"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 Âtma 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 Âtma 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 Âtma'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."