King Errant Part 5

But Babar was a sportsman. Even if it came to killing the forward in the King's game, he was not going to do it underhand. So he looked round the a.s.sembly of loyalists who had met to convince him in his grandmother's apartments in the stone fort, and said briefly: "To horse, gentlemen! I go to dismiss my Prime-minister from his appointment."

But that gentleman had already dismissed himself. When they arrived at the citadel, they found he had gone hunting; and from that expedition he never returned. Someone must have blabbed; for he had posted off to Samarkand, rather to the boy-King's relief. It would have been a terrible thing to imprison or blind the best forward in the kingdom.

And even when news came that the offender had paused by the way to make an attack on aks.h.i.+, and in the consequent _melee_, 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 ingrat.i.tude 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 Gokultash was almost as good at leap-frog as the deceased statesman.

Nevian Gokultash, 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 _Gokultash_--'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 amba.s.sador to be put to death.

Such, however, not being in the pleasures of G.o.d, the envoy managed to escape, and after having endured a thousand distresses and hards.h.i.+ps, 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 n.o.bles added their opinion, that it was no time in which to commence a campaign.

So he returned to Andijan and to a boy's life of study and sport. The saintly Kazi 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 Andijan, 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 n.o.bleman. He could strum on the lute, bawl a song fairly, and play with singlestick to admiration. The latter was Kasim's care; Kasim who was the best swordsman in the kingdom and who used to quarrel with the Kazi 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 Andijan 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 c.o.c.k _minawul_ pheasant all resplendent in its winter plumage. "But he cannot see. When he paints thee he makes thee all as one with Timur Shah and Ghengis Khan--on whom be peace--but I want _thee_."

In truth it needed a better artist than Andijan 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.

"Baisanghar 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 Baisanghar 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 fas.h.i.+on with the c.o.c.k pheasant. His sister thought too much of Baisanghar. 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 Baisanghar?"

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 Baisanghar 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 Ferghana, 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 Mahmud 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 Isan-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 Khan, Suzerain of all Moghulistan, had been suzerain also of Samarkand. None questioned that. Had not the triple marriage of Yunus Khan's three daughters with the King of Samarkand's three sons been arranged especially in order to put an end to the Khan of Moghulistan's undoubted claim, by joining the two families? Well, one of those marriages had produced no son.

Mahmud who had married the younger daughter, had but one son by her, a perfect child. But Babar, son of the eldest sister, was adolescent; therefore, by every right, every claim, he was the heir.

But she was a wise old woman. There was no use being in a hurry.

Samarkand might as well seethe in its own sedition for awhile. By all accounts the Turkhans were up in arms; and the Turkhans were ticklish folk to deal with. Then Khosrau Shah, the late King's prime-minister was an able man and might be trusted to fight for what he wanted. The time for intervention would be when the combatants had weakened each other.

And the shrewd old woman once more proved herself right. For Khosrau Shah, having plumped for the nincomp.o.o.p Masaud--doubtless because he knew that with a nonent.i.ty on the throne, his power would be absolute--the Turkhans declared for Baisanghar, sent for him express, and having driven out Khosrau, who had attempted to conceal his master's death until his plans were completed, placed the former on the throne.

And here another factor came in to the wary old woman's mind. What if her granddaughter were to marry Baisanghar? Babar could lay claim to other kingdoms when he was fit to fight for them, and thus there would be a down-sitting for both her daughter's children. So, most of the affairs of importance at Andijan being conducted by her advice, Kasim's swashbuckler instincts were held in check for the time.

Something however must be done to occupy the lad meanwhile; and the news that his uncle by marriage and cousin by descent, Hussain, King of Khorasan, meditated an expedition against Hissar, the neighbouring province, prompted the suggestion that the boy-King should take advantage of proximity to pay his respects and make acquaintance with the premier prince of the age.

Babar's imagination was aflame in an instant. Tales of the splendid court at Herat were broadcast in Asia. Folk said they had even spread to Europe--that dim unknown horizon to which the boy's thoughts often reverted. And Sultan Hussain was as his father and his elder brother.

It was always wise to make the personal acquaintance of such; it dispelled misunderstanding on their part, and gained for yourself a nearer and better idea of their strength and weakness.

So one day at the beginning of winter, with stout Kasim wrapped to the eyes in furs and a hundred-and-a-half or so of hardy troopers equipped for a mountain march, Babar started for the low pa.s.ses by the White Hills to the valley of the Oxus river.

"Have a care of thy soul, my son," said the saintly Kwaja, "and remember what the poet sings:

"The soul is the only thing to prize; Heed not the body: it is not wise.

The wiles of the Devil are millionfold, And every spell is a fetter to hold.

Thou hast five robbers to keep at bay, Hearing and sight, touch, taste and smell, So chain them up and govern them well.

Some things are real and some but seem; The mundane things of the world are a dream."

But Isan-daulet sniffed. "So be it that he keep the inst.i.tutes of Ghengis Khan as his forebears did, he will do. They be enough for a brave man, and death or the bastinado sufficient punishment."

The Kwaja looked grave. "Yet be they not the law of Islam, sister; and we, of the faith, are not heathens."

"Heathen or no!" retorted the old lady, "my grandson will do well if he touch Ghengis Khan's height." And she sniffed again.

Perhaps her words put it into the boy's head, but in this, his first flight beyond his hill-clipped kingdom his thoughts were with his great ancestors. He rather swaggered it in consequence round the camp fires at night, and was overbold in the chase; so that more than once on the higher hills Nevian-Gokultash had to pick him out of a snow-drift. But his dignity was always equal to the occasion, and when at last Sultan Hussain Mirza's camp showed in ordered array on the low ground beyond the pa.s.ses, he took it as if he were quite accustomed to see the large pavilions, the rows on rows of orderly tents, the _laagers_ of chained carts.

He held his head very high too, as he rode down the central alley, his pennant carried before him by two jostling troopers. The smart soldiers, lavish of buckles and broideries, who lounged about, smiled at the uncouth troop; but each and all had a need of praise for the boyish leader who sat his horse like a centaur and whose bright eyes seemed everywhere.

"He is a gay enough young c.o.c.kerel," admitted a scented n.o.ble with a smile. "Let us see if his uncle will make him fight."

But even if Babar had been more pugnacious than he was, sheer astonishment at his first interview would have kept him quiescent.

Even Kasim-Beg, stickler as he was for etiquette, gave up the hopeless attempt at ceremonial.