It was dark, therefore, ere he and his galloping party stumbled over the stone causeways leading up to the high-perched citadel at Âkshi. Too late to disturb the women-folk, who, outworn by wailing, had gone to rest. But a little knot of long-robed physicians showed him the dead body of his father, lying ready for the funeral on an open bier in the Audience Hall. Babar had often seen death before, but never in this guise, with watchers and flaring torches and all the insignia of chiefship discarded, before the poor deserted shell of power.
It impressed his emotional nature vividly, and the mystery and the pity of it went with him to the dim royal room--so rough in its ancient royalty--where his father had been wont to sleep, and where the very touch of the royal quilts, surcharged with the personality of the cold dead in whose place he lived, seemed to burn in upon his young body and keep it awake. Not with concern or regret for things past, but with keen curiosity as to what was going to happen in the future to one Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar.
Lineal descendant of Timur the Earth Trembler; also of the Great Barbarian Ghengis Khan, was he to follow in their footsteps of conquest? Or would he be snuffed out at once by Uncle Ahmed of Samarkand? Wherefore, God knew, since he, Babar, had never done his uncle any harm. On the contrary; if he lived, he would have to marry that uncle's daughter Ayesha.... Here his vagrant thoughts wandered to remembrance of how sick he had been from overeating himself on sweets at the betrothal ceremonies;--that was his very earliest real recollection--when he was five years old.
Then there was Uncle Mahmud of Tashkend. Even in the dark the boy's cheek flushed at the mere remembrance of him; equally devoid of courage and modesty, of unbelieving disposition, keeping buffoons and scoundrels about him who enacted their scurvy and disgraceful tricks in the very face of the court, and even at public audiences!--of no outward appearance either, but all rough-hewn and speaking very ill ...
The lad, always unsparing of epithet, painted the portrait with remorseless hand. So his thoughts passed to Mahmûd's sons, his first cousins. He knew them well, but Masaud the eldest was a nincompoop, and as for Baisanghâr? What was there that jarred at times in Baisanghâr? Baisanghâr who was so charming, so elegant, so clever, so sweet-tempered?
Here the lad's mind passed swiftly, without conscious cause, to his own sister, Dearest-One as he always called her; for he was given to caressing nicknames for those he loved. And he loved none better than the tall, straight girl, five years his senior, who hectored him and petted him by turns. But she ought really to get married; it was nonsense to say you preferred being a sainted Canoness!
Baisanghâr did not say that, though, he, too, refused to marry. He said women were unnecessary evils. Was that true? Not that it mattered, since he, Babar, would have to marry, because he was King ...
King! Would it make him happier, he wondered? Could anyone be happier than he had been in this splendid world? Supposing it was to make him unhappy? Supposing it took the charm from life ...
The idle thoughts went on and on. He felt sleepy, yet he could not sleep. And by and by the glimmering oblong of the unglazed window kept him watching the slow growth of light.
Out on the hills, the still dawn must be stepping softly so as not to waken the world too soon ... soft, sandalled feet among the snow-set flowers....