A Prince of Dreamers Part 43

"It is but eight," he muttered hoa.r.s.ely, "no Tarkhan can be condemned by eight----"

"Listen O Chief of the Barlas clan," interrupted the accuser, "to the ninth crime. Yestermorn he did of vile licence kill with his l.u.s.tful kiss----"

Khodadad essayed a mocking laugh.

"With a kiss? What then? Lucky for any maiden to be so honoured by a Tarkhan; so much the more lucky for such a devil's mash of deformity."

"His own daughter," rang out the charge, harder, colder, crueller.

"His daughter by the Rosebud of Love which he dishonoured. His daughter whom he called into being without cause, when he defiled her mother!"

Ah! now he knew! now he understood why--the thought came to Dalil even as he fought blindly against it.

"Thou liest!" he murmured thickly. "She was Payandar's sp.a.w.n. He----"

"He is the accuser," returned the voice calmly, "and by his right of Tarkhan he swears it before the Last a.s.size. Speak, chiefs of the Barlas clan, doth this man deserve sentence?"

Once again that surging a.s.sent mingled with the rolling of kettledrums, filled Dalil's ears; but through it he heard the words:

"Executioners! open the veins of his neck and let the Barlas blood go free of his vile body. Let him bleed to death while I, the king, mourn the spilling of good Barlas blood."

Then from all around seemed to arise a low wailing, backed still by that quivering roll of the kettledrums. The veiled figures rose slowly; a blackness rose also obliterating all save awful fear. Ah! he knew what was coming! He knew. Was that the keen p.r.i.c.k of a long lancet at his throat? Was that a warm stream trickling, trickling?

Oh! ye G.o.ds and devils! it was time to wake!

"Ohi my son! Ohi my brother!" The long-drawn wail rose louder and louder!

Wake! _Wake_! _Wake_! What a hideous dream it was. She was not--she could not be his----

An awful cry, half-choked, broke from him. It was bloodwarm blood--his own blood caressing his bosom, nestling at his heart ...

Wake! Wake!

"Ohi! my brother! Ohi! my son!"

Something surged in his brain. He heard no more.

It was dawn.

The delicate tracery of the desert birds' feet showed close up to the edge of the ruffled carpets whereon lay--hideously confused--all the indescribable refuse of sensuality which the mind has enabled humanity to bring to bear upon its pleasures. But he who had called all the past l.u.s.t and licence into being, still slept peacefully on the squalid string bed beneath the rich satin quilts.

A servant or two wakened and yawned; then, seeing his services unrequired slept again. So, swiftly, the sun rose with a ruffling wind that followed the footsteps of the birds, in circling eddies, and pa.s.sed on, leaving the sand without a sign of pa.s.sage on it.

"He sleeps long," said one, a servant.

"Let him sleep," grumbled another, "when he wakes it will be but another service of sin for him and us."

But others needed the quick wit and relentless purpose of Khodadad; so almost ere dawn had pa.s.sed to day, two or three hors.e.m.e.n came galloping from the city intent on finding help from the arch-conspirator.

"G.o.d and His Prophet!" faltered Mirza Ibrahim shrinking back from the shoulder on which he had laid an awakening hand, "he is dead!"

Dead and cold. There was no sign of violence upon him; only on his neck two blue marks, mere signs as it were, of scratches about half an inch long.

"He has died in the night," said Ghia.s.s Beg with a s.h.i.+ver. "No one is to blame. G.o.d send he had time for a prayer."

But Mirza Ibrahim clutched the complacent Lord High Treasurer by the arm and gasped:

"Look! Look!"

In front of the tent just beyond the ruffled carpet lay a square of white cloth and on it as if in blood, lay clear, distinct, the red marks of a horse's hoofs.

"'Tis the sign," he whispered, his face ashen gray. "The sign that judgment has been pa.s.sed by his peers."

CHAPTER XXI

_No strength of Hand, no strength of Foot have I, To reach the restful Heaven of Thy Throne; Yet can my soul's eyes gaze upon the Sky And finding dream there, dream the Truth mine own Even while wearied by its ceaseless Strife I watch the Shuttle in the Loom of Life_.

--Nizami.

That self-same dawn Akbar the King sate alone, as he so often did, upon a large flat stone which lay in a lonely spot beside the Anup tank. He was dressed in the saffron sheet of an ascetic, and a fold of it, drawn across the lower part of the face, completely disguised him; though the few persons abroad at this early hour were not of the cla.s.s from whom he could fear detection or even interruption--except perhaps a pet.i.tion for a blessing. For this was the widows' hour; that strange hour in India, while the world still sleeps, when sorrowful womanhood works out the salvation of mankind. When dim, ghostlike in their white shrouding, figures creep out of the shadowy homes, burdened with the sins of men, and, after was.h.i.+ng them away in the chill waters of dawn, creep back to the hearthstones, ere the sun rises upon the devoted drudgery of another widows' day.

The sight of these figures, the whole scene, unreal, mystical, had always had a fascination for Akbar, a curious almost angry interest.

He felt himself helpless before it, King though he was. True! he had abolished _suttee_ by a sweep of his pen. The swift cruel sacrifice of life he had checked; but this long-drawn agony was beyond him.

And what did it mean when all was said and done? His active mind, ever wrestling with problems of the psychic world, fought for a conclusion on this, the question which has puzzled so many inquirers.

"Whence and wherefore comes the sense of sin which in the woman lies ever at the root of s.e.x, making her falsely modest or boldly brazen?"

How silent they were, these mateless, almost s.e.xless bodies whose souls were seeking--through past aeons, and for endless centuries to come--salvation not for themselves but for their men folk! The very water slipped noiselessly over the shaven unveiled heads that slipped into it as noiselessly.

Sound only came when, on the red sandstone steps of the tank once more, they again drew their wet shrouds round youth and age alike.

Drip! Drip! Drip!

The water fell in blood-red tear drops beside the blood-red print of their bare feet upon the stones. A dolorous way indeed! a dolorous life.

A couple of gray-crested cranes, mates evidently, showed nestling side by side as they stood knee-deep in the gray levels of the tank; levels which brimmed up from the dim shadowy steps of the dim shadowy reflections in the water of the dim shadowy realities of stunted bushes and gnarled caper trees that rose against the dim gray of coming dawn.

Why was not humanity like the birds, accepting the Great Mystery of generation as differing not one whit from other functions of Life?

There lay the puzzle. What sin was it that the woman had committed in the dawn of days!

Yea! the dawn came fast! Below the distant verge of sight the bright-hued riders of the Day were galloping hard, each bringing his pennant to the battle of Light and Darkness.