A Prince of Dreamers Part 34

Vague, instinctive affection and loyalty had to war with pa.s.sionate desires for power, with the thousand and one poisoned thoughts which, day and night, were put into his mind diligently by those who sought him as their tool.

When he had disappeared into the thickets of pomegranate and orange, there came a sudden little laugh.

"Oh! birdies! birdies! What a stupid stripling!"

The shrouding veil which she had hastily drawn round her on the appearance of the Prince, slipped back, and Mihr-un-nissa's dimpling face was buried in the opalescent feathers of her captives. "Nay! no struggling! Sure thou art better here than with your sulky, fatling Prince--though see you, my birds, he is not so ill-looking when he is seen close, as the squirrel said of the spider when he had dismembered him! But he is not a patch on Sher Afkan. La! how Ummu squirmed when I spoke of him. What sillies women be, as if one might not use one's eyes. Ohi! Now I have it! 'Tis the talisman in his turban gives the Prince his air. Have a care! Mihr-un-nissa, lest thou fall in love with him and desert true friend. And yet----"

She paused, looked down at her own face mirrored in the water and what she saw there held her.

It was true what the woman told her. That was no mere wife's face--it was the face of a queen--a real queen----

The birds of love fluttered in her listless hold. Lost in her dreams she scarcely noticed that one, eluding her slack grasp fled joyfully to coo his paean of liberty from an orange tree hard by.

Was it worth it? Was it worth it? What was all the power in the world worth to a woman, as she--the girl upon its verge--imagined womanhood?

"My birds?" The Prince had returned. The imperious voice roused her; roused her temper also.

"Here, my lord," she replied curtly.

"What? Only one?" The voice was angry now; almost ready for a curse.

She set, as it were, soul and body into cold ice.

"Sire!" she answered, with chill courtesy, "one has flown."

In the shade of the trees, her face, averted, was unseen, and of her figure, crouched in upon itself instinctively, the Prince saw nothing but childish outlines.

"Stupid fool," he cried roughly. "How? d.a.m.n you! Tell me how."

She was on her feet in a second, facing his anger fearlessly, her own blazing hot in defiance of all things. Aye! even this fading Prince who dared to call her fool!

"So! my lord!" she cried defiantly and from her outstretched hands the second dove flew circling to join its mate.

Salim stood startled into silence. From the orange tree the doves were cooing. The perfumes of the garden rose up around them. Overhead blazed the brazen sky.

But the Heir-Apparent of India saw nothing save that first glimpse of the woman who as Mihr-un-nissa, Queen of Women, Nurmabal, the Light of Palaces, and finally as Nur-jahan, the Light of the World, was to play so large a part in his life.

He was too much taken up with the love which, like the doves, had flitted from the listless hand of Fate even to attempt to detain the girl, when with a sudden sweeping salaam, a soft sweet, "Your servant, Mihr-un-nissa" she turned and fled.

At least, she felt, he might as well know who she was.

CHAPTER XVI

_A thousand ships have foundered here before So lost, no chip of them came back to sh.o.r.e.

I, too, on those waves wandered many a night, Till terror plucked my sleeve, and cried "No More!

Back to the land! G.o.d's wide horizon rings Thee and the worlds. Thinkst thou the King of kings To compare by conjecture? Ah! poor wight, Wisdom itself, wists not His hidden things_."

--Sa'adi.

When Mihr-un-nissa fled from the Prince in the garden, she did not fly far. Just round the corner waiting for her return, stood her covered palanquin, her dutiful duenna. For Mussumat Fatima had long since given up attempting to control her young mistress. To begin with, she had found out that Mihr-un-nissa was not as other girls. She was wild as a young hawk, but there it ended. Except in so far as uttermost mischief went, she was to be trusted; there never was any fear of love letters or any improprieties of that sort. So, if she chose to fancy sitting beside a fountain by herself in the women's garden, where was the harm? She was a mound of sense; so much so, that on this hot afternoon (heaven knows why the child had insisted on coming out--to ruin her complexion, doubtless, if she could--but she couldn't--from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot there wasn't a speck or a freckle) no one could blame a body for dozing in the dhooli and dreaming.

"La! child! How thou didst frighten me," gasped Fatima, as a tornado of yellow and purple draperies flung itself breezily on the top of her fat person.

"Oh! Futtu! Futtu!" panted the girl, half laughter, half tears. "I have seen him!"

"What, again!" shrilled the duenna, waking instantly to a sense of her responsibilities. "Impudence! knowest thou not that paper boats don't float for ever, and that who lacks modesty lacks conscience?"

"Oh! have done with second-hand wisdom," said the girl, superbly. "And it was not him--It was the Prince--Prince Salim."

Fatima let loose a shriek. "Oh! my liver! An' thou darest to tell me!

'Tis bread and water for a week, miss----"

"And I spoke to him and he spoke to me," continued the culprit, calmly; out of sheer perversity, reversing the order of events.

Fatima let loose a louder shriek. "What! Lo! the noose is round thy neck, and mine too! May the devil be deaf! If folk hear----"

But the girl who had drawn aside with distaste and was now seated half in and half out of the palanquin, interrupted the duenna contemptuously. "Futtu, thou art a full-weight fool. Why dost not remember it needs skill to do wrong instead of making thy nose red with wrath?"

Suddenly she stood up, a curiously defiant figure. "Lo! I am sick of saws and sayings. I want to know at first hand! And I will know. Call the carriers. I go to atma Devi. Lo! I have tried, as thou knowest, to see in the ink again; but it comes not. I lack the charm she said; she shall teach it me. Nay!" she continued stemming Fatima's rising flood of denials, "See here, fool. If thou deniest me I go straight home, and tell--not _my_ mother, she would be pleased--but Sher Afkan's, and then----" She clasped the old woman's neck with both hands and squeezed it tight. "Does it feel nice, Futtu?" she asked solicitously.

So it came to pa.s.s that just as the sun was setting, its last rays sparkled on Mihr-un-nissa's jewelled hair, as she sate on the Charan's roof waiting for the drop of ink to fall into her palm. She was more woman than child now, since she had watched the birth of desire, and of something more than desire, in Prince Salim's eyes. So that was love! A queer thing, at best, it must be to feel as he must have felt, before he could look so poor a slave. If that was love, she could not give it back. What! give homage to a lout of a lad? And yet the Queenship! Oh! if it had been Akbar himself, then she would have known what to do, for he was King indeed! Or if--yes! if it had been "_him_," for he was a man indeed!

Drop ink and hide my flesh, Cover my worldly ways.

Then let G.o.d's light afresh Mirror G.o.d's praise.

Drop ink, drop deep, Cover in sleep My night of nights and bring the day of days.

This time the chanted words thrilled little Mihr-un-nissa through and through. For once--and perhaps for the first time in her young life she was in deadly earnest. But, once again poor atma's mind was far from her spell. Ever since Deena that morning had brought her word of Diswunt's death, regret, remorse had warred with her defiance. It was strange. What did it mean? Had he regretted? And wherefore? At times absorbed with fear lest she should have betrayed the King, she had been ready to seek out Birbal and tell him the truth, risking her own life. But there was her promise, her sisters-troth with Siyah Yamin.

That cut both ways. It forced her to silence, so long as the courtezan kept troth. And had she not? Had not atma Devi seen with her own eyes Aunt Rosebody's hand close on the diamond? Could it be in better keeping?

"If the gracious child will complete the circle of magic," she began, when Mihr-un-nissa's laugh rang out disdainfully.

"What! to see what thou thinkest? Not so! What I shall see, what I shall do, is of my own gift. Stand back woman!--touch me not!"

Drop ink, drop deep, Cover in sleep My night of nights and bring the day of days.

She chanted the words lingeringly and for an instant there was silence while those two women, the fat, worldly duenna, and the pa.s.sion-distraught denier of her s.e.x, listened and looked with long-drawn tense breathings. It was deadly earnest to them also. Would she see? Could she see? Such things were, they knew, beyond the magic frauds of fortune-tellers.

And then suddenly the sweet round voice rose eagerly.

"I see! Holy prophet! I see--It is the Prince; but Lord! how fat he hath grown and how old--I think he is the King----"

Fatima under her breath muttered "An old King's better than a young Prince."