The Shaving of Shagpat, George Meredith [popular e readers TXT] 📗

beyond the meat-market. Of a surety, I know not how my lord the King may see me.”

Said the porter, “ ’Tis enough! on my head be it.” And he went from her, singing the song:

“How little a thing serves Fortune’s turn
When she’s intent on doing!
How easily the world may burn
When kings come out a-wooing!”

Now, ere she set forth on the after-morrow to make her purchases, Bhanavar sent word to the Vizier Aswarak that she would see him, and he came to her drunken with alacrity, for he augured favourably that her reluctance was melting toward him: so she said, “O my master, my time of mourning is at an end, and I would look well before thee, even as one worthy of being thy bride; so bestow on me, I pray thee, for my wearing that day, the jewels that be in thy treasury, the brightest and clearest of them, and the largest.”

The Vizier Aswarak replied, and he was one in great satisfaction of soul, “All that I have are thine. Wullahy! and one, a marvel, that I bought of Boolp the broker, that had it from an African merchant.” So he commanded the box wherein he had deposited the Jewel to be brought to him there in the chamber of Bhanavar, and took forth the Serpent Jewel between his forefinger and thumb, and laughed at the eager eyes of Bhanavar when she beheld it, saying, “ ’Tis thine! thy bridal gift the day I possess thee.”

Bhanavar trembled at the sight of the Jewel, and its redness was to her as the blood of Zurvan and Almeryl. She stretched her hand out for it and cried, “This day, O my lord, make it mine.”

So the Vizier said, “Nay, what I have spoken will I keep to; it has cost me much.”

Bhanavar looked at him, and uttered in a soft tone, “Truly it has cost thee much.”

Then she exclaimed, as in play, “See me, how I look by its beam.” And in her guile she snatched the Jewel from him, and held it to her brow. Then Aswarak started from her and feared her, for the red light of the Jewel glowed, and darkened the chamber with its beam, darkening all save the lustre that was on the visage of Bhanavar. He shouted, “What’s this! Art thou a sorceress?”

She removed the Jewel, and ceased glaring on him, and said, “Nothing but thy poor slave!”

Then he coaxed her to give him the Jewel, and she would not; he commanded her peremptorily, and she hesitated; so he grasped her tightened hand, and his face loured with wrath; yet she withheld the Jewel from him laughing; and he was stirred to extreme wrath, and drew from his girdle the naked scimitar, and menaced her with it. And he looked mighty; but she dreaded him little, and stood her full height before him, daring him, and she was as the tigress defending a cub from a wilder beast. Now when he was about to call in the armed slaves of the palace, she said, “I warn thee, Vizier Aswarak! tempt me not to match them that serve me with them that serve thee.”

He ground his teeth in fury, crying, “A conspiracy! and in the harem! Now, thou traitress! the logic of the lash shall be tried upon thee.” And he roared, “Ho! ye without there! ho!”

But ere the slaves had entered Bhanavar rubbed the Jewel on her bosom, muttering, “I have forborne till now! Now will I have a sacrifice, though I be it.” And rubbing the Jewel, she sang,

“Hither! hither!
Come to your Queen;
Come through the grey wall,
Come through the green!”

There was heard a noise like the noise of a wind coming down a narrow gorge above falling waters, a hissing and a rushing of wings, and behold! Bhanavar was circled by rings and rings of serpent-folds that glowed round her, twisted each in each, with the fierceness of fire, she like a flame rising up white in the midst of them. The black slaves, when they had lifted the curtain of the harem-chamber, shrieked to see her, and Aswarak crouched at her feet with the aspect of an angry beast carved in stone. Then Bhanavar loosed on either of the slaves a serpent, saying, “What these have seen they shall not say.” And while the sweat dropped heavily from the forehead of Aswarak, she stepped out of the circle of serpents, singing,

“Over! over!
Hie to the lake!
Sleep with the left eye,
Keep the right awake.”

Then the serpents spread with a great whirr, and flew through the high window and the walls as they had come, and she said to the Vizier, “What now? Fearest thou? I have spared thee, thou that madest me desolate! and thy slaves are a sacrifice for thee. Now this I ask: Where lies my beloved, the Prince my husband? Speak nothing of him, save the place of his burial!”

So he told her, “In the burial-ground of the great prison.”

She rolled her eyes on the Vizier darkly, exclaiming, “Even where the felons lie entombed, he lieth!” And she began to pant, pale with what she had done, and leaned to the floor, and called,

“Yellow stripe, with freckle red,
Coil and curl, and watch by my head.”

And a serpent with yellow stripes and red freckles came like a javelin down to her, and coiled and curled round her head, and she slept an hour. When she arose the Vizier was yet there, sitting with folded knees. So she sped the serpent to the Lake Karatis, and called her women to her, and went to an inner room, and drew an outer robe and a vest over that she had on, and passed the Vizier, and said, “Art thou not rejoiced in thy bride, O Aswarak? ’Twas a wondrous clemency, hers! Now but four more days and thou claimest her. Say nothing of what thou hast seen, or thou wilt shortly see nothing further to