CHAPTER IV.
When Shums-ood-Deen was placed upon the musnud, intimidated by the fate of his unhappy brother, he was afraid to oppose the man who had raised him to the throne; he had therefore little more than the name of king. All the substantive power was in the hands of his late father’s slave, who assumed the title of Mullik Naib, an office equivalent to regent; and the nobility who had escaped the sword, seeing no safety but in submission, bowed to his authority. The queen-mother, having been originally a slave, paid the utmost deference to the traitor who had blinded her elder son, in order that she might obviate any mischief against the younger, whom she advised to submit to the wisercounsels of his minister, observing that he was indebted to him for his crown, and that the man who had so easily deposed one brother might with equal facility depose the other. “Besides,” she said, “you owe him a debt of gratitude, and, depend upon it, he will expect it to be paid. You will find, my son, many malicious insinuations breathed into your ear against your benefactor—but let me conjure you to give them no heed, for the king who requites benefits with injury can have no security for his throne.”
“Alas! mother,” said the young monarch, “I have been exalted only to misery; I find the throne a seat of thorns instead of roses. My elevation has been the means of separating me for ever from the object of my soul’s idolatry, and I am become a wretch whom the veriest outcast might pity.”
“Nay, this is mere delusion: higher objects will engross your attention now. Alliances will be sought with you by princes; seek not, then, the attachment of slaves.”
“Did you not recommend gratitude towards my benefactor?”
“True, I did; but this may be shown without marrying his daughter.”
“To marry her is the one dear wish of my heart; not in order to signify my gratitude to the man who has placed me upon the pinnacle of human greatness, but to signalise my love for one who is at once an honour to her sex and to her country.”
“These are youthful raptures, my son, which the cares of royalty will soon stifle.”
“Never! the impress upon my heart is too deep to wear out: it will never be effaced but by the worm.”
The queen-mother could not succeed in persuading her son to relinquish all thoughts of the lovely Agha, which she was anxious to do, in order that he might form an alliance that would secure him upon the throne, and render him independent of a man who might turn all his influence against him, should he be impelled by caprice or interest to serve some other object of his ambition.
Shums-ood-Deen’s mother treated Lallcheen with great cordiality, and he, in return, behaved to her with much respect, sending her valuable presents, and using every method to secureher confidence; but this conduct on both sides was mere temporising, as no real cordiality subsisted between them.
It was now Lallcheen’s grand aim to see his daughter united to the young king, and it mortified him extremely to find that the only impediment was her own scruples. His soul was stung at the chance of losing that reward which he had waded through blood to obtain. Disappointed ambition exasperated him against what he called the rebellion of his child, and he determined to compel her to embrace the dignity which he had steeped his soul in guilt to secure for her. Knowing the Readiness of Shums-ood-Deen to make her his queen, he was the more enraged that any impediments should arise from her who was the party that would be especially benefited by such a union; and he sought her with a determination to enforce obedience to an authority which he had never hitherto exercised in vain.
“Agha”, said he, sternly, “can it be possible that you refuse to become the wife of a man whom you have confessed you love, and who is ready to make you the partner of his throne?”
“It is true, my father; I never could sit upon a throne the ascent to which is stained with the blood of its legitimate inheritor. The present king shares in the crime of his brother’s deposers so long as he partakes of the fruit of their guilt.”
“Girl, this is not the language of a child towards her parent; you know the first wish of my heart is that you should share his dignities with the son of my late master. If the man whom I propose you should wed were odious to you there might be some reason in your opposition, but as this is not the case, I expect you immediately to become the wife of Shums-ood-Deen.”
“That will not be while he sits upon a blood-stained throne. You are my father, and I know your power. My life is at your disposal, but not my will; you may take the one, but you shall never coerce the other!”
“No, Agha, I will not take your life, however you may rebel; but your liberty is likewise at my disposal, and depend upon it, that if you persist in a stubborn opposition to my wishes, you shall suffer penalties under captivity which you little dream of.”
“I have well weighed the consequences of resistance, and am prepared to pay the penalty. I feel that the man who would not hesitate to dethrone his king would have little scruple about imprisoning his daughter. But, to put you at once out of suspense as to my determination, I tell you, firmly and solemnly, that I never will comply with your wishes. Take me to the prison you have prepared for me!”
Lallcheen did not reply, but quitted her with a blanched cheek. He was deeply vexed at this unexpected bar to his ambition from his own child. The fruits of crime were already ripening, but he perceived that they had only a flavour of bitterness. He remembered the predictions of the devotee, and the sun of his glory grew dim—a shadow passed over it, but the disc again grew light, and he hoped that it would be no more obscured.
Difficulties now began to thicken around him. Feroze Chan and Ahmud Chan, uncles to the deposed king, had promised their brother-in-law, Mahmood Shah, father of Gheias-ood-Deen, when he was on his death-bed, that they would be faithful and loyal to his son; they accordingly served him with submission and fidelity. Being from the capital at the time their royal relative was deposed by Lallcheen, they escaped the unhappy fate of the nobles who were assassinated. Finding, however, that the king had been dispossessed and blinded, their wives instigated their husbands to avenge the indignity to which their nephew had been subjected. Feroze and Ahmud Chan readily listened to these natural appeals in favour of their injured relative, but the traitor, discovering their intentions through his emissaries, complained to Shums-ood-Deen, and, accusing those nobles of treason, demanded their instant execution. Hoping to excite the young sovereign’s fears, he represented to him that their object evidently was the restoration of Gheias-ood-Deen, which would involve the death of the reigning monarch, as, the moment the deposed king was restored, he would naturally wreak his vengeance upon all who had been instrumental in hurling him from his throne, among whom the man raised to that throne would be one of the first to suffer.
Shums-ood-Deen being emboldened by the known influenceand bravery of his uncles, resisted these importunities of the slave, whose imperious exercise of authority already began to be exceedingly vexatious. Seeing that the opposition was likely to become serious, Lallcheen sought the queen-mother, and artfully representing to her the perils by which her son was beset, obtained her promise to co-operate with him in counteracting the confederacy forming against the government of her younger son.
“If,” said he, “we do not get rid of these Omrahs, the worst consequences are to be apprehended. Their connexion with the blood-royal gives them an influence which must endanger the safety of your son; and you being suspected of having participated in the late revolution, will be certainly singled out as one of the first victims. If they are not to be overcome by open force, the concealed dagger is a sure and speedy remedy against threatened hostility.”
These arguments rousing the queen’s fears, she hastened to her son, threw herself at his feet, and implored him to provide for his own and his mother’s safety by ordering the instant seizure of the two refractory nobles before they should be aware that their hostile designs had been made known.
Shums-ood-Deen, overcome by the earnest entreaties of his mother, was reluctantly induced to consent to the apprehension of the husbands of his aunts. They, however, having obtained intelligence of his design, quitted Koolburga, and shut themselves up in the fortress of Sagur, where they were for the present secure from the machinations of their enemy.
An officer of the name of Suddoo, formerly a servant of the royal family, commanded in Sagur. He was rich and powerful, and received the princes with the greatest hospitality, doing everything in his power to evince his attachment to them. He was entirely in the interests of the deposed monarch, and felt the strongest antipathy towards the traitor who had mutilated him and assassinated his nobles. He had been elevated by Gheias-ood-Deen to his present dignity as a reward for long and faithful services, and his gratitude did not sleep. Towards Lallcheen he always entertained a secret enmity, suspecting theintegrity of his purposes, and believing him to be nothing better than a hollow hypocrite.
The fortress under Suddoo’s command was one of great strength, and in it for the present the princes felt themselves perfectly secure. Here they were determined to remain until they could assemble a sufficient body of forces to oppose the treacherous slave.
In pursuance of this determination, they addressed letters to Shums-ood-Deen and the principal nobility, declaring that they were making preparations to chastise the man who had committed such an act of outrage upon his sovereign, at the same time declaring that they had no intention of disturbing the existing government. They stated that, as near relatives of the deposed monarch, they conceived it their duty to use every effort to inflict justice upon him by whom he had been so irreparably injured, and called upon the nobility and the reigning sovereign to assist them in punishing so grievous an offender. If this were done they promised entire submission to Shums-ood-Deen’s government, and concluded by a solemn asseveration that nothing should deter them from bringing retribution upon the head of Lallcheen.
The king was not disposed to look unfavourably at this communication. The trammels which his benefactor, as the sanguinary slave always called himself, had cast upon him, cramped his youthful and ardent spirit. Nothing but his affection for the daughter made him hesitate upon sacrificing the father. This caused him at first to waver; he thought upon her beauty, her accomplishments, and his passion began to blaze. How would she endure to see her father given up to certain death by the man who professed to love her as his own soul? Would she not spurn him, would she not shrink with loathing from the destroyer of her parent? He reflected upon that parent’s baseness, his ambition, his tyranny; but his love for Agha bore down all opposition arising from the contemplation of her father’s worthlessness, and he finally determined to protect the man whom by every principle of equity he was bound to sacrifice.
Lallcheen meanwhile was not insensible to what was going on.He was now more than ever anxious that his daughter should be united to the reigning monarch, as he imagined it would tend to confirm his own influence in the state, and put an end at once to those hostile measures which the family of Gheias-ood-Deen were taking to vindicate the wrongs of their royal relative: it would moreover enable him to command the whole energies of Shums-ood-Deen’s kingdom, civil, political and military, which he would have the power of employing to counteract the hostile intentions of his foes. He felt himself, nevertheless, in a state of great embarrassment, and began to entertain such designs as are generally the resort of desperate men. Although conscious of his unpopularity, he had nevertheless secured the favour of the troops by paying up their arrears, and allowing them some privileges which they had never hitherto enjoyed. All the disaffected Omrahs too, of whom there were not a few, tendered him their services, and declared that they would maintain his cause to the last drop of their blood. He, however, was fully aware how little confidence is to be placed either upon the professions or promises of unprincipled men. His own heart was a faithful interpreter of what such promises and professions amounted to, and he therefore felt anything but in a state of security. This rendered him desperate. The opposition of his daughter had so exasperated him against her that he had treated her with a severity which, instead of subduing her resolution, had only the more firmly determined her to thwart his wishes with an indomitable resolution, which he did not imagine she possessed. To all his promises of tenderness towards her, if she would only relax from her stubborn opposition, she replied by a calm look of defiance, that moved him more than once to acts of violence. She shrank not from the arm that struck her to the earth, but rose without a murmur of complaint, and smiled upon the impotent malice that would stifle her conscience under the claims of parental authority.
The situation of the slave was now becoming critical. He sought the queen-mother, and represented to her the danger to which she must necessarily be exposed, should the avengers of her elder son’s deposition succeed in gaining possession of thecapital. She had never been popular with the Omrahs, and therefore began to fear that her fate would be involved in that of Lallcheen, as it was generally believed that she had been more than privy to the late massacre of the nobles at the slave’s house. Imagining her safety inseparable from his, she hastened to her son, and demanded his protection for Lallcheen. “It is evident,” she said, “that the pretended avengers of your brother’s wrongs seek but the gratification of their own ambition, either in your death or degradation. Our common interests require that we should oppose them.”
“Are our means sufficient?”
“You have the confidence of the army and of the chief Omrahs, and the enemy can only hope to seduce under their banners the disaffected, who are as likely to become traitors to their present masters as they were to their former. We have no alternative but a resolute and fierce resistance; let me entreat you, therefore, to return an unqualified defiance to those haughty rebels, who seek to subvert your government.”
Shums-ood-Deen being thus prevailed upon by his mother to act with instant decision, returned an answer to Feroze and Ahmud Chan which served only to inflame those princes without bettering his own cause. They, with the assistance of Suddoo, having collected three thousand horse and foot, proceeded towards the capital, calculating with much confidence that other troops would join them on their march. Disappointed, however, in this expectation, they halted for some time on the banks of the river Beema, without receiving any reinforcements. All the chiefs withheld their aid, as if they considered the good cause desperate. This, nevertheless, did not deter the princes from proceeding with their present means to put into immediate execution their design of vindicating the wrongs of a much-injured sovereign. It was accordingly agreed that they should advance without further delay, with the regal canopy carried over the head of Feroze Chan. Upon this occasion his brother Ahmud was raised to the rank of Ameer-ool-Omrah, Suddoo to that of Meer Nobut, and Meer Feiz Oolla Anjoo to that of Vakeel or minister.
On the arrival of the princes within four coss of the city, Lallcheen marched out to meet them, accompanied by the young king. He had distributed great sums of money among the officers and troops, which had secured their present fidelity. Knowing that the means of his enemies were insufficient to purchase the treachery of his army, he advanced against them with great confidence. His own numerical superiority caused him to look upon victory as certain; and when he considered the raw, undisciplined state of the hostile forces, his confidence grew into arrogance, which eventually did fatal mischief to his cause.
Notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the princes laboured, they did not decline an engagement. They trusted to their good intentions, and the general enthusiasm of their troops. A severe battle was consequently fought in the vicinity of the town of Merkole; and the brothers being defeated, after an obstinate resistance, fled with their adherents to the fort of Sagur.
The victors were beyond measure elated at the successful issue of this first battle. The power of Lallcheen increased his presumption and that of the queen-mother, which at length rose to such a height that many officers of the court privately offered their services to the defeated princes, whom they advised to lose no time in procuring pardon from Shums-ood-Deen, by offers of immediately returning to their allegiance, and repairing to the capital without loss of time, in order to concert future plans for punishing the traitor and re-establishing the lawful supremacy.
Lallcheen was too much engrossed by the views of his ambition, which rose with his success, to observe that a silent but secret disaffection was working among the nobles and some of the most influential officers of the army. Confidence rendered him haughty, and where he was in the habit of conciliating he began to command.