The Prince of India; Or, Why Constantinople Fell Volume I Part 30

The Governor's head was drooping; his hands crossed themselves upon his stomach; and when he raised his eyes, they were full of deprecation and entreaty.

"Your Highness--most n.o.ble Lord--condescend to hear me."

"Speak. I am awake to hear the falsehood thou hast invented in excuse of thy perfidy to us, and thy treason to him, the most generous of masters, the most chivalrous of knights."

"Your Highness has greatly misconceived me. In the first place you have forgotten the crowded state of the Castle. Every room and pa.s.sage is filled with the suite and escort of"--

He hesitated, and turned pale, like a man dropped suddenly into a great danger. The shrewd guest caught at the broken sentence and finished it:

"Of Prince Mahommed!"

"With the suite and escort," the Governor repeated.... "In the next place, it was not my intention to leave you unprovided. From my own apartments, light, beds and seats were ordered to be brought here, with meats for refreshment, and water for cleansing and draught. The order is in course of execution now. Indeed, your Highness, I swear by the first chapter of the Koran"--

"Take something less holy to swear by," cried the Prince.

"Then, by the bones of the Faithful, I swear I meant to make you comfortable, even to my own deprivation."

"By thy young master's bidding?"

The Governor bent forward very low.

"Well," said the Prince, softening his manner--"the misconception was natural."

"Yes--yes."

"And now thou hast only to prove thy intention by making it good."

"Trust me, your Highness."

"Trust thee? Ay, on proof. I have a commission"--

The Prince then drew a ring from his finger.

"Take this," he said, "and deliver it to the Emir Mirza."

The a.s.surance of the speech was irresistible; so the Turk held out his hand to receive the token.

"And say to the Emir, that I desire him to thank the Most Compa.s.sionate and Merciful for the salvation of which we were witnesses at the southwest corner of the Kaaba."

"What!" exclaimed the Governor. "Art thou a Moslem?"

"I am not a Christian."

The Governor, accepting the ring, kissed the hand offering it, and took his departure, moving backward, and with downcast eyes, his manner declarative of the most abject humility.

Hardly was the door closed behind the outgoing official, when the Prince began to laugh quietly and rub his hands together--quietly, we say, for the feeling was not merriment so much as self-gratulation.

There was cleverness in having doubted the personality of the individual who received the refugees at the landing; there was greater cleverness in the belief which converted the Governor into the Prince Mahommed; but the play by which the fact was uncovered--if not a stroke of genius, how may it be better described? The Prince of India thought as he laughed:

"Not long now until Amurath joins his fathers, and then--Mahommed."

Presently he stopped, a step half taken, his gaze upon the floor, his hands clasped behind him. He stood so still it would not have been amiss to believe a thought was all the life there was in him. He certainly did believe in astrology. Had not men been always ruled by what they imagined heavenly signs? How distinctly he remembered the age of the oracle and the augur! Upon their going out he became a believer in the stars as prophets, and then an adept; afterwhile he reached a stage when he habitually mistook the commonest natural results, even coincidences, for confirmations of planetary forecasts. And now this halting and breathlessness was from sudden recollection that the horoscope lying on his table in Constantinople had relation to Mahommed in his capacity of Conqueror. How marvellous also that from the meeting with Constantine in the street of the city, he should have been blown by a tempest to a meeting with Mahommed in the White Castle!

These circ.u.mstances, trifling to the reader, were of deep influence to the Prince of India. While he stands there rigid as a figure marbleized in mid action, he is saying to himself:

"The audience will take place--Heaven has ordered it. Would I knew what manner of man this Mahommed is!"

He had seen a handsome youth, graceful in bearing, quick and subtle in speech, cultivated and evidently used to governing. Very good, but what an advantage there would be in knowing the bents and inclinations of the royal lad beforehand.

Presently the schemer's head arose. The boyish Prince was going about in armor when soft raiment would be excusable--and that meant ambition, dreams of conquest, dedication to martial glory. Very good indeed! And then his manner under the eyes of the girlish Princess--how quickly her high-born grace had captivated him! Something impossible were he not of a romantic turn, a poet, sentimentalist, knight errant.

The Prince clapped his hands. He knew the appeals effective with such natures. Let the audience come.... Ah, but--

Again he sunk into thought. Youths like Mahommed were apt to be wilful.

How was he to be controlled? One expedient after another was swiftly considered and as swiftly rejected. At last the right one! Like his ancestors from Ertoghrul down, the young Turk was a believer in the stars. Not unlikely he was then in the Castle by permission of his astrologer. Indeed, if Mirza had repeated the conversation and predictions at El Zaribah, the Prince of India was being waited for with an impatience due a master of the astral craft. Again the Wanderer cried, "Let the audience come!" and peace and confidence were possessing him when a loud report and continuous rumble in the room set the solid floor to quaking. He looked around in time to see the big drum quivering under a blow from Nilo.

From the negro his gaze wandered to Sergius standing before the one loophole by which light and air were let into the dismal chamber; and recalling the monk as the sole attendant of the Princess Irene, he thought it best to speak to him.

Drawing near, he observed the cowl thrown back, and that the face was raised, the eyes closed, the hands palm to palm upon the breast.

Involuntarily he stopped, not because he was one of those who always presume the most Holy Presence when prayer is being offered--he stopped, wondering where he had seen that countenance. The delicate features, the pallid complexion, the immature beard, the fair hair parted in the middle, and falling in wavy locks over the shoulders, the aspect manly yet womanly in its refinement, were strangely familiar to him. It was his first view of the monk's face. Where had he seen it? His memory went back, far back of the recent. A chill struck his heart. The features, look, air, portrait, the expression indefinable except as a light of outcoming spirit, were those of the man he had helped crucify before the Damascus gate in the Holy City, and whom he could no more cast out of mind than he could the bones from his body. His feet seemed rooting into the flinty flags beneath them. He heard the centurion call to him: "Ho, there! If thou knowest the Golgotha, come show it." He felt the sorrowful eyes of the condemned upon him. He struck the b.l.o.o.d.y cheek, and cried as to a beast: "Go faster, Jesus!" And then the words, wrung from infinite patience at last broken:

"I am going, but do thou TARRY TILL I COME."

For relief, he spoke:

"What dost thou, my friend?"

Sergius opened his eyes and answered simply, "I am praying."

"To whom?"

"To G.o.d."

"Art thou a Christian?"

"Yes."

"G.o.d is for the Jew and the Moslem."

"Nay," said Sergius, looking at the Prince without taking down his hands, "all who believe in G.o.d find happiness and salvation in Him--the Christian as well as the Jew and the Moslem."

The questions had been put with abrupt intensity; now the inquisitor drew back astonished. He heard the very postulate of the scheme to which he was devoting himself--and from a boy so like the dead Christ he was working to blot out of wors.h.i.+p he seemed the Christ arisen!

The amazement pa.s.sed slowly, and with its going the habitual shrewdness and capacity to make servants of circ.u.mstances apparently the most untoward returned. The youth had intellect, impressiveness, apt.i.tude in words, and a sublime idea. But what of his spirit--his courage--his endurance in the Faith?

"How came this doctrine to thee?"

The Prince spoke deferentially.