‘I wouldn’t go so far as to quite put it that way.’
‘It’s of no consequence now, Father. The Padshah is in Agra and there is no avoiding the conflict, but if you will forgive my harking back to the same point, will you even now reconsider postponing it?’
‘If I didn’t know you as one of the toughest generals in the history of the Rajputs, I would say that you’ve lost your nerve. This excessive caution is making you faint of heart. The more we delay, the stronger he’ll get. Now is the time to strike while the Padshah is still unsettled and the Lodi vassals are busy fomenting revolts everywhere.’
Chapter
42
Who, Mangal, who?’
It was seventeen days since ‘the accident’ as the court bulletin preferred to call it.
‘Could be any one of a hundred and fourteen people.’
I looked sharply at Mangal. Why not a round hundred or ninety-three out of the hundred and seventeen who went to Pushkar? Mangal tends to get flippant when he wants to be cagey. But he meant what he said and he was right. Queen Karmavati’s chief eunuch was not just powerful, he used that power to hurt and destroy people. He liked the women in the zenana to be beholden to him so that at some critical moment he could ask for an exorbitant favour or exact a terrible price. He could be charming but always with an ulterior motive and even the queens were afraid of him. Mangal was right, barring Queen Karmavati and Vikramaditya, all of us at Pushkar could have borne the eunuch grievous ill will.
‘Has he regained consciousness?’
‘No.’
‘Has his condition stabilized?’
‘No, the doctor says he’s bled profusely plus his system has suffered a terrible trauma. There’s no saying yet whether he’ll make it or not.’
‘There was not a single slash or wound on Bruhannada’s back. He knew who was attacking him but did not retaliate or defend himself. Nor did he try to run away. All he seems to have done is to shield himself from the blows with his hands and arms. Do you think he believed he deserved to die?’
‘Perhaps.’ It was monosyllabic day for Mangal.
‘Who was it, Mangal, who? You think it was someone so powerful that Bruhannada felt he had no choice but to take an assault on his person without raising his hand in self-defense?’
‘The thought has crossed my mind, Highness.’
‘Will you stop acting officious with me and be more forthcoming? This was a crime committed within hailing distance of His Majesty. Anybody who could get to Bruhannada could have got to His Majesty.’
‘The police are aware of the lapse in security, Highness, but they are not happy that I’ve been given charge of the investigation and are not exactly being cooperative.’
‘Do you think someone’s putting the screws on them?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Have you talked to Rani Karmavati?’
‘She informed me that she was under no compulsion to speak to me since I was in Intelligence and not with the police. But she did finally give me an audience yesterday.’
‘And?’
‘She was short with me. Would I not have told you if I knew who did it, she asked me.’
‘Does she suspect anybody?’
‘Everybody, she said, everybody.’
‘You think she’s coming clean?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you questioned my second wife?’
Mangal looked blankly at me.
‘Don’t play games with me, Mangal. She was the one who found the mutilated man.’
‘She said she had skipped her bath in the morning because it was cold and was going to take one in the afternoon in a quiet place since the water would be tolerably warm then.’
‘Do you believe her story?’
‘I have no reason to doubt it, Sire.’ I thought I could read Mangal’s mind and even hear him say, ‘Why don’t you ask your wife and get all the details first-hand yourself?’
‘Did she see anybody else around?’
‘She said no.’
I was irritable and frustrated. I knew I was making Mangal do all the dirty work because I didn’t expect the Police Commissioner and his men to come up with answers. This was a Palace matter and they would be out of their depth. But all either he or I had turned up so far were blind alleys and blanks.
‘Let me know if something comes up.’
‘The Queen, it appears, has asked her maid-in-waiting, Urvashi, to go back to her home in Bundi.’
‘A falling-out with one of her maids is nothing new for Queen Karmavati.’
‘The word is that Urvashi may have missed her period two months running.’
‘Why would I be interested in Urvashi’s menstrual cycle? This won’t be the first or last time that my brother Vikramaditya has cohabited with one of his mother’s ladies.’
‘But it would be a precedent of sorts if the lady is really pregnant with Prince Vikramaditya’s child and is being sent away from Chittor.’
‘I don’t get the connection Mangal.’
‘It bothers me that I can’t get the link either, Sire.’
‘Maybe there’s none and you are reading too much into the Queen’s displeasure. Why not accost the lady while she’s wending her way home and check matters out?’
‘I intend to, Highness.’
Mangal must have been halfway to his office block when I ran after him.
‘Where have you kept him, Mangal?’
‘In one of the rooms in the quarantine section in the Atithi Palace, Highness. I’ve posted one of my own men there.’
‘Can we move him without anyone coming to know of it?’
‘I believe Rasikabai rents some of her outhouses behind Tamarind Lane to visitors from out of town.’
‘Transfer him there but not before you’ve got a completely bandaged double who can take solitary confinement for a couple of weeks at the minimum, maybe a month.’
‘When do you want it done?’
‘Tonight if possible. Keep at least half a dozen alternative accommodations in mind. We’ll move the eunuch as often as necessary.’
The rear wing of the Atithi Palace which houses the infectious diseases section went up in flames two days after we transferred Bruhannada. His replacement was lucky to have got away with only twenty-five percent burns.
From day one I had been going over the same question over and over again: Why would anyone want to crosshatch the genitalia of a eunuch? It didn’t make sense. Defacement of Bruhannada’s face, that I could understand. One could apprehend some kind of motive there. The chief eunuch was a goodlooking man and conscious of it. If anyone wanted to get back at him, the face might be a good place to start. I was not sure who we were looking for. Was it a personal thing or a political vendetta? Was it a man or a woman? And whoever it was or they were, why would the eunuch not defend himself?
Mangal and I went for a swim in the Gambhiree where we had decided to meet every night while we struggled to sort out the Bruhannada case. It was the only place where we could have some privacy. We were running out of time. Father was getting impatient, the matter of the Padshah of Delhi demanded Mangal’s and my full attention and the atmosphere in the Palace reminded me of that evening in the Gujarat campaign when I had watched a buffalo’s throat being slit while the rest of the cattle awaited their turn in cowering anticipation.
The ladies in the zenana would not take a bath or go to the toilet except in groups of three or more. A curtain or shadow moving was enough to start one of them screaming and within seconds the whole lot would be convinced that they were about to be murdered, and ran shrieking for cover. It’s not as if Chittor is innocent of crime. We have our share of wife-beatings, thefts, stabbings, highway robberies, and murders. But something about the viciousness and brutality of the attack on the eunuch seemed to have caught the imagination of the women and made them terribly nervous and fearful.
The hijadas of the city who share their genderless state with the royal
eunuchs in the palace, have adopted Bruhannada as their patron and are going to take out a silent procession at ten tomorrow morning and march around the city both as a mark of respect and as a way of highlighting their plight. This is indeed a curious turn of events which would surprise no person more than the said Bruhannada whose worst nightmare, along with that of all the eunuchs in the royal household, is to be confused with the hijadas. What is more curious and to the point is that I have been deputed to safeguard a man for whom I bear nothing but the most unmitigated antipathy.
Both Mangal and I have always suspected that the brains and subtlety behind Queen Karmavati’s schemes belong to her chief eunuch. He knows what he wants and knows how to go about getting it. He also has that rarest of gifts: sustained application. He wants to be kingmaker and the power who rules from behind the scene. He has chosen his vehicle carefully. He may not love Vikramaditya as much as his mother does but he loves him far more wisely.
Now when he was at the peak of his powers and was perhaps the most feared person in the Palace, who would dare to touch him and why would he let them?
‘Rani Karmavati called me over today and told me to hand over Bruhannada to her since I was incapable of taking care of him.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her that it was too late to do anything about it now, Mangal?’
‘I did. I even gave her his ashes and bones. She smiled and told me to tell these old wives’ tales to my wife or some other credulous fool. She had no intention of allowing me to murder the chief of her household staff.’
I was about to ask Mangal who was snitching on us when I realized the folly of the question. Nothing, absolutely nothing escapes Queen Karmavati’s ears.
‘What about her maid-in-waiting, Urvashi, have you questioned her?’
‘She won’t talk, Highness.’
‘Is she pregnant?’
‘The midwife is convinced she is.’
‘Is it Vikramaditya’s baby?’
‘I doubt it. Since she wouldn’t talk I threatened to call Prince Vikramaditya. Do that, she said, and I’ll kill myself. She meant it, I think.’
‘Let her go to her parent’s place in Bundi, Mangal. If Vikram or his mother find out that we waylaid her, I’m sure they’ll tell His Majesty that we tried to molest her.’
‘I would like to keep her for another week or two though.’
‘Why?’
‘As I was about to terminate my interview with Urvashi, she enquired after Bruhannada.’
‘Why not, the whole world’s talking about him?’
‘Still, it’s a little odd that of all the people in the world, she should ask after him.’
‘Have it your way. Just make sure neither Vikram nor his mother find out where she is. Are you shifting the eunuch tonight?’
‘I already have. Whoever’s out to get him is as well-informed about his whereabouts as Queen Karmavati.’
‘What does the Raj Vaidya say? When will he gain consciousness?’
‘He’s not hazarding any guesses.’
‘I keep getting the feeling that we are missing something. What do you have on the Chief Eunuch?’
‘Nothing much really. When Prince Vikramaditya felt like a change of pace, he sodomized the eunuch from time to time.’
‘Does Bruhannada have another lover? Some young boy or another prince?’
‘I don’t think so. Sex doesn’t seem to interest him much, not even with His Highness.’
‘Do you think we are barking up the wrong tree? Maybe it’s not a sex crime at all. Whoever did it wanted us to think it was.’
‘So what kind of crime was it?’
We were back to where we had started. Nowhere.
That night when I got back home after the swim, there was no light in my room. The Bruhannada fever had got to me. My hand was on the hilt of my sword. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness when two hands clutched at my ankles.
‘I beg you not to put on the light.’
It was hardly a voice, just the broken remnants of a person transiting into the nether world. What if I had heard Sugandha’s voice half a second later? Who would have believed that I had killed my faithless wife by accident?
I dropped my sword and picked her up.
‘Please don’t look at me.’
Even in the darkness of the room, the purple of her bruises glinted like the shot colours in a Kanchipuram silk. Her body had swollen grotesquely.
‘Who did this to you, Sugandha?’
‘It doesn’t matter. There is no punishment in hell commensurate to the shame I have brought upon your name.’ Her flesh shifted like heavy liquid in my arms. She groaned in pain.
‘Hold me tight. Promise me you’ll never let go of me. Never.’
I felt such unbearable love and tenderness for her then, I was willing to foolishly promise her anything, declare bondage to her for the rest of my life as reparation for having let her down. And yet something held me back. Was this pity for her or for myself?
I looked at her baby face. Oh God, what had I done to this childish and childlike woman? How could I have allowed her to go to Vikramaditya? Did I not know that my brother would not be able to resist the soft invitation of her flesh to damage and disrupt it? Suddenly I saw myself for what I was: a petty, vindictive man who was relieved that his wife was committing adultery so that he could have a clean conscience and be free of any guilt towards his father-in-law. What had my brother gone and done to her? What did Rajput honour expect of me? Should I challenge Vikram to a swordfight, should I split his head and spill his brains, should I tear off his clothes in public and force him to walk naked on the streets of Mewar? And yet the only infamy I thought he was worthy of was the worst kind of un-Rajput conduct: stab him from behind and carve his heart out and see the bloody thing palpitate like a fish flapping and tossing for air on land. And yet I was aware I would do none of these things. Instead I would be circumspect, there was enough scandal attached to my name like shit to the sole of a sandal. I would tell myself that I did not need to shove my foot any deeper than I already had. I would be heroic in my self-restraint and find any excuse not to confront Vikram.
I felt a wave of such revulsion against myself, I tried to smother it by crushing my wife in my embrace. Her lips brushed mine and her breasts clamoured against me.
Why is it that the oldest questions we ask about ourselves never have answers? Where do violence and pain stop and sex start? Is lovemaking nothing but loneliness trying to break out?
‘Princess,’ I asked her afterwards when I lay quietly against her breasts, ‘why did my brother fly off into a rage today?’
‘He’s been doing it every day. It’s just that it got out of hand today. His temper has been unstable since Pushkar. He’s afraid that I know something.’
‘Do you?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to know.’
There was good news the next day. Bruhannada had regained consciousness.
I looked in on him, enquired after his health and left. I thought I would give him another day, let him regain his strength but I also had some less than honourable motives. He was a smart man, he had a pretty shrewd idea about how the world worked but he was also arrogant. He didn’t just know it all, he knew better. He would expect to be put through a round-the-clock grilling immediately. Be a good idea, I thought, to leave him alone and make him wonder what was going on. A little uncertainty never did anybody any harm.
‘How long have you known?’ I asked Mangal.
‘Known what, Highness?’
‘You know what or who I am referring to.’
‘I’m no mind reader and you, Highness, are getting more and more cryptic.’
‘Don’t try my patience, Mangal.’ I had not been able to wipe that invisible grin off his face though there was one appearing on mine now. ‘I’m going to have to take you down a peg or two, very soon. Now, are
you going to talk or be evasive for some more time?’
‘A couple of days, Highness, though it’s still just a hunch. But it would appear you are more knowledgeable than I am.’
‘Just a hunch, Mangal, same as you. Nothing more. We still need proof.’
Our conversation must have sounded like pure nonsense to any passing listener but Mangal and I were so much together, I just took it for granted that he had access to my innermost thoughts. Well, I hope not the whole lot.
I knew that Sugandha had lied to me last night. She was privy to something that my brother Vikram was afraid she might share with me or someone else. I didn’t think she was dissembling or that Vikram had put her up to it. My guess was that she was trying to protect me. Like most people who rush to conclusions, Vikram is, by nature, deeply suspicious. But he has a limited and straightforward mind which is not given to analysis or working a thought through. Unless Sugandha had been in the know of something, it would not occur to him to try to shut her up. I could be wrong but I suspected that she had run into Vikram at the wrong time on the day of the crime. I wanted to test my thesis with Mangal but as usual he’s far better at these matters than I and had zeroed in on the suspect much earlier than I. But even Mangal had no answer to one question: why would Vikram want to kill his staunchest ally? If His Majesty were to ask me to submit a report to him tomorrow, there was no way I could tell him that Vikramaditya was our prime suspect. I would merely come across as a man who was trying to frame his brother because of an ancient vendetta.
It was past eleven forty when I got back home at night. Sugandha would not allow me to light the lamp.
‘How long do you plan to stay in the dark?’
‘I’m not a vain woman, Highness. I am also not the prettiest of women,’ she told me with a simplicity that was not feigned. ‘I do not want to lose whatever little affection you may bear for me by seeing me in the state that I am in. You shouldn’t have provoked your brother, Highness. You do not know what a vengeful and dangerous man he is.’
Cuckold Page 57