"Who or what can the hundred be, who guard the treasure day and night?"
Tess wondered.
"That is what puzzled me. At first, because I was very young, I thought they must be snakes. So I made friends with the snakes, learning how to handle even cobras without fear of them. Then, when I had learned that snakes could tell me nothing, but are only Widyadharas—beautiful lost fairies dreadfully afraid of men, and very, very wishful to be comforted, I began to think the hundred must be priests. So I made friends with the priests, and let them teach me all their knowledge. But they know nothing! They are parasites! They teach only what will keep men in their power, and women in subjection, themselves not understanding what they teach! I soon learned that if the priests were treasure-guards their charge would have been dissipated long ago! Then I looked for a hundred trees, and found them! A hundred pipal trees all in a place together! But that was only like the first goal in the very first chukker of the game—as you shall learn soon!"
"Then surely I know!" said Tess excitedly. "In the grounds of the palace across the river, that you escaped from the night before you came to see me, there is quite a little forest of pipals."
"Nine and sixty and the roots of four," Yasmini answered, her eyes glowing as if there were fire behind them. "The difficulty is, though, that they don't change with the full moon! Pipal trees grow on forever, never changing, except to grow bigger and bigger. They outlive centuries of men. Nevertheless, they gave me the clue, not only to the treasure but to the winning of it!"
The afternoon wore on in drowsy quiet, both of the girls sleeping at intervals—waited on at intervals by Hasamurti with fruit and cooling drinks— Yasmini silent oftener than not as the sun went lower, as if the details of what she had to do that night were rehearsing themselves in her mind. No amount of questioning by Tess could make her speak of them again, or tell any more about the secret of the treasure. At that age already she knew too well the virtue and fun of unexpectedness.
They ate together very early, reclining at a low table heaped with more varieties of food than Tess had dreamed that India could produce; but ate sparingly because the weight of what was coming impressed them both. Hasamurti sang during the meal, ballad after ballad of the warring history of Rajasthan and its royal heroines, accompanying herself on a stringed instrument, and the ballads seemed to strike the right chord in Yasmini's heart, for when the meal finished she was queenly and alert, her blue eyes blazing.
Then came the business of dressing, and two maids took Tess into her room to bathe and comb and scent and polish her, until she wondered how the rest of the world got on without handmaidens, and laughed to think that one short week ago she had never had a personal attendant since her nurse. Swiftly the luxurious habit grows; she rather hoped her husband might become rich enough to provide her a maid always!
And after all that thought and trouble and attention she stood arrayed at last as no more than a maid herself—true, a maid of royalty; but very simply dressed, without a jewel, with plain light sandals on her stockinged feet, and with a plain veil hanging to below her knees—all creamy white. She admitted to herself that she looked beautiful in the long glass, and wished that Dick could see her so, not guessing how soon Dick would see her far more gorgeously arrayed.
Yasmini, when she came into the room, was a picture to take the breath away,—a rhapsody in cream and amber, glittering with gems. There were diamonds sparkling on her girdle, bosom, ears, arms; a ruby like a prince's ransom nestled at her throat; there were emeralds and sapphires stitched to the soft texture of her dress to glow and glitter as she moved; and her hair was afire with points of diamond light. Coil on coil of huge pearls hung from her shoulders to her waist, and pearls were on her sandals.
"Child, where in heaven's name did you get them all?" Tess burst out.