I can’t stop staring at Salva though, we haven’t had a chance to have a good look at each other at such proximity since the day I found him with the concubines. What an absurd thought that this is our reunion. I take in his eyebrows, drawn together, his eyes that seem to pierce right through me, and for a moment – just very briefly – I forget to be guilty and I think this is what I felt like when I saw you and it serves you right.
It seems like we will all stand there in silence forever, when Lalita appears with a little bark cup of water, she is clever with her hands and has been amusing us with cups and plates and a little doll for Ambalika, just the crudest thing, a skirt made out of dried weeds and a face drawn on with a piece of charcoal from the fire, but Ambalika has taken to cradling it in her arms and murmuring to it, and as long as she is talking to something, we are grateful.
‘Your Highness,’ Lalita says, bowing low and proferring the cup as though it was on a silver salver. ‘Please drink this water, and may I bring some to wash your feet?’
Salva takes the water, but almost unwillingly, and then he looks over at Bheeshma and says, ‘I have not come here as your guest, O Vile Stealer of Women! I have come to take the women of my ward back to Kashi where their husbands are waiting for them.’
Bheeshma moves between us, smooth as silk. ‘There now, young princeling. Why should they go back to Kashi when I have a groom waiting for them? And it was meant to be a swayamvara, was it not? I have won the princesses fair and square.’
‘Not all the princesses,’ Salva looks at me, and for the first time his mouth softens a little. ‘Princess Amba and I have been betrothed since we were both children. Our lives are together. I will fight for her honour and her hand.’
‘If Princess Amba wants to marry you, then of course, I will let her go,’ says Bheeshma, softly.
Salva shakes his head. ‘It has to be this way, I will fight for her.’
I want to run to him and hold his hand and say let’s go, let’s go back to Kashi, let’s be married, but my mind drifts to the conversation I had with Bheeshma about horses, just this morning, and how he knew without my even having to tell him, about my relationship with Sauvee. It is a part of me that I never expected anyone to understand. I think also of his booming laugh, his strong arms, the feel of the callouses on his palms from the reins. He is a different sort of man from any I have ever met.
Besides, I tell myself, this is how Salva wants to do it, I shouldn’t stand in his way.
‘Draw your sword!’ says Salva, raising his. I notice his arms are trembling. He was never very good with weapons, even though he tried so hard. I always expected he’d get better with time, never thought he’d actually be called upon to use his knowledge, whatever he has of it.
I suddenly remember the two of us, right after our tenth name days, we are hiding in a corner of the palace. I am escaping my weaving tutor, he is hiding from the sword-master. I was giggling and he put his warm palm over my mouth.
‘Don’t laugh, they’ll hear us, Amba!’
I made signs to show him I wouldn’t, and he dropped his hand from my face. I remember the smell of him, we were pressed very close, and he smelled like sweat and little boy and all those things, but also sweet like an apple.
‘Aren’t you ever going to learn to use a sword?’ I asked him, and he shook his head.
‘I’m going to be a master at the bow and arrow, I’m really good at it, but swords are heavy and they don’t move so gracefully. When I have my own army, I’ll have lots of swordsmen around me so no one will be able to get close.’
‘Why don’t you tell your father that and then he’ll tell mine and then you won’t have to learn anymore?’
‘My father wants me to learn everything,’ he said, darkly. ‘Even the mace! Have you ever tried to pick one up?’
I shook my head and he shook his back at me, ‘You couldn’t! No one can, only very strong men. It’s not a prince’s sport.’
‘I shan’t need embroidery either,’ I told him, emboldened by his confessions. ‘I shall have my maids do it for me. I’d never be able to go fast enough to embroider a whole cloth to wear anyway.’
‘When we are married, you shall never have to do anything you don’t want to.’
He sealed his promise by kissing me on the cheek firmly, and then our tutors did find us after all, and dragged us away, but I remember looking back at him, and he nodded at me solemnly as evidence of our pact.
‘Salva,’ I say now. ‘Why don’t you challenge Bheeshma with your bow? He has one too!’
Salva shakes his head, not looking at me. ‘It has to be the sword.’ I’m not sure why he’s so adamant about this, so I am about to argue, but then I remember the fruit and the arrow that bore it, and how that was just the simplest task for Bheeshma, whereas it would be one of great skill and feat for Salva.
I watch Salva hold out his sword with both hands. I can persuade him to leave my sisters behind, maybe. Ambika is looking at me, with desperation in her eyes, and Ambalika is crowded next to Lalita, she would probably be happier in Hastinapura as well. I will be the only one to return to Kashi, with the prince triumphant. I try to feel gleeful at the thought. Salva is my love and this is what I want, to return with him, victorious, back to my cold father, my absent mother, the rocky kingdom that we will make our way to. It’s what I have spent my whole life working towards.
‘Bheeshma!’ says Salva. ‘Do you refuse to fight me? Are you such a coward?’ His voice is high and cracks on that last note. Bheeshma shakes his head once.
‘Don’t do it, son. Go back to Kashi and I will spread the word that you are a valiant fighter who was more than a match for me.’
‘Do you think I need your pity?’ Salva darts forward, and slashes out at Bheeshma.
Ambika gives one thin scream, the only sound besides Salva’s panting, but Bheeshma has easily parried it, his sword drawn before I can even blink, his hand dashes forward to meet Salva’s weapon.
‘Have you gone mad, boy?’ Bheeshma asks, and he sounds truly concerned. ‘Do not fight me. Go home, have your guardian find you another wife.’
‘If I kill you,’ Salva says, his sword still raised in his arms, ‘I will tell them all you were no match for me and I killed you because you defiled my future wife and her sisters.’
‘You would invent a story to make yourself feel better, but what of the reputation of your women if people think I defiled them?’
‘I will still marry Amba, and maybe the other two as well. Why not? It will make me look magnanimous and forgiving, who doesn’t like that in a ruler?’ He grins a wide manic grin. I’ve never seen him look like this before and I am a little afraid.
Salva slashes out again, wildly. Bheeshma ducks to the side, but not before the tip of the sword slashes him across the chest, drawing bright blood. Bheeshma bellows, and bounds backwards onto the chariot.
For a moment, I think he intends to run away and leave us there. Ambika is gripping my hand so hard that the bones in it are touching each other and it is painful but I can’t bring myself to shake her off. But then Bheeshma leaps off, his sword raised in his arms, and Salva cowers back despite himself.
The moment I see the two of them, side by side, swords in their hands, that’s when I know it’s over for Salva. Bheeshma doesn’t even need to grip his weapon with both hands: he holds it in his left, his other hand high behind him, fingers tilted towards the sky, as though he is doing an elaborate dance. I see the expression on Bheeshma’s face change, no smile or frown, nothing to reveal that he is thinking of anything at all. I once saw a master jeweller at work in the palace, he had come a long way and my father was partial to the beaten gold of his necklaces, the way he embedded precious stones into it, so it came out looking like a wonderful flower. That man had the same look in his eyes as he melted the gold and let the gems fall into place – intense concentration, as though if he was told he could only do one task for the rest of his life, this would be the one he would choose.
Salva is sweating even harder now, slashing forward with his blade again. Bheeshma parries him easily, then unexpectedly moves into Salva, catching him off balance. The larger of the two continues pressing his advantage with short, vicious strikes, backing Salva against a tree. Their eyes are fixed on each other, their swords interlock. But then, a quick flick of Bheeshma’s wrist, Salva’s weapon clatters away, and a blade presses into his throat.
‘How now?’ asks Bheeshma, eyes narrow and glittering, nostrils flaring.
‘Kill me then,’ says Salva, turning his head, ‘and be done with it.’
Bheeshma looks as though he is going to, he reaches forward, the blade presses into Salva’s throat, he makes a squeak and then Bheeshma steps back and lets his sword arm fall. His head is bowed and he reaches up one hand to his brow.
‘Go,’ he says.
‘I said you should kill me!’ cries Salva, but I notice he is edging away.
‘Go!’ says Bheeshma again, and his voice is so terrible that it seems everything hushes for a moment. Even Ambalika looks up from where she is sitting, nursing her doll. Salva picks up his sword, half bows towards Bheeshma and leaves.
‘Salva!’ I call after him, but he doesn’t turn around and I don’t run after him. I’m too busy thinking who do I wish had won?
‘Hastinapura is not far,’ Bheeshma says to us all at the end of the second day. This is the first time he has spoken to me since we left the copse. After Salva left, Bheeshma bade us make haste over our meal so we could leave, pushing away Yashas as he tried to tend to his wound. Bheeshma has only spoken to us through the servants, giving them orders. ‘We stop here.’ ‘Feed the princesses.’ Things like that. I feel as though the friendly morning we had riding was just a story I told myself to feel better.
‘Oh good,’ says Ambika, when it is clear that a response is expected from us. I am sitting against a tree, letting Lalita massage my feet, and Ambalika is next to Bheeshma. That’s another odd thing. Since his fight with Salva, Ambalika began to talk again, but only to Bheeshma. She follows him around and prattles to him, and even though he only responds with a vaguely positive grunt, it seems to be enough for her. Right now, she is holding her doll and looking up at him with the same eyes that so many bards said there wasn’t enough poetry in the world for. I notice that she has her hair braided around her head like a little crown, and her sari looped around her body so tight I can see every curve. I wonder when she did that.
‘Bheeshu-ji,’ she says, in honeyed, childlike tones. ‘What if they don’t think I’m pretty?’
I glance at Ambika and am happy to see her make a face in my direction. But Bheeshma smiles – smiles! – and says, ‘They won’t think you’re pretty, little Princess, they’ll think you’re beautiful.’
‘Do you really think so?’ asks Ambalika, leaning forward so her sari falls away from her bosom, and where has she learned to do all this? But Bheeshma averts his eyes very properly and smiles and says of course he thinks so, she is the most beautiful princess he has ever seen in his whole life. I turn away and curiously, catch Yashas’ eye. He gives me a strange smile, the first time he has actually smiled at me. He’s not very friendly, or very forthcoming, this Yashas. In fact, he’s even more of a mystery than Bheeshu-ji over there, because Bheeshma is a prince, and I understand certain things about a prince’s life – what he must do, what his family is like and so on. Yashas is a riddle, is Lalita the same sort of puzzle? I suppose she is – what must have made her turn from a man into a woman, from a guard to a maid? Perhaps it’s because I’ve been spending so much time with these two, but I wonder about their lives more than I have about any of the other servants we left behind in Kashi.
Ambika clears her throat and asks, ‘When do we expect to arrive?’
‘We’ll rest here for the evening,’ he says, standing up and stretching. ‘I shall shoot us some more game for our dinner, unless you would be satisfied with fruits and berries?’ But no, my sisters would not be satisfied by that, they both wrinkle their noses in distaste, and Bheeshma sets off. I have no appetite, haven’t been able to eat properly for our entire journey, even though I nibble at whatever is placed before me to keep up my strength.
As soon as he sets off, I turn my back to others and pull out the knife that we took from the battle back in Kashi. Ambika handed it to me yesterday, ‘I suppose we won’t need this?’ she said, but I took it from her anyway. I’m wearing it against my stomach, held in place by a piece of cloth I tore from my sari. The metal is cool and hard, and I have to be careful when I sit down, or else it will jab at me, but I like the feel of it. I feel less like Princess Amba, snatched away from her family, a slave to whatever fate holds in store for me, and more like some other creature altogether. Someone who doesn’t wait for things to happen to them. Someone more like a man.
I wonder when I shall use my knife. I had hoped to be able to overpower Bheeshma somehow when I snatched it, but now I know that thought is useless unless I catch him by surprise. I wipe it lovingly and then stand up and slip it back. My sisters look up.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ I tell them. ‘I need to think, and stretch my legs, you stay here.’
The one nice thing about this journey has been doing as we please. Bheeshma doesn’t seem to care so much about propriety, or what a young princess must and mustn’t do. I imagine my mother fainting if she were to see what we have been up to. To think yesterday Ambika got tired of sitting in the chariot and Bheeshma slowed down the horses so she could run alongside, which she did with great whoops. There was no one to see her anyway, except an old man in a faraway field, but he didn’t even stare, as if princesses crossed his road on foot all the time. Bheeshma’s been quite cunning in that sense – we’ve hardly encountered any other people. Once we went through the outskirts of a village, but it was a meagre poor one, and Bheeshma bought a vessel of water for us to drink and paid a bag of coins to the headman for it, just so he could feed his people. They were so stunned with the riches, they didn’t even look at us too closely, and we are many yojanas away from Kashi, they might not have heard of the three abducted princesses here anyway.
Sometimes we will sing very loudly, songs that Lalita teaches us, songs she picked up from her community. Sometimes we will all sit together and prepare the food so it cooks faster, I think of Ambalika, her hands full of blood from the fish we were scaling, running around saying, ‘Oh my nose itches! Scratch it, scratch it!’
As I walk away from them, I hear Ambika saying, ‘Lalita, you said you’d teach me how to do a salambha sirsasana like you did. Imagine me standing on my head! Will you show me now?’ I smile to myself as I leave them, it will probably be their last evening of freedom, unlearning everything we have been bred to do – walk in small steps, speak in low voices. I hear a shriek of laughter from Ambalika and then Ambika crying, ‘Do you laugh? You try it and see how easy it is!’
We have sought shelter in a little cleft, when I walk out of it, I see that we are on a hill that continues above me, while the path goes on beyond. I choose to walk uphill, just to see where we are. It is a steep walk, but I am singing the song Lalita taught us in the chariot:
I am green-oh,
I am the new thresher,
My father-in-law put me to work,
My mother-in-law is dead-dead-dead
My husband is an as-ur-aaa
I have no family!
I am green-oh!
I am the new thresher in the fields!
It’s a chanting sort of tune and even though the words are so grim, the music makes us smile, especially the ‘as-ur-aaa’ which we learn to yodel, just as they do in the fields, Lalita tells us. It took Ambalika to finally ask her, ‘Did you grow up with farmers, Lalita?’ and I kicked myself, because I should have asked her first, watching her face blossom a little with the attention, even as she shakes her head. ‘No,’ she told me, smiling, ‘but I met a lot of people in my childhood, they sung me songs sometimes.’
I
realize that we’ve never had just a single maid before, our entourage has always been crowded, different faces flitting in and out of the background. I have had favourites, but never only one.
I have no family! I shout as I pull myself up on a branch, and just as I say it, an arrow comes shooting out of the thicket and nearly takes off the tip of my nose. I yelp and clasp my hands to my face. Bheeshma comes out of the thicket as well, his face as dark as thunder.
‘Serves you right for singing so loudly that you have frightened all the game away,’ he says, retrieving his arrow and replacing it into his quiver.
‘How dare you,’ I say, blinking back my tears of fright and rage. ‘You could have killed me.’
He laughs, a mean little laugh, ‘Hardly. I wasn’t aiming for your head, I just wanted to shut you up.’
‘Shut me up!’ I have gone incandescent with rage. ‘Listen, you ... old fool, just because you go about with this long face all the time, the gods only know why, considering you have won, do you hear me, O Great Bheeshma of the Great Family, as you keep reminding us? You won. You defeated our father and his army, you defeated my intended, you are meeting with very little resistance, if any, from us, in fact, I would say this has been the best abduction you could hope for. Oh, don’t even contradict,’ this as he begins to open his mouth. ‘It was an abduction, it was, it was! You stole us! And I know we don’t have anyone to take our side, because we are only women, but we can still think, you haven’t taken that away from us.’
He isn’t saying anything, though the set of his mouth has gone from mutinous to sheepish now.
‘And when I find a little joy, a little, in this place that we are complete strangers to, with a man who is a complete stranger to us, who expects us to trust him on his word only. And we have to trust you! For what choice do we have! I carry this around with me, but I know you would have it off me in an instant,’ I whip out my knife and he takes a step backward. I throw it down at my feet. ‘So take it, take it all. Take whatever joy I manage to scrounge up in my heart, whatever songs are at my lips. And keep telling yourself that you haven’t abducted us.’ I push past him and begin to run to the thicket he had hidden himself in, I’m getting stabbed by all the twigs and the leaves, I feel a scratch open up on my arm, another sting by my cheek where a branch has slapped it and snagged into my hair, but I keep going, until I finally stop, out of breath, and half sobbing. I fall to my knees, and before I can help it, I am keening, a long and low wail that escapes out of my body as though somebody is dragging it out by a rope. He is behind me, I can hear his footsteps, and then he drops down next to me as well, and takes my shoulders in his hands, so he is still behind me, and I am still wailing, but this time, I’m crying with someone supporting my weight, which somehow makes me feel a little better.
Girls of the Mahabharata Page 9