"Saints!" echoed the Queen, with a hard laugh. "I would make them saints and martyrs, too, were I free. Quick, woman! pen and ink! And stay! Fâtma's puzzle hath driven all else from my head. What time was't that Hussan Askuri was bidden to come?"
"The saintborn comes at four," replied Hâfzan ceremoniously, "so as to leave leisure ere the Chief Eunuch's return with the answer."
Zeenut Maihl's face was a study. "The answer! My answer lies there in Fâtma's riddle; take two gold mohurs for it, woman, it hath given me new life. Write, Hâfzan, to the chamberlain, that the disciples must pass the southern window of the King's private room ere they leave the palace. And call my litter; I must see Hussan Askuri ere I meet him at the King's."
An hour afterward, with bister marks below her eyes, and delicate hints of causeful, becoming languor in face and figure, she was waiting the King's return from the latticed balcony overhanging the river, where he always spent the heats of the day; waiting in the cluster of small, dark rooms which lie behind it, on the other side of the marble fountain-set aqueduct which flows under a lace-like marble screen to the very steps of the Hall of Audience.
"Is all prepared?" she asked anxiously, as a glint of light from a lifted curtain warned her of the King's approach.
"All is prepared," echoed a hollow, artificial voice. The speaker was a tall, heavily built man with long gray beard, big bushy gray eyebrows, and narrow forehead. A dangerous man, to judge by the mixed spirituality and sensuality in his face; a man who could imagine evil, and make himself believe it good. It was Hussan Askuri, the priest and miracle-monger, who led the last of the Moghuls by the nose. It was not a difficult task, for Bahâdur Shâh, who came tottering across the intervening sunlit space, was but a poor creature. The first impression he gave was of extreme old age. It was evident in the sparse hair, the high, hollow cheeks, the waxy skin, the purple glaze over the eyes. The next was of a feebleness beyond even his apparent years. He seemed fiberless, mind and body. Yet released at the door of privacy, from the eunuch's supporting hands, he ambled gayly enough to a seat, and exclaimed vivaciously:
"A moment! A moment! good priest and physician. My mind first; my body after. The gift is on me. I feel it working, and the historian must write of me more as poet than king."
"As the king of poets, sire," suggested Hussan Askuri pompously.
Bahâdur Shâh smiled fatuously. "Good! Good! I will weave that thought with mine into perfumed poesy." He raised one slender hand for silence, and with the fingers of the other continued counting feet laboriously, until with a sigh of relief, he declaimed:
"Bahâdur Shâh, sure all the world will know it,
Was poet more than king, yet king of poets."