"I have a letter for the Lord of the World with me. Its substance is this. The Sirkar will recognize no heir. During the lifetime of our Great Master, whose life be prolonged forever, the Sirkar will make no promise of any kind, either to his majesty, or to any other member of the royal family. It is to remain as if there were no succession."
No succession! Above the sudden murmur of universal surprise and dissent, a woman's cry of inarticulate rage came from behind the lattice. The King turned toward the sound instinctively. "I must to the Queen," he murmured helplessly, "I must to the Queen."
[CHAPTER II.]
IN THE CITY.
"Come, beauty, rare, divine,
Thy lover like a vine
With tendril arms entwine;
Lay rose red lips to mine,
Bewildering as wine."
The song came in little insistent trills and quaverings, and quaint recurring cadences, which matched the insistency of the rhymes. The singer was a young man of about three-and-twenty, and as he sang, seated on a Persian rug on the top of a roof, he played an elaborate symphony of trills and cadences to match upon a tinkling saringi. He was small, slight, with a bright, vivacious face, smooth shaven, save for a thin mustache trimmed into a faint fine fringe. His costume marked him as a dandy of the first water, and he smelled horribly of musk.
The roof on which he sat was a secluded roof, protected from view, even from other roofs, by high latticed walls; its only connection with the world below it being by a dizzy brick ladder of a stair climbing down fearlessly from one corner. Across the further end stretched a sort of veranda, inclosed by lattice and screens. But the middle arch being open showed a blue and white striped carpet, and a low reed stool. Nothing more. But a sweet voice came from its unseen corner.
"Art not ashamed, Abool, to come to my discreet house among godly folk and sing lewd songs? Will they not think ill of me? And if thou comest drunken horribly with wine, as thou didst last week, claiming audience of me, thine aunt, not all that title will save me from aspersion. And if I lose this calm retreat, whither shall poor Newâsi go?"
"Nay, kind one!" cried Prince Abool-Bukr, "that shall never be." So saying, he cast away the tinkling saringi and from the litter of musical instruments around him laid impulsive hands on a long-necked fiddle with a 'cello tone in it. "I would sing psalms to please mine aunt," he went on in reckless gayety, "but that I know none. Will pious Saadi suit your sober neighbors, since lovelorn Hafiz shocks them? But no! I can never stomach his sentimental sanctity, so back we go to the wisest of all poets."
The high, thin tenor ran on without a break into a minor key, and a stanza of the Great Tentmakers. And as it quivered and quavered over the illusion of life, a woman's figure came to lean against the central arch, and look down on the singer with kindly eyes.