For he was late.
The five troopers were already galloping through the grape-garden toward the women's apartments and the King's sleeping rooms.
Their shouts of "The King! The King! Help for the martyrs! Help for the Holy War!" dumfoundered the court muezzin, who was going late to his prayers in the Pearl Mosque; the reckless hoofs sent a squatting bronze image of a gardener, threading jasmine chaplets for his gods peacefully in the pathway, flying into a rose bush.
"The King! The King! Help! Help!"
The women woke with the cry, confused, alarmed, surprised; save one or two who, creeping to the Queen's room, found her awake, excited, calling to her maids. "Too soon!" she echoed contemptuously. "Can a good thing come too soon? Quick, woman--I must see the King at once--nay, I will go as I am if it comes to that."
"The physician Ahsan-Oolah hath arrived as usual for the dawn pulse-feeling," protested the shocked tirewoman.
"All the more need for hurry," retorted Zeenut Maihl. "Quick! Slippers and a veil! Thine will do, Fâtma; sure what makes thee decent----" She gave a spiteful laugh as she snatched it from the woman's head and passed to the door; but there she paused a second. "See if Hafzân be below. I bid her come early, so she should be. Tell her to write word to Hussan Askuri to dream as he never dreamed before! And see," her voice grew shriller, keener, "the rest of you have leave. Go! cozen every man you know, every man you meet. I care not how. Make their blood flow! I care not wherefore, so that it leaps and bounds, and would spill other blood that checked it." She clenched her hands as she passed on muttering to herself. "Ah! if he were a man--if his blood were not chilled with age--if I had someone----"
She broke off into smiles; for in the anteroom she entered was, man or no man, the representative of the Great Moghul.
"Ah, Zeenut!" he cried in tones of relief. "I would have sought thee." The trembling, shrunken figure in its wadded silk dressing gown paused and gave a backward glance at Ahsan-Oolah, whose shrewd face was full of alarm.
"Believe nothing, my liege!" he protested eagerly. "These rioters are boasters. Are there not two thousand British soldiers in Meerut? Their tale is not possible. They are cowards fled from defeat; liars, hoping to be saved at your expense. The thing is impossible."