A Prince of Dreamers Part 40

But there was no answer, and he leant swiftly to listen for a breath.

"Little one! Little one!" he cried. He could hear none, and as he stooped his wrinkled face puckering into tears, a voice behind him said quietly: "She is dead! Lo! it was time."

Deena turned to see the _rebeck_ player who closing the door softly, came to stand beside the bed.

"Dead! Dead!" blubbered the old sinner. "Yea! Yea! it is so--his kisses killed her--only his kisses."

"Whose?"

The question echoed and re-echoed over the roof instinct with a sudden new fire, a sudden authority, and it reduced Deena to snivelling submission.

"Only a kiss lord, only a kiss; but Meean Khodadad----"

He paused struck dumb by the expression on the Wayfarer's face. Grief, horror, exultation showed on it, and over all a great awe as of one who sees a mystery.

"Khodadad! Oh! Thou most Mighty! Khodadad! It is the end."

CHAPTER XIX

_Love sent music to sing Love's praise So Harmony came to this world's sad ways.

Master of melody, Caesar of sound, Each chord he struck fettered reasoning, Till man and beast by it quite were bound Into friendship fast and companioning.

Yea! at the note of his crooked lyre One wakened up, one was lulled to sleep, And the whole wide world grew quick with desire To dance and to die, to laugh and to weep.

At the burst of his blended melody The heart of the wise knew the mystery_.

--Nizami.

"Lo I am true!" cried atma menacingly, "Art thou so also, O! Siyal?"

She had been with the courtesan for full half an hour, time was running short, and yet she felt that she had gained nothing, and knew scarcely more than she had done when she had climbed the steep oil-greased narrow stairs to the balcony room. She had been eager then to face fact--if need be--keen to test the loyalty of her fellow conspirators; but now she stood baffled before Siyah Yamin's easy but inflexible contempt. That someone had betrayed them the latter said was indubitable; and as atma was the only outsider, she must be the culprit. Not necessarily a conscious offender. But, by all she held most sacred, did not atma know of some indiscretion, could she not, briefly, guess--and then the noisy, yet silvery laugh had rung out at the Charan's tell-tale face. Her tongue, however, had been loyal. She had refused to say a word. Not that she felt in any way bound to shield Mihr-un-nissa from the possible revenge of those whose game she had given away, but because it was out of the question to tell of the secret visit of a screened lady.

So Siyah Yamin had declined information except by fair barter; declined it with jibes and smiles; but now sudden pallor came to her face, she shifted her eyes uneasily from atma's half accusing ones.

"True?" she echoed, and, and her voice had a petulant ring in it.

"Aye! as true as it befits womanhood to be! Lo! ato I grow tired of my s.e.x at times and would I were a man!" She pressed her hands close to her heart, then suddenly burst out again into her hard silvery laugh "And thou? sweet widow--dost not pine for thy lover Sher Khan? Is he not here despite these--petticoats?" She flounced out her clinging muslins.

"Peace, fool! So thou wilt not tell" said atma frowning, "then I must ask elsewhere."

"Aye! Ask!" jibed the courtesan. "There be many with tongues beside poor little me who will, look you, have confidence for confidence.

Belike the Beneficent Ladies, or mayhap Rajah Birbal for the Envoy from Sinde whom some deem a mere simulacrum of a man, or even the Feringhi jeweller--to say nothing of the King himself."

Her eyes were keenly on the Charan's face as she spoke, but there was no flicker of expression to give her any clue. In truth atma was absolutely in the dark. She did not even know if the turban were lost or found. Her mind ran riot over supposition in either case. If the former, it could not remain lost for ever in those underground chambers. It might even now have drifted to the tank where a hundred hands might find it. She must go and watch. And yet, what use? The rather send divers to search below; if indeed any man would so adventure his life! And for this she must proclaim a cause, proclaim that she knew of the theft. And after all there might be no reason for this. Birbal, with his quick wit, must have saved the turban. He must; yet not even he could outwit Fate.

She smote her hands together again impotently as she ran, this time toward the roof which she had left too long. That feeling of neglected duty strangely enough, overmastered all others. She must go back to her immediate charge. Once there she would have time to think what she must do to find out the truth. For she must find it even if she had to go to the King himself tell him all and then repay herself for treachery by the death dagger.

But what she found awaiting her on the roof drove these thoughts from her mind for a time; only for a time--that Time which meant nothing to one brought up as she had been, in a philosophy which counts the past, the present, the future as one. For in India there is no hurry about anything; the wisdom of Isaiah is in every mouth, "He that believeth shall not make haste."

Yet as she joined in the woman's wailing over Zarifa--for the news of death spreads quickly, and the neighbours troop in as to a festival--a dull wonder lay at the back of her brain, a vague resentment at her own ignorance.

In truth the resentment was scarcely justifiable, since many others concerned in the incident were feeling the same dull surprise.

The conspirators first of all, who found themselves once more deprived of their _point d'appui_. And Khodadad the arch-plotter was strangely silent, strangely lacking in suggestion. As the day wore on, indeed he withdrew petulantly from all conclave, and taking Mirza Ibrahim with him, plunged into pleasure at Satanstown. For something in that scent of roses on the roof, something in the look of that face sleeping so peacefully upon the pillow, had roused memory; and memory in her long slumber had somehow, from some subliminal consciousness in that unknown ego of which Khodadad Tarkhan was the outward and visible sign, a.s.sociated herself with regret. He told himself, lightly, that it was the shock of seeing deformity where he had expected beauty, which had unnerved him; but it was not that. It was the ineffaceable memory of Beauty itself.

Then in the Palace where Umm Kulsum and Aunt Rosebody had sate in the little balcony outside the latter's private room all the morning, unable to feel joy over the merciful escape of the Most High and their scapegrace darling because of the probable loss of the turban with its talisman; yet unable to feel sufficient grief over the latter because of bubbling gladness over the Brotherhood between those two dear ones (a Brotherhood that nothing must disturb, not even self-seeking confession of sin) on to all this had followed a dull wonder as to what was to be done next. For after noonday prayers were over had come a despatch by hand from my Lord Birbal, Chief Constable of the Kingdom returning in due course of etiquette to the givers, the turban they had supposed lost. And what is more, when their anxious fingers had privilege to pry, there was the talisman also, safe and sound.

The shock of relief kept them both silent awhile; then Aunt Rosebody cracked all her knuckles vehemently.

"So goes care!" she cried, adding piously, "truly we might have trusted G.o.d! His club makes no noise, and what's in the pot comes on the plate."

Then her face clouded. "But what is to be done next Ummu?" she asked feebly. Umm Kulsum shook her head.

"We might give it back to the woman."

"What?" interrupted the little old lady peevishly. "To a civet-cat from the bazaar of whom we know nothing?"

"There was the red woman also, auntie," suggested the Mother of Plumpness, "she seemed honest--at least when she came to----"

"Tell Mihru's fortune--a pack of lies!" sniffed her companion. "Canst think of nothing better, child?"

"Mayhap it might be wiser," suggested Umm Kulsum again, "to consult----"

"Consult whom?" shrilled Gulbadan Khanum, and this time the interruption was wrathful. "What would be the use of asking Hamida?

All know her answer. 'Tell truth and shame Shaitan.' And as for Rakiya Begum with her spectacles and her etiquettes and her distiches, I would sooner die! Now it would be different if 'Dearest Lady' were alive----" She paused and her lively dark eyes grew limpid with sudden tears.

"We can go where she went for wisdom," whispered little Umm Kulsum consolingly, "we can pray."

Aunt Rosebody gave a grunt of satisfaction and dried her eyes. "Aye!

there is some sense in that! We can pray and wait. 'Twill at least give us time to think out some plan for ourselves, and sleep brings wisdom; but Ummu, Ummu, I would give every hair I possess--and though they are gray they are not uncomely--that I had never mixed myself up with the King's Luck. 'Tis worse than the Day of Resurrection, for then a body will but have two roads to choose--up and down--and here!

Lo! wonder grows like a white ants' castle."

In this feeling Aunt Rosebody was not alone. Birbal himself was in a similar state of blank surprise, for to him had come the most startling denouement of all.

After the momentous events of the night he had felt himself ent.i.tled to a few hours' rest. He had had little of it by day or by dark, ever since he had discovered the theft of the diamond; for he had given himself up wholly to the recovery of the stolen jewel; but now that he had this safely stowed away in his waistband-purse he could spare leisure for comfort. So he slept the sleep of the just, without a dream to disturb him. Yet his brain must have been working, for, when he woke, it was to a sense that in the excitement of the moment of success he had made a mistake. Had he had time to consider he would never have given himself away to his enemies as he had done by showing them that he knew of the talisman. It was a tactical error; which might be partially rectified so far as some people were concerned.

Therefore without further delay, he sent a message to William Leedes, at the Hall of Labour, to come up to him at once, bringing the false diamond with him. When this arrived it did not take long to exchange the true for the false, and then with due decorum to send the turban back to the Beneficent Ladies, who, he knew from what Mihr-un-nissa had said, had given it to the Prince. He calculated cunningly that this return would at least keep them quiet, and women were invariably at the bottom of every conspiracy.

He felt very secure, very confident, very complacent, and spent an hour or two in entertaining William Leedes with Eastern sumptuousness ere ordering the palanquins to take the jeweller and the diamond back to safe keeping in the Hall of Labour, whence he a.s.sured himself no thief in the world would have another chance of purloining it. In truth he had some reason for complacency; since the general outlook was clearing. These repeated failures must dishearten the enemies of empire, and the mere fact of the bond of Brotherhood between the King and his son--which had come incidentally by the way in the course of counterplot--added to the chance of Akbar being content with practical politics and remaining at Fatephur Sikri.

The only unsatisfactory item in past or present was the memory of the man who juggled with other men's eyes and ears. Who and what was he? A friend to Akbar at any rate, and for the time being, that was enough.

The wide roof of the Hall of Labour lay ablaze with afternoon sunshine as they entered it, and as they pa.s.sed along the arcades, the workmen looked up and salaamed. The door of Diswunt's studio was locked and barred, and a sentry paced across that of the jeweller. Known though they were, it required the pa.s.sword ere William Leedes could produce his key, unlock the door, enter, then close and lock it again behind them.

Birbal gave a sigh of relief as he drew out his waistband-purse. "At last!" he said holding out the diamond. "Replace it on the lathe, sir jeweller, and once I see it there--lo! I will vow pilgrimage if needs be. Yea! I will cry 'Hari Ganga' like any drunk man in a puddle!"

He turned aside, out of sheer lightheartedness, humming a _ghazal_ from Hafiz.

Make fast a wine cup to my shroud That at the latter day My soul a good drink be allowed To nerve it for the fray.