, "he hath a new
knot to his kerchief. How, in God's name, think you, is it tied?"
The incomparable person paused for one second only; then in the most
polished of voices he poured out a lengthy ode, deftly ringing the
changes on the word "_baz_" (falcon) which in Persian has at least a
dozen different meanings.
A ripple of laughter followed his somewhat forced allusions, and he
sat down again amid a chorus of applause.
Babar stood dum-foundered, yet in every fibre of his body sympathetic.
Here was something new indeed! A new world very different from the
rough and tumble clash of arms and swords and polo sticks at Andijan;
but a world where, mayhap, he might hold his own.
"Well done! Well done!" he cried with the rest, and his uncle the
Sultan nodded approval at the lad.
"Sit ye down, sit ye down!" he said; "and, cupbearer! a beaker of
Shiraz wine for the King of Ferghana!"
For the life of him the boy could not refrain from one swift look at
Kasim's face, Kasim who was all shocked propriety at such a violation
of the rules both of Islam and Ghengis Khan; but after that one scared
glance dignity came back.
"Your Highness!" he said, with pomp, waving his hand towards one of
the butting rams, "like my ancestor the Barbarian I drink water only."
A smile went round the assembly and young Babar felt a glow of pride
that he had not fallen so far short in wit. Thereinafter he sat and
listened with wide eyes. His uncle was certainly a lively, pleasant
man; but his temper was a bit hasty and so were his words. Still,
despite that and overfreedom with the wine cup, he evidently had a
profound reverence for the faith, since at the proper hour he put on a
small turban tied in three folds, broad and showy, and, having placed
a plume on it, went in this style to prayers!
That night when Kasim was snoring in the tent and the
hundred-and-a-half or thereabouts of his followers were slumbering
peacefully, full up of kid _pullao_, Babar lay awake. He was composing
an ode for the first time in his life. It was a sorry composition of
no value except that it filled him with desire to do better.
CHAPTER IV
In this world's inn, where sweetest song abounds
There is no prelude to one song that sounds;
The guests have quaffed their wine and passed away
Their cups were empty and they would not stay.
No sage, no stripling, not a hand but thine
Has held this goblet of poetic wine;
Rise, then, and sing! Thy fear behind thee cast
And, be it clear or dull, bring forth the wine thou hast.
_Jami_.
Babar could not tear himself away from his uncle's camp. He lingered
on and on, watching the military operations with a more or less
critical eye, but absorbing culture wholesale.
It was a revelation to him, meeting men to whom fighting was not the
end and aim of life; and these Begs and nobles of his uncle's court,
though they were all supposed to be engaged in warfare with Khosrau
Shah who was holding Hissar over the river, for his nominee the
nincompoop, had yet time for other things.
Ali-Shir, for instance, was wise beyond belief in all ways.
Incomparable man! So kind, so courteous. Babar profited by his
guidance and encouragement in his efforts to civilise himself. Thus
becoming--since there is not in history any man who was greater patron
of talent than Ali-Shir--one of that great company of poets, painters,
professors, and musicians who owe everything to him, who, passing
through this world single and unencumbered by wife or child, gave
himself and his time up to the instruction of others.
So far, therefore, as the clash of intellect went, young Babar was
satisfied. In regard to the clash of arms it was different. How such a
mighty body of Mirzas, Begs, and chiefs, who, with their followers, if
they were not double the number of the enemy over the water were _at
least_ one-and-a-half times that number, could content themselves with
practical inaction passed his understanding.
When, too, they had such battering rams and catapults as positively
made his mouth water! There was one of the latter which threw such a
quantity of stones and with such accuracy that in half an hour--just
before bedtime prayers--the enemy's fort was beautifully breached. But
the night being deemed rather dark for assault and the troops
preferring the safety and comfort of their trenches, no immediate
attack was made; the result being that before morning the breach was
repaired.
There was absolutely no real fine fighting, and at this rate his
uncle, the Sultan, would doubtless spend the whole winter on the banks
of the Amu river, and when spring came, patch up some sort of a peace
from fear of the floods which always came down with the melting snow.
"That is his way," asserted Kasim with a shrug of his shoulders. "He
leads his army forth with pomp and state, and in himself is no mean
general; but ever it comes to naught. It is so, always, when folk take
to rhyming couplets, and putting spices to their food. Give me orders
that hang together, and plain roast venison."
But all the while the honest man was stuffing his mouth full of lamb
and pistachio nuts, and Babar smiled. Still he felt that, so far as
the art of war went, he might go back to little Andijan without fear
of leaving behind him any knowledge worth the learning. It was
otherwise with the culture, and he flung himself with characteristic
vitality into music lessons, and dancing lessons, elocution lessons
and deportment lessons, until as he entered the court audience no one
could have told that but a few weeks before, he had been as rough and
as uncouth as old Kasim, who stoutly refused veneer.
"What I am, God made me," he would say, "and if folk like it not let
them leave. I budge not."
To which uncompromising independence, one pair of hands--delicate,
long-fingered, ivory hands--gave fluttering applause. They belonged to
a young man who, almost at first sight, impressed young Babar more
than anyone he had seen in all his life. He was a helpless cripple who
yet took his part in life like any other man. Every evening his
spangled litter would be brought into the big audience tent and set
down just below the King's. For Mirza Gharib-Beg (who styled himself
Poverty-prince in allusion to the meaning of his name--poor) was the
King's son by a low-born woman who had been passionately loved. So,
despite the fact that he had been born misshapen, ugly, and that
ill-health had always been his, Poverty-prince still had a hold on his
father's affection. And no wonder; since, though his form was not
prepossessing he had a fine genius, and though his constitution was
feeble, he had a powerful mind. There was nothing, it seemed to Babar,
that he could not do. He could rhyme with Ali-Shir, play the guitar
with Abdulla-Marwarid and paint with Bahzad. What is more, he could
talk mysticism far better than Kamal-ud-din, with his wagging black
beard, who pretended to raptures and ecstasies and had written a
portentously dull book about Sufism which he called "The Assembly of
Lovers"--portentously dull and also profane--which was inexcusable.
But when Poverty-prince spoke of roses and nightingales and even of
the red wine cup, he took you into another world; and he evidently
believed what he said, whereas Kamal-ud-din was all pose.
Yet the next instant the thin ugly face would show almost impish in
its amusement and its owner would burst out with some sally that would
set them all a-laughing; and him a-coughing for the change of air
which was to have done him good was doing him harm; though he would
not admit it.
"Wherefore should I?" he laughed gaily in some anxious face. "A man is
as ill as he thinks himself--he is all things that he believes himself
to be. So I am strong, and well, and young, and deeply enamoured of a
beauteous lady. She is called Feramors--a pretty name," and he would
catch up a lute over which his thin, long, ivory hands would flutter
like butterflies and sing:
"Say! is it Love or Death, O Feramors!
That hides behind thy bosom's pearly doors?
I care not, so I reach the heart within.
Oh! let me in;
Open the closed doors, O Feramors!"
Truly he was a marvellous person! To Babar, boy as he was, the most
marvellous thing in the camp. How could he, cripple, suffering, almost
dying as he was, keep life at bay as it were? How could he sit so free
of it? He, Babar, with his health and strength was not so independent,
though he was more so than most, for, almost unconsciously, he set
himself as free as he could from encumbrance even of thought.
He shrank even from so much as came to him from Gharib, and avoided
his cousin in consequence, spending such time as he could spare from
his numerous lessons, and the watch Kasim made him keep on military
matters, in hunting amid the low hills.
But it was no use. That dark, curiously be-scented tent wherein the
cripple lay laughing at life, had a strange attraction for him. He
took to dropping into it on his way elsewhere, until old Kasim grew
uneasy.
"He lays spells on you, my liege," he protested. "They tell me he can
do it to all young folk--so have a care!"
"Smear my forehead with lamp-black against the evil eye; then shall I
be safe," laughed the boy, and yet in his heart he felt the spell.
And, oddly enough, he liked it. He was fascinated by something in this
distant, faraway cousin of his; so far-away that it scarcely seemed
worth while calling him cousin. Yet, as grandmother Isan-daulet would
say: "all men were descended from Adam!"
"Come in on thy return from the chase," said Poverty-prince one day
when he had looked in on the scent sodden tent, a picture of youth and
strength and health, in his fur _posteen_ and his high peaked cap.
"And bring thy bag with thee for this lifeless log to see. What shall
it contain? _Imprimis_--a brace of chameleon birds. I love to see
their iridescent necks and the six different colours between head and
tail--mark you! how I remember thy description, cousin-ling?"
Babar blushed. "Thou said'st thou had never seen them," he began
apologetically.
"Save through thine eyes and they are good enough for most folk. Be
not ashamed, coz, of the gift God hath given thee. And thou shalt
bring me a fat deer and some _kalidge_ pheasant--and, with luck, a
cock _minawul_. Then we will look at it with the same eyes--thou and
I--" A wistfulness had crept into his voice, and he said no more.
But the curious thing was that the bag was ever just what
Poverty-prince had predicted, neither more, nor less.
"Thou art a wizard, for sure," said Babar half seriously. "The
thought of thy words makes my aim sure at times, and at another sets
my bow arm a-quiver. Wert thou to say '_naught_,' I should return
empty-handed."
"So be it," laughed the cripple. "Why should we kill God's pretty
creatures?"
And thereinafter two whole hunts produced nothing. Whether it was a
fresh fall of snow in the hills that brought ill luck Babar could not
say, but he looked at his cousin with awe.
"Thou hast more power I verily believe," he said, "than the Dream-man
whom Uncle Hussain keeps--"
"For his amusement," put in Poverty-prince with a frown. "But _that_
is black magic; mine is white. I do naught. 'Tis thy mind that
answers--" he broke off and his large eyes--the only unmarred feature
in his face--narrowed themselves to a piercing glance. "Wherefore
should I not say it, cousin? Has it not struck thee, that had'st thou
been born crooked and not straight, or had I been born straight and
not crooked, we should have been as two twins? That is why I like
thee, and thou likest me."
The boy sat and stared at him, almost incredulously. He could not
imagine his youth and strength pent up in that prison of a body; and
yet ...
Yes! without doubt there was some tie. Else why should he feel so
intimate--why should he speak to Poverty-prince of things which every
decent young Mahomedan was taught to keep to himself; for instance of
Dearest-One and the possibility of her marrying Baisanghar?
The blood rushed to his face, however, with shame when he felt his
cousin's hot, long-fingered, trembling hand close on his wrist in
quick arrest.
"Marriage--say not the word! Dost not know? Nay--I forgot thy
youth--and I will not soil thine ears with the tale. But we in foul
Herat know most wickedness, most degradations. And there is that in
miserable Baisanghar's life that bars marriage with any woman worthy
the name. Aye! and he knows it--poor maimed soul enmeshed for ever by
the wickedness of one who should have protected him--May God's curse
light on him for ever. So think not of marriage, cousin."
Babar shook off his cousin's clasp haughtily. It was not that he
resented having substance given to his vague doubts of Baisanghar--it
was better to know for sure; but interference with his womenkind was
intolerable. And he had brought it on himself!
"By your leave," he said with terrific dignity, "we will speak no more
on such private matters. 'Tis my own fault. Such subjects are not meet
for public conversations."
Poverty-prince lay back on his cushions and kindly raillery took
possession of his face. "Not meet, sayest thou cousin-ling? Yet are
they the best half--nay! the three quarters of life. Dost know that
even to me, cripple, marriage hath played the major part?"
Babar's eyes involuntarily travelled over the distorted body, the
crumpled limbs, and Poverty-prince laughed cynically.
"Thou art right, boy," he went on; "loathsome to sight and touch, what
had I to do with weddings. But princedom weighs heavy with the pandars
of the court. And 'twas done early. Mayhap they did not dream I would
grow up so monstrous--as I did." He paused and his pale face grew
paler, his hot fingers clasped and unclasped themselves. "Mayest thou
never--nay! thou will not--see fear upon a girl's face. I saw it. Dost
understand? Nay, thou art but a child still. Thank God! I did. So she
waits for release by my death. And then--" He paused again and this
time bright, cold raillery took possession of his face as he said:
"Thou wilt make a fine bridegroom, cousin-ling, some day! Fair maids
will not be alarmed at thee!"
"Likely I shall be of them," answered the boy stoutly; and it was
true; barring Dearest-One, the stupid, mincing creatures filled him
with dismay.
This passed but a few days before Kasim, who thought his young charge
had had quite enough of the camp, proposed starting homewards. There
seemed no prospect of the campaign coming to a close. Quite a variety
of strategical movements had been made, mines had been dug, forts
besieged, but the result was nil. And time was passing. Events had not
been going smoothly at Samarkand, the moment for intervention might be
near and Grandmother Isan-daulet had sent a messenger advocating
return.
None too soon, for the very same day King Hussain's runners brought
news of a conspiracy to turn out Baisanghar, and bring in a younger
brother Ali-Khan.
"But he is not of the blood, either," said Babar hotly. "Kasim! we
must go back at once." The desire for conquest was stirring in him
once more.
"The sooner the better, sire," replied the stout warrior, settling his
sword belt. He had wearied terribly among the smart soldiers and was
longing for a real raid once more.
"To say farewell," echoed Poverty-prince, when Babar looked in that
night at his cousin's tent; "I thought it was not to be for a week
yet." And his hot hand clasped the cool one with a lingering touch.
"There was news from Samarkand," replied the lad, regret tempering the
keenness which had come to his face with the prospect of action. "And,
cousin, it matters little--'tis but a few hours' difference--"
"A few hours?" echoed the cripple, speaking, for the first time since
Babar had known him, almost regretfully; "that means much to one who
has but a few days or weeks to live. Not that it does so really, coz,"
he added, recovering his usual serenity. "And thou wilt spare me one
of the hours? I dare claim so much of my twin?"
The pathetic playfulness of the appeal went straight to the lad's soft
heart; he fell on his knees beside the cushions, then sat back in the
Mahomedan attitude of prayer. "Nay, brother," he said--and there was
quite a tremble in his young voice--"say not so--I am but a poor
creature beside thee. Thou art--truly I know not what! Sometimes I
think an angel from God's paradise--thou art so splendid!"
"Knowest thou if angels be splendid?" asked Poverty-prince with
radiant raillery. "For myself I know not--only this--that I shall miss
my double--" He looked at the lad's lithe limbs, at his long legs, his
great stretch of arm. "And to think," he muttered, "that I might have
been born so--My God! to think of it."
Then suddenly he clapped his hands and gave a peremptory order to the
servant who appeared.
"See that I be not disturbed--that no one enters."
He waited till they were alone, then drew something from his bosom and
held it before him in both hands. It was a tiny crystal bowl scarce
large enough for his finger tips. But they held the glittering thing
lightly. It looked like a diamond body to two fluttering ivory wings,
as he said slowly, musically.
"It hath lain in my breast, ever. I found it in the hand of death," he
said dreamily, "but the Riddle-of-Life ends for me, and begins for
thee. So take it, when I have told thee how it came to me."
Those ivory hands of his seemed more like wings than ever as, still
holding the bowl before him, he lay back and it showed clear against
the shadows of the tent.
"Thou knowest," he went on, "the graveyards of the hill-folk? Set on
an hill and thick with iris flowers--the flowers of immortality--the
green sword leaves guarding the blossoms, guarding the quiet dead
below? It was the day I saw fear in a maiden's eyes--there was
such a graveyard not far from her father's dwelling--he is dead now
and she awaits the release of death amongst beneficent ladies in a
House-of-Rest at Herat--and I bid them carry me there; for my heart
was aflame and I cursed God for this carcase, seeing she was fair. So
they left me there overlooking the valley, and when they had gone I
lay amid the crushed iris and writhed--but of that no more. It hath
passed.
"So, suddenly, between my empty wide-spread arms and clutching fingers
I saw something amid the crushed blossoms. It must have been a very
old grave on which I lay, since the iris roots matted thick upon it as
if to hide the dead that lay in the hollow of it; for the rams and the
winds sweeping on that high exposed spot had torn the covering of soil
from Mother Earth's bosom. What I saw was this crystal cup. Perchance
it had been used when the dead was laid to rest, and forgotten.
Perchance some sad lover had set it there with flowers and tears in
the poignancy of first grief, and gone away to love another. Who
knows? The iris-roots had grown to a cup around it; twisted, white,
iris-roots like dead fingers; and I took it from them. Take thou it, O
Zahir-ud-din Mahomed, from one close to the Adventure of Death. I
burden the gift with but one condition--if ever thou comest across a
frightened maid--" here his whole face became radiant with smiles--"be
not afraid of her. So take it cousin-ling. It is no cup of King
Jamsheed to bring thee counsel in thy need. Yet it hath its virtue to
those, who, like thou hast, have eyes to see. It can bring content."
Content! was this the secret of Poverty-prince's charm? Babar, bold,
young, every fibre of him keen-strung for the Life, on the brink of
which he stood, cared little for content. Yet he took the cup and
looked at it curiously. Quaint of a surety! Taller than it was broad.
Small enough to lie in the hollow of the hand. The brim over-thick by
reason of heavy bosses below the edge: five bosses like those in blown
glass, but oval, like eyes. The rest faintly frosted by fine
scratchings (were they without or within?--within surely) which, were
they letterings, would need a magnifying glass ere they could be
deciphered. But at the bottom, so disposed that one must read in
drinking, these words showed clear:
"Save the cup of life, what gift canst thou bring?"
That was from Hafiz surely?
"Aye! divine Hafiz," replied his cousin answering his thought boldly.
"Now, hold it to the light, cousin-ling, and see its virtue."
The boy did as he was bid, feeling dazed and dreamful. A seven-lamped
tripod behind his cousin's cushions had been lit--at least he could
not remember that it had been there when he came in--Seven little
lamps ...
Why! those five bosses were deftly arranged to gather the light and
send it ... God and His Prophet! How beautiful!
Through the clear eye before his eyes he saw his cousin's face--all
glorified--splendid utterly ...
That something which came to him ever with the sight of beauty, filled
him with joy ...
But stay! the bosses must be magnifying glasses also! He could read
something.
What was it?
_Ishk_ (love)? or _Ashk_ (tears)?
"Thou wilt see more clearly when thou hast learnt to use the five eyes
of the soul," came his cousin's voice; "then thine own thoughts will
return to thee from the Mirror-of-Life. Now put it into the bosom of
thy fur coat. There is room there for it and majesty likewise. And now
I will sing the Song-of-the-Bowl ere thou goest."
He clapped his hands once more, and the boy sighed and rubbed his eyes
dreamily. Surely the seven lamps had been lit? But now they were not;
the semi-darkness of the scent-sodden tent closed in on him, and that
was his cousin's every-day voice:
"Bring me my dulcimer, slave! Lo! King-ling, it suits the measure
better than the _cithara_ and I am proud of the tune! 'Tis my own."
So, after a while, the tinkling notes began, the voice rose
plaintively:
[Illustration: Three Bars of Music with words]
"Clear Crystal Bowl! Thy sun-sparkles blind
Every poor soul whose eyes seek to find
Way through Life's wilderness on thy bright brim,
Crystal Bowl!
What wilt thou bring to him,
Darkness or Light?
Clear Crystal Bowl! Thy touch, icy cold,
Chills lovers lips that lay overbold
Hot clinging kisses on thy bright brim,
Crystal Bowl!
What wilt thou bring to him,
Love or Despair?
Clear Crystal Bowl! I laugh like thy wine!
Bring me Life's whole! all things must be mine!
Is not the wide world mirrored in thee
Crystal Bowl?
I bid thee bring to me
Joy, Grief, Life, Death--"
The voice ceased and there was silence for a little while.
But in all the long after-years the memory of those tinkling notes,
that thin voice claiming the whole of life, remained with Zahir-ud-din
Mahomed.
"Well! God's peace go with thee," said Poverty-prince brightly at the
last; "methinks thy boyhood is about past, and sterner stuff hath to
come. But keep the gift of death and if thou lose it--at least
remember my poor verses. And, coz--" here the wizened face almost
dimpled with laughter, "if thou comest across the frightened maid--I
give no names, they are an encumbrance, remember to make her not
frightened of my twin! Farewell."
It was a stirring night. The river had to be crossed silently in the
very face of Khosrau Shah's pickets (for he was holding the north bank
for his nominee the nincompoop) and a stealthy way made skirting the
enemy's camp, ere they could reach the hills beyond. Some of the party
felt inclined to put Andijan tactics in force, make a rush through the
out-posts, give and take a few sabre cuts, and so make off; but Babar,
even though old Kasim hesitated, had learnt something besides
accomplishments in his uncle's camp; he had learnt that time was long,
and that it was well to choose your own. So he rode canny.
It was dawn ere they reached the last vantage ground whence they could
see the camp they had left. It lay curiously calm and peaceful. Kasim,
more than half-asleep on his horse now there was no chance of a fine
fight, yawned, and stretched his arms wide.
"No more of that for me," he said lustily. "I am for cut and thrust
and a good bellyful of plain food."
"But I am for all things," laughed Babar. He was trying to pick out
his cousin's tent, and as he spoke he put his hand into the bosom of
his coat to feel for the Crystal Bowl.
He could not find it!
Had it dropped out or what...?
"I must go back," he said, half to himself--"I must, I must!"
"Go back? Wherefore?" asked old Kasim. "What is it, sire--to go back
is Death; the enemy is awake by now."
The boy-King looked at him keenly. "Aye!" he said shortly, "and to go
on is Life. I must remember, as he said. Forward! gentlemen!"
CHAPTER V
The day of delight has come and the wind brings scent
Of musk and rose and lilies and peppermint.
Oh! day of delight pass slow!
God's flowers must blow.
The day of despair has come and the wind brings dust
To bury the flowers; the song of the birds is hushed.
Oh, day of despair pass swift!
Let God's clouds lift.
The days of despair and delight have come;
Ah, me! I care not away from my home.
The days of God pass swift and slow.
Allah-i-hu--allah-i-ho!
_Ashraf the Exiled_.
Old Isan-daulet, who had been Queen-regent to all intents and purposes
during Babar's absence, welcomed him back to Andijan somewhat charily.
She had sent for him in a hurry when news came that the Turkhans of
Samarkand had revolted against Baisanghar, captured that prince by
stratagem, and put Mirza Ali his younger brother on the throne.
But now the tables were turned. Baisanghar, whom all knew to be wily
as a fox, had not only managed to escape, but having somehow gained
the sympathy of the townspeople, they had risen tumultuously against
the Court-folk and the Turkhans, had besieged the citadel which had
not been able to hold out for a single day, and had replaced
Baisanghar--why only God knew!
"'Twill be because of his love odes, grandmother," said Babar gravely;
"there is not a house in Samarkand where a copy of them is not to be
found."
Isan-daulet sniffed captiously. "I would he would keep his love-songs
to himself. There is Dearest-One sick as a magpie still with the shock
of his death, and he is not dead, the good-for-nothing."
Babar's lip set. "He is dead to her anyhow," he said, "so no more
dreams of that, grandmother. I forbid it, and so I will tell her."
"Hoighty-toighty!" sniffed the old lady; but in her heart of hearts
she was glad.
"Look you!" she said to her daughter afterwards, "he spoke for all the
world like his grandfather when things went wrong. Lo! he is boy no
longer. We must treat him as a man, with wiles."
Such, however, was not Dearest-One's treatment of her brother; nor was
his of her, what might have been expected from his peremptory tone to
his grandmother. How could it be, when he found her pale and
dispirited, despite her joy at seeing him? He beat about the bush
uncomfortably for quite a long time, until with characteristic
clarity he blurted out: "And, sister, thou must think no more of
Baisanghar--he is a worthless scoundrel--"
The girl, ill as she was, looked as if she could have stabbed him with
her eyes.
"That he is not," she said proudly; "thou art like the rest of
them,--even the Kwaja--yea! I have talked with him concerning it and
he knows, mayhap, more than thou dost--who confound the sinner with
the sin. But look you, Zahir-ud-din Mahomed, were there no man on
earth but Mirza Baisanghar I would not have him; and yet I love him
dearly, dearly." She sank back on her bed, hid her face in the quilt,
and sobbed.
Babar stood aghast, yet feeling as if he could cry too.
"I wish thou had'st known Cousin Gharib," he said suddenly,
causelessly. "He would have understood. I cannot--not yet."
Then he turned and left her. What was the use of trying to comfort
anyone when you did not know the cause of their sorrow? And Joy and
Grief, Life and Death had to come if one were to live.
Then life was so full just at the present. The very story of
Baisanghar's escape was enough to make one's heart beat. Under
sentence of death, and such a death! To be taken with pomp
and ceremony to the foot of the throne in the Gokserai--the
Green-palace--that wonderful palace, four stories high, built by the
Great Timur in the citadel, where every kingly descendant of his must
be enthroned, where every kingly descendant of his must die--and
there to be strangled! With _that_ before him, to have the nerve in a
few minutes to unbrick a closed door, run to the bastion, fling
himself over the parapet wall, and so find shelter in Kwaja Kwarka's
house--the holiest man in the city! A thousand pities, indeed, that
Baisanghar had sunk so low. Aye! Dearest-One was right. One could
condemn the sin, and yet do justice to the sinner. Yet there was a
lack of kingliness too that was inexcusable. To allow his brother Ali
to escape also was perhaps to err on the side of mercy, but to submit
to be beaten by him in battle immediately afterwards was distinctly
unnecessary!
It complicated matters, too, most dreadfully. For here was Baisanghar,
acclaimed by the people, more or less imprisoned in the City of
Samarkand, and Ali-Mirza, nominated by the Court, beleaguering him
from the Bokhara side, while Khosrau Shah, relieved from the necessity
of defending Hissar for his nincompoop by the withdrawal of Sultan
Hussain back to Khorasan, was hastening all he knew to put in his oar
for _his_ nominee from the Hissar side!
This being so, and neither of the three claimants having a shadow of
right beside his, Babar's, there was nothing for it, but to be on the
spot at once.
So kettledrums were beat and pennons unfurled, while Nevian-Gokultash
saw to his young master's coat of mail, and the latter pored over the
memoirs of his great ancestor Timur to see what wrinkles he could pick
up in regard to the disposition of troops in a real fine fight; for,
being a born general, he was dissatisfied with what he had seen, even
with Uncle Hussain's smart soldiers.
Only Dearest-One took no interest in the military preparations; she
embroidered no flag with crinkled gold. She sat on the roof and
watched the young King ride out in all his bravery and then she prayed
God for his safety, and also for the safety of that other one, who
deserved none.
And, for a time, both her prayers were answered. The summer passed on
to winter and still Samarkand, the protected city that has never
really fallen, sat gaily secure in its wide suburbs and vast network
of fortified gardens. Scarcity, indeed, pressed harder outside the
walls than within. Then the nincompoop whose only object apparently in
advancing on Samarkand had been to pursue his mistress, the daughter
of a high Court official, succeeded in marrying her, and so retreated.
Thus Babar found himself confronting Baisanghar supported by the
populace, and Ali by the Court. They waited and looked at each other
for some time; and then one morning, after preliminaries, Babar moved
his army some twelve miles down the right bank of the river Kohik, and
Ali-Mirza moved his down the left. So, with their armies behind them
(though it would seem, somewhat helpless either for support or
protection) the two young Princes each with five followers rode from
their own side to the middle of the stream and with the chill water
just touching their horses' bellies, agreed that if the summer came
again they would harry Samarkand together.
After which solemn ceremonial Ali returned to his side of the river,
and Babar to his; whence he set off to Ferghana.
It was not a very distinguished campaign but it was his first. Perhaps
it was as well it was uneventful for he was busy working his small
army into something like discipline. Therein, he saw clearly, boy as
he was, lay success; without it, there was nothing but one long
succession of isolated raids, incoherent, useless, leaving the people
ready, as they had been in the beginning, for a new, and yet another
new conqueror.
It was something, therefore, when in the next spring, he found himself
able to restrain his troops and to punish severely many straggling
Moghuls who had been guilty of great excesses in the different
villages through which they had passed. It was an unheard-of idea, but
it had a marked effect; for shortly afterwards when his camp was close
to a place called Yam, a number of persons, both traders and others,
came in from the town to buy and sell, and somehow, about afternoon
prayer-time a general hubbub arose during which every shop and every
stranger was plundered. Yet an order that no person should presume to
detain any part of the effects or property thus seized, but that the
whole should be restored without reserve before the first watch of the
next day was over, resulted in not one bit of thread or a broken
needle being kept by the army!
It was a glorious victory for pure ethics and quite repaid Babar for
having to remain for six weeks outside Samarkand. Besides, the peach
gardens were in full bloom. It was curious going out into the pleasure
ground of the city, to slash, and hack, and hew, and kill! But there
was no other way for it, and many were the sharp skirmishes that took
place with the townspeople where folk as a rule had been wont to
disport themselves on holidays. But in war-time things got upside
down; witness the dastardly deceit of the Lover's Cave where five of
Babar's most active men were killed. Seduced by a treacherous promise
to deliver up the fort if a party came thither by night, a picked
troop was chosen for the service, with this result.
It rankled bitterly in the young commander's heart; he felt himself at
fault for his greatest weakness--an inveterate habit of believing what
he heard.
Yet he had his consolations. Day by day, as he waited, doing his best
with the small force at his command to cut off the supplies from the
city, the number of townspeople and traders who came out to traffic in
the camp bazaar increased, until it became like a city and you could
find there whatever is procurable in towns. And day by day, the
inhabitants of the country around came in and surrendered themselves,
their castles, their lands, high and low. Only the city of Samarkand
held out. It was in the end of September and the sun was entering the
Balance, when Babar, weary of waiting, made a feint march to the rear
and the garrison of Samarkand, jumping to the conclusion that he was
in retreat, rushed out in great number, both soldiers and citizens.
Then orders were given to the cavalry in reserve to charge on both
flanks; whereupon God prospering the proceeding, the enemy were
decisively defeated; nor from that time forward did they ever again
venture on a rally. No! though Babar's soldiers advanced through the
now leafless peach gardens to the very ditch and carried off numbers
of prisoners close under the walls.
And still fair Samarkand stood secure. Seven whole months had the
blockade lasted, and now the winter's cold was coming on to aid the
garrison. In addition, the great Turkhestan raider Shaibani Khan was
said to be on his way with a large force to intervene in the quarrel.
Both dangers had to be faced. Babar felt, in view of the first, that
he must cantoon his men, and set to work marking out the ground for
the huts and trenches; so, leaving labourers and overseers to go on
with the work, he returned to his camp. None too soon, for the very
next morning a hostile army showed to the north. It must be Shaibani,
prince of Free-lances!
Nothing dismayed, by the fact that fully half his soldiers were away
seeking winter quarters, Babar put the forces he had with him in
array, and marched out to meet the enemy. Boldness met with its
reward. Shaibani withdrew, and after giving the young King some nights
of sleepless anxiety went back whence he came, and Baisanghar,
disappointed in relief, resigned himself to despair and fled
accompanied by two or three hundred naked and starving followers.
"In the whole habitable world are few cities so pleasantly situated as
Samarkand." So wrote Babar when at the age of fifteen he found himself
met as King by the chief men of the city, by the nobles, by the young
cavaliers, and escorted to the Garden-Palace where Baisanghar had
lived. It was a great relief to him that his cousin had escaped,
indeed he had taken no precautions to prevent his doing so. Babar's
quarrel was not with him, but with his claim, and as the lad--for he
was but a lad still--sat that night under the roof which had sheltered
the deposed prince, he told himself he had been right when he had said
to Dearest-One that Baisanghar would never make a king. There were no
signs of kingship in that Garden-Palace. No plans or sketches, no
dry-as-dust schedules. Not one of the papers and models such as
he, Babar, already carried with him. Only a lute, a dulcimer, some
dice-boxes. Not even luxury! Poor Baisanghar! Rightly had he called
himself an unsubstantial shadow. His poetry was the best part of him;
and his painting.
Babar sitting alone in the alcoved room which Baisanghar had evidently
left in a hurry, lay back among the cushions of the divan and thrust
his hand beneath them to adjust them to his head. There was something
hard beneath their softness. He drew it out and found a small square
frame. Of gold--no! it was green enamel and on it were set, like
flowers, turquoises, rubies, amethysts, topazes.
Why did it remind him of the spring meadows about Andijan? The spring
meadows set with forget-me-nots and tulips? It was a bit too dark
where he was to see the pale painting it held, so he rose and took it
to the light.
Dearest-One!
And with a rush came back accusingly something he had almost forgotten
all these months of striving and stress. Poverty-prince! the
Cup-of-Life! those bosses that gathered the Light and magnified what
was written by Fate. Once or twice he had thought of it carelessly;
but now...?
Why had the thought come back to him?
It was a speaking likeness. Faint-coloured, delicate as a dream.
Perhaps Baisanghar had meant it to be so. It was likely he did. Poor
Baisanghar! For the life of him Babar could not help pity, even when
he found the back of the frame was covered with fine writing--with
verses!--not even when he recollected that it was to his sister that
they were dedicated!
In truth there was little in them of offence, and Babar as he went to
sleep that night, King of Samarkand, caught himself repeating them.
They were certainly very neat--very neat indeed. And now that he had
had time to think, why should not poor Dearest-One see them? They had
given him a kindlier feeling towards the writer, so why should not
she...?
Why not, indeed! The Cup-of-Life held all things for all.
Yes! he would send, or give her the portrait as it stood. It was
really an excellent piece of work; and the words were perfect--the
construction, and the _grammar_ so good.
He fell asleep reciting them.
HEFT-AURANG[1]
THE SEVEN THRONES
Seven thrones and each a star
Set in God's Heaven afar;
Seven thrones and each for thee;
Thank God there is no place
Beside thy face
For me! for me!
Seven sins! Ah! more than seven
To cast me down from heaven;
Seven sins; and each of me!
Thank God there is no place
Beside my face
For thee! for thee!
Seven stars and one a pole
To guide the wandering soul
To rest; but not for me--
There is no grace or place
Beside thy face.
Ah me! Ah me!
---------------------
[Footnote 1: The Persian name for the Great Bear.]
---------------------
"Samarkand is a wonderfully elegant city."
So wrote its young King the next evening. He had spent the day in
going round his new possessions and had found them to his liking. Not
only was the little Mosque with its carven wooden pilasters quaintly
beautiful, but the big one was magnificent with its frontispiece on
which was inscribed in letters so large that they could be read a mile
off:
"And Abraham and Ishmael raised the foundations of the House of God
saying 'Lord accept it from us; for Thou art He who heareth and
knoweth.'"
Then the gardens were a joy, the baths the best he had ever seen, the
bakers' shops excellent, the cooks skilful. And the dried prunes of
Bokhara, a fruit renowned as an acceptable rarity and a laxative of
approved excellence, were to be found in perfection. Then there was
the Observatory built by Ulugh-Beg, his ancestor, who had been a great
mathematician. Babar had never seen an observatory before; indeed
there were at that time but seven in the whole world, so it was an
honour to possess one. He spent many days poring over its astronomical
tables, trying to understand them; and finally put on a mathematical
master, since no science could possibly come amiss to a King.
Meanwhile Nevian-Gokultash and Kasim and all the Andijan nobles,
bickered inevitably with the Samarkand grandees, and Babar found no
small difficulty in keeping the peace.
Still, life was once more splendid; at any rate for the young King.
But the soldiers grumbled at the lack of loot. It was all very well to
say that the country had voluntarily submitted and was therefore
beyond plunder, and that from a city which had suffered the
vicissitudes of war for two years and withstood a siege of seven
months, it was impossible to levy anything by taxation. It was all
very well to supply the inhabitants with seed corn and supplies to
enable them to carry on till harvest time. But charity began at home,
and home under these circumstances was best.
The wild Moghuls deserted first; then by twos and threes, the other
men slipped away by night.
Yet still life was splendid. On those same clear winter's nights Babar
could watch the stars with new-found knowledge.
"If the Most Excellent would watch the barracks instead," growled old
Kasim, "it would be well. Our men grow thin. There are scarce a
thousand of them left, all told; and new friends are not so good as
old ones. The Samarkandis are doubtless fine fellows, as the Most
Excellent appears to find them; but would they follow back to Andijan
if occasion occur?"
And occasion did occur. A letter arrived from Babar's maternal uncle
the Khan of Moghulistan who, urged doubtless by the deserters, wrote
saying that as the former had possessed himself of Samarkand, it was
only fair that his younger brother Jahangir, who, after all, _was the
son of Omar Saikh's first wife_ should be given Andijan.
Kasim, who with his usual frown at all letters sat listening, spat
solemnly on the ground. "Poison breeds poison," he said; "I deemed
that talk had been spilt in the blood from Hussan Yakoob's hinder
parts four years past. But 'tis never too late for mischief when women
are left to themselves as they are at Andijan."
"But my grandmother is sagacious," began Babar.
Kasim shrugged his shoulders. "Saw you ever a woman who could manage a
woman, sire? So have not I. Begum Fatima and she have been spitting at
each other like wild cats, and what is wanted is a stick. Now, what is
to be said?"
Babar spoke hotly. "That I will not hear of it! No! though I might of
myself have made my brother governor. But of myself. This savours of
command. He knows my men have gone back! I will not hear the tone of
authority."
And Babar as he spoke felt himself tremble with anger. His voice was
hoarse, too, and his head ached. He had been sitting up all night in
the Observatory to watch an eclipse of the moon, and despite his fur
coat had felt chill; for February had brought bitter winds.
"So be it!" said old Kasim gleefully. He was getting weary of
Samarkandi side, and foresaw more fighting now the spring was at hand.
Next day a special messenger, foot in hand from Andijan, found Babar
in bed with a severe cold. And the letter from Kwaja Kazi did not mend
matters. Briefly, the deserting soldiers, discontented, disloyal, were
giving trouble, and if help were not sent at once events might come to
a very bad termination.
That night delirium came to the young soul, as the young body lay
fighting for breath against pneumonia.
The physician bled him, of course, and fed him with almonds and
ginger. And they closed every door and window, so that the wood-smoke
filled the room and such little lung-space as was left. But splendid
youth and health were his, and after a few days he lay outwearied with
his hand-to-hand fight with Death, looking at the letters which had
followed fast upon each other during his illness. And each brought
worse news than the last. Andijan was besieged. Any moment his
women-folk might fall into the hands of the enemy. He must start at
once. To set aside Nevian-Gokultash's protestations, was easier than
to rise and dress. Once up, however, he managed the council of war
creditably, and for a day held his own bravely, giving orders for this
and that.
A tall, thin, haggard young figure with sharpened features and
eager eyes defying Fate; until suddenly voice left him, he struggled
on for an hour or two, then lay unconscious. So weak that they did
not dare bleed him again, but mercifully left him as he was. Only
Nevian-Gokultash at his right hand, moistening the dear lips with
cotton dipped in water, while Kasim sat still as a statue, the tears
running down his furrowed cheeks.
Was this, then, the end of that vivid young life, the like of which
had never been seen?
But the Samarkandi fellows who did not really care might go about the
city as dogs, and yelp the news that Zahir-ud-din Mahomed their King
was dying, nay! was dead. It was easy to see that this had been done,
for hour by hour, day by day the Garden-Palace became more and more
empty, more and more solitary.
A runner from Andijan, bearing further news found it so, and, anxious
for the truth, stole upstairs on tiptoe to see for himself.
How still! How cold! How silent! And that half-seen form in the dusk,
motionless among the quilts? Dead! Dead! or so close to Death that no
alternative remained.
That night as his bells tinkled from his post-runner's pike as he ran
past village, and field, and wood, they jangled the refrain that was
on his mouth for all who cared to listen.
"Babar is dead! Life has ended! The cup is finished!"
Yet, even as the words rang out on the chill air, other words, faint,
scarce to be heard, were startling those two sad watchers in the
Garden-Palace.
"The Crystal Bowl. Give it back to me ... I ... I laugh as I
drink.... Bring me the whole, I say, the whole."
The boy's brain, faintly conscious, was taking command once more.
And the body obeyed. In four or five days he was reading letters of
despair from his mother, from old Isan-daulet, from Dearest-One.
Samarkand, they said, had been taken with troops from Andijan. Could
not _one_ man be spared from Samarkand to keep Andijan?
Babar had not the heart to delay, and ill as he was set off in a
litter with such followers as he could gather together. It was a
Saturday in March that he started; just a hundred days since he had
entered Samarkand, and he knew he could not hope to return as King.
"_One hundred days only_," he thought, as he jolted through the peach
gardens that were once again swelling to bud.
He reached Khojend by forced marches in a week's time; but by then he
was on his horse again, beginning to regain strength and colour.
So he wondered why the people looked at him so strangely as he rode
through the town. Did they take him for a ghost?
Yet he was even as one when they told him the news. Just a week
before, on the very Saturday when he had started in such haste from
Samarkand, Andijan had capitulated, needlessly capitulated, to the
enemy on the news of Babar's death brought by a returning post-runner.
For the sake of Andijan he had lost Samarkand, and now found that he
had lost the one without preserving the other.
Worse still, he had lost a dear friend; for the saintly Kwaja Kazi,
protesting against the premature yielding of the citadel while there
was yet no lack of provisions or of fighting men, had been barbarously
martyred by being hanged in a shameful manner over the gate of the
citadel.
No wonder Babar wrote in the diary he had begun to keep: "I was in a
very distressed condition and wept a great deal."
CHAPTER VI
Blest is the soul that is lifted above
The paltry cares of Self's selfish love,
Which adds no weight to another's care
And gives no soul a burden to bear,
Which takes what comes as its part and lot,
Which laughs at trouble and worries not,
Which sleeps without malice or fraud in its breast
And rises pure from its daily rest.
_Jami_.
There was a sad meeting, naturally, with the womenfolk Babar had hoped
to help, and who were--somewhat contemptuously--sent to him, unharmed,
after a few days. Or perhaps that "divinity which doth hedge a king"
or whatever it was, which all his life long ensured Babar's own
safety, extended itself to those who were dear to him.
Anyhow they came, and fell with tears on the neck of their dethroned
darling. Dearest-One, slim and tall, her face still showing the lines
of conflicting anxieties, yet still sweet utterly, without trace of
bitterness for her brother. The Khanum, too rejoiced at seeing her son
alive and well to care so much about his loss of dignity. Old
Isan-daulet, keener of look and sharper of tongue than ever, but with
a world of sympathy in her stern eyes for the lad who had lost all
save honour. For she realised that Babar had practically given up
Kingship for the sake of his womenkind. He had had fair grip of
Samarkand, and even with but a thousand devoted followers of his own
to help him hold it, could, nay would have done so.
Babar, himself, did not attempt to deny his virtue. He never did; he
was too frank to gloze over any of his actions, good or bad. He had
done the right thing and he accepted the fact gravely; perhaps a
trifle pompously; but that was his nature. In the same way, he could
not fail to see, that what had placed him in the unfortunate position
of having insufficient followers to hold both Samarkand and Andijan,
was no error of judgment on his part, but simply his extreme and
unusual justice in refusing to grind down the distressed inhabitants
of the former city for the benefit of his soldiery. Could he only have
shut his eyes to the usual undisciplined plunder his army would not
have deserted wholesale.
He was not introspective, but he knew, vaguely, that he had, somehow,
had no choice in the matter. He had been born with this strong sense
of justice, so he could not help himself; therefore despite this
recognition of his own virtue, it slipped from him like water off a
duck's back leaving no self-conceit behind.
So he welcomed his loving women quite whole-heartedly, and then wept
more profusely than ever at the difficulty of maintaining them in
proper fashion. Not that they wanted this. The Khanum, gentle, kindly
soul, was only too glad that her quite capable hands should do all
things for her darling, Dearest-One brisked up with work that took her
out of herself, and Isan-daulet had roughed it too much in her youth
not to enjoy the familiarity of roughing it again. And life, even at
Khojend, a miserable place in which a single nobleman would have found
it difficult to support his family, was not without its interests. Of
the rather more than two hundred, and considerably less than three
hundred followers who chose exile with their young King, quite a
number were men of good family, whose wives and children joined them.
There was, therefore, company of a sort. Then Babar, despite his
tears, was not one to give in. Inspired as he was by an ambition for
conquest and extensive dominions, he could not, on account of one or
two paltry defeats, sit down and look idly about him.
So, at any rate, he told the three loving women with his usual serious
pomp, when he sent a request for assistance to his uncle, the Khan of
Moghulistan, and then set off to reconnoitre around Samarkand. He
returned ere long disappointed; but was soon on the march again
to see his uncle in person at Tashkend. In this he was encouraged by
Isan-daulet who remembered her brother of old. "Lo! I know him. A good
soul but a stupid. The brains of my father, Yunus, went in the female
line. But if you beat his ears with words he will listen. And keep on
the soft side of Shah-Begum, my husband's widow--God rest his soul!
Anyhow he is at peace from her! A clever woman, but like a camel in
mud--slippery!"
And this expedition was so far successful that the young leader
actually returned from it once more at the head of some seven or eight
hundred horsemen. Rather a wild lot, mostly free-lance Moghuls eager
for loot and violence. But it was better than nothing, though Khojend
was not large enough to hold them, even for a night. Mercifully,
however, there was an enemy's fort some forty miles off, so, taking
scaling ladders with them, they rode on to it and carried the place by
surprise. But even one day of Babar's strict discipline was more than
enough for the wild men of the desert, and the very next morning the
Moghul Begs represented that, having but a mere handful of men, no
possible benefit could result to anyone from the keeping of one
miserable castle; and so, there being truth in this remark, they rode
off to their desert again unabashed, leaving Babar to return annoyed,
but not despondent. For at this particular fortress there grew a
particular melon, yellow in colour, with skin puckered like shagreen
leather. A remarkably delicate and agreeable melon, with seeds about
the size of those of an apple, and pulp four fingers thick, which
everyone agreed was not to be equalled in that quarter.
It was as well, certainly, to have gained _something_ if only a good
melon, and the little party at Khojend feasted on it and thanked God
they had their boy back again safe and sound.
The summer was passing to autumn when another fit of despondency came
to young Babar in the news of his cousin Gharib-Beg's death. The
invalid had lingered far longer than had been expected, but still the
certainty that he was gone brought grief; the more so because it
re-aroused regret for the lost Crystal Bowl; regret which had almost
been forgotten in the clash of arms of the last few months. But now he
had time--only too much of it--for thoughts. Not given to mysticism in
any form, he yet wondered vaguely if the Crystal Bowl had ever
existed, or if the whole incident had not been part of the curious
hold Poverty-prince had had upon his imagination; and not on his only,
but on the imagination of all with whom the cripple had come in
contact.
And now he was dead! Gone for ever, like so many friends in these last
troublous times.
Babar, translucent as the crystal itself, gloomed under the shadow of
his regrets till his mother began to fret with the fear of on-coming
illness.
But Dearest-One knew her brother better. "He must get away from us
all," she said. "Yea! even from old Kasim and his warriors. Let him go
to the White Mountains a-hunting for the winter."
But Babar would have none of it.
The White Mountains? Aye! they would be splendid--there were more
bears there than in any other part of the country. Aye! and snow
leopard too--the lad's eyes glistened as he admitted this--but he
_could_ not leave his women-folk again, and he ought not to leave
those who, to their own cost, had chosen to stick by him.
"Then we will go also," said Dearest-One, nothing daunted. "We are not
of towns more than thou art, and thou canst divide thy magnificent
army!--take a hundred men with thee and leave an hundred to guard
Khojend!"
Her sweet eyes smiled at him, and he agreed. No one in all his life
had understood him like Dearest-One, he thought; there was perfect
confidence between them, though, strangely enough, he had never yet
given her the portrait he had found in the Garden-Palace--the portrait
left by Baisanghar in his flight.
Why had he not done so? He scarcely knew, except that he had felt shy
of broaching a subject that seemed buried. 'Twas best not to rouse
coiled snakes, and Baisanghar, who had taken refuge in Bokhara, had
gone out of their lives altogether; out of his, Babar's, at any rate.
But everything seemed gone out of that; as the Turkhi couplet said:
"No home, no friends, no roof above my head;
Six feet of earth, no more, to make my bed."
The White Mountains, however--white indeed during winter with their
snowy slopes invading all save the tiny cleft of the valley where the
skin tents of the little party had been pitched--soon brought back
content. It was as if the soft covering of snow had blotted out the
past, and the winter slipped by, full up with trivial distractions.
Babar, returning long after dark to the encampment with half-a-dozen
or so of bear-skins, forgot he was, or ever had been, King. And when
early spring came on, and the bears were breeding, he took to hunting
tulips instead. There were so many different kinds of them. Over
thirty; and one yellow, double and sweet-scented like a rose.
Dearest-One used to accompany him on these expeditions, for she was a
real Moghul maiden, and the bright, cold winter had braced her up,
until her cheeks glowed once more. Yet still Babar had never given her
the portrait of herself, though he carried it with him more than once
with that determination. Again, he scarcely knew why, except that it
seemed to him the right thing to do. Why should she not have it?
But one day the brother and sister had wandered high over the melting
snow slopes, where the flowers lay thick as a carpet. Blue spring
gentian and clustered pink primrose, purple pansy, and deep brown
nodding columbines above a mosaic of forget-me-not and yellow
crowsfoot. Great sweeps and drifts of flowers where the snow-drifts
ended, and beyond in the far, far distance, in a dip of the hills, a
level line of clear cobalt-blue.
"Yonder lies Samarkand," said Babar, glooming in a second with the
thought of past defeat; but his mind, ever vagrant, followed swiftly a
line of new thought as he narrowed his long eyes to see better. "Had I
the quaint contrivance at the Observatory there," he went on; "did I
not tell thee of it?--no!--Well! 'twas a thing with curved glasses in
a box and it made far-off things seem near--but blurred sometimes.
Still had I it, I could mayhap see the Green-Palace. It stands high
above the town."
Dearest-One, her hands clasped idly over her knees as she sat on a
little peak of rock and ice that rose out of the flowers, was silent
for a space; then she said dreamily:
"'Twas in the Green-Palace, was it not, where Kingship comes and goes,
that Baisanghar was to die that time he escaped?"
Babar hesitated. It was the first time his sister had mentioned her
cousin's name to him; but now that the subject had been broached,
might it not be better to take the opportunity offered? He had the
portrait with him. Why not have it out and have done with it? After
all it was a fitting place; the green alp all starred with flowers
reminded him of the Andijan meadows and they of the green enamel frame
starred with ruby, turquoise, amethyst, topaz.
"I have something here," he said, fumbling in his fur coat, "that I
have meant to give thee for some months; but--I know not why--" So he
began haltingly; then warming to his subject told her in his own
inimitable way, every tiny touch giving life to the picture, how and
where he had found what he finally placed in her hands.
The girl who had listened coldly looked at it still more chillily.
"'Twas not meant for me," she said at last, and her tone was as
ice--"And he prized it little, since he left it behind him."
Babar with the returned miniature in his hand, stared at her in
confused amaze, feeling that, of a truth, women were kittle cattle.
One could never count on them--and all these months he had been afraid
of exciting a storm of tears!
Distinct ill-usage was in his voice as he said gravely: "But thou hast
not seen the verses writ behind, and they are good. I stake my word
they are excellent and correct in every elision, every poetic
licence."
It may have been the bathos in the lad's last eager protest which kept
the pathos of poor Baisanghar's words from making full mark, which
kept the girl's lips from quivering overmuch, which kept the mist of
tears from overflowing to her cheeks as the words fell on the
flower-scented air. So little, to frail humanity, turns grief to
laughter and smiles to tears.
Anyhow Dearest-One sat silent, and a faint smile curved her thin red
lips.
"Yea!" she said softly, "they are good verses; but he was ever a
poet."
And then suddenly the poetry which lies hid at the heart of all
sorrow, all longing, all deprivation, surged on her and her face lit
up with passionate feeling. "Give it me back, brotherling! give it me
back. Let us leave it here! Here! on this high unknown place among
God's flowers! Here! amid ice and snow! Here! overlooking the Palace
where he would have died. Here! close to high heaven where there is
understanding!" Her voice had risen as her thought rose, and now
rang out joyous, triumphant. "Lo! the _Heft-Aurang_ will look down on
my face night after night and the pole star will point the way to
him.... Ah! Baisanghar! have patience, have patience! love will point
the way!..."
She laid the portrait face upwards to the clear blue sunshiny sky on a
cold slab of ice that filled up--and looked as if it had filled up for
centuries of chill summers and frost-bound winters--the wide clefts of
the rock beside her; then stood up and stepped down amid the flowers,
tearless, radiant.
"Come, brother!" she said. "It grows late. Let us descend, they will
be waiting."
But Babar looked meditatively at the pictured face, and then at the
one before him transfigured by emotion.
"So that is love!" he said at last with a curious impersonality in his
tone. "Truly it is wonderful; and after all there is not so much
difference between it and tears!"
So in a flood, came back to him that one glimpse he had had in the
Crystal Bowl of his cousin's face. He saw it again clearly; he seemed
to hear his voice telling of the frightened maiden. He had never
thought of her since; such things passed quickly from his boyish mind.
But now the wonder came as to whether he _would_ ever meet her. He
might, without recognising her, since he did not know who she was.
But Dearest-One might know; such things were part and parcel of the
woman's life. His sister, however, was already half way down the slope
and he had to run to overtake her.
"Do I know?" she echoed to his question, quite calmly, having had time
to recover her serenity. "Wherefore not? Such knowledges have to be
kept by someone; so we women guard it. She whom Mirza Gharib-Beg
deserted--" she spoke with distinct blame--"was well within the circle
of distinction, being both of the royal house and also of the lineage
of Sheik Jami, the divine poet--on whom be peace! Therefore she
deserved a better fate than to live her life in a House-of-Rest--as I
shall live mine," she added with conviction.
"But thou art so young," protested Babar, ever ready to follow any new
lead of thought.
Dearest-One flashed out on him in her old way. "Young! One year older
than she--so there! She was but a child, and Gharib-Beg, remember, was
but two years older." She paused, then added hurriedly: "Did I not
tell thee we silly women guarded such trivial knowledge as our lives?"
To judge by Babar's women-folk (one of his many widowed aunts had
joined the little camp on a visit--he had endless aunts and he seemed
to be a favourite with all--) they guarded other trivial knowledges as
their lives also. Babar returning home of an evening would find a
regular Turkhi feast including goats' milk cheese fritters, made, of
course, after the family recipe, spread out for his delectation, and
Dearest-One never forgot to put violet essence in the thick milk. And
plenty of sugar, for the lad had a sweet tooth. Then as they sat round
the great, pine-log fire at night, Isan-daulet would call for a song;
none of those niggling Persian odes, about the Beloved's Eyebrows and
a Cup of Wine--the which was forbidden, though many good men fell away
from grace and were none the worse for it--not in _this_ world at any
rate, and for the next who could tell since the dear Kazi was not
there to lay down the law ...
"The Kazi was a saint," interrupted Babar with certainty; "I know it;
first because the men who martyred him have all since died. That is
one proof. Then he was a wonderfully bold man. Most men have some
anxiety or trepidation about them. The Kwaja had not a particle of
either, which is also no mean proof of sanctity."
Old Isan-daulet chuckled. "Then are all my family canonised," she
said, "and Paradise will have small peace! But sing, boy, a rattling
Turkhoman ballad and bawl it fairly, if thou canst, now-a-days."
But Babar had learnt better than bawling over in Uncle Hussain's camp,
and though his grandmother shook her head over his rendering of
"Toktamish Khan" still 'twas a fine song with a good stirring chant to
it:
The pale white willows grow in the sand,
Toktamish Beg.
Choose one to hobble thy horse's leg
That thy bay steed stand.
Thy red blood drips on the yellow sand,
Toktamish Khan.
Wilt bind his wound, wife of Mirza Jan
With thy jewelled hand?
The wound is doleful, the kiss was sweet
Toktamish Kull.
Which poison, man! makes thine eyes so dull
And thy breath so fleet?
Oh! my bay horse neighed when I did sing,
And Mir Jan's wife
Swore she would love me all my life
And gave me a ring.
Thy steed will find him a rider soon
And fair Narghiss
Will have a new lover to cuddle and kiss
Ere another moon.
But thy mother is old; she has lost her brave
Toktamish Khan;
Let her carry her sheaf to Death's wide barn
And dig her a grave!
The firelight danced on the young face as it sang cheerily. The
Khanum, his mother, wept unobtrusively at the thought of what she
would do if _her_ young brave were to die. Old Isan-daulet beat time
with precision; Dearest-One smiled gently; but Nevian-Gokultash--the
Heart-of-Stone--held up his finger.
"Hist!" he said, "a horse's steps."
Not one but many. A little detachment of loyalists headed by Kasim
Beg, arriving in hot haste with renewed hope!
Babar stood up tall, strong, and threw his wide arms out as if to
shake off inaction.
"Whence?" he asked briefly; "East, west, north or south?" There was
weariness in the thought, not in the tone. He was ready to fight
anywhere for Kingship again, though his heart sank at the futility of
it all. Bokhara, Samarkand, Hissar, and half-a-dozen other chief-ships
always changing hands. But this, a message of treaty from Ali Mirza
who had held Samarkand since it had dropped from Babar's hand might
mean something. So he was in the saddle and off; only to return then,
and half-a-dozen other times, despondent, to admit that his star was
not yet in the ascendant.
Isan-daulet wearied of waiting at last, and set off herself to
Moghulistan to levy troops to aid her grandson in the name of her dead
husband. The Khanum went with her, and Dearest-One took the
opportunity of retiring with one of her old aunts, to a House-of-Rest.
So Babar was left alone. He would not remain at Khojend, however; he
felt that he had already taken too much from the loyalists there, so
in a state of irresolution and uncertainty he made for the border land
of the Pamirs beyond the White Mountains. There he remained amongst
the nomad tribes, perplexed and distracted with the hopelessness of
his affairs.
And here, as winter passed to spring once more, a saintly Kwaja--also
an exile and a wanderer--came to visit him. And having no help to
give, no advice to offer to one so down-cast, prayed over him and took
his departure much affected.
"And so was I," writes Babar frankly. Doubtless he was; and yet before
sunset that very day he must have been out on the hillside, possibly
hunting for new tulips in this new country; for he descried a horseman
making his way rapidly up the valley.
A horseman!
Within half-an-hour, without an instant's delay, Babar had backed his
lean Turkhoman mare and, followed by a leaner troop of such friends as
still clung to him (Kasim and Nevian-Gokultash of course amongst the
number) was galloping for Marghinan (the place where they remove the
stone from apricots and put in chopped almonds!). For a message had
been sent by the governor of the town to say he was ready to give it
up to its rightful owner, and would hope for forgiveness for past
offences.
It was then sunset, and Marghinan lay more than a hundred miles away
as the crow flies. All that night till noon next day the little band
rode fiercely on. On those wild hills there was no road to speak of;
one could but follow the water-courses as the streams sought their
level. At noon next day they drew bridle for the first time. They had
not come far, or fast, yet so hard had been the way that their horses
needed rest. Twelve hours to give them a chance, and also, in the
close valley of Khojend to secure night time for the first part of the
march, and they were off again; this time to let sunrise pass to
sunset and sunset pass to night before they again drew rein in the
grey dawn. Drew rein and looked at each other doubtfully. Yet their
goal lay not four miles ahead of them, a shadowy hill crowned by a
fort and scarce seen in the half light.
But the doubt was this:
They had ridden for forty-eight hours up hill and down dale, over
breakneck precipices and roaring torrents, without ever considering
that they had no real warranty for so doing!
The Governor of the town was one who was known to stickle at no crime.
With what confidence then could they unconditionally put themselves in
his power?
So at least urged Nevian-Gokultash. Others joined in, and Babar, ever
reasonable, saw cogency in the doubt, and ordered a halt for
consideration.
Out in the dawn, the horses, heads down, taking a nibble of grass
between heaving breaths, the sweat running down from their polished
backs, the tired troopers, too tired to dismount, arguing _pros_ and
_cons_ wearily, until Babar rising in his stirrups, showed tall,
straight, strong, commanding.
"Gentlemen!" he said. "Our reflections are not without foundation, but
we have been too late in making them. We have now ridden three nights
and two days without sleep or rest. Neither horse nor man has strength
left. There is no possibility of retreating, since there is no place
of safety to which we _could_ retreat. Having come so far we must
proceed. Therefore let us go forward remembering that nothing happens
save by the will of God. Right turn, gentlemen! Forward!"
And forward it proved to be from that moment. Marghinan his, the
country people, disgusted with the late usurpers, crowded round their
old young King.
Of course Grandmother Isan-daulet was in at the finish with her horde
of two thousand wild Moghul horsemen; who nevertheless did good, if
barbarous, service at Akshi, where treachery met with its just reward.
For the Moghuls, stripping their horses, rode barebacked into the
stream and sabred the escaping traitors in their boats.
So the peach trees had not shed their blossoms before, by the Grace of
the most High (and many real fine fights) Babar recovered his paternal
kingdom, of which he had been deprived for two years.
Two years!
He could hardly believe it as he rode through on the mantle of
lambskins between the fort of Andijan and the river, where not so long
ago he had been playing leap-frog when first King-ship came to him.
"Nevian-Gokultash!" he cried suddenly, "an thou lovest me! off from
thy horse and give me a back like a kind soul. I must leap to my
kingdom once more!"
He stood there laughing, the embodiment of boyish youth and energy;
forgetful of past troubles, eager to enjoy life.
"Ul-la-la!" shouted some of the nobles catching the spirit of the
thing and throwing themselves from their horses.
So leap Babar did, not over Nevian only, but over half-a-score or more
of the friends of his adversity including Kasim who nearly tumbled
over with laughter and joy.
And the young King, as he once more cast himself face upwards on the
soft furry little blobs of blossom amid a chorus of applause, felt
that the whole world was splendid indeed.
CHAPTER VII
Blessed is he who has not to learn
How the favour of fortune may change and turn,
Whose head is not raised in his high estate
Nor his heart in misfortune made desolate.
_Nizami_.
"There is no use in talking," quoth Isan-daulet decisively. "Send the
trays to Ayesha Begum, my daughter, and prepare the wedding
comestibles. It has been high time, these two years back, that
Zahir-uddin Mahomed got himself married, but of a truth there was not
the wherewithal. One cannot marry out of a basket. But now all is
smooth, so send for the bride. God grant she be not so unwilling as
the groom."
And in truth Babar, seated on the floor, of course, between his
grandmother and his mother, looked far from happy. His hands lean,
supple, strong, hung over his grasshopper knees, and his head--small
for the rest of his body--had not its usual frank bearing.
"I am not unwilling," protested the young man; "Lo! it has to be done,
that I know. 'Tis the duty of Kings to marry and have sons; but, see
you, I have no experience at all; indeed I have never been so
circumstanced as either to hear or witness any words expressive of the
amorous passion, and I have never seen my betrothed since I was five."
"God forbid!" ejaculated the Khanum piously.
"But how then can I love her?" protested Babar; "'tis not like
Dearest-One and Cousin Baisanghar--"
A shriek of outrage drowned what he would have said. Not that either
of the two good ladies really felt shocked, but that in dealing with
Babar they held it wiser to adhere to the strictly conventional;
otherwise, heaven only knew if he would not go off at a tangent as
Dearest-One had done. Poor Dearest-One on whom the blow of uttermost
fate had fallen at last. For a terrible tale had come to Andijan but a
month before, snuffing out the lamps of festival like a dust-storm at
a wedding. For who could rejoice when they thought of a poor young
prince who was nobody's enemy but his own, like Baisanghar, strangled
with a bowstring by the orders of the miserable and infidel-like
wretch, worthless, contemptible, without birth or talents, reputation
or wisdom, Khosrau Shah? Babar had been beside himself with rage, and
had expended every known epithet on the murderer, who though he prayed
regularly, was black-hearted and vicious, of mean understanding,
slender talents, faithless and a traitor. A man who for the sake of
the short and fleeting pomp of this vain world had done to death the
sweetest prince, the son of his old benefactor, in whose service he
had been and by whom he had been patronised and protected. Thus
rendering himself accursed of God, abhorred of men, and worthy of
shame and execration till the judgment day. Perpetrating his crimes
too for the sake of trivial enjoyment, and, despite his power and
place, not having the spirit to face a barn-door chicken!
The young man had poured all this and much more into his sister's
ears, hoping to comfort her, but she had only turned her face to the
wall, and wept.
Strange, indeed, were women-folk; she had been so composed when she
herself renounced him, but now that Death had stepped in she was all
tears.
The thought of her weeping brought him a quick excuse. "Anyhow," he
remarked, with evident relief, "there can be no weddings yet awhile;
my sister is not in condition for festivals."
Isan-daulet sniffed. "Sisters are not indispensables to a marriage. So
be good boy, Babar, and listen to reason. Do I not ever advise thee to
thy benefit?"
"Not ever," retorted the young King sulkily; "thou did'st advise me to
set my promise aside and let thy cursed Moghuls and others plunder
those I had sworn to protect."
"Not plunder, boy!" replied the old lady shrilly, "but to resume their
own property."
"I care not," said Babar sternly, and rising to go; "I say I was wrong
to yield. 'Twas senseless, to begin with, to exasperate so many men
with arms in their hands. And then--Lo! grandam--I was precipitate,
and in affairs of state many things that appear reasonable at first
sight require to be well weighed and considered in a hundred different
lights ere orders are given. I shall have trouble over that yet."
He stalked away in dignified fashion, and his mother sighed. "He grows
a man, indeed. 'Tis time he married; but I wonder will she be good
daughter to me?"
"She will be good granddaughter to me, that I'll warrant me," retorted
Isan-daulet viciously. She would stand no nonsense from young chits.
So the marriage went on, and Babar performed his part of it with grave
politeness and propriety. He wore his wedding garments with a
difference, and when he sat beside his bride for the first time,
holding her hand and repeating the words after the officiating Kazi he
felt quite a thrill. In fact he would like to have squeezed the little
hand he held, only it was so covered with rings and gew-gaws that he
was afraid of hurting it. Altogether the fateful she looked rather
small; but distinctly fetching--though of course he could not see her
face, in her veil of jasmine blossoms. They smelt, however, rather
sickly.
That was in fact all that he vouchsafed to Dearest-One who, late in
the evening, slipped in, dressed in white from head to foot, to wish
her darling brother happiness.
"I would she smelt of violets instead," he said thoughtfully; "dost
think, Dearest-One, it could have been the jasmine perfume and not the
sweets that made me sick when I was five?"
And Dearest-One laughed; a laugh with a sob in it, and said to her
mother ere she returned to her House-of-Rest:
"He is not fond of her, see you?"
"God forbid!" snapped Isan-daulet tartly. "Lo! he will love her when
she is the mother of his son."
And Dearest-One was silent; that might be; though she doubted it. But
for the present she was right. Babar was not in love; what is more he
was shy.
The Khanum, his mother, who found her town-bred, mincing and
thoroughly amiable daughter-in-law quite an amusing distraction, began
by rallying him on his bashfulness; but as the first period of his
married life went on, bringing a decrease of such affection as he had
had, and a corresponding increase of shyness, raillery turned to
tears, then to anger, until the gentle lady, outraged by her son's
behaviour, would scold him with great fury and send him off like a
criminal to visit his wife.
Babar had, however, some excuse for his lack of interest. Marriage had
come to him in the very moment when he needed all his vitality to keep
his newly-recovered throne. What he had said to his grandmother
concerning his overprecipitate permission for modified plunder had
been true. The inconsiderate order, issued without sufficient
foresight had caused commotions and mutinies.
The Moghuls, still dissatisfied, had marched off in a huff; good
riddance of bad rubbish, as Babar said, though he chafed inwardly at
not having been able to control them amicably. Still the Moghul Horde
had ever been the authors of every kind of mischief and devastation.
Five separate times had they mutinied against him; and not only
against him--that might have pointed to incompatibility of temper on
his part--but against every one in authority, especially their own
Khans.
It was in the breed. True was the verse:
"If the Moghul race had an angel's birth
It still would be made of the basest earth;
Were the Moghul name writ in thrice-fired gold
'Twould be worth no more than steel, wrought cold.
From a Moghul's harvest sow never a seed,
For the germ of a Moghul is false indeed."
Thank God! he was no Moghul; he was Turkhoman born and bred!
Before winter came on, indeed, the position of affairs had become
critical. Half the nobles had sided with young Jahangir who still
claimed the throne, and fighting was general all over the valley of
Ferghana. To shut himself up in the town of Andijan for the winter
months would only be to leave the enemy free to ravage the country
outside. He therefore chose a spot on the skirts of the hills and
cantooned his army there. A pleasant spot with good cover for game! An
excellent sporting ground, in fact, containing plenty of mountain
goats, antlered stags, and wild hogs. In the smaller jungle, too, were
excellent jungle fowl and hares.
Then, when such sport palled, there were always the foxes, which
possessed more fleetness than those of any other place. Babar rode
a-hunting every two or three days while he remained in those winter
quarters, and regaled himself on the jungle fowl, which were very fat.
Keeping an eye all the time, however, on the enemy's movements, and
guarding Andijan, where the Khanum and old Isan-daulet appeared to
have forgotten wars and war's alarms in something more cognate to
their woman's hearts; something that was almost too delightful to be
true.
Babar, when he first heard of the delightful prospect, was all that
could be desired. Affectionate, overjoyed, proud. What else could he
be when his mother hung round his neck hysterically, and even
Dearest-One's pale cheeks flushed at the future.
"He shall be my son as well as yours, brotherling," she said. "Lo! I
will be his best-beloved aunt. So that settles it, and all silly
women's talk about my marrying somebody--does it not, O King!"
And Babar, as he sat holding his sister's hand as in the old days, saw
a vista of happiness before him. It would be delightful. Imagine
having a son of his very own! Ayesha Begum could not complain of his
coldness on that visit, and he returned to his camp jubilant.
But the knowledge of what was to come, made him restless. Of what use
was an heir, unless he was heir to something tangible? Ferghana,
divided against itself, was no permanent position for either claimant.
But what of Samarkand? There, his cousin Ali (who had no claim) had
just beaten Weis, his younger brother who had a claim, doubtless,
through his mother: but after his, Babar's, since she was the younger
daughter.
He sat on the snowy slopes waiting for _bara-singha_, or bear, and
ciphered it out; he came back to camp and talked it over with Kasim
and the nobles.
"Praise be to God!" said the old swashbuckler, "we may see some fine
fighting once again."
They were to see more than they had bargained for; since, when with
the advancing spring Babar and his army arrived before Samarkand it
was to find that they were pitted, not against the weakling Ali and
his half-hearted troops, but against the great Usbek raider, Shaibani
Khan, who, God knows why or wherefore, had attacked Bokhara, taken it,
marched on to Samarkand, taken it by the treachery of a woman, and was
now there in undisputed possession. Babar felt that to attack the
position overtly with his small force was madness. But what of a
surprise? The Usbek horde were strangers. Babar himself had been
beloved, during his short reign of a hundred days. If once he could
find himself within the walls, the people of Samarkand might declare
in his favour. At any rate they would not fight for the Usbek. _That_
was certain.
It was worth a trial. But those who were to attempt the forlorn hope
must be picked men, and there must be no attacking force before the
city. That would put the garrison on the alert.
In the meantime he would go to the mountains; one thought clearer in
high places.
Summer was nigh on, ere preliminaries were settled, and Babar
with his picked band, ready for swift attempt, stood on the heights of
Yar-Ailak once more. Above him, unseen in the darkness of the moonless
night was the flower-carpeted alp where Dearest-One's face watched the
stars wheel. The _Heft-Aurang_, the seven thrones, showed in ordered
array on the purple velvet of the night. Was one of them kept vacant
for him, he wondered, or had Baisanghar's poor ghost found it? Babar's
mind was ever full of such whimsical thoughts; they came to him,
unasked, making his outlook on life many-facetted, many-hued, like the
iridescent edge which had set a halo round all things in the Crystal
Bowl.
The future seemed thus glorified to him as he sat looking out over the
unseen city in the valley beyond.
His nobles, his comrades, were sitting round him, revelling over the
camp fire; holding a sort of sacramental feast before the dangerous
surprise.
"Come!" cried Babar, turning, a light on his face brighter than the
firelight; "let us have a bet on when we shall take Samarkand.
To-night, to-morrow or never!"
"To-night!" cried Nevian-Gokultash and the others followed suit.
Half-an-hour afterwards they were in their saddles, low-bowed upon
their peaks, light scaling ladders slung alongside, riding for all
they were worth. Now or never! The time was ripe. Shaibani Khan
himself, lulled in security, away on a marauding expedition, the
garrison unalarmed, confident.
It was midnight when they halted in the Pleasure-ground before the
walls of Samarkand. Here Babar detached eighty of his best men. They
were, if possible, to scale the wall noiselessly by the Lovers'
Cave--most deserted portion of the fortifications,--make their way
silently to the Turquoise Gate, overpower the guard and open the
doors.
Babar himself, with the remainder of his men was to ride up to the
Gate and be ready to force their way in.
How still the night was! The stars how bright! The Seven Thrones
wheeling in their ordered array to the dawn. What had Fate ordered in
his life? Babar, waiting, his hand gripped on his sword-hilt in the
dark way of the Gate, listened eagerly for a sound. The horses' hoofs,
deadened by enswathing felt, had made no sound, the very chink of
steel on steel had not been heard. All was silent as the grave.
What did Fate hold in store? Hark, a sentry's sleepy call: "What of
the hour of the night?"
What, indeed?
Then in one second, tumult, uproar, a clashing of sword on sword.
"The Gate! Open the Gate!" shouted Babar.
A swift bombardment of dull blows--stones, anything on iron bolts and
bars. A shiver, a sudden yielding, and the wide doors swung open.
An instant after Babar was through the gateway, King of Samarkand. He
knew it, even as he galloped on through the sleeping streets to the
citadel. A drowsy shopkeeper or two, roused by the clatter, looked out
from the shops apprehensively, then offered up prayers of
thanksgiving. So, by ones and twos, the city woke to relief and
gratitude. By dawn the hunted Usbeks had disappeared; dead or fled.
And the chief people of the town, bringing such offerings of food
ready dressed as they had at hand were flocking to the Great Arched
Hall of the Palace, to do homage to their new King, and congratulate
him on his success.'
Babar received them with his usual frank, simple dignity. For nearly a
hundred and forty years, he said, Samarkand had been the capital of
his family. A foreign robber, none knew whence, had seized the kingdom
unrighteously. But Almighty God had now restored it, and given him
back his plundered and pillaged country which he would proceed to put
in order.
He did it to his heart's content! He was now nineteen, the birth of
his son was nigh at hand, and all must be ready for the expected heir.
So the next month or two passed in preparations and congratulations.
Babar, who felt the strength of the pen as well as that of the sword,
wrote endless letters to the neighbouring princes and chiefs, assuring
them of his favour, and requesting like return from them. These he
despatched duly accredited with rose-scent and gold-dust and brocaded
bags; but not so many came back as went out.
Moghulistan was slow to recognise the value of peaceful persuasion,
and looked askance at the young general who could surprise so wily a
foe as Shaibani Khan and yet think it worth while to write missives
like a scrivener.
But one letter came which brought the young King unmixed delight; for
it was from the incomparable Ali-Shir at Khorasan; an incomparable
letter without one word astray; a pure pleasure from start to finish.
The young King answered it boldly: even daring so far as to write a
Turkhi couplet of his own composing on the outside thereof; a Turkhi
couplet that was not half-bad; for he was growing to be a man in mind
as well as body.
So all things went merry as a marriage bell. His grandmother, his
mother, and the mother of his expected heir, arrived by slow marches
from Andijan and were lodged in the Birthplace and Deathplace of
Kings, the Green-Palace. And Dearest-One came too in the white
robes of a sainted canoness, eager to take up her position of
aunt-in-ordinary; a position of honour with the Chagatai family. Babar
himself had half-a-dozen or so such Benificent-Ladies ready for all
festivities, all condolences.
So, one hot night, he found himself looking distractedly at the moon
in a balcony of the women's apartments.
Hurrying feet and whisperings had gone on, it seemed to him, for
hours.
But these feet did not hurry; they lagged.
"A daughter! a miserable daughter!" said his mother's voice, full of
tears. "Lo! I wonder Ayesha could think of such a thing ... It is
unpardonable."
"Let us say no more," put in Isan-daulet. "When a woman disgraces
herself, the less said the better. We will get thee a more dutiful
wife, sonling."
Even Dearest-One's face was downcast utterly.
"A daughter!" echoed Babar and paused. Then he said eagerly: "May I
not see it, motherling?--'Tis my first child, anyhow."
And they showed it him, a naked new-born baby wrapped in a cotton
quilt.
"It looks old; as if it had been born a long time," he said
reflectively; then his fine, strong, young hand touched the tiny
crumpled fingers tentatively. "Lo! they are like little worms," he
said and laughed aloud suddenly, a gay young laugh. "She is not bad,
my daughter. I will call her 'Glory of Women.'"
And almost every day he would find time to go in to the women's
apartments and look at her.
But, after a month or forty days, the little Glory of Womanhood went
to share the Mercy of God.
She was his first child, and at the time he was just nineteen.
CHAPTER VIII
A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste
Of Being, from the Well amid the Waste,
And lo!--the phantom Caravan has reached
The Nothing it set out from.
_Omar Khayyam_.
Fate had called a halt in Babar's life. A court had once more gathered
round him, and, as King of Samarkand, a city of colleges and culture,
this was of different stamp from that of Andijan. It occupied itself
with other things than the edge of a sword-blade or the merits of a
polo-ball.
"Lo!" said Mulla Binai the poet, his voice lubricated with artificial
adulation to extreme oiliness, "I have at last found fitting memorial
for the magnificent victory of the King in these poor words:
"'Tell me, my soul, the conquering day
Fateh Babar Bahadur,' I say."
The horrid doggerel, with its inlay of numerical letters giving the
date of Babar's surprise of Samarkand, was allowed to pass muster in
that crowd of flattering courtiers.
Only Kasim Beg, bluff as he had been from the beginning, said,
smartly:
"Good enough, if so be 'tis accurate; but of that, thank God, I know
naught; for whilst thou rememberest fine fights by dots and strokes, I
keep them by the dents on my good sword."
The old noble disliked Binai; he disliked all poets in general; but
this one in particular. He knew nothing good of him but his _riposte_
to Ali-Shir--who was worth ten of him since he had at least been born
a Beg and who, before he was bitten by the mad craze for jingling
words, had struck a good few shrewd blows for the right. Besides, he
had been author and patron of many useful inventions, and it was not
his fault if the gilded youth of Herat named every new fashion after
him, and when he, in consequence of an earache, bound up his face with
a kerchief, bound up theirs also and called it _a la mode_ Ali-Shir.
Still Binai's _riposte_ to the sarcasms which had driven him from
Herat was a good joke. To order a ridiculous pad for the ass he was to
ride and call it the Ali-Shir pad! The recollection of it always made
good old Kasim laugh broadly. The humour of it suited his sturdy
outlook. An outlook that was disturbed by the jingle-jangle of words
and wits that began to arise about his young master. It was all very
well, and affairs were doubtless in a most prosperous state. All the
same there was no counting on any continuance of fine weather with
half-a-dozen claimants to the throne and Shaibani-Khan close at hand.
The Usbek raider was no man to give in because of one reverse; his
whole life was war.
So Kasim frowned at culture, and as Prime-Minister looked to his
weapons.
It was not however for many months that his fear came true and
Shaibani, reinforced, appeared again on the horizon of Babar's world.
But when he did, the young King set aside everything else and buckled
on his sword once more with zest. He had been studying military art in
his great ancestor Timur's memoirs, and was eager for a pitched
battle. No sooner, therefore, did Shaibani's hordes show themselves,
than the young general marched to meet them, and, over-impatient,
precipitated a collision before his own re-enforcements of over five
thousand men had time to join him.
But it was his first pitched battle, he was keen as mustard, and had
planned it all out on paper beautifully on strategical lines.
And the astronomers were to the fore with a lucky conjunction of
stars.
So the right and left wings marched out in orderly array, and wheeled
admirably to meet the first attack of their flank. But somehow this
separated Babar from his staff of veterans, who possibly did not
believe in the virtue of disciplined movements; and though in person
he led a dashing and impetuous charge of his centre on the foe, which
drove the Usbeks back to the point of rout, Shaibani would not accept
defeat. He stood firm, despite his officers' advice to withdraw while
he could, and continued the wild desert tactics of repeated charges on
the enemy's flank, repeated withdrawals to wheel and reform.
And Babar's army, but half-disciplined, divided by conflicting ideals
became hopelessly confused. His Moghul troops, refusing to obey
orders, reverted to their old habit of killing and plundering, with
the result of rout--complete absolute rout.
That night the young leader, stern and calm, despite the ache at his
heart for his own broken ideals as well as for the loss of the many
Begs of the highest rank, the many admirable soldiers, the many
devoted friends who had perished in the action, held a council of war
in the citadel as to what had best be done under the circumstances.
Capitulation on terms, or unconditional defence?
Belief in their leader and the devotion of the Andijan nobles carried
the day against the more lukewarm Samarkandis. It was resolved to hold
the citadel to the death, to the very last drop of blood; and with
vitality renewed by the need for immediate action Babar set to work
strengthening the fortifications. Here at any rate he was master;
bricks and earth could not disobey orders; they must remain where they
were put.
Yet most of the nobles sent away their wives and families secretly.
Babar's mother and sister, however, refused to leave their beloved one
whose fortunes they had followed for so long through thick and thin.
Grandmother Isan-daulet, also, remained of course. Her brave old heart
rather gloried in the thought of a siege, and with all the hatred of a
desert-born Chagatai, she hated the Usbek raider who had dared to beat
her grandson.
Though on that point she and Babar had many words. He reviling her
Moghul horde as the cause of his failure; she asserting it to be his
cramping conditions which had prevented the success of the old methods
of warfare that had served his fathers well enough.
As for Ayesha Begum she had long since retired in a huff to her own
relations, making as her excuse the plea of grief for the death of the
little Glory of Womanhood. But Babar knew better. She had not cared at
all. Her other plea that he did not love her was more to the purpose.
Anyhow it was as well, thought the young husband grimly; she would
only have wept and been uncomfortable.
For discomfort was inevitable even from the very beginning of the
siege; at any rate for the men. The nightly round of the ramparts
alone entailed lack of proper sleep, since but a small portion of them
was ridable, the rest had to be done on foot. And so long was the
circuit that, starting at dusk, it was dawn before every place had
been inspected. Still, even with the small force at his command, Babar
kept the foe at bay, though, more than once he had a narrow squeak of
it. Once when a feint attack of Shaibani's on the Iron-Gate covered a
daring escalade at the Needle-makers Gate. An escalade that was all
but successful. Four of the attacking party were actually over the
wall, dozens of others were swarming up it, when one Kuch-Beg, noble
by birth and by nature, caught a glimpse of someone where someone
should not be. To draw his sword single-handed as he was, and spring
to the attack was the work of an instant. It was an exploit for ever
to be cited to his honour, though his ringing war-shout brought three
more heroes to his aid. Even so, there were but four against dozens;
but furious blows, daredevil recklessness do much, and almost before
the nodding guards were roused, the danger was over, the escaladers
driven back, to fall a confused heap of ladders and men leaving a dead
body or two on the ramparts.
Then Kasim Beg sallied out again and again to engage the enemy's
pickets and returned, bringing heads to set on pikes upon the walls.
For war was war in those days; there was no talk of Red-Crosses and
ambulance-wagons.
And yet two women went about inside the fortress, bandaging wounds and
applying simples. For the Khanum, Babar's mother, could not bear to
see pain, and though old Isan-daulet sniffed at new fangled ways,
asserting that men could but die once and that it was waste of time to
tend a common soldier as though he were a noble, she came of a
fighting tribe and could give many an inherited recipe for the healing
of cuts, the prevention of wound fever. Then Dearest-One despite her
youth, had a claim, as one who had renounced the world to freedom for
good works; so mother and daughter went about in their close white
veils applying the simples which the old woman pounded and compounded,
and doing all they could for the brave men who were helping the
beloved of their eyes to keep his kingdom. They could do no less; they
could do no more; so at least said the Khanum, as often in the dark
nights the mother and daughter lay awake trembling in each other's
arms, listening during an attack or a sally.
Grandmother Isan-daulet would fall foul of them for their red eyes.
"When a man comes in to his food," she would say, "reeling from blows
at his head or sick at stomach with hunger, 'tis no comfort to him to
see tears, or the signs of tears. Thou sayest, daughter, thou can'st
do no more for thy son? Then I can. I can make him angry."
And she did: so that Babar went from his breakfast with his soft heart
hardened to disdain.
Dearest-One used to admire her grandmother's pluck. Not to care if one
hurt the beloved for his good! That was great. And she would wring her
hands tight and say to herself: "I told him long ago that there was
nothing I would not do for him; but there is nothing, nothing I can
do."
So the months dragged by. Harvest came and went without bringing fresh
supplies to the beleaguered fortress, and Shaibani, cynical, somewhat
afraid of his daring young antagonist, withdrew from actual collision,
and contented himself with blockade. Starvation would do the work
without his aid.
The grain for the horses had already given out; however, while the
leaves lasted the mulberry trees and the rose-wood trees in the
fortified gardens were stripped and did for fodder. But the winter
winds ended this supply, and the shift was made to keep some few
horses alive with the rispings of wood moistened with water and
sprinkled with salt. A sorry appearance was that of the poor steeds on
such miserable fare; but Babar's charger did better, with a daily
share of his master's bread; though the big-boned lad could ill
spare it. For all alike were on short commons; and they grew shorter
day by day. The dying horses were killed and eaten, the donkeys went
next--then the cats and dogs. When matters came to this pass, however,
night after night men--brave men--began to let themselves down over
the wall and make their escape. The haggard young King never knew when
he called a council of war, what trusted, what honoured face, might
not be absent. Yet still he clung to that last drop of blood. The oath
might have been foolish, since, as the ancients said, a fortress can
only be maintained by the joint action of head, and feet, and hands;
that is to say by generalship, two friendly forces on either side, and
a good supply of water and stores as the starting point of all. Still
he had made it, and he meant to stick to it. The others might go if
they pleased.
"If I could only secure thine and my mother's and my grandmother's
safety," he said to Dearest-One--"the other few women also," he
added--"though there is little fear for them, they count not enough
for harm; and Shaibani hath his army well in hand. That is how he
scored against me. Those accursed Moghuls of my grandmother's would
not obey orders. If they killed a man they plundered him--and what is
that, when a turning movement hath been ordered? Ah! it was devilish!
devilish!" And the tall, thin, young figure would throw out its arms
almost appealingly. For Babar was ever high-strung, and his nerves
were going.
He gave himself no rest either. Night and day he was always on the
watch. So it did not matter so much to him as to others when Shaibani
Khan, changing his tactics, commenced making the darkness hideous by
beating large kettle drums and sounding the alarm. Yet the young King
shook his fist over the battlements at his foe, who had now pitched
his headquarters tent close to the Lovers' Cave, and said to
Dearest-One, "It is not fair, and yet it is! I would do it in his
place--and yet I don't know--I don't know!" He was very near the end
of his tether, yet his grip was tight as ever and he would sit on the
top of the gateway with a crossbow and shoot at everyone and
everything living that showed itself.
"I struck a palish white-coloured horse to-day," he said to his sister
with a cruel exultant look in the eyes that had always been so tender
for God's dumb creatures, "and it fell dead--would it had been a man!"
And Dearest-One turned pale. This was worse than death; worse than
anything--anything in the wide, wide world!
She lay face downwards beside her mother that night and thought, and
thought, and thought, until the grey dawn came. Then she sat up and
looked at her mother sleeping beside her.
Yes! it was best. The plan was worth the trying at any rate; and she
would be the only one to suffer.
She lay down again, and laid her head on that gentle, loving, sleeping
breast. And the motherly arms, unconscious as they were, closed round
her and held her fast until she, too, slept, outwearied. That morning
she was closeted with her grandmother for hours, and at the midday
meal the old woman's eyes showed red; but Dearest-One's were clear and
bright; when the mind is made up there is no use in tears.
The evening was stormy. The bitter east wind swept along the ramparts
and drove the dust in blinding clouds into the eyes of all. The very
foe ceased from their disturbing shouts of alarm, and on many a post
the sentry slept awhile.
Did one at the wicket gate by the Lovers' Cave sleep or did he not;
and did the white-robed figure that slipped after dusk through the
deserted streets pass out, unseen, to challenge fate in the Usbek
leader's camp?
Or did Dearest-One send a message only?
Or was it only chance which the very next morning brought the
ultimatum to the haggard young King? Who knows? Certain it is it came.
There was no reason, Shaibani wrote, why those who had been brave foes
should not be brave friends. None could deny the King of Samarkand's
bravery; few would care to deny his own. Why then should they not be
friends? A marriage was ever the best way of securing peace. Let Babar
therefore give his sister Khanzada Begum in lawful marriage to his
foe--who, be it said, was in strong enough position to take her--and
so form a lasting alliance.
"My sister!" burst out Babar in a fury. "Go back to the savage
Usbek Shaibani, robber, raider, sir ambassador; and tell him that
Zahir-ud-din Mahomed is not his peer--he is his master!"
This was all very well in the saying; it sent the blood, growing a bit
sluggish from sheer starvation, flooding to heart and brain; but
afterwards when the envoy had gone, and the hungry anxious faces of
the few who still remained to him showed bitter disappointment, he
leant his head on his hands drearily in the quiet of the women's room,
and tried to put himself in the place of those bearded Begs to whom a
woman's honour or happiness or indeed affection, was, as a rule, of
small account.
He could not, of course, assent; and yet it seemed a pity that he
could not.
And while he sat crouched in upon himself, spent and weary,
Dearest-One herself came and crouched beside him and laid her pretty
head on his shoulder.
"Brother!" she said, "I have heard. Come let us talk it over as in old
days. So let me hold thy poor hand as we used to do; for we have ever
been friends, Babar-ling--have we not?"
Her voice was calm and steady despite the clamant note of tears that
was in every word.
"Talk not of it, sister! I will not have it," he muttered; and his
voice was broken, husky. "By God and his prophet! I could strike him
dead for the thought that I could be such a cur as even to think of
it."
She shrank just for a second. "Many men would think it naught," she
said, "but it is because it means much to thee that thou must think."
"I will not think," he cried passionately, "I will not be coerced. I
will not be cozened. I, Babar, take the consequence."
He left her, baffled, yet still determined, to return to the charge in
a day or two; and in starvation times a day or two means much. So
much, that she spoke sternly with finality.
"Wilt thou kill thy mother by thy pride, Babar? Listen! Long years ago
I said I would do aught for thee--"
"And I answered I would never ask aught," interrupted her brother
hotly; but she went on unheeding:
"And now thou deniest me the right to save thee. I who have so few
pleasures. Lo! as thou knowest, my heart is dead for love; and this
man--this Shaibani--is not all bad--I--I know he is not. Brotherling!
women have borne more for love than I shall have to bear maybe--for
the man must be kind in a way--for--for if it ended, Babar--he could
take me--without marriage--so grandmother says--"
Babar started up with an oath. "So she also is against me!"
Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that the old woman spoke truth. It
was generous in Shaibani even to offer marriage.
"I will not have it!" he cried. "I will not yield! I would sooner kill
thee, myself."
"Thou wilt kill--us all," she said calmly. Then she broke down and
clung to him sobbing. "Let it be, brotherling, for my sake. There is
so little I can do--let me do this."
The quick tears of understanding ran down his cheeks, but he shook his
head and left her.
So, after a day or two, yet another proposition came from Shaibani to
his brave foe. Babar might go with bare life, taking his womenkind
with him if he chose, provided he capitulated utterly and acknowledged
he was beaten.
There were parleyings and parleyings and who knows what secret
promisings beside, what innocent lies, what heart-broken yielding on
Babar's part. At last, protesting vainly that had he had the slightest
hope of relief, or had he had another week's stores remaining he would
never have listened to either threats or entreaties, he agreed to
capitulate for bare life to him and his. His mother, his sister, his
grandmother, these three must share his freedom. The others must take
their chance of horses, or remain, unharmed. Grandmother Isan-daulet,
however, flatly refused to come. She was too old, she said, to be
cocked up on a horse for days. She was not afraid. Thrice, already,
when she was young and good-looking she had fallen into the enemies'
hands and had been unmolested--save once and how that business ended
Babar knew. So, being now wrinkled and undesirable she would just
remain and mayhap give Shaibani a piece of her mind. So her horse had
better go to Mingilek-Gokultash who was perchance over good-looking.
It was ever best not to put temptation in men's way. Besides
Dearest-One might like to have her foster-sister with her. It was
convenient to have some woman one could trust beside one in dangerous
times.
As the old woman spoke, she held her granddaughter by the hand, and
her old fingers tightened themselves on the young ones with a grip
firm as steel, soft as a caress. And Dearest-One stooped and kissed
the old face on the lips.
So by midnight all was ready for the preconcerted escape. The few
sorry horses left in the citadel were standing saddled, the enemy's
pickets, it is to be presumed, were looking another way. Babar,
fierce, miserable, helped his mother to her pad and settled the
stirrups for her. He could scarcely see for the hot tears held back so
angrily in his eyes. He could scarcely speak for the hard-held breath
that seemed to choke him.
Defeated, flying for his life--No! not for his own only; for theirs
also!
He gave a glance round at his party. "Is everyone there? Is everyone
ready?"
And from the midst of the little crowd clustering round the fugitives
with sobs and tears a voice came clearly:
"Yea! brother! I am ready."
It was Dearest-One's voice. That must be she leaning from her horse to
whisper a word to old Isan-daulet who stood waving farewells.
"Then in God's name let us begone, and end the business," he shouted
fiercely, leapt to his charger, dug spurs to its flanks and was off
careless of disturbance. He had sold himself for the sake of those who
loved him, man and woman alike; but the blackness as of death was
before his eyes; he could not think; he could do nothing but dig spurs
to his horse, and ride on recklessly.
And the night itself was dark as death; he had to rein up amid the
great branches of the Soyd Canal, and with difficulty rallied his
party to the right road. Yet, still entangled in the intricacies of
the irrigated fields, there was time for no other thought save that of
getting as far from Samarkand as possible before the dawn. Since
though the Usbek leader himself had given order for free pass, his
followers, still less his allies, were not to be trusted.
The sky was grey with coming day before they reached the comparative
safety of a wild valley set amid encircling hills. Here Babar called a
minute's halt to breathe the horses, and for the first time turned to
take stock of those who followed him.
His keen eye took in his mother's veiled form. But that bundle like a
sack of corn, that crumpled heap like a withered rose leaf--neither of
these were Dearest-One? _She_ rode! In a flash, a sense of pride at
her upright carriage on her horse came to him, even as a suffocating
leap of his heart made him speechless for a second. An awful fear
seized him. He knew, and yet he would not know what had happened.
"Khanzada Begum!" he muttered hoarsely. "Where--where is she?"
No one spoke, and anger--hopeless, helpless anger and grief kept him
silent. Then someone said almost fearfully:
"Mayhap in the night time--in the darkness--"
"It is a lie!" burst out Babar. "It is a lie!--I have been tricked!"
Then something of the innate truth that was ever in his soul made him
pause. He ought to have known--he ought to have guessed. Foes were not
usually so generous, and he saw himself not altogether free from
blame. "I have tricked myself--I ought to have known," he burst out.
"I--oh! may God's curse light on everyone--everyone--"
So he stood, his face turned towards the distant city for a moment,
then with a reckless laugh he loosed the rein on his horse's neck and
threw his arms above his head.
"Come on!" he shouted as the horse bounded forward. "We are free! Let
us ride to hell--to hell and damnation!" And his laughter echoed back,
bringing terror to his mother's heart.
"He is beside himself," she cried. "After him, Kasim--for God's sake
keep him from harm."
But Kasim and Kambar-Ali his squire, were already at the gallop, and
the sound of their horses' feet followed Babar as he fled.
From what?
From everything in the wide world. From anger, love, remorse, helpless
grief, even from resolve not to be beaten. His nerves were unstrung;
for the moment his one thought was escape.
But only for a moment. The sound of those galloping hoofs behind him
brought immediate self-control, immediate grip on kingly dignity.
He turned back on his saddle to cast a word that would re-instate him
in sanity to those following fools.
"A race!" he cried gaily. "Come on! A race let it be!--Ten
_dinars_ ..."
But even as he spoke, he overbalanced. Perhaps he felt giddy, perhaps
the girths on his starving horse were all too slack. Anyhow the saddle
turned with him and he fell; fell clear on his head.
He was up again, however, ere they reached him, standing unsteadily
with dazed eyes, passing his hand gently backwards and forwards over
his brow.
"What was it all about?" he murmured cheerfully. "I've clean forgotten
it all." And he had.
He mounted again after a minute and rode on; but the memory of that
night had gone out of his mind for ever and aye.
CHAPTER IX
Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two and went his way.
_Omar Khayyam_.
Those first few days of despair were as a dream. The world and all
that is in it showed to Babar's eyes like a phantasy of sleep. He lay
and rested at a friendly village, passing from the extreme of famine
to plenty; from an estate of danger and calamity to peace and ease.
The nice fat flesh, the bread of fine flour well baked, the sweet
melons and excellent grapes in great abundance, all these made him
feel sensibly the pleasures of peace and plenty; for enjoyment after
suffering, abundance after want, come with an increased relish and
afford a more exquisite delight. It was the first time in his life
that he had passed from the injuries of his enemies and the pressure
of actual hunger to the ease of security, and he revelled in it like
the wholesome-hearted, and, for the time, mindless creature that he
was.
But memory of a sort came back to him after a few days and he grew
restless; so they marched on. And as he rode over the hills or walked,
leading his mother's pony, discontent began once more to leaven his
glad content. The world in these lower lying districts was beautiful
in the early springtide, but there was something more in life than
mere beauty. There was something else needed to make it splendid.
"I will go back to where we were in the White Mountains," he said one
day. "I was happy there and so was Dearest-One."
It was the first time he had mentioned his sister's name, and his
mother looked at him anxiously. But he said no more. Nature was
dealing in kindly fashion with him and bringing memory back by slow
degrees.
But at Bishagher, where they halted a few days, it was like to have
been otherwise, for there they came across an old duenna of Babar's
mother who having been left behind in Samarkand because of the
scarcity of horses, had, nothing daunted, trudged after her mistress
on foot. The two women sobbed on each other's necks, while the one
told and the other listened to the piteous tale of a marriage, which
after all had not been so bad as it might have been, because of old
Isan-daulet's masterful spirit. But they said nothing to the menfolk
about it all. It was as well that their boy should hear as few details
as possible.
And here--the first possible place for news since those long months of
siege--tidings came of family deaths at Tashkend. It was fourteen
years since Babar's mother had been there and seen her people, and
now, when they were hopeless, homeless, and when, moreover, she had
her old governess to serve her once more, the time seemed fitting for
a visit.
So she went, and for the first time for many years Babar was left
alone without any hostages to fortune.
And one of the first things he did with his liberty was to climb a
certain hill all set with flowers, which he and his sister had climbed
one spring day in the past. The gentians were as blue, the primulas as
pink as ever, and the mosaic of forget-me-nots and yellow crowsfoot
lay almost inconceivably bright as ever. The blue sky, grazing ground
for fleecy white flocks of clouds, stretched away beyond the hills to
that faint bluer line of distant Samarkand.
All was as it had been. And the green enamel frame set with jewels,
like flowers, lay on the transparent ice where she had put it. He had
not noticed that before; one could see through the slab--see green
grass-blades, and a half opened flower bud that had been held in chill
prison for years and years and years--It was quaint, utterly, when her
face, her portrait had gone! The rain had washed it away. The vellum
on which it had been painted lay white as snow.
Yes! quaint utterly. The icy grip had kept its hold, the warm sunshine
had let slip its prize. He sat down idly, his head resting in his
hands.
Yes! her face had gone! What matter now if there was place or grace
beside it for another? Poor Baisanghar! and poor--infinitely poorer
Dearest-One! For the first time the full meaning of what had happened
came over him; he turned round passionately, hid his face among the
flowers and cried like a child.
_Ishk_ and _ashk!_ Love and tears. How little divided them. So the
thought of his dead, crippled cousin came to him and the memory of
that vivid, fate-defying face stood between him and despair. The
Crystal Bowl! Yes! he would laugh as he quaffed: life had brought him
strange adventures; let her bring more! He was ready for them--quite
ready, in his manhood, to take what the years might hold. For boyhood
had gone. That had capitulated with Samarkand.
He did not formulate all this clearly; he simply felt it. Felt the
keen joy in life come back to him as he sat up once more and looked
out over God's beauties with still swimming eyes; and the tears were
magnifying glasses!
A quaint conceit that might be worked up into a couplet or perchance a
quatrain. Baisanghar would have done it finely: he worked well on such
finniken fancies. But he had been wrong in the verses he had written
on the back of the enamel frame. Were they there still? Aye! they had
been protected from the tears of rain.
He read the lines over, feeling as he read them that there was
something in them that lacked. So, as he felt, words came to him; for
he was born with that artistic temperament which cannot help trading
on its own most sacred emotions; perhaps because such natures see
vaguely that individualism is a snare to the soul, that all things
worth recording are part of a Greater Personality than their own. And
the outcome of feeling and words ran thus:--
"Seven thrones, seven sins, seven stars,
But not one thing that bars
Life's love, Life's tears.
The crushed grape fills the bowl
With wine for the sad soul
Beyond these years."
He jumped up feeling quite pleased with himself, for they were the
first verses in that measure he had ever composed!
After this when he was wandering barefoot over hill and dale, he would
sit down when he found some pleasant spot and string rhymes together;
for he was in a backwater, mentally and bodily. For twenty years he
had battled with Fate over trivialities; since what, after all, were
Ferghana and Samarkand and Hissar? Only tiny little bits of God's
earth. He was beginning to be a trifle weary of it all, to long for a
larger horizon. So he sent off on the pretext of getting news, the few
followers who had remained with him while he, Nevian-Gokultash,
and another wandered farther and farther, higher and higher up the
White Mountains until they reached the Roof-of-the-World. And there
they lodged awhile in the felt tents of a shepherd and lived on
sheeps'-milk, cheese and buckwheat-cakes. Their host was a man of some
eighty years; but his mother was still alive, and of extreme age,
being at this time no less than one hundred and eleven years old, and
in full possession of her faculties. Indeed, the circumstances of the
great Timur's invasion of India remained fresh in her memory owing,
doubtless, to her having been in her youth greatly interested in one
who had been in his army.
She was a hale old woman, smoke-dried yet apple-cheeked, who loved to
hear herself talk, especially when the tall good-looking young
stranger sat at her feet, fixing his hazel eyes that were at once so
sad and so merry on her whirling pirn as she twisted the brown wool
for the blankets.
How it whirled, and leaped, and spun, as the withered old hand jerked
the thread! So the Hand of Fate jerked men's lives, setting them
spinning like tops into the shadows, out into the firelight again;
always, always spinning!
"So the Great Khan was feeding his dogs, being in those days infidel,
when Shaikh Jumal-ud-din the divine came to him. 'Am I better than
this dog?' quoth Timur, 'or is he better than I?' And the Shaikh
smiled. 'If the King has faith he is better than his dog; but if he
has no faith, then is his dog better than he, since the dog believes
in a master.' So the Great Khan said the Creed immediately."
"Wah!" murmured the circle of shepherds; but Babar would press for
tales of the Great Invasion. And sometimes the old lady would begin at
the very beginning, and tell how Timur's soldiers, imitating their
leader, would make their left arms straight as the letter "I" and
their right arms crooked as a "K" and so write death in the blood of
their enemies. How they let fly their arrows as the moon lets fly
shooting stars so that the blood-sodden hillsides showed like a drift
of red tulips. Or she would drone on--it was a long story--over the
"Battle of the Mire," where the enemy not having strength to fight,
sought help from the magic rain-stone, so that though the sun was in
the Warrior, a host of dark clouds suddenly filled the sky. The
thunder resounded, the lightnings flashed, the water descended from
the eyes of the stars until the voice of Noah was heard praying a
second time for deliverance from the Deluge. Then the beasts of the
field swam like fishes, the skin of the horses' bellies adhered to the
crust of the earth. The feathers of the arrows damped off, their
notches came out, neither men nor horses could move by reason of the
rain ...
So she would maunder on until Babar would say impatiently:
"Get on to India, mother! I would fain be there myself."
And he would hardly listen as she, once more beginning at the very
beginning, would detail the eight-hundred-thousand men, provided with
rations for seven years and each accompanied with two milch-kine and
ten milch-goats, so that when stores were exhausted they might live on
milk, and when milk dried up they could convert the animals themselves
into provisions.
It was all doubtless very wise of Timur--God rest his soul!--who was
ever great on the commissariat; but he, Babar, preferred the laconic
remark in his great ancestor's autobiography, "The princes of India
were at variance with one another. Resolved to make myself master of
the Indian empire. Did so."
It was however the more intimate personal experiences which the old
woman held by virtue of that dead "interest" of hers, which fired
Babar's imagination; but these fragments of a half-forgotten past were
not always to be got at. The long years of common round and daily task
had overlaid them; it needed a subtle touch upon the instrument to
make it vibrate once more. But Babar found a key. There was a certain
Turkhoman ballad called "The Maid-of-the-Spring," which invariably
unlocked the old woman's memory. So, often, as they sat over the camp
fire at night, Babar, smiling to himself, would say, "A song, a song!
Let us sing 'The Maid-of-the-Spring' together once more, grandmother!
There is none sings it as thou dost."
Which was true! Still the toneless treble of the old voice whining
away like the fine whing of a mosquito did not sound so bad against
the rich baritone. And the youngest maiden could not have nodded and
becked more, or looked more arch. And perhaps the old heart beat as
quickly as a young one; such things do not go by age.
And this is what they sang in somewhat monotonous antiphon:
He.
Maid of the Spring! I'm thirsty! I pray
A drop of water! I must away.
God bless you, my girl! And don't be slow!
Give me a drink and let me go.
She.
I don't give drinks to strange young men
Who come a-swaggering down the glen;
Naught you'll get from my pitcher to-day,
Drink for yourself and go your way.
He.
Maid of the Spring! I cannot alight,
I'm far too tired! I'm wearied quite!
I haven't time! God bless you, my dear!
Give me a drink--I _can't_ stay here.
She.
The birds sing sweet in the spring, they say,
It's sweeter still when _I_ tune my lay,
But tired man should sleep in his bed--
Farewell! God's blessing be on your head.
He.
Give me some water, you pretty dear!
If I'd only time, you need not fear.
My darling! a drink from that stoup of thine,
Be it water or be it wine.
She.
Many men travel along this way,
All are thirsty but none can stay.
Take my pitcher and drink if you will,
A thirsty man must have his fill.
He.
Your brows are arched by a pen, I swear,
Your teeth are pearls--I will treat you fair,
Get down from my horse and wait an hour.
Give me your lips, my sweet, my flower.
She.
Roses and violets grow our groves,
No one may pluck them but he who loves.
My brother has slaves, and sticks a-main;
Drink and be off--it soon will rain!
He.
Darlingest dear! let it storm or rain,
My wide felt cloak shall shelter us twain.
Pitcher and all, leap up and ride,
We'll find a kiss at the water's side.
She.
My love! my love! have you come at last?
Drop the pitcher and hold me fast!
There are my lips before we fly
Out to a new world--you and I.
"And now for India!" Babar would cry when the applause was over. "I
want to hear about the size of it, and the fruit and flowers of it,
and all about it. See you, grandmother, begin and tell me of the young
woman thy man met at Lahore--then thou wilt remember to a nicety!"
So the summer passed, until old Isan-daulet arriving from Samarkand
with news of Dearest-One, set Babar's mind a-jogging once more over
his enemy Shaibani. But there was nothing to be done in winter time:
such a bitter cold winter, too. More than one man died of it, and even
Babar himself admitted that, after diving sixteen times in swift
succession into a river that was only unfrozen in the middle by reason
of its swift current, the extreme chilliness of the water quite
penetrated his bones; as well it might.
Then early spring brought a great grief which gave pause to energy.
Nevian-Gokultash was done to death, by a scoundrel who was jealous of
Babar's affection for him, and who had the temerity to say that
faithful creature had fallen over a precipice when he was drunk.
Nevian, who adhered so strictly to the law of Islam! Nevian, who had
always sided for sobriety, who had been to the full as urgent as old
Kasim Beg against a King giving himself up to wine. Babar, helpless to
follow the murderer, felt deeply the death of his playmate in
childhood, the companion of his boyhood. There were few persons for
whose loss he would have grieved so much or so long. For a week or ten
days, he thought of nothing else and the unbidden tears were ever in
his eyes.
After this, a great restlessness set in, fostered by old Isan-daulet,
whose whole life had been one long succession of battles and murders
and sudden deaths, and whose belief in Moghul troops never wavered.
Why, she suggested, not go to his uncles the Khans at Tashkend? His
mother had been ill; she would like to see him once more. And if his
tongue was sufficiently careful amongst his thirty-two teeth, he might
get substantial help.
"For what?" gloomed Babar--"to get back Akshi and lose Andijan or get
Andijan and lose Akshi? 'Tis all one in the end."
"Not the fine fighting, child!" replied the old lady craftily. "That
is the same, be it in _Gehannum_ or _Bihisht_." (Hell or Heaven.)
That was undoubtedly true; and there was no good to be gained by
rambling from hill to hill as he had been doing.
So, once more, the young adventurer gathered together a very scanty
band of followers; for old Kasim Beg, who till then had never left
him, had come to words with Isan-daulet over these same Moghuls, and
refused to accompany him.
"I say not, sire," remonstrated the wise old soldier, "that these men
are bad soldiers for me; but they are for the Most Exalted, who has
ideas of discipline. Besides, I care not to risk my own neck for a
chance. In obedience to the Most Exalted's commands I beheaded quite a
number of these men in the last campaign, for marauding. Wherefore,
therefore, should I go amongst their mourning relatives? I will come
if there be fighting. Then there is no leisure and little desire for
private revenge; blood can be let anywhere and one corpse is as good
as another."
So Kasim went with his imme
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