King-Errant

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

CHAPTER II

I set Death's Door wide open for thee, Friend,
That thou might'st go.
I did not weep; I did not even send
One sign of woe
To follow, lest the way thou had'st to wend
The harder show.
But thou? Thou shut'st the Door upon my face,
Thou hid'st from me
One tiny gleam of glory from the place
Where thou would'st be;
In this world or the next there is no trace
No trace of thee!

With the swift family affection of their clan, relatives gathered round Babar in his bereavement. His paternal aunts came from Khorasân, and ere the forty days of mourning were over, a small cavalcade arrived from Tashkend. But it brought an aggravation of grief; for old Isân-daulet had predeceased her daughter by a few days. Babar's uncle, the little Khân, had also died; but beyond the fact that this deepened the Shadow-of-Death which seemed to have fallen over his young life, it brought no sorrow to the King. It was different with his grandmother. With her passing he had veritably no feminine thing left to whom he owed affection and duty, to whom he could go for comfort and counsel.

There were his paternal aunts, of course; good creatures every one of them, especially Ak Begum, though the others always flouted her because she had not married. Which was very unkind, since anyone with half-an-eye could see it was because she had devoted her life to her fat, half-witted lame sister. Poor Badul-jamâl-Begum! What an irony of fate it was that she had been called that! The "Lady of Astonishing-Beauty." But feminine names were beyond reason. Even Ak Begum--the "Fair Princess." What a name for that little bird-like, dark creature who twittered and preened herself at every word.

Yet she was the only one of them who understood, who gave the young man's sore heart any comfort at all.

She came to him, looking as if no pin were out of place, so natty, with her scanty hair still braided in virginal fashion on her wrinkled forehead, and said in her high piping voice:

"Lo, nephew! here are violets. A man brought them from the snows. Are they not sweet? Sniff them! Thy mother was ever so fond of them."

And Babar sniffed at them and afterwards took them to his mother's grave. Yes! The Fair Princess was certainly his grandfather's daughter; of the same blood as he was.

Still, grief must have its way, and here it was unbounded. Regret and remorse were mixed with it; and, yet once again, Babar gave way before the mental strain.

He tried to resume his ordinary life and actually started to lead his army afield, but was struck down with a sort of sleeping sickness. For days no matter what efforts they made to rouse him, his eyes constantly fell back to sleep. Yet after a time he pulled himself together again and started once more, but this time with no definite plan. Nor did he quite recover his normal health all that winter, which was spent in half-hearted attacks, and whole-hearted forgiveness of all and sundry of his enemies; for it was not his wish to treat anyone harshly. The snow lay very deep that winter in the high glens and passes. At one place off the road it reached up to the horses' cruppers and the pickets appointed for the night-watch round the camp had to remain on their horses, from sheer inability to dismount.

Half the army suffered, and Babar himself had to be carried back to Kâbul, helpless with lumbago. Mental unhappiness always seemed to affect his bodily health. But spring comes early in Kâbul and the pulse of renewed life began to beat once more in Babar's veins. By March, when the red tulips he had planted there were in full bloom about his mother's grave in the garden of the New Year, he was once more looking out from that high ground at the world beneath his feet, and straining his bright eyes over new horizons.

One thing he must do. He must marry. But this time he would choose for himself. This time he would give himself a chance of finding that new world he had seen when he was a boy in Dearest-One's eyes. Poor Dearest-One! He had had letters from her concerning their mother's death, and their pitifulness had almost broken his heart. Yet he could do nothing, nothing! She was as one dead; only not at peace like his mother.

But she also had urged marriage. Yes! he must marry, and no one should have a finger in the matrimonial pie but himself; least of all his paternal aunts. If needs be he would marry privately. The idea attracted him; he pondered over it. The question arose, in that case, whom he was to choose. Amongst the well born, those who lived in the circle of distinction as the phrase ran, it would be impossible. Without a confidante the mere broaching of marriage was out of the question.

And yet the very idea of one low born was distasteful to him.

So, as he pondered vaguely over possibilities, an idea came to him.

What of the frightened girl? Why not?

She could not be more than a year or two his senior; if that, for she had been much younger than his Cousin Gharîb. And her father was dead. And she lived in a House-of-Rest. That is to say if she still lived--or if she was not married.

Bah!--he was a fool to let his fancy run so far. Still he could enquire when he went to Khorasân as he meant to do some time that summer. Meanwhile a feeling of content came to him; partly because his imagination endorsed the idea as delightfully sentimental; mostly because it postponed necessity for immediate action.

And yet, when a day or two after a missive arrived from his uncle, Sultan Hussain, begging for his assistance at Khorasân against the arch enemy and raider Shaibâni-Khân who threatened an inroad, Babar felt pleased at what seemed an order from Fate; especially as the missive came by the hands of rather a quaint ambassador; namely by the son of his uncle's professional Dreamer-of-Dreams. To be sure Cousin Gharîb had made fun of the man's pretensions; but there was more in that sort of thing than could be accounted for by reason. Anyhow, it was a clear duty to set off at once. If Shaibâni was the enemy, then, if other princes went to the attack on their feet it was incumbent on him to go if necessary on his head! and if they went against him with swords, it was his business to go, were it only with stones!

"The Most High must have a care of Kâbul nathless," said wary old Kâsim. "Look you the saying runs:

Ten dervishes in one rug
Lie comfy, and warm, and snug,
But two Kings upon one throne--
Such a thing never was known.

The most High's brother--and his cousin--"

But Babar cut him short. He never would listen to suspicions of his own relations.

"I have done nothing," he said, with just that little touch of conscious virtue that in him was so translucent, so simple, though in one less artless it might have been offensive, "to provoke either of them to hostility; neither have they given me ground for dissatisfaction."

Kâsim shrugged his shoulders and muttered under his breath that it would need the Day of Judgment to make some folk believe in sin, and applied himself to seeing that the garrison left was sufficient to keep order.

Babar himself was full of spirits. Apart from other considerations the prospect of, at last, seeing Herât, the most civilised city in Central Asia, filled him with keen interest. It was full, he knew, of poets, painters, philosophers, and its luxuries were things to speak of with bated breath. In addition, he had a pleasant remembrance of his Uncle Hussain. It was more than ten years since he had seen him over in the camp which had struck him, the hardy barbarian, with awe. Did the old man--old now with a vengeance since he had reigned a good fifty years--still keep butting rams and amuse himself with cock fighting? Above all, did he still on festival days put on that small turban tied in three folds, broad and showy, and having placed a plume nodding over it in that style go to prayers? Babar wrote in his own hand--in the Babari writing which he had just invented and of which he was vastly proud--a letter to the kindly old man, telling him that he had set out from Kâbul and hoped to be with him shortly. This he entrusted to an ambassador who with the Dreamer-of-Dreams started express for Herât; he himself having a small job on hand by the way, in the punishment of some wandering tribes to the west.

It was not much of a task; but summer quarters in the hills had a fascination for Babar, and he remained on the top of one of the many ranges he had to cross; despatching Kâsim-Beg meanwhile with a body of troops to scour the countryside for rebels.

There was a sense of freedom about the wide upland stretches of sweet grass, where flocks and herds grazed placidly, where flowers blossomed by the million, and the tall fir forests edged the downward slopes. The whole world of blue waving hills touched the blue sky. One might be adrift on a huge raft in the River of Life. Babar would doff shoes and wander barefoot for hours, content with a chance shot after an escaping deer, or a chance following of his own vagrant thoughts. And these often fled in the direction of a House-of-Rest wherein dwelt a frightened girl. He could not help it. He was made sentimental to his heart's core. Remove the pressure of fine fighting, of ardent ambition, and there he was, ready to be touched by pity, love, admiration. And the thought of the woman to come was a perpetual stimulus to his imagination. The mere fact that he did not know her name was delightful; it took from the idea all trace of earth. And Babar, though the very reverse of ascetic in his tastes and pleasures, had ever been repulsed by sensuality. His was the Epicurean enjoyment of the spirit, as distinct from that of the mind, or that of the body. So in his thoughts he called the woman he intended should be his wife "My moon," which is the eastern equivalent of "My queen"; and, in easy dilettante fashion wrote more than one ode to that luminary. Most of them were in Persian and contained exactly the proper number of feet, and rang the appointed interchanges of meaning and words with faultless accuracy. He was quite proud of them, and thought better of them than of the one in Turkhi; which, however, he set to music and sang, for his innate good taste was for ever breaking loose from scholastic tradition. He twanged the tune on a cithâra as he sat on a rock in the moonlight and felt quite light-hearted over his own unworthiness; it fitted so neatly into the rhyming fall ...

Moon of still night!

Whence the bright light

that enfolds

In its pure smile

Earth's untold guile;

that upholds

Silver in glow,

whiter than snow,

this my hand

Tuning thy praise?

Whence come thy rays?

From what land

Bringest thou peace,

thus to release,

from its sin

Stricken sad heart,

wailing its part

in Life's din?

Lo! from God's sun

must thou have won

thy kind light.

Though I am clay,

watch me alway

through the night.

I am of earth;

thine is the birth-

right divine.

Moon of my soul,

thine is this whole

heart of mine.

The distance from Kâbul to Khorasân was over eight hundred miles; so with even every-day marching the journey would have taken some time, and Babar was in no particular hurry. Less so than ever when news came to him with the return of his ambassador, that Sultan Hussain had suddenly died from an apoplectic seizure. At first Babar felt inclined to turn back. His uncle, he knew, had left his kingdom, in unheard of fashion, to his three legitimate sons, in defiance of the old saw about the ten dervishes, and Babar had too much experience to believe that such an arrangement could work satisfactorily. However he had other motives for advancing, and therefore he continued his route, and, passing over the last range of high hills, found himself in the country where the advanced detachments of the Usbek force were already raiding. This in itself was an attraction, bringing as it did a chance of fine fighting. He found his cousins, the new Kings, encamped, ready to meet the advancing foe on the Murghâb river; or rather he found two of them. The third, from private motives of pique had refused to join the confederacy. This appeared to Babar to be inexpressibly mean, when everyone else had united and were sparing no efforts to oppose an enemy so formidable as Shaibâni. He could not understand how any reasonable man could pursue a line of conduct which must after his death, stain his fair fame. Surely everyone with the commonest grace would push forwards his career, so that, even if closed, it would conduct him to renown and glory, since fame is truly a second existence?

These sentiments, however, fine as they were, did not make much mark on the luxurious camp on the banks of the Murghâb. His cousins received Babar fairly well, though their manners required some polishing up by old Kâsim-Beg's inflexible rules of etiquette. Of course, the fact that two of the younger and illegitimate princes did not come out as far as they ought to have done to welcome their Kingly cousin was objectionable; but that might be put down to delay in starting due to an over-night debauch, rather than to intentional slight. But when it came to the State reception in the Audience Tent, Kâsim had to pluck at his young master's girdle and remind him with this jog, that he was to go no further, but to await his eldest cousin's advance. Which he did obediently, knowing that old Kâsim held his King's honour as his own, and was keenly alive to his consequence.

But he, himself, was always forgetting these convenances, where he was concerned. If you really felt affectionate it was a nuisance having to wait, and bow, and scrape.

The State reception, however, went off very well and it was followed by a sort of entertainment at which wine was served in goblets of silver and gold, that were put down by the meat!

Fateful innovation which sent old Kâsim back to his own camp hungry, in the highest of dudgeons.

"Had it been a drinking party, sire," he protested, "'twould have been my own fault for being there. But at an official dinner, 'twas scandalous. No faithful Mussulmân could touch a morsel of food so defiled."

Babar, somewhat regretful at a rather abrupt departure, murmured an excuse to the effect briefly, of "autres tempes, autres moeurs"; whereat Kâsim-Beg, a purist for the old ways, broke out hotly:

"Lo! sire! the Institutions of Ghengis Khân have brought your Highness' family well through much trouble. Sacredly have they observed them in their parties, their courts, their festivals, their entertainments, their down sittings, their risings up, and it would ill become their descendant to flout them."

Babar flushed up; in his heart of hearts, he was not quite such an admirer of the old Turk. "Lo! the Institutes are good enough," he said; "a man may well follow them; yet are they not of Divine authority, so that one be damned for disobeying them. Besides, see you, what hope would there be for the world if folk made no change? If a father has done wrong why should not a son change it to what is right?"

Old Kâsim, munching away at the dry bread and pickles which was all his servants could produce, snorted. "'Tis the other way round most times; and see you, sire, I give those Kings your cousins one year, one little year, to hold Herât! Then the Kingdom of their father--God rest his soul since he had gleams of grace and once let one of his God-forgetting sons go before the magistrate--held--despite wine bibbing--for nigh fifty years, will have gone for ever."

"Aye," replied Barbar, thoughtfully. "I have noticed that myself. Some men drink with impunity. I wonder if 'twould hurt me?"

"God forbid! your Majesty!" said old Kâsim with a tremble in his voice. "Shall all our care, mine and the saintly Kwâja who held you as a boy in his guardian care, be wasted? God forbid, say I."

But Babar said nothing; he knew that in his inmost heart he had had for years a great longing just to see what it was like to be drunk! It could scarcely hurt for once, and the land of inebriety could hardly be the arid desert it had been painted for him, or so many folk would not wander in it.

He was always open to reason on all points. Nevertheless he gave out solemnly that he drank no wine, and his cousins, being good hosts, refrained from pressing him to do so.

Badia-zamân, the elder of the three, doubtless thought little of him for the abstinence. To be young, good-looking, able to enjoy yourself in every way and yet not to take the best of Life, seemed to him sheer foolishness; and he showed his estimate in his manner, so that Babar came home from his second interview in a fume of anger.

"This shall not be!" he said hotly. "Kâsim! send proper representations that young as I am, I am of high extraction. Twice have I by force regained my paternal Kingdom, Samarkand. To show want of respect to one who has done so much for his family by repelling the foreign invader is not commendable."

For a marvel the young King was on his dignity, much to old Kâsim's joy. And with good result; for nothing more could have been desired at the next audience which Babar attended with his full retinue. And a fine figure he looked, dressed in the very latest fashion with a gold brocade coat, a flowered undershirt and white silk baggy trousers all lined with gold thread. His hair, too, was scented and curled and his turban tied with a difference. A very different person this from the ragged, out-at-elbow fugitive, or even the stern young soldier in his tarnished coat of mail, fighting for life against overwhelming odds.

He rather liked the change. It was a new experience to ruffle with gilded youth, and he ruffled fairly until his boon companions began to play indecent and scurvy tricks, when he left, disgusted for the time being. But the entertainments were wonderfully elegant. There was every sort of delicacy on the comestible trays, and kababs of fowl and goose; indeed dishes of every sort and kind. The Prince-Kings vied with each other in the refinement of their luxuries, and certainly Badia-zamân's parties deserved to be celebrated; they were so fine, so easy, so unconstrained. On the other hand Mozuffar's entertainments were more amusing, especially when the wine began to take effect. There was a man who danced excessively well; a dance of his own invention.

"Dance or no dance," grumbled old Kâsim, "the Princes thy cousins have taken four months to reach this place. And now news comes that a plundering party of Usbeks is well within touch not more than forty miles off--and they dance! 'Twill be to another tune ere long."

"Mayhap they would let me go," said Babar eagerly, "'twould be a diversion."

So he was off to lay his proposition before his Cousins; but they, afraid of their own reputations, would not suffer him to move. The fact was, as he admitted to old Kâsim privately, the Princes, though very accomplished at the social board or in the arrangements for a party of pleasure, and though they had a pleasing talent for conversation and society, yet possessed no knowledge whatever of the conduct of a campaign, and were perfect strangers to the arrangements for a battle, or the danger and spirit of a soldier's life.

This left nothing more to be said; especially as his hearer agreed with every word.

Early autumn, however, had passed, and Shaibâni, being a careful general, prepared to withdraw his forces against the winter's cold. This being so, there was no longer any reason--there had been but little before--for remaining in camp at the Murghâb, and the Prince-Kings proposed a return to Herât and invited Babar to accompany them.

"Were I your Highness," said old Kâsim sturdily, "I would not go. So far God in His mercy has kept virtue on the lips of the King, and kept wine away from them. But in that God-forsaken city of Herât who knows what might happen? They tell me even the women there are castaway, and that your uncle the late King's widow drinks like a fish--may God reward her!"

"I have never seen a woman drink wine," said Babar quite thoughtfully. "Have you?"

Kâsim looked at his young master critically.

"New things are not always good things, sire," he replied drily, "and, as was mentioned ere we set out from Kâbul, God only knows what may happen there if we delay our return too long. Already have five months passed and 'tis a fifty days' march homewards."

"Not if we take the high road," said Babar.

"The high road," echoed the old general; "that may be covered with snow any moment now."

"Yet will I chance my luck," returned Babar gaily. "See you, old friend, I have my reasons! I must see Herât--in the whole habitable world they say there is not such a city; besides ..."

He paused, for his was a truthful soul even to itself; and he knew that the past six weeks of jollity and convivial male merry-making had considerably dimmed his desire to do his duty and marry. Still he had promised himself he would try and seek out his Cousin Gharîb's betrothed--for she had never been his wife--and he meant to do it. Between whiles of course. For he must make the most of his time in Herât. Yes! it would be a pity to miss the chance of his life. To be in the most refined of cities which possessed every means of heightening pleasure and gaiety; in which all the incentives to, and apparatus for, enjoyment were combined into one vast invitation to indulgence, and not to indulge, would be foolish. If he did not seize the present moment, even to the point of tasting wine, he was not likely to have such another.

And, certainly, wine seemed to raise the level of a man's mind. His cousins were but dullards out of their cups. And there was no need to exceed. To be dead-drunk was no pleasure to anyone.