Legendary & romantic tales of Indian history

by Hobart Caunter

Shums-ood-Deen being emboldened by the known influence and bravery of his uncles, resisted these importunities of the slave, whose imperious exercise of authority already began to be exceedingly vexatious. Seeing that the opposition was likely to become serious, Lallcheen sought the queen-mother, and artfully representing to her the perils by which her son was beset, obtained her promise to co-operate with him in counteracting the confederacy forming against the government of her younger son.

“If,” said he, “we do not get rid of these Omrahs, the worst consequences are to be apprehended. Their connexion with the blood-royal gives them an influence which must endanger the safety of your son; and you being suspected of having participated in the late revolution, will be certainly singled out as one of the first victims. If they are not to be overcome by open force, the concealed dagger is a sure and speedy remedy against threatened hostility.”

These arguments rousing the queen’s fears, she hastened to her son, threw herself at his feet, and implored him to provide for his own and his mother’s safety by ordering the instant seizure of the two refractory nobles before they should be aware that their hostile designs had been made known.

Shums-ood-Deen, overcome by the earnest entreaties of his mother, was reluctantly induced to consent to the apprehension of the husbands of his aunts. They, however, having obtained intelligence of his design, quitted Koolburga, and shut themselves up in the fortress of Sagur, where they were for the present secure from the machinations of their enemy.

An officer of the name of Suddoo, formerly a servant of the royal family, commanded in Sagur. He was rich and powerful, and received the princes with the greatest hospitality, doing everything in his power to evince his attachment to them. He was entirely in the interests of the deposed monarch, and felt the strongest antipathy towards the traitor who had mutilated him and assassinated his nobles. He had been elevated by Gheias-ood-Deen to his present dignity as a reward for long and faithful services, and his gratitude did not sleep. Towards Lallcheen he always entertained a secret enmity, suspecting the integrity of his purposes, and believing him to be nothing better than a hollow hypocrite.

The fortress under Suddoo’s command was one of great strength, and in it for the present the princes felt themselves perfectly secure. Here they were determined to remain until they could assemble a sufficient body of forces to oppose the treacherous slave.

In pursuance of this determination, they addressed letters to Shums-ood-Deen and the principal nobility, declaring that they were making preparations to chastise the man who had committed such an act of outrage upon his sovereign, at the same time declaring that they had no intention of disturbing the existing government. They stated that, as near relatives of the deposed monarch, they conceived it their duty to use every effort to inflict justice upon him by whom he had been so irreparably injured, and called upon the nobility and the reigning sovereign to assist them in punishing so grievous an offender. If this were done they promised entire submission to Shums-ood-Deen’s government, and concluded by a solemn asseveration that nothing should deter them from bringing retribution upon the head of Lallcheen.

The king was not disposed to look unfavourably at this communication. The trammels which his benefactor, as the sanguinary slave always called himself, had cast upon him, cramped his youthful and ardent spirit. Nothing but his affection for the daughter made him hesitate upon sacrificing the father. This caused him at first to waver; he thought upon her beauty, her accomplishments, and his passion began to blaze. How would she endure to see her father given up to certain death by the man who professed to love her as his own soul? Would she not spurn him, would she not shrink with loathing from the destroyer of her parent? He reflected upon that parent’s baseness, his ambition, his tyranny; but his love for Agha bore down all opposition arising from the contemplation of her father’s worthlessness, and he finally determined to protect the man whom by every principle of equity he was bound to sacrifice.

Lallcheen meanwhile was not insensible to what was going on. He was now more than ever anxious that his daughter should be united to the reigning monarch, as he imagined it would tend to confirm his own influence in the state, and put an end at once to those hostile measures which the family of Gheias-ood-Deen were taking to vindicate the wrongs of their royal relative: it would moreover enable him to command the whole energies of Shums-ood-Deen’s kingdom, civil, political and military, which he would have the power of employing to counteract the hostile intentions of his foes. He felt himself, nevertheless, in a state of great embarrassment, and began to entertain such designs as are generally the resort of desperate men. Although conscious of his unpopularity, he had nevertheless secured the favour of the troops by paying up their arrears, and allowing them some privileges which they had never hitherto enjoyed. All the disaffected Omrahs too, of whom there were not a few, tendered him their services, and declared that they would maintain his cause to the last drop of their blood. He, however, was fully aware how little confidence is to be placed either upon the professions or promises of unprincipled men. His own heart was a faithful interpreter of what such promises and professions amounted to, and he therefore felt anything but in a state of security. This rendered him desperate. The opposition of his daughter had so exasperated him against her that he had treated her with a severity which, instead of subduing her resolution, had only the more firmly determined her to thwart his wishes with an indomitable resolution, which he did not imagine she possessed. To all his promises of tenderness towards her, if she would only relax from her stubborn opposition, she replied by a calm look of defiance, that moved him more than once to acts of violence. She shrank not from the arm that struck her to the earth, but rose without a murmur of complaint, and smiled upon the impotent malice that would stifle her conscience under the claims of parental authority.

The situation of the slave was now becoming critical. He sought the queen-mother, and represented to her the danger to which she must necessarily be exposed, should the avengers of her elder son’s deposition succeed in gaining possession of the capital. She had never been popular with the Omrahs, and therefore began to fear that her fate would be involved in that of Lallcheen, as it was generally believed that she had been more than privy to the late massacre of the nobles at the slave’s house. Imagining her safety inseparable from his, she hastened to her son, and demanded his protection for Lallcheen. “It is evident,” she said, “that the pretended avengers of your brother’s wrongs seek but the gratification of their own ambition, either in your death or degradation. Our common interests require that we should oppose them.”