A Prince of Dreamers Part 29

My singing soul has its nest Near the great white Throne Where the roses of Paradise rest On its Corner Stone, And the scent of those roses seems To bring idle dreams Of Life and Love and the Endless Quest.

Oh bird! arise Lift up thine eyes To the Heaven that lies Beyond Paradise.

Once again the man who doubted all things felt a thrill almost of fear; but Fate promptly gave him back his self-confidence, for a voice behind him said as the song ceased.

"If my lord seeks me, I seek my lord."

He turned to find the _rebeck_ player on the threshold; but with bare feet. So the cynical laughter rang out this time in frank amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Well designed, musician! But the shoes lie yonder." And then he hummed gaily the refrain of a popular song.

Love to her mind Came like the wind, All stealthy as the cat is.

But those not blind Next morn will find Footsteps beneath her lattice.

A flickering smile showed on the _rebeck_ player's lips. "My lord has learnt that of l.u.s.t in the bazaar. If he desires to learn of love he should go--to Bayazid!"

The faintly inflected play of words was out of keeping with the man who made it; but the vague questionings concerning him which for days past had been in Birbal's mind seemed to have vanished with his first look at the miserable, almost squalid figure, the dull eyes, the deathlike mask of the face. What could the fellow be but street musician? Except--since women were incomprehensible--the widow's lover!

Something of curiosity, however, remained.

"Bayazid?" he echoed haughtily. "What knowest thou of the drunkard who calls himself King of Malwa?"

"That he is King of Musicians, my lord, and this slave's master. He could tell my lord all concerning love. Aye! even as well as the Sufi from Isphahan."

Those dull eyes seemed to take on a leer and Birbal stared at them, startled back into questionings.

"The Sufi? What dost know of him?" he asked quickly.

"Naught!" replied the musician evasively. "Save that the servants said he sups at the river palace this night; he and another king--Payandar of Sinde mayhap."

He looked up again with that leer in his eyes, and the wonder died out of Birbal's. The man was palpably a trickster; palpably trying to play on credulity--credulity in Birbal, prince of doubters!

"Then will they sup in h.e.l.l, slave," he said curtly "since Payandar hath been dead these fifteen years. So farewell, Smagdarite, lest I disturb love. Stay--let me see thy talisman once more."

"This dustborn atom in a beam of light resigns it," came the reply, and for an instant Birbal stood paralysed by dim remembrance. But the green stone on its greasy skein lay in his hands, all inert, without perfume, without, charm.

It was like nothing so much, he told himself, as half chewed cud, and he tossed it back contemptuously, a gold piece following it.

"That for thy pains. Farewell, widow! Luck to thy love!"

He turned to go, but the _rebeck_ player who had stooped to pick up the coin, still stood in the doorway, and the sun flas.h.i.+ng on the gold he held betwixt finger and thumb seemed for a second to blind Birbal's eyes to everything else.

"If the Most Excellent desires to hear of love," came the musician's voice softly, "he might go to the King Bayazid's river palace--this night--when the moon is waning. The river palace, my lord, when the moon is waning."

The words echoed down the stairs after Birbal who seemed not to hear them. They had, however, the opposite effect on atma Devi; who all this time had stood silent, apparently engrossed in listening. Now she roused herself and turned accusingly to her companion.

"So thou has been here all the time, and it was to thee the child talked in gray dawn and gray dusk! Wherefore did I not see thee?"

"Because thou wouldst not, sister! Because thy mind has been elsewhere--whither G.o.d knows." She started and looked at him half-fearfully but he went on unregarding. "It is what the will wishes to see that is seen. To all else we are blind."

Something in the words seemed to strike a new note in her, and the half savage, half anxious look on her face vanished. "Yes! mayhap I have been blind," she muttered to herself despondently. "But wherefore--Oh ye dear G.o.ds! wherefore am I blind!"

She turned to lean over the parapet, as if to rest her eyes, her very heart, upon the dim blue distant haze betwixt earth and sky.

"Because thou wilt not see the Truth, sister"--the voice seemed to her to belong to that dim earth and sky--"because thou hast denied love.

Yet naught else will save the King."

She gave a startled cry but, looking round, saw that the Wayfarer had gone. "May s.h.i.+v-jee protect me" she murmured to herself. "He is magician for sure. Yet is he wrong. I am no woman, but the King's Charan, I have done my duty!" So, clenching her hands she sate and dreamed for him of safety, honour, empire.

Birbal, meanwhile, dreamt the same dream as he plunged into the increasing intricacy of cabal which centred round his master.

So he gave no thought at all to so contemptible a person as the opium-drugged, song-besotted Bayazid who still styled himself the King of Malwa, though he had fled from royalty for the sake of a dead dancing girl; as if any woman were worth such a sacrifice! True, the tragic tale of Rupmati, the poetess, musician, singer, ultimate artist, who had made her King forget even statesmans.h.i.+p for seven long happy years, had its aesthetic beauty. One could picture the consternation of the dove-cot when Adham Khan, Akbar's general and foster-brother put the royal lover to flight; picture still more easily, knowing Adham Khan's nature, his defiance of orders, and the proposals he made to Rupmati. While the rest was pure poetry! The beautiful woman dressing herself as a bride is dressed for the conqueror's a.s.signation, and then leaving nothing but dead flesh awaiting him on the couch strewn with flowers. That was fine! But Bayazid? Even though Akbar's own hand had brought retribution on libertine Adham's head for this and other offences, he, Birbal, would never have come cringing to the Emperor's court, to spend his time in singing love _ghazals_. That was contemptible.

And yet as the day wore on, the memory of the _rebeck_ player's words returned inconsequently, almost annoyingly. What was it to him, Birbal, if Bayazid had a supper party or no? He had other corn to parch. And he parched it consistently until, late on in the evening, having excused himself, he knew not why, from an entertainment at the palace, he fell asleep peacefully.

The gongs were sounding eleven when he woke suddenly to a new resolve, which admitted of no reconsideration.

He would go to the river palace. After all, there might be something in what the _rebeck_ player had said--he might be in the right. At any rate there was no harm in seeing. He clapped his hands and ordered his fast trotting bullocks. But the river palace lay some miles away in an orange garden down by the sliding yellow stream which flows past Agra and it was nigh on midnight ere he reached its wide open gateway.

Bidding his rath await him outside, he pa.s.sed inward. A sentry slept in the scented shadow of the archway, so he went on unchallenged into the scented garden where the faint shadows of the waning moonlight slept also across the broad paved walks, and on the conduits of running water that was hastening to slake the nightly thirst of the sun-wearied plots of pomegranate and orange trees on which the ripe fruit hung obscure. The dim clearness seemed to show the darkness; above all the utter darkness of the great pile of the palace.

No signs here of a supper party! The fact whetted his curiosity, and he went on, feeling himself the only live thing in a world of drugs and dreams.

In the hallway another drowsy servant showed, curled up half asleep upon the floor.

"Your master?" asked Birbal.

"Roofways," came the answer with a yawn.

The whole place seemed opium-soddened; there was a cloying savour of poppy and dead roses in the narrow turret stairs which led upward; so narrow that the stone wall on either side was polished by the elbows of the pa.s.sers up and down.

The first floor was dark save for the fading moonlight seen through the open window archways, so he went up again, until the wide roof set amid the encircling shadowy trees through which the pale gleam of the river showed, lay beneath his feet.

And overhead were the stars beginning their watch of the night.

One seemed to have fallen from heaven to burn in a silver filagree shrine, in shape like a domed mausoleum, which was the only thing dimly visible in the darkness; that, and still more dimly the lute with broken strings which lay before it illumined by the twinkling light.

"Bayazid!"

He stood and called; till from the night beyond the light came a chanting, drowsy, half coherent voice--

None knows the Secret! Therefore take the cup Lightly with laughing lip and drink it up.

Though it be heart's blood!--just one little sup So ... That is good!... Now die!

"True wisdom, Hafiz, prince of poets," murmured Birbal as he went forward and called again.

This time the answer came from near, "Yea! I am Bayazid. Welcome friend!"