by John Speed
“She couldn’t sleep, so I came to keep her company,” the whisper answers. The words strike Maya strangely; it occurs to her that the voice might be speaking of the goddess, or of Maya herself. The voice whispers again, “Come in. You took so long. I thought you’d never get here.”
“Mother!” Maya cries out. “Mother, is it really you?”
“Yes, child,” answers Gungama, her old eyes beaming. “Did I not say that we would meet again?”
They hug each other, and then they laugh, and they hug each other again and then they cry. The goddess near them stares into the distance while the small stone room rings with sobs and laughter and whispers.
It isn’t long before she’s told Gungama about the attack on the Adoli temple, how she sent the girls away. Then she tells of Lakshman’s strange arrival, and of how they fled from the Bijapuris. She even tells of that vivid dream she’d had.
“Is that so,” is all Gungama says.
“What’s wrong with me, ma?” asks Maya. “Why is he always in my thoughts? I don’t even like him!”
“He is not one to like or dislike. His role is only to disturb everyting, as he has disturbed you.”
“You said once that our fates were intertwined.”
Gungama strokes her cheek with her soft palm, her eyes tender. “How that is to be, I cannot see. I only know that you are here for him, just as I once was. You’re stuck with him!” Then she looks at her anxiously, as if telling her some hard secret. “But now you start to sense his purpose. And your own purpose, which is tied with his. How it all works out I can’t imagine. Somehow all will be well.” Gungama peers into Maya’s gold-flecked eyes. “He’s come to stand the earth upon its head, child. And he starts with you.”
Bandal has found some words to drive his men: “If you want to live, then cut.” It gets the point across succinctly. He tried explaining, and cajoling, and pleading and threatening, but now he merely points to the west, to the dust cloud hovering in the air that surges ever closer.
“If you want to live, then cut.” The men slash furiously through the vines and trees. They push great heaps of brush beside the new-made road. The sun has passed its zenith, but the air is cool. And to everyone’s amazement, the road is nearly finished: a clear, wide track that leads directly to a promontory a few hundred yards from the fort’s first gate. It looks as if some god has taken a razor to the forest and shaved a swath down to the bare soil.
In truth, Bandal feels a little perturbed. In the morning, Iron gave him orders. Hanuman too, was telling him what to do. At noon Shivaji came riding down the new road, Tanaji behind him, picking his way through the half-cleared places, and the men had cheered.
Shivaji then shouted out his plan. Afzul Khan will march his men along this new road, Shivaji told him. The Marathis will hide in the forest on either side, and attack. The Bijapuris on the road will die like dogs.
The men cheered. That smile of Shivaji’s, so confident and certain, made them feel that anything is possible.
It is Bandal who sees them first, the riders from Bijapur.
A half-dozen horsemen burst into the wide clearing at the foot of the mountain, riding quickly. Even from this distance, it’s easy to see that they ride expensive Bedouins and fly dark green pennants from their lances.
Bandal finds a jug of water, splashes his face and hands, and slaps the dust from his clothes. “Keep working,” he growls as the men stop to look. “We must finish the road by sundown.” He reaches the foot of the mountain road just as the riders get there.
Bandal blinks when he sees them; dark men with crosses branded across their faces. Except for one: blindfolded, gagged, hands tied behind his back—his cousin Jedhe.
“Where is headman?” barks the lead rider.
“I am Bandal. I’m in charge. Why have you bound my cousin?”
The rider laughs. “I am Simon, messenger of Afzul Khan. I come to see Shivaji.”
“Release that man and I’ll take you to him.”
“You are quite rude,” the rider answers. “I bring this man to Shivaji, not to you. Take me now to Shivaji.” Suddenly the other riders lower their lances, though Bandal saw no sign from the lead rider.
“Let him go.” Around him he hears his men stop their work, can feel them approaching though he does not turn.
“Don’t ask for death, fellow. Take me now to Shivaji.”
Bandal looks things over, does the math in his mind. For a moment, looking at Jedhe, he considers fighting. His muscles cry out for violence. But instead, he calls out “Bring me my pony.”
“Let’s go,” Bandal growls when he has mounted. The riders lift their lances.
“Keep working!” Bandal calls to the men. He spurs his pony, and the riders follow him up the new-built road.
“You know this traitor, fellow?” the lead rider calls to him. “My master says he is traitor. I say this right? Means ‘stinking liar’?” Bandal grits his teeth. “You do not answer me, fellow? Is that not rude?” Again Bandal says nothing. The rider says something in a language that he does not understand, and the other riders laugh.
By the time the riders reach the main gate, Shivaji stands before it, with Iron, Hanuman, and Tanaji at his side.
The Bijapuris form a crescent, with the captain at the center, next to Bandal. Bandal dismounts and walks back to Jedhe. He sees that his hands are not tied but wrapped in chains, his wrists raw and bleeding. “Don’t, fellow!” the lead rider calls. “He is not for you.”
“What is your business?” asks Shivaji.
“You are Shivaji? I am the messenger of Afzul Khan. He sends me to make arrangements. I say this right?”
“Go on.”
“Afzul Khan is not far. You see?” The captain nods toward the west, where the dust cloud of the army now seems only a few miles off.
“Why is my man treated so?”
The captain chortles. “Is traitor. I say this right? Means ‘stinking liar.’ He try to sell you to Afzul Khan. Say you are coward. You are coward, Shivaji?”
“Shivaji is our lord,” Hanuman calls out. “He is no coward.”
“This rude fellow talk for you, Shivaji?” The captain sneers.
“Let him go,” Shivaji answers.
“Sure.” The rider holding Jedhe’s horse shoves Jedhe so hard he falls from his saddle. Bandal manages to break his fall, and sets to work, pulling off his blindfold and gag.
“Take him inside,” Shivaji says to Bandal, as he helps Jedhe to his feet.
The captain throws a key at Shivaji’s feet. “In my land we kill such a man.”
Shivaji doesn’t move. Bandal leads Jedhe into the fort as again the captain snorts. “Say your business and be gone,” Shivaji orders.
“You don’t be rude. You send messenger, Afzul Khan sends messenger.”
“I would not send back a messenger in chains.”
The captain frowns. “But I am not traitor. I come to arrange this parley. I say this right?” Shivaji nods. “I find place for parley. Then comes Afzul Khan. Tomorrow. Noon, maybe. For parley. I find place.”
“We will parley in the fort. A place has been prepared”
The captain laughs out loud. “I think not inside that fort. I think not inside is good idea.”
“Then where?”
The captain looks around him, considering. He clearly has something in mind. “You make nice road. Is for Afzul Khan very nice. All army can come up this road very fast. Why you do this?” The captain studies Shivaji, sizing him up. Shivaji stares back until the captain starts to squirm. “Something here is not right,” he says. He turns and whispers with the man beside him. Then he looks back at Shivaji. “Back there. At place road ends.”
“There?” Shivaji asks, looking shocked. “That’s no place for a parley.”
“Yes, fellow. That place only.”
Shivaji’s eyes narrow, and now it is he who stares at the captain. “All right. I’ll make the arrangements.”
“No!” the cap
tain answers. “I make arrangements. Also I make rules. I only, or no parley. I do this.”
Shivaji nods. “I’m listening.”
“No men. No archers.” He points to the battlements. “Walls only. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Parley in tent.”
“We’ll put up a tent, if you want.”
“No!” the captain answers, glowering. “Afzul Khan tent only!”
Tanaji steps beside Shivaji. “Don’t do this, Shahu. It’s some kind of trap.”
“How can a tent be a trap?” Shivaji nods at the captain. “Agreed.”
“Good. In tent Afzul Khan only, Shivaji only.”
“No!” Tanaji bursts out. “This is bad, Shahu.” He turns to the captain. “Bodyguards. One guard to each man.”
“Agreed,” the captain says. “But no weapons in tent.”
“Agreed,” Shivaji answers, though Tanaji again protests.
The captain leans back and says, “Good. Done. Parley at noon tomorrow.”
“Wait!” Tanaji strides forward. “No soldiers near the tent! It would be a death trap!”
“Ten soldiers,” the captain offers. “Ten soldiers, Shivaji; ten soldiers Afzul Khan. Ten soldiers each man only.”
“Enough,” Shivaji says. “Our arrangements are done.”
“Yes, done,” the captain looks at the faces of the watchmen on the battlements. “You have bad men for soldiers, I think.” The captain says one unknown word out loud, and the Bijapuri riders laugh.
Shivaji stands solemnly. “Go while you still breathe.” Iron and Hanuman move to his side.
The captain considers Shivaji, measuring him. “Tomorrow. Noon.” He nods to his men, and they ride off slowly down the new-made road.
At that moment, Jedhe stumbles out of the fort. Behind him, Bandal waves his bare sword at a crowd of angry Marathis, shouting and throwing stones. They begin to form a circle around Jedhe. A stone clips his ear and he staggers to his knees.
Shivaji runs to stand in front of Jedhe. “What are you doing?”
“He’s a traitor, lord! He deserves to die!” someone shouts and the others cheer.
“Quiet!” Shivaji orders. He bends over Jedhe and pulls him to his feet. Blood trickles down Jedhe’s face. “I will deal with this, not you. Go back inside the fort.”
Hanuman rushes out from the fort, and behind him, Iron and Tanaji. They stand in front of Jedhe, hands on their sword hilts.
With their arrival, one by one, the men obey. Last to go is a tubby, barefoot farmer, his face twisted in anger. “Take back your goddamned weapon,” he says, throwing a jewel-hilted sword at Jedhe’s feet. “I won’t carry a traitor’s sword.”
“Are you all right?” Shivaji asks. Jedhe nods. “Bring him to my room,” he tells Bandal.
“Are you going to try him, lord?” asks Bandal.
“No.”
“But he’s a traitor!”
Shivaji glares at him, then turns to the others. “You believe that? You’d take the word of that—that mercenary?”
Bandal shakes his head. “I don’t know what to believe, lord.”
“If he betrayed you, he must die, Shahu,” Iron says softly.
“You can’t let a traitor live, Shahu,” Tanaji agrees.
“Stop it,” Shivaji cries. “Are you a traitor, Jedhe?”
Jedhe lifts his head wearily, glancing at the faces that watch him. “I did only what you told me, lord,” Jedhe answers. “I wouldn’t betray you.” He looks at the others, pleading. “I did only what Shivaji asked.”
Shivaji smiles. “I believe him. You must believe him, too.”
“But we don’t know what really happened, Shahu!” Hanuman cries.
“So we must take his word. How will we succeed if we do not even trust each other?” He looks from face to face. “The only way to convince Afzul Khan to come alone was to make him think that he might take me by treachery. So I asked Jedhe to play the traitor.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this plan?” Tanaji spits out.
“Your father also did shit like this,” Iron tells him, his face ugly. He shakes his head. “It’s bad business. You make us weak, Shahu. Afzul Khan will think our ranks are full of traitors.”
“We’ll sort this out later,” Tanaji says. “That army will be here soon. If we’re dead what difference will it make?”
Shivaji nods. “Afzul Khan will bring his army up that new road. That’s my plan, at least.” The others say nothing, but Shivaji’s words seem to hang in the air, suddenly hollow. “We must hide the men in the forest along the road’s edge before he gets here.”
“Sleep in the forest?” Hanuman says. As he says this, the plan sounds more and more doubtful.
“Yes. We’ll set our cannon along the road. Also any cannon we can move from the far side of the fort. You’ve heard this plan before,” Shivaji insists. “You all agreed!”
“No one is disagreeing, Shahu,” Tanaji says, his eyes cold.
“How is Onil progressing, Hanu?” Shivaji asks.
“He’s got about a hundred granadas ready, Shahu,” Hanuman answers.
“And the bombs for the road?”
“He says he isn’t certain that they’ll work, Shahu.”
“They’ll work,” Shivaji answers, confident as ever. The other men look skeptical. “We’ll plant the bombs along the road as soon as they’re ready.”
“What about the parley?”
“We’ll launch the attack as soon as Afzul Khan goes in the tent. Bandal, you will be my bodyguard.”
Bandal looks up, surprised.
“How much of your plan did Jedhe know, Shahu?” asks Hanuman. “How much has he betrayed?”
“I betrayed nothing,” Jedhe whispers.
“So you say,” Tanaji replies.
“You want to make a different plan?” Shivaji says. “You want a different leader?” No one answers. “Then do as I say.” Shivaji leads Jedhe toward the fort.
As they stand there, looking after Shivaji and Jedhe entering the fort, Bandal nods toward the road. A courier on a Marathi pony hurries forward. “Here comes more bad news,” Bandal says.
“How do you know that, cousin?” Hanuman asks.
“Because it’s all bad news, cousin.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “I’ll see to finishing the road.”
“What about this courier?”
“That’s Shivaji’s look-to, whatever it is. Let him handle it. I’ve had enough for one day.”
In the darkness behind him, the walls of the fort twinkle with a thousand tiny Dewali lamps,. Around the blazing fire in the central courtyard, soldiers and villagers are singing, a long, energetic chant. But here on the walls of the high place, Shivaji sits alone, staring across the moonlit mountains. He sees his new road through the forest, like a white scar on dark skin beneath the crescent moon.
At his side, his sword, Bhavani, lies unsheathed, its ram’s-head hilt glistening. The basalt stone is rough where he sits. The singing voices seem a hundred miles away.
He sees beyond the hillside the campfires of the Bijapuris blinking through the forest. Eastward, the horizon has begun to glow, the first hint of dawn, of death approaching.
He turns his head toward the north, and stares hard into the darkness, as if he might see a wisp of smoke from Sai Bai’s funeral pyre.
Shivaji stands. Slowly he unfolds his turban, and unties his hair, which falls across his shoulders, blown by the breeze. The turban slips from his uncaring fingers—caught by the wind, it floats and spills like a ghost in the shadows. Finally it whispers out of sight into the darkness where the fort walls meet the mountain, falling into emptiness.
Shivaji steps forward, until his toes have reached the wall’s edge and touch the empty air.
“How does this help, darling?” comes a soft voice behind him.
Shivaji looks around to see the wrinkled face of Gungama. For a moment he ignores her, and begins to lean over the edge of the wall. Ins
tead he turns to her, and carefully, for the wall is narrow, he manages to kneel. “Give me your blessing, ma.”
“Not for this, darling. I don’t have that many blessings left. I’ve got to be careful how I use them.”
With a light touch on his chin, Gungama lifts his head. “Have you been crying? Your wife was done with that body, darling.” Gungama combs his long hair from his face as though he were a child. “She needed it no more. She played her part; and she’s off to play another.” Shivaji drops his eyes. “Your part is not yet over. Why do you wish to die?”
“Maybe dying now would be the best,” he stammers. “My men no longer trust me. Why should they?”
“So what happens if you jump? Then, poof, your men will triumph?”
“No. Then my men will die. But at least I won’t be to blame.”
“You don’t know that, darling. Maybe you end up floating in the sky up there, a hungry ghost, watching their blood flow like a river down that nice new road.”
“Our only freedom is to choose the moment of our death.”
Gungama shakes her head. “To me you say this foolishness? I am too old for it, child. What matters is how we choose to live, not when we choose to die. Consider your wife. Was she not faithful, all her life? Faithful even in her death? Did she not rise and feign recovery so that you would come here free from worry?”
Shivaji starts. “How do you know that?”
“Jump, and you prove her life was worthless. And your life, and mine as well. Jump and I will jump with you, darling, for with your death, all hope will flee the world.” She points to the horizon. “The man who waits out there—he is no man. He is a demon incarnate, come to earth to destroy you. He must die, and you, my sweet, must kill him.”
Shivaji looks over the battlements with a face filled with grief, or longing. “If it’s what you want, mother.”
“No!” Her voice fills the air like a shriek, harsh and terrifying. “You must do what you want. I’m old and dying. She’s dead. You have life. You choose.”
“What do you want of me?” Shivaji yells. “These hints, these knowing looks … They mean nothing to me! Either you’re crazy, or a fool, or both. But I will not be persuaded by you! If I live, or if I die, it’s none of your affair. Leave me!”