She shook her head slowly. ‘I had no idea.’
He hung his head. ‘You do not know how many times I desired to come to you, to beseech you to forgive me. To let me start afresh.’
She looked at him as if seeing him now for the first time since he had entered her chambers. ‘You should have come. I would have forgiven you in a trice. If only you had come.’
‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I should have come. But I had not the heart. You know, you alone know, how much I fear rejection. I hesitate to venture where I might not find certain victory. For grieving as I was—yes, that is the word, grieving for our lost love—I could not bear the thought of you turning me away, pushing me out. Then I should have been lost utterly.’
‘How could I?’ she cried. ‘Turn you away? Push you out? You fool? You royal fool! I would have taken you in with open arms. I could never turn you away.’
He stared at her. ‘Is it true then? Would you have forgiven me so easily?’
She looked down for a moment. There was a ragged edge to her voice when she spoke again. ‘Perhaps forgiveness would have taken a while. I am no devi, just a woman. A woman still trying to be a queen. But I would have let you stay. Of that much you can be certain.’
They were both silent for several moments. Thinking of the nights they had lain awake in their respective beds, so near to one another, yet so emotionally distant. Longing, wanting, fearing.
‘I am a fool,’ he admitted. ‘An old fool now.’
She looked up anxiously. The deterioration in his health had been no secret around the palace. ‘Have you had more attacks? The royal vaids—’
He snorted. ‘The royal vaids find my ailment fascinating to study, and impossible to cure!’ He shook his head. ‘I am being uncharitable. They do their best, it is true. Yet even the great medical science of Ayurveda doesn’t have all the answers.’ He shrugged aside the topic brusquely. ‘We will speak of that later, I promise. But right now, I am better than I have been in years.’ He gestured wistfully at the portrait of his younger self. ‘Not what I was once. Never again that strength, that burning ambition, that war-lust, that—’ He coughed once. ‘But I feel good. Better than I have felt in a long time. Perhaps that is why I was able to find the strength to come to you at last.’
He looked at her, a gentleness in his moist eyes that was more than mere politeness. ‘And I thank the ancestors that I did.’
She felt his gaze move down her face, to her breasts, her still slender waist, her flaring hips, her navel … He saw her fair almond-white complexion turn scarlet, the flush spreading from her cheeks to her throat … He moved closer.
‘Kausalya,’ he whispered in her ear.
Her knees buckled and gave way. She slipped down, her sari rustling, bangles clinking against each other. She crumpled in a heap at his feet, boneless, breathless. He sighed and bent with an effort. He caught her hands and pulled her to her feet. She came easily, not resisting, and he caught a whiff of jasmine and was instantly flooded with memories. Of their first years together, their first nights, when there had been only she and he, no second or third queens, no three hundred and fifty other wives, just a young prince and his princess, lying on a flower-bedecked bed in the open chaukat beneath the stars. The jasmine brought that back with a suddenness that was all the more shocking because he had blocked out the memories for so long.
She looked up at him with eyes that were as wide, as beautiful—no, far more beautiful—as the ones in the portrait. No amount of artistry could capture the way the light caught her eyes, this glowing inner flame that made her seem both angel and conquering warrior princess. It was as if the years had never passed, as if she had never borne a son, as if he had never lost interest in her and grown distant, as if …
He shook his head and released her, stepping back. His bare feet trod on the edge of the arghya bowl and tipped it over, spilling water and making a clattering sound that echoed hollowly in the large chamber. Neither noticed or cared.
He drew her to the bed. As he did, he saw her reach out and yank on a slender tasselled cord tied to a post of the bed. A shower of cool, delicately scented rose petals coated the bed and their bodies. He was amazed. How many years had she waited, night after night, replenishing that cache of petals daily, for just this one moment when he would come to her again? He could not conceive of such infinite patience. He was astonished to find himself weeping with pleasure and pain both at once, the pleasure of her clasp and the pain of their long separation.
He remembered then that he had not yet spoken to her of the real reason for his coming to visit her.
Afterwards.
He would tell her immediately afterwards.
TWO
Second Queen Kaikeyi was being murdered by a rakshas. The horned demon was sitting astride her chest, crushing her lungs with his bear-like bulk, hammering away at her head with his pounding paws, as rhythmically as a dhol-player at a Holi celebration. Bam-bam-bam-bam, pause, bam-bam-bam-bam, pause.
He would have continued until her skull cracked open to spill out her brains but her thought of Holi seemed to interrupt his rhythm. He growled angrily and squeezed his thighs, making her ribs ache unspeakably.
She struggled to open her eyes. Holi. What was it about the festival of Holi that had angered the rakshas? It was sometime soon, wasn’t it? She knew it was, because just the other day Manthara had told her that this was Bharat’s first Holi at home since the age of seven. Kaikeyi had been startled to hear this. She knew Bharat and his brothers had spent several years at Guru Vashishta’s gurukul, being schooled in God knows what. But they had been home for three seasons now, and it seemed like he had always been here with her. Had he really been away for eight years? Manthara couldn’t be mistaken, she was never mistaken. That was why Kaikeyi trusted her to decide everything for her.
Where was Manthara now anyway? Why wasn’t she doing something about this damn rakshas sitting on her chest? And this head. Blessed Earth-Mother Sri. She wished the rakshas would just tear off her head and be done with it. Decapitation would be a blessed relief after this pounding. Then she might dare to open her eyes and resume her life once more. Of course it might be awkward to pursue a normal life without a head. Although of course the great god Ganesha had managed fine with a baby elephant’s head.
Perhaps she could have a doe’s head attached, or better still, a stag, one of those giant Nilgiri stags, ten feet high at the shoulder, antlers bristling menacingly. She could picture herself, standing naked, her neckline ragged and blood-smeared, with the head of a Nilgiri stag, proud and black-eyed, antlers rising like a bizarre crown. Interesting. In a strange gods-and-monsters kind of way. Like a mythic victim of a terrible curse. Arousing, like those strange paintings of twisted creatures she had once seen at a foreign merchant’s stall on the road to Janakpuri.
‘Kaikeyi!’
Or like those tribals she had watched performing that dance inspired by the forbidden shakti-pooja ritual. The dance had been so shockingly coarse, she had wondered what it would have been like to witness the ritual itself. Or even—bite your tongue—participate in it. The tribals had worn animal pelts, complete with heads and glassily staring eyes. That was how she would look if she had the head of a Nilgiri stag and the body of a woman, a perfect body like she used to have, before marriage, before motherhood, before living well and eating even better took their toll. What a formidable, terrifying, awe-inspiring thing she would be.
‘Kaikeyi, if you don’t wake up this instant, I will pour this ice-cold water on your head.’
And if she danced for Dasaratha then, really danced, not the cautious, precisely choreographed natya performances designed for royal viewing but the wild abandoned frenzy of the Gandaharis or Kazakhs or Krygziks, then even his long ailing would not be able to suppress the urges he would feel. Yes, she would have that power over him once again. That sense of complete and utter control.
‘Kaikeyi, this is your last warning, girl. Next comes the water
. Brace yourself.’
Why did the stupid hag always call her ‘girl’? Just because she had tended her since childhood. It was ludicrous to call her that at this age. She was a mother. A queen no less. And yet Manthara still treated her like she was nothing more than a snivelling, spoilt little—
‘Aaaah!’
She sat up in bed, opening her eyes to a watery hell. No, not hell, for hell would be hot and blazing. This was cold, ice cold, and the stupid hag had splashed it across her face and her chest— she still had the jug in her hand, as she stood there, grinning her crooked-toothed grin—like she was washing down a horse or, or, or …
‘Manthara,’ Kaikeyi spluttered, wiping water from her eyes. ‘You witch!’
Manthara’s grin widened. ‘Yes, me witch.’ She dropped the arghya jug with a clatter and shuffled forward, reached out with one wizened, claw-like hand. Slapping Kaikeyi once across each cheek, hard enough to sting. ‘And you hussy. Now wake up, and see where your master has gone while you slept the dawn away.’
Kaikeyi blinked rapidly, the slaps completing the wake-up process the water had started. Manthara’s use of foul language told her at once that something was seriously wrong; the hunchback wasn’t above using bad language to express herself at times, but when she addressed Kaikeyi in such terms, it always meant that Kaikeyi had made a serious mistake, one that had repercussions on her, Manthara’s, own life and fortunes. And while Manthara could overlook a mistake that affected Kaikeyi alone, she would never, ever forgive a mistake that affected herself. That was a lesson Kaikeyi had learned a very long time ago, as a girl barely tall enough to reach Manthara’s knee, staring up with large infant eyes at the hulking hunchbacked woman who had absolute power over her life and needs, or so it had seemed then.
Kaikeyi scooted to the far side of the bed, her miserable headache suddenly forgotten. Suddenly she was that little girl again, clinging fearfully to Manthara’s sari, completely at the mercy of her daiimaa. It had been years since Manthara had thrashed her physically but Kaikeyi suspected she intended to make up for lost time. She had that familiar diamond-bright gleam in her eyes and the part of her lower lip where her overhanging upper teeth rested was shiny with spittle.
Kaikeyi drew her knees up to her chest, crouching at the far edge of the large luxurious bed, watching Manthara with feral darting eyes. She didn’t know what she might have done to enrage her surrogate mother-cum-nanny but she didn’t intend to sit still and accept whatever new brutality Manthara was planning to dish out.
To her surprise, Manthara’s next words were a question, not the string of four-letter words she’d expected.
‘How long is it since he came to you?’
Kaikeyi rose to her knees and stared suspiciously at Manthara, wiping away the water seeping from her drenched tresses into her eyes. ‘Who?’
The hunchback snorted. ‘Who? Foolish woman, your husband. The King of Kosala, master of Ayodhya, Maharaja Dasaratha, who else? How many other men do you share your bed with?’
Kaikeyi wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a real question or a rhetorical one. She had never been good with subtlety and the pounding in her skull had only become worse. Oh, what cheap brew had that lout at the inn poured into her cup last night? She held her head in her hands and struggled to frame a good answer instead. What was the question again? Ah yes, how long had it been since Dasaratha had visited her bed? Good question. How long had it been?
‘I don’t know,’ she replied at last, truthfully for once. ‘A long time. Maybe a year, maybe longer.’
Manthara nodded thoughtfully, setting the jug down on a chaupat table—Kaikeyi never actually played the game, but Dasaratha sometimes did. Several pieces—an elephant, a rook, and a few foot-soldiers—tumbled off the squarish board and clattered on the floor. ‘That was what I thought. Naturally, I assumed it was because of his health. An ailing septuagenarian does not desire physical intimacy as frequently as a robust young man.’
Manthara wagged a finger. ‘But you can never tell with men. They often feign weakness only to conserve their lustful energies for other, newer conquests.’ Her face twisted in a snarl. ‘I was fooled just as you were, believing his health kept him from your bed. Now, I see, he’s had his own agenda, the shrewd bastard.’
Kaikeyi’s eyes widened. Manthara’s abusive outbursts had never included the maharaja before.
She shuddered. Whatever this was about, it was something she didn’t want to deal with right now. Not with a splitting headache.
The old hunchback went on sharply, ‘What are you gaping at, girl? Standing around here won’t do us any good. We have to find out what the old man is up to, and quickly. Get dressed, Kaikeyi.’ She gestured at the suit of clothes she had placed on a couch. ‘Go on then. Jaldi! There’s work to be done.’
Kaikeyi did as she was told without argument. She had endured a lifetime of such bossing about, being told what to wear, what to say, how to say it, what to do and when and to whom. It was almost a relief to fall into this easy obedience. As she wiped the water from her face—this was to be the extent of her morning ablutions today, it seemed—she glanced repeatedly at Manthara, trying to read the daiimaa’s mood more clearly.
Manthara stared at a diya beside the bed, her eyes fixed directly on the flickering flame.
‘What happened?’ Kaikeyi asked as she stripped off the loincloth in which she had slept and put on a fresh one. ‘Why are you asking about Dasaratha? What did he do?’
Manthara’s attention remained on the lamp, her small glassy pupils transformed into tiny pinpoints of yellow fire by the twin reflections of the diya’s flame.
Kaikeyi wrapped the sari around her waist with quick, practised efficiency. ‘Manthara,’ she said, starting to feel really scared now, ‘what’s wrong? Talk to me, won’t you?’
Manthara looked up at last. The reflected diya flame in her eyes seemed red now, deep fiery ochre, the colour of blood, if blood could flow upwards like a flame.
‘The maharaja is in the first queen’s bedroom,’ she said.
Kaikeyi paused in mid-fold, one hand at her hip, the other holding the bunched material at waist-height. She stared at Manthara, trying to absorb the implications of her words. It must be a joke. Dasaratha hadn’t entered Kausalya’s chambers in years! Except … except … Manthara never joked.
‘Doing what?’ Her voice screeched on the second word.
Manthara’s face twisted in another grimace of disgust. ‘Doing what men do to women.’
Kaikeyi started. Whatever she had been expecting or fearing, this was not it. ‘But …’ she began, confused and bewildered. She looked around, found the silver lota of water kept on her bedside table, picked it up and downed it in one long swallow. Her tongue worked again, although her throat still felt desert dry. ‘But why? Why her? I mean … I thought … You said he was too ill to …’ The implication struck her like a sledgehammer. A surge of anger rose like bile in her throat. ‘Why her, Manthara? Dammit! Why her?’
Manthara looked at her grimly.
With the flames dancing in her eyes, she eerily resembled the rakshas in Kaikeyi’s dream. ‘That’s what we have to find out, you stupid woman.’
THREE
Pradhan-Mantri Sumantra saw Guru Vashishta levitating a moment before he entered the yoga chamber.
He glimpsed the guru’s white-clad long-bearded form between the closely bunched stone pillars that ringed the central chaukat. And for one startled moment, he could have sworn the guru was levitating. Not very high, perhaps just a foot or so—but rising steadily, definitely rising—above the ground. Sumantra’s view was blocked for an instant, just a fraction of a second as he rounded the last pillar, but when he reached the chaukat, the guru was firmly seated on the ground, eyes half-shut in the classic yoga-nidra asana of deep transcendental meditation. If it had been anyone else, Sumantra would have thought he’d imagined it and put it out of his mind at once. He was a scientific man, the most pragmatic prime minister the kingdo
m had ever had. Not given to tales of the Seven Seers and their fantastic mastery of Brahman sorcery. But he had never known quite what to make of Guru Vashishta. After all, the brahmarishi was a legend among legends. It was said he had been ordained by the Creator, mighty Brahma himself. Even Sumantra’s pragmatic outlook faltered momentarily before such a reputation.
‘Namaskar, gurudev.’ His message delivered, the prime minister carefully kept his gaze directed at the guru’s feet, waiting silently for the sage’s response.
Vashishta remained in the lotus posture for a few moments longer, his eyes shut, breathing slowed to the point of stasis. Out of the corner of his eye, Sumantra imagined he could glimpse a faint bluish tint to the sage’s white dhoti. Even the guru’s toenails seemed to glow briefly with the electric-blue tint.
Sumantra blinked.
The blue tint was gone. The dhoti’s edge was pristine, white as a sesa rabbit and spotless. He swallowed and resisted the urge to rub his eyes. Perhaps he needed to have the royal vaids check his vision once more.
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