Miguel Prince of Viranna

What know ye of the wearer, ye who know the dress right well?

'Tis the letter-writer only, can the letter's purport tell.

--Sa'adi.

"Hush! The King listens!"

The sudden sonorous voice of the court-usher echoed over the crowd and there was instant silence.

The multitude sank, seated on the ground where it had been standing, and so disclosed to view the rose-red palaces of Fatehpur Sikri, the City of Victory, rising from the rose-set gardens where the silvery fountains sprang from the rose-red earth into the deep blue of the sky.

Akbar the King showed also, seated on a low, marble, cushion-covered pedestal beneath a group of palms.

He was a man between the forties and the fifties with no trace of the passing years in form or feature, save in the transverse lines of thought upon his forehead. For the rest, his handsome aquiline face with its dreamy yet fireful eyes and firm mouth, held just the promise of contradiction which is often the attribute of genius.

So, as he sate listening, a woman sang.

She stood tall, supple, looking in the intensity of her crimson-scarlet dress, like a pomegranate blossom, almost like a blood-stain amongst the white robes of her fellow musicians. The face of one of these, fine, careworn, stood out clear-cut as a cameo against the glowing colour of her drapery, and the arched bow of his rebeck swayed rhythmic ally as the high fretful notes followed the trilling turns of her voice:

Gladness is Gain, because Annoy has fled

Sadness is Pain, because some Joy is dead

Light wins its Halo from the Gloom of night

Night spins its Shadow at the Loom of light.

The Twain are one, the One is twain

Naught lives alone in joy or pain

Except the King! Akbar the King is One!

Birth sends us Death, and flings us back to Earth

Earth lends us Breath, and brings us fresh to Birth

Love gives delight----

"Hush! The King wearies!"

Once again the sonorous voice of the court-usher following a faint uplift of the King's finger brought instant obedience. The singer was silent, the crowd remained expectant, while the hot afternoon sun blazed down on all things save the King, sheltered by the royal baldequin.

He raised his keen yet dreamy eyes and looked out almost wistfully to the far blue horizon of India, which from this rocky red ridge whereon he had built his City of Victory showed distant, unreal, a mere shadow on the inconceivable depth of the blue beyond.

Jalal-ud-din Mahomed Akbar, Great Mogul, Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith, Head of Kingdoms Spiritual and Temporal! Aye, he thought, he was all that so far as the Shadow went. But in the Light? What of the Light beyond, wherein Someone--Something--sate enthroned, King-of-Kings, Lord-of-Lords? What was he there?

He rose suddenly, and the crowd rising also swept back from his path tumultuously, as the waters of the Red Sea swept back from the staff of Moses, to leave him free, unfettered.

There was no lack of power about him anyhow! He stepped forward, centring his world with the swing of an athlete--a swing which made the bearers of the royal baldequin jostle almost to a trot in their efforts to keep the Sacred Personality duly shaded; and then he paused to look thoughtfully into a pool that was fretted into ceaseless rippling laughter by the fine misty spray which was all that fell back from the clear, strong, skyward leap of the water in the central fountain. Was that typical of all men's efforts, he wondered? A skyward leap impelled by individual strength; and then dispersion? When he died--and death came early to his race--what then?

He stood absorbed while the crowd closed in behind the courtiers who circled round him at a respectful distance. Beyond them the fun of the fair commenced; bursts of laughter, a hum of high-pitched voices, the tinkling of wire-stringed fiddles, the occasional blare of a conch, with every now and again the insistent throbbing of a hand drum, and a trilling song--

"May the gods pity us, dreamers who dream of their godhead"

And over all the hot yellow sunshine of an April afternoon in Northern India.

"The King is in his mood again," remarked one of the courtiers vexedly. He was Man Singh, the Rajp?t generalissimo, son of the Rajah Bhagwan Singh who had been Akbar's first Hindoo adherent, who was still his close friend and soon to be his relative by marriage. The speaker was in the prime of life, and the damascened armour seen beneath a flimsy white muslin overcoat seemed to match his proud arrogance of bearing. The courtier to whom he spoke was of a very different mould; small, slender, dark, with the face of a mime full of the possibilities of tears and laughter, but full also of a supreme intelligence which held all other things in absolute thrall. He gave a quick glance of comprehension toward his master, then shrugged his shoulders lightly.

"He sighs for new worlds to conquer, Mirza-rajah," he replied, with a faint emphasis on the curious conglomerate title which was one of the King's quaint imaginative efforts after cohesion in his court of mixed Hindus and Mahommedans. "You Rajp?t soldiers are too swift even for Akbar's dreams! With Bengal pacified, Guzerat gagged, Berhampur squashed and the Deccan disturbances decadent, His Majesty is--mayhap!--busy in contriving a new machine to turn swords into wedding presents."

He gave an almost sinister little bow at this allusion to the coming political marriage of the Heir-Apparent, Prince Sal?m to Man Singh's cousin; a match which set the adverse factions in the court by the ears.

Man Singh laid his hand on his sword-hilt and frowned.

"If Birbal could speak without jesting 'twere well," he said, significantly. "Those bigoted fools"--he nodded toward a group of long-bearded Mahommedan preachers--"may howl about heretics if they choose, but we Rajp?ts know not how to take this mixed marriage either; for in God's truth the Prince is not as the King, but an ill-doing lout of a lad--so Akbar has no time for moods. He needs skill."

Birbal gave another of his comprehending glances toward his master, another of his habitual slight shrugs of the shoulder.

"Perchance he wearies of skill! The doubt will come to all of us at times, Sir soldier, whether aught avails to check the feeblest worm Fate sends to cross the path! But ask Abulfazl there, he stands closer in council to Akbar than I."

There was a slight suspicion of jealousy in his tone as he turned toward a burly, broad-faced, clean-shaven man whose expression of sound common sense almost overlaid the high intellectuality of his face.

"What ails the King?" he answered, and as he spoke his light brown eyes, scarce darker than his olive skin, were on Akbar with all the affection of a mother who glories because her son has outgrown her own stature. "Can you not see that he fears death?"

"Death!" echoed Man Singh, hotly. "Since when? There was no fear of death in Akbar when he, my father, and I--each guarding the other's head--rode down that cactus lane at Sarsa when the spear points were thick as the thorns!--nor when at Ahmedabad he sounded the reveille to awaken his sleeping foes--though they outnumbered him by four to one--because it was not regal to take them unawares--nor when----"

Abulfazl laughed, a fat chuckling laugh which suited his broad open face: "Lo! I shall have come to thee, stalwart and true, when I run short of incidents for my poor history of this glorious reign. Yet none knows the Most Excellent's reckless bravery better than I. But 'tis to his dream he fears death, Man Singh,--his dream of personal empire that is bound up with this thirst-stricken town, founded for the heir of his body! And this fear of the force of fate comes upon him at the Nau-r?z[2] always, since both father and grandfather died ere they were fifty; and Prince Sal?m----"

"Curse the young cub," broke in the Rajp?t angrily, "what of him now?"

"Only the old tale," replied Shaikh Abulfazl gravely, "drunk----"

"Oh! Let the young folk be----" interrupted Birbal bitterly, as he passed on. "'Tis God gives us our sons; not we who make them. Mayhap some of us might have found better heirs through the town crier!"

Abulfazl looked after him pityingly. "It wrings him too, with Lalla, his son, ever in the Prince's pocket. Such things are tragedies, and I thank heaven that my father----"

"If Abulfazl has time for gratitude to his Creator"--broke in a voice polished to the keenest acerbity--"can he not find a better subject for it than mere man, even though the man be his father?"

Abulfazl turned in perfect good-humour on his bitterest enemy, the rival historian Budaoni, who, as opponent-in-chief of all reforms, still wore a beard, while his green shawl and turban showed him an orthodox Mahommedan.

"Not so, Mulla-sahib," retorted the Shaikh carelessly. "I will leave the remark as a Shiah[3] sin for you to chronicle in your Sumi[4] fashion."

So saying, he also passed on to stand beside the King, and, as Birbal had already done, strive to rouse him from his dreams.

"My liege!" he said, "the deputation from the English Queen----"

For an instant Akbar looked at him, resentfully; then the despotic finger raised itself, and Abulfazl fell back to join Birbal in failure.

From behind in the circle of the courtiers came an airy laugh.

"Will you not try, Oh! most learned! to rouse him with religion, since politics and art have been given congé, or shall I, as pleasure, fling myself into the breach?" said an overdressed noble with a handsome evil-looking face as he bowed ornately to the group of long-bearded Mahommedan doctors who held themselves together in contemptuous condemnation of all things.

"Where God sends meditation, Mirza Ibrah?m, He may haply send penitence also," replied their leader, the Makhd?m-ul'-mulk. "For that, we men of God wait with what patience that we can."

"I would we could rouse him," murmured Birbal, standing apart, "the generalissimo said true. He has need of all his skill--and yours, Shaikh-jee."

"Mine has he ever," replied Abulfazl, simply; and it was true. No lover was more absorbed by his mistress than he by Akbar and Akbar's fortunes. He was obsessed by them.

So as they stood, those two faithful friends and counsellors of the one man whom they held dearest upon earth--yet in a way unfaithful, distrustful of each other because of unconfessed jealousy--there came to them close at hand throbbing through the hot yellow sunshine that seemed to throb back in rhythm, the sound of an hourglass drum, and a high trilling voice--

"May the gods pity us, dreamers who dream of their godhead."

"It is tma," muttered Birbal to himself. "What seeks the madwoman now?" And he strode back to where on the outskirts of the circle of courtiers some disturbance was evidently going on.

"Let her pass in an' she will," he called to the ushers, angrily. "When will men learn that fair words fight women better than foul ones. I will dismiss her."

"Bards of a feather flock together," sneered Budaoni, alluding to Birbal's own minstrel birth. Abulfazl who was close behind his enemy turned on him courteously.

"Mayhap he and my brother Faiz, Hindu and Unorthodox poets-laureate, being disappointed of a worthy colleague from your sect Mulla-jee, are seeking one--amongst women!"

There was a laugh, and Budaoni turned aside scowling, with a murmured "May God roast him!" It was his favourite wish for the unorthodox.

Meanwhile a red dress showed through the bevy of protesting ushers and the next moment a group of three persons was standing before Birbal. One the woman who had sung, the other the rebeck player whose fine careworn face had shown cameo-like against her glowing colour, the third an old man almost hidden by his big drum.

The woman was past her first youth, but she was still extraordinarily handsome, and her dark eyes, full of some hidden thought, looked defiantly into Birbal's.

"I am the King's bard--the King's champion," she said in a low rapid voice, "I have come to sing to him."

Birbal bowed with a half-disdainful sweep of both hands.

"Those who know tma Devi as the daughter--the daughter only--of her dead father, may disclaim her right of succession. Birbal does nothing so--so unnecessary! Akbar has no need of your pedigrees to-day, madam! The King listens to no one--not even to your servant! Let the lady pass out again, ushers!"

For an instant tma hesitated. Then her eyes sought the rebeck player's and Birbal's followed hers instinctively. There was nothing unusual in the musician's thin face save its excessive pallor; in that he looked as if he had been dead for days. For the rest he was clean shaven to his very scalp, and wore no headdress; nor much of dress below that either. Birbal's swift downward glance paused in a moment at something attached to a skein of greasy black silk which the man wore, talisman fashion, about his throat.

What was it? A stone of some sort roughly smoothed to a square, and of a dull green uneven texture like growing grass. No! it was like leaves--like the rose leaves in a garden, and those faintly red specks were the roses. Yes! it was a rose garden. How the perfume of it assailed the senses, making one forget--forget--forget--

"Oh! rose of roses is thy scent of God?

Speak rose, disclose the secret!" "Foolish clod,

Who knows discloses not what's sent of God."

The quaint old triplet seemed afloat in the air and tma's voice to come from beyond something that was eternally unchanged, inevitable.

"Has the seedling no need of the root; does the flower not nurture the fruit?" she chanted, her eyes still upon the rebeck player.

Birbal looked at her, caught in the great World-Wisdom which poets see sometimes in the simplest words.

"She says truth," he murmured to himself. "She says truth!" Then with a light laugh he turned to Abulfazl. "Shall we let her pass? At least she can do no harm."

"Nor any good," broke in Man Singh hotly; "and it will but strengthen her madness! What! a woman to claim a Charan's[5] place--to give her body to the sword?--her honour to the dust for the King's? Psha! Bid her go back to her spinning wheel!"

Abulfazl smiled largely. "Lo! even Rajp?t manhood lives in the woman for nine long months--none can escape from the dark life before birth. Yea! let her pass in, Birbal--she can do no harm."