even when news came that the offender had paused by the way to make an attack on Âkshi, and in the consequent mêlée, having been wounded in the hinder parts by an arrow from his own men, had been unable to escape and so had fallen a victim to the loyalists the boy-King was glad that Providence had taken judgment from his hands. Hussan had but himself to thank. As the poet said:
"Who does an evil deed
But sows the seed
Of his own meed."
This was finely philosophic; but it did not quite comfort the philosopher. The first actual experience of ingratitude and disloyalty made its mark upon him and sobered him. He began to abstain from forbidden and dubious meats and but seldom omitted his midnight prayers.
Mercifully, however, the season for polo was past, and Nevian Gokultâsh was almost as good at leap-frog as the deceased statesman. Nevian Gokultâsh, who, as foster brother, was above the possibility of suspicion.
"Truly," said Babar one evening, throwing his arm round his playmate's neck affectionately, "rightly are thy kind named Gokultâsh--'heart of stone.' Thy love is founded on rock, whereas my brother by blood--" he broke off impatiently--"but there! 'tis not his fault--he is so young--two whole years younger than I."
Despite the good-natured excuse which in all his chequered life, ever came easily to Babar's kindly nature, he felt the first chill of the cold world at his heart. He found to his great irritation and annoyance, that his milieu was not nearly so reasonable as he was himself. It was the irritation and the annoyance which besets capability and vitality. Other folk had not nearly such good memories, were not half so nimble-minded, or straight-forward, as he expected.
When, for instance, he sent an envoy to a rebellious chief, in order to remonstrate with him, before proceeding to arms, the wrong-headed man, instead of returning a suitable answer, ordered the ambassador to be put to death.
Such, however, not being in the pleasures of God, the envoy managed to escape, and after having endured a thousand distresses and hardships, arrived naked and on foot, to pour the tale of his wrongs into Babar's indignant ears. Urged by wrath at such ill-manners, the boy-King proposed instant reprisals, and set off; but a heavy fall of snow on the encircling hills and a slight sprinkling on the clover meadows warned him that winter was approaching, and his nobles added their opinion, that it was no time in which to commence a campaign.
So he returned to Andijân and to a boy's life of study and sport. The saintly Kâzi was his tutor, and kept the boy to his Al-jabr (algebra) and Arabic, and abstruse dialectic dissertations on the nature of the Kosmos. There were not many books to be read in Andijân, but Babar knew them all. He had the Epic of Kings almost by heart, and used to regret there were not more details about the great Jamsheed with his wonderful divining cup; Jamsheed who reigned with might, whom the birds, and beasts, and fairies, and demons obeyed; Jamsheed of whom it was written "and the world was happier for his sake and he too was glad." That was something like a King!
And Babar learnt also, in a rude, unrefined way, all the accomplishments of a Turkhi nobleman. He could strum on the lute, bawl a song fairly, and play with singlestick to admiration. The latter was Kâsim's care; Kâsim who was the best swordsman in the kingdom and who used to quarrel with the Kâzi as to whether the young student's strongest point was fencing, or the fine nastalik hand-writing in which Babar excelled.
As for sport, the snow falling early brought the deer down to the valleys; and the undulating country about Andijân was always full of wild fowl, while pheasants by the score were to be shot in the skirts of the mountains.
The boy was growing fast and in his lambskin coat worn with the fleece inside, the soft tanned shammy leather without all encrusted by gold-silk embroidery to a supple strength that kept out both cold and sabre cuts, he looked quite a young man; and his high peaked cap of black astrachan to match the edgings of his coat and bound with crimson velvet suited his bright animated face.
Dearest-One admired him hugely.
"I would the court painter were not a fool," she said regretfully as he came in one day from the chase and held up for her inspection a cock minâwul pheasant all resplendent in its winter plumage. "But he cannot see. When he paints thee he makes thee all as one with Timur Shâh and Ghengis Khân--on whom be peace--but I want thee."
In truth it needed a better artist than Andijân held to do justice to the fire which always leapt to the boy's face when beauty such as the iridescent bird's struck a spark from his imagination and made the whole world blaze into sudden splendour.
"Baisanghâr might do it likely," replied Babar thoughtlessly; "he hath a quaint turn with his brush that is not as others; and he said he would love to paint thy portrait--" he broke off suddenly, aware that this was a subject which had better not have been introduced. But, indeed, there seemed a fate that he should always talk of Baisanghâr to his sister. Could it be her fault? He looked at her with boyish reproach, but the girl's face was lit up with smiles and dimples.
"Aye! he said that. Did he say more after I had gone? Tell me, brotherling."
But he walked off in dignified fashion with the cock pheasant. His sister thought too much of Baisanghâr. And it was time she married.
He talked to his mother quite seriously about it, and she met his anxiety by the calm remark:
"Why should she not marry Baisanghâr?"
Why not, indeed, now he came to think of it. Somehow it had not occurred to him before. But when he suggested it to his sister she met him with a storm of tears. She was never going to marry. She was going to be a sainted canoness and pray for her brother. Why could he not leave her alone; and Cousin Baisanghâr also, who apparently was of the same mind, since, though he was nigh nineteen, he had never taken a wife. And, if it came to weddings, was it not high time that he, Babar, King of Ferghâna, bethought himself of bringing his betrothed home? That would procure festivities enow, if that was what he was wanting.
From which deft shaft in the enemy's camp, Babar fled precipitately. The very idea irked him; he had no time for such nonsense. In fact he wearied even of the three loving women who insisted upon consulting him by day and by night.
But ere the winter was over yet another messenger of death arrived, and this one made the boy-King feel like a caged young eagle longing for his first flight.
Wicked Uncle Mahmûd after disgusting Samarkand for six months with his unbridled licentiousness and tyranny, until great and small, rich and poor, lifted up their heads to heaven in supplications for redress, and burst out into curses and imprecations on the Mirza's head, had, by the judgment that attends on such crime, tyranny, and wickedness, died miserably after an illness of six days.
The women wept, of course, though old Isân-daulet's tears were considerably tempered by smiles at her own prophetic powers. Had she not said that both the men who dared to attack the apple of her eye, young Babar, would suffer? And so they had. And now …
The old lips pursed themselves and were silent. But the old thoughts were busy. Her grandson was, mayhap, over young to try his luck this year, yet for all that he was the rightful heir to the throne of Samarkand. In this way: Father Yunus Khân, Suzerain of all Moghulistân, had been suzerain also of Samarkand. None questioned that. Had not the triple marriage of Yunus Khân's three daughters with the King of Samarkand's three sons been arranged especially in order to put an end to the Khân of Moghulistân's undoubted claim, by joining the two families? Well, one of those marriages had produced no son. Mahmûd who had married
