The morning following was one in which the hearts of the citizens of Adrianople stood almost throbless with horror. Mothers clasped their babes with a shudder to their breasts; and fathers stroked the fair hair of their boys, and thanked Allah that no tide of royal blood ran in their veins. A story afterward floated over the lands of Moslem and Christian, as terrible as a cloud of blood, dropping its shadow into palace and cottage, and dyeing that page of history on which Mahomet's name is written with a damning blot.
While Mira Sultana was bowing at the feet of the new monarch, congratulating him upon his accession to the throne, her infant son, Ahmed, half brother to Mahomet, was being strangled in the bath by his orders. Another son of Amurath, Calapin, had, through his mother's timely suspicion, escaped to the land of the Christians.
It was late in the day when Captain Ballaban appeared for audience with the Sultan. His Majesty was apparently in the gayest of moods.
"Come, toss me the dice! We have not played since I laid aside my manhood and put on the Padishah's cloak. Come! What? Have you no stake to put up? Then I will stake for both. A Turkoman, the father of my own bride, has sent me a bevy of women, Georgians, with faces as fair as the shell of an ostrich's egg,[72] and voices as sweet as of the birds which sang to the harp of David.[73] The choice to him who wins! What! does not that tempt the cloud to drift off your face? Then have your choice without the toss. What! still brooding?" added he, growing angry. "By the holy house at Mecca! I'll make you laugh if I tickle your ribs with my dagger's point."
"You made me promise that I would be true to you, my Padishah, and if I should laugh to-day I would not be true," replied Ballaban quietly. "My face wears the shadows which the people have thrown into it."
"The people?" said Mahomet growing pale.
"Ay, the people have heard the wailing of the Sultana."
"For what? Tell me for what?" asked the Sultan with feigned surprise.
Ballaban narrated the story which was on every one's lips.