The wide mosque lay empty save for a group of long-bearded doctors of the law, who, lingering after service was over, discussed as ever the unfailing topic of the King's innovations. Such purposeless innovations too! Leading to nothing, to absolute nescience; for what else was all this talk of freedom, of equality, of universal brotherhood? Were not kings, kings, and nobles, nobles, since the very beginning?

These reverend seigneurs surcharged with pride of race, the pride of the conqueror, fiercely fanatical in faith, felt resentfully that in religion, in manners, in morals, Akbar, their King, stood absolutely aloof from them.

Yet they, in their turn, stood as absolutely aloof from the real heart of India which beat placidly in the simple lives of the husbandmen toiling in the ample fields which, seen through the great Arch of Victory receded into a dim blue distance that lost itself in a dim blue sky. So each, the conqueror, the conquered, went on his way, while a man dreamt of blending the two into one.

"Yes! it is true," murmured Budaoni the historian regretfully; "from his earliest childhood his Majesty hath collected everything in all religions that is worth remembering, with a talent of selection peculiar to him, and a spirit of inquiry opposed to every principle of our Faith."

"Sobhan-ullah!" assented the MakhdÛm-ul'-mulk, who had been the highest religious authority in the land until the King, with one sweep of his pen, had made himself the Head of the Church. A direful offence to the orthodox who refused assent to Akbar's reasoning that since there was but one law, the law of God, there could be but one authority; therefore the intervention of a priesthood between the people and God's vice-regent on earth was unnecessary, impolitic.

An old man, white-bearded, high-featured, murmured to himself, "Yet is he King indeed," then fell hurriedly to the telling of his beads; but GhiÂss Beg, the Lord High Treasurer--a stout, good-humoured looking man, whose fat paunch stood evidence for his love of good living--shook his head and sighed.

"It cometh of abstinence, see you," he mourned. "When the stomach is empty wind rises to the head. And, were it not for that damned sense of duty which leaveth the King neither by day nor by night, Akbar would give up food and sleep altogether. So far hath he wandered from the Sure Pivot of Life that the very question of dinner ariseth not in his mind; he eats but once a day, and leaveth off unsatisfied, nor is there even any fixed hour for this food. Sure! 'tis the life of a very dog."

"So he keep it, and his dogs, and his uncircumcised friends to himself," muttered a sour-visaged elder, "I quarrel not with his starvations. Belike they may bring the Heir-Apparent to his rights sooner, and that would be a glad day for IslÂm."

The old man with the white beard who was telling his beads murmured once more under his breath: "Yet is he King indeed," and went on with his prayers still more hurriedly.

"Lo! mullah jee!" yawned another sour-visaged one, "Prince SalÎm will be in the idolaters' toils ere then. With a RÂjpÛt to wife there is small hope for a Ruler of the Faith."

In the hot sunshine where they sate whispering like sleepy snakes, ready, yet too lazy, to strike, a leisurely groan ran round the whole assembly. That the first wife--practically the only real wife--of the Heir-Apparent should be a Hindu was simply an outrage. It was bad enough that the King himself should have taken the RÂjpÛt daughters and sisters of his conquered foes into his harem, in order--heaven save the mark!--to cement friendship between the races; but he, at least, had been first married in orthodox fashion to a daughter of IslÂm. Could he not do even so much for his son?

GhiÂss Beg heaved another fat sigh and his face took on obstinacy.

"True," he assented, "and 'tis not that as fair a bride could not be found----"

"In the House of the Lord High Treasurer," interrupted a sneering voice. It came from Mirza IbrahÎm, who, at that moment, followed at a little distance by a posse of courtiers and others, came from the cloisters full upon the half-drowsy group of malcontents.

"God forbid!" gasped the horrified High Treasurer weakly. In his heart of hearts he had been thinking--and not for the first time--of his little daughter Mihrun-nissa, as a future Empress of India. But this was an outrage on decorum, an indignity! He began to splutter remonstrance.

"Prayers are over! Up with the carpet!" interrupted the Mirza irreverently. Whereupon the MakhdÛm interfered with pompous frowns and craved to know what my Lord High Chamberlain meant by the unseemly remark.

"Nothing, Most Holy," replied the latter cheerfully, "save that if the pious deliberations of the wise are ended the ignorant have a point of law which they would fain lay before authority. Is it not so, oh, sahibÂn?"

He turned as he spoke to a little knot of curiously distinctive-looking men who, having separated themselves from the remainder of his following, stood together in the full blaze of sunlight. They were singularly alike. Small, fine-drawn, with watchful eyes, and a little stoop forward of the head, reminding one irresistibly of a bird of prey. In truth the Syeds of BÂrha were wild hawks indeed; and to-day, still travel-stained with their quick march from their eyrie of a fortress far in the distant plains, they were ready to swoop fiercely on any cause of offence. For they were red-hot with anger at the exile of that ill-doing scion of their house JamÂl-ud-din. Not that they defended his choice of a wife--it was one which sooner or later might necessitate a sack, and the nearest river--but, if Siyah Yamin was the lad's wife, what right had even the Great Mogul to interfere?

They assented with a scowl; but KhodadÂd (he who called himself by another name when he wrote to Sinde) smiled urbanely. He was evidently prepared to play the indispensable Eastern part of applauder and general backer-up.

"Even so, Most Holy!" he replied effusively, "a point of law which can only be settled by God's most chosen Judge, before whom even these lineal descendants of our Great Prophet bow humbly."^[10]

The speech was full of malicious intent, purposely provocative, and succeeded in its purpose.

"Then let them go to the King," began the MakhdÛm acrimoniously, when IbrahÎm cut him short, concealing a yawn as he sought a comfortable place for himself where his feet could be in sunshine, his head in shadow.

"Who hath usurped the Judge's seat? Nay! Most Holy! It is only time-servers and idolaters who yield such function to Akbar. We faithful ones and true----"

"Had best keep silence in a public place," put in Budaoni eyeing the other with a glassy stare. He himself might take his own part in discontent, but being, by virtue of his voice, precentor in the Court Mosque, he did not choose to encourage IbrahÎm, whose evil life was notorious. The latter smiled and skilfully drew another red-herring of provocation across the path.

"Public?" he echoed with a leer of malice. "Sure there is no more private place than the Court Mosque since the King started his Divine Faith! Hast heard, Most Holy, what the idolatrous pig Birbal jested last Friday when the King, for a marvel, put in an appearance at prayers--that he came not in order to listen to what you preached as of God, but to hush the slanders you borrowed of the Devil."

The MakhdÛm spat solemnly, the senior canon let loose a thundering "God roast him," which echoed and re-echoed through the wide arches.

"Except," remarked Budaoni with a sneer, "when his Majesty reads prayers himself; then he comes to stutter!"

This allusion to the day not so far past when Akbar, assuming the Headship had--whether from nervousness or emotion history sayeth not--broken down in repeating the kutba composed for the occasion by Faiz, the poet-laureate, produced snorts and smiles of assent.

"Yes! yea!" assented the sour-visaged elder fiercely "he stuttered indeed--mayhap because the words were by Faiz, the dog poet--may God rot him for defiling His Holy Place."

The old man with the white beard looked up suddenly.

"Yet, sirs, was there ought wrong with the words?" he asked; so stretched out his lean old hand, and his wavering old voice rang out through the sunshine:

The echoes died away and there was silence. Then IbrahÎm indulging in a yawn of contempt for the digression his words had caused, said patronisingly, "The question we ask is not of kutbas; it is of a marriage, most Enlightened-One."

But Budaoni's virulence was incorrigible. "His Majesty hath propounded not a few such problems to this poor court already," he remarked caustically; "doth he perchance propound another?"

This further allusion to the hot dispute between the King and the doctors concerning the legality of the former's political marriages with RÂjpÛt princesses, would have met with equal favour, but for IbrahÎm's quick frown. To him, as chamberlain, the King's present austerities and general asceticism were a continual grievance.

"Thy wits must wander, Budaoni," he interrupted sharply, "or thou wouldst know the very name woman is at a discount at court! Mayhap the translation into civilised language of the Hindu Scriptures proves too much for thee!"

The historian scowled, for his task of translating religious books from the Sanskrit into Persian for the King's benefit was utterly abhorrent to his orthodoxy.

"And small wonder," he replied hotly. "These useless absurdities confound the eighteen worlds! Such injunctions! Such prohibitions! A whole page against the eating of turnips! May God forgive the enforced spoiling of orthodox pen, ink, and paper over such puerilities!"

It was the Syeds' turn to shift impatiently. "Good sir historian," said one, handling his sword as it lay on his knee, "we come not hither to discuss literature, but to ask an opinion. Hath the King right to exile a man for the marrying of a woman?"

"What man, and what woman?" asked the MakhdÛm portentously. "On that hangs law. Hath the man already four wives?"

"The King hath nigher to forty," interrupted the incorrigible Budaoni.

"Peace, preacher!" reproved the great man, wagging his head. "Cloud not perspicacity with allusions. And the woman? Is she virgin, widow, or duly divorced?"

There was a general sort of chuckle from the hawks-brood.

"None of them i' faith," said the head of the clan at last, "'tis Siyah Yamin whom all know; but she hath said the Creed and the lad hath married her."

"By legal marriage?"

"How else?" asked the spokesman hotly. "We of BÂrha, descended of the true Prophet--may His name be exalted--deal not with customs borrowed of the idolater."

"Then are they true wed, and none can dissolve the tie save the husband himself by----"

"Traa!" interrupted IbrahÎm impatiently, "that is for them to settle between them! These gentlemen desire to know by what right the King forbids this virtuous young man to bring his screened and lawful woman into the town? Such cupolas of chastity are beyond the power even of majesty; is it not so, most learned doctors?"

A little stir shifted through the assemblage; it sate up literally, metaphorically, keen for ground of offence against any of the King's decisions.

"Of a truth," pronounced the MakhdÛm pompously, "he hath no right. By all the laws of IslÂm a screened and lawful woman belongs only to her owner."

So in the sunshine the enmity of the Old against the New rose hot as the sunshine itself, and conspiracy sprang into being.

It was a good half-hour ere Mirza IbrahÎm summed up the situation in these words:

"We meet again then, in the Hall of Public Audience to-day, and demand revision of the sentence as being contrary to the Revealed Word; and if the King----"

KhodadÂd broke in on him with a sudden laugh--"Nay! my idolatrous quarry will be Birbal! God and His Prophet! how I loathe the dog!" He paused, seeing the unwisdom of his confidences, for the Syeds of BÂrha rose, to stand packed, fingering their swords.

"God's truth," said their leader, turning insolently to the speaker, "keep thy carrion to thyself, TarkhÂn! We of BÂrha mix not in court cabals--we be not buzzard-cocks to whom the smell of death brings but gluttony. No! if the King rescind not his order we fling our allegiance at his feet, we and our goodly following; so, escaping free of false law to our strongholds, there to defend ourselves against tyranny. But for quarry! Stab whom thou willst, TarkhÂn, but reckon not on our knives."

KhodadÂd, deprecating a scowl at his indiscretion from Mirza IbrahÎm, smiled lightly:

"Quarry for my craft is all I ask, though God knows His world would be better without the Hindu pig who, see you, comes yonder defiling the sanctuary and hatching new plots against our pockets, with the accurst Khattri, TÔdar Mull, the Finance Minister."

It was a deft distraction, for the constant cutting-down of perquisites and fees in Akbar's efforts to ameliorate the condition of the poor, was a continual source of irritation to the upper classes. But the Syeds of BÂrha were large landowners, and they knew on which side their bread was buttered. So they salaamed respectfully to the two statesmen as they passed at a distance arm in arm, and the oldest of the little group said sharply, "Hindu or no, he hath his grip on the collector of taxes. So good luck go with him--aye! And with the King, too, in such matters. Save for this about JamÂl-ud-din we find no fault in him."

"Neither see I fault in him," came a sudden voice loud yet wavering. It came from the white-haired old man who had been telling his beads, and who now stood, his thin bent figure outlined against the distant blue of India that showed through the Arch of Victory.

"Neither see I fault," he repeated, his tone breaking in his vehemence. "God give him ever what he prays for--'a tranquil mind, an open brow, a just intent, a right principle, a wide capacity, a firm foot, a high spirit, a lofty soul, a right place, a shining countenance, and a smiling lip.' Of such are kings indeed!"

They looked at the old man in haughty scorn, as stumblingly, his old eyes half-blind with tears, he passed through the archway, so down the steps to disappear as it were in the heart of India widespread, remote, indefinite. But Budaoni murmured under his breath, "Lo! the glamour of the King is upon him. God knows one can scarce live in sight of him and not feel the very soul of one go out toward what lies beyond. Even I myself----" he paused and was silent, knowing that through all his diatribes, all his wanton misreadings of Akbar's character, ran admiration.

Meanwhile TÔdar Mull had in passing given a quick glance in return for the salutation which had come from the Syeds of BÂrha.

"That bodes--what?" he had asked of Birbal, who had shrugged his shoulders and given a still keener glance at the group in the sunshine.

"Since KhodadÂd is in it--mischief! Mirza IbrahÎm ever equals immorality, and the SyedÂn--I wist not they were here--bode--with JamÂl-ud-din and his chaste spouse in exile--marriage! As for the Learned of the Law, they contribute 'Mahommed is His Prophet.' The whole doubtless forming conspiracy--what else is there in the court with this accursed peace of Akbar's giving time for the cooking of cabals? Would to God----" He broke off, his mind besieged in a rush with the fierce regret which had been his ever since, but a few hours before he had heard the words of self-renunciation fall unconsciously from his master's lips. But--fate willing--there should be no more such talk! He, Birbal, would force on war; he would make Akbar, as unconsciously, play his part in common-sense, grasping Kingship. "Yea," he continued urbanely, "were it not that the poor, thriving, are content, thanks to TÔdar Mull's wise ruling----"

The Kattri's face, yellow of tint, fleshy of contour, seemed to take on bone and muscle, and his oiliness of manner roughened into swift decision. "Aye!" he returned, "they grow more content, poor souls, but, 'tis the King who starts me on the trail. I go even now to discuss a new idea of his with Abulfazl, whose head truly hath no peer for detail."

"Yea!" put in Birbal, "but the King's Diwan is even now using it in showing the details of the King's work to the Englishmen, while the Portuguese priests scowl at the intrusion of new claimants to commerce. Lo! I grow weary of these strangers. Why should Akbar make their way smooth?"

TÔdar Mull, his inherited aptitude for the problems of money showing in the eyes which were keen even for fractions in a man's character, looked at Birbal doubtfully.

"Wherefore not?" he asked. "Lo! I have had speech with these new men, and there is that of free-trading, unfettered by aught save gold or the lack of it, in them which compels approval. For see you, in the end gold is the essence of all things. I tell thee were it not for piety I myself would bow down to it and worship with a 'Hallowed be thy name.'"

Birbal's mimetic face became preternaturally grave, but there was a twinkle in his eye: "'Twould not"--he bowed courteously--"be so bulky a divinity as TÔdar Mull's present pantheon, which, if rumour says sooth, already runs to cart-loads."

The financier flushed. This allusion to his habit of carrying waggons-full of household gods about with him when on tour brought a quick reproach: "Jest not at the Gods, O! Brahmin-born," he said.

Birbal's whole expression changed. "Not at the All-Embracing One, for sure; but for the little brass god-lings."

TÔdar Mull edged away nervously. "Let be--let be! RÂjah Sahib. Each for his own belief, and the Almighty's curse lodge on the hindmost, so it be not me! Now go I to the statistic makers; for see you, without figures man is lost in this world."

They parted company, and Birbal looked after the retreating Finance Minister with a frown.

What was the use of it all! Was it not better far to eat, to drink, knowing that to-morrow one must die? So his thoughts turned, as they always did, to the present; to the one portion of time which even Fate could not filch from a living man. The advent of the SyedÂn of BÂrha meant, doubtless, appeal to the King. An appeal to which the King must not, of course, listen. As to that, Abulfazl must be seen, and at once.

He found him in the royal storehouses, his yellow-brown eyes clear with pride as he pointed out the system on which they were worked to the three Englishmen who stood, centring, with the curious half-contemptuous gaze of another world, the leisured bustle in the wide courtyards.

"His Majesty," explained Abulfazl grandiloquently, "having acquainted himself with the theory and practice of every manufacture, is thus able to distinguish between good and bad work. So, the intrinsic value of each article being settled by the State in reference to a certain fixed standard, neither worthy labour nor true art can fall into discredit."

Ralph Fitch looked queerly at the carts unlading and lading, at the groups of experts settling true values, at the artificers waiting patiently for the verdict; certain, if their work were up to the standard, of immediate sale.

"And what of the merchants?" he asked sharply. "Where does their profit----?"

"Their profit is settled also," interrupted the Diwan with simple pride, "and they are content." His voice took on sternness as he added, "They have, indeed, no choice; since all articles unstamped by the testing houses are liable to confiscation, and the possessors thereof to fine."

"Cheer thee up, Ralph," laughed John Newbery into his companion's appalled face as they moved on to a new court, "and thank heaven we be not thus tied by the apron strings! Though, by our Lady, this King Echebar has a trick o' keeping cables taut which would make me almost wish to enter his service would he but command some adventure to the Poles."

William Leedes looked up quickly. "Nay," he said, "before God I would rather quit this land and leave it--as it is."

He paused, for John Newbery's attention had passed as his roving eyes settled themselves surprised, yet approvingly, on the long lines of light which followed the rows on rows of steel lance heads, swords, and matchlocks lining the walls of the vast armoury into which they entered. It was full to the brim with every conceivable instrument of war, many of them strange to Western eyes. But Abulfazl gave no time for inspection. With the brief explanation, "The Most-Excellent is yonder at work," he passed through one of the wide arches fitted with massive doors which were now set open to the sunlight, and joined a group of men who stood in the courtyard beyond.

A sharp report, followed by the whistling ping of a bullet as it struck a target outlined on the farther wall, cut the hot air keenly, and Akbar, who had been kneeling for better aim, stood up rubbing his shoulder. He was dressed in a white overall, not unsmirched with grease, and his grizzled hair showed free of covering.

"It hits hard enough behind anyhow, sir smith," he said good-humouredly to a swarthy half-naked workman who looked down the still smoking barrel of the newly tried gun with a doubtful air. "Nay! 'tis not the grooving. That idea holds good. It is something in the chamber. Bring it this evening to the Palace, and we will see to it. Hast aught else for trial?"

The next instant, after one careless salute to the newcomers he was deep in the mechanism of a complicated gun, and his face lit up as he looked. "See you," he went on--apparently as much for himself as for those others who, left behind by his imaginings, stood patient, half-comprehending--"if this moving wheel duly loaded, could fit the one barrel what need for more? The twin cannon fired by one match which we made last year works well, but this will be better--if it can be compassed." And then suddenly as his hands fingered ratchet wheel and eccentric, bolt and socket with sure practical touch, his eyes grew full of dreams.

"Lo! we work in the dark," he murmured, "since none know why the bullet curves, and so the worst may do as well, nay better than the best. 'Twas an old matchlock snatched from a sleepy sentry which gave me empire."

He paused, back in thought to that false dawn before the trenches at Chitore when, going his rounds after his wont, alone and in darkness, he had seen upon the ramparts of the besieged town the figure of his foe also going his rounds, but by the light of lanterns.

It had been a long shot, but in the dawn Chitore was his, and he was Emperor of India. Yet, once again, almost overmastering regret came over him for the past horrors of that sun-bright dawn. The awful onslaught of saffron-robed heroes, doomed to desperate death, which he had seen against the rolling clouds of dense white smoke that rose from the very bowels of the earth, where, in dark caves, the RÂjpÛt women were burning--self-immolated!

Then as he stood there fingering the outcome of his uncontrollable desire for success, all his victories seemed to slip from him for the moment; he remembered--as, nearly two thousand years before him another great King of India had remembered--nothing but his regret. At the moment he, also, could have inscribed an edict for all time setting forth his sorrow for "the hundreds of thousands of God's creatures needlessly slain." But the next instant the mood passed and he turned with almost insolent regality to the English adventurers.

"Yet tell your queen, sir travellers," he said, "that Akbar holds the best gun to be the best key to empire."

John Newbery looked at Ralph Fitch, who bowed his answer:

"Most Excellent, we will give the message without fail."

As they passed on, Birbal paused a moment beside Abulfazl to whisper in his ear:

"The BÂrha hawks are in. Hast news of them?"

The Diwan nodded: "The King sees them at audience to-day to consider----"

Birbal interrupted with a bitter laugh: "Before God, Abul," he said, with his habitual shrug of the shoulders, "when the Most-Excellent thinks of himself as Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith, he is too excellent for this world. Better sure a little injustice than that the King should back on himself. It is not time for weakness. What does he say?"

"'The Law-maker cannot break the law,'" replied the Diwan softly, and in his voice there was a touch both of irritation and of pride.

So in the sunshine the eyes of those two followed the King who dreamt such strange new dreams of duty and responsibility toward his subjects.