Homay and the child in the river

Bahman has a son, Sasan, and a daughter, Homay, also called Chehrzad, wise and beautiful. The poem says he took Homay as his wife, by the custom of the faith it calls Pahlavi, and she is six months with child when he falls ill. Dying, he names Homay his heir, and after her the child she carries, son or daughter. Sasan, passed over, leaves in shame for Nishapur and marries there in secret, and his son, another Sasan, ends up herding the flocks of the king of Nishapur. The poem will come back to that line.

Homay takes the crown and rules well. She gives birth in secret, hands the baby to a nurse, and lets it be said that he died, because, the poem says, she has come to love the throne. When the boy is eight months old she has a carpenter make a small box of dry wood, sealed with pitch and musk and lined with silk of Rum, its bed strewn with pearls, gold, carnelians and emeralds. A precious jewel is tied to the child's arm. At midnight the box is set on the Euphrates, and two men follow along the bank to see where it goes.

At dawn it lodges among the stones of a washing-place, and a washerman pulls it out. He and his wife have just lost a baby of their own. They take the boy, and on the third day they name him Darab, because they found him in running water. With the jewels they move to a city sixty farsangs away, where nobody knows them, and live in comfort.

The ruined arch

Darab grows strong and wilful. He beats every boy he wrestles, runs away from the washing stones, and asks to be taught instead: the Zand and Avesta first, then riding, archery and polo. Sure that he is no washerman's son, he bars the door one day, draws a sword, and makes the washerman's wife tell him everything. With the dinars that are left he buys a horse and serves a border lord, and when raiders from Rum kill his lord, he enlists in the army Homay sends against Rum under her general Rashnavad. Homay reviews the troops herself, and when she sees the tall young rider with a steel mace on his shoulder, her milk rises.

On the march a storm breaks. Darab, who has no tent, shelters under a broken arch. Rashnavad, going his rounds, hears a voice from the ruin three times, telling the arch to keep watch over the king of Iran, the son of King Ardashir, that is, Bahman. He has the sleeper woken, and as Darab mounts his horse the arch falls in. Darab tells his story, and Rashnavad sends for the washerman and his wife.

Darab leads the scouts against Rum, breaks the Rumi lines, kills forty churchmen and carries off a cross, until Caesar sues for peace. On the way home Rashnavad hears the washerman's account, writes it all to Homay, and sends her the jewel from the baby's arm. Homay weeps: God gave her a son and she threw him into the Euphrates. She gives treasure to the poor and to the fire temples, and on a day the astrologers choose she seats Darab on a golden throne, puts the crown on his head, and asks his pardon. He answers that she comes of a hero's line and should not grieve so over one wrong. She tells the nobles he is Bahman's only heir and gives up the throne she has held for thirty-two years. The washerman goes home with ten purses of gold, and the new king tells him to keep an eye on the river in case another box comes down it.