The Great Mogul

The other, a handsome and soldierly youth, came nearer and questioned Ali Beg, mostly concerning the disabled and dying snake, found and beaten into pulp by the foremost men of the caravan.

The Mirza told his tale with dignified eloquence; he ended with a pathetic request for help for his exhausted wife and family.

This was forthcoming quickly, and, while he himself was refreshed with good milk, and dates, and cakes of pounded wheat, Malik Masúd, the elder of the two horsemen and leader of the train, told how he dreamt the previous night that during a wayside halt under a big tree he was attacked by a poisonous snake, which was vanquishing him until a stranger came to his aid.

The snake lying in the path of the kafila was the exact counterpart of that seen in his disturbing vision, but his amazement was complete when he recognized in Ali Beg the stranger who had saved him.

So, in due course, Mihr-ul-nisa, with her baby girl, was mounted on a camel, and her husband and two sons on another, and Deri, the cow, before joining the train, was regaled with a copious draught of water and an ample measure of grain.

Thus it came to pass that Mirza Ali Beg and his family were convoyed through Kandahár and Kábul in comfort and safety. They rode through the gaunt jaws of the Khaibar Pass, and emerged, after many days, into the great plain of the Punjáb, verdant with an abundant though deferred harvest.

And no one imagined, least of all the baby girl herself, that the infant crowing happily in the arms of Mihr-ul-nisa was destined to become a beautiful, gracious and world-renowned princess, whose name and love-story should endure through many a century.

In that same month of July, 1588, on the nineteenth day of the month, to be exact, the blazoned sails of the Spanish Armada were sighted off the Lizard. Sixty-five great war galleons, eight fleet galleasses, fifty-six armed merchantmen and twenty pinnaces swept along the Channel in gallant show. Spread out in a gigantic crescent, the Spanish ships were likened by anxious watchers to a great bird of prey with outstretched wings. But Lord Howard of Effingham led out of Plymouth a band of adventurers who had hunted that bird many a time. Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher and the rest – they feared no Spaniard who sailed the seas.

Their little vessels, well handled, could sail two miles to the Spaniards’ one, and fire twice as many shots gun for gun. “One by one,” said they, “we plucked the Don’s feathers.” Ship after ship was sunk, captured, or driven on shore. A whole week the cannon roared from Plymouth Sound to Calais, and there the last great fight took place in which the Duke of Medina Sidonia yielded himself to agonized foreboding, and Drake rightly believed that the Spanish grandee “would ere long wish himself at St. Mary Port among his orange trees.”

During one of the many fierce duels between the ponderous galleons and the hawk-like British ships, the Resolution, hastily manned at Deal by volunteers who rode from London, hung on to and finally captured the San José.

It was no easy victory, for the Spaniards could acquit themselves as men when seamanship and gunnery gave place to swords and pikes. Three times did the assailants swarm up the lofty poop of the San José before they made good their footing.

At last, the Spaniards gave way before the ardent onslaught led by a gallant gentleman from Wensleydale in the North, Sir Robert Mowbray, to wit, who, had he lived, was marked out for certain preferment at court.

Unhappily, in the moment of victory, a young, pale-faced monk, an ascetic and visionary, maddened by the success of his country’s hereditary foe, sprang from the nook in which he lurked and struck Mowbray a heavy blow with the large brass crucifix he carried.

The Englishman had doffed his hat and was courteously saluting the Spanish captain, who was in the act of yielding up his sword. One outstretched arm of the image of mercy penetrated his skull, and he fell dead at the feet of his captive.

At once the conflict broke out anew. Nothing could restrain the crew of the Resolution when they noted the dastardly murder of their chivalrous leader. The galleon became a slaughter-house. The monk, frenzied as a beast in the shambles, sprang overboard and was carried past another ship, the Vera Cruz, which rescued him. This vessel was one of the few storm-wracked and fever-laden survivors of the Armada which reached Corunna.

The Englishmen learnt from wounded Spaniards that the fanatical ecclesiastic was a certain Fra Geronimo from the great Jesuit seminary at Toledo. They remembered the name so that they might curse it. They cried in their rage because Fra Geronimo had escaped them.

A black snake in the plain of Herát, a glittering crucifix on board the San José in the Channel off Gravelines – these were queer links, savoring of necromancy, whereby the lives of gallant men and fair women should be bound indissolubly. Yet it was so, as those who follow this strange and true history shall learn, for many a blow was struck and many a heart ached because Nur Mahal lived and Sir Robert Mowbray died in that wonderful month of July, 1588.

CHAPTER II

“Up then rose the ’prentices all,
Living in London, both proper and tall.”

    Old Song.
Sir Thomas Cave, of Stanford in Northamptonshire, a worthy Knight who held his wisdom of greater repute at court than did his royal Master, was led by the glamour of a fine summer’s afternoon in the year 1608 to fulfil a long-deferred promise to his daughter.

At Spring Gardens, removed but a short space from the King’s Palace of Whitehall, that eccentric monarch, James I., had established a menagerie. Here could be seen certain mangy specimens of the wonderful beasts which bulked large in the lore of the period, and Mistress Anna Cave, with her fair cousin, Mistress Eleanor Roe, had teased Sir Thomas until he consented to take them thither on the first occasion, of fair seeming as to the weather, when the King would be pleased to dispense with his attendance.

The girls, than whom there were not two prettier maidens in all England, soon tired of evil-smelling and snarling animals, which in no wise came up to the wonderful creatures of their imagination, eked out by weird wood-cuts in the books they read.

They found the charming garden, with its beds of flowers and strawberries, its hedges of red and black currants, roses and gooseberries, and its golden plum-trees lining the brick walls facing west and south, far more to their liking.

Nor was it wholly unsuited to their age and condition that their eyes wandered from the cages of furtive wolves and uneasy bears to the smooth walks tenanted by a coterie of court ladies with their attendant gallants. Anna Cave, eighteen, yet looking older by reason of her tall stature and graceful carriage, Eleanor Roe, a year younger, a sweet girl, at once timid in manner and joyous in disposition, found much to cavil at in the Spanish fashions then prevalent in high circles. Born and bred in decorous and God-fearing households, they were not a little shocked by the way in which the great dames of the period dressed and comported themselves. Yet, with all their youthful disapproval there mingled a spice of curiosity, and Nellie, the shy one, often nudged her more sedate companion to take note of a specially ornate farthingale or a Spanish mantilla of exquisite design.

Now, despite the reverence in which the stout Sir Thomas held the King, he did not approve of some of the King’s associates. Especially was he unwilling that the bold eyes of any of the young adventurers and profligates who clustered under the banner of Rochester should survey the charms of his daughter and niece. Therefore, when the girls would have him walk with them in the wake of Lady Essex, then at the height of her notorious fame, he peremptorily vetoed their design.

“If you are aweary of the kennels,” he said, “we will stroll in our own garden. It is fair as this, and the scent of the flowers therein is not aped by the cosmetics of the women.”

“Nay, but, uncle,” pouted Eleanor, disappointed that the style of the much talked-of Countess should be no more than glimpsed in passing, “we have seen neither lion, nor tiger, nor humpbacked camel. Surely the King’s collection is not so meager that one may find as many wild beasts at any May-day fair in Islington?”

“Lions, tigers, and the rest, Got wot! What doth a girl like thee want with such fearsome cattle?”

“’Tis only a few days since I heard one declaiming a passage in Master Shakespeare’s play of ‘Macbeth,’ and he said:

What men dare, I dare:
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble.

Now, save a very harmless-looking bear, neither Ann nor I have seen these things, so we know not why they should be held so terrible.”

During this recital the knight’s red face became wider and wider with surprise.

“Marry, Heaven forfend!” he cried, “what goings on there be behind my back! Anna, can you, too, spout verse as glibly?”

“Indeed, father, Nellie and I know whole plays by heart. Yet we would not indulge in this innocent pastime if we thought it angered you.”

Sir Thomas was as wax in his daughter’s hands. Secretly, he feared her greater intellectual powers. He believed that girls’ brains were better suited to housewifely cares than to the study of poetry, yet some twinge of doubt bade him keep the opinion pent in his own portly breast.

“Nay, then, if it pleases you and wiles away dull hours, I will not hinder you. But our sweet Nellie should not betray her gifts in public. Folk hereabouts have rabbits’ ears and magpies’ tongues. I fear me there are neither lions nor horned pigs to hand. They are costly toys, and ’tis whispered that his gracious Majesty obtaineth less credit abroad than among his liege subjects. Further, my bonny girls, I have asked a certain youth, George Beeston by name, to sup with us to-night, and it behooves you – What, Anna, has it come to that? You shrug at the mere mention of him! And he a proper youth – not one of these graceless rascals who yelp at Carr’s heels!”

Again was Sir Thomas becoming choleric and red-faced, and the girls’ excursion promised to end in speedy dudgeon had not a messenger, wearing the Palace livery, approached and doffed his cap, bowing low as he halted.

“Happily one said your worship was in the gardens,” he said. “I am bidden to tell you that the King awaits your honor in his closet. The matter is of utmost urgency.”

Now, this announcement had the precise effect on its recipient calculated by those who sent it. Sir Thomas, inflated with importance, was rendered almost incoherent. Never before had he received such a royal message. All considerations must bow to it. He bustled the girls into a litter in which they could be carried to his brother’s house in the city without soiling their shoes or being exposed to the gaze of the throng in the Fleet or Ludgate. He himself hurried off to Whitehall, there to be kept in a fume of impatience for a good hour or more, while the King disputed with a Scottish divine as to the exact pronunciation of the Latin tongue. Admitted at last to the presence, he found that the urgency of his summons touched no greater matter than the cleansing of the Fleet ditch, a fruitful source of dispute between the monarch and the city in those days.

Sir Thomas had wit enough to promise that the King’s wishes should be made known to the Common Council, and sense enough to wonder why he was called in such hot haste to attend a trivial thing.

It was a time when men sought hidden motives for aught that savored of the uncommon; the knight, borrowing a palfrey from a merchant of his acquaintance, rode homeward along the Strand revolving the puzzle in his mind. Long before he reached Temple Bar he was wiser if not happier.

Soon after Anna Cave and the sprightly Eleanor entered their litter to be carried swiftly through the Strand, two young men approached Temple Bar from the east. Their distinctive garments showed that while one was of gentle birth the other was a yeoman; that they were not master and man could be seen at a glance, as they conversed one with the other with easy familiarity, and repaid with ready good-humor the chaff which they received from the cheeky apprentices who solicited custom in the busy street.

Indeed, the appearance of the yeoman was well calculated to stir tongues less nimble than those of the pert salesmen of Fleet Street. Gigantic in height and width, his broad, ruddy face beaming with the delight afforded by the evidently novel sights of London, his immense size was accentuated by a coat of tough brown leather and high riding-boots of the same material which almost met the skirts of the coat. Tight-fitting trousers of gray homespun matched the color of his broad-brimmed felt hat, in which a gay plume of cock’s feathers was clasped by a big brooch of dull gold. The precious metal served to enclose a peculiar ornament, in the shape of a headless fossil snake, curled in a circle as in life and polished until it shone like granite.

Though his coat was girt by a sword-belt he carried no weapons of steel, apparently depending for protection, if such a giant required its aid, on a long and heavy ashplant. In other hands it would be a cumbrous stake; to him it served as a mere wand.

His immense size, aided by a somewhat unusual garb in well-dressed London, absolutely eclipsed, in the public eye, the handsome and stalwart youth who, in richer but studiously simple attire, strode by his side.

The apprentices, fearless in their numbers and unfettered in impudence, plied him with saucy cries.

“What d’ye lack, Master Samson? Here be two suits for the price of one, for one man’s clothes would never fit thee.”