King-Errant

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

CHAPTER I

"The Long Years slide,
The Door of Life stands wide,
Ghosts creep inside,
With their dead fingers hide
Present from Past.
Dear God be kind!
Grant that I keep enshrined
Within my mind
The Love of Human-kind,
Until the Last"

Babar sat overlooking a Kâbul valley, a tall, straight, still athletic man of two-and-forty.

Twelve years had passed since, broken, crestfallen at his failure to keep the loyalty of Samarkand, he had shaken the dust of his kingly hopes in Transoiana from him for ever, returned to Kâbul and set himself another emprise--the conquest of India. Thus far he had not succeeded. Three or four attempts had been made, in themselves satisfactory, in result futile. On his last expedition he had got as far as Lahore; but he had had to return for reinforcements to Kâbul, leaving a doubtfully-loyal governor in the Punjâb. So he was still no more, no less, than King-of-Kâbul; for those twelve years had brought a marked diminution in the vivid initiative of his younger years. He was up at dawn as usual, it is true; the wine he had drunk overnight had never been allowed to cloud his days; yet those twelve comparatively empty years remained, and remain, in mute testimony to the toxic power of the body over the mind. He felt this himself vaguely; for he was always sensitive to the touch of truth.

He had begun wine-bibbing of deliberate intent. He had told himself that he would only indulge for ten years, until he was forty. Indeed, wanting one year of that age he had drunk more copiously as a sort of send-off to virtue. But virtue had not come. As he sat overlooking the valley where his twelve thousand troops were encamped, the instinct to enhance his keen enjoyment of the beauty he saw found words in an order for a beaker of good Shirâz wine, and an intimation that the Pavilion-of-Spirits was to be prepared, his friends and boon companions warned.

The royal cup-bearer brought a golden goblet filled to the brim, and he quaffed it down like mother's milk; so--the cup still in his hands that hung between his knees--sat drinking in that intoxicating beauty of the splendid world.

For it was still splendid to him; though for twelve years he had seldom gone to bed strictly sober. His face, however, showed no sign of his life, save in a certain premature haggardness of cheek. The eyes were clear as ever, and had gained in their falcon-like keenness by reason of his slight stoop, not from the shoulders, but the neck.

It was sunset. The crests of the surrounding hills showed softly violet against the clear, primrose sky. The girdle of the distant snow peaks were losing the last faint flush of day; the cold icy pallor that was Creeping over them, matched the low, level mist streaks which were beginning to stretch, like a winding sheet, over the darker purple shadow of the valley. A shadow that looked like the sky at night, all set as it was with constellations of camp fires ...

"Slave! Another goblet of wine!"

But, even as he gave the order, a twinge of conscience made him remember the Arabic verse: "The breach of a promise avenges itself on the promise breaker." But it was only a twinge. After all, most of the wine parties had been guileless and innocent. He could scarcely recollect being miserably drunk more than once or twice; and then he had always suffered horribly in the stomach for his sin. And but one or two parties had been disagreeable, as when one Gedâi, being troublesome-drunk had tried to recline on the royal pillow, and had had to be turned out neck and crop by royalty itself; such royalty having invariably a stronger head than the other carousers.

But even that had been rather funny; though not so funny as on the day when, drinking in the open, they had been apprised of the enemy's approach and Dost-Mahomed could not--despite skins full of water--be got on his horse; so Amni, being solemn-drunk, had suggested that rather than leave him in that condition to fall into the enemy's hands it would be better at once to cut off his head and take it away to some place of safety!

The very remembrance brought laughter. Babar tossed off the second beaker of wine, and stood up quoting Nizâmi's verses:

"Oh! bring the musky scented wine,
The key of mirth which must be mine,
The key which opens wide the door
Of rapture rich and varied store,
And o'er the temper casts a spell
Of kindness indescribable."

In those last words lay the secret of Babar's superiority to the debasing influence of his life.

His kindness was simply indescribable, and he stuck to his code of honour and morality with a certain fastidiousness. Men must carry their liquor like gentlemen, no man must be pressed to drink wine, no private house be unwillingly defiled with its use, even if the Emperor were the guest. Above all things, wine must not interfere with duty. He would follow the advice he had had cut on the side of the little, red granite cistern among the Judas trees in the Four-corner Garden of Kâbul--the little cistern that was so often filled with redder wine--he would sing with the singers and lutists:

"Sweet are the smiling Springs,
Sweet what each New Year brings,
Sweet is a cup of wine,
Sweeter is Love divine.
Oh, Babar! Seize them all.
They pass beyond recall."

He would seize all; but he would remain a kindly gentleman.

And so--if he were to send his letter to Mahâm, his dear wife, his ever-sweet guardian and friend, that night, he must finish it ere going up the Pavilion-of-Spirits!

They were constant correspondents, those two, and although they had only parted from each other at the Garden-of-Fidelity a day or two before, he had plenty to say to her, both as his moon, the woman who was the chief influence of his life, and also as the head of his family. For Mahâm's other children having died in infancy, leaving none but Humâyon in direct descent, Babar, by her advice, had married again. The youngest of three sons thus born he had made over at birth to Mahâm who was bringing the little Hindal up as her own. At the tribunal of his own heart, this was ever an action to be slurred over. It had doubtless brought great grief to the real mother, a good woman who had done her duty by him in giving him children. Still it had all been settled by usual custom. The auguries had been consulted before the birth of the child, and Mahâm had taken the chance of its being a girl. Yet ... In good sooth that whole year, with its episode of the taking of Bajour, touched a lower level than any other in Babar's thoughts. He had been six and thirty, it was the first time he had used match-lock men or artillery, and somehow--possibly because he had begun to take drugs as well as wine--he had reverted to inherited instinct. He had been minded to emulate his ancestor Timur--he had done so ...

Three thousand infidels put to the sword!...

Babar escaped from the remembrance and palliated the action by telling himself that the Afghâns were an impossible race, strangely foolish and senseless, possessed of little reflection and less foresight. What trouble had not the Yusufzâis given him until he had attached them by marrying the daughter of their chief.

That, anyhow, had not been sordid. Babar recalled the whole incident with pleasure. How he had gone, disguised as a wandering mendicant to the chief's fort, during a feast, in order to spy out the land. How the Lady Mubârika--the Blessed-Damozel--had noticed the handsome beggar and sent him food from her own dish. How he had thanked her, found out she was not betrothed, and had wrapped the food she had given him in his handkerchief, hidden it in a hole in the wall, and gone back to claim her as his bride.

"I have no daughter," came back the proud answer.

"Ask her concerning a wandering mendicant," Babar replied, "and if more proof be wanted, find the food the gracious Lady gave wrapped in my handkerchief and hidden in a breach of thy fort. So let it be peace!"

And peace it had been; for the Lady Mubârika...! Could he ever forget her grace and dignity as she stood before him for the first time as a bride? When she had let slip her veil and laid her pale hands on her pale bosom.

"My lord! Remember that the whole tribe of Yusufzâis sits enshrined in my heart!"

It had been fine!

No! Even though Mahâm had held his soul, that, and his passionate appreciation of it, had been a gleam in a dark year. And no one had ever had an unkind word for the Lady Mubârika. Childless, reserved, quiet, she was yet a power in that household he had left behind him in Kâbul. So he wrote to his moon:

"Thou hast good friends with thee. That Dearest-One and the Blessed-Damozel are as sisters to thee, is ever a consolation to me. Also that our farewell was in that same garden where my first love died, and rose again in thee. In truth it was in its greatest glory; the flowers yellow, purple, red, springing everywhere, all mingled together as if they had been flung and scattered abroad from the full basket of God. The pomegranate trees so beautifully yellow, the fruit hanging red upon the boughs. The grass plots covered with the second crop of white and pink clover. The orange bushes so green and cheerful, laden with their golden globes. In good sooth, of all the gardens I have planted--God knows how many--this one is the crown; none could view it without acknowledging its charm. Humâyon hath come to join me as arranged, though somewhat tardily, for which I spoke to him with considerable severity; nathless with difficulty, my moon, since he is thy son and the beauty, and vigour, and valiance of his seventeen years would disarm an ogre.

"Bid Ma'asuma be a good girl till my return and tell her I will keep her husband's life safe as my own; and greet little Rosebody from her father. Lo! is there aught in the wide world more captivating to a man's heart than his female children. Except perchance, my moon! his wife."

Ten minutes after despatching this, sealed and signed, by special runner, Babar was the centre of the merriment in the Palace-of-Spirits. In good sooth at that early hour, it was innocent and guileless enough. A party of men, chosen chiefly because they were of like temperament to himself, all of them distinguished by general bonhommie and not a few by wit and accomplishments, all met together to enjoy themselves, sometimes with the aid of aromatic confections, sometimes with wine or spirits.

To-night it was the latter, so the fun waxed fast.

The screens of the tent had been thrown back; they could see the valley beneath them studded with fire stars.

"Look! Most-Clement!" cried Târdi-Beg. "Yonder, I swear, is the Heft-Aurang."

Babar bent his keen eyes hastily on the flickering lights. Aye, the Heft-Aurang--the Seven thrones! The thought took him back with a rush to Baisanghâr, dead these twenty years; from him, memory fled to Gharîb and the Crystal-Bowl-of-Life. He carried the copy Mahâm had given him in his bosom always, though he seldom used it. It was too small for wine! But some day--aye!--some day soon--he would keep his promise to himself and forswear drinking.

"Yea!" remarked Ali-Jân, not to be outdone, "and yonder to the right are the Brothers."

"And look you to the left, the Warrior," stuttered Abul-Majîd. "His sword is somewhat crooked."

"'Tis thine eyes are askew," laughed Shaikh-Zîn. "Thou never hadst a head worth a spoonful of decent Shirâz."

So in laughter, and quips, and cranks, the merriment waxed. They could most of them string verses after a fashion, and some of them began reciting their latest efforts. The climax being reached when Ali-Jân gravely gave a well-known couplet as his own!

"When lovers think, their thoughts are not their own,
But each to each Love's communings have flown."

"Hold thy peace, pirate!" came Babar's full joyous voice. "That is Mahomed Shaikh. Thou couldst not write such an one for thy life."

Ali-Jân, who was already far gone, waggled his head. "Lo!" he said with a hiccup, "I could do--doz-shens!"

"And I." "And I," chorused others militantly, for the spirits were rising fast.

"So be it!" cried Babar, as ever the most sober of the party. "Let us all try and parody it extempore! Now then, Ali-Jân--'tis thy turn first. Rise and out with it instanter!"

Ali-Jân rose gravely and stood swaying. "When--" he began solemnly. "When--"

Then he subsided, gravely and solemnly. The roar of consequent laughter was dominated by Babar's joyous shout, "I have it! I have it!"

"When Ali drinks, his legs are not his own,
Each seeks support and neither stands alone."

"Shâbâsh! Wâh! Wâh! Ha! Ha! Ha!" The uproarious mirth echoed out into the still night.

"The Emperor is merry," quoth the sentries in the valley, with a smile.

"Aye! but he looks ill for all that," said an orthodox old trooper. "I saw him shiver yestere'en when he swam the stream in his clothes, and the water was lukewarm. Time was, not so long ago, when he would have swum an ice torrent and felt no cold; now, he hath taken a chill."

Whether the man was right in the cause thereof, he was correct in the illness. The next morning found Babar down with so severe a defluxion, fever, and cough, that he spat blood. The court physician dosed him with narcissus flowers steeped in wine, and Ali-Jân, Târdi-Beg and all the other boon companions sat with the monarch to cheer him up by laying the blame of the illness on the cold, or the heat, or what not. But Babar himself knew whence the indisposition proceeded, and what conduct had led to this chastisement. What business had he to laugh at folk in verse for his own amusement? Still less, no matter how mean or contemptible the doggerel, to take pride in it and write it down? It was regrettable that a tongue which could repeat the sublimest productions, should lend itself to unworthy rhymes; it was melancholy that a heart capable of nobler conceptions should stoop to meaner and despicable verses. From henceforth he would abstain religiously from vituperative poetry.

This excellent resolution--or something else--proved curative; and Babar was soon on the mend and was able to write the following:

"Oh! what can I do with you, flagrant tongue?
On your account I deserve to be hung.
How long will you utter bad parodies,
One half indecent, the other half lies?
If you wish to escape being damned--Up rein!
Ride off--nor venture near verse again."

To which he appended a quatrain in his best Arabic:

"Oh, God! Creator of the World! My soul
I broke upon the Wheel of Evil sore.
Cleanse me from sin, my God, and make me whole,
Else cursed shall I be for evermore."

He felt better after thus committing his penitence to writing. So with renewed vitality, and gathering his force together as he went along, he crossed the Sind river to find the moment ripe for his emprise. India was in a turmoil, divided by two rival claimants to its throne.

The whole country was over-run by armies, more or less independent; the whilom Governor of Lahore at the head of one, numbering over forty thousand men, chiefly Afghâns.

It broke up, however, by sheer invertebrate disintegration, ere Babar could reach it, and he passed on, unopposed, by the lower Kashmir hills, by Bhimber and Jhelum till he arrived at Sialkot, keeping all the while close to the skirts of the mountains where retreat and safety might be found if needs be.

But now, before him, lay the wide plain of the Punjâb. Here for the first time in his life, Babar faced a real galloping country where horsemen could, indeed, charge to some purpose. But with flat plain behind him it was necessary that the plain should be friendly. To ensure this needed delay, he had to negotiate, to threaten, to pacify. Half-a-dozen petty chiefs had to be brought to their senses, and those senses were so dull, so rude, so provokingly stupid. What for instance could be said to a man who actually claimed to be seated in the Presence, when nobles and princes of the blood-royal stood by in all humility?

Babar's language on such occasions was always frank, truthful, utterly unanswerable.

"The Most-Clement hath settled his hash," remarked the Prime-Minister with a smile, when the old ex-governor of Lahore, having been caught, was brought before the Emperor, with the two swords which the rebel had boastfully hung round his neck as sign of unyielding opposition, still dangling under his chin. This by Babar's own order, to emphasise the trouncing which sent the old sinner away unharmed, but sadder and wiser.

"Yea!" replied the Emperor quite gravely. "Yet I told him naught but what he deserved most truly, for I had done much for him. And, as thou sawest, he had no answer. He did, indeed, stammer out a few words, but not at all to the purpose, for what reply could he make to such confounding truths?"

"Of a surety, none," assented his hearers, still with a smile. Folk had to smile often over Babar's frank, outspoken clarity.

So, by slow degrees, and not without many a drinking-party, Sirhind was reached; and here the Emperor's soul was refreshed by the sight of a rivulet of running water! It was almost unbelievable; and no doubt he drank a libation of something stronger in its honour.

Then, but a few miles farther on, he came upon an extremely beautiful and delightful place with a charming climate, where, perforce, he had to halt a few days if only to explore the neighbouring country which promised well. Doubtless he was close to the southern spurs of the Sewâlik hills, and here, in one of the side valleys, he found himself on the bank of one of those oleander-set streams, where the butterflies get mixed up with strange sweet-scented flowering shrubs. One of those streams which in the dry season are beds of boulders with a half-hidden trickle of water amongst the stones; but which, in the rains, swell extremely and rush down in a perfect torrent to join that strange Gaggar river which rises forty feet in a night, and sweeps away, resistless, to a still stranger fate--to total disappearance in the sands of the Rajputâna desert. A fate which must have impressed the Emperor with his keen appreciation of the poetry in life.

And here, in early March, these same flowering shrubs must have been budding, the butterflies must have been fluttering over the new russet shoots of the maiden-hair fern; and in sheltered spots Babar's favourite Judas trees must have been in bloom.

The temptation was too great! He called another halt, and set to work, not to drink, but to make a garden; while, not to lose time, he sent out scouts and spies to bring him intelligence as to his enemy's movements. Doubtless as he laid out his favourite Four-cornered Garden, he drank success to it, and dreamt happy, if confused, dreams of stone-watercourses and bright fountains after the Kâbul pattern; for he wrote and told Mahâm all about it. And he told her also that her son Humâyon was bearing himself like a hero and had gone out with a light force to reconnoitre and disperse some wandering bands of marauders; but that he would be back again of course, for his eighteenth birthday on the 6th, when there was to be a great festival on the occasion of the first beard-cutting; such a festival as would have delighted the heart of the old grandmother Isân-daulet--on whom be peace!

And his thoughts waxed soft and young again with the remembrance of that shaving of his own--on his eighteenth birthday--on the upland meadow close to the Roof-of-the-World when there was but one real tent in his encampment, and his following had consisted of more than one and less than two hundred tatterdemalions. Times had changed; and yet he was defying Fate to the full as much as in those far away days; for against his twelve thousand troops all told, the whole strength of Northern India was gathering itself upon the plain above Delhi. That fateful plain where hundreds of thousands of men had already given up their lives in battles which for their time had decided the fate of Hindustân.

What would that fate be now?

He was not without thought; but he was without fear. He meant to win. Meanwhile till the fateful moment of fight arrived there was the Garden! When that was fairly started, news came that the enemy had begun to advance slowly. It was time therefore to be on the move. But the broad, calm stream of the Jumna river was not to be allowed to slip past without being pressed into the service of pleasure, so, while the army held down the bank for two marches Babar sailed down in an awning-covered boat and explored many a side stream where the bottle-nosed alligators lay on the sand banks like logs, and great flocks of flamingoes, white in the distance, rose startled into flaming red clouds. And in the still evenings so cool, so pleasant, Babar, who had a genius for the comfortable, ordered aromatic confections to be served, and the party floated down stream in dreamy content, trailing their hands in the refreshing water and singing low-toned songs in a whisper, until, suddenly the boat touched a sandbank, and Shâh-Hussan went over on his back, laid hold of Kâli-Gokultâsh, who was cutting a melon, and both fell into the water, the latter leaving the knife he held, stuck point down in the deck! And what is more, he refused to regain the boat, but continued swimming in his best gown and dress of honour till the shore was reached!

But there--a fine figure of a young man, handsomer in face than his father ever was, taller in height, yet without the latter's inexpressible charm--stood Humâyon to join in the laughter for a few moments, but then to give news which ended fooling.

The advance party of Sultân-Ibrahîm's army was within touch.

Babar was ready on the instant. He was out of the boat before it was moored, giving orders, short, sharp, stern.

The time for play was over.