"No sign yet, Hâfzan?" she asked fiercely.
"No sign, my Queen," replied Hâfzan, with an odd derisive smile. If they did not come now, thought this woman with her warped nature, they would come later on; come and put a rope round the necks of men who had laid violent hands on women.
"Then I stop here no longer!" cried Zeenut Maihl recklessly; "I must see somewhat of it or die. Quick, girls, my dhooli, I will go back to my own rooms. 'Twill at least bear me through the crowd, and the jogging will keep the blood from tingling from very stillness."
So through the tawdry, dirty, musky curtains a woman's fierce eye watched the crowd hungrily, as the dhooli swung through it. A fierce crowd too in its way, but lacking cohesion. Like the world without those four rose-red walls, it was waiting for a master. And the man who should have been master was taking cooling draughts, and composing couplets, so her spies brought word. No hope from him till she could lure him back from his vexation and put some of her own energy into him. Who next was there likely to do her bidding? Her eye, taking in all the strangeness of the scene, troopers stabling their horses in the colonnades, sepoys bivouacking under the trees, courtiers hurrying up and down the private steps, found none in all that crowd of place-hunters, boasters, enthusiasts, whom she could trust. The King's eldest son Mirza Moghul was the fiercest tempered of them all, the only one whom she feared in any way; perhaps if she could get hold of him----
As her dhooli swayed up the steps he was standing on them talking to Mirza Khair Sultan. She could have put out her hand and touched him; but even she did not dare convention enough for that. Nevertheless, the sight of him determined her. If the King did not come back to her by noon, she must lure the Mirza to her side.
"Thou art a fool, Pir-jee," she said petulantly to Hussan Askuri who, as father confessor, had entrance to the womens' rooms and was awaiting her. "Thou hast no grip on the King when I am absent. Canst not even drive that slithering physician from his side?"
"Cooling draughts, seest thou, Pir-jee," put in Hâfzan maliciously, "have tangible effects. Thy dreams----"
"Peace, woman!" interrupted the Queen sternly, "'tis no time for jesting. Where sits the King now?"
"In the river balcony, Ornament-of-palaces," replied Fâtma glibly, "where he is not to be disturbed these two hours, so the physician says, lest the cooling draught----"
The Queen stamped her foot in sheer impotent rage. "I must see someone. And Jewan Bukht, my son? why hath he not answered my summons?"