1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

128
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
destinations; but Gul Begum had recovered something of her queenly
gait and carriage. She felt that she was master of her fate. Ten days
would restore her to her prison life and her mother, and so, guided by
former experiences, she commenced her old game of stupidit y and
slatternly untidiness.
The elder of the four was soon sent to Jellalabad, to be a servant in the
house of the Chief Secretar y’s spiritual leader (he had asked for an
elderly woman), and one of the remaining three was superfluous in her
present abode.
“I can make nothing of that Gul Begum,” the Chief Secretar y’s wife
said plaintively. “She’s a great useless hulk. She does nothing but eat
and sleep. And is so dirt y and untidy, I do not fanc y anything she has
once laid her hands upon.”
The Chief Secretary’s house was a well ordered one; each person in it
had his or her share of work. Idleness in one member threw extra work
on the others. He had but one wife, and was faithful to her.
“All right, Jan (m y wife),” he said quietly. “We will send her to the
Mir Sahib. I promised him a wife, and though a bad servant, she may
make a good wife. Is it not often so? You can send her at once, if you
wish. I will make arrangements for her as soon as you have settled with
her.”
But Gul Begum was not so easily settled with; she would not go to
Logman to be any man’s wife, she wished to stay where she was.
The lad y was in despair; she would speak to her husb and about it when
he came in, she said. “In the meantime Gul Begum was to return to her
work.
When the subject was broached to him, the Chief Secretar y was rather
anno yed; annoyed wit his wife because she could not manage a slave,
anno yed with the slave for daring to oppose her mistress; it was most
unusual. He sent for her himself, he who never addressed a word to the
female slaves, and she came in, prostrating herself at his feet.
He had a thick stick in his hand, it was his walking stick, and he was
to ying with it. She had not heard of his using it on any one since she
had entered his establishment, but he might, why not? Hers was an
exceptional case – she was a refractor y slave.
“What is the meaning of this, Gul Begum?” he asked sternly. “You will
not work, and yet you refuse to leave my establishment when I offer
you to be a holy man in honourable marriage.” He rose from the
cushion on which he was sitting, and came towards her. The girl shrank
back, but he passed her and fetched a piece of paper from a ledge in the