The Shaving of Shagpat, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Shaving of Shagpat, Complete

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The three were selected, and made onslaught on this Chief, and perished
under his arm.

Bhanavar saw them fall, and exclaimed, 'Another attack on him, and with
thrice three!'

Her will was the mandate of Mashalleed, and these likewise were ordered
forth, and closed on the Chief, but he darted from their toils and
wheeled about them, spearing them one by one till the nine were in the
dust. Bhanavar compressed her dry lips and muttered to the King, 'Head
thou a body against him.'

Mashalleed gathered round his standard the chosen of his warriors, and
smoothed his beard, and headed them. Then the Chief struck his lance
behind him, and stretched rapidly a half-circle across the sand, and
halted on a knoll. When they neared him he retreated in a further
half-circle, and continued this wise, wasting the fury of Mashalleed,
till he stood among his followers. There, as the King hesitated and
prepared to retreat, he and the others of the tribe levelled their lances
and hung upon his rear, fretting them, slaughtering captains of the
troop. When Mashalleed turned to face his pursuer, the Chief was alone,
immovable on his mare, fronting the ranks. Then Bhanavar taunted the
King, and he essayed the capture of that Chief a second time and a third,
and it was each time as the first. Bhanavar looked about her with rapid
eyes, murmuring, 'Oh, what a Chief is he! Oh that a cloud would fall, a
smoke arise, to blind these hosts, that I might sling my serpents on him
unseen, for I will not be vanquished, though it be by Ruark!' So she drew
to the King, and the altercation between them was fierce in the fury of
the battle, he saying, ''Tis a feint of the Chief, this challenge; and I
must succour the left of my army by the well, that he is overmatching
with numbers'; and she, 'If thou head them not, then will I, and thou
shalt behold a woman do what thou durst not, and lose her love and win
her scorn.' While they spake the Arabs they looked on seemed to flutter
and waver, and the Chief was backing to them, calling to them as 'twere
words of shame to rally them. Seeing this, Mashalleed charged against the
Chief once more, and lo! the Arabs opened to receive him, closing on his
band of warriors like waters whitened by the storm on a fleet of
swift-scudding vessels: and there was a dust and a tumult visible, such
as is seen in the darkness when a vessel struck by the lightning-bolt is
sinking--flashes of steel, lifting of hands, rolling of horsemen and
horses. Then Bhanavar groaned aloud, 'They are lost! Shame to us! only
one hope is left-that 'tis Ruark, this Chief!' Now, the view of the plain
cleared, and with it she beheld the army of Mashalleed broken, the King
borne down by a dust of Arabs; so she unveiled her face and rode on the
host with the horsemen that guarded her, glorious with a crown of gold
and the glowing Jewel on her brow. When she was a javelin's flight from
them the Arabs shouted and paused in terror, for the light of her head
was as the sun setting between clouds of thunder; but that Chief dashed
forward like a flame beaten level by the wind, crying, 'Bhanavar;
Bhanavar!' and she knew the features of Ruark; so she said, 'Even I!' And
he cried again, 'Bhanavar! Bhanavar!' and was as one stricken by a shaft.
Then Bhanavar threw on him certain of the horsemen with her, and he
suffered them without a sign to surround him and grasp his mare by the
bridle-rein, and bring him, disarmed, before the Queen. At sight of Ruark
a captive the Arabs fell into confusion, and lost heart, and were
speedily chased and scattered from the scene like a loose spray before
the wind; but Mashalleed the King rejoiced mightily and praised Bhanavar,
and the whole army of the King praised her, magnifying her.

Now, with Ruark she interchanged no syllable, and said not farewell to
him when she departed with Mashalleed, to encounter other tribes; and the
Chief was bound and conducted a prisoner to the city of the inland sea,
and cast into prison, in expectation of Death the releaser, and continued
there wellnigh a year, eating the bitter bread of captivity. In the
evening of every seventh day there came to him a little mountain girl,
that sat by him and leaned a lute to her bosom, singing of the mountain
and the desert, but he turned his face from her to the wall. One day she
sang of Death the releaser, and Ruark thought, ''Tis come! she warneth
me! Merciful is Allah!' On the morning that followed Ukleet entered the
cell, and with him three slaves, blacks, armed with scimitars. So Ruark
stood up and bore witness to his faith, saying, 'Swift with the stroke!'
but Ukleet exclaimed, 'Fear not! the end is not yet.'

Then said he, 'Peace with thee! These slaves, O Chief, excelling in
martial qualities! surely they're my retinue, and the retinue of them of
my rank in the palace; and where I go they go; for the exalted have more
shadows than one! yea, three have they in my case, even very grimly black
shadows, whereon the idle expend not laughter, and whoso joketh in their
hearing, 'tis, wullahy! the last joke of that person. In such-wise are
the powerful known among men, they that stand very prominent in the beams
of prosperity! Now this of myself; but for thee--of a surety the Queen
Bhanavar, my mistress, will be here by the time of the rising of the
moon. In the name of Allah!' Saying that he departed in his greatness,
and Ruark watched for her that rose in his soul as the moon in the
heavens.

Meanwhile Bhanavar had mused, ''Tis this day, the day when the Serpents
desire their due, and the King Mashalleed they shall have; for what is
life to him but a treachery and a dalliance, and what is my hold on him
but this Jewel of the Serpents? He has had the profit of beauty, and he
shall yield the penalty: my kiss is for him, my serpent-kiss. And I will
release Ruark, and espouse him, and war with kings, sultans, emperors,
infidels, subduing them till they worship me.'

She flashed her figure in the glass, and was lovely therein as one in the
light of Paradise; but ere she reached the King Mashalleed, lo! the hour
of the Serpents had struck, and her beauty melted from her as snow melts
from off the rock; and she was suddenly haggard in utter uncomeliness,
and knew it not, but marched, smiling a grand smile, on to the King. Now
as Mashalleed lifted his eyes to her he started amazed, crying, 'The hag
again!' and she said, 'What of the hag, O my lord the King?' Thereat he
was yet more amazed, and exclaimed, 'The hag of ugliness with the voice
of Bhanavar! Has then the Queen lent that loathsomeness her voice also?'

Bhanavar chilled a moment, and looked on the faces of the women present,
and they were staring at her, the younger ones tittering, and among them
Nashta, whom she hated. So she cried, 'Away with ye!' But the King
commanded them, 'Stay!' Then the Queen leaned to him, saying, 'I will
speak with my lord alone'; whereat he shrank from her, and spat. Ice and
flame shivered through the blood of Bhanavar, yet such was her eagerness
to give the kiss to Mashalleed, that she leaned to him, still wooing him
to her with smiles. Then the King seized her violently, and flung her
over the marble floor to the very basin of the fountain, and the crown
that was on her brow fell and rolled to the feet of Nashta. The girl
lifted it, laughing, and was in the act of fitting it to her fair head
amid the chuckles of her companions, when a slap from the hand of
Bhanavar spun her twice round, and she dropped to the marble insensible.
The King bellowed in wrath, and ran to Nashta, crying to the Queen,
'Surrender that crown to her, foul hag!' But Bhanavar had bent over the
basin of the fountain, and beheld the image of her change therein, and
was hurrying from the hall and down the corridors of the palace to the
private chamber. So he made bare the steel by his side, and followed her
with a number of the harem guard, menacing her, and commanding her to
surrender the crown with the Jewel. Ere she could lay hand on a veil, he
was beside her, and she was encompassed. In that extremity Bhanavar
plucked the Jewel from her crown, and rubbed it, calling the Serpents to
her. One came, one only, and that one would not move from her to sling
himself about the neck of Mashalleed, but whirled round her, hissing:

Every hour a serpent dies,
Till we have the sacrifice:
Sweeten, sweeten, with thy kiss,
Quick! a soul for Karatis.

Surely the King bit his breath, marvelling, and his fury became an awful
fear, and he fell back from her, molesting her no further. Then she
squeezed the serpent till his body writhed in knots, and veiled herself,
and sprang down a secret passage to the garden, and it was the time of
the rising of the moon. Coolness and soothingness dropped on her as a
balm from the great light, and she gazed on it murmuring, as in a memory:

Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending?
Stay under that dark palm-tree through the night,
Rest on the mountain slope,
By the couching antelope,
O thou enthroned supremacy of light!
And for ever the lustre thou art lending
Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,
Silvery leaps and falls:
Hang by the mountain-walls,
Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,
For a danger and dolour is thy wending!

And she panted and sighed, and wept, crying, 'Who, who will kiss me or
have my kiss now, that I may indeed be as yonder beam? Who, that I may be
avenged on this King? And who sang that song of the ascending of the
moon, that comes to me as a part of me from old times?' As she gazed on
the circled radiance swimming under a plume of palm leaves, she
exclaimed, 'Ruark! Ruark the Chief!' So she clasped her hands to her
bosom, and crouched under the shadows of the garden, and fled through the
garden gates and the streets of the city, heavily veiled, to the prison
where Ruark awaited her within the walls and Ukleet without. The Governor
of the prison had been warned by Ukleet of her coming, and the doors and
bars opened before her unchallenged, till she stood in the cell of Ruark;
her eyes, that were alone unveiled, scanned the countenance of the Chief,
the fevered lustre-jet of his looks, and by the little moonlight in the
cell she saw with a glance the straw-heap and the fetters, and the
black-bread and water untasted on the bench--signs of his misery and
desire for her coming. So she greeted him with the word of peace, and he
replied with the name of the All-Merciful. Then said she, 'O Ruark, of
Rukrooth thy mother tell me somewhat.'

He answered, 'I know nought of her since that day. Allah have her in his
keeping!'

So she cried, 'How? What say'st thou, Ruark? 'tis a riddle.'

Then he, 'The oath of Ruark is no rope of sand! He swore to see her not
till he had set eyes on Bhanavar.'

She knelt by the Chief, saying in a soft voice, 'Very greatly the Chief
of the Beni-Asser loved Bhanavar.' And she thought, 'Yea! greatly and
verily love I him; and he shall be no victim of the Serpents, for I defy
them and give them other prey.' So she said in deeper notes, 'Ruark! the
Queen is come hither to release thee. O my Chief! O thou soul of wrath!
Ruark, my fire-eye! my eagle of the desert! where is one on earth beloved
as thou art by Bhanavar?' The dark light in his eyes kindled as light in
the eyes of a lion, and she continued, 'Ruark, what a yoke is hers who
weareth this crown! He that is my lord, how am I mated to him save in
loathing? O my Chief, my lion! hadst thou no dream of Bhanavar, that she
would come hither to unbind thee and lift thee beside her, and live with
thee in love and veilless loveliness,--thine? Yea! and in power over
lands and nations and armies, lording the infidel, taming them to
submission, exulting in defiance and assaults and victories and
magnanimities--thou and she?' Then while his breast heaved like a broad
wave, the Queen started to her feet, crying, 'Lo, she is here! and this
she offereth thee, Ruark!'

A shrill cry parted from her lips, and to the clapping of her hands
slaves entered the cell with lamps, and instruments to strike off the
fetters from the Chief; and they released him, and Ruark leaned on their
shoulders to bear the weight of a limb, so was he weakened by captivity;
but Bhanavar thrust them from the Chief, and took the pressure of his
elbow on her own shoulder, and walked with him thus to the door of the
cell, he sighing as one in a dream that dreameth the bliss of bliss. Now
they had gone three paces onward, and were in the light of many lamps,
when behold! the veil of Bhanavar caught in the sleeve of Ruark as he
lifted it, and her visage became bare. She shrieked, and caught up her
two hands to her brow, but the slaves had a glimpse of her, and said
among themselves, 'This is not the Queen.' And they murmured, ''Tis an
impostor! one in league with the Chief.' Bhanavar heard them say, 'Arrest
her with him at the Governor's gate,' and summoned her soul, thinking,
'He loveth me, the Chief! he will look into my eyes and mark not the
change. What need I then to dread his scorn when I ask of him the kiss:
now must it be given, or we are lost, both of us!' and she raised her
head on Ruark, and said to him, 'my Chief, ere we leave these walls and
join our fates, wilt thou plight thyself to me with a kiss?'

Ruark leapt to her like the bounding leopard, and gave her the kiss, as
were it his whole soul he gave. Then in a moment Bhanavar felt the blush
of beauty burn over her, and drew the veil down on her face, and suffered
the slaves to arrest her with Ruark, and bring her before the Governor,
and from the Governor to the King in his council-chamber, with the Chief
of the Beni-Asser.

Now, the King Mashalleed called to her, 'Thou traitress! thou sorceress!
thou serpent!'

And she answered under the veil, 'What, O my lord the King! and wherefore
these evil names of me?'

Cried he, 'Thou thing of guile! and thou hast pleaded with me for the
life of the Chief thus long to visit him in secret! Life of my head I but
Mashalleed is not one to be fooled.'

So she said, ''Tis Bhanavar! hast thou forgotten her?'

Then he waxed white with rage, exclaiming, 'Yea, 'tis she! a serpent in
the slough! and Ukleet in the torture hath told of thee what is known to
him. Unveil! unveil!'

She threw the veil from her figure, and smiled, for Mashalleed was mute,
the torrent of invective frozen on his mouth when he beheld the miracle
of beauty that she was, the splendid jewel of throbbing loveliness. So to
scourge him with the bitter lash of jealousy, Bhanavar turned her eyes on
Ruark, and said sweetly, 'Yet shalt thou live to taste again the bliss of
the Desert. Pleasant was our time in it, O my Chief!' The King glared and
choked, and she said again, 'Nor he conquered thee, but I; and I that
conquered thee, little will it be for me to conquer him: his threats are
the winds of idleness.'

Surely the world darkened before the eyes of Mashalleed, and he arose and
called to his guard hoarsely, 'Have off their heads!' They hesitated,
dreading the Queen, and he roared, 'Slay them!'

Bhanavar beheld the winking of the steel, but ere the scimitars
descended, she seized Ruark, and they stood in a whizzing ring of
serpents, the sound of whom was as the hum of a thousand wires struck by
storm-winds. Then she glowed, towering over them with the Chief clasped
to her, and crying:

King of vileness! match thy slaves
With my creatures of the caves.

And she sang to the Serpents:

Seize upon him! sting him thro'!
Thrice this day shall pay your due.

But they, instead of obeying her injunction, made narrower their circle
round Bhanavar and the Chief. She yellowed, and took hold of the nearest
Serpent horribly, crying:

Dare against me to rebel,
Ye, the bitter brood of hell?

And the Serpent gasped in reply:

One the kiss to us secures:
Give us ours, and we are yours.

Thereupon another of the Serpents swung on, the feet of Ruark, winding
his length upward round the body of the Chief; so she tugged at that one,
tearing it from him violently, and crying:

Him ye shall not have, I swear!
Seize the King that's crouching there.

And that Serpent hissed:

This is he the kiss ensures:
Give us ours, and we are yours.

Another and another Serpent she flung from the Chief, and they began to
swarm venomously, answering her no more. Then Ruark bore witness to his
faith, and folded his arms with the grave smile she had known in the
desert; and Bhanavar struggled and tussled with the Serpents in
fierceness, strangling and tossing them to right and left. 'Great is
Allah!' cried all present, and the King trembled, for never was sight
like that seen, the hall flashing with the Serpents, and a woman-serpent,
their Queen, raging to save one from their fury, shrieking at intervals:

Never, never shall ye fold,
Save with me the man I hold.

But now the hiss and scream of the Serpents and the noise of their
circling was quickened to a slurred savage sound and they closed on
Ruark, and she felt him stifling and that they were relentless. So in the
height of the tempest Bhanavar seized the Jewel in the gold circlet on
her brow and cast it from her. Lo! the Serpents instantly abated their
frenzy, and flew all of them to pluck the Jewel, chasing the one that had
it in his fangs through the casement, and the hall breathed empty of
them. Then in the silence that was, Bhanavar veiled her face and said to
the Chief, 'Pass from the hall while they yet dread me. No longer am I
Queen of Serpents.'

But he replied, 'Nay! said I not my soul is thine?'

She cried to him, 'Seest thou not the change in me? I was bound to those
Serpents for my beauty, and 'tis gone! Now am I powerless, hateful to
look on, O Ruark my Chief!'

He remained still, saying, 'What thou hast been thou art.'

She exclaimed, 'O true soul, the light is hateful to me as I to the
light; but I will yet save thee to comfort Rukrooth, thy mother.'

So she drew him with her swiftly from the hall of the King ere the King
had recovered his voice of command; but now the wrath of the All-powerful
was upon her and him! Surely within an hour from the flight of the
Serpents, the slaves and soldiers of Mashalleed laid at his feet two
heads that were the heads of Ruark and Bhanavar; and they said, 'O great
King, we tracked them to her chamber and through to a passage and a vault
hung with black, wherein were two corpses, one in a tomb and one
unburied, and we slew them there, clasping each other, O King of the
age!'

Mashalleed gazed upon the head of Bhanavar and sighed, for death had made
the head again fair with a wondrous beauty, a loveliness never before
seen on earth.

THE BETROTHAL

Now, when Shibli Bagarag had ceased speaking, the Vizier smiled gravely,
and shook his beard with satisfaction, and said to the Eclipser of
Reason, 'What opinest thou of this nephew of the barber, O Noorna bin
Noorka?'

She answered, "O Feshnavat, my father, truly I am content with the
bargain of my betrothal. He, Wullahy, is a fair youth of flowing speech.'
Then she said, 'Ask thou him what he opineth of me, his betrothed?"

So the Vizier put that interrogation to Shibli Bagarag, and the youth was
in perplexity; thinking, 'Is it possible to be joyful in the embrace of
one that hath brought thwackings upon us, serious blows?' Thinking, 'Yet
hath she, when the mood cometh, kindly looks; and I marked her eye
dwelling on me admiringly!' And he thought, 'Mayhap she that groweth
younger and counteth nature backwards, hath a history that would affect
me; or, it may be, my kisses--wah! I like not to give them, and it is
said,

"Love is wither'd by the withered lip";

and that,

"On bones become too prominent he'll trip."

Yet put the case, that my kisses--I shower them not, Allah the All-seeing
is my witness! and they be given daintily as 'twere to the leaf of a
nettle, or over-hot pilau. Yet haply kisses repeated might restore her to
a bloom, and it is certain youth is somehow stolen from her, if the
Vizier Feshnavat went before her, and his blood be her blood; and he is
powerful, she wise. I'll decide to act the part of a rejoicer, and
express of her opinions honeyed to the soul of that sex.'

Now, while he was thus debating he hung his head, and the Vizier awaited
his response, knitting his brows angrily at the delay, and at the last he
cried, 'What! no answer? how 's this? Shall thy like dare hold debate
when questioned of my like? And is my daughter Noorna bin Noorka,
thinkest thou, a slave-girl in the market,--thou haggling at her price, O
thou nephew of the barber?'

So Shibli Bagarag exclaimed, 'O exalted one, bestower of the bride!
surely I debated with myself but for appropriate terms; and I delayed to
select the metre of the verse fitting my thoughts of her, and my wondrous
good fortune, and the honour done me.'

Then the Vizier, 'Let us hear: we listen.'

And Shibli Bagarag was advised to deal with illustrations in his dilemma,
by-ways of expression, and spake in extemporaneous verse, and with a full
voice:

The pupils of the Sage for living Beauty sought;
And one a Vision clasped, and one a Model wrought.
'I have it!' each exclaimed, and rivalry arose:
'Paint me thy Maid of air!' 'Thy Grace of clay disclose.'
'What! limbs that cannot move!' 'What! lips that melt away!'
'Keep thou thy Maid of air!' 'Shroud up thy Grace of clay!'
'Twas thus, contending hot, they went before the Sage,
And knelt at the wise wells of cold ascetic age.
'The fairest of the twain, O father, thou record':

He answered, 'Fairest she who's likest to her lord.'

Said they, 'What fairer thing matched with them might prevail?'

The Sage austerely smiled, and said, 'Yon monkey's tail.'

'Tis left for after-time his wisdom to declare:
That's loveliest we best love, and to ourselves compare.
Yet lovelier than all hands shape or fancies build,
The meanest thing of earth God with his fire hath filled.

Now, when Shibli Bagarag ceased, Noorna bin Noorka cried, 'Enough, O
wondrous turner of verse, thou that art honest!' And she laughed loudly,
rustling like a bag of shavings, and rolling in her laughter.

Then said she, 'O my betrothed, is not the thing thou wouldst say no
other than--

"Each to his mind doth the fairest enfold,
For broken long since was Beauty's mould";

and, "Thou that art old, withered, I cannot flatter thee, as I can in no
way pay compliments to the monkey's tail of high design; nevertheless the
Sage would do thee honour"? So read I thy illustration, O keen of wit!
and thou art forgiven its boldness, my betrothed,--Wullahy! utterly so.'

Now, the youth was abashed at her discernment, and the kindliness of her
manner won him to say:

There's many a flower of sweetness, there's many a gem of earth
Would thrill with bliss our being, could we perceive its worth.
O beauteous is creation, in fashion and device!
If I have fail'd to think thee fair, 'tis blindness is my vice.

And she answered him:

I've proved thy wit and power of verse,
That is at will diffuse and terse:
Lest thou commence to lie--be dumb!
I am content: the time will come!

Then she said to the Vizier Feshnavat, 'O my father, there is all in this
youth, the nephew of the barber, that's desirable for the undertaking;
and his feet will be on a level with the task we propose for him, he the
height of man above it. 'Tis clear that vanity will trip him, but honesty
is a strong upholder; and he is one that hath the spirit of enterprise
and the mask of dissimulation: gratitude I observe in him; and it is as I
thought when I came upon him on the sand-hill outside the city, that his
star is clearly in a web with our star, he destined for the Shaving of
Shagpat.'

So the Vizier replied, 'He hath had thwackings, yet is he not deterred
from making further attempt on Shagpat. I think well of him, and I augur
hopefully. Wullahy! the Cadi shall be sent for; I can sleep in his
secresy; and he shall perform the ceremonies of betrothal, even now and
where we sit, and it shall be for him to write the terms of contract: so
shall we bind the youth firmly to us, and he will be one of us as we are,
devoted to the undertaking by three bonds--the bond of vengeance, the
bond of ambition, and that of love.'

Now, so it was that the Vizier despatched a summons for the attendance of
the Cadi, and he came and performed between Shibli Bagarag and Noorna bin
Noorka ceremonies of betrothal, and wrote terms of contract; and they
were witnessed duly by the legal number of witnesses, and so worded that
he had no claim on her as wife till such time as the Event to which he
bound himself was mastered. Then the fees being paid, and compliments
interchanged, the Vizier exclaimed, 'Be ye happy! and let the weak cling
to the strong; and be ye two to one in this world, and no split halves
that betray division and stick not together when the gum is heated.' Then
he made a sign to the Cadi and them that had witnessed the contract to
follow him, leaving the betrothed ones to their own company.

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