The Prince of India; Or, Why Constantinople Fell Volume I Part 34

"I have nothing from the stars by which to speak, and I dare not a.s.sume to reply for myself."

Then Mahommed's eyes became severely bright, and the bones of his hands shone white through the skin, so hard did he compress them.

"How long am I to wait before the glory you promise me ripens ready for gathering? If it requires long campaigns, shall I summon the armies now?"

A tone, a stress of voice in the question sent a shiver through the Prince despite his self-command. His gaze upon Mahommed's countenance, already settled, intensified, and almost before the last word pa.s.sed he saw the idea he was expected to satisfy, and that it was the point to which his interrogator had been really tending from the commencement of the interview. To gain a moment, he affected not to clearly understand; after a repet.i.tion, he in turn asked, with a meaning look:

"Is not thy father, O Prince, now in his eighty-fifth year?"

Mahommed leaned further forward.

"And is it not eight and twenty years since he began reigning wisely and well?"

Mahommed nodded a.s.sent.

"Suffer me to answer now. Besides his age which pleads for him, your father has not allowed greatness and power to shade the love he gave you heartily the hour he first took you in his arms. Nature protests against his cutting off, and in this instance, O Prince, the voice of Nature is the voice of Allah. So say I speaking for myself."

Mahommed's face relaxed its hardness, and he moved and breathed freely while replying: "I do not know what the influences require of me."

"Speak you of the stars, my Lord," the other returned, "hear me, and with distinctness. As yet they have intrusted me with the one prediction, and that you have. In other words, they are committed to a horoscope based upon your nativity, and from it your glory has been rightly delivered. So much is permitted us by the astrologic law we practise. But this now asked me, a circ.u.mstance in especial, appertains to you as chief of forces not yet yours. Wherefore--heed well, my Lord--I advise you to make note of the minute of the hour of the day you gird yourself with the sword of sovereignty which, at this speaking, is your great father's by sanction of Heaven; then will I cast a horoscope for Mahommed the Sultan, not Mahommed, son of Amurath merely--then, by virtue of my office of Interpreter of the Stars, having the proper writing in my hand, I will tell you this you now seek, together with all else pertaining to your sovereignty intrusted me for communication. I will tell you when the glory is open to you, and the time for setting forward to make it yours--even the dawning of the term of preparation necessarily precedent to the movement itself. Now am I understood? Will my Lord tell me I am understood?"

An observation here may not be amiss. The reader will of course notice the clever obtrusion of the stars in the speech; yet its real craft was in the reservations covered. Presuming it possible for the Prince to have fixed a time to Mahommed's satisfaction, telling it would have been like giving away the meat of an apple, and retaining the rind. The wise man who sets out to make himself a need to another will carefully husband his capital. Moreover it is of importance to keep in mind through this period of our story that with the Prince of India everything was subsidiary to his scheme of unity in G.o.d. To which end it was not enough to be a need to Mahommed; he must also bring the young potentate to wait upon him for the signal to begin the movement against Constantinople; for such in simplicity was the design scarcely concealed under the glozing of "the East against the West." That is to say, until he knew Constantine's disposition with respect to the superlative project, his policy was delay. What, in ill.u.s.tration, if the Emperor proved a friend? In falconry the hawk is carried into the field hooded, and cast off only when the game is flushed. So the Prince of India thought as he concluded his speech, and looked at the handsome face of the Lord Mahommed.

The latter was disappointed, and showed it. He averted his eyes, knit his brows, and took a little time before answering; then a flash of pa.s.sion seized him.

"With all thy wisdom, Prince, thou knowest not how hard waiting will be.

There is nothing in Nature sweeter than glory, and on the other hand nothing so intolerably bitter as hungering for it when it is in open prospect. What irony in the providence which permits us to harvest greatness in the days of our decline! I dream of it for my youth, for then most can be made of it. There was a Greek--not of the Byzantine breed in the imperial kennel yonder"--he emphasized the negative with a contemptuous glance in the direction of Constantinople--"a Greek of the old time of real heroes, he who has the first place in history as a conqueror. Think you he was happy because he owned the world? Delight in property merely, a horse, a palace, a ship, a kingdom, is vulgar: any man can be owner of something; the beggar polishes his crutch for the same reason the king gilds his throne--it belongs to him. Possession means satiety. But achieve thou immortality in thy first manhood, and it shall remain to thee as the ring to a bride or as his bride to the bridegroom.--Let it be as you say. I bow to the stars. Between me and the sovereignty my father stands, a good man to whom I give love for love; and he shall not be disturbed by me or any of mine. In so far I will honor your advice; and in the other matter also, there shall be one ready to note the minute of the hour the succession falls to me. But what if then you are absent?"

"A word from my Lord will bring me to him; and His Majesty is liable to go after his fathers at any moment"--

"Ay, and alas!" Mahommed interposed, with unaffected sorrow, "a king may keep his boundaries clean, and even extend them thitherward from the centre, and be a fear unto men; yet shall death oblige him at last. All is from G.o.d."

The Prince was courtier enough to respect the feeling evinced.

"But I interrupted you," Mahommed presently added. "I pray pardon."

"I was about to say, my Lord, if I am not with you when His Majesty, your father, bows to the final call--for the entertainment of such was Paradise set upon its high hill!--let a messenger seek me in Constantinople; and it may even serve well if the Governor of this Castle be instructed to keep his gates always open to me, and himself obedient to my requests."

"A good suggestion! I will attend to it. But"--

Again he lapsed into abstraction, and the Prince held his peace watchfully.

"Prince," Mahommed said at length, "it is not often I put myself at another's bidding, for freedom to go where one pleases is not more to a common man than is freedom to do what pleases him to a sovereign; yet so will I with you in this matter; and as is the custom of Moslems setting out on a voyage I say of our venture, 'In the name of G.o.d be its courses and its moorings.' That settled, hearken further. What you have given me is not all comprehensible. As I understand you, I am to find the surpa.s.sing glory in a field of war. Tell me, lies the field far or near?

Where is it? And who is he I am to challenge? There will be room and occasion for combat around me everywhere, or, if the occasion exist not, my Spahis in a day's ride can make one. There is nothing stranger than how small a cause suffices us to set man against man, life or death.

But--and now I come to the very difficulty--looking here and there I cannot see a war new in any respect, either of parties, or objects, or pretence, out of which such a prodigious fame is to be plucked. You discern the darkness in which I am groping. Light, O Prince--give me light!"

For an instant the mind of the Jew, sown with subtlety as a mine with fine ore, was stirred with admiration of the quality so strikingly manifested in this demand; but collecting himself, he said, calmly, for the question had been foreseen:

"My Lord was pleased to say a short while ago that the Emir Mirza, on his return from the Hajj, told him of me. Did Mirza tell also of my forbidding him to say anything of the predictions I then intrusted him?"

"Yes," Mahommed answered, smiling, "and I have loved him for the disobedience. He satisfied me to whom he thought his duty was first owing."

"Well, if evil ensue from the disclosure, it may be justly charged to my indiscretion. Let it pa.s.s--only, in reporting me, did not Mirza say, Lord Mahommed, that the prohibition I laid upon him proceeded from a prudent regard for your interests?"

"Yes."

"And in speaking of the change in the status of the world I then announced, and of the refluent wave the East was to pour upon the West"--

"And of the doom of Constantinople!" Mahommed cried, in a sudden transport of excitement.

"Ay, and of the hero thou wert to be, my Lord! Said he nothing of the other caution I gave him, how absolute verity could only be had by a recast of the horoscope at the city itself? And how I was even then on my way thither?"

"Truly, O Prince. Mirza is a marvel!"

"Thanks, my Lord. The a.s.surance prepares me to answer your last demand."

Then, lowering his voice, the Prince returned to his ordinary manner.

"The glory you are to look for will not depend upon conditions such as parties to the war, or its immediate cause, or the place of its wagement."

Mahommed listened with open mouth.

"My Lord knows of the dispute long in progress between the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople; one claiming to be the head of the Church of Christ, the other insisting on his equality. The dispute, my Lord also knows, has been carried from East to West, and back and back again, prelate replying to prelate, until the whole Church is falling to pieces, and on every Christian tongue the 'Church East' and the 'Church West' are common as morning salutations."

Mahommed nodded.

"Now, my Lord," the Prince continued, the magnetic eyes intensely bright, "you and I know the capital of Christianity is yonder "--he pointed toward Constantinople--"and that conquering it is taking from Christ and giving to Mahomet. What more of definition of thy glory wilt thou require? Thus early I salute thee a Sword of G.o.d."

Mahommed sprang from his couch, and strode the floor, frequently clapping his hands. Upon the pa.s.sing of the ecstasy, he stopped in front of the Prince.

"I see it now--the feat of arms impossible to my father reserved for me."

Again he walked, clapping his hands.

"I pray your pardon," he said, when the fit was over. "In my great joy I interrupted you."

"I regret to try my Lord's patience further," the Prince answered, with admirable diplomacy. "It were better, however, to take another step in the explanation now. A few months after separating from Mirza in Mecca, I arrived in Constantinople, and every night since, the heavens being clear, I have questioned the stars early and late. I cannot repeat to my Lord all the inquiries I made of them, so many were they, and so varied in form, nor the bases I laid hold of for horoscopes, each having, as I hoped, to do with the date of the founding of the city. What calculations I have made--tables of figures to cover the sky with a tapestry of algebraic and geometrical symbols: The walks of astrology are well known --I mean those legitimate--nevertheless in my great anxiety, I have even ventured into the arcana of magic forbidden to the Faithful. The seven good angels, and the seven bad, beginning with Jubanladace, first of the good, a celestial messenger, helmeted, sworded with flame, and otherwise beautiful to behold, and ending with Barman, the lowest of the bad, the consort and ally of witches--I besought them all for what they could tell me. Is the time of the running of the city now, to-morrow, next week-- when? Such the burden of my inquiry. As yet, my Lord, no answer has been given. I am merely bid keep watch on the schism of the Church. In some way the end we hope has connection with that rancor, if, indeed, it be not the grand result. With clear discernment of the tendencies, the Roman Pontiff is striving to lay the quarrel; but he speaks to a rising tide.

We cannot hasten the event; neither can he delay it. Our role is patience--patience. At last Europe will fall away, and leave the Greek to care of himself; then, my Lord, you have but to be ready. The end is in the throes of its beginning now."

"Still you leave me in the dark," Mahommed cried, with a frown.

"Nay, my Lord, there is a chance for us to make the stars speak."

The beguiler appeared to hesitate.

"A chance?" Mahommed asked.

"It is dependent, my Lord."