Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

  There was no need for words. Tara took a look at him and then glared at her maids, who retreated without showing their backs. Veera paused till they left, closing the door behind them. He did not know how to start. But his emotions had reached their nadir and the dam burst when they were alone. He rested his head on her lap and burst into tears. His mother drew him close and held on tightly. ‘Cry, if you want, son,’ she said.

  *

  Veera woke up with a start and found his mother asleep against a bedside post. He sighed deeply and staggered to his room, to the refuge of his bed. His heart ached as he realized an after-thought. He had sacrificed Sunanda for the throne. Sundar would have done so too. Sunanda was not important. The throne was.

  Halfway through the night, he found a warm presence next to him. It seemed like Sunanda to his befuddled brain. He embraced her and felt the warmth of her tear-stained face on his. He knew something wasn’t right but he couldn’t resist. After their fervent lovemaking, Veera realized something was amiss. He shone the lamp on her face and saw that it was Vani, his mother’s handmaiden and his first lover. She was snoring gently.

  When he thought the world had forsaken him, the woman he had renounced was there to console him. Vani with her usual clairvoyant nature had made herself available to comfort him.

  ‘Thank you so much, Vani. But for you I wouldn’t know what to do,’ he murmured when she woke up.

  ‘I could not let my prince mourn alone,’ she said, turning away lest he see her tears. Here was this remarkable girl trying to commiserate with his loss of another girl. The irony struck him. He shook her gently. ‘How did you know?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  She held him close to her bosom and smiled a sad smile. ‘I know more than this, my prince,’ she said. A teardrop fell on him like a warm splash of summer rain and he looked up.

  ‘What else do you know?’ he queried.

  ‘You are going to Lanka next week,’ she announced.

  *

  The prime minister’s message reached him early in the morning. Veera had already shaved and bathed. He looked at himself in the polished metal mirror. Well, well, my sovereign, you are in for a surprise, he thought. He had decided he would go to Lanka; this was the opportunity he needed to prove his mettle. He had convinced himself against reason that Sunanda would refuse to be betrothed to Sundar, and would wait for him. Soon, both Sunanda and the throne could be his.

  Akshayan had groomed and readied the horses. They both rode towards the royal palace as commoners bowed when he passed them. Veera would usually bow his head in acknowledgement, but not today. His thoughts were racing across the boundaries of the empire, to Lanka, to what he imagined would be his crowning glory – but then, abruptly, the tumult in his mind turned to desperation. He realized he didn’t have the support he would require to stand up to his king and father. Maybe in four or five years he could rally the numbers, but Veera he knew he needed to show his people he deserved their support.

  He alighted from his horse and left Akshayan to take care of it. He walked into the throne hall alone, but the hall was empty. A servant guided him towards an adjacent ancillary room, where the king rested during prolonged court sessions. Its balcony looked out towards the gardens and the pond. Veera expected the king to be pacing in the room restlessly as he had always seen him do when he was tense. But the king stood by a window, gazing out. Only the prime minister was present.

  So the king has decided not to humiliate me in a crowded assembly, Veera thought. As he entered, the minister cleared his throat. Veera walked up to Kulasekharan and prostrated himself on the ground. Kulasekharan turned and a blessing automatically came to his lips. It seemed ironical that the king should bless him with the words ‘Jaya Vijayebhava’ – ‘May victory always be yours’.

  Though it was a king’s prerogative to dispense with any problem as he thought fit, Pandyan kings never took a decision in haste. They debated with a council of ministers to arrive at a consensus – a tradition that had been initiated ever since a Pandyan ancestor had wrongly executed a man, and his widow Kannagi had burnt the whole town down with her fury.

  Veera hoped his father wouldn’t let him down. He wondered, Would the king concur with the plot to banish me? But the look on his father’s face doused the last flicker of hope. His memories of Kulasekharan came back to haunt him – his father, who did not have the guts to wed the woman he loved, who could not protect his son either. Veera was assaulted by half a dozen emotions – envy, jealousy, hatred, rivalry, spite – all at the same time, angry at his father, the royalty he belonged to, his mother and his country.

  Veera gave the king an unrelenting stare. He knew that if he held his father’s gaze, his father would crumble. Kulasekharan, however, knew as much and restrained from looking him in the eye. He looked tired and closed his eyes frequently as if to rest them. Dark sacs encircled them. The king has not slept properly, Veera realized, and this gave him some pleasure.

  The king looked at his minister, but if he thought the minister would voice the royal edict, he was mistaken. The minister didn’t show any sign of doing so. Kulasekharan realized he would have to say it himself.

  ‘We need to send somebody to...’ Words failed him and his command of his emotions was left hanging.

  ‘To Lanka, Your Majesty’? Veera questioned.

  The king was left speechless.

  ‘I too, have my ways, Your Majesty,’ Veera said in a lighter tone.

  The king smiled sadly. His mind said the words his mouth did not dare to whisper. But his heart blessed his son with all its strength. This experience, my son, will take you farther than your detractors would like you to go, Kulasekharan thought.

  *

  Kulasekharan had been in a quandary the previous day. He knew he could not arrive at a decision based on what was right or wrong; rather, he had to dispel the simmering tensions between his favourite son, born of an unwed mother, and his royal family. He would not be hurried into a decision. Eventually, he would have to give a ruling, which he knew would not be accepted by the queen if it went against her. It was so delicate a matter that he could not talk to anyone about this. If only Vikrama were around… For the first time since the rebellion, he regretted his brother’s absence. He could have just handed the problem over to him and concentrated on getting on with his reign.

  Kulasekharan had listened gravely as the queen had screamed at him, insisting that Veera be dealt with. He knew that if the queen became more vicious, Veera’s life would be in danger. The king could no longer ignore this reality, yet the impending confrontation had to be avoided. He had to preserve order and chart the boundaries beyond which transgressions would not be tolerated.

  Conjugal relations played crucial roles in the crown’s decisions. The dictatorial manner that women assumed showed they were assured of their power and they frequently made incursions into the domain of rulers. The queen had made it very clear that Veera was trespassing. He was putting ideas into the mind of an innocent girl who was to wed his brother and this could be construed as a dastardly act.

  The king had kept his silence. His spies were bearers of more accurate tidings about their relationship; if the queen would have heard their report she would know just how ‘innocent’ the girl had been. She may not even have dreamt of getting the girl married to her son. Unknown to Veera and Sunanda, the head of espionage had prepared a dossier on the cohabiting couple as he had the right to do.The intelligence reports on the trysts of the young couple added to the king’s discomfiture.

  Veerasekharan, the spymaster of the Pandyan empire, had information on anybody who mattered. The people in his employ – listed as clerks in the records of pay – were a group of operatives totally devoted to him. They would take a cue by a nod of the head or a blink of their master’s eyes. With powers to pry into the personal matters of anybody in the realm, they had dossiers on every important person they thought needed to be investigated. Their colossal failure had been Vikrama’s betrayal and
subsequently, the entire system was honed after that. They were certainly circumspect but that was to make their job easier rather than out of respect for those investigated. They ignored nothing. Rumours, facts, hearsay: any source, scraps of conversation overheard in public or in private spaces was information.

  ‘What do you think?’ the king had asked Veerasekharan when the first reports reached him.

  ‘The prince has every right to choose who the girl in his life should be. My job is only to report; who am I to pass judgement?’ came his reply.

  The king was visibly irritated. ‘I did not ask you to pass a verdict on the family. What about Veera?’

  The spymaster hesitated. He could be commenting on his future king. ‘It shows his carelessness and unreliability and a tendency to let his heart govern his head.’

  ‘And?’ the king prodded further.

  ‘His ability to pursue a goal is in doubt, especially when there is a conspiracy within the family against him and nobody is there to support him.’ He stressed on the word ‘conspiracy’. The king bowed his head. Veerasekharan’s eyes, which never let anything escape, noticed a small flicker of shame – or was it guilt in the king’s downcast eyes?

  Kulasekharan had to handle this affair with circumspection and prudence. He was livid with Veera, but not because of his queen’s ranting. Veera could have chosen any girl in this realm, but he had been foolish enough to lay his hands on a girl who was betrothed to his stepbrother. This was highly irrational, and extremely unbecoming of a future king. He had risked his future for the sake of this girl.

  He remembered his own tryst with love in his youth. He knew its power. At one point, he had almost let the empire go rather than relinquish his love. He sighed, thinking, Many a man who has crossed oceans has tripped on a dimple on beautiful cheeks.

  It will be all right, he told himself, but deep within his heart he knew the seeds of a larger, more cataclysmic event had been sown. A potential civil war had been averted, or at least postponed for now. After brooding on the immediate consequences and future ramifications, he had to take a decision to bring this problem to a satisfactory conclusion. He had to avert the family feud that seemed to be swiftly approaching its grand finale. Lanka was the perfect excuse to get rid of Veera – it would also ensure his safety from the scheming Cholas.

  *

  ‘Ariyan Chakravarthi, our regent in Lanka, has the north under his control. It has been firmly held ever since…’ Kulasekharan let his words trail, not wanting to mention Vikrama’s name. It was Vikrama who had conquered the upper reaches of Lanka with such a decisive hand. The Pandyans had not progressed an inch after he had returned. They had fought a few pitched battles but had not gained any new territory. The Lankans had an exasperating mode of getting back into the woods whenever they were weaker and resorted to guerrilla warfare. He continued, ‘A bunch of berry-gatherers are holding him out. Ariyan Chakravarthi needs somebody to aid him in bringing the war to an end.’

  Officially, Veera’s assignment was to cut short the war, but the purpose was to get him out of the way – perhaps, out of Sundar’s way to the throne. Perhaps they thought he would succumb to the fevers of Lanka, or die from a Sinhala arrow. In his absence, Sundar could establish himself firmly and be declared the crown prince.

  The crown prince did not just carry a fanciful epithet. He was privy to the secrets of the grand council and sat on the council of ministers. He would act as the king in times of the king’s absence or sickness. In times of peace most kings died in bed rather than on the battlefield, and a clever successor could quickly consolidate his hold whenever a king fell sick.

  Veera accepted his punishment, prostrated before the king and walked away. His steps were slow and guarded. The king looked at him walking away, and let out a deep sigh. The only alternative in front of him was a civil war. The best option for now would be to send Veera away and marry off Sunanda to Sundar. The situation would cool in Veera’s absence. He would find himself en route to a battlefront, which would keep his thoughts off the girl. In a single stroke, Kulasekharan thought he had solved the issue. The expedition was but an errand of expedience and even the exile was camouflaged as an invasion. Despite his sadness, the king could not but feel satisfied.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE TURKS ARRIVE

  Khambayat was controlled by a guild of merchants, but the Arabs controlled the guild.

  Arabs bought and sold everything in its markets – slaves, horses, bolts of muslin, teak planks, peacock feathers, perfumed oils, carved ivory, sandalwood, lemongrass and gems, but, above all, pepper, which grew so abundantly in the humid forests of the Malabar coast.

  The Arab knowledge of astronomy, as well as their understanding of the seasonal rhythm of the monsoons, allowed them to survive long-distance voyages in frail, tub-like dhows. The Arab sailor’s knowledge of the timing and direction of the winds was so advanced that port officials and merchants, using special almanacs, could predict fairly accurately the time trading ships would arrive from thousands of miles away. Throughout the Middle Ages, just as the Persians had controlled the Silk Route, the rugged Arabs with an inborn forte for trade dominated the sea trade between the Indian subcontinent and the rest of the world.

  ‘During the heyday of the frankincense trade, the spice was taken to the markets of Rome, Alexandria and Damascus. It was much in demand by buyers who burned the golden nuggets of sap in temples and coveted it as a fragrance. The last thing we wanted was to let someone else profit from this trade, so other than remaining tight-lipped about the source of the raw material, we strategically leaked bits of erroneous lore and horror stories about frankincense groves being guarded by winged serpents,’ Hassan said one day, explaining to Malik how Arabs became traders from the desert dwellers they had once been.

  Malik suppressed a laugh. The Sheikh continued, ‘We collected cinnamon with a simple hatchet off an inconsequential tree, but the story behind it was fascinating. In fact, our clients paid a premium price for the story and not the merchandise. Great giant birds, these merchants said, carried the sticks of cinnamon into the air to make their nests on inaccessible rocks, which no man was able to climb. The merchants supposedly cut up the carrion of oxen and asses that had died in their land and placed the meat near the cliffs. The birds seized the meat and flew with it to their nests, but when the nest could not support the weight of the meat, it fell to the ground, along with the cinnamon sticks.’

  Malik smiled at the Arabs’ imaginative innovation. A simple trick had given them the entire trade in aromatics on a platter. Malik could imagine camel caravans, a long chain of undulating movement, walking against the stark expanse of sandy beige hills and endless blue skies of the desert towards the Mediterranean coast.

  His master continued, ‘Arabs were also the first to figure out how to use trade winds – those gusts that blow towards India during the late summer, and then turn the other way during late winter.’ This knowledge had inadvertently fallen into the hands of the Romans when an Indian sailor was washed up on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. He was brought to Alexandria and taught how to speak Greek, so that he could explain the secrets of the winds. The Romans did what any good businessman would do – cut out the middle men.

  ‘With our exclusion from the trade, we went from being the wealthiest people on earth to nomads. We eked out a living herding goats and camels.’ Hassan became thoughtful, and added with a smile, ‘I presume the Arabs will remain nomads unless they find something precious beneath their soil.’

  Yet, some Arabs, like Hassan, still could not resist the ways of trade and sailed away to little-known lands to start their own ventures. ‘Every man subconsciously prefers to pilfer. They would rather steal from a shop, or bed another man’s wife. There is a thrill in thievery, and trading is the most honourable way after war to rob an honest man.’

  ‘Then why did you pay a thousand dinars for me? Was I worth so much?’ asked Malik.

  ‘It was a deal, unless someone deci
des to pay you more for victories in chess, which I doubt anybody would do for a thousand years,’ Hassan sniggered. ‘But I might still teach you a trick or two in trade.’

  *

  Malik was ushered into the big world of commerce by an insignificant piece of accountancy. When he entered Hassan’s study one night, the Arab was pondering over a sheet of blackened wood on which he had written small figures with a piece of chalk. Hassan asked him to total the figures for him and the speed with which Malik calculated the sum amazed the Arab.

  ‘Why don’t you come to the godown tomorrow?’ the Arab said. It was then that Hassan introduced him to the horse trade. Malik mastered the basics within a week. He learnt the tricks of the trade just by observing how his master conducted the business.

  Hassan soon began insisting on Malik staying close at all times, even in the bedchamber. They would start talking when Malik came in with a girl from the harem and would continue their dialogue deep into the night. When the girl would try to draw his attention, the Arab, hardly in an amorous mood, would nudge her away, somewhat roughly.

  While the girl would sleep without a modicum of modesty, the contours of her body clearly visible under her scanty clothing, the Arab and his slave would discuss business. Hassan seemed genuinely pleased to have a partner to participate in the discussion; it gave him the same sated feeling as an orgasm.

  Malik soon introduced subtle but strong changes in the Arab’s trading system. Hassan tacitly accepted the most ridiculous of suggestions and was not surprised when they worked out to his profit.

  As horse traders, the Arabs would sell their Arabian steeds for staggeringly high prices. The Arab horse possessed a perfect form – the broadness of the square forehead, the prominence and brilliance of the eye, the shortness of the muzzle, the width of the nostrils, the thinness of the lower jaw and the beautifully developed network of veins. The equine was a mark of regal grandeur and to be mounted on one was to be superior. A horse was also an instrument of war, capable of elevating a foot-soldier into a cavalryman. A continent in turbulence made the demand for horses insatiable.