CHAPTER III.
The Sultana was not long in discovering the mutual attachment which subsisted between the Ameer-ool-Omrah and Bameea.
Her anger knew no bounds. She summoned the Abyssinian. He appeared before the presence of his sovereign, not without some suspicion of what was about to take place. Bameea stood behind the Queen. She saw by the scowl upon the royal brow that no good was intended towards the object of her love. The eye of Ruzeea Begum was restless, and her fingers trembled as she dipped them into the ewer of perfume that stood beside her. Her full expressive mouth was closed with a compression that indicated suppressed emotion, and the full undulating lip occasionally quivered. Her head was raised haughtily as the Ameer-ool-Omrah entered, and she fixed upon him her large penetrating eye with so searching a scrutiny that it seemed as if it would have reached the very core of his heart. He met her gaze with calm reverence; and having made his obeisance, stood before her with the unbending dignity of a man who has secured the approbation of his own conscience. For several moments the Sultana did not speak, and in her presence no one of course ventured to break the silence. Bameea trembled as she perceived the rising agitation of her sovereign, which was evidently increased by the unperturbed demeanour of the person whom she had summoned. Ruzeea Begum at length finding the ebullition rising to her throat, by a sudden effort suppressed it, and passing her hand gently across her brow, as if to dispel the cloud which for a moment overshadowed it, she said, in a tolerably calm tone,
“Yakoot”—but her voice slightly trembled, and she eagerly swallowed a copious draught of sherbet.
“Yakoot,”—she had now regained her self-possession—“say, what does that man deserve who, having been raised by his sovereign from the lowest to the highest station, slights that sovereign’s favour?”
“Death, if he slight a favour which it becomes his sovereign togrant and him to receive; the praise of all good men, if he slight a favour that would degrade his sovereign, and dishonour him.”
“You have treated your Queen with the basest ingratitude.”
“I have done my duty, and if that is not consistent with the station to which a criminal partiality has advanced me, I am ready again to become the slave of the Sultana, instead of her Ameer-ool-Omrah. I courted not the distinction, and will never maintain it at the price of my virtue.”
The eye of Ruzeea Begum flashed fire.
“Slave!” she cried, “thy virtue is but the mask of hypocrisy. There is the cause of all thy disloyalty;” and she pointed with a quivering lip towards Bameea,—“there is the rebel who has seduced thee from thy allegiance; but there shall come a day of retribution—a day of vengeance—and remember that the revenge of monarchs is not the sudden irruption of the whirlwind, but the wide-spreading devastation of the hurricane.”
Bameea shrieked as she heard this fearful denouncement, and buried her brows in her small delicate hands.
“Bear her from my sight,” said the angry Queen: “henceforward I dispense with her services. But you,” turning to the Abyssinian, who stood before her in the same attitude of unruffled self-possession—“you may look for punishment when you least expect it. You have many enemies, and yet fancy yourself secure in the supremacy of your own valour; nevertheless, though you possessed the bravery of our holy prophet, and were endowed with a supernatural power of locomotion, there is no spot upon earth or in heaven where the vengeance of an insulted queen would not reach you.”
“Hear me, before I quit your presence for the last time,” said Yakoot, solemnly. “I am threatened with your vengeance; it is right I should tell you that I shall do my best to anticipate and to repel it, whenever and wherever it may appear. From this moment I revoke my vows of fealty to the daughter of Shums-ood-Deen. When monarchs become tyrants, from that instant they cease to be accredited sovereigns, and lose all right to the allegiance of good men. Had I forfeited my claim to yourrespect by an act dishonourable to my name or title, I were content to suffer the heaviest penalty which human laws award to human offences; but, as my integrity has remained untarnished in your service, I feel that you have now heaped upon me a wrong of which I am not deserving, and from this moment I quit your presence as a foe.”
The Sultana was silent; she dared not speak lest the current of her rage should burst forth into a torrent, and the Abyssinian retired from her presence with an unruffled brow.
That night he was passing towards his home, without a guard and unarmed. The street was dark and narrow. Towards the end there was a ruin used for the purposes of stalling cattle, where all the homeless and vagrant of the city congregated. He passed the ruin, but saw not a human soul, nor heard a sound. Musing upon the unpleasant occurrences of the morning, he walked leisurely onward. His heart was stirred to a quicker pulsation as he reflected upon what his beloved Bameea might undergo from the criminal jealousy of her royal mistress. On passing a house supported by a projecting buttress, the drapery of his loose dress caught in a fractured stone, and his progress was thus for the instant impeded. As he stopped, he fancied he heard the stealthy sound of footsteps, and, turning round, soon perceived three figures at a short distance cautiously approaching. They paused when they saw that he no longer advanced. The recollection of the Sultana’s threat immediately struck upon his memory like a flash of light. There was something so sinister in the movements of the three men that determined him to be upon his guard. He placed his back against the wall, having his left side protected by the projecting buttress. The men advanced, and upon reaching the place where the Ameer-ool-Omrah was stationed, sprang upon him simultaneously, and attempted to pierce him with their daggers. With a sweep of his muscular arm he levelled two of them to the earth, and raising his foot, impelled it with such quickness and force against the body of the third that he fell senseless. One of the assailants who had been struck down was almost instantly on his legs, and rushed forward with his dagger raised to strike; but,stumbling over his prostrate companion, the Abyssinian caught him in his arms, lifted him like a cushion in the air, and dashing him on the ground, left him there stunned. Releasing the weapon from the grasp of his fallen foe, he approached the other man who had been first prostrated by the sweep of his arm; buried in his heart the instrument with which he had just armed himself; and taking their turbans from the heads of the other two assassins, bound their hands and feet together, and in this painful situation left them to the charities of the casual passenger.
Next morning, the report of a man having been murdered spread through the city, and the two individuals, who were found tied by the wrists and ankles, having been examined, feared to fix the charge upon their intended victim, lest it should lead to a discovery of their criminal assault; but, whilst they were under examination, to their astonishment the Abyssinian appeared before their judge, and detailed all the circumstances of the attack made upon him by the prisoners, and how he baffled them in their murderous design. They were immediately led forth to execution, lest they should betray who had employed them. Suspicion fixed upon the Sultana; but, as she did not interpose her authority to rescue the assassins from death, the suspicions of the many were silenced, though they were still harboured by the few, as it is too common a practice for tyrants to abandon their instruments when failure has laid them open to the chance of discovery.
The Queen affected great concern at what had occurred, and sent a messenger to Yakoot to congratulate him upon his escape from the murderous assault of his foes. He received her deputy with cold formality, but did not even return a message. She was outrageous at her condescension, being so openly slighted by a slave, as she still called the man whom her own voice had declared free, and whom she had raised to the dignity of Ameer-ool-Omrah. The smothered flame did not immediately burst forth, but, while it smouldered, gathered strength for a fiercer conflagration.
Yakoot, however, took no measures of precaution, although it was evident that the elements of mischief were at work and rising into active combination. He resolved to counteract the perfidiousdesigns of the Queen. The spirit of disaffection against her government had already begun to show itself. Her brother Beiram had won the affections of the troops, indignant at being under the dominion of a woman, and disgusted at the impure life which the sovereign was reputed to lead. Many of the nobles, too, were strongly disaffected against her; at the head of these was Mullik Altoonia, of the Toorky tribe of Chelgany, governor of Bituhnda, and tributary to the Queen. Yakoot, disgusted at Ruzeea Begum’s rancour towards him, fomented the disaffection of that powerful noble by pointing out the flagrant enormities of the Sultana’s government; and, as a measure of precaution, secretly joined the councils of the rebels. The hostility of Ruzeea Begum knew no bounds, and she determined that he should expiate with his life the crime of having slighted her favour.
A few days after the late attack upon the Ameer-ool-Omrah, he was hunting the wild boar in a forest not far from the city. Many nobles of the Queen’s court were likewise enjoying this animating sport. A vast concourse of people had assembled, as in Eastern countries they always do upon similar occasions. Carried by the ardour of the chase beyond his companions, Yakoot passed a cover, from which a huge boar darted, directing its course across the plain. The Abyssinian instantly dashed his heels into the flanks of his steed, and it bounded off after the game; but scarcely had it cleared the thicket, when an arrow, discharged by an unseen hand, struck its rider in the fleshy part of the upper arm, and remained crossed in the wound. Snapping the shaft, and drawing out the reed, he continued his career, and, in spite of his wound, succeeded in slaying the boar.
It was too evident now that his life was aimed at by secret enemies; and, without expressing his suspicions, but affecting to look upon the murderous attempt of the morning as a mere accident, he resolved immediately to quit the city and retire to Bituhnda. The Sultana’s government was becoming more and more odious every day, and it was clear to him that she had employed assassins in two several instances to take away secretly the life which she dared not openly attack. On that night hequitted the capital, and joined Mullik Altoonia, with several of the disaffected nobles. The moment Ruzeea Begum heard of their flight, she placed herself at the head of a considerable army, and, meeting the rebels half-way between Delhi and Bituhnda, a battle ensued, in which the royal forces were defeated by the conduct of Yakoot, who commanded the disaffected, and the Queen was made prisoner. She was sent to the fort of Bituhnda to Mullik Altoonia, who, being seduced by her beauty and affected distress, shortly after married her. Upon this, the Abyssinian retired in disgust to Delhi, and engaged in the service of Prince Beiram, who had been elevated to the throne.