Bhallika sighed. “I’m ruined, my friend. I wanted to make a quick fortune, to provide for my wife-to-be.”
“Wife?”
“Ah, she’s a treasure! For her sake, I agreed to a strange scheme to fool King Prasenajit. King Suddhodana offered me a lot of money if I would sell some jewels to the Kosalan, important pieces from the royal treasury that the Kosalan king’s sorcerer would want in order to cast a weakening spell on Suddhodana. They would pay a high price for them. Well, really, Suddhodana said that all that was nonsense, but that the more the Kosalan king spends on jewels, the less he’d spend on weapons. A few nights before I left, I was dicing at an inn that has a bad reputation but some charming girls. I was a little in my cups, and said I wanted to find a guard who would be discreet, because I was going to do a secret errand for King Suddhodana. A tough-looking soldier turned up at my door the next day, offering his services. Said he was ex-Maghadan military.”
“I have a feeling your guard wasn’t what he seemed,” Chandaka said.
Bhallika leaned back with a groan and continued. “I wish I’d had your intuition.” He shifted a little so Maitreyi could put a rolled blanket under his head. “I hired the fellow. Maghadans are known for their skill at arms.”
“But few of them ever leave King Bimbisara’s service,” Siddhartha said.
“I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me,” Bhallika said. “In reality, I think he was ex-Kosalan, a deserter who had been in the outlaw army.” He grimaced.
“I thought the bandit army had broken up once Angulimala disappeared.”
The merchant shifted a little and winced. “Yes, but its remnants plague the trade road. Before we got to Varanasi, my guard suddenly showed his true colors. He gave a signal and four more like him jumped out of the bushes. They beat and robbed me and left me for dead.”
“Surely King Suddhodana will help you get the jewels back. He was once allied with the outlaws.”
“When Angulimala ruled them. Now they answer to no one and melt into the forests just like Naga tribesmen,” Bhallika said.
“The Nagas hate them,” Atri said, “because when Kosalan soldiers go searching for outlaws, they kill any tribesmen they find. The Nagas once aided the bandits out of loyalty to Angulimala, who many worshipped as an avatar of their Great Mother, Mahaprabhu.”
Bhallika gave an enormous sigh. “I’ve lost everything. The king will demand I pay him for the jewels, and their value exceeds everything I own. It’s a fool who does a king’s business, boys. Begging your pardon, I’m sure, Prince. It will be a long time before I can marry my sweet Sakhi, my sweet Koli girl.”
“A wild Koli girl? They breed them tough and ugly up in the mountains,” Chandaka said with a laugh. “I thought your tastes ran to more refined women, Bhallika.”
“Careful. There’s Koli blood in my veins.” Siddhartha eased down next to Chandaka, holding a hot chapatti. “Nanda may end up with their chief’s daughter for a wife. Yasodhara, I think she’s called.”
Chandaka snorted with laughter and snatched the chapatti from Siddhartha. He tossed the hot bread from one hand to another, blowing on his fingers. “If you marry, Addha’s girls will be very unhappy. Especially Ratna.”
“You’d like it if I didn’t see Ratna anymore, wouldn’t you, Chandaka?” Bhallika tried to wink, but his face was too swollen. “We’ve long been rivals for her attentions. But I said I was getting married, not taking a vow of celibacy.” He laughed and grimaced again.
“Enough,” Maitreyi said. “Bhallika needs his rest. Off to the river with you two—and bathe before the sun sets.”
Chandaka felt as tired and sore as if he’d been at the practice field all day. He stumbled after Siddhartha, and after pushing through a stand of thick, tall grasses, they emerged onto a low bluff. In the distance, on the same side, Varanasi clung to Ganga’s banks, its whitewashed mud buildings reflecting the pink sunset.
“It’s as beautiful as when I came here with Father,” Siddhartha said.
“You rode in on a covered palanquin and stayed in the mansion of one of Varanasi’s richest courtesans. You don’t know its seedier parts,” Chandaka scoffed, but he was proud of his birthplace.
“Look.” Siddhartha pointed.
On the other shore, a naked girl plunged into the water and rose up, over and over again. Her faint, unintelligible chanting drifted across the broad river.
“Those are the cremation grounds,” Chandaka said. “You can’t really see past the bluff, but it’s nothing but barren ash and dust, inhabited by vultures and the chandala, whoever he is these days. Or maybe it’s whoever she is!” Chandaka strained to see better. From this distance he could tell she was slim, around his age judging by her height. Long dark hair. Hard to make out the face.
“How do they pick the chandalas? Doesn’t it pass from father to son?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes a pilgrim does it. When Kirsa and I lived in Varanasi, it was Harischandra. He was the one who guessed Kirsa’s lineage. He must have left and that girl took over.”
“Harischandra?” Siddhartha’s eyes widened. “The king of the Surasenas?”
“Yes. No one is supposed to know. Not that it matters, if he’s gone.”
“A king who lost his kingdom through treachery,” Siddhartha said thoughtfully. “Father said he put too much trust in one of his generals and too much faith in a sage’s goodness.”
Chandaka nodded. “Addha knew him before he lost everything. He swore her to secrecy.”
“Father says she knows how to keep secrets.”
“A wise courtesan must,” Chandaka replied, thinking of what Addha had concealed from him about his own parentage until just recently, which he had not yet revealed even to Siddhartha.
Both were silent, watching the girl across the river finish her ablutions. Then she gathered some reeds and headed up the bluff, looking back once before she disappeared.
“Wish I could have gotten a closer look,” Chandaka said.
They made their way down the stony path to the water. Siddhartha waded in and plunged ahead, heading out into the stream with graceful strokes.
The surface was opaque, reflecting the violets and hot pinks of the evening sky, and deceptively smooth, but the current almost knocked Chandaka over. Siddhartha was a good swimmer, but these were not the vast bathing tanks in Queen Prajapati’s royal gardens.
“Don’t go so far,” Chandaka called out. Siddhartha pulled away without turning around. “Siddhartha! It’s dangerous.” The prince kept going. He could drown, and where would that leave Chandaka? He would never be able to go back to the Sakyan kingdom, never see Kirsa again.
“Come back!” Why wouldn’t he listen? Resentment bubbled up in Chandaka. He was sick of being the charioteer to this perfect prince. It was not such an honor, not like being a full-blown warrior. Siddhartha’s other companions, pure Kshatriyas all of them, liked him well enough, found him amusing, but they resented him, too. The prince’s lap dog, some called him. They whispered about his lineage. A courtesan’s son, who maybe lacked any warrior blood at all.
Chandaka couldn’t tell them the truth. They wouldn’t have believed him anyway. It was hard for him to believe, too.
At last Siddhartha turned and began swimming back, but Chandaka’s relief was short-lived. The prince smiled, waved, and plunged beneath the surface into that powerful current.
If he didn’t come up, Kirsa would be Chandaka’s. He would find a way to get her away from these upstart Sakyas and the scheming Gautama family and go live somewhere else; among the peaceful Avantis, perhaps, or up in the Himalayas among the rough, proud Kolis, or they could even go to Taxila, where the wisdom of east and west met.
Still no sign of him. Some demon had seen into Chandaka’s thoughts and was holding the prince down—or some demoness had fallen in love with him and wrapped him in her watery arms and
would never let him up.
“Siddhartha!” he cried, plunging in. Ganga seized him. The current seemed to push him down to the muddy bottom where a whirlpool of dirty water trapped him. It was like a hand was holding him down.
Someone seized his hair and pulled him up, up to the surface. Chandaka spluttered and choked as Siddhartha held onto him. The prince put an arm around Chandaka’s chest and made several powerful kicks toward a leafy tree limb overhanging the water. The current pushed Chandaka into the tangled branches, and he grasped them, hanging on for dear life.
“What in the name of the gods were you doing?” Siddhartha demanded, gripping a low branch with one hand and brushing drops of water from his face with the other.
“What were you doing?”
“Letting Ganga wash my sins away.”
They hung on the limb, swaying in the current, staring at each other in fury until at the same instant they burst out laughing. They started back. Chandaka, shaky from his near drowning and disturbed by his own dark thoughts, kept silent, and so did the prince.
Back at the hermitage, Maitreyi had propped Bhallika against Kanthaka’s wooden saddle to give him some dhal. The merchant was eating the lentils in good spirits, even though his face was still swollen and his arm pained him every time he moved.
Atri ladled out bowls for Siddhartha and Chandaka.
“The best I’ve ever tasted,” Chandaka said after a few mouthfuls.
“And he should know,” Bhallika said. “At Addha’s, Lakshmi saves all the best tidbits for him.”
The satisfaction of a good meal had dispelled Chandaka’s dark thoughts. He sighed with contentment. “Where did you learn to cook, Atri?”
“It would have been better if I’d had hot peppers to put in it,” Atri said with a modest smile. “I learned it from a young Koli Brahmin, Nalaka by name. He came to Varanasi to study at the Brahmin Valmiki’s ashram, then had a falling out with his guru. We took him in for a time. You’ve heard of Valmiki, no doubt. He’s famous for his mastery of the Vedas. He’s the one who directed the performance of King Prasenajit’s Horse Sacrifice.”
Maitreyi shook her head. “What arrogance Prasenajit had, to dare offer the Ashvamedha. As if he had divine lineage.”
“I remember,” Siddhartha said. “All the kings came to the final rites, even those like my father who weren’t his vassals. I accompanied Father, and we stayed with the courtesan Addhakashi. That’s where I met Chandaka.”
“You were part of her household?” Atri asked.
Chandaka nodded. “My mother Amrapali was the most gifted apprentice in Addha’s house.” He fell silent. Though he knew she was safe in the Licchavi kingdom, it hurt to think of his beautiful mother and he tried not to.
Siddhartha’s question to Maitreyi rescued him. “How did you come to this peaceful hermitage?”
Maitreyi launched into their tale. Chandaka listened with a polite smile on his face, but his thoughts were on his mother, and on Addha’s imposing mansion in the courtesans’ quarter, where they lived before the political situation forced them to flee. He’d spent many happy hours in the famous garden with his mother Amrapali and her most generous patron, King Bimbisara of Maghada. Back then, all Chandaka knew was that this jolly man was always so kind and indulgent to him.
His world turned upside down when Kirsa arrived. He could remember like it was yesterday the day when he was seven and Lakshmi came back to the house with the wet, bedraggled girl-child in her arms. “Poor little thing!” she’d said. “She’s called Kirsa. I found her drowning in Mother Ganga.”
Chandaka had never forgotten the fear and grief in Kirsa’s amber eyes when she first looked into his. From that day, he had never wanted to be separated from the little girl who looked up to him as an adored older brother then—and now, when he had come to love her in ways he was afraid to tell her.
“So,” Maitreyi was saying, “although we were from wealthy families, we kept a modest house where we raised three sons and a daughter. We were able to do much good charitable work—”
“Maitreyi became a famous healer in Varanasi,” Atri said with pride.
“Wait, I think I’ve heard of you,” Chandaka said, glad to get away from thinking of how Kirsa would never love him the way he loved her. “Addha contributed to a house of healing you established.”
“Indeed, she did. It was a loss to many of Varanasi’s charities when the new king drove its finest courtesan away, all because she was the previous king’s favorite.”
“It was for the best,” Chandaka said. “She’s been King Suddhodana’s favorite ever since.”
“I’ve heard that, and I am glad for her,” Maitreyi said.
“But please,” Siddhartha said. “Finish your story.”
“After the last of our children married, Atri took it in his head to retire to the forest. He said that as he had followed the dharma and during the first stage of life sat as a youthful brahmacharin at a guru’s feet, then took up the second stage as a householder, marrying me and raising fine sons to say the prayers at his death, that now it was time to enter the third stage of life, and retreat from the world.”
“My only wish was to seek the godhead,” Atri said. “I divided my remaining wealth among my children. My intention was to leave Maitreyi well provided for—”
“I ask you, boys, is that an insult? Did he think I was such a woman as to dress in fine Varanasi cloth and gold earrings, a ruby at my nostril, and sit around eating white rice covered with silver leaf and drinking from a golden cup in my old age? If he gave me all the wealth in the world, I would not be closer to atman. Oh, no, I would not let him go off by himself to seek moksha.”
“Mark my words, Prince Siddhartha,” Atri said. “Even the Great God Shiva found that the most severe asceticism may liberate a man from this endless round of birth and death and suffering, but it will not free him from his wife.”
“A loving wife, who only wants to care for you,” Maitreyi retorted. Atri threw up his hands. They smiled at each other.
Everyone sat in companionable silence as the fire died down. Soon the old couple said their goodnights and climbed the short ladder to their treehouse.
Chandaka grew drowsy while Bhallika extolled to Siddhartha the virtues of the Koli girl he wanted to marry, and then he fell sound asleep.
Kanthaka’s high whinny woke him. Siddhartha was already sitting up, staring into the dark.
“What is it?” Chandaka rubbed his eyes.
Siddhartha pointed. The new moon gave little light, and the fire was nothing but a few red embers. Indra’s thousands of eyes were just a dim glimmer through a humid haze.
Chandaka was fully awake. Four small, slender men wearing nothing but loincloths and carrying spears stood at the forest’s edge, watching them. Their dark skin was blotched and smeared with what looked like white ash. They held spears that would have killed him before he could reach for his knife, but they stood still as statues. Kanthaka pulled at his tether and pawed the ground, snorting.
Siddhartha was quicker with a weapon than anyone Chandaka knew, but he made no move to get his sword, as if he knew the mysterious visitors would do them no harm.
They were short in stature; too short for any Arya, in fact. Nagas, most likely. They didn’t look like cannibals, as some said they were, nor did it seem like they were intent on murder, but this encounter wasn’t over.
Chandaka cursed himself. He had the ability to keep himself in a light doze in dangerous situations. It was a useful skill when sleeping with other men’s wives or the daughters of strict fathers. But he had felt safe here and slept too deeply.
A woman appeared wearing little more than her dark companions. She was their height. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders and down to her waist. She put a hand on Kanthaka’s forehead. The horse quieted.
She approached them while her companions
waited in the shadows, then knelt next to Bhallika and studied his face a moment. She was well shaped, and though the darkness veiled her features, what he could see was lovely. High cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a straight, long nose, like some high-caste Arya.
She turned to her companions and nodded. Then she reached into a sash wound round her waist and pulled out two little bags. “These are the jewels stolen from Bhallika,” she said softly in the common tongue. There was a faint clink of coins as she placed them next to the sleeping merchant.
“How did you get them?” Siddhartha whispered.
“The forest has eyes. We searched out his attackers. They were liars, thieves, and did violence to Bhallika, a good man who did no harm to them. They deserved to die, so we offered them to the Mother.” She stood up. “One bag holds the jewels and the other a small fortune in gold we found on the thieves. I give him the thieves’ gold to repay a kindness he did me long ago.”
“Who are you?”
“Lila.”
Under the thin sliver of the new moon, Lila glided across the clearing and rejoined the four men, and they all slipped back into the forest. If the little tied sacks had not been where she put them next to Bhallika, Chandaka would have thought they dreamed it.
The Sakyas
A war horn wrenched Sakhi from sleep. Their enemies had found them. She sat up. The sky was silver with dawn’s light.
Another piercing blast shattered the air, its echoes beating against the mountain goddess. A warrior dressed in deep blue with a brilliant gold sash appeared at the top of the path, holding a drawn bow. For a wild moment Sakhi thought it was the Sakyan messenger, and perhaps right behind him Dandapani would appear.
The strange warrior lowered his bow. He peered down. “Found them!” he shouted over his shoulder. Two more blue-and-gold-clad warriors appeared.
“Ho, down there,” one called. “King Suddhodana has defeated the Kosalas.”
“It’s safe to return to the village,” another one said. He waved for them to come up.
The Mountain Goddess Page 20