A Prince of Dreamers Part 15

"Had best keep silence in a public place," put in Budaoni eyeing the other with a gla.s.sy stare. He himself might take his own part in discontent, but being, by virtue of his voice, precentor in the Court Mosque, he did not choose to encourage Ibrahim, whose evil life was notorious. The latter smiled and skilfully drew another red-herring of provocation across the path.

"Public?" he echoed with a leer of malice. "Sure there is no more private place than the Court Mosque since the King started his Divine Faith! Hast heard, Most Holy, what the idolatrous pig Birbal jested last Friday when the King, for a marvel, put in an appearance at prayers--that he came not in order to listen to what you preached as of G.o.d, but to hush the slanders you borrowed of the Devil."

The Makhdum spat solemnly, the senior canon let loose a thundering "G.o.d roast him," which echoed and re-echoed through the wide arches.

"Except," remarked Budaoni with a sneer, "when his Majesty reads prayers himself; then he comes to stutter!"

This allusion to the day not so far past when Akbar, a.s.suming the Headship had--whether from nervousness or emotion history sayeth not--broken down in repeating the _kutba_ composed for the occasion by Faiz, the poet-laureate, produced snorts and smiles of a.s.sent.

"Yes! yea!" a.s.sented the sour-visaged elder fiercely "he stuttered indeed--mayhap because the words were by Faiz, the dog poet--may G.o.d rot him for defiling His Holy Place."

The old man with the white beard looked up suddenly.

"Yet, sirs, was there ought wrong with the words?" he asked; so stretched out his lean old hand, and his wavering old voice rang out through the sunshine:

Lo! from Almighty G.o.d I take my Kingship Before His Throne I bow and take my Judgeship Take Strength from Strength and Wisdom from His Wiseness Right from the Right, and Justice from His Justice Praising the King I praise G.o.d near and far Great is His Power, Al-la-hu Akbar.

The echoes died away and there was silence. Then Ibrahim indulging in a yawn of contempt for the digression his words had caused, said patronisingly, "The question we ask is not of _kutbas_; it is of a marriage, most Enlightened-One."

But Budaoni's virulence was incorrigible. "His Majesty hath propounded not a few such problems to this poor court already," he remarked caustically; "doth he perchance propound another?"

This further allusion to the hot dispute between the King and the doctors concerning the legality of the former's political marriages with Rajput princesses, would have met with equal favour, but for Ibrahim's quick frown. To him, as chamberlain, the King's present austerities and general asceticism were a continual grievance.

"Thy wits must wander, Budaoni," he interrupted sharply, "or thou wouldst know the very name woman is at a discount at court! Mayhap the translation into civilised language of the Hindu Scriptures proves too much for thee!"

The historian scowled, for his task of translating religious books from the Sanskrit into Persian for the King's benefit was utterly abhorrent to his orthodoxy.

"And small wonder," he replied hotly. "These useless absurdities confound the eighteen worlds! Such injunctions! Such prohibitions! A whole page against the eating of turnips! May G.o.d forgive the enforced spoiling of orthodox pen, ink, and paper over such puerilities!"

It was the Syeds' turn to shift impatiently. "Good sir historian,"

said one, handling his sword as it lay on his knee, "we come not hither to discuss literature, but to ask an opinion. Hath the King right to exile a man for the marrying of a woman?"

"What man, and what woman?" asked the Makhdum portentously. "On that hangs law. Hath the man already four wives?"

"The King hath nigher to forty," interrupted the incorrigible Budaoni.

"Peace, preacher!" reproved the great man, wagging his head. "Cloud not perspicacity with allusions. And the woman? Is she virgin, widow, or duly divorced?"

There was a general sort of chuckle from the hawks-brood.

"None of them i' faith," said the head of the clan at last, "'tis Siyah Yamin whom all know; but she hath said the Creed and the lad hath married her."

"By legal marriage?"

"How else?" asked the spokesman hotly. "We of Barha, descended of the true Prophet--may His name be exalted--deal not with customs borrowed of the idolater."

"Then are they true wed, and none can dissolve the tie save the husband himself by----"

"Traa!" interrupted Ibrahim impatiently, "that is for them to settle between them! These gentlemen desire to know by what right the King forbids this virtuous young man to bring his screened and lawful woman into the town? Such cupolas of chast.i.ty are beyond the power even of majesty; is it not so, most learned doctors?"

A little stir shifted through the a.s.semblage; it sate up literally, metaphorically, keen for ground of offence against any of the King's decisions.

"Of a truth," p.r.o.nounced the Makhdum pompously, "he hath no right. By all the laws of Islam a screened and lawful woman belongs only to her owner."

So in the sunshine the enmity of the Old against the New rose hot as the sunshine itself, and conspiracy sprang into being.

It was a good half-hour ere Mirza Ibrahim summed up the situation in these words:

"We meet again then, in the Hall of Public Audience to-day, and demand revision of the sentence as being contrary to the Revealed Word; and if the King----"

Khodadad broke in on him with a sudden laugh--"Nay! my idolatrous quarry will be Birbal! G.o.d and His Prophet! how I loathe the dog!" He paused, seeing the unwisdom of his confidences, for the Syeds of Barha rose, to stand packed, fingering their swords.

"G.o.d's truth," said their leader, turning insolently to the speaker, "keep thy carrion to thyself, Tarkhan! We of Barha mix not in court cabals--we be not buzzard-c.o.c.ks to whom the smell of death brings but gluttony. No! if the King rescind not his order we fling our allegiance at his feet, we and our goodly following; so, escaping free of false law to our strongholds, there to defend ourselves against tyranny. But for quarry! Stab whom thou willst, Tarkhan, but reckon not on our knives."

Khodadad, deprecating a scowl at his indiscretion from Mirza Ibrahim, smiled lightly:

"Quarry for my craft is all I ask, though G.o.d knows His world would be better without the Hindu pig who, see you, comes yonder defiling the sanctuary and hatching new plots against our pockets, with the accurst Khattri, Todar Mull, the Finance Minister."

It was a deft distraction, for the constant cutting-down of perquisites and fees in Akbar's efforts to ameliorate the condition of the poor, was a continual source of irritation to the upper cla.s.ses.

But the Syeds of Barha were large landowners, and they knew on which side their bread was b.u.t.tered. So they salaamed respectfully to the two statesmen as they pa.s.sed at a distance arm in arm, and the oldest of the little group said sharply, "Hindu or no, he hath his grip on the collector of taxes. So good luck go with him--aye! And with the King, too, in such matters. Save for this about Jamal-ud-din we find no fault in him."

"Neither see I fault in him," came a sudden voice loud yet wavering.

It came from the white-haired old man who had been telling his beads, and who now stood, his thin bent figure outlined against the distant blue of India that showed through the Arch of Victory.

"Neither see I fault," he repeated, his tone breaking in his vehemence. "G.o.d give him ever what he prays for--'a tranquil mind, an open brow, a just intent, a right principle, a wide capacity, a firm foot, a high spirit, a lofty soul, a right place, a shining countenance, and a smiling lip.' Of such are kings indeed!"

They looked at the old man in haughty scorn, as stumblingly, his old eyes half-blind with tears, he pa.s.sed through the archway, so down the steps to disappear as it were in the heart of India widespread, remote, indefinite. But Budaoni murmured under his breath, "Lo! the glamour of the King is upon him. G.o.d knows one can scarce live in sight of him and not feel the very soul of one go out toward what lies beyond. Even I myself----" he paused and was silent, knowing that through all his diatribes, all his wanton misreadings of Akbar's character, ran admiration.

Meanwhile Todar Mull had in pa.s.sing given a quick glance in return for the salutation which had come from the Syeds of Barha.

"That bodes--what?" he had asked of Birbal, who had shrugged his shoulders and given a still keener glance at the group in the sunshine.

"Since Khodadad is in it--mischief! Mirza Ibrahim ever equals immorality, and the Syedan--I wist not they were here--bode--with Jamal-ud-din and his chaste spouse in exile--marriage! As for the Learned of the Law, they contribute 'Mahommed is His Prophet.' The whole doubtless forming conspiracy--what else is there in the court with this accursed peace of Akbar's giving time for the cooking of cabals? Would to G.o.d----" He broke off, his mind besieged in a rush with the fierce regret which had been his ever since, but a few hours before he had heard the words of self-renunciation fall unconsciously from his master's lips. But--fate willing--there should be no more such talk! He, Birbal, would force on war; he would make Akbar, as unconsciously, play his part in common-sense, grasping Kingship.

"Yea," he continued urbanely, "were it not that the poor, thriving, are content, thanks to Todar Mull's wise ruling----"

The Kattri's face, yellow of tint, fleshy of contour, seemed to take on bone and muscle, and his oiliness of manner roughened into swift decision. "Aye!" he returned, "they grow more content, poor souls, but, 'tis the King who starts me on the trail. I go even now to discuss a new idea of his with Abulfazl, whose head truly hath no peer for detail."

"Yea!" put in Birbal, "but the King's Diwan is even now using it in showing the details of the King's work to the Englishmen, while the Portuguese priests scowl at the intrusion of new claimants to commerce. Lo! I grow weary of these strangers. Why should Akbar make their way smooth?"

Todar Mull, his inherited apt.i.tude for the problems of money showing in the eyes which were keen even for fractions in a man's character, looked at Birbal doubtfully.

"Wherefore not?" he asked. "Lo! I have had speech with these new men, and there is that of free-trading, unfettered by aught save gold or the lack of it, in them which compels approval. For see you, in the end gold is the essence of all things. I tell thee were it not for piety I myself would bow down to it and worship with a 'Hallowed be thy name.'"

Birbal's mimetic face became preternaturally grave, but there was a twinkle in his eye: "'Twould not"--he bowed courteously--"be so bulky a divinity as Todar Mull's present pantheon, which, if rumour says sooth, already runs to cart-loads."

The financier flushed. This allusion to his habit of carrying waggons-full of household G.o.ds about with him when on tour brought a quick reproach: "Jest not at the G.o.ds, O! Brahmin-born," he said.