The Prince of India; Or, Why Constantinople Fell Volume I Part 40

"Your Majesty," she said, "I am reminded of an invitation left with the person whose ident.i.ty was in discussion the instant of this announcement.

In the afternoon, while I was sojourning in the White Castle, an Arab story-teller was presented to me under recommendation of my courteous host. He was said to be of great professional renown in the East, a Sheik travelling to Adrianople for the divertis.e.m.e.nt of the Hanoum of the Sultan. In the desert they call him endearingly the _Singing Sheik_. I was glad to have the hours a.s.sisted in their going, and he did not disappoint me. So charmed was I by his tales and manner of telling them, by his genius, that in taking my departure from what proved a most agreeable retreat, and in acknowledging the hospitable entertainment given me, I referred to the singer, and requested the Governor to prevail on him to extend his journey here, in order to favor me with another opportunity to hear him. Had I then known it was in my Lord's purposes to visit me with such a company of most n.o.ble gentlemen, or could I have even antic.i.p.ated the honor, I should not have appointed to-day for the audience with him. But he is in attendance; and now, with full understanding of the circ.u.mstances, it is for Your Majesty to p.r.o.nounce upon his admission. Perhaps"--she paused with a look of deprecation fairly divisible share and share alike between the Emperor and the Lords around her--"perhaps time may hang heavy with my guests this morning; if so, I shall hold myself obliged to the Singing Sheik if he can help me entertain them."

Now, was there one present to attach a criticism to the favor extended the Arab, he dismissed it summarily, wondering at her easy grace. The Emperor no doubt shared the admiration with his suite; but concealing it, he said, with an air of uncertainty, "Thy recommendation, daughter, is high; and if I remain, verily, it will be with expectation wrought up to a dangerous degree; yet having often heard of the power of the strolling poets of whom this one is in probability an excellent example, I confess I should be pleased to have thee admit him."

Of the Admiral, he then asked, "We were to set out in return about noon, were we not?"

"About noon, Your Majesty."

"Well, the hour is hardly upon us. Let the man appear, daughter; only, as thou lovest us, contrive that he keep to short recitals, which, without holding us unwillingly, will yet suffice to give an idea of his mind and methods. And keep thyself prepared for an announcement of our departure, and when received, mistake it not for discontent with thyself. Admit the Arab."

CHAPTER XIX

TWO TURKISH TALES

The situation now offered the reader is worth a pause, if only to fix it in mind.

Constantine and Mahommed, soon to be contestants in war, are coming face to face, lovers both of the same woman. The romance is obvious; yet it is heightened by another circ.u.mstance. One of them is in danger.

We of course know Aboo-Obeidah, the Singing Sheik, is Prince Mahommed in disguise; we know the Prince also as heir of Amurath the Sultan, a very old man liable to vacate place and life at any moment. Suppose now the rash adventurer--the term fits the youth truly as if he were without rank--should be discovered and denounced to the Emperor. The consequences can only be treated conjecturally.

In the first place, to what extremities the Prince would be put in explaining his presence there. He could plead the invitation of the Princess Irene. But his rival would be his judge, and the judge might find it convenient to laugh at the truth, and rest his decision on the prisoner's disguise, in connection with his own presence--two facts sufficiently important to serve the most extreme accusation.

Constantine, next, was a knightly monarch who knew to live n.o.bly, and dared die as he lived; yet, thinking of what he might do with Mahommed fallen into his hands under circ.u.mstances so peculiar, there was never a Caesar not the slave of policy. In the audience to Manuel the sailor, we have seen how keenly sensitive he was to the contraction the empire had suffered. Since that day, to be sure, he had managed to keep the territory he came to; none the less, he felt the Turk to whom the stolen provinces invariably fell was his enemy, and that truce or treaty with him did not avail to loosen the compression steadily growing around his capital. Over and over, daytime and night, the unhappy Emperor pondered the story of the daughter of Tantalus; and often, starting from dreams in which the Ottoman power was a serpent slowly crawling to its victim, he would cry in real agony--"O Constantinople--Niobe! Who can save thee but G.o.d? And if He will not--alas, alas!" The feeling thus engendered was not of a kind to yield readily to generosity. Mahommed once securely his, everything might be let go--truth, honor, glory--everything but the terms of advantage purchasable with such an hostage.

The invitation to the imaginary Sheik had been a last act of grace by Irene, about to embark for the city. Mahommed, when he accepted, knew Therapia by report a village very ancient historically, but decaying, and now little more than a summer resort and depot of supplies for fishermen. That its proverbial quietude would be disturbed, and the sleepy blood of its inhabitants aroused, by a royal galley anchoring in the bay to discharge the personnel of the empire itself, could have had no place in his antic.i.p.ations. So when he stepped into a boat, the Aboo-Obeidah of his eulogy, and suffered himself, without an attendant, to be ferried across to Roumeli-Hissar; when he there took an humble wherry of two oars, and bade the unliveried Greeks who served them pull for Therapia, it was to see again the woman who was taking his fancy into possession, not Constantine and his court bizarre in splendor and habitude. In other words, Mahommed on setting out had no idea of danger.

Love, or something very like it, was his sole inspiration.

The trireme, with the white cross on its red sail, its deck a martial and courtly spectacle, had been reported to him as the hundred and twenty flashing scarlet blades, in their operation a miracle of unity, whisked it by the old Castle, and he had come forth to see it. Where are they going? he asked those around him; and they, familiar with the Bosphorus, its shipping and navigation, answered unanimously, To exercise her crew up in the Black Sea; and thinking of the breadth of the dark blue fields there, the reply commended itself, and he dismissed the subject.

The course chosen by his boatmen when they put off from Roumeli-Hissar kept him close to the European sh.o.r.e, which he had leisure to study.

Then, as now, it was more favored than its Asiatic opposite. The winds from the sea, southward blowing, unloaded their mists to vivify its ivy and myrtle. The sunlight, tarrying longest over its pine-clad summits, coaxed habitations along the sh.o.r.e; here, a palace; there, under an overhanging cliff, a hamlet; yonder, a long extended village complaisantly adapting itself to the curvatures of the brief margin left it for occupancy. Wherever along the front of the heights and on the top there was room for a field the advantage had been seized. So the Prince had offered him the sight of all others most significant of peace among men--sight of farmers tilling the soil. With the lucid sky above him summer-laden, the water under and about him a liquid atmosphere, the broken mountain-face changing from lovely to lovelier, and occasionally awakening him with a superlative splendor, the abodes so near, and the orchards and strawberry and melon patches overhead, symbolizing goodwill and fraternity and happiness amongst the poor and humble--with these, and the rhythmic beating of the oars to soothe his spirit, fierce and mandatory even in youth, he went, the time divided between views fair enough for the most rapturous dreams, and the Greek, of whom, with all their brightness, they were but dim suggestions. Past the stream-riven gorge of Balta-Liman he went; past Emirghian; past the haven of Stenia, and the long sh.o.r.e-town of Yenikeui; then, half turning the Keuibachi bend, lo! Therapia, draggling down the stony steep, like a heap of bangles on a brown-red cheek. And there, in the soft embracement of the bay, a bird with folded wings asleep--the _trireme_!

The sight startled the Prince. He spoke to the rowers, and they ceased fighting the current, and with their chins over their shoulders, looked whither he pointed. From ship to sh.o.r.e he looked; then, pursuing the curve inland to the bridge at the upper end; thence down what may be called the western side, he beheld people crowding between a quay and a red kiosk over which pended a wooded promontory.

"There is a Princess living in this vicinity," said he to one of the rowers, slightly lifting the handkerchief from his face. "Where is her palace?"

"In the garden yonder. You see the gate over the heads of the men and women."

"What is her name?"

"Princess Irene. She is known on this sh.o.r.e as the Good Princess."

"Irene--a sound pleasant to the ear"--Mahommed muttered. "Why is she called good?"

"Because she is an angel of mercy to the poor."

"That is not usual with the great and rich," he said next, yielding to a charm in the encomiums.

"Yes," the boatman responded, "she is great, being akin to the Emperor, and rich, too, though"--

Here the man broke off to a.s.sist in bringing the boat back from its recession with the current, at this point boisterously swift.

"You were saying the Princess is rich," Mahommed said, when the oars were again at rest.

"Oh, yes! But I cannot tell you, my friend, how many are partners in her wealth. Every widow and orphan who can get to her comes away with a portion. Isn't it so?"

His companion grunted affirmatively, adding: "Down yonder a man with a crooked back lives in an arched cell opening on the water. Perhaps the stranger saw it as he came up."

"Yes," Mahommed answered.

"Well, in the back part of the cell he has an altar with a crucifix and a picture of the Blessed Mother on it, and he keeps a candle burning before them day and night--something he could not do if we did not help him, for candles of wax are costly. He has named the altar after the Princess, Sta. Irene. We often stop and go in there to pray; and I have heard the blessings in the light of that candle are rich and many as the Patriarch has for sale in Sta. Sophia."

These praises touched Mahommed; for, exalted as he was in station, he was aware of the p.r.o.neness of the poor to berate the rich and grumble at the great, and that such had been a habit with them from the commencement of the world. Again the boat slipped down the current; when it was brought back, he asked: "When did the ship yonder come up?"

"This morning."

"Oh, yes! I saw it then, but thought the crew were being taken to the sea for practice."

"No," the boatman replied, "it is the state galley of His Majesty the Emperor. Did you not see him? He sat on the throne with all his ministers and court around him."

Mahommed was startled.

"Where is the Emperor now?" he inquired.

"I should say, seeing the crowd yonder, that His Majesty is in the palace with the Princess."

"Yes," said the second rower, "they are waiting to see him come out."

"Row out into the bay. I should like to have the view from that quarter."

While making the detour, Mahommed reflected. Naturally he remembered himself the son of Amurath; after which it was easy to marshal the consequences of exposure, if he persisted in his venture. He saw distinctly how his capture would be a basis of vast bargaining with his father, or, if the st.u.r.dy old warrior preferred revenge to payment of a ruinous ransom, how the succession and throne might slip to another, leaving him a prisoner for life.

Yet another matter presented itself to him which the reader may decide worthy a separate paragraph. Its mention has been waiting this opportunity. The Prince from Magnesia, his seat of government, was on the way to Adrianople, called thither by his father, who had chosen a bride for him, daughter of a renowned Emir. Regularly he would have crossed the h.e.l.lespont at Gallipoli; a whim, however, took him to the White Castle--whim or destiny, one being about as satisfactory as the other. Pondering silently whether it were not best to return, he thought, apropos the Princess Irene, of the nuptials to be celebrated, and of his bride expectant; and a Christian, pausing over the suggestion, may be disposed to condemn him for inconstancy.

In countries where many wives are allowed the same husband he is not required to love any of them. Indeed, his fourth spouse may be the first to command him; hers the eyes for his enslavement; hers the voice of the charmer charming both wisely and forever. Mahommed did now think of the Emir's daughter, but not with compunction, nor even in comparison. He had never seen her face, and would not until after the wedding days. He thought of her but to put her aside; she could not be as this Christian was, neither so accomplished nor courtly; besides which, it was dawning upon him that there were graces of mind and soul as well as of person, while perfection was a combination of all the graces in equal degree.

Gleams of the latter had visited him while gazing into the radiant face of the Emperor's kinswoman; and how, at such favoring times, his fancy had gone out to her and come back warmed, enlivened, glorified! There is a pa.s.sion of the mind and a pa.s.sion of the blood; and though one and one make two, two is still a multiple of one.

Looking thus at the galley, Mahommed thought of the tales in the East not less common than in the West, and believed in them faithfully, for chivalry was merely on the wane--tales of beauteous damsels shut up in caves or adamantine castles, with guardian lions couchant at the gates, and of well-sworded heroes who marched boldly up to the brutes, and slew them, and delivered the captives always with reward. Of course, in making the application, the Princess was the prisoner, the ship the lion, and himself--well, in want of a sword, he laid hand upon his dagger, precisely as a liberating knight up to the ideal would do.

Nor was this all. The revelations of the Prince of India were still fresh to him. He wished to see his compet.i.tor. How did he look? Was there enough of him to make battle? He smiled thinking of the pleasure there would be in slyly studying the Princess and the Emperor at the same time. He drew the handkerchief down, looked at his brown-stained hands, and adjusted the folds of his burnoose. The disguise was perfect.

"Take me to the landing--there before the gate of the Good Princess," he said, with the air of a traveller above suspicion.

His resolution was taken. Challenging all chances, he would respond to the invitation of the Princess. And so completely were doubt and hesitation dismissed with our adventurer, that it was not Mahommed who stepped from the boat where the populace was in densest a.s.semblage, but Aboo-Obeidah, the Singing Sheik, and as such we will speak of him.