The Queen turned on him passionately. "Are not all things possible with God, and is not His Majesty the defender of the faith!"
"But not defender of five runaway rioters," sneered the physician. "My liege! Remember your pension."
Zeenut Maihl glared at his cunning; it was an argument needing all her art to combat.
"Five!" she echoed, passing to the lattice quickly. "Then miracles are about--the five have grown to fifty. Look, my lord, look! Hark! How they call on the defender of the faith."
With reckless hand she set the lattice wide, so becoming visible for an instant, and a shout of "The Queen! The Queen!" mingled with that other of "The Faith! The Faith! Lead us, Oh! Ghâzee-o-din-Bahâdur-shâh, to die for the faith."
Pale as he was with age, the cry stirred the blood in the King's veins and sent it to his face.
"Stand back," he cried in sudden dignity, waving both counselors aside with trembling, outstretched hands. "I will speak mine own words."
But the sight of him, rousing a fresh burst of enthusiasm, left him no possibility of speech for a time. The Lord had been on their side, they cried. They had killed every hell-doomed infidel in Meerut! They would do so in Delhi if he would help! They were but an advance guard of an army coming from every cantonment in India to swear allegiance to the Pâdishah. Long live the King! and the Queen!
In the dim room behind, Zeenut Maihl and the physician listened to the wild, almost incredible, tale which drifted in with the scented air from the garden, and watched each other silently. Each found in it fresh cause for obstinacy. If this were true, what need to be foolhardy? time would show, the thing come of itself without risk. If this were true, decisive action should be taken at once; and would be taken.
But the King, assailed, molested by that rude interrupting loyalty, above all by that cry of the Queen, felt the Turk stir in him also. Who were these intruders in the sacred precincts, infringing the seclusion of the Great Moghul's women? Trembling with impotent passion, inherited from passions that had not been impotent, he turned to Ahsan-Oolah, ignoring the Queen, who, he felt, was mostly to blame for this outrage on her modesty. Why had she come there? Why had she dared to be seen?