"Your Majesty should send for the Captain of the Palace Guards and bid him disperse the rioters, and force them into respect for your royal person," suggested the physician, carefully avoiding all but the immediate present, "and your Majesty should pass to the Hall of Audience. The King can scarce receive the Captain-sahib here in presence of the Consort." He did not add--"in her present costume"--but his tone implied it, and the King, with an angry mortified glance toward his favorite, took the physician's arm. If looks could kill, Ahsan-Oolah would not, he knew, have supported those tottering steps far; but it was no time to stick at trifles.
When they had passed from the anteroom Zeenut Maihl still stood as if half stupefied by the insult. Then she dashed to the open lattice again, scornful and defiant; dignified into positive beauty for the moment by her recklessness.
"For the Faith!" she cried in her shrill woman's voice, "if ye are men, as I would be, to be loved of woman, as I am, strike for the Faith!"
A sort of shiver ran through the clustering crowd of men below; the shiver of anticipation, of the marvelous, the unexpected. The Queen had spoken to them as men; of herself as woman. Inconceivable!--improper of course--yet exciting. Their blood thrilled, the instinct of the man to fight for the woman rose at once.
"Quick, brothers! Rouse the guard! Close the gates! Close the gates!"
It was a cry to heal all strife within those rose-red walls, for the dearest wish of every faction was to close them against civilization; against those prying Western eyes and sniffing Western noses, detecting drains and sinks of iniquity. So the clamor grew, and faces which had frowned at each other yesterday sought support in each other's ferocity to-day, and wild tales began to pass from mouth to mouth. Men, crowding recklessly over the flower-beds, trampling down the roses, talked of visions, of signs and warnings, while the troopers, dismounting for a pull at a pipe, became the center of eager circles listening not to dreams, but deeds.
"Dost feel the rope about thy neck, Sir Martyr?" said a bitter jeering voice behind one of the speakers. And something gripped him round the throat from behind, then as suddenly loosed its hold, as a shrouded woman's figure hobbled on through the crowd. The trooper started up with an oath, his own hand seeking his throat involuntarily.
"Heed her not!" said a bystander hastily, "'tis the Queen's scribe, Hafzân. She hath a craze against men. One made her what she is. Go on! Havildar-jee. So thou didst cut the mem down, and fling the babe----"
But the doer of the deed stood silent. He did in truth seem to feel the rope about his neck. And he seemed to feel it till he died; when it was there.
But Hafzân had passed on, and there were no more with words of warning. So the clamor grew and grew, till the garden swarmed with men ready for any deed.