Читать книгу A Prince of Dreamers - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Oh! fathers who have sung I sing

With woman's lips

Yet shall your sword hold honour for the King

Till my blood drips

To cover failure with red blazoning,

Of set defiance, deathful-triumphing

Ohé the King

Challenge I bring

Ohé the King, the King!

The huge silver hilted, cross-handled sword she had been holding--its point skyward--smote the stone at her feet as the wild chant ended, and the clang of the tempered steel rang out over the roof as Âtma Devi, turning to the north, the south, the east, the west, repeated her challenge. She had put on her father's silvered coat of mail, and her long black hair bound with a silver fillet about the brows, made her look like some Valkyrie of the West, ready to avenge the slain.

A water-bright ripple of laughter came from the door opening on to the small square of roof, and Âtma turned toward it fiercely to see a pink and yellow lollipop of a woman, respectability, in the shape of a thick white burka veil,^[8] flung at her feet, leaning against the door lintel and watching her amusedly.

Her fierce frown faded. "Yamin," she said slowly, "What dost thou here?"

Siyah Yamin, pampered darling of the town, sank down, like a snake coiling itself, amid circling billows of soft scented satin and jingling fringes of silver and pearls. She was a small woman, extraordinarily graceful, extraordinarily beautiful, with a tiny oval innocent-looking face on which neither pleasure no pain left any mark whatever. From the crown of her head to the sole of her feet she looked, and was, prepared at all points for her trade; a dainty piece of confectionery ready to satisfy any sensual appetite.

"Here?" she echoed, and the one word showed her a passed-mistress in polished elocution. "Didst fancy I would stay in Satanstown because his Majesty the Monk chose to lump me with other loose livers and exile us beyond his city's walls? Not I!" Here the water-bright laugh rang out derisively. "Lo! many things have happened since Siyâla played with Âtma--what a bully thou wast in those days to poor little me; and thou lookst it now, thou sister of the veil!--for did we not drink milk together out of one vessel and under one veil, see you, before I drifted to the temple--and so hitherward? Yea! leaning on thy sword so--why! thou lookst beautiful! Could but some of my men see you----"

"Peace, woman!" said Âtma sternly. The tall cross-hilted sword held point downward formed a support for her elbow as she rested her head on her hand and gazed thoughtfully at Siyah Yamin.

"Thou hast not changed much, Siyâla," she said, more softly.

"Come! that is more like," laughed the little lady. "Those were merry old days! A pity thou didst not come with me to the temple, Âtma! Better anyhow than widowhood ere womanhood began."

"Peace, child!" repeated Âtma sternly. "What canst thou know of that high fate which makes of womanhood something beyond itself--but I waste words. Wherefore hast thou come?"

Siyah Yamin pouted her pretended sulkiness. "Because from my roof yonder--lo! how well we have kept the secret that thou didst not know the Companion-of-the-Court was thy next neighbour!--it hath been such fun, Âtma! beguiling the beadles whom his Monkey Majesty----"

"Have a care, Siyah Yamin!" interrupted Âtma hotly--"the King----"

Siyah Yamin coiled herself to closer laughing curves. "The King!" she echoed, "Oh yea! Âtma and the King--the King and Âtma!"

The woman hidden within the sword-bearer shrank back and paled.

"Well! What of Âtma and the King?"

"Naught! Naught!" laughed the little lady, "but I have heard of thy success to-day. What is there that Siyah Yamin does not hear? So when I saw thee from my roof up yonder with the old man's armour and the sword--frown not sweet sister, it becomes thee mightily--I just caught up my veil, and ran downstairs (for we have many entrances see you, and this tenement of yours is one of them) to offer thee congratulations--since if the King cast even the wink of an eye on a woman that is something! And they say he raised thee by the hands!"

The hot blood surged into Âtma's face. "And if he did, what then?" she asked.

Siyah Yamin rose, and yawning took up her veil. "Touching comes before tasting," she replied airily, "even with Kings. And so, having offered my gratulations on good luck--farewell."

Âtma stood frowning at her. "Thou playest a dangerous game, Siyâla; if the King discovers that thou--the darling of the town--hast set his rule at naught----"

Siyah Yamin burst into a perfect cascade of laughter. "Fie on thee, Âtma! and me a married woman, veiled, secluded, a perfect cupola of chastity!" Wrapped in her white burka, all one could see of the devilry within, was two eyes brimming over with malignant mischief.

"Married!" gasped Âtma, "what man has dared----?"

"Aye! He is brave," assented the courtesan, "and I love him--as much as I love most! And he is the best-looking of them all--is Jamâl-ud-din."

"Syed Jamâl-ud-din of Bârha?" echoed Âtma incredulously.

The veiled head nodded. "Yea! He is Syed, and set on his religion. So I said the Creed and he gave me one of the eight marriages--I forget which. These Mahommedan ceremonials are not awe-inspiring like the Seven Steps and the Sacrificial Fire; lo! even with no man, but a dagger, that gave me shivers. Thou wilt come and see me, Âtma. It is pleasant up there. We have joined four roofs. Ask for the Persian bibi from Khorasân and if needful give the password--'Kings-town.' Rage not, virtuous beloved! 'Tis better anyhow to live under Akbar than under Satan!"

So with a tinkling of silver and pearl fringes she passed upward.

Âtma stood for a while lost in thought, then rousing herself in quick impatience, put aside the sword in its appointed corner, removed her hauberk, laid it on the ground in front of the sword and on it set the two lamps which all night long kept watch and ward over the weapon, placed between them the death-dagger of her race, and so, her new-come evening task finished, went toward the parapet of the roof and, leaning her arms on it, looked out over the fast-fading horizon of India.

In her dark eyes still lay some of the unrest, the resentment which, since her father's death, had made the townsfolk call her mad: for those words with which the King had gifted to her the Châranship, "I'll treat thee not as woman, but as man," had curiously enough brought home to her all the limitations of that womanhood.

How little she could do--except die--for the King's honour. Still the roof was no longer voiceless. The challenge had rung out from it once more, obliterating the sad echoes of that last dying effort of the old man. She looked round as if listening for that feeble whisper.

No! It had gone. She was the Châran now! and the edge of the death-dagger was keen enough for woman's flesh; she might yet join the great and noble company of the self-immolated.

Her heart stirred in her at the thought of their deeds enshrined in old bardic verses that had been handed down from father to son from generation to generation.

They were in her keeping now at any rate, and she must not forget them.

So, half-kneeling by the low parapet, her chin resting upon her crossed arms, she said them over to herself rough, rude, almost unintelligible, yet still instinct with fire, with courage, with defiance.

She lingered lovingly over one: that tale of how the young ten-year-old Heera when his father was treacherously slain and his master falsely accused of high treason to his suzerain, was sent forth by his mother to seek his father's body in the wilds, and having found it, to take the death-dagger from the bleeding corpse, and so, all travel-stained and weary, his young face blistered with tears, to appear before the hasty tribunal and give the champion's cry--

It is a lie!

I, Heera, I

I take the lie!

Ye Bright-Ones see me die!

Avenge the lie!

And thus by his death force upon the conspirators a full inquiry. So she knelt dreaming, her chin upon her hand while the glow of the set sun faded from the sky.

Yet with all her dreaming she was very woman, and in every fibre of her being she still felt the touch of the King's hands upon hers.

Such hungry hands! Dimly, in her sexless soul, she recognised that quality in them. What did they want? Not womanhood certainly. But who wanted that? No one. Motherhood was one thing and widowhood was another, but sexual womanhood was nescience.

With a sigh she rose to fetch her Dharm-shastra and read her nightly portion from its pages, choosing it at random, so many slokas this way or that way from the one on which her eye fell first. Yet despite this superstitious selection, she was learned beyond the learning of most women, beyond even that of many learned men, for her father had taught her as he taught his sons--all save the Sacred Text, that privilege of Brahmanhood. The limitation, however, left Âtma smiling, since her widowhood outweighed for her the repetition of many gayatris.

By it she gained a privilege greater than her brothers. By its very virginity she became their ancestress, the ancestress of all her race. That voluntary yielding up of sex brought her eternal motherhood, because through her renunciation those heroes had found life everlasting.

Her barren breasts--sucked of no child's lips--had nurtured them--nurtured them all!

Shiv-jee, Râjindar, half a hundred others, were all her children. Aye, it was her hands which had sent little Heera into the wilderness to do his duty. His childish face full of tears of courage was hers!--was hers!

There was no death; nothing but unending life that "cannot slay that is not slain." So to her, as she sate reading the Sacred Book came spirits innumerable, until in the vast multitude of men, her own womanhood was lost.

A low knock came to the door. Holding the light by which she had been reading in her hand, she rose and went toward it.

"Who enters?" she asked, and started at the reply.

"It is I, Birbal. Open, my sister. I come from the King."

He stood within the threshold unfolding the shawl with which he was enveloped, and disclosing his keen face lit by a satirical smile.

"A good password, by all that's holy," he said airily. "Nay! frown not, sister, I am of thy tribe."

"True," she replied gravely. "My father spoke often of Maheshwar Rao"--she gave Birbal's tribal name with intent--"and said that could he but learn not to jest----"

The faint laugh, the little shrug of the shoulders came, unfailing as ever.

"Were the world less amusing, sister," he said, "Birbal might have more chance!" He passed lightly to the parapet, and sate on it dangling his legs "Padré Rudolfo, the Jesuit, hath it," he continued, "that I am the fool who saith 'There is no God'; but Birbal propounds no such proposition. He hath an open mind. His very errand here this night, my sister, shows--shall we say credulity? I come, sister, for thy rebeck player. I need him."

"Wherefore?" asked Âtma quickly.

Birbal's mouth quivered cynically. "Shall I say the King desires him, sister? Nay! I will not lie. I want him, because of a talisman stone he wears around his neck. He called it smagdarite. I wish to see it again."

"A stone?" echoed Âtma surprised, "what stone? He wears no talisman, for sure."

Birbal's feet came down the roof in sudden excitement. "He wears none! Better and better! Tell me where he lives, sister. I would see for myself. Come! quick, the night goes on, and it is time the King's Châran was abed."

He looked at her in frank mockery and she flushed slowly.

"If it be not for harm," she began, "he is but a poor player."

"Harm!" he echoed impatiently. "If what I think prove true, it is not likely Birbal would harm one possessed of--smagdarite! Out with it, sister. I have tramped from well to water, and water to well, these two hours seeking the Sinde envoy, but it comes ever from each clue that he has gone--disappeared beyond the city. So I bethought me of smagdarite and thee. Come! where lives he?"

"I will take my lord thither," she said evasively. "Nay! 'tis no trouble; he lives--he lives here in this very house."

She raised the light above her head and passed down the stairs. It was a many-storied tenement house, that circled round a central stair, and then broke away from it and wandered in labyrinthine passages to return once more to the same flight of steps; or was it another and she was purposely deluding him?

On and on they went through the dark silence, going down and down.

"He is in the cellars," she said, pausing at a corner to show with her lamp a flight of smaller, steeper steps. "He is so poor, he cannot pay. Have a care! the steps are broken!"

They stood before a small low door at which Âtma knocked. There was no answer. "Wayfarer!"^[9] she cried softly. "O! Wayfarer!"

Still no answer.

"I have a key," she said, and drew one from her bosom. Birbal followed the light into the dark room. In that hot climate a cellar is no bad place wherein to live, and this one struck pleasantly cool, deliciously scented as by a thousand roses in blossom.

Birbal was conscious of a sudden elation. He was on the track assuredly! The next instant he was standing beside a string bed on which lay, wrapped in a white sheet, the figure of the rebeck player. The clear, fine profile turned upward almost as if he lay dead, and he did not stir when Âtma touched him on the shoulder.

She gave a vexed sigh. "It is the Dream-compeller," she said, "he takes it at times, and lies like a log, and then----"

But Birbal, eager in his quest, had drawn the sheet aside, and now started back with a swift exclamation. For, on the drugged man's breast was no talisman; but, upturned as his, there lay the most beautiful face surely in the whole wide world. It was that of a girl apparently not yet in her teens, yet still close on womanhood; perfect, delicate, pure, like some scented lily. Her breath coming and going regularly exhaled the perfume of a thousand flowers.

"'Tis Zarîfa--his daughter," explained Âtma softly. "She is a cripple utterly. Naught shows of her scarcely save her face, but when her eyes are open, one forgets." She gathered the sheet together so as to hide all that should be hidden. Only that perfect face remained asleep upon the Wayfarer's breast.

"Does he give the Dream-stuff to her also?" asked Birbal, feeling his voice unsteady. Poet, artist, to his finger-tips, the sight before him stirred him in every fibre, bringing with it a sense of half-remembered dreams.

She shook her head. "He sends her to sleep first with flower essences. She is like a deer for scent--a rose makes her unconscious, and then they sleep, and sleep, and sleep."

Slumber seemed in the air. They stood beside the low string bed, silent, almost drowsy. Âtma roused herself with an effort.

"He promised he would not; but they must have been given money to-day," she said regretfully. "There is no use waiting, my lord--they will sleep for hours--perhaps days."

"Days?" he echoed interrogatively.

She passed her hand over her forehead again. "It seems as if it were days. Then, when he goes out, I carry Zarîfa up to my roof. She is so light. There is nothing of her but the face. Yet she sings like a bird."

Birbal's hand went out to the lamp Âtma held and turned its light full on her face.

"You are but half-awake yourself, sister," he said gravely. "And it is all hours of the night. See, I will wait until I note your light pass on the uppermost stair, lest danger lurk for you in the dark."

He waited for her to lock the door, then standing in the dark archway watched her twinkling light circle the stairs, then disappear, circle again higher up and disappear, until he judged from the failure of the twinkle to return that she had reached her roof. And, as he watched his mind was busy.

Who was this man? And did he really possess the art which some deemed magic, but which he, keen rational thinker, found to be inextricably mixed up with the whole problem of life? What was it that all the great ones of the earth had possessed? What gave them their power, their influence? What was it, for instance, which made his own clear-seeing eyes fall at times before those dreams in Akbar's? What was it, what?

His whole life was one ceaseless questioning; and finding no answer, he jested at the very question itself. What was reality? Not surely the death-like profile he had just seen, the death-like form with that flower-face upon its breast.

He was turning to go when a burst of half-sober laughter rose close beside him and a voice answered tipsily.

"Ts'sh, Dhâri, thou art not safe yet in Siyah Yamin's paradise, so lurch not, fool, lest the watch seize thee! Take my arm, lo! I am steady."

A sound as of confused tumbling against the wall belied the assertion.

Every atom of blood in Birbal's body seemed to leap to his hands in anger, for he recognised the voice. It was that of his only son, his spendthrift son Lâlla--the son of so much promise, so many regrets. And the other was his boon companion Dhâri--another bad son of a good father--Tôdar Mull the man whose financial skill had saved the Empire from the oppression of bribery. Where then was the third of this precious trio of young rakes? Where was the Heir Apparent, Prince Salîm? Not far off, that he would warrant!

Slipping off his shoes, he followed up the stairs, keeping at a respectful distance to be beyond reach of the lurches, yet close enough to hear the password given at the closed door, not far he judged from Âtma's square of roof. Allowing a decent interval he knocked again and briefly saying "Kings-town" found himself admitted to an inner, scantily-lit staircase which, however, showed a brilliant light at its end.

A minute more and he stood looking with a curious amusement at Siyah Yamin's paradise. The jade had taste! Here on the highest roof in all the city she had set a terraced garden open only to the stars. The little coloured lights, edging the rose beds and the tiny splashing fountains, scarcely sent their diffused radiance higher than his knee. It did not reach the edge of the trellised walls, and above that was night; cool, quiet, night. A liveried servant salaamed to him profusely, then returned to his solitary game of cards. A white Persian cat rose, hunched up its back and clawed viciously on the Persian carpets laid along the paths, then yawned showing its needle. like teeth. From a confused heap of silks and satins under an awning came loud snores, but at the farther end of the far roof there was wakefulness; for a half-tipsy, wholly-discordant voice made itself heard singing a song--