King-Errant. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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he did what he could, though it was a strain upon his twelve young years, for the long night had left him feverish and the long day with its need for initiative had outwearied him. So that when at last the ordeal was over, and he was free to seek the women's apartments for rest, his nerves were all a-rack, his pulse fast and irregular.
He found his grandmother alone by the big coal fire. Mother and sister, outwearied also, had gone to bed; the best place, the old lady said oracularly, for sore eyes and broken hearts. And Babar felt it was better so. The company of the stern-featured, soft-hearted old woman of whose sagacity and clear-sightedness he stood somewhat in awe, would be more bracing than the tears which must come sooner or later.
People said he was like his grandmother. Was he, he wondered, as he lay prone on the sheepskin rug watching the firelight on her fine old face.
"Tell me!" he said suddenly, "the tale of thy youth--of Jaimal and the lover who was slain."
But Isân-daulet, though she smiled, shook her wise old head.
"Nay, child! Such tales do to stir phlegm. They are not meet when the humours are already disturbed."
The boy leaned over on his elbows and looked up at her.
"Like cures like by comparison! 'Twould steady my pulse to know others throbbed. Feel mine, Grandam--how it beats!"
She took the thin, muscular wrist held out to her and appraised it judicially.
"I will give thee a purge the morrow's morn," she said shortly. "That will keep thy head cooler than idle tales; there is nothing for hot boy's blood like a purge."
Babar's face showed obstinate yet whimsical. "I will not take it, nanni, if thou wilt not tell--so there! And Kings are not to be coerced, see you, by black draughts, as mere boys are. And 'tis the first boon I have asked from thee--as I am."
The ring of almost apprehension in the last words was too much for the old woman, who loved the lad as the apple of her eye. She laid her hand caressingly on the boy's hair. It was cut, Florentine fashion, to the ears, and the ends, outsweeping in a gentle curve were sun-burned browner than the rest of the dark head.
"It is little to tell, sweetheart, save that it shows how even womanhood may confound strength by being resolute. It was not many years after my lord, your grandfather, married me in my father the Khân's tents upon the Steppes. He was a bold, brave man, was my lord, and like all bold, brave ones, he fought sometimes and won, and sometimes he fought and lost. 'No battle is ended save by Death,' remember that, O! Zahir-ud-din Mahomed! And once when he lost, his women--I was one--fell into the hands of Jaimal Shaikh, his enemy. And he--low-bred hound who knew not the first principles of politeness!--did not even keep me for himself!--I was not ill-looking in those days, my child--but sent me to his officer. I, the wife of Yunus Khân, Chagatâi, of the house of Timur the Earth Trembler! Well! the fool came decked as for a bridal with blandishments and perfumes, and I welcomed him. Wherefore not? for the supper was good and he played on the lute passably. But when that was over, and we withdrew smiling to the inner room, my maids locked the door by my orders, stabbed the silly rake to death and flung his be-scented body through the window to the gutter. 'Twas its proper place."
The old voice which had gained strength and fire in the recital, dropped to cold, hard finality.
"And Jaimal Shaikh?" queried Babar unwilling to lose a word.
"He sent for me and I went. 'Why hast thou done this evil thing?' he asked. 'Because thou didst worse,' I answered. 'Because thou sentest me, the wife of a living man, to another's embrace. Therefore I slew him. Slay me also, if so it pleases thee.'
"But it did not please him. 'Take her to her husband's prison,' he said, 'and leave her there. They are one flesh indeed.' So I stopped with thy grandfather and comforted him until his star rose again. Now, get thee to thy bed, child, and see thou take the draught without demur. Remember 'God is no maker of the promise breaker.' 'Twill make thee feel sick, doubtless; but what matter if the result be good."
Babar made a wry face and laughed. "Thou hast done me more good with thy tale, revered one! Lo! I can see thy would-be lover in the gutter and my esteemed grandmother, all beautiful as a bride, peeking through the lattice for a glimpse of his corpse--"
"Go to thy bed, child," put in the old lady, delighted. "There be more than pictures for thy sight now; so may the Great Maker of Kings guard thee, his creature."
And that night Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar, forgot that he was King in sound, dreamless, boyish sleep.
CHAPTER II
"There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft To keep watch for the life of Poor Jack!"
In truth, Babar needed such a cherub in the first days of his King-ship, for Kâsim and Hussan, his two advisers, fell foul of one another. The former, bluff, honest, facetious, a pious, faithful, religious Moslem who carefully abstained from forbidden meats and drinks, and whose judgment and talents were uncommonly good though he could neither read nor write, was for the forward policy. Hussan, polished, active, a man of courage who wrote excellent verses and was remarkable for his skill in playing polo and leap-frog, was for diplomacy. And against these latter qualifications even honest Kâsim's ingenuous and elegant vein of wit could not stand.
At least in young Babar's judgment. Old Isân-daulet his grandmother was, however, of a different opinion, and even Dearest-One, his sister, ventured to rally him gently on his choice of Prime-minister.
"What," asked Babar hotly in reply, "is Hussan the worse for playing games? Is a man the worse for doing all things well?"
"Nay! but rather the better--so be it that they be men's things," she replied, going on imperturbably with the embroidery of a new pennon for her brother. It was green and violet, his favourite colours, and she was scrolling a text on it in crinkled gold. As she sat in the sunshine on the flat roof of the citadel, her bare head gleaming brown in the glare of light, her mourning garment of dark blue short in the sleeves and low at the neck showing her wheat-coloured skin, she was a pretty creature, though her nose was too long, her chin too short for real beauty: that lay in her eyes, amber-tinted like her brother's.
"Man's things! What be man's things?" argued Babar irritably. "Is cousin Baisanghâr no man because he could help thee embroider two years agone?"
The princess held her head very high. It was not nice of her brother to import strange young men into the conversation, and distinctly mean of him to mention that old breach of etiquette. Had she not heard enough of it from her mother, ever since? Luckily grandam Isân-daulet, being desert-born, had not been so shocked, or life would have been unendurable. And as for Baisanghâr! Everyone knew he was not at all a proper young man, though he was so charming, so sweet-tempered, so …
"Lo! brother!" she said with asperity, checking her vagrant thoughts, "if one fool shook a baby's rattle better than another, he would be wise man to thee. But 'tis not I only who find leap-frog Hussan a smooth-tongued hypocrite. Grandmother has her eye on him."
"Then can no harm happen," said the boy-King cheerfully, rising, however, with suspicious alacrity as if to escape from the subject. In truth he was somewhat afraid of old Isân-daulet though he tried to minimise his awe by asserting that very few of her sex could equal her in sagacity!
Events, however, had marched with great rapidity, and Sultan Ahmed, his uncle, was now with his army but sixteen miles from Andijân.
So something must be settled. Kâsim was for defiance and defence, Hussan for diplomatic and dutiful submission; since the King of Samarkand was, ever, indubitably suzerain-lord of Ferghâna.
"Words against works," quoth honest Kâsim, who loved to be epigrammatic. His experience told him that if you fought fair you failed at times, but in the end you