Part 35 (1/2)

It was a perfect autumn day when, after dismissing the Persian contingent, Babar made his triumphant entry. All along the route, high and low, n.o.bles and poor men, grandees and artisans, princes and peasants, alike testified their joy at the advent of one who had already twice before come to them as King, and who had endeared himself to them by his kindness and generosity.

The streets were all draped with cloth and gold brocades; pictures, drawings, wreaths, were hung up on every side. Such pomp and splendour no one has ever seen or heard of before or since. He was received at the Gate by the great men of the city, who a.s.sured him that the inhabitants had for years been longing that the shadow of his protection might be cast upon them.

Babar, who was dressed, rather to their regret, in the uniform of a _kissilbash_ General (which smacked of heresy, almost of unbelief) responded heartily, and all eyes followed his splendid figure as he rode through the streets saluting the crowd right and left. He was in the highest spirits, for he knew that in the very Palace where she had been left ten long years before, his dearest sister was awaiting him.

Dearest-One! It seemed almost too good to be true.--G.o.d save the man who had brought this happiness into his life!

Impatient, headstrong in all his emotions, he would gladly have cut short his reception and gone straight to her; but the people would not be denied a sight of their hero. If the angels were crying aloud ”Enter in peace!” and the populace was shouting ”G.o.d save the Emperor!” the least he could do was to listen to them patiently.

So it was nigh dusk before he found himself, trembling with sheer joy, in the Garden-Palace and saw before him a tall, slender figure in white--

”Dearest-One! Dearest-One!” he cried and was kissing her feet, her hands, her thin, worn face.

”Brotherling! Brotherling!”

That was all they said. And then they held back to see each other. She saw strength, and health, and manhood such as she had scarce dreamed of, even for him; a man of past thirty in the very prime of all things. And he saw a woman of nigh forty with streaks of silver in her dark hair, upright, tall, but with a weariness even in her joy.

”I am sorry, Dearest-One,” he said humbly as he had said to her many a time when as a child he had grieved her.

”And I am glad,” she replied softly.

That night the city seemed on fire. Flares blazed from every house, the flickering lines of countless lights seemed to interlock one street with another. Vast crowds surged through them, and far and wide rose Babar's praise.

But at the door of a mosque an old white-bearded _mullah_ sat and spat calmly. ”He wore the accursed red-cap of the schismatic--Wherefore?”

And the folk who heard him looked at each other and echoed:

”Wherefore?”

That was the question. Asked by one to-day, it was asked by half-a-dozen the next, by a hundred the week after, when Babar, faithful as ever to his promises, had the Kutba, the Royal Proclamation, read in the name of Shah-Ismael as over-lord. A thousand asked it when the first gold coin was struck bearing the hated s.h.i.+ah legends. The Emperor, the man they had welcomed, was a heretic. He and his army wore the red-cap.

Samarkand, head centre of orthodoxy, became alarmed, began to whisper.

”I am no heretic, but a keeper of promises,” said Babar grimly, and went on his way. He had become a trifle arrogant, and inclined to resent any interference. The Samarkand folk were rude, ignorant, bigoted; he would not even try to pacify them.

So the winter pa.s.sed and spring set in--(the plentiful drops of her rain having clothed the earth in green raiment)--and with the warmer weather the Usbeks once more appeared like locusts on the edge of the Turkhestan desert and the fight for Samarkand began all over again.

And this time Babar with not a wish ungratified, Babar in the plenitude of his pride and strength, was forced to flight; for religious bigotry is the hardest of all foes to fight.

A horde of _kizzilbashes_, it is true, was sent by his over-lord to help him; but they only made matters worse. First by their confirmation of heresy; next by their brutality in murdering high and low, the sucklings and the decrepit.

Sick at heart, Babar found himself once more a wanderer; once more a prey to the treachery of Moghul troops, from which he escaped one night with bare life and in his night clothes.

His one consolation was that Maham, Dearest-One and his children, were safe with relatives in Khost.

No! he had another consolation; for the man who had set aside wine as an enhancement of pleasure, now took to it as a lessener of care. The Cup-of-Life for him was filled again and again with the Wine-of-Death, and he laughed as he quaffed at its bubbles on the rim. Vaguely, too, came to him a sort of disgust at dogmatic creeds. He would sit and sing Sufic odes with fervour, and praise.