A Prince of Dreamers Part 49

Yet conveyed it must be, and before long; for the soft radiance of the Lamps of the Dead had begun to die down. The wandering spirits had had their feasting; they must be in their graves by dawn.

Could she escape? Could she by good luck see a friend? bribe one of the bearers?

But time slipped by without opportunity and she found herself lodged at last in a very handsome apartment consisting of a room and beyond that a slip of roof with a latticed cupola before any chance had come of accomplishing her desire.

"Nay! no more! I need nothing more. I will call if so be," she said to the servants who fawned about her. "Go! I tell thee."

She must think, she must devise some plan. The room was well appointed; even a long pen-box with a quaint pot of glazy ink stood by a low stool, so she could write. Meanwhile she must have a few minutes in the open. The musk of the tented dhooli had almost been too much for her.

So, out on the roof of this cupola's bastion or turret, half way down the palace wall, she leant, her arms on the parapet, and looked downward and upward. Above, to one side, was the palace; but which part of it? Below her was one of the wide eaves so characteristic of Indian architecture, and it ran, after skirting the turret octagonally along the walls, into the darkness. There was foothold for one with a strong head, doubtless; but what then?

As she thought a sound of whirring ropes met her ear, and something dark slid down the wall from far above her.

The preacher's dhooli! Then the King's balcony was somewhere above her! Could she? How far did the eave run. It would need ten yards at least. And could she start the equipoise if once she got a hold on the ropes?

Stay! She would only have to signal.

CHAPTER XXIV

_Oh clear the cushioned thrones from those who sleep Preach thou the Truth, let the Untruth be dumb Till gladsome voices once more fill both worlds Freshen the universe--Be thou our soul We are dead bodies. Bring us back to life Thou art our guard, the caravan is lone.

Thou art our army, let thy standard wave.

Lo! the day steed is weary; the dim night To all around us; bid thy seraphim Herald the coming dawn, and wake us, Lord, As helpless babes we sleep and sleep and sleep Upon the threshhold of another world_.

--Nizami.--A. D. 1140.

Birbal had been wakeful. The discovery of the second false gem had thrown him back on himself. At dawn all his energies must be turned toward making it impossible that the King's rash, almost incredibly rash challenge, should bring disaster on the policy of years; so ere that dawn came endless plans for the recovery of the missing jewel must be set in train. Then, if possible, he must find the juggler with men's senses, the man whose marvellous art had helped him before.

There was a chance that King Bayazid might know his whereabouts; so an hour or so ere daylight, all other things having been started, Birbal's swift-trotting bullocks drew up at the garden gate of the River Palace. All was dreamful as before. Here no lamps of the Dead shone in the wide arcades, only on the roof the light which burnt ever in Rupmati's shrine, showed the gaunt length of her lover asleep on cushions beneath it.

"The Sufi from Isphahan?" he said drowsily. "He who called himself the Wayfarer, pretended to be Payandar, and _was_ musician! Yea! he left a message for thee--that his work was accomplished. He whom he watched was dead, the danger was overpast; therefore he went, whither I know not. Neither do I care. He sang me a _ghazal_ ere he left--it hath a good lilt to it."

And Birbal as he ran down the stairs again, heard that same lilt of it ringing after him.

A broken gla.s.s that held the red-wine of Strife, The corpse of a man, besprinkled with essence of rose, A child asleep on the threshold of larger life, Such is thy dawn-wake, lover who seeks repose.

Lend, for the Love-of-G.o.d, to my thirsty heart thy bowl, So with the dawn-waked winds He shall refresh thy soul.

He muttered a curse on Sufi nonsense, and flinging himself into the _rath_ again, bade the servant return cityward. So, after a while he dozed, seizing on time for sleep when naught else could be done. He was aroused by a sharp jolt, a sudden drawing to one side on the part of the driver.

"What is't, fool?" he queried, sharply.

"Protector of the Poor" replied the man "It is the King!"

He was on his feet in an instant, rubbing his eyes in the gray dawn-light in time to see a rider whirl past alone.

The King undoubtedly; but his escort? Was this all? An old man bent with service, dropping farther and farther behind, not so much from any fault in his mount, but simply from lack of riding.

That anyhow could be remedied.

"Your horse!" he cried, and the old servitor, a tall, bony Mahommedan, recognising Birbal instantly, recognising also the advantage of the slim Hindu in a stern chase, obeyed.

"What is it? Where goes he?" asked Birbal briefly, hands busy shortening stirrups.

"Shakingarh--to the burning. The Most-Auspicious slept when the madwoman--she who calls herself Charan came up in the Preacher's dhooli. Two horses are aye kept saddled in the yard below. The King was on Bijli in a twinkle, and I--there was none else--scrambled on Chytue shouting for some one to follow."

But Birbal had gathered up the reins and was off. Chytue lightened by the change of riders, sweeping on at a thundering gallop, lessening the distance at every stride between him and his stable companion.

Akbar looked round to frown; then to smile. "A race!" he cried gleefully. "How now Bijli?" The mare answering to the call shot forward like an arrow from a bow.

A race indeed! thought Birbal. A lost one, too, most likely, for the gray of the false dawn was pa.s.sing into primrose.

How had they managed it--they must have killed the old man; and he would be burnt at sunrise, and then Akbar's promise to the little coward of a Rani--oh! curse all women!--

Fifteen miles good, though in the far distance behind him the low, jagged ridge of Sikri loomed like a cloud. One by one the mud mounds which tell of village sites, rose out of the treeless western horizon, showed silent, lightless, smokeless in the half-light, then sank, dwindled, to join that shadow of the ridge. How many more of them must be pa.s.sed before dawn ... before dawn ...

So thought the rider behind, cursing himself as he rode, for having forgotten this easy-broken promise of his King.

But Akbar, riding ahead, had forgotten anxiety in determination, and as, at a deviating curve in the track, he struck boldly across country, his every vein thrilled with joyful excitement.

The dawn was coming! Under his horse's flying hoofs the interminable sequence of sandy by-paths through the sun-baked fallows chequered with fields of young millet and maize, seemed to slip past. As the light grew, the purple eyes of the feathery vetches seemed to look at him tear-drenched with dew, the goldy-green b.a.l.l.s of the colocynth apples as they cracked under the thundering feet gave out a bitter, bracing, wholesome smell.

Down in an old backwater of the river which held a few acres of damper ground, a flight of cranes rose, to wing a wedge-shaped way to the west.

"Oh! for the wings of a dove."

That was what Padre Rudolfo sang.

Was that a spiral trail of smoke on the horizon? Aye; but from a village rubbish heap. After all, a funeral pyre was nothing more; a mere rubbish heap of accessories in which a soul had played its part.

Yea! but as when one layeth His worn out robes away And, taking new ones sayeth These will I wear to-day.

So putteth by the spirit Lightly its robe of flesh And pa.s.seth to inherit A residence afresh.

The words of the Bhagavad-Gita recurred to his mind, bringing with them as they do to every human mind that knows them, a sudden sense of companionship, of hand clasping in the wilderness of life.

The pale primrose of the dawn was reddening fast. A few more minutes and the sun's edge would for half a second sparkle like a star on the rim of the world; and then, with the coming of sunlight, the King's Shadow, swifter than the King himself would speed ahead, lengthening out, reaching, touching all things before he, the flesh and blood, could touch them!

Ah! The Shadow was the real man! He glanced backward. He had come fast. No one was in sight. Following the whimsey of his thought he told himself it was always so. Behind, out of sight, almost out of mind, rode the world, in front the Shadow--the Will, the Ideal, the Unattainable.

Faint and far on the horizon a square speck of light showed the tower of Shakingarh, the Falcon's Nest. There was little time to spare then, for the sun shone on its battlements.

Little indeed! for as the gleam of the village cl.u.s.tering about the feet of the fortress rose to view, a sound of shawms and trumpets arose also. But there was no spiral of smoke as yet to tell of fire.

Bijli, responding to the spur, swept on over the more cultivated country. An old ca.n.a.l, dug hundreds of years before by some dead dynasty sent sinuous channels through the fields; high cactus hedges, shutting out the view, formed impenetrable barriers. With irritation at the delay, Akbar had to follow a winding cart track, deep-rutted beyond words--an old way--the old way that made reform so difficult!