Part 33 (2/2)
”The Queen will have to find another scribe,” replied Hafzan meekly.
Zeenut Maihl glared at her, then rolled round into her cus.h.i.+ons as if she were in actual physical pain. And hark! From the Lah.o.r.e gate, as if nothing had happened, came the chime of noon. Noon! and nothing done. She sat up suddenly and signed to Hafzan for pen and ink. She would wait no longer for the King; she would at least try the Mirza.
”'This, to the most ill.u.s.trious the Mirza Moghul, Heir-Apparent by right to the throne of Timoor,'” she dictated firmly, and Hafzan looked up startled. ”Write on, fool,” she continued; ”hast never written lies before? 'After salutation the Begum Zeenut Maihl,'”--the humbler t.i.tle came from her lips in a tone which boded ill for the recipient of the letter if he fell into the toils,--”'seeing that in this hour of importance the King is sick, and by order of physicians not to be disturbed, would know if the Mirza, being by natural right the King's vice-regent, desires the private seal to any orders necessary for peace and protection. Such signet being in the hands of the Queen'--nay, not that, I was forgetting--'the Begum.'”
She gave an angry laugh as she lay back among her cus.h.i.+ons and bid them send the letter forthwith. That should make him nibble. Not that she had the signet--the King kept that on his own finger--but if the Mirza came on pretense or rather in hopes of getting it? Why! then; if the proper order was given and if she could insure the aid of men to carry out her schemes, the signet should be got at somehow. The King was old and frail; the storm and stress might well kill him.
So her thoughts ranged from one plot to another as she waited for an answer. If this lure succeeded, she would but use the Heir-Apparent for a time. What use was there in plotting for him? He could die, as other heirs had died; and then the only person likely to put a spoke in her wheel was Abool-Bukr. He was teaching his young uncle the first pleasures of manhood, and might find it convenient to influence the boy against her. It would be well therefore to get hold of him also.
That was not a hard task, and she sat up again without a moment's hesitation and signed once more to Hafzan.
”Thy best flourishes,” she said with an evil sneer, ”for it goes to a rare scholar; to a fool for all that, who would have folk think nephews visit their aunts from duty! 'This to Newasi loving and beloved, greeting. Consequent on the disturbances, the princely nephew Abool-Bukr lieth senseless here in the Palace.' Stare not, fool!
senseless drunk he is by this time, I warrant. 'Those who have seen him think ill of him.'” Here she broke off into malicious enjoyment of her own wit. ”Ay! and those who have but heard of him also! 'The course of events, however, being in the hands of Heaven, will be duly reported.'”
She coiled herself up again on the cus.h.i.+ons, an insignificant square homely figure draped in worn brocade and laden with tarnished jewelry; ill-matched strings of pearls, flawed emeralds, diamonds without sparkle. Yet not without a certain dignity, a certain symmetry of purpose, harmonizing with the arched and frescoed room in which she lay; a room beautiful in design and decoration, yet dirty, comfortless, almost squalid.
”Nay! not my signature,” she yawned. ”I am too old a foe of the scholars; but a smudge o' the thumb will do. If I know aught of aunts and nephews, she will be too much fl.u.s.tered by the news to look at seals. And have word sent to the Delhi gate that the Princess Farkhoonda be admitted, but goes not forth again.”
Her hard voice ceased; there was no sound in the room save that strange hum from the gardens outside, which at this hour of the day were generally wrapped in sun-drugged slumbers.
But the world beyond, toward which the old King's l.u.s.terless eyes looked as he lay on the river balcony, was sleepy, sun-drugged as ever. Through the tracery-set archs showed yellow stretches of sand and curving river, with tussocks of tall tiger-gra.s.s hiding the slender stems of the palm-trees which shot up here and there into the blue sky; blue with the yellow glaze upon it which comes from sheer sunlight. A row of _saringhi_ players squatted in the room behind the balcony, thrumming softly, so as to hide that strange hum of life which reached even here. For the King was writing a couplet and was in difficulties with a rhyme for _cartouche_ (cartridge); since he was a stickler for form, holding that the keynote of the lines should jingle. And this couplet was to epitomize the situation on the other side of the _saringhies_. _Cartouche? Cartouche?_ Suddenly he sat up.
”Quick! send for Hussan Askuri; or stay!” he hesitated for an instant.
Hussan Askuri would be with the Queen, and no one ever admired his couplets as she did. How many hours was it since he had seen her? And what was the use of making couplets, if you were denied their just meed of praise? ”Stay,” he repeated, ”I will go myself.” It was a relief to feel himself on the way back to be led by the nose, and as they helped him across the intervening courtyard he kept repeating his treasure, imagining her face when she heard it.
”Kuchch Chil-i-Room nahin kya, ya Shah-i-Roos, nahin Jo Kuchch kya na sara se, so cartouche ne.”
A couplet, which, lingering still in the mouths of the people, warrants the old poetaster's conceit of it, and--dog-anglicized--runs thus:
”Nor Czar nor Sultan made the conquest easy, The only weapon was a cartridge greasy.”
”The Queen? Where is the Queen?” fumed the old man, when he found an empty room instead of instant flattery; for he was, after all, the Great Moghul.
”She prays for the King's recovery,” said Fatma readily. ”I will inform her that her prayer is granted.” But as she pa.s.sed on her errand, she winked at a companion, who hid her giggle in her veil; for Grand Turk or not, the women hold all the trump cards in seclusion. So how was the old man to know that the one who came in radiant with exaggerated delight at his return, had been interviewing his eldest son behind decorous screens, and that she was thanking Heaven piously for having sent him back to her ap.r.o.n-string in the very nick of time.
Sent him, and Hussan Askuri, and pen and ink within reach of her quick wit.
”That is the best couplet my lord has done,” she said superbly. ”That must be signed and sealed.”
So must a paper be, which lay concealed in her bosom. And as she spoke she drew the signet ring lovingly, playfully from the King's finger and walked over to where the scribe sat crouched on the floor.
”Ink it well, Pir-jee,” she said, keeping her back to the King; ”the impression must be as immortal as the verse.”
Despite the warning, a very keen ear might have detected a double sound, as if the seal had needed a second pressure. That was all.
So it came about that, half an hour or so afterward, the Head-of-the-nine at the magazine was looking contemptuously at a paper brought by the Palace Guards, and pa.s.sed under the door, ordering its instant opening. George Willoughby laughed; but some of the eight dashed people's impudence and cursed their cheek! Yet, after the laugh, the Head-of-the-nine walked over, yet another time, to that river bastion to look down at that white streak of road. How many times he had looked already, Heaven knows; but his grave face had grown graver, though it brightened again after a glance at the lemon bush. The black streak there would not fail them.
”In the King's name open!” The demand came from Mirza Moghul himself this time, for the Palace was without arms, without ammunition; and if they were to defend it, according to the Queen's idea, against all corners, till there was time for other regiments to rebel, this matter of the magazine was important. Abool-Bukr was with him, half-drunk, wholly incapable, but full of valor; for a scout sent by the Queen had returned with the news that no English soldier was within ten miles of Delhi, and within the last half hour an ominous word had begun to pa.s.s from lip to lip in the city.
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