He began to tell her what he had discovered, but soon she interrupted him.
“I know all that, and more,” she said. “I can even tell you what will be done to-morrow. Jahangir will repudiate the deed, and execute those concerned in it whom he can lay hands on. But you and I are doomed. With Sher Afghán dead, who shall uphold us? We have but one course open. We must fly, if we would save our lives. Let us go now, ere daybreak, and ride to Burdwán. Once there, I can frame plans for vengeance, whilst you shall go to Calcutta, not unrewarded.”
The firmness of her tone astounded Mowbray as greatly as the nature of her proposal. When he came to seek Roger’s advice he found that his friend had swung round to the view that it was hopeless now to seek redress from the Emperor. The number and valor of Sher Afghán’s retainers gave some promise of security, and, once away from the capital, there was a chance of escape.
So Nur Mahal was told that they would adopt her counsel, and it was wonderful to see how a woman, in that hour of distress and danger, imposed her will on every man she encountered.
It was Nur Mahal who instructed certain servants of her father’s to see to the embalming of her husband’s body and its safe conveyance to Burdwán. It was she who sent couriers to start the caravan of the Feringhis on a false trail back to Delhi. It was she who arranged the details of the first march, forgetting nothing, but correcting even the most experienced of Sher Afghán’s lieutenants when he declared impossible that which she said was possible.
And finally, it was Nur Mahal who, after a last look at the face of him whom she revered more in death than in life, rode out again into the darkness, from the Garden of Heart’s Delight. But, this time, Walter Mowbray and Roger Sainton rode with her, and those three, as it happened, held the future of India in the hollows of their hands.
CHAPTER XII
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Marlowe, “Hero and Leander.”