Amba crinkled her nose and kept to the edge of the wall, where the light of the torches was the brightest. She made her way to an old wooden casket by the corner, closest to the woman washing dishes, and sat down, taking care to cover her legs. She told herself that she would get used to the smell of cow dung and foul breath; she just had to sit there for a few minutes. She kept her eyes low, and wrapped her cloak tighter around herself. Into the heavy air, someone said from the centre table:‘Who is the piece of lightning, Asvini? Never seen her around these parts.’
‘Shut up and drink your juice, Sirisha,’ said the woman from behind the table. Bending towards Amba, she asked, ‘What will you have, dear?’
Amba found her voice. ‘I will have some goat’s milk, please.’
A cackle of laughter shot through the men’s huddle. ‘Drink some barley juice with me, lady,’ said someone in a thick voice, ‘and I shall follow you like a dog.’
The man with the flute, sitting along the opposite edge of the room from her, lifted his instrument back to his lips. The shed fell silent for a few seconds, then the men began to wave together, singing along to the notes and holding up their glasses.
Amba drank her milk, tapping her feet to the rhythm, and kept the empty glass beside her. She narrowed her eyes at the group of men, but she could not make out their features. All the fire torches in the room were perched on the walls, leaving the middle of the room in shadow.
‘Asvini!’ one of the men called. ‘Fill me up again with some of your nectar!’ A giggle went around the group, and the speaker looked up and threw up his eyebrows at the landlady.
‘Only if you show me how many coins you have on you, Kavasha. Your woman told me today that I should not give you more than a glass no matter how much you plead with me. And you have already had four by my count.’
‘Eh! This is my second one, I swear to the gods.’
‘Show me your money bag,’ said Asvini.
The man called Kavasha slumped in his chair and played with the rim of his glass. ‘Asvini, you know how bad the rains have been this year.’
‘Aye, I do. That is why you must not drink so much, Kavasha. Why do you not go back to your wife and sleep with her? Go. Make love to her tonight.’
‘Eh, I make love to her every night. But I do not get any love from you, Asvini, and I have been coming to this shed all my life!’
‘When my man comes back from his travels I will send him to you, and he will give you all the love you need.’ Asvini’s reply sent a hoot through the group, and the men banged on their tables with their glasses, drowning out the mellow tone of the flute. She filled up the men’s glasses one by one, collecting a coin from each and depositing them into the little yellow cloth bag that hung off her waist. When she came to Kavasha, he rummaged his pockets but came up empty-handed.
‘I have nothing, Asvini,’ he said, blinking up at her.
‘Then I have nothing for you, you good-for-nothing oaf.’
‘At the next harvest, I will give you all the rice you need for the whole winter if you fill up my glass just this once. I pray to you, Asvini. Your hands are those of Annapurna herself, and your barley juice – ah, the gods can keep their nectar, I tell you.’
‘Shut up,’ she said, but Amba saw that he had broken her. She had begun to smile, and she filled his glass even as she said, ‘That field of yours will not yield anything this season or the next, Kavasha. We have not had rains the whole year. Where are you going to get the sack of grains from?’ She got back to her place behind the table and began to wash a fresh batch of vessels. As she wiped the first one, she looked at Amba and asked her if she wanted another pail.
Amba nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
She heard whispers from the men, and then one of them nudged Kavasha and giggled. The latter got up, cleared his throat, steadied himself, and bowed in her direction. ‘My lady,’ he said.
Amba bowed too, without removing her hood or cloak. Somebody thumped him on the back and he sat back down. ‘What if my field does not give me anything?’ he said, after taking a big gulp of his new drink. ‘I have my cattle which will give me milk, and I will open a shed just like this one, and I will only allow maidens to come there – maidens that would drink nothing but goat’s milk.’
Asvini motioned to one of her servant boys to attend to the unwashed utensils. She came to the edge of the table and said, ‘What self-respecting maiden would come to your shed, you idiot? And you speak of cattle – let us see if that cattle lasts this year, shall we? If you have not heard, Hastinapur is readying for battle, they say. Once they come and go, neither will you have cattle nor a wife.’
‘Eh! Hastinapur will never take Panchala!’ Kavasha replied.‘And they will take my cattle only over my dead body!’
‘So they will,’ said Asvini, filling up Amba’s vessel up with milk. ‘They shall have no trouble killing you, and all you men who sit here – go and protect your women, because if Hastinapur comes, even the royal house will have nowhere to run.’
‘Yes,’ said a big man with a long beard and smooth head, brooding over his glass. ‘The king of Hastinapur is getting married to the princesses of Kasi, they say. If that is true then Panchala is caught in the middle, is it not? If only our king had a daughter to give in marriage to the king of Hastinapur. Being relatives is much better than being enemies, if you ask me.’ He downed his glass and brought it down with a thump on his table. Asvini hurried over to fill it up. He tossed her a coin, which she caught and slid down her bag.
‘If you ask me,’ said Kavasha, ‘the king should give us a son who will lead us in war against Hastinapur. All that land between Ganga and Yamuna – just imagine how many sacks of grain will grow on that land every year.’ His eyes watered at the thought, and he gave Asvini a sly look. ‘Then you shall have no say in when I come and when I leave, Asvini, huh? I shall be rich, and I shall shower you with gold coins.’
‘Hah, you make me laugh, Kavasha. Do you think I will be here by then? Long before Hastinapur fights with us I will shut down this cowshed and go eastward. They say Kosala is a kingdom that seldom fights, and that the merchants there are rich. If I open a barley-juice shed there, I suspect I shall not need to deal with people like you lot!’
Amba raised her head, just enough for her mouth and nose to be visible. ‘You are right, madam,’ she said. ‘Kosala is indeed full of rich merchants.’
‘Aye,’ said the man Asvini had addressed as Sirisha. ‘How would you know that, lady?’
Amba stopped. ‘I … I was the waiting-woman at Kasi for the three princesses until Bhishma won them over in battle. I have visited them in Hastinapur, and now I am on my way back home.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said the big brooding man. ‘That sounds like a lot of rot! Waiting-women are taken on palanquins, and they never travel except with riding companions.’ When the rest of the men turned to look at him, he said, ‘My sister is an errand-girl at the court to the waiting-women. She tells me what it is like.’
Amba’s heart leapt when she heard that, and she asked the man, ‘Will your sister be able to guide me to the king?’
‘Eh? But you are going back to Kasi, are you not?’ he asked.
‘I tell you,’ said Kavasha,‘something about this woman smells bad. I saw her horse outside. It is not of our kind. It is of the kind they have up North, where the rocky kingdoms lay.’
Asvini said to the men: ‘Hush, boys. Sit down and drink up in silence.’ But Amba saw that her face had turned suspicious too. The sooner she got out of there, the better, she thought. As she rose to pay, her scabbard undid the knot of her knapsack, and her crown tumbled onto the wooden ground.
Everyone watched in stunned silence as the coronet came to rest a few feet away from her. Then someone from the huddle whistled. The men got up one by one, and leaving their glasses behind, circled her and looked down at the ornament. One scratched his head, another opened his mouth in a circle, yet another touched the jewel with the tip of his foot, a
s though he expected it to blow into pieces any minute. ‘Whoa,’ said Kavasha. ‘Look at that!’
‘You are from Hastinapur,’ said one of the men.
‘You want to see our king,’ said another.
‘Are you here to kill him?’
‘No!’ she said. ‘No, you do not understand. I … I am the princess of Kasi.’
Kavasha laughed. ‘A few minutes ago she was a waiting-woman to the princess. Now she is the princess.’
‘I am the princess of Kasi!’ she said. ‘I am banished from Hastinapur for having killed the king.’
‘Hastinapur’s king is dead?’ said the big man, looking around him. ‘Why has this news not come to us yet?’
‘Because it happened but a few days ago. If Panchala invades Hastinapur now…’
‘Nonsense. Hastinapur’s king is hale and hearty. He is cavorting with his three wives as we speak!’
‘He is not,’ Amba replied.‘And he never got married to three princesses. He only married two. I am the third one.’
Kavasha leaned closer to her. ‘You are the third princess of Kasi? You look too old for that.’
‘I am the first princess of Kasi. I am the eldest of them all.’
‘Gah! Another story,’ said Kavasha. ‘I think you are a spy.’
She saw them all nod, one after the other, and at the end she saw Asvini’s face, set in disapproval. ‘I … I … well, why don’t you take me to your king? I shall explain all.’
‘No,’ said the big man, grabbing her by her arms, ‘you tell us first who you are and why you are here, spreading lies about Hastinapur.’
When she felt the man’s iron grip close around her arms, when she saw him lift her up in the air as though he was handling a dried twig, Amba, for the first time in her life, felt that she could die. The man’s chest heaved every time he took breath, and when he breathed out it sounded like a snort so heavy with the smell of barley that it made her head pound. The other men had closed in around her now, and one of them was looking into her sack. Another one pulled back her hood and removed her cloak. A collective gasp went up.
‘Say what you will, she looks as pretty as a princess,’ said one.
‘Oh, sweet as honey, ripe as corn,’ said another.
‘Hush!’ said the man holding her. He leaned in so that his nose almost touched hers. She closed her eyes and drew back as much as she could. He shook her, once, forward and back. ‘I am asking you for the last time, “Princess”. Who are you? And what are you doing here? If you do not answer me, I will leave you to this pack of wolves here. By the time they are finished with you, you will have wished you were dead.’
Her breath quickened as though she had run here all the way from Hastinapur. How foolish she had been not to take Hastinapur’s gold. If she got out of this, she thought, she would go back to Bhishma and take the gold he had promised her. She would just set up a new life for herself in one of the kingdoms and live comfortably, under a new name. Revenge was not for her; she who could be broken in two by this man’s bare hands. She prayed to the Destroyer with all her devotion, even as the brute’s fingers burned into the skin of her arms. She prayed for something to come and rescue her; anything . . .
‘There,’ said a voice, and to her ears it sounded like Shiva himself. ‘That is enough. Put her down and leave, all of you.’
‘Aye, and who might you be, sir? Bhishma himself, I suppose, come to rescue her?’
‘No,’ said the man, stepping out of the shadows into the light. ‘I am enough for scum like you.’ He held up a ring with a large red stone, and immediately the fingers around her released their grip. She was placed on the ground, and all the men fell to the ground, bowing. He held out his arm in her direction. ‘Come over to my side, my lady. I shall protect you.’
It was only then that she looked at his face – a web of marks and scars through which two keen eyes looked out. His lips were so thin that when he spoke, it appeared as if someone had cut into his mouth with the thinnest of blades. ‘I shall not catch sight of any of you again. If I do, I shall make sure I put my sword to work. Do you understand?’
‘My lord,’ said the big brute that had lifted her. ‘We were concerned that this woman is a spy from Hastinapur.’
‘You are but a peasant,’ said her saviour. ‘What do you know about spies and such? And did your mothers not teach you to treat a woman with respect? What shall come of Panchala if her men see a whore in every woman? The king shall be displeased with you, gentlemen, if I were to tell him of this.’
Amba heard them howl and hug the ground more closely, and the big fellow said, ‘Pardon us, my lord. Perhaps we have misbehaved with the lady.’
‘Perhaps?’
‘Pardon us again, we have misbehaved with the lady.’ He turned to her and went down on one knee. In a low voice, he murmured, ‘We beg your pardon, my lady. I do wish you forgive us.’
‘Enough!’ said the nobleman. ‘I suggest all of you oafs run home and get some sleep. Perhaps in the morning, after the fog has cleared a little, you will know what you would have done had I not been passing through.’ He took her hand in his and led her out into the chilly night, closing the door behind them. ‘Come, my lady,’ he said to her. ‘Get the horse out on the road!’ he instructed the shadow of a man to her left, who went scurrying away.
The nobleman walked in front of her, the reins of her horse in one hand and his in the other. To their left, corn fields stretched out as far as she could see. The moon had already set for the night, and she could not tell what time it was. She had left Hastinapur on horseback no later than an hour after sundown and had maintained a good pace; it could not be much later than midnight now, she thought. Of course, if she had not been consumed by anger at Bhishma, she would have stayed the night and started in the morning. Now once again she bristled at the thought of that man. If she had to be here, riding on a horse with a stranger for company at midnight in a strange land, was he not to blame? If she had her way, she would see to it that the head of Hastinapur’s regent would roll in the dust.
‘I must thank you, my lord,’ she said out loud, holding her cloak from flying away in the west wind. ‘You saved my life in the cowshed.’
‘My name is Jarutha,’ said the man, without turning back. ‘Your ladyship must not be accustomed to travelling by herself, for otherwise you would have known that it is a bad time to be about in town.’
‘Allow me to introduce myself, my lord–’
‘I heard what you said before I came to your rescue. Are you indeed the princess of Kasi?’
‘I am, my lord, yes. You can send word to King Kasya, who rules over Kasi, and he shall only be glad, I think, to confirm it.’
‘I think we shall do that, yes,’ said Jarutha. ‘But you said something else, madam, which was interesting. You said that the king of Hastinapur is dead.’
‘That is the truth, Lord Jarutha,’ said Amba. ‘The king of Hastinapur died nine days ago to this day, and if you do not know that perhaps your spies are not as good as you think they are.’
Jarutha laughed. ‘We do not have spies in Hastinapur, my lady. They do not take lightly to strange people over there. Here in Panchala, you at least got two glasses of goat’s milk. In Hastinapur, they do not allow you to enter unless you bear a message or a seal.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, they look after themselves well. They defend themselves well too, so I am not certain that you are right when you say this is a good time to invade Hastinapur.’
Amba said, ‘The king is dead, Lord Jarutha. If this is not a good time, then what is?’
‘As long as Bhishma is alive, Princess, Hastinapur will not fall.’
‘Bhishma is only one person, my lord. You have a whole army. Surely you do not think that Bhishma can rout your whole army single-handedly?’
Jarutha did not reply. He led their horses out of the cornfields up a hill. Her horse began to pant and protest, but Jarutha’s appeared fresher and ready for the
climb. Jarutha asked her to mount his horse so that hers could rest for a while. After they had made the switch and resumed their trek, Amba looked up to see the outer wall of the fort a few hundred leagues ahead of her. The breeze had picked up as they gained in elevation, and now she had to hold her cloak with all her might to prevent it from flying away. When she turned around she saw that the fields lay below her, dotted by scarecrows here and there. The starlight and the wind made the fields look like one great purple ocean.
She turned around, and as they approached the wall in silence, as the first warmth of the firelight touched her skin, Jarutha said, ‘Our king, I think, will have a word with you, my lady.’
FIVE
The High King of Panchala, Drupad, appeared cross with the world. Amba could guess why. A king’s day ended much later than that of most of his subjects, but once it did, they liked to be undisturbed till the next morning. She had heard it said that kings lived short lives because they could be killed in battle at any time, but to her mind it was the daily grind of duties that wore them off, bit by bit. The methods of relaxation they employed did not help, either. Was there a king in the land who was not addicted to alcohol or women or dice? A man may think, foolishly, that he could sleep with as many women as he wanted, but he would only end up learning what Vichitraveerya did – that there was also such a thing as too much pleasure.
The soft fragrance in the room suggested that a waiting-woman or two had been driven out just before her entrance. On the table she saw three gold-plated glasses and a jug with a long, narrow mouth. Red rose petals covered the large circular bed, and a glass of milk sat on the stool to its right, half-empty. Milk – from buffaloes, especially – was believed to strengthen a man’s virility. Tell a man that it would make him a God in bed and he would even drink poison willingly.
The Rise of Hastinapur Page 4