had gone down before father's. …
The last word brought memory of a still dearer tie.
"My mother?" asked the boy swiftly, "my mother? How--"
Then the real meaning of what he had heard came to him. He gave a little short, sharp cry and cast himself face downwards on the sweet-smelling white clover.
And all the joy of splendid life passed from him.
Nevian foster-brother who worshipped him, went over to him and crouched beside him.
"It is God's will, sire," he mumbled mechanically. "Kwâja Kâzi says so, and Kwâja Kâzi is a saint."
But saintship did not interest that young human heart, face to face for the first time with the deprivation of death.
Meanwhile those others, the bearded nobles and broad-faced courtiers who had crowded out at the news, looked at each other in doubt.
What had best be done? The times were troublous. Their new King was over-young. The King of Samarkand, the King of Tashkend, his paternal uncles, were already on the war-path. The former almost within striking distance; and this news of death would hasten, not retard.
In such case, might not refuge in the hills be wise? At any rate till Kâsim-Beg, most faithful of Governors, and Hassan-Yakoob, wiliest of advisers, could be recalled from the front?
But, while they still cogitated, Babar, who even at that age was not to be handled, rose suddenly, the tear-stains still on his sun-tanned cheeks. His voice, however, was firm.
"To horse, gentlemen!" he cried. "I go to secure my kingdom!"
He was on his lean-necked, goose-rumped Turkhestan mare Zulaikha almost before the words passed his lips, and ere two minutes had sped the low arched gateway of the city echoed and re-echoed to the hoofs of horses, as--the riders low bowed upon their saddles--they swept through in a stream of tails and tassels. So had it echoed many a time to the wild Turkhoman cavalry, since life in those days was one long war and rumour of war.
"My King!" said Shirâm-Taghâi spurring close as Barbar drew rein on the citadel terrace, and laying a detaining hand on his bridle. "That way lies death! Thine uncles mean evil! Come with us to the hills."
For an instant the boy hesitated and his eyes sought the distant blue of the mountains.
There, doubtless, lay safety--but what of that unknown quantity--kingship?
He had no ideals of it. He had not even been brought up to expect the chiefship. In those days succession was too uncertain for anticipation. But it was something now within his grasp. What if he lost it?
Still the faces around him were anxious and their owners were old; they had experience. And he was so young! How young none knew but himself. As this thought came he felt inclined to cry out-loud for his mother as in his heart he was crying for her loving care.
Then from the citadel came a running messenger to bid him enter without fear.
"It is a trick, Sire," protested Shirâm-Taghâi. "Safety lies with us."
And others echoed his words; so the lad wavered, uncertain, till an old man seated in the sunshine mumbling to himself, his long white beard wagging the while, spoke chance words that gave him the clue.
"Whatever happens is God's will, as the saints say."
Five minutes afterwards the young King knelt before Khwâja Kâzi, the saint of his family, for his decision. He was a thin ascetic-looking man whose sunken eyes, hollowed by many fasts, hardened by much thought, but softened by the unshed tears of a lonely life, dipped critically into the clear, shadowless youth of the hazel ones and appraised the character of the young face with its fine-lipped mouth that tempered the strong square of the chin. And Khwâja Kâzi knew the inside of the boy as well. He had watched him from birth; and lawyer and judge by profession, had accurately gauged the volatile, versatile vitality which would carry him triumphantly over all the obstacles in the leap-frog race of life. But he saw the dangers ahead also, and he loved the lad as his own soul; as indeed, despite all his faults, most people did love Babar in fortune and misfortune, in sickness and in health.
And the keen observer noticed how firmly the young hand closed over his scimitar-hilt. It was enough for one accustomed to weigh evidence and give verdicts.
"Draw thy sword, my son! and stand firm!"
The decree fell on glad ears. The boy was on his feet in a second and the war-shout of his race rang through the smoke-grimed old hall. Kingship lay before him.
As yet, however, the tragedy of death clouded his outlook. His dead father awaited burial at Âkshi, thirty miles distant; but ere he could start thitherwards many arrangements and new appointments had to be made. The novelty of power carried him far from thought. It was dream-like to be giving orders when but an hour before he had existed solely by the pleasure and permission of his father; as every other son in Moghulistân lived in those quaint old days.
It was dark, therefore, ere he and his galloping party stumbled over the stone causeways leading up to the high-perched citadel at Âkshi. Too late to disturb the women-folk, who, outworn by wailing, had gone to rest. But a little knot of long-robed physicians showed him the dead body of his father, lying ready for the funeral on an open bier in the Audience Hall. Babar had often seen death before, but never in this guise, with watchers and flaring torches and all the insignia of chiefship discarded, before the poor deserted shell of power.
It impressed his emotional nature vividly, and the mystery and the pity of it went with him to the dim royal room--so rough in its ancient royalty--where his father had been wont to sleep, and where the very touch of the royal quilts, surcharged with the personality of the cold dead in whose place he lived, seemed to burn in upon his young body and keep it awake. Not with concern or regret for things past, but with keen curiosity as to what was going to happen in the future to one Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar.
Lineal descendant of Timur the Earth Trembler; also of the Great Barbarian Ghengis Khan, was he to follow in their footsteps of conquest? Or would he be snuffed out at once by Uncle Ahmed of Samarkand? Wherefore, God knew, since he, Babar, had never done his uncle any harm. On the contrary; if he lived, he would have to marry that uncle's daughter Ayesha. … Here his vagrant thoughts wandered to remembrance of how sick he had been from overeating himself on sweets at the betrothal ceremonies;--that was his very earliest real recollection--when he was five years old.
Then there was Uncle Mahmud of Tashkend. Even in the dark the boy's cheek flushed at the mere remembrance of him; equally devoid of courage and modesty, of unbelieving disposition, keeping buffoons and scoundrels about him who enacted their scurvy and disgraceful tricks in the very face of the court, and even at public audiences!--of no outward appearance either, but all rough-hewn and speaking very ill …
The lad, always unsparing of epithet, painted the portrait with remorseless hand. So his thoughts passed to Mahmûd's sons, his first cousins. He knew them well, but Masaud the eldest was a nincompoop, and as for Baisanghâr? What was there that jarred at times in Baisanghâr? Baisanghâr who was so charming, so elegant, so clever, so sweet-tempered?
Here the lad's mind passed swiftly, without conscious cause, to his own sister, Dearest-One as he always called her; for he was given to caressing nicknames for those he loved. And he loved none better than the tall, straight girl, five years his senior,
