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In death I will not cheat him. What you have known is true. My child is no child of his. I will not go down to death with a lie upon my lips. Come and see." Dwaymenau was no more. Sundari, the Indian woman, awful and calm, led the Queen down the long ball and into her own chamber, where Mindon, the child, slept a drugged sleep.
Desirous of carrying further the policy of gaining ground by means of fortified posts, Justinian, who had recently restored and strengthened the frontier city of Martyropolis, on the Nymphius, sent instructions to Belisarius, early in A.D. 528, to the effect that he was to build a new fort at a place called Mindon, on the Persian border a little to the left of Nisibis.
And so matters rested in the palace until Ananda had ten years and Mindon nine. It was the warm and sunny winter and the days were pleasant, and on a certain day the Queen, Maya, went with her ladies to worship the Blessed One at the Thapinyu Temple, looking down upon the swiftly flowing river.
Suddenly, lifting the hangings of the palace gateway, before them stood the mother of Mindon, the Lady Dwaymenau, pale as wool, having heard the shout of her boy, so that the two Queens faced each other, each holding the shoulders of her son, and the ladies watched, mute as fishes, for it was years since these two had met.
One of great interest was built by Mindon Min, and called the Kuthodau, or, more generally, the 450 Pagodas, but there are said to be seven hundred and twenty-nine cupolas surrounding the great central pagoda, each containing an alabaster slab upon which are engraved some texts of Buddha taken from the Pali Bible, the King thinking thus to perpetuate them, the whole surrounded by a wall, in which are built two richly decorated gates.
No one answered, the women looking upon each other, until Dwaymenau, sitting beside him, glimmering with rough pearls and rubies, spoke smoothly: "Lord, worshipped and beloved, the two boys quarreled this day, and Ananda's deer attacked our Mindon. He had a madness upon him and thrust with his horns.
And this boy, Mindon, was beautiful and strong as his mother, pale olive of face, with the dark and crafty eyes of the cunning Indian traders, with black hair and a body straight, strong and long in the leg for his years apt at the beginnings of bow, sword and spear full of promise, if the promise was only words and looks.
Only the fear of the King guarded her and her boy, but that was strong. The boys played together sometimes, Mindon tyrannizing and cruel, Ananda fearing and complying, broken in spirit.
But this is a story of the dead days of Pagan, by the Irawadi, and it will be shown that, as the Lotus of the Lord Buddha grows up a white splendour from the black mud of the depths, so also may the soul of a woman. In the days of the Lord of the White Elephant, the King Pagan Men, was a boy named Mindon, son of second Queen and the King.
For your love of the King, I love you. And here, standing on the verge of life, I testify that the words of the Blessed One are truth that love is All; that hatred is Nothing." She bared the breast that this woman had made desolate that, with the love of this woman, was desolate ho longer, and, stooping, laid her hand on the brow of Mindon.
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