“If you so much as turn your head again or lift a hand without my order, I blow your brains out,” said Malcolm in the same unemotional tone.
“Nay, let him attack a woman if it pleaseth him,” cried Roshinara, who had not drawn back one inch from the place where she was standing when Malcolm confronted Akhab Khan and herself. “That is what our troops, officers and men alike, are best fitted for. They love to swagger in the bazaar, but their valor flies when they see the Ridge.”
Again quite indifferent to the fact that Malcolm’s finger was on the trigger, the rebel leader threw out his hands towards the Begum in a gesture of agonized protest.
“Do you not trust me, my heart?” he murmured. “If you knew of this Nazarene’s presence why was I not told?”
“Because I wished to save you in spite of yourself. Because I would mourn you if you fell in battle as befits a warrior and the man whom I love, but I would not have you die on the scaffold, as most of the others will die ere another month be sped. What hope have we of success? If forty thousand sepoys cannot overcome the three thousand English on the Ridge, how shall they prevail against the force that is now preparing to storm Delhi? I sent for Malcolm-sahib that I might obtain terms for my father and for thee, Akhab Khan. This man is now in our power. Let us bargain with him. If he goes free to-day, let him promise that we shall be spared when the gallows is busy in front of our palace.”
Each word of this impassioned speech was a revelation to Malcolm. Here was the fiery beauty of the Mogul court pleading for the lives of her father and lover, pleading to him, a solitary Briton in the midst of thousands of mutineers, a prisoner in their stronghold, a spy whose life was forfeit by the laws of war. Hardly less bewildering than this turn of fortune’s wheel was the whirligig that promoted a poor trooper of the Company to the position of accepted suitor for the hand of a royal maiden. Never could there be a more complete unveiling of the Eastern mind, with all its fatalism, its strange weaknesses, its uncontrollable passions.
Akhab Khan stretched out his arms again.
“Forgive me, my soul, if I did doubt thee,” he almost sobbed.
The girl was the first to recover her self-control.
“Put away your pistol,” she said, fixing her fine eyes on Malcolm, with a softness in their limpid depths that he had never seen there before. “If we can contrive, my plighted husband and I, you will not need it to-night. I was rejoiced to hear that you were within our gates. We are beaten. I know it. We have lost a kingdom, because wretches like Nana Dundhu Punt of Bithoor, have forgotten their oaths and preferred drunken revels to empire. Were they of my mind, were they as loyal and honorable as the man I hope to marry, we would have driven you and yours into the sea, Malcolm-sahib. But Allah willed otherwise and we can only bow to his decree. It is Kismet. I am content. Say, then, if you are sent in safety to your camp, do you in return guarantee the two lives I ask of you?”