The flame-gatherers

For a long time they stood there, in the stillness of the night, looking at each other in a kind of lethargy; while between them, on the ground, lay the body of Ragunáth, gradually chilling, the blood from its three wounds still running thinly down into the pool beside it. Around and over all three of them myriad fireflies fluttered, like stars of the under-world, setting a ghastly glow over the ghastly scene. Fidá’s heart was beating very faintly now. He was obliged to breathe in little gasps. But he was not thinking of this. His mind was groping. He was still in a great darkness when Ahalya came over to him, walking carefully to avoid the blood, and laid both hands on his arm.

“Let us go back to the palace,” she whispered.

Fidá shook his head. “I think I shall not go back to the palace. I think I shall go on,” he answered.

“On! Whither?”

“Up. Up to be judged.”

“Fidá! Beloved! You will come with me.”

But the man was not to be moved by her tone, which was such a one as is used to a sick child. Possibly Fidá was mad, or very near it; but it was a quiet madness, and he was sure of his desires.

“Alas, Ahalya, what wrong I have done thee! All the wickedness that man can accomplish I have accomplished. Wherefore I am going up before Allah. But thou must not grieve for me, thou fairest of all women. Thou knowest well that I was very near the end. Most beautiful—most sweet—lotos-lidded, fear not lest I should not take upon my soul the double crime. Thou shalt be freed from all sin in the eyes of Allah and Mohammed. It is the last joy of love that I can perform for thee.”

He spoke in a quiet, solemn tone that frightened the woman inexpressibly. As he paused, she threw herself before him, clasping his knees.

“O my lord—O beloved of my heart—thou Krishna—whither thou goest permit that I go also! If thou art to appear before thy great god, suffer me to remain at thy side. Spurn me not for that I am a woman. Did I not vow to thee long since that, since thou wast my true husband, I, thy faithful one, would not suffer thee to die alone, but, performing the suttee with mine own hand, would accompany thy spirit to its blest abode? And I swear now by the faithfulness of Radha, and by Lakshmi and Devi and the divine Ushas, that, if thou goest forth alone into the presence of the gods, I will surely follow thee. Wherefore, thou, who hast loved me well, grant me a last boon. Let me go forth and die with thee, that we may be judged together, and, if thou lovest me still, together endure our punishment.”

“Consider thy words, Ahalya. Just now thou’rt not thyself. Return to the palace and dwell there quietly, and let peace come into thy heart. I absolve thee from that old vow of love. There is no one that could suspect thee of this murder. I have done it; and this my absence will proclaim. Bhavani knows nothing. He is now with Churi, and thou canst tell the child what thou wilt. Return, then, to the house of the Rajah, and forget—and forgive—my sins.”

“Nay! Nay, nay, nay!” It was the first time that either of their voices had been raised. “I will not be absolved from my oath! I will not be left alone to face the terrors of Kutashala Máli! Take me with thee, else, by mine own hand, I die alone. Oh consider the sweetness of death together! Consider the terror of death alone!”

“Again—I plead with thee!”

“No, no. If thou diest, I also will die.”

“But thou knowest, Ahalya, that I cannot live. Thou knowest that to wait will mean either execution by torture for the murder of a Brahman-Kshatriya, or a long and agonizing death through my curse. And I, coward-like, perhaps, choose here a swifter and more merciful end. Yet, if thou wilt, I will return with thee to the palace and wait there for what may come.”

For an instant Ahalya considered. Then she answered: “Nay, beloved, I will not have thee return to the palace. Only take me with thee that I may not die alone.”

“And if I took thee with me? How should we die?”

“What was it that thou wouldst have done, going up alone?”

“I have here the dagger that slew Ragunáth.”

Ahalya shuddered. “Not that! Listen. Thou knowest that by my people there are certain waters held sacred to the gods, so that those that die in them are cleansed of many sins. Such a stream is the broad Narmáda, which to us is the little Gunga, the promised sacred flood. Let us, then, under cover of night, go down to the river and there, in the same moment, die together—thou in my arms, I in thine.”

Fidá reflected. “How shall we reach the river?” he asked.

“I have heard that there is a way down the rocks of the plateau at this end. When the plain is reached, it is an easy walk to the river. By dawn we should be there if—if only—thou hast the strength.”

“I shall have the strength. Did I not slay this man?” Fidá’s pride was touched; and perhaps, after all, just this little, human vanity, decided them. “I have the strength. But thou, most beautiful, canst thou endure this long and painful journey now? Faintest thou not for food? Will my arm be enough to uphold thee by the way?”

“If I fall, Fidá, thou shalt kill me where I lie and thyself proceed. Nay, I shall not fail thee. Come. Let us seek the path down the cliff.”

There was a moment or two of delay while the knife was plucked from the body of the dead man, and Ahalya removed a part of her hampering drapery. Then, after one solemn embrace, they started. It was the time of the month when there was no moon; but the stars, nowhere in the world more brilliant than here, shed a faint, steady light over the quiet earth. The descent of the great cliff was begun at a point almost immediately behind the water-palace; and they soon found themselves occupied enough to forget the tragic circumstances of the journey, as they picked a fearful and uncertain way from point to point, from rock to rock, down, through the night, from high Mandu to the plain. What chance it was that stayed their destruction, they scarcely knew. But certainly it was a miracle that, in the first five minutes, they were not dashed headlong down the whole depth. Fidá’s knees shook under him. Had it not been for Ahalya, he would have ended all just here, swiftly. But, with an effort that he felt to be the final summing up of all his forces, he went on, the woman following uncomplainingly, fleetly, silently. It lacked an hour to midnight when they reached the plain, and, looking back and up, wondered at what they had accomplished.

Now they threw themselves upon the ground, for a few moments of necessary recuperation. Ahalya was drooping with sleep, which Fidá dared not permit her to indulge. He realized, vaguely, that the unnatural strength on which he was enduring must break soon; and by the time it was gone, they must be at the river-bank—the borderland of eternity. So, after a few moments, he bent over her, whispering:

“Up, beloved—up, and on! We must reach the river by dawn. There, my Ahalya, thou mayest sleep—we may both sleep—long and undisturbed.”

And Ahalya, heeding him in all things, rose and put her hand in his, and they passed into the night again, over the plain, toward the distant river.

Dawn, white, mistlike, broke slowly upon the world, over the plains of Dhár, where, to the south of the city, two armies were encamped: one, that which guarded the city walls, the joined forces of the Lords of Dhár and of Mandu; the other, Omar el-Asra, with five thousand Mohammedan warriors out of Delhi. In the earliest dim shadow of daylight these two armies stirred, woke, and swiftly prepared them for the day; till, when the first shafts of the sun tipped the Indian spear-heads with red fire, there rose from either line a low, deep battle-cry,—from the Indian ranks the oath of the gods: “May the bright bolts of Indra, the discus of Vishnu, the lingam of Siva protect us to-day!” and from the other side the cry that was echoing over all the civilized world, from Granada to Benares, the great shibboleth of conquest and carnage, before which the earth bowed: “La-Ilaha-il-lal-laha!” “There is no god but Allah!” a god of violence and death. And while these shouts still echoed to the sky, the two lines began a slow advance, till, ere they met, a great cloud of sun-bright dust whirled up and around them, and the haze of impending battle closed them in from mortal sight.

Light lifted itself also over the swift-flowing, holy Narmáda, on the north bank of which stood the man and the woman, hand in hand, silently watching the coming of the day. They were exhausted with the horror and the travail of the long night; but their minds were now above the physical state. That no longer mattered. Fidá stood staring at the slowly lightening waters, his face fixed and very stern. Ahalya also was still, leaning on the arm of her lover, her eyes closed. She was not praying, nor did she even think. Of what was there to think? The past lay behind them, ended. Of the future there was none. The present was painless. Like Fidá, she was tacitly waiting for the first rays of the sun to mark that spot in the water where It must come.

Just before the first finger of gold was raised over the Vindhyas, just before the armies in distant Dhár began their advance, Fidá turned to Ahalya beside him, and murmured, softly:

“Beloved, it is too terrible for thee. I cannot let thee die here, thus. See, it is cold, this mountain water. It comes from far above.”

“Hush, Fidá. We are to go up together. Thou hast promised it,” she replied quietly, her lips barely moving.

Fidá uttered a groan. “It is not I—it is not for myself I falter. But thou—there is no sickness upon thee—”

“Look! look, beloved, it is the sun! See where it makes a bed of gold upon the stream! Lift me up, Fidá—carry me out—carry me out and lay me there—upon our golden bed.”

She turned to him, and he, looking into her upraised face, could urge no more. Lifting her, with a last effort, gazing the while deep into her unrepentant eyes, he sought for the last time her lips, and then—with a setting of all his muscles—stepped forward into the stream. The rush of water, even near the shore, was very swift. It was scarce up to his waist, no more than covering Ahalya’s ankles, when, suddenly, he knew that he could not breast the current. There was a second of agonized realization—a scream from the woman as she was plunged into the icy flood. Then came a moment’s struggle with the resistless, irresistible force, which at one time covered the whirling bodies and again exposed them to the air. Suddenly Ahalya was swept into the arms of Fidá. With the last instinct of life, the hold of each tightened about the other. Then, in the tumult of the running river, came a mighty stillness. The current might toss them as it would. They were alone and one, and there was for them a moment of indissoluble peace before they were called up to answer for their deed.

And now, upon the plain of Dhár, the battle-lines had met, and were mingled in an inextricable mass. Those watching from on high—Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and Allah—might, in the hideous mêlée, have been able to distinguish one single combat, short, swift, decisive. There, in the midst of the shouts, shrieks, and yells, encompassed by flashing weapons and life-streams running red, two men, Omar el-Asra and Rai-Khizar-Pál of Mandu, met together, fighting mace and mace, and, later, sword and sword. One moment, only, in that chaos of duels, did this endure. Then the great Rajah, husband of Ahalya the beautiful, conqueror of an Asra prince, plunged forward from his saddle, his skull cloven in two by the keen blade of the Mohammedan warrior.

Thus, in that fair April morning, by devious ways, four souls that had been closely bound in their earth-life, went up and met together at the throne of the dread judge:—Rai-Khizar-Pál, his sceptre laid down forever; Ragunáth, his faithless minister, passion-spent at last; and finally, still hand-in-hand, still unrepentant of their love, Fidá of Yemen and the Ranee Ahalya, not now flushed with the sweet rose-hue of her Iran.