She turned to lean over the parapet, as if to rest her eyes, her very heart, upon the dim blue distant haze betwixt earth and sky.
"Because thou wilt not see the Truth, sister"--the voice seemed to her to belong to that dim earth and sky--"because thou hast denied love. Yet naught else will save the King."
She gave a startled cry but, looking round, saw that the Wayfarer had gone. "May Shiv-jee protect me" she murmured to herself. "He is magician for sure. Yet is he wrong. I am no woman, but the King's Châran, I have done my duty!" So, clenching her hands she sate and dreamed for him of safety, honour, empire.
Birbal, meanwhile, dreamt the same dream as he plunged into the increasing intricacy of cabal which centred round his master. So he gave no thought at all to so contemptible a person as the opium-drugged, song-besotted Bayazîd who still styled himself the King of Malwa, though he had fled from royalty for the sake of a dead dancing girl; as if any woman were worth such a sacrifice! True, the tragic tale of Rupmati, the poetess, musician, singer, ultimate artist, who had made her King forget even statesmanship for seven long happy years, had its æsthetic beauty. One could picture the consternation of the dove-cot when Adham Khân, Akbar's general and foster-brother put the royal lover to flight; picture still more easily, knowing Adham Khân's nature, his defiance of orders, and the proposals he made to Rupmati. While the rest was pure poetry! The beautiful woman dressing herself as a bride is dressed for the conqueror's assignation, and then leaving nothing but dead flesh awaiting him on the couch strewn with flowers. That was fine! But Bayazîd? Even though Akbar's own hand had brought retribution on libertine Adham's head for this and other offences, he, Birbal, would never have come cringing to the Emperor's court, to spend his time in singing love ghazals. That was contemptible.
And yet as the day wore on, the memory of the rebeck player's words returned inconsequently, almost annoyingly. What was it to him, Birbal, if Bayazîd had a supper party or no? He had other corn to parch. And he parched it consistently until, late on in the evening, having excused himself, he knew not why, from an entertainment at the palace, he fell asleep peacefully.
The gongs were sounding eleven when he woke suddenly to a new resolve, which admitted of no reconsideration.
He would go to the river palace. After all, there might be something in what the rebeck player had said--he might be in the right. At any rate there was no harm in seeing. He clapped his hands and ordered his fast trotting bullocks. But the river palace lay some miles away in an orange garden down by the sliding yellow stream which flows past Agra and it was nigh on midnight ere he reached its wide open gateway. Bidding his râth await him outside, he passed inward. A sentry slept in the scented shadow of the archway, so he went on unchallenged into the scented garden where the faint shadows of the waning moonlight slept also across the broad paved walks, and on the conduits of running water that was hastening to slake the nightly thirst of the sun-wearied plots of pomegranate and orange trees on which the ripe fruit hung obscure. The dim clearness seemed to show the darkness; above all the utter darkness of the great pile of the palace.
No signs here of a supper party! The fact whetted his curiosity, and he went on, feeling himself the only live thing in a world of drugs and dreams.
In the hallway another drowsy servant showed, curled up half asleep upon the floor.
"Your master?" asked Birbal.