It was a great delight to the Queen to revisit the place. The Governor's house was cleared out for her, and for several days the whole fort was made private; and she wandered from place to place with her companions and attendants every day, pointing out to Maria and Zóra where she had sat for hours together with her lord the King, watching the works in progress, breathing the pure fresh air, and taking their simple meals on the top of a bastion, or on the high cavalier when it was finished, where a great canopy used to be pitched. Nor was it possible for the two girls not to be interested in the place itself. It was, indeed, very beautiful: the lake shimmering in the sun, with the black precipices, hung with many-hued creepers, reflected into it; while, after it had shot through the arch on the dam, the river brawled down the valley till it was hid from view by the projection of the hills below. The air here was cool and refreshing, for they had risen to a considerable height above Sholapoor: and this was another reason why the Queen had chosen the upper route instead of the lower. Here and there, from points on the table land without the fort, where the Queen took her companions, the dim blue plains of Beejapoor could be seen stretching to the horizon like a sea, and the fresh cool wind would come to them freely and soothingly. These, too, were old haunts of her husband and herself; and it seemed often to Maria and Zóra that, in the dreamy mood of mind in which she often sat alone, she appeared like one who had a consciousness of seeing these well-remembered scenes for the last time, and carrying away every possible recollection of them in her loving heart. Often, indeed, she would draw one or other, or both of them, to her side, and with her eyes brimming with tears, would say, "Look, children! here my lord received such a letter, or told me such a thing, and you must not forget even a stone of it; but, should I ask you even when my eyes are dim in death, you must describe it all to me as you see it now in the bright glowing sunlight."
I need not follow minutely the daily march in early cool morning, nor the succession of beautiful mango groves in which the party rested every day, affording cool shade and refreshing rest. They were, indeed, seldom in their tents till nightfall, for around the enclosure was a screen of tent walls, which made the whole private. The tent pitchers selected the shadiest portions of these groves, and usually contrived to enclose a number of large leafy trees, beneath which carpets and soft cushions were spread; and reading, or the Queen's business, with her clever secretary, Zóra, who had gained confidence by experience, went on as usual; and embroidery, too, and Maria's paintings, except when she retired to her own tents to share her devotions with her brother; while overhead the birds chirped, or sang, or cooed, and screamed in their glee and freedom.
To Zóra in her new happiness this march was a perpetual elysium. Abbas Khan could not always be with her, for he had his own work to do in the regulation of the camp, the obtaining of supplies, and the payment for them, and all other current business. Sometimes, too, and indeed generally of an evening, the large Royal tent was opened; and the Queen received in durbar all the officers, zemindars, and chief inhabitants of villages around. The Queen had quitted the dominions of Beejapoor soon after leaving Nuldroog, and passed into those of Ahmednugger. Abbas Khan by no means liked what he heard from all quarters in regard to the position of Ahmednugger and the parties there, who seemed to be at constant and bloody feud; and he earnestly strove with the Queen to induce her to turn back. But she upbraided him. "Would she have the world think her a coward? and had she not brought Beejapoor through worse troubles than those?" So he was silent thenceforth. It was her fate, and whatever was to be, would be fulfilled.
The leader of the Dekhany party, Mean Munjoo, who had set up the spurious prince, was not at Ahmednugger. He had taken the boy with him, and gone beyond Owsa, towards Golconda, to urge the necessity of supporting Ahmednugger; and he was bitterly repentant that he had invited the Prince Moorad. He wrote to the Queen for forgiveness, and declared he would not return except with troops from Golconda and Beejapoor, to drive the Moghuls back. The Queen, too, wrote to her nephew, King Ibrahim, to send a heavy force of cavalry, in which the Moghuls were said to be weak, and to watch affairs from Nuldroog; and subsequently as many as twenty-six thousand of the best cavalry of Beejapoor, with six thousand from Golconda, assembled there, and occupied the crests of the plateau which stretched northwards.
With these precautions taken, which had occasioned several days' delay at Patoda, the Queen now marched on, faster than before, for it was impossible to overrate the importance of her presence at Ahmednugger. But it was the same pleasant journey throughout, the same succession of cool, shady groves and crisp bracing air. Often would the Queen wile away the march with her hunting leopards and falcons with her, and enjoy many a gallop over the undulating downs, where Abbas Khan and the officers of his small force, and even the good Bishop, would ride with her and enjoy the sport. Sometimes, too, Maria, when the march was a quiet one, rode with her brother, to the great envy of Zóra, who, from an elephant allotted to her, looked after them as they cantered past her, longing to be with them. If there were anything remarkable to be seen, the Queen would diverge from the beaten track, as she did at the temple of Pukrode, and, looking over the crest, could follow the line of hills to Ahmednugger itself. There she had stayed an extra day to wander about, as was her wont, and enjoy the keen air of that elevation, which, while it put roses into Maria's cheeks, and made Zóra ruddy, tinged even the Queen's pale countenance with pink, and restored the bright beauty of her youth. Again from Patoda they made a day's excursion to the waterfall of the Incherna and its gloomy abrupt ravine; and they would sit for hours on the short smooth sward above, and watch the rainbows playing over the pool, nearly four hundred feet below them, and those which seemed to start out suddenly from the column of water, flash for an instant, and disappear. How glorious it all was! Even the heavy state cares which weighed upon the Queen seemed to be put aside for the time; and the noble lady's cheerful, nay, even playful disposition diffused a joy among her little party which they had never felt before. To Zóra it was perfect elysium, as she told her husband in their quiet hours; she often felt her heart too full for speech. "I had hoped, dear lord, to be happy with thee, and to make thee happy; but this reality transcends all my expectations, for you are all too kind and too indulgent to me."
"No, Zóra; all the love which inspired me as thou watched over me that first night doth but heighten by time. When I had it not, I hungered and thirsted for it. Now I have it, it groweth fresher every day, and more precious to me. Enjoy these happy days, therefore, to the full, for the time cometh, I fear me, in which there may be weeping and woe."
"Why dost thou think so?" she asked.
"I read much in the mother's sweet face," he returned. "When she gazes on these scenes of her old happiness, there is a wistful, lingering look in her eyes which seems to say, 'I am looking at ye for the last time.' When she rises to depart, it is not with a merry remark, as it used to be, but with a sigh and a silent tear, which I can read, though you may not be able to do so. But it may be only one of those gloomy forebodings which torment us sometimes without real foundation, and from which the Lord, if He finds us faithful, delivers us happily; and so may it be with our beloved mother. There will be lip service enough to her when we go; but there are, of all about her, only ourselves upon whom she can depend. O wife! when I think on all she hath been to me since a child, I could give my life for her, even though I were to lose thee, my darling."