The girl nodded, but Amba saw fear in her eyes. Smiling at her, Amba pointed Anjasi to a bundle of clothes in the corner. ‘Wear them, child, and send back your clothes and chariot with your attendants.’ She waved to the attendant, bidding him to leave the room.
Anjasi asked, ‘My jewellery, lady?’
‘You shall not wear them, but you may keep them for a moon or two. Come midwinter you must cast them off as well, all your rings and necklaces.’
‘As you wish, my lady.’
Amba called out without raising her voice: ‘Parushni.’ When she arrived on tiptoe and bowed to her, she said, ‘Anjasi will sleep with you in your hut, and she will stay with us until next year’s rite. Will you show her our ways and take care of her so that she would not miss her kingdom?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Now it is time to water my plants,’ said Amba,rising up. Just then she saw the doorway to the hut darken with a shadow. She knew who it was without having to look at it a second time. ‘Sage Parashurama,’ she said, ‘I shall be with you in a second.’
Amba met him on the edge of the courtyard by the well. She picked up the vessel full of water and gestured to him to walk with her around the hut to the farm at the back. Through one of the windows, the sage asked Amba,‘Another priestess to train, my lady?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘She wants to have a child by one of the gods.’
Parashurama fell in step with her and held his hands behind him. ‘Do you really believe that, my lady, that it is gods who father children born at the fertility rites?’
‘That is what the mothers believe, Sage, and that is all that matters.’ They came to the fence. She opened the log gate and bent the can over her hand so that water trickled off the tips of her fingers onto the soil. ‘You have something on your mind, do you not?’
‘Yes,’ said Parashurama from behind her. ‘It is regarding King Drupad.’
Amba stopped, just only for a second. Her hands continued their motions as if she had heard nothing. She had thought – no, convinced herself – that all matters related to Panchala and Bhishma had been buried deep enough in her past, but one mention was enough to bring back those memories. She had to shut her eyes to drive them out of her mind.
‘How is Panchala any of my concern?’ she managed to say.
‘It is not,’ said Parashurama. ‘But King Drupad is still childless, after all these years, and now that Hastinapur has two heirs–’
‘He wishes for one too.’
‘Yes, he does. He came to my hermitage yesterday, and he had a proposition.’
Amba saw in her mind’s eye a blood-tipped arrow lifted by an invisible hand and, set to a bow with a string of gold. Without being told she could guess what the proposition was, and a part of her leapt at it, but she held herself back. She was now a priestess. ‘But Sage,’ she said, stepping to the next row of basil plants, ‘I am past childbearing now. I am already six-and-twenty.’
‘But my lady, that is what Drupad wants. He wishes to lay with a sterile priestess.’
Amba stood up and turned to Parashurama. ‘I do not understand.’
‘The priest at Drupad’s court told him that laying with a priestess who was past child-bearing would bring back his virility, and he would be able to have children.’
‘That is impossible,’ said Amba, ‘and you know that too. An impotent man is an impotent man for life, Sage, no matter how many priestesses he beds.’
‘I do not know that for certain,’ said Parashurama. ‘The Goddess of Fertility works in her own mysterious ways.’
Amba turned back to her plants. ‘Be it so, but I would not lay with that man even if I had to die.’ In her mind the image of the arrow sharpened, and the string got stretched back so far that Amba wondered if the bow would snap in two. Then the arrow flew into the air and pierced a man’s chest through his armour, drawing a single stream of blood that flowed downward, to his waist. Amba recognized the man with the sharp face and the beard, and his cry of pain which was but a whisper.
There will be a child, she heard someone say from deep within her. There will be a child, and it will be the death of Bhishma.
Amba looked up at the clear blue morning sky. She broke into a loud chuckle. Mother, she thought, why do you play this game with me? I do not care about Bhishma any more, nor do I care about the fate of Panchala or of North Country. I am yours; I have given myself to you and you have accepted me. All I want to do for the rest of my life is to serve you, and now you bid me to have a child. But how will I have a child, Mother? How will I survive having a child at my age?
‘You know of enough herbs, do you not, that would prevent a maiden from giving birth to a child after laying with a man?’
She nodded, her mind still lingering over the voice that she had heard. It had come from within her, so it had to be hers, but a little part of her wanted to believe the Goddess had spoken to her.
‘Then what do you fear, my lady?’ said Parashurama. ‘You shall not bear a child, and the High King will get his manhood back. You have helped many maidens become mothers; perhaps you can think of this as step toward helping a man become a father.’
Parashurama was right; she would lose nothing by doing this. On the contrary, doing a good turn to a High King of a kingdom such as Panchala would only serve her well in the future. All she had to do was to bear with the discomfort for one night – and if Drupad were truly impotent, it would not be a long night – and she could go back to her own world.
But there was that voice.
Deep within her, something stirred and awoke. Her mind began to race. If the voice had, indeed, been the Goddess’s, it meant that She had put into Amba’s hand another tool by which she could take her revenge on Bhishma. For the first time in perhaps eight years, she thought of Ambika and Ambalika atop Hastinapur’s throne, playing with their children, and her eyes suddenly awoke with stinging, scalding tears.
If the Goddess willed it so that her wrongs were to be avenged, who was she to deny her? She was not right in questioning whether she would survive, either; if the Goddess gave her instructions to birth a child, she would have her own plans of looking after her. Amba was no more than a servant to her, and her duty was no more than to follow her bidding.
So she said to Parashurama, ‘Tell the High King that I shall receive him at the fertility rite this year.’
FOURTEEN
The rite of fertility usually took place on the day after the first rain of the year, after the earth was made fertile by the sky. But this time Amba decreed that it be moved back by a week. No one had asked her why, but she had told them nevertheless that it had to be on the night of the full moon. What she had really wanted to do was to time the night with the most fertile period of her month.
Seated on her bed, she turned her wrists and looked at the flower bangles she had been asked to wear by Parushni. At one time she would have perhaps smiled at them, touched her nose to them and breathed in with a deep sigh, but now she just looked at them. Her hair had been set in a plait that morning, and tender jasmines had been tied to her scalp with twine. She had asked Parushni severely if she had intended to dress her up like a maiden about to be married, but Parushni had just smiled and gone on with it.
Oil and sandal paste glistened on her arms and thighs. On her forehead was a single vertical line of vermillion, and underneath it was a yellow turmeric curve. She had been given a new white sari to wear, and her undergarments had a dry, warm feel to them. Incense sticks burnt from the corner of the room where a stone idol of the Mother sat, looking at her. Amba observed all these things with detachment, as a priestess should. There was but one thing that she could not be detached about – at least she had not been able to in the last one month – and that was Bhishma.
Eight years, she told herself. Eight years of training and she had conquered all parts of herself, and yet at one word from the Goddess she was ready to take up arms against Bhishma again. She thought she had conquered e
nvy, but her heart burned when she thought of Ambika and Ambalika. She did not know what she envied about them; she wanted neither to be a queen nor to be queen mother. Did she just envy the fact that they had borne children while she had remained barren?
Even with Bhishma she did not know what caused her anger. Her life in the last eight years had been happy and rich with contentment, and if Bhishma had been responsible for it, she ought to be thankful to him. But then another voice sprang up inside her, one that she had long ago learnt to suppress but had lately become louder. It said: whatever you have gained is by your goodness of character. Whatever you have lost is due to Bhishma. So go, get your revenge against your destroyer. Do not rest until you have seen his dead body.
This was not the Goddess; she was priestess enough to know that. The voice of the Goddess never preached death. This was her own self, that old self that had goaded Sage Parashurama to fight Bhishma, that old self that had torn apart her hair on those long summer nights thinking of ways in which she could reach Bhishma and plunge a dagger into his heart. Back then, this voice had screamed in her ears. Now, it only whispered. And yet these eight years she had learnt to silence it. Now she let it go on.
Outside she heard drums, and through the shadows on the white curtain and the chants, she could make out that Drupad was ready. As the drums reached a crescendo and she readied herself for his entry, a small thought came to her: you can still stop this. But she pushed it aside with a savage shake of the head and filled her head with images of the mysterious bowman who would one day shoot the poisoned arrow at Bhishma’s heart. That bowman would be her son, she thought. The Goddess had told her so.
She smiled, and got to her feet to welcome her paramour.
She could not at first recognize Drupad. He had the skin of a leopard wrapped around his waist, and his body was smeared with ash. A round, red spot gaped at her from between his eyes, and a black vertical eyelid had been drawn on it, with long lashes ready to blink open. A live snake hissed from over his left shoulder, and when it looked at her it raised its hood and opened its mouth, revealing two sharp, hungry fangs. In his hands Drupad held a trident fashioned out of wood and iron, and in his wet, matted hair there stood a white crescent moon with a star at its bottom tip. His feet were grey and dusted with ash, Amba noticed, and his toes had been fitted with brass rings that clacked against the earth with each step.
Her mind went back to their last meeting almost nine years ago, when she had asked him if he would marry her. He had expressed horror at her question then, and now he had come back to her. But for the Goddess’s promise of a son who would kill Bhishma, she would have spat in his face and sent him back to his kingdom. In what way was he worthy of laying with a priestess of the Mother? But that did not matter. Now, for her own sake she had to endure him and stoke in herself some of the lust that she had long ago vanquished. For her own sake, for this one night, they had to be the incarnations of Shiva and his consort.
He opened his mouth when his eyes fell on her, whether in recognition or in wonder she did not know. The lines on his face had lengthened a bit since she saw him last, and there was a childlike innocence to his face, the kind into which men often lapsed in middle age. Especially impotent men, she thought. Men grew up with such certainty over their ability to sire children that when the tragic realization of their inability dawned upon them, it drove the light out of their eyes.
‘So we meet again, High King,’ said Amba, holding her hands out to him in a gesture of welcome.
He got down on one knee and took both her hands in his. He clutched them to his lips and sighed into them. ‘My lady, Amba! It is you, it is, indeed, you.’
‘So it is. I have heard that Bhishma has taken back the quarries you stole using me as pawn.’
‘My lady! The gods have made me suffer long and hard for that slight! I asked Sage Parashurama to tell me your whereabouts so that I could come to you and offer my apologies, but he would not.’
Amba shook her head. ‘No apology is required, Drupad. We all serve a bigger force, and She is always watching. If you say you have suffered, then I grant that you have.’
‘No, no, my lady, there has not been one night that I have slept soundly after I sent you to Sage Parashurama. Many a time in the last eight years did I wonder how it would all have transpired if I had taken you as my wife that night.’
‘But you did not, Drupad, and there is no gain in wishing the past had been different.’
He kissed her knuckles, smelled the flowers on her wrists. ‘Bhishma has been encroaching on our mountains all these years, my lady. Now he holds almost the same amount of rocky land as does Panchala. And no king in North Country dares raise his voice against the champion of Hastinapur.’
‘You have not wed, have you, Drupad?’ she asked, ignoring his comment. She held his chin and lifted it up so that she could look into his eyes. ‘How will you have sons if you do not marry?’
‘Do you think I have not tried, my lady? Ever since I was fourteen I only rarely slept alone on my bed, but never did a maiden get a belly from sleeping with me. I am known all across North Country as an impotent wretch. Pray tell me, who will give their daughter in wedding to someone like me?’
‘Not even the vassal states?’ Her mind went, fleetingly, to Subala.
‘No, my lady,’ said Drupad, ‘not even the vassal states. And now that the queens of Hastinapur have given birth–’
‘Let us not speak of them, High King.’
He looked up, puzzled; then remembered the ‘queens’ he had referred to were her sisters. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, of course. With Hastinapur now possessing heirs, a new strength seems to have taken over Bhishma. He was once cautious and diplomatic, but now he attacks my mines without so much as a warning.’
Amba felt anger rise within her, and though a part of her admonished it and fought to allay it, another part of her relished it, especially now that she held the reins of Bhishma’s future in her hands. She said, ‘I will give you a son, High King.’
‘My lady?’ he dithered. ‘I do not understand. You do not understand–’
‘I understand perfectly well!’ she said, silencing him. ‘You have slept with waiting-women, with women of your court, perhaps sisters and wives of your noblemen, but you have never slept with a priestess.’ Her voice sank low to a whisper. ‘A priestess is a daughter of the Goddess, Drupad, and the Goddess never allows the rite of fertility go to waste.’
Drupad stumbled to his feet, and though he was taller than her, at that moment, he looked like a mere child, fumbling and looking down at his hands. The snake on his shoulder wrapped around his neck tighter and stared at Amba, its forked tongue sliding out and slipping back in.
‘But Sage Parashurama told me that you are past child-bearing, that you would return strength to my loins.’
‘I shall give you a son, King of Panchala, who will one day slay the regent of Hastinapur.’
That lit up his eyes, she saw, though his manner was still that of a knave, arms waving about as he hunted for words. She reached out, fingers outstretched, to take the snake by its neck and lowered it onto the floor. ‘Come, Drupad,’ she said, ‘I shall show you how the Mother makes love to the Destroyer.’ She took his hand in hers, and as she guided him to the bed, his eyes glassed over with desire. Under the leopard skin wrapped around his hips, she saw a round bulge take shape.
With her other hand she dimmed the lamp. Outside, the chants and drums continued.
FIFTEEN
Amba caressed her stomach. It had grown quite a bit in the last two months, and now she could not stand on her feet for very long without catching her breath. She looked at the chalk-drawn calendar on the mud wall of her hut; if her calculations had been right, her son would be born before the midsummer feast, fourteen days from now. Her body was bathed in sweat, and grains of sand and mud stuck to her palms as she pushed herself back against the wall. The sun was so harsh this year that even in the middle of the night, the breez
e that flowed over the Yamuna was warm. It dried the skin and left it broken in white patches.
The house had become dirty, and she had left the plants untended for nigh on a week now. Anjasi had been around to help her, yes, but she was still new at the hermitage. Only after the priestesses kept their first rite of fertility did they become truly serene and accepting. Even Parushni had been fidgety during her first year.
She wondered if she should get up and sweep the room once, but it was late at night now. It could wait for tomorrow. A knot appeared in the pit of her stomach, and it churned and tightened, making her head swim and eyes ache. She clutched her hips with both hands and breathed in and out deliberately, as Sage Parashurama had taught her to. In a few moments, the cramps subsided, leaving her covered in a fresh layer of sweat.
When she had first asked the High Sage why her stomach turned so much, he had said male children did that because they were in a hurry to leave the woman’s womb and run and conquer countries. He might have said that just to please her, but there was some truth to his words. Her son would be the future High King of Panchala. He would need to run around a lot, and would need to fight a lot of wars – especially with the rulers of Hastinapur.
On that thought she sat up straight against the wall and bent down, so that her lips hovered around her chest, as close to her son as she could get. Then, in a low, steady croon, she began to speak. Six months of daily habit had ironed out all stutters from her speech, and the words came out on their own, one after the other, without her having to push them out with any conscious thought. Sage Parashurama had said that a child in the womb began to hear and understand its mother’s words from the twelfth week onward. He had instructed her to speak to her son, to tell him tales of gods and goddesses, of kings and queens, and of right and wrong.
The Rise of Hastinapur Page 10