"Any news, Hodson?" asked Major Erlton, meeting the free-lance as he rode back to his tent after his fashion, with loose rein and loose seat, unkempt, undeviating, with an eye for any and every advantage.
"None."
"Any chance of--of anything?"
"None with our present chiefs. If we had Sir Henry Lawrence here it would be different."
But Sir Henry Lawrence, having done his duty to the uttermost, already lay dead in the residency at Lucknow, though the tidings had not reached the Ridge. And yet more direful tidings were on their way to bring July, that month of clouds and cholera, of flies and funerals, of endless buglings and fifings, to a close.
It came to the city first. Came one afternoon when the King sat in the private Hall of Audience, his back toward the arcaded view of the eastern plains, ablaze with sunlight, his face toward the garden, which, through the marble-mosaic traced arches, showed like an embroidered curtain of green set with jeweled flowers. Above him, on the roof, circled the boastful legend:
"If earth holds a haven of bliss
It is this--it is this--it is this!"
And all around him, in due order of precedence, according to the latest army lists procurable in Delhi, were ranged the mutinous native officers; for half the King's sovereignty showed itself in punctilious etiquette. At his feet, below the peacock throne, stood a gilded cage containing a cockatoo. For Hâfzan had been so far right in her estimate of Hussan Askuri's wonders that poor little Sonny's pet, duly caught, and with its crest dyed an orthodox green, had been used--like the stuffed lizard--to play on the old man's love of the marvelous. So, for the time being, the bird followed him in his brief journeyings from Audience Hall to balcony, from balcony to bed.
The usual pile of brocaded bags lay below that again, upon the marble floor, where a reader crouched, sampling the most loyal to be used as a sedative. One would be needed ere long, for the Commanders-in-Chief were at war; Bukht Khân, backed by Hussan Askuri, with his long black robe, his white beard, and the wild eyes beneath his bushy brows, and by all the puritans and fanatics of the city; Mirza Moghul by his brother, Khair Sultân, and most of the Northern Indian rebels who refused a mere ex-soubadar's right to be better than they.
"Let the Light-of-the-World choose between us," came the sonorous voice almost indifferently; in truth those secret counsels of Bukht Khân with the Queen, of which the Palace was big with gossip, held small place, allowed small consideration for the puppet King.