They were emerging on a wide, square courtyard of which the palace formed one side, the fort another, a flight of steps leading down to the river a third, while the fourth was apparently, a wing of the palace. All three walls were absolutely blank save for a low door at each of the four corners; and these were, so to speak, connected with each other by pathways raised two steps above the rest of the courtyard. A similar footpath crossed it in the middle and so completed the resemblance to a union-jack; for the pathways were of white marble and red Agra stone, the courtyard of purple-blue brick. These paths met in a round platform in the centre, where, on a stone carriage, stood an old cannon.
"That's a big gun," said Vincent Dering, when, with a quickened clink of his spurred steps he had reached it; so, laying his hand lightly on the cylinder, he vaulted to it, as on to a horse, and stooped to read an inscription on the riveted band about the breech.
"Sanskrit," he said--"that stumps me! it's so confounded straight. Ah! here it is in Persian too--that's better."
There was a faint clash of steel on stone, for, as he read the motto aloud, Roshan's hand, stiffening on his sword-hilt, made ground and scabbard meet.
Captain Dering slipped to his feet again with a laugh.
"'Teacher of religion, and instructor of souls;' that's about a correct translation, isn't it, risaldar sahib? Well! I'd back a Maxim against old Blunderbore as a missionary agent nowadays. Hullo! they worship it still, do they?" He pointed to a faded chaplet of marigolds around the muzzle, and a red hand printed on the marble below.
The Mahomedan's face took on the expression of his race and creed; all unconsciously, too, he reverted to his own language.
"The idolators do that when they come to bathe; and they give alms to the saint, when he is inside."
"Inside!" echoed Captain Dering. "What! Inside the gun?"
Here Lance, who had promptly peered down the muzzle, came up from it excitedly, asserting that the saint was there now; he could see the brute's fuzzy head half way down, so he must have crawled in feet foremost--one of those naked brutes who smeared themselves with ashes, to judge by his chignon.
"Make a ripping mop," laughed Vincent Dering, after glancing down in his turn; "clean the gun nicely,"--then the insouciance of his face disappeared, its curves hardened--"and by God! I'll make him. I'm not going to have my guns worshipped! eh, Roshan?"
"Huzoor," assented the Mahomedan once more, this time joyfully, as--a decorous two paces behind--his spurs jingled in harmony with his captain's across the raised union-jack towards the river-end of the courtyard where, in a projecting bastion right upon the bathing steps, the low arched door stood which gave access to the Fort.
In order to reach it they had to pass the solitary visible occupant of the wide, sunlit courtyard. This was a man--of what rank, education, occupation, none could tell--who having raised a square of two-inch-high mud wall between his twice-born purity and the world, was preparing his daily food. Naked, save for his waistcloth, and the thread of the twice-born over his left shoulder, he was isolated even from his kindred. Alone with himself and his God.
Before him in the mud-plastered square, as he sat immovable, was the mud fireplace on which his wheaten dough-cake was cooking; beside him was a leaf-platter of curds, a brass vessel of milk; a sight to be seen a hundred times a day in India; one which should never be forgotten.
The noon was almost shadowless; yet, even so, as he led the way, Captain Dering, from sheer habit, swerved to step further from the sacred square. Doing so his foot slipped an instant on the lower step. He gave an impatient exclamation and passed on. A minute later the door of the fort clanged behind the little party, cutting short an English laugh.
Then, not till then, the man in that square of purity showed signs of life. He rose quietly, almost unconcernedly, took the half-baked cake from the embers, the leaf-platter of curds, the vessel of milk, and going down to the river's edge, flung his dinner into it, to feed the fishes.
In that stumble, the plume-like fringe of Vincent Dering's high peaked turban had sent a shadow to overtop the two-inch barrier between one man and his fellows.
CHAPTER II
"HE SHALL FEED HIS FLOCK LIKE A SHEPHERD"
The garden of the old palace at Eshwara had been rightly described by Roshan Khân as a pleasant place. Longer than it was broad, its shady walks and orange groves clung to the river, raised above it by a balconied wall against which the current ran dimpling. On two of the remaining sides, a twenty-feet high barrier of sheer masonry, buttressed and bastioned, blocked out all curious eyes. On the third, separating it from the courtyard where the big gun stood, rose the palace. Seen thus intimately from within, the latter had changed its character. No longer severe, stern, giving a blank stare at the world from the narrow slits of infrequent windows, it had grown fanciful, almost fantastic, full of canopied turrets and inconsequent little latticed retreats.
At least in the two upper storeys; for the lower one was more solid, its chief feature being a wide, aisled passage leading right through it to a door which gave on the courtyard. Being exactly opposite the one in the corner of the Fort bastion on the other side, this door opened, as the latter did, on one of the slantwise limbs of the quaint union-jack of raised paths which centred in the cannon.
It was not necessary, however, to go round by this in crossing from one door to the other, as by keeping to the river steps, you could do so on the same level.
In old times the guardians of the frail beauties for whose delectation the garden had been made, had lived in the crypt-like vaulted rooms which opened out from this aisled passage; so keeping the gate against illegal wanderings. Since the only other exit from the garden, save by boat, was through the second storey of the women's apartments, and as this was by a door leading directly into the royal rooms (which were on the other side of the tunnel that gave access to the courtyard, and also divided the palace into two portions--male, and female), the butterfly prisoners had had no chance of fluttering to strange honey. In those days, therefore, the door had always been bolted and barred.
It stood wide open, however, showing a vista of green at the farther end of the passage, when Captain Dering and Lance Carlyon came over to it in reply to the intimation that Miss Laila Bonaventura was "At Home for music on Wednesday afternoons," which had been brought to the Fort overnight by an old pantaloon. A very old pantaloon with a wizened face, a few sparse hairs--dyed flaming red--standing at right angles to his cheeks, and a marvellous livery, consisting for the most part of yards upon yards of tarnished tinsel cloth, twisted and twined about head and waist like Saturn's rings. The oldest of old pantaloons, with a back curved by a life-time of obeisances, a toothless mouth, still full of sonorous titles, and a wicked old eye, watchful for the least want of the master, be it good or evil. A pantaloon, with Heaven knows what history of unutterable things hidden in his old brain, such as is to be seen, even in these days, lingering round the ruins of a native court; a figure despicable enough, yet real; so in a way pathetic, by reason of its absolute lack of real interest in things as they are.
And now as the two Englishmen paused,--partly because the swift change from the glare without to the gloom within was startling,--this same pantaloon, with a white muslin robe superadded to the livery as a badge of his dignity as door-keeper, precipitated himself upon them from the shadows, with ancient skips of alacrity and loop-like salaams; then with crab-like sidlings led the way, the young men following.
"I must have that old chap on paper before I leave," said Vincent Dering; "he's too good to be lost."
So, their steps echoing cheerfully with their