Part 7

Seeing her intelligence clear as a sword of Azerbajan, her exalted father resolved that his jewel should not be dulled by lack of polishing and cutting, and he appointed the wise lady Miyabai to be her first teacher. At the age of seven she knew the Koran by heart, and in her honour a mighty feast was made for the army and for the poor. As she grew, aged and saintly tutors were appointed, from whom she absorbed Arabic, mathematics and astronomy, as a rose drinks rain. No subject eluded her swift mind, no toil wearied her. Verses she wrote with careless ease in the foreign tongue of Arabia, but hearing from an Arab scholar that in a single line the exquisite skill betrayed an Indian idiom, she discarded it instantly because she would have perfection and wrote henceforward in her own tongue—Persian.

No pains were spared upon this jewel, for the Emperor desired that its radiance should be splendid throughout Asia, yet her limit was drawn, and sharply. For in her young pride of learning she began a commentary on the holy Koran, and hearing this, he sternly forbade it. A woman might do much in her own sphere, he wrote, but such a creature of dust may not handle the Divine.

I, Abul Qasim, was with her when the imperial order reached her and saw her take the fair manuscript and obediently tear it across, desiring that the rent leaves be offered to the Shadow of God in token of obedience. But those dark and dangerous eyes of hers were not obedient beneath the veiling of silken lashes, and turning to me, to whom she told her royal heart, she said;

“What the hand may not write the heart may think, and in the heart is no Emperor. It is free,” and leaning from the marble casement she looked down into the gliding river and said no more.

Yet the Emperor made amends, and noble, as far as his light led him. Not for a woman the mysteries of the faith of Islam that he held of all things the greatest, but, fired by the praises of her tutors, he sent throughout India, Persia and Kashmir for poets worthy of this poet-Princess and bid them come to Delhi and Agra and there dwell that a fitting company be made for her.

So, veiled like the moon in clouds, curtained and attended, the Princess Arjemand was permitted to be present at tournaments in the palace where the weapons were the wit and beauty of words, when quotations and questions were flung about as it might be handsful of stars, and a line given be capped with some perfect finish of the moment’s prompting and become a couplet unsurpassable, and very often it was the soft voice from behind the golden veil that capped the wisest and completed the most exquisite, and recited verses that brought exclamations from the assembled poets.

“Not even Saadi (may Allah enlighten him!) nor Jalalu’d-din Rumi (may his eyes be gladdened in Paradise) excelled this lady in the perfumed honey of their words.” So with one voice they cried.

And this was not homage to the daughter of the Protector of the Universe. No indeed! for death has not washed out her name with the cold waters of oblivion and now that she is no more beautiful nor daughter of the Emperor her verse is still repeated where the poets and saints meet in concourse.

It will be seen that her life in the Begam Mahal (the Palace of the Queens) must needs be lonely, for there was none among the princesses who shared her pleasures, and their recreation in languidly watching the dancers or buying jewels and embroideries and devouring sweetmeats wearied her as sorely. But she had one friend, Imami, daughter of Arshad Beg Khan, and this creature of mortality who writes these words was also accounted her friend though unworthy to be the ground whereon she set her little foot.

Day after day did the Lady Arjemand with Imami write and study, and the librarians of the Emperor had little peace because of the demand of these ladies for the glorious manuscripts and books collected by her ancestors from all parts of the earth.

They sat and the walls echoed to the low note of her voice as she read and recited and so beautiful were the tones of my Princess that I have seen the water stand in the eyes of those who heard her recite her own verses or those of the great Persians. It was a noble instrument ranging from the deepest notes of passion to the keen cry of despair, and I would listen unwearied while the day trod its blossomed way from dawn to sunset in the Palace gardens. Great and wonderful was this new palace of the Emperor with tall lilies inlaid in the pure marble in stones so precious that they might have been the bosom adornments of some lesser beauty. Palms in great vases brought by the merchants of Cathay made a green shade and coolness for two fountains—the one of the pure waters of the canal, the other of rose-water, and they plashed beside a miniature lake of fretted marble rocks sunk in the floor where white lotuses slept in the twilight of the calm retreat. Such was the chamber of the daughter of the Padshah.

But of all the jewels the Princess was the glory.

Surely with small pains may the Great Mogul’s daughter be a beauty, but had she been sold naked in the common market-place this lady had brought a royal price.

Toorki and Persian and Indian blood mingled in her and each gave of its best. The silken dark hair braided about her head was an imperial crown. From the well-beloved lady who lies in the Taj Mahal (may Allah make fragrant her memory), she had received eyes whose glance of slow sweetness no man, not even the men of her own blood (excepting only her stern father), could resist, and of her rose-red lips half sensuous, half child-like, might it be said

“Their honey was set as a snare and my heart a wandering bee, Clung and could not be satisfied, tasted and returned home never more.”

The imperial Mogul women were indeed the jewels of the world, because the beauties of Asia were chosen to be their mothers. The net of the Emperors swept wide, and I, who in virtue of my age and faithful service have seen, testify that there was none like them, and the loveliest of all was fit but to serve my Princess kneeling. Shall not the truth be told? Of the soul within that delicious shrine her deeds must tell.

Now as I have written she sat with Imami by the little lake, and I in a marble recess by one of the great latticed windows that looks down on Jumna river and on the other side over the city of Shahjahanabad, new and luminous in magnificence. In all the world else are no such palace and city. At this moment she read aloud a letter from her father Aurungzib concerning the memoirs of her ancestor the Emperor Babar who founded their dynasty in India, a book written by his own hand and religiously preserved in the Mogul archives, and she read it with anger because when she demanded this book from the librarian, the Padshah hearing wrote thus:

“Happy Daughter of Sovereignty. There is one manner of life for men, who are the rulers, and for women, who are the slaves. It seems you go too far. What has a daughter of our House to do with our ancestor Zah-r-ud-din Muhammed Babar, the resident in Paradise? I have granted much already. Plant not the herb of regret in the garden of affection. He writes as a man for men. The request is refused. Recall the verse of the poet:

“‘Ride slowly and humbly, and not in hurrying pride For o’er the dusty bones of men, the creature of dust must ride.’

“What an Emperor writes is not suitable for the Princesses of his House. His duty is rule; theirs, obedience.”

It was a discouragement but a command, and another had laid the finger of obedience on the lips of silence, but, taking counsel with her heart, this Princess did not so.

She called to me for her pen and wrote in answer:

“Exalted Emperor, Shahinshah, Shadow of God, King of the world, Refuge of the needy, father of the body of this creature of mortality, be pleased to hear this ignorant one’s supplication. Surely you have fed my mind on the bee’s-bread of wisdom, and from your own royal lips have I learnt that the words of our ancestor (upon whom be the Peace!) are full of flavour and laughter, generous and kind, shining with honour and the valour of our family. Now, since this is the root whence sprang your auspicious Majesty’s rule, should not a humble daughter triumph in it? True is it that I am your female slave, yet may this worthless body bear one day a son to transmit your likeness to the prostrate ages, and since we do not breed lions from lambs, his mother should carry the laughter and fire of her race like a jewel in the mine of her soul. I make my petition to the Padshah, the holiest of Emperors.”

“It will be granted me,” said the Princess reading these letters aloud to Imami and to me, “because of that last word—the holiest. He values that title more than to be called the Shahinshah. And with all my heart I would it were otherwise.”

“And why, high Lady?” cried Imami in sheer astonishment. “Surely the Padshah is a saint and his deeds and words will shine in Paradise. It is blessed to be devout.”

“I know little of Paradise, but I know, and my father might know if he studied the life of Akbar the Great, his great-grandfather, that to be so bitter a saint in our Mohammedan faith that he insults and persecutes every other is to break our dynasty to powder. Consider of it, Imami, as I do. Have you read the Acts of Akbar Padshah the greatest sovereign that ever reigned? Were I emperor in India thus and thus I would do.”

“Glory of Women, may your condescension increase! What did Akbar Padshah?” said Imami, joining her hands, but I said nothing because I knew.

“Though he was born Moslem yet he honoured all the Faiths, knowing in his wisdom that the music is One and the dogmas but the foolish words that man in his ignorance sets to it. All faiths are true, and none!”

The blood almost fell from my face as I heard her, because had these words been carried to the Emperor not even her rank, not even her daughterhood, could have saved the Princess. With Imami and me she was safe, but in a palace a bird of the air may carry the matter.

“Yes!” she went on, laughing coldly, “Akbar Padshah had in all ways the tastes of Solomon the Wise and his Begam Mahal (Palace of the Queens) was a garden of beauty. But observe! The Queens were chosen from every faith and each had the right to worship as she would. There were Indian princesses who adored Shiva the Great God and Krishna the Beloved. There was the Fair Persian who worshipped the Fire as Zoroaster taught, and there were ladies of the faith of our Prophet more than can be counted. Whereas in the zenana of my imperial father——”

She paused, and Imami continued with gravity that concealed a smile:

“The Begams recite the holy Koran all day, as becomes the ladies of the Emperor who says that he sighs for the life of a faquir.”

“And would he had it!” cried the Princess with passion, “for every day discontent grows among the Hindus that are taxed, beaten, and despised only because they hold the faith of their fathers. Is there one of them employed about the court or in the great offices? Not any. Whereas the Emperor Akbar in his deep wisdom made them as one with ourselves and thus built up a mighty Empire that my father with holy hands destroys daily.”

“O Brilliant Lady, for the sake of the Prophet, be silent!” I said, for indeed she terrified me by her insight. It is better for a woman that she should not know, or, knowing, keep silence. “If these words were carried to the Padshah——”

“I should at the least be imprisoned and never more see the light of day— Well, one may be a devotee out of the Faith as in it, and like Akbar Padshah, I am the devotee of Truth who shuts her fair eyes on no faith that men hold in humbleness of heart. And were it policy only, is it not madness to disgust and terrify the countless millions of the Hindus upon whom our throne is carried? The end is sure.”

“What is the end?” asked Imami in a whisper.

“Misery for himself—though that matters little, for he will take it as the robe of martyrdom from the hand of Allah, but ruin for the Mogul Empire in India. O that I were a man!”

Her face lit up into such pride and valour as she spoke that I wished it also, for I knew that her words were true as truth. But in India a woman can do nothing. It is little wonder I trembled for my Princess.

A picture of her Imperial father lay on the low table at her elbow, painted by a Persian artist of fame, and beautiful as a jewel in its small brilliant colours, and looking upon it one might see the Kismet of the Emperor in every feature. Eyes stern but sad, the narrow brows and close lips of the man who sees not life as it is but as his own thought of it, bounded by those high narrow brows that overweighted the lower part. The head of the Emperor was surrounded like that of a saint with a golden halo and his stern eyes were fixed on some vision invisible to others. The jaw was weak but fine, and of all dangerous things on earth beware the strength of a weak man in the grip of his belief. The Princess looked at it, and then at me:

“The Emperor (may Allah enlarge his reign) should have lived in the time of the Prophet and have been the Sword in his right hand. He is born centuries too late. It is policy now that carries all before it. O could I speak my mind to him, for my brothers dare not, but he and I are worlds apart and in his presence I am silent.”

I sighed. Not his throne, nor his children, nor his women, nor aught on earth weighed for one grain of sand against the Pearl of the Faith. True is it that the Emperor Akbar followed the Vision also but with eyes how wide and clear!—knowing this for certain, that mortal man _cannot_ know, that Truth is a bird flying in the skies and lets fall but a feather to earth here and there. So he made for himself a faith that held the quintessence of all the faiths, and had his sons been like to him—but past is past. They were not, and they broke his great heart.

So I said, bowing very low:

“Princess, when the happy day comes that you must wed you shall make your lord Lord of the World with your wisdom.”

She laughed, but bitterly.

“O, I have lovers! For one, Suleiman, my cousin, son of the brother whom the Emperor slew because he stood too near the throne. By report I knew what he was, but I saw him and spoke with him——”

“My Princess, and how?” I asked in great surprise, knowing that his presence in the Begam Mahal would have been death.

She looked at me with large calm eyes.

“My faithful servant, have you come and gone so long about the Begam Mahal and have not known that all things are possible? Prince Suleiman was veiled like a woman, and like a woman he stood where you sit, and I saw his face and we spoke together. Should not cousins meet who may be man and wife? And I have loved his father, Prince Dara, very much, who was learned and good.”

I trembled again when I heard, for had the Emperor guessed that she had done this thing what hope for her? His three brothers had he slaughtered, and the Prince Suleiman was doomed.

“And he saw your face, O Brilliant Lady?”

“No, and not for fear’s sake but because I liked him not at all. He said ‘O Envy of the Moon, lift up your veil that I may enjoy the marvel of your beauty’ and I sang this verse I had made to my lute.”

She caught up her lute that lay beside her and sang,

“I will not lift my Veil, For if I did, who knows? The bulbul might forget the rose, The Brahman worshipper Adoring Lakshmi’s grace Might turn, forsaking her, To see my face; My beauty might prevail. Think how within the flower Hidden as in a bower Her fragrant soul must be, And none can look on it. So me the world shall see Only within the verses I have writ. I will not lift the Veil.

“And the fool caught me and would have torn it,” she added, “but Imami restrained him, and he flung from us like a woman in temper as in dress. A contemptible creature!”

“But Lady of Beauty, what had you against him?”

“Do I not know all that goes on in this city? Do I not know that Prince Suleiman spends his days and nights in Shaitanpur (Devilsville, the quarter of pleasure) and was I to show my face to a man reeking from the embraces of the bazaar? No, I am Makhfi (the Hidden One) and hidden I will remain for such as he. I will be no rival to Peri Mahal the dancer and her like.”

And even as she ended a low voice at the curtain that veiled the entrance asked for admission and when she granted it, the heavy silk was drawn aside and a tall veiled woman entered. The Princess did not look up but I saw Imami’s eyes fix as if startled.

“Her slave prays for a word with the Marvel of the Age whose mind is so lovely that it outshines even her fair face and her face so beautiful, that it is the lamp that permits the light of her soul to shine through.”

“Warm for a woman!” said the Princess, and looked straight at the new-comer who stood salaaming with the utmost humility. She added impatiently:

“There is no need of this ceremony, lady. Remove your veil. The good physician Abul Qasim is privileged to see the faces of all in the Begam Mahal.”

In a flash the veil was torn off and a man’s face appeared beneath it—young, bold, and handsome with the high features of the Imperial House, a splendid dissolute young man with the down black on his upper lip like the black astride the young swan’s bill. Prince Suleiman, the son of Dara the Emperor’s brother.

“Ha, daughter of my uncle!” he cried,— “Did I not wager, did I not swear, that I would see that hidden beauty and now I see it face to face. Poets have sung it and painters praised it, but their words and their colours were lies for they could not utter the truth. And having seen I entreat for my father’s sake, for love’s sake, that it may be mine.”

He made towards her eagerly, wholly disregarding Imami and me. I looked to see her confused or angry, but she spoke with a most misleading calm.

“Exalted cousin, you have won your wager and your bride. If her embrace is cold it is at least constant and——”

“Cold, with those burning lips of rose, those glowing eyes? O Loveliest, Divinest, grant me one kiss for earnest if you would not have me die at your feet.”

I saw her sign with her hand to Imami who glided away, flattening herself against the wall as if terrified, then she spoke serenely.

“Exalted cousin, when were you last in Shaitanpur?”

It stopped him like a lightning flash. He stood arrested on the marble before her face.

“I know nothing of Shaitanpur,” he said, breathless.

“No? Nor of the dancer Peri Mahal and her house with the courtyard of roses, nor of the song she sings?”

Again she caught up her lute and sang in a low voice,

“Black bee, strong bee, the honey-eater, Plunder my perfume, seek my heart Cling to me, ravage me, make me sweeter, Tear the leaves of the rose apart.”

He stared, his eyes slowly dilating. That the daughter of the Emperor should sing the song of the bazaar—the song of the light women—! Then it emboldened him. He threw himself forward to seize her hand.

“Maker of verses, this is a rose of your own garden. Till now I never heard it, but it speaks of love. You shall not ask me twice. My rose, my pearl, my star!—” He caught the hem of her veil. Now I knew well from her eyes that he rushed on his fate, but it was written in the book of his destiny and what is written who can avert?

She drew back a little and looked at him with soft eyes—wells of delicious darkness, the swelling curves of her lovely form a temptation for true believers, and her lips smiling a little as if from delight at their own sweetness. And indeed her voice was gentle as moonbeams and as caressing, as though she could sacrifice all to please the man whom she exalted with the sight of her.

“Fortunate cousin, I am a weak woman. How dare I face the wrath of the Emperor? He did not love your father. He does not love your father’s son, yet if he did——”

She drooped her head a little as if with a soft shame that overwhelmed her in the depths of modesty. O very woman, divine yet a child!— She had turned wisdom into folly with a glance. And he trembling, and with eyes fixed, stammered out:

“Alas, I have dreamed of your sweetness and what is the dream to the truth? I am drowned in it. O give it to me; make it mine that in life and death it may enfold me and that I may never again behold a lesser light, having seen the ineffable.”

And he caught her hand passionately and drew her towards him, she yielding gently and slowly, resisting a very little, and looking at him as if with compassion.

And very softly in a voice like the breathing of a flute she said:

“O my cousin, how should we face the wrath of the Emperor?” as though all her soul were in that question.

And he, kissing her hands with frenzy, said in broken words:

“Ah, Moon of my delight that knows no wane, let me but watch with you through the starry hours of one night, and then, then if the Padshah’s will be to slay me, I shall at least have lived.”

“And I also,” she said, looking down like the feminine incarnation of modesty, so that enraptured he flung his arms about the yielding softness of her most exquisite form and kissed her on the lips as a thirsty man in the desert grasps the cup nor can sever his mouth from it. And when he would permit her to speak she leaned her head backward to gain space, and she said:

“What is my lord’s will with his slave? And in what shall I obey him?”

Now I, standing in the recess would have warned him, if I could, that not thus—O not thus, does the proudest and wisest of women abandon herself to such as he! For I had pity on his youth and the manly beauty of him, and the Imperial blood that he shared with her. But who was this creature of dust to obstruct the design of the Imperial Princess? And indeed even I wavered and was uncertain that I guessed her meaning, with such veiled submissive sweetness did she hold his hand in hers and touch it to her lovely brows.

And trembling like a man in a fever, he replied.

“O darling little slave, since you give me the right to command what is wholly mine, I say this— Let my slave, whose slave I am, expect me to-night when the moonlight touches the western corner of the Divan-i-Am, and I will come to this chamber of bliss, and my life, my soul, are in the hand of my slave whose feet I kiss.”

And throwing himself on the marble like a worshipper he kissed the flower-soft feet that showed like bare gold beneath the hem of her robe, and so rising to his knee, looked up at her as an idolater at the goddess vouchsafed to his eyes.

But she looked beyond him at the curtain that veiled the door. It lifted to a hidden hand, and Imami stood there, ash-pale, in her hand a dish of gold, and standing upon it a great goblet of jewelled glass with pomegranate sherbet brimming in it rose-red and rose-petals floating on the surface and beside it two cups of gold flashing with diamond sparks, and on her knee she offered it to the Princess, who took the goblet and a cup smiling.