A Prince of Dreamers Part 28

"There is the chance of it," replied the King's Prime Minister, slowly. "I can say no more, no less."

But Birbal was more vehement. "It is more than chance; it is certainty. I have my finger on the pulse of the people. Already it beats irregularly. Had I but the power----"

"Peace! Birbal," said the King, sternly. "Thou hast it not!" Then turning to William Leedes he continued as if nothing had been said.

"And the next?"

The jeweller pointed to the mathematical diagrams at which he had been working.

"That is as fate and figures will have it, my liege. I labour to lose as little as may be."

Akbar's eyes twinkled, he gave a boyish laugh. "For fear of cutting out the King's luck? Lo! that should satisfy thee, Birbal."

"Not one whit, sire," replied the latter stanchly. "Birbal knows his own mind; and by all the G.o.ds in Indra's heaven, had I not been put in charge of ill-luck by the King's order--I--I would have stolen luck for him."

He laughed lightly giving his usual slight shrug of the shoulder; but Diswunt turned away suddenly and stood looking out on the sunlight.

Should he, should he not? It meant paradise, it meant escape from h.e.l.l according to two women; but _this_ was a man; and the King's best friend, the keenest intellect in the court.

"I stay!" he said curtly to the sentry who came to keep watch and ward while William Leedes went out for the mid-day recess.

"Best not!" remarked the latter casually. "Art needs rest, and thou has been at it ever since thou didst see Michael Angelo. Lo! were I to work unceasing at my problem I should grow crazy with angles and take a month where a week would suffice."

"Take the month an thou willst" retorted the cripple ill-humouredly as he banged to his door.

So there was no hurry! He had a week wherein to do the little thing that was asked of him. Only to wile the jeweller from his cell for one brief minute.

It was, however, but two days afterward, that he stood at the lintel of William Leedes's workshop. Something had gone wrong with the latter's calculations and he had lingered after the Hall of Labour had emptied. The lad's eyes were bloodshot, his hands were trembling with the hemp he had drunken. And then suddenly he walked over to the diamond. "Truly, as the King said, it is like a door" he murmured, "a door through which men could see--but these men can see naught. Though every line is true--they cannot see it."

"Cannot see what?" asked William Leedes abstractedly from his compa.s.ses.

For answer Diswunt gave a wild jeering laugh and clutched the jeweller by the wrist.

"Come and see it; _thou_ canst see! Come, I say--nay! thou must come and tell me if I be fool utterly."

His door, set wide, almost elbowed that of the jeweller's, and, overborne by Diswunt's wild appeal, William Leedes found himself on its threshold.

"Not that! not that!" almost yelled the lad, his half insane, reckless laughter echoing loudly through the arches. "Didst think I brought thee to see the pattering of flies-paws. Stand forward a bit--so forward----"

The wide door, as he set it aswing, enforced his demand; and what it brought to view as it swung, astonished William Leedes to forgetfulness and left him silent with admiration.

It was a hunting piece in rough charcoal. A buck standing at bay amid a herd of hyenas; but there was something more in it than that and William Leedes involuntarily crossed himself.

"Thou hast a devil, Diswunt," he said at last, and once more the half-mad painter's high, reckless laugh filled the arches.

"So! thou canst see! Dost mark the Tarkhan's sneer, the Chamberlain's cold glare?"

It was true. Something in the n.o.ble poise of the stag's head was reminiscent of the King, and each one of the savage beasts surrounding it recalled by some witchery of touch or line the foremost of the King's enemies.

"Lo! yonder is the stupidity of the Makhdum," went on Diswunt punctuating his words by that high laugh; "yonder the self-satisfaction of Budaoni, the fat foolishness of Ghia.s.s Beg." He paused, almost as if listening to the faint echo of his laughter in the roof. Then sudden seriousness came to him.

"But he will escape them, _now_. Dost see the javelin to the right yonder--that shall save him and his Luck."

The last word came curiously clear as if intended to awake remembrance. It did so.

"By'r Lady!" cried William Leedes, "I had a'most forgot." He was back in his workshop in a moment to find the diamond matrixed as ever in its place, with the darker sheen of the first facet showing full of promise.

But Diswunt stood at the lintel and looked out, not at the suns.h.i.+ne but at the door of the empty workshop next to William Leedes. It quivered slightly as if wind were behind it, or as if someone were gently closing a bolt.

CHAPTER XIII

Whirr spindles on my rus.h.i.+ng reel Leap thread from out my fingers feel.

Time dwindles! Fate will cut the thread Sleep dead! Before her grinding wheel Kindles life's spark again for woe or weal.

Birbal paused on atma's threshold listening to her deep voice backed by the burring hum of her spinning wheel, and as he listened he s.h.i.+vered. This thought of unending life aroused from death or ever the tired eyes were fast closed appalled him. Not for him such slight slumber!

Then he knocked. There was a sound of quick uprising from within, a swift echo of footsteps and then atma's voice at the door said with a breathlessness in it:

"What is't? Hast brought news--is all well?"

"Well or ill matters naught" he replied cavalierly. "Open! I come from the King."

But the phrase had lost its charm, "Go thy way, Chamberlain of Princes!" came the mocking answer. "Once bit, twice shy."

"Thou mistakest, sister" urged Birbal, who knowing Mirza Ibrahim's reputation, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of atma Devi's refusal. "I am Maheshwar Rao, disciple by birth of thy dead father."

The rea.s.surance was deft, and the door held ajar upon the chain showed atma's figure, tall, low-browed, defiant.

"What wants my lord?" she asked, and her voice trembled as if from some secret perturbation. "A kiss like my Lord Ibrahim, ere I turned him out, close clipped in an embrace for which he cared not? Yet enter--in the King's name enter to the house of his Charan."

Something there was of strain, of anxiety, in face and manner, that made Birbal's keen eyes seek round the roof for its cause. Then he laughed. "Nay! I seek no kisses, widow, where a lover has just left his lips."

She stared at him haughtily. "What means my lord?"

He pointed easily to a pair of man's shoes which stood in a corner beside the door. "Smagdarite's, sister! Ah I have your secret. He is here, for yonder are his shoes!"

atma's eyes following his, grew puzzled in their anger.

"Shoes!" she echoed superbly. "I see them not, my lord."

This time the laugh came more coa.r.s.ely. "None so blind as the blind beggar! Bah! woman, do I not know what woman is? He is here I say--hath been here always, and thou didst delude me last time with the child's voice."

He paused, for suddenly a tremulous sweet song as of some mating bird rose on the air.