The empress, however, discovering her loss, was nothing daunted. She put on disguise; somehow--Heaven knows how!--managed to cross the Jhelum, and finding her generals somewhat doubtful, somewhat chill, upbraided them for allowing their rightful king to be stolen before their very eyes. That night an attempt was made to rescue him by a nobleman called Fedai-Khân, who swam the river at the head of a small body of horse; but it failed, and half the party was drowned.
Next morning, Nurjahân, having succeeded in rousing the army to a sense of its duty, herself headed a general attack. There was no bridge; the only ford was a bad one, full of dangerous deep pools. But the rashness of impulse was leader, and the woman was amongst the first to land of a whole army, drenched, disordered, dispirited, with powder damp, weighed down with wet clothes and accoutrements.
The result was a foregone conclusion. Nurjahân herself was as a fury. Her elephant circled in by enemies, her guards cut down, balls and arrows falling thick around her howdah, one of them actually hitting her infant grand-daughter, Prince Shahriyar's child, who was seated in her lap. A strange place, in truth, for a baby, unless it were put there as a loyalist oriflamme. Then, her driver being killed, and leviathan cut across the proboscis, the beast dashed into the river, sank in deep water, plunged madly, sank again, and so, carried down-stream, finally found shore; and the empress's women, looking to find her half-drowned, half-dead with fear, discovered her busy in binding up baby's wound.
Bravo, Nurjahân! One can forgive much for this one touch of grand-motherhood.
Of course she was beaten; whereupon she gave up force and instantly went to join her husband in the guise of a dutiful wife. It was her only chance of regaining him, and her empire over his enfeebled brain.
Already she was almost too late. Mohabat had been before with her, had treated him with deference, with profound respect, had made him see that she was the cause of all his troubles--which was hardly the case. Anyhow, she was met point-blank with an order for her execution.
Even this did not daunt her courage. She only asked for permission to kiss her lord's hand before death.
Grudgingly assent was given; it could not well be withheld. And one sight of her was enough. Jahângir's heart had really been hers ever since, as a boy, she had defied him in that matter of the doves.
Perhaps--who knows?--she may have stood before him--guilefully--in the very attitude in which she had stood while Love flitted from the listless hand of Fate; and all that Mohabat could do was to bow low and say: "It is not for the Emperor of the Moghuls to ask in vain."
So Nurjahân was once more in her old place beside the drunkard, free to begin again with her fine, feminine wiles. It did not take her long to undermine Mohabat's influence. Within six months her intricate intrigues bore fruit. Jahângir, whose person was so watched and guarded that he was practically a prisoner, was spirited away by a muster of Nurjahân's contingent in the middle of a review, and Mohabat having thus lost his hostage was compelled to come to terms.