‘All our masons and bricklayers have taken their leave, Your Highness,’ said Nishanta. ‘Now all that remains, after we leave, is that you send to our kingdom those who can pass on the knowledge of your irrigation canals, so that the thirst of Pundra’s people may be quenched.’
Kamsa had pulled his sleeves up to his wrists, revealing his solid gold bangles, and was staring down at his palms, nodding along. Now he looked up and grinned. The mouth fell away to one side and the eyes shone with malice. Jahnavi suddenly found herself wishing she were back on the mountain, on Lady Ganga’s lap, listening to tales of the fisher people. She looked at the closed oak door. It looked heavy, immovable. Not even if the three of them were to throw themselves at it would it budge an inch.
‘My father used to say there are two kinds of people to be suspicious of,’ said Kamsa. ‘The first is a person who is eager to help. Selfishness is the greatest virtue of all, Kamsa, he told me. No one will ever do anything for you without gaining from it in some way. If a man comes to you and pretends to have nothing but your good at heart, be suspicious of him. It was good advice, and I always heeded it. It is why I grew suspicious of him, and when he insisted he wanted what was best for me, I threw him in prison.’
Kubera eyed the soldiers and said, ‘Perhaps we came at an inopportune time. Perhaps tomorrow we shall seek your audience again—’
‘No!’ said Kamsa, leaning forward in his chair. ‘You could not have come at a more opportune time. You will know why that is if you listen to my story. Let me finish it.’ His smile grew stonier. ‘The second kind of person to be wary of, my father told me, is one who has a ready answer for every question. When you talk to these people, you feel as though they have had this conversation before in their heads. They have practised for it. They do not mumble, they do not seem uncertain. Every question is expected. Do you know why a king ought to be wary of such people?’
Kubera shook his head. Kamsa looked at Nishanta, who shook his too.
‘Because it is these people who come with the grand plans. They come with deceit in their minds and lies on their tongues. They embrace you with one hand and slide the blade of a knife into your spine with the other. When I first met the three of you, my lady,’ he said, turning to Jahnavi, ‘I thought that all of you seemed too eager to help Mathura, although you were strangers to this land, and that you had an answer to all my questions. You barely needed to think!’
‘I … do not understand what you say, Your Majesty.’ Jahnavi felt a cold trickle of sweat travel down her back. Her sack – and the two men’s weapons – had been taken from them outside the king’s room. The soldiers moved off the wall now and seemed to loom around them.
‘The fear in your face tells me that you do, my lady, but no matter. Let us pretend that you do not. I shall ask my men to hold you, lest you feel like performing a heroic act.’ He signalled to the soldiers, and in a moment, two of them held her by each arm. Nishanta and Kubera had been restrained by two guards each too.
‘There. That makes me a little more comfortable. Even without weapons you are as dangerous as snakes.’ He got off his seat and ambled toward her. He placed the back of his hand on her cheek and leaned forward, so that he could look into her eyes. ‘Beautiful snakes, perhaps, but snakes nevertheless.’
‘I do not understand the meaning of this, Your Majesty,’ said Kubera. ‘We have done all that we could for you … there must be some mistake, some misapprehension—’
He was interrupted by a laugh from Kamsa. ‘Tell me, my good sir, do you think me an utter fool? Do you think that even after being taken for a ride by one of your people, who stole a Mystery from us in the garb of a holy man, I cannot know you when I see you? Do you think you could just walk into my court, tell me you are merchants and travellers from the land of Pundra, and have me take you at your word?
‘Did it not occur to you that I may wonder how a merchant and a traveller – and a maiden – are able to defeat trained horsemen from Magadha? Did you never stop to think I may have spies in Pundra, that I can send messengers on horseback to that land and receive answers to my questions in a matter of three nights?’
Nishanta said, struggling against the men’s grasp, ‘Your Majesty, the danger you faced from Magadha was real. You cannot deny that we have helped you in these last two moons.’
Kamsa laughed again. ‘What baffles me is your utter lack of perspective, my man. Magadha and Mathura have always fought little battles, but we also trade with one another. King Jarasandha and I share the same ambition, of one day ruling the whole of North Country.’ His face suddenly lost all trace of humour, and he snarled at Nishanta. ‘And when we reach there, mark my words, we shall come after you. We will seek out that mountain and destroy it.’
‘The mountain is better defended than you assume, Your Majesty,’ said Jahnavi, her own calm surprising her. ‘You will do well to think of the other kingdoms of North Country that stand in your path.’
‘With Magadha and Mathura joining hands, none of the Middle Kingdoms will matter. I think not that the likes of Pundra will be eager to fight the might of Magadha’s cavalry or Mathura’s archers. Even if more of your kind come down from the mists of the north, we shall sweep them all before you come.’
‘Magadha and Mathura joining hands?’
Kamsa laughed again. ‘This is what bewilders me. You can be extremely intelligent one moment and extremely dull the next. You do not see, do you, that all the while you thought you were trapping me and winning my trust, what I was actually doing was trapping you and winning yours.
‘After the day you arrived at the court, I sent out a missive to King Jarasandha, offering him friendship. I told him about you, and how we – he and I – could benefit from your knowledge. You will teach us how to make stronger bows, sharper arrows and sturdier ships, while we pretend to be enemies. Once your work is complete, I told him, we could be allies, and we could set out together on the campaign to unite North Country. Only instead of one name, it would be two names. Kamsa and Jarasandha will rule the world. Together!’
The room descended into silence. For Jahnavi, Kamsa’s words were pincers plunging right to the deep reaches of her soul. Mother Ganga had said this man was cleverer than he looked, and she had not disregarded that advice, but he had turned out to be sharper than all three of them put together. Now with their own hands they had handed over the weapons against Meru to Kamsa. If Magadha and Mathura’s combined might was too much for the rest of North Country, the weaponry of Meru had strengthened them even further.
We must live our own lives, she heard Mother Ganga say, and let Earth live her own. How sound that idea seemed now.
‘King Jarasandha will not honour your alliance, Your Majesty,’ said Nishanta. ‘He will cast you away after using you. He is no man’s friend.’
Kamsa walked to Nishanta and placed his hand on the broad shoulder. Smiling, he asked, ‘Whose friendship shall I trust, then? Yours, Nishanta? Whether King Jarasandha will continue to be my ally or not, and whether or not he will deceive me, I know not. But I know this – you and your people have already deceived me. What wrong have I done you, Nishanta? Here I was, in my own little city by the river, keeping my people happy, and you descend from your distant mountain, and rob me. You speak of friendship? You speak of loyalty?’
‘The Meru people are honourable, my lord,’ said Nishanta, his head hanging. ‘I implore you to trust them, not the ruler of Magadha.’
Kamsa stepped back and clapped his hands. To the maid who appeared at the door, he said, ‘Escort High King Jarasandha in here, right this moment.’
The maid scuttled off, and Kamsa turned to Jahnavi and smiled. ‘Tonight is the night of surprises, my lady. May I tell you that Magadha and Mathura are entering into a formal alliance on the morrow? King Jarasandha is offering me his sister’s hand in marriage. The ceremony will not be a large one, for we do not wish to make the news so well known that it travels all the way to Hastinapur, but it will be presided ove
r by the important sages of the two cities.’
He turned to Nishanta. ‘Did you hear that, my friend? The High King is giving me his sister in marriage. What are you offering me?’ He looked at Jahnavi. ‘Will you, perhaps, allow me to marry this fair young maiden?’
Nishanta’s eyes grew red as blood.
‘No?’ said Kamsa. ‘I thought not. She would have made a lovely queen. But at this moment, it seems more your loss than mine.’
‘You do not know who you speak of, Kamsa,’ said Kubera. ‘I would hold my tongue if I were you.’
‘Ah, now I have heard everything. The prisoner throws threats at his captor and lives to tell the tale.’
The door opened, and behind the maid entered a thin, grey-haired man decked in silk garments and red earrings. Kamsa bowed to him. The visitor bowed too and cast a look in the direction of the prisoners. Jahnavi saw that he had quick black eyes, like that of a mouse foraging for a morsel of food.
‘Are these the people you spoke of?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘I hope you will put them to death publicly in the city square.’
‘I shall, Your Majesty. Soon after the wedding.’
‘Let the people of the north know they are not welcome here any more.’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
The old man coughed and ran a sharp tongue over his lips. Kamsa signalled to the men to take the prisoners away.
Jahnavi felt a wet cloth cover her nose, and before she knew it, her eyes grew heavy and she lost consciousness.
When she awoke, Jahnavi felt as though her skull were being sawn into, inch by inch. When she tried to hold her head in her hands, she found she could not lift her wrists because they had been chained. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she became aware of the putrid smell of faeces and the buzz of mosquitoes hovering over the small pool of water that had collected in one corner of the cell.
Through the hole in the stone wall above her head she could see a patch of black sky and two twinkling stars, one larger than the other. Only after her teeth had begun to chatter did she realize that the air was freezing. She rubbed her palms together forcefully and pressed them to her cheeks, her ears, her lips.
Her bare feet felt numb against the cracked stone floor. She tried to cover them with her robe, and in the process curled up into a ball. Of all the things she had imagined would happen to her on Earth, getting drugged and holed up in a nameless prison was perhaps the last. Even Lady Ganga, she thought, would not have thought of a situation this dire.
Would they come for her? The Meru people would not stand for a maiden of the mountain to be held captive in this fashion. What was more, a Celestial himself was being held. She had heard that Meru did not have the necessary army to win open battles any more, but surely they would think of some way to break them open from this cold hell.
Her head began to pound again, and she shut her eyes tight. I see the White Rock, she told herself. I am sleeping on the meadow by the river, with my head on Lady Ganga’s lap. She is placing warm kisses on my cheek and is crooning a song to my ear. She is rocking me, and now she is holding my feet in her soft hands so that they do not freeze. I hide my head in her cloak; it does not thump any more. And I am falling asleep. I am falling asleep. I am falling asleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
F
rom the hole in the wall Jahnavi saw that it was a bright morning, but inside the cell the air was black and heavy. The shackles froze her wrists white, and she had no feeling in her fingers. Hurriedly she rubbed them together, until she saw some of the ice-like coating dissolve and the pinkness of her palms emerge.
A clang at the door. On the other side of the iron grills she saw a man she thought was too thin to be a guard. ‘Time for your wash,’ he said. She thought he had wanted to add ‘my lady’ at the end of his sentence, but stopped because he would not sound fierce enough. ‘We first get the women to bathe before we wake up the men.’
Women. That meant she was not the only one.
She thought of the clamped window on the palace wall overlooking Mathura’s dock and Kamsa’s words: Whatever has been there is now gone. Deep in her ears she heard the cooing of a spring nightingale, and it took her back to the mountain, to the day on which she had fused with Mother Ganga. Something about Pritha’s tale of having a child with Surya. Something about Vasudev, the prince of Shurasena, and his wife. What was her name?
Devaki.
She held up her wrists to the man, who stood for a second looking at her with his iron face. Then he signalled with his stick to a guard, who opened the lock. The man, probably the main guard, took out a bunch of keys, knelt by her to insert one of the smaller keys into the lock of the shackles, and twisted it.
The chains loosened and Jahnavi felt the red marks on her wrists with her fingers. A vague anger rose up like a wave inside her. Never had a lady of the mountain been treated like this. If the Wise Ones came to know … But then, never had a lady of the mountain been so naive in her judgement of the enemy. They had thought that Kamsa was as dull as he looked, but behind that hefty body and lumbering speech hid a quick, alert mind.
‘Get up,’ said the guard.
He led her out of the cell into the long corridor. As they walked to the stairway at the far end, Jahnavi looked on both sides of her in the hope of spotting either Kubera or Nishanta. She saw a snarling, snivelling old man starved to the bone. She saw a bearded hulk holding the bars of the prison with his large brown hands and sticking his nose out at her. As they passed, he gave her a wide, rotten grin. She saw a dwarf with unruly white hair look up from a parchment, then a fat sloth swatting at flies, his shackles clinking heavily each time he waved his hands.
But no Nishanta. No Kubera.
They walked down a set of winding stairs and arrived at a large, empty room that seemed to be better lit than the cells. Square windows with ornate wooden frames had been built into the walls on both sides. Candles had been mounted on stands along the wall. One corner section had been separated with standing wooden panels, which the guard pointed to and said, ‘You shall wash over there.’
Sounds of splashing water came from inside. They stood there waiting. Another guard was standing by the bathing corner, and he traded a glance with Jahnavi’s escort.
‘Who is the other lady in the prison?’ she asked them. They looked at each other again and pretended not to have heard.
‘I heard the High King Kamsa has imprisoned his own sister and her husband. Is that true?’ Again, no answer.
‘They say the king was scared of a curse, that his sister’s child would cause his death. Rumours abound in the kingdom that Lady Devaki has gotten with child once or twice, and that the king has slashed the babes’ throats with his own sword.’
‘Not twice,’ said her guard, but caught himself, as though chiding himself for breaking a rule.
‘Just once, then.’ Jahnavi smiled. ‘Is it Lady Devaki in the washing chamber? It would be my honour indeed to make her acquaintance.’
‘We are not to converse with the prisoners,’ said the guard, looking straight ahead at the stone wall. ‘You are not to try to draw us into speaking.’
The sounds died down. For a moment Jahnavi forgot the searing on her wrists, the catch in her lower back, the dank smell of her cloak. Bare feet slapped against the water-soaked stone floor inside. She did not know why, but she felt that on the other side of that closed wooden door stood their best chance of escaping this prison.
The woman who came out of the bathing room looked nothing like a princess. Her eyes gazed out vacantly from the depths of two black holes. Her forehead – even though just washed – bore an oily, pasty look, and her eyebrows were uneven. The only remnants of her past beauty – and she could tell that the princess was once beautiful – were in the lustrous black of her damp hair and the rose-red of her lips.
The two guards bowed low to her as she came out. She threw a suspicious look at Jahnavi.
‘Who is
this, Rishabha?’
‘My lady,’ said the guard who had accompanied Jahnavi down the stairs, ‘she calls herself Jahnavi. She claims to belong to the warrior class in the kingdom of Pundra.’
Jahnavi bowed and said, ‘My lady, Devaki. We have heard much about you in our kingdom.’
‘The western city?’ said Devaki to Rishabha. ‘Why did she journey all the way across North Country to visit our prison?’
‘The king has punished them on the charge of treason, my lady.’
Devaki smiled. Her front teeth were small and perfect, but the canines were just that little bit larger so that they pressed against her bottom lip.
‘Treason is what I have been charged with too, Rishabha, and my lord Vasudev. In the land of Mathura, every man who disagrees with Kamsa is charged with treason.’ These last words were pronounced with her chin raised at Jahnavi.
‘I do not blame the king for doubting us, Your Majesty,’ replied Jahnavi. ‘We have given him enough reason to do so.’
‘That sounds like a confession.’
‘If this is a trial, then you should deem it one.’
‘One prisoner trying another,’ said Devaki. ‘The wonders of Mathura never cease to amaze.’
Rishabha stepped forward. ‘I hate to interrupt, Lady Devaki —’
‘Yes, yes, prisoners must not speak with one another. Especially if they are women, eh, Rishabha?’
‘The king’s orders, my lady.’
‘And yet when the men come here to wash themselves, I suppose nothing bad could come of them talking to one another. There are so many of them, after all.’
‘We try our best to enforce the rule on them too, my lady.’
With a shrug in Jahnavi’s direction, Devaki nodded at the guard by her side. As they moved past them, the queen held up a palm to Jahnavi’s cheek and stepped closer. In spite of her imperial demeanour Devaki was shorter than her by a few inches, so she had to look up to gaze into Jahnavi’s eyes.
The Queens of Hastinapur Page 8