Akbar stood up and looked about him dazedly. This instant response of Providence in his favour filled him with exulting awe. The almost fanatical enthusiasm for himself, for his ideals, which so often possessed him, seized on him; and Birbal, riding up in weary haste, found him the centre of an enthusiastic crowd who, granting him supernatural power, were busy substituting a dead woman for a living girl, while the latter sate stupidly in the sunlight watching the flames blaze up round another victim with that burden of an old man's head upon her lap.
Anyhow, the promise was unbroken; but Birbal, as he rode back behind Majesty, told himself there was trouble ahead. Such incidents were not wholesome, especially when every effort must be made to keep the King down to practical politics. So little might make him break away.
"So, Shaikie, hath lost one chance of Love," said Akbar, suddenly, when after a long and silent ride, the towers of Fatehpur Sikri showed clear again.
"And Empire hath gained many chances of stability," replied Birbal drily. "With grandsons of Râjpût descent, Majesty may hand on the crown, when God's time comes, in security."
"Of what?" asked Akbar swiftly. "That my dream will be fulfilled--the dream of a King." And then suddenly he almost drew rein. "The woman must be rewarded, Birbal--she who came, God knows how, to warn me. I would not have her escape reward."
"As Majesty has bidden her act Châran at the Festival to-day," replied Birbal, still more drily, "there seems small chance of her escaping notice."
The King's face broke suddenly into charming, whimsical smiles. "Of a truth, friend! I must be a thorn in the flesh even to thee; and to those others. God knows how they bear with me."
"Or how they will bear with her," acquiesced Birbal, grimly. For all his liberal culture, his boasted freedom from prejudices, he was conventionality itself in somethings, and it irked him to think of a woman masquerading as a Châran.
And yet Âtma Devi looked her best when a few hours afterward she knelt on the floor below the short flight of steps on the second of which the Emperor sate on the royal yellow satin cushions, while the throne, a marvel of gold and gems, occupied the highest step. Her long black hair, unbound, encircled by a steel fillet, fell like a veil over her shoulders, but left her bosom half-hidden by a man's steel corselet bare. A cuirass of steel chains hanging below the corselet covered the muslins of her woman's drapery, and her shapely arms, strenuous under the weight of the huge straight sword, held hilt downward, balanced it straight as a die, steady as a rock, point skyward.
In truth, the whole scene was magnificent beyond compare. The ordinary reception was over, but there was to follow one of the great episodes of the gorgeous yearly round of splendid yet curiously imaginative festivals, which marked Akbar's court. That is to say, the Emperor having challenged his court to play chess with him, was to play the game with the living chessmen who stood duly ranged on the huge chequered board of black and white marble which still exists at Fatehpur Sikri, just beyond the flight of steps which leads downward from the Hall of Audience.