“I’ve seen women give birth. I never want to go through that. Siddhartha doesn’t want them, either. He says they are a hindrance on the spiritual path. Prajapati has found a beautiful bride for Nanda. Suddhodana could name one of his children heir.”
The lack of an heir. It was a thing no one talked about openly. The subject roused the king’s fury, though not the queen’s. In strict confidence she had told Nalaka that perhaps there was too much intermarriage and it was best Siddhartha and Dhara didn’t have children. There was gossip. Dhara was barren; they had taken a vow of celibacy; the astrologers had not found an auspicious date to conceive. Among the various factions, rumors rose and fell that Siddhartha would renounce his royal duty any day, just as the prophecy said, and the king would name another heir, Nanda or this cousin or that concubine’s son, whomever the particular faction fanning the rumor favored.
“What if Suddhodana named Nanda the heir? That would relieve both of you of your royal duties altogether.”
Dhara straightened her back, lifted her chin. “There is a middle way. A compromise. Siddhartha and I could rule. Until Nanda’s child was ready to inherit.”
This was what Asita had foreseen. Yasodhara, the Warrior Queen. The ruler who would save the Sakyas from the annihilation promised in the prophecy while Siddhartha took the sage’s path right here at Vishramvan Palace. Why did it fill Nalaka with unease? Truly, Dhara had gifts that could make her a good ruler.
“This is why you go to council and take part in war games. But do you think the kingdom would accept this? Most of all, is it what Siddhartha wants?”
Dhara put a hand up to shade her eyes from the rising sun. “There he is.”
Siddhartha was standing at the forest’s edge, still as a statue, watching them. “I have been looking for you, beloved,” he said as he joined them in the temple. “I’m glad to find you here. Have you decided to take more interest in dharma studies again?”
Perhaps there was a trace of sarcasm in the prince’s voice. Perhaps not. Either way, Nalaka had the sense the prince had heard everything.
“What does Siddhartha want, you ask,” the prince said. “Dear guru-ji, Siddhartha doesn’t know.”
Sakhi’s garden
“Don’t go.” Sakhi sat on the low stone wall of the new lotus pool, one hand on her growing stomach, the other trailing in the water. She watched Bhallika with anxious eyes as he paced back and forth. A slight breeze blew a cooling spray from the pool’s splashing fountain onto her face as a hot tear rolled down her cheek.
“My love, I won’t be gone long.” Bhallika rushed to the storeroom, shouting at the bearers. “Deepa! How much is left?” They hurried out, heavy bales and boxes on their backs, to the oxcarts outside the postern. Today he would leave for Rajagriha, the Maghadan capital, and he was too caught up in the journey’s excitement to ease his wife’s distress.
“Almost done,” was Deepa’s muffled response.
“Well, hurry up!” Bhallika returned to Sakhi’s side. “You’re beautiful in blue and green.”
Though she had worn the bright silk to please him, Sakhi was insulted at the empty compliment. “I’m enormous as a water buffalo,” she replied. “I can no longer please you the way that courtesan does.” Though Sakhi was twenty-one, younger by some years than Ratna, her pregnancies had made her look much older. But at the moment, that wasn’t what troubled her most.
Pure joy had filled her during her three earlier pregnancies, making it easy to push away worries about what could go wrong. This time she couldn’t shake the terrible foreboding that she might die. Bhallika had lately been less attentive and didn’t sense her fears, and she could not confront him, as if speaking them would make them true.
“So that’s what’s bothering you.”
“Among other things,” she began. Now was the time to reveal her anguish, but the words wouldn’t come. “There’s a rumor at the market that for every bangle you drape on my arm, you give two to Ratna,” she said instead.
“Ha!” Bhallika gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Amusing. I must tell her you said so. Deepa!” he shouted, jumping up and hurrying to catch the servant.
“Coming, master.”
Each time he left for distant places, he was as excited as if it were his first journey. She loved his boyish confidence, the way he took on challenges. He would dismiss her concerns with breezy assurance, just as in Dhavalagiri he had talked about saving her life as if it were an adventure, not a hero’s act.
Dhavalagiri. General Sukesa had returned to the village several times to monitor the progress of rebuilding and on his returns told her that the Sakyas and Kolis together were making the place prosper. Sakhi had no trouble believing this. Kapilavastu showed what Sakyan energy and ambition could create. Sakhi had never gone back to see for herself, though. She was afraid to revisit the place of so many horrific memories. A jumble of bittersweet thoughts of her happy childhood, her dead parents, her former closeness with Dhara filled her mind. Her throat tightened.
“Now, most excellent wife.” Bhallika walked up, brushing dust from his clothes. “Do you believe I’m buying Ratna bangles? You keep my books. You know what I spend on your jewels.”
Another evasion. He had never denied a relationship to the courtesan. “She’s an entertainment. Like gambling,” he had told her after their wedding. As a naive bride just shy of sixteen, Sakhi had lacked the confidence to demand her husband end it. She had grown more worldly during their marriage and had come to accept it. Most husbands visited the courtesans’ quarter. Recently, a nobleman had married a courtesan after his wife died in childbirth. If she died, Sakhi thought bitterly, Bhallika might well marry Ratna.
In those early days, he’d responded to her concerns by putting Sakhi in charge of his accounts. He even enlisted Sakhi’s help to limit his losses. “Set aside some profit in a little sack for dicing,” he had said. “I swear once it’s gone, I’ll not sign chits against the family’s assets.” This mollified Sakhi. She took pride in doing the job well, wishing her father could see how she put his instruction in the sacred science of numbers to use. Bhallika kept his word with regards to chits. In fact, he won quite often and brought his winnings home to her.
Indeed, he spent generously on Sakhi’s jewels, but that wasn’t stopping her from sinking into self-pity. She was already envisioning Ratna moving into the mansion, taking Sakhi’s old room.
He sat down next to her on the pool’s edge. “You are the mother of my sons. Would you begrudge me giving a few baubles to a girl of that sort?” He stroked her round belly.
Ratna was no “girl of that sort,” but among the most desirable women in Kapilavastu.
“No.” Sakhi couldn’t meet his eyes. “But there’s something else that’s bothering me… ” She swished her hand in the water, gathering her thoughts.
Deepa walked up with a bale on his back. “This is the last, Master Bhallika. We can leave as soon as you want.”
Bhallika nodded. They watched in silence as Deepa disappeared out the postern.
“Don’t go,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder.
He smiled and kissed her forehead. “You’ve always been so cheerful when I go away. I sometimes have wondered if you want me to leave. Perhaps you have a lover.”
“Bhallika!” She didn’t know whether to be hurt or to laugh.
“My dear, I jest. You’re queen among the city’s most virtuous women.”
She played with an end of her antariya. Was she glad when he left? She liked running things on her own. Not this time, though. “They say Prasenajit has vowed to have Angulimala’s head. How will you get past the Kosalan troops? Or the bandits, for that matter?”
Mala, or Sakhi should say Angulimala, had returned to her outlaw army not long after the battle in Dhavalagiri, wreaking havoc on the Kosalas and their vassals. She had taken up her old habit of cutting off the finger
s of her victims and stringing them around her neck, and added a new one: sacrificing her victims to the Great Mother. A few eyewitnesses had escaped with shocking stories. Hard to believe the infamous Angulimala was the charismatic yogi who mesmerized Sakhi and Dhara around a Koli campfire, who had given Tilo a merciful death, who had rescued Dhara in Varanasi. That was another lifetime.
“We’ve been over this. The Nagas will guide me through the forests until I reach friendly territory and can return to the main road.”
“The Nagas! They participate in Angulimala’s horrible sacrifices!”
“But their priestess Lila knows and trusts me. As for the outlaws, Angulimala and Suddhodana are allies again. I have no fear of them. My love, what’s really troubling you?”
Sakhi buried her face in the thick cotton of his traveling robe. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “I’m going to die! I feel so heavy, like something is pushing me down into the earth, to Yama’s hells… ” Her sobs came harder and faster.
“What? Nonsense.” He put his arm around her shoulders and rocked her gently. “You’ll be fine, my fair-hipped one, fine. For you, having babies is as easy as plucking ripe mangoes from low branches. You could give me a hundred sons.” He kissed her on the lips. “Or will it be a little girl this time, eh? We’ve wanted a daughter. Don’t worry.”
He kissed her more deeply, and her sobs calmed. The bearers’ squabbles as they finished loading the carts drifted in from the street.
“They’ll never finish without me,” Bhallika said. “This mood of yours… you need to do something different.” He hesitated. “What about inviting Princess Yasodhara to talk about old times? You haven’t seen her for months.”
Sakhi wiped her eyes with a corner of the bright green silk and glared at him. “Princess Yasodhara and I don’t have much in common anymore.”
“Come, now,” Bhallika said. “She was the sister of your heart… ”
“The sister of my heart is hiding behind Princess Yasodhara. Or Dhara the yogi.” And I don’t care about either of them, she thought. Ever since Sakhi’s wedding, Dhara had been even more distant.
Bhallika stood and drew her up, and they walked out to the street, where he ordered some bales rearranged and everything tied more securely, until there was nothing left to do but kiss goodbye.
With a heavy heart, Sakhi watched the caravan creak its way down the wide king’s road that led to the city gates and the wide world.
“You? Afraid?” Dhara shook a finger at Sakhi. “But my dear, you’ve had three sons in five years. Having a fourth should be easy as… as… as balancing Bhallika’s books!”
It’s not easy at all, Sakhi wanted to say, balancing his books and wondering what he does the nights he’s away. But she kept silent, feigning fascination with the ashoka tree’s falling leaves. They sat underneath it on the pink and green cushions Mitu had strewn about. The rains were done, an autumn chill would soon set in, and the watery sunshine gave a little unseasonable warmth. Sakhi hoped all the new plantings would survive Kapilavastu’s odd frost or occasional thin, wet snow.
“Balancing books,” Dhara’s attendant Uttara said with a smirk. “Indeed.”
Not a man in sight, but the courtier was reclining in a seductive pose, her slender legs wrapped in bright orange silks tied at her waist, leaving her small breasts bare. Hard to believe she was Bhela’s daughter. She had a reputation for depravity. Her gold bangles glittered in the dappled sunlight and clinked as she picked up an apple from the tray of fruit the kitchen boy brought. She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Your Bhallika is as rich as the king, my dear. It must take you forever to count his coins.”
With a little smile, she tossed the long waves of her oiled dark brown hair back over her shoulder. Many young women of rank wore their hair unbound now, in the fashion Dhara had started in her early days in the palace. Some of the young noblewomen affected a warrior’s braid instead, emulating the way the princess wore hers on the practice field, though no Sakyan girls took the martial arts as seriously as Dhara did. A few attempted the exhausting drills in archery, horsemanship, and swordplay required of all young warriors, but none achieved her skill. She had earned her own command, passing every test any warrior must pass: a rare thing for a woman. In all the other kingdoms, only the Maghadan king sent women into battle, and even his army had few women in command positions. In living memory, no Sakyan girl had even seen real fighting. Dhara had already led the adoring young men who made up Yasodhara’s Cavalry in a few skirmishes with the Kosalan vassals.
No court women went so far, however, as to dress in the simple garb of a yogi as Dhara often did. Today she sat like a yogi, cross-legged, with a simple cream-colored light wool antariya wrapped loosely around her legs and thrown over her left shoulder, leaving her right breast bare. It was strange, how the princess could revel in riches and still take the spiritual studies she and Siddhartha pursued under Nalaka very seriously. Nalaka said she was as good as the prince. In an unguarded moment, Nalaka had told Sakhi he sometimes feared Mala had distorted the teachings, and that Dhara might misuse her powers. But Sakhi believed Nalaka’s good influence would counterbalance them.
Nevertheless, Sakhi wondered how her friend now felt about the woman she had once so admired. Dhara never spoke of Mala to Sakhi.
“Sakhi was always good at numbers. Do you remember how we helped Mother stock the chief’s hall?”
Sakhi remembered that Dhara had mocked her numerical skill in those days.
“I’ll wager the little Koli chief’s hall doesn’t compare to this mansion,” Uttara drawled. “My dear, it is the biggest in the city.”
Uttara might think it was vulgar, but Sakhi didn’t care. Many Sakyans from the professional and merchant classes were wealthier by far than some distinguished old lineages. She curved her lips, returning Uttara’s smirk. “Thank you,” she said in her sweetest tones. My dear, indeed.
Long-limbed golden-skinned Uttara was Sakhi’s least favorite court creature. Dhara had brought her along, she said, because Uttara and Sakhi should have so much in common, both being priests’ daughters. More likely Dhara brought her along so there would be no opportunity for intimate talk between two old friends: one more hurt to add to the long list Princess Yasodhara had inflicted. Bhallika had suggested that Dhara might have her own list of grievances, but Sakhi was not the one who snubbed and patronized her friend.
“But tell me truthfully, Sakhi.” All of a sudden, Dhara took Sakhi’s hand. Sakhi flushed, wondering if her old friend knew what she was thinking. Like Siddhartha, Dhara had the power to read others’ thoughts. “You’re not really afraid of this birth.”
Perhaps the power to read another’s mind was just paying close attention to the other person. Dhara wasn’t really paying close attention to Sakhi. She withdrew her hand and rested it on the folds of green silk that covered her enormous stomach. Mitu said that she must be carrying twins. The fountain’s splashes filled the silence. Bhallika loved the fleeting rainbows as the water droplets caught the sun’s rays. He should be here watching them.
“Will the new physician attend your lying-in?” Uttara asked. “He’s all the rage. My brother’s wife asked for him instead of a midwife, and now all the noble mothers must have Jivaka when their babies are born. He’s quite good, you know.”
“So I’ve heard, but I will have Saibya-ji and Kirsa,” Sakhi said.
Dhara rolled her eyes. She had come for Bharata’s and Arjuna’s births, though it was very difficult for her. Sakhi knew Dhara’s terror of childbirth and was grateful she had been there to hold her hand and wipe her brow. When Bhima was born, however, the princess did not come. Mitu said it was probably not so much because of the princess’s terror, but because the whole kingdom was awaiting an heir. After six years and no sign of a little princeling, court and commoner wondered if there would ever be one. All sorts of rumors abounded. Dhara never acknowledged t
hem in Sakhi’s presence.
In her anxious state over the coming birth, Sakhi wanted badly for her to come. She was afraid. She needed a friend.
If Dhara was still a friend.
This princess, who commanded a troop and could change into an eagle, repelled, fascinated, and frightened Sakhi. Curious. Despite Dhara’s powers to touch another’s mind, she had never touched Sakhi’s. Nalaka said this was because Sakhi didn’t have the same training. Whatever the reason, their former, truer intimacy, born of whispered secrets and childhood games, was now gone.
“Yes, you must have Jivaka attend you.” Dhara clapped her hands. “He’s so clever. He apprenticed in Taxila with the most eminent physicians. Not with old Saibya, like Kirsa.”
“Saibya studied in Taxila, too,” Sakhi pointed out.
“But it’s much nicer to have a handsome young man to tend you, don’t you think? Let me talk to Siddhartha, see if we can’t get Jivaka for your lying-in. They’ve become great friends and sit up all night with Nalaka arguing about the meaning of the Forest Teachings,” she said with somewhat forced brightness.
Sakhi sighed, wishing Nalaka was here instead of Dhara. Next time he came, she would ask him about this doctor from Taxila.
“He’s rich, too,” Uttara said. “You would have so much to discuss with him, Sakhi.”
“Really?” Sakhi could barely conceal her annoyance.
“His father is a wealthy Gandharan merchant. I’d wager Jivaka knows all about caravans and such. Why, he might be able to help you with the birth and Bhallika’s accounts!”
“Childbed is hardly the time to be discussing accounts,” Sakhi snapped. She flushed. She’d taken the bait. “But neither of you would know that.”
Dhara’s face went cold. Uttara raised her eyebrows and took another bite of apple.
At that moment, Sakhi’s two older sons burst out of the dark passageway that led to the front gates, all skinny little limbs and rumpled clothing. “Princess Dhara,” Bharata said, breathless, his unruly dark curls slipping from the silken strip that bound his little topknot. “A messenger for you.”
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