Read Ebook: A Prince of Dreamers by Steel Flora Annie Webster

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Ebook has 2258 lines and 112421 words, and 46 pages

There was a slight suspicion of jealousy in his tone as he turned toward a burly, broad-faced, clean-shaven man whose expression of sound common sense almost overlaid the high intellectuality of his face.

"What ails the King?" he answered, and as he spoke his light brown eyes, scarce darker than his olive skin, were on Akbar with all the affection of a mother who glories because her son has outgrown her own stature. "Can you not see that he fears death?"

"Curse the young cub," broke in the R?jp?t angrily, "what of him now?"

Abulfazl turned in perfect good-humour on his bitterest enemy, the rival historian Budaoni, who, as opponent-in-chief of all reforms, still wore a beard, while his green shawl and turban showed him an orthodox Mahommedan.

So saying, he also passed on to stand beside the King, and, as Birbal had already done, strive to rouse him from his dreams.

For an instant Akbar looked at him, resentfully; then the despotic finger raised itself, and Abulfazl fell back to join Birbal in failure.

From behind in the circle of the courtiers came an airy laugh.

"Where God sends meditation, Mirza Ibrah?m, He may haply send penitence also," replied their leader, the Makhd?m-ul'-mulk. "For that, we men of God wait with what patience that we can."

"I would we could rouse him," murmured Birbal, standing apart, "the generalissimo said true. He has need of all his skill--and yours, Shaikh-jee."

"Mine has he ever," replied Abulfazl, simply; and it was true. No lover was more absorbed by his mistress than he by Akbar and Akbar's fortunes. He was obsessed by them.

So as they stood, those two faithful friends and counsellors of the one man whom they held dearest upon earth--yet in a way unfaithful, distrustful of each other because of unconfessed jealousy--there came to them close at hand throbbing through the hot yellow sunshine that seemed to throb back in rhythm, the sound of an hourglass drum, and a high trilling voice--

"It is ?tma," muttered Birbal to himself. "What seeks the madwoman now?" And he strode back to where on the outskirts of the circle of courtiers some disturbance was evidently going on.

"Let her pass in an' she will," he called to the ushers, angrily. "When will men learn that fair words fight women better than foul ones. I will dismiss her."

"Bards of a feather flock together," sneered Budaoni, alluding to Birbal's own minstrel birth. Abulfazl who was close behind his enemy turned on him courteously.

There was a laugh, and Budaoni turned aside scowling, with a murmured "May God roast him!" It was his favourite wish for the unorthodox.

The woman was past her first youth, but she was still extraordinarily handsome, and her dark eyes, full of some hidden thought, looked defiantly into Birbal's.

"I am the King's bard--the King's champion," she said in a low rapid voice, "I have come to sing to him."

Birbal bowed with a half-disdainful sweep of both hands.

What was it? A stone of some sort roughly smoothed to a square, and of a dull green uneven texture like growing grass. No! it was like leaves--like the rose leaves in a garden, and those faintly red specks were the roses. Yes! it was a rose garden. How the perfume of it assailed the senses, making one forget--forget--forget--

The quaint old triplet seemed afloat in the air and ?tma's voice to come from beyond something that was eternally unchanged, inevitable.

Birbal looked at her, caught in the great World-Wisdom which poets see sometimes in the simplest words.

"She says truth," he murmured to himself. "She says truth!" Then with a light laugh he turned to Abulfazl. "Shall we let her pass? At least she can do no harm."

"Nor any good," broke in M?n Singh hotly; "and it will but strengthen her madness! What! a woman to claim a Ch?ran's place--to give her body to the sword?--her honour to the dust for the King's? Psha! Bid her go back to her spinning wheel!"

Abulfazl smiled largely. "Lo! even R?jp?t manhood lives in the woman for nine long months--none can escape from the dark life before birth. Yea! let her pass in, Birbal--she can do no harm."

"Nor good," persisted M?n Singh stoutly.

"They call it smagdarite, Excellence. It comes from Sinde."

"Sinned or no sin," echoed Birbal gaily, "the devil is in it. But 'tis a good name. Pass on Smagdarite! Stay"--here the old man half-hidden by his drum essayed to follow--"whom have we here? Old Deena the drum-banger! In what vile stew of Satanstown didst spend the night, villain?"

Thus apostrophised, Deena's comically wicked, leering, old face hid itself completely in a salaam behind the drum, and came up again puckered with pure mischief.

"That is a question for the virtuous Lord Chamberlain, Mirza Ibrah?m," he replied, demurely.

The sally was greeted with a boisterous laugh, and Mirza Ibrah?m--whose fine clothes dispersed a perfect atmosphere of musk--scowled fiercely. For Satanstown, as ultimate exile of all the bad characters of the city was in his charge, and report had it that he pursued his duty of inspection with more than usual assiduity.

"Sit thou here then, by Smagdarite," continued Birbal, recovering from his laugh, "and drum from a distance, lest thou be utterly damned for deserting honourable company. Hark! she begins!"

?tma had by this time sunk to the ground beside the King. Her flimsy scarlet skirts curved about her like overblown poppy petals. Her dark eyes, full of fire, were fixed on the unconscious figure so close beside her, and, under the slow circling of her lissome forefinger the little drum held in her left hand was beginning to give out an indescribably mysterious sound like the first faint sobbing of air before an organ pipe breaks into a note.

The singer's voice, high and clear, rose on it almost aggressively--

Hark! and hist! To the list Of the kings who have died In their pride, To the wide, wide, world.

M?RUN-KH?N!

Lo! He dreamt he was King! But he died In his pride To the wide, wide, world.

SO HIS SON SUL?M?N

Dreamt the dreamings of kings Till he died In his pride To the wide, wide, world.

SO THE DREAM WAS JEH?N'S!

And he dreamt he was king Till he died In his pride To the wide, wide, world.

The rhythmic background broke with the singing voice into troubled triplets, and the King's slack hands gripped in on themselves. Was he listening?

TO KUM?N

"Enough!" The word came swiftly as Akbar turned with a frown. "The end, woman? The end?"

There was a pause; then from the very dust of his feet rose her reply:

"There is none to the dreaming of kings!"

"There is none--to the dreaming--of kings," he echoed slowly, and his eyes scanned her face curiously as he raised her from the ground. "Who art thou, woman?" he asked suddenly; then as suddenly dropped the hands he held, and said coldly: "Give her gold for her song." But once more a fresh feeling came to make him add: "Nay! not gold--let her choose her own reward--what wouldst thou, sister?"

His face, grown soft as a woman's, looked sympathetically into hers; she stood before him abashed by the quick tie that seemed to have sprung up between them, unable to realise the chance that was hers.

"Quick step!" cried M?n Singh brutally. "See you not the Most-Gracious waits? What shall it be? Gold, fal-lals, dresses--the things for which women sell their souls?"

She turned on him like a queen.

The dying fall of her words left the court amazed, almost affronted. Here was a claim indeed! A claim foreign to the whole conservative fabric of Eastern society--which heaven knows had already suffered shock enough at the King's reforming hands!

But Akbar took no heed of the looks around him; he was deep in that problem of Sex which was one of the many to claim his quick interest at all times.

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