by John Speed
Soon everyone from the temple is heading to Welhe, dancing, laughing, eager to congratulate the triumphant raiding party. When they reach the village, they gather in the courtyard of Iron’s house. Bala finds himself talking to his friend Govindas. “I’ll tell you what I think, Balaji,” Govindas says. “This is the start of something, make no mistake. This is Shivaji’s sign. He’s telling the world that he’s taking back what’s his.”
“Maybe,” Bala answers.
“I see them!” someone shouts, pointing to a hill just visible over the village’s stone walls.
When he hears the cheering, Iron straightens, a man aware of the importance of appearances, lifting his head, though it weighs a hundred pounds. “We’re all right!” Iron shouts, his face determined that it should be so. But even Bala’s smile fades when he sees Lakshman clutching his bandaged eye, the blood oozing over his fingertips. “Get a doctor,” Tanaji growls. But his voice is so hoarse, Bala can hardly hear him.
“We have no doctor,” Iron says. “Get the shastri.”
“The shastri is here, uncle,” Bala responds, jogging along beside Lakshman. “Hold on, brother, help is here. Hold on.” Bala runs back to the gates.
“I’m all right,” Lakshman says, not realizing that Bala is already gone.
Tanaji reins in his horse and waits for Shivaji to catch up. “Now I quit, Shahu. I’m done with you.” When he sees the look on Shivaji’s face, Tanaji nearly repents. But he’s been thinking and now his mind is made up. He speaks quickly before he changes it again. “I promised your dad I’d help you grow to manhood. Well, I’m done. If you can take a fort, you’re a man—that’s how it seems to me.”
“Uncle, don’t say this. Not now,” Shivaji says, and his eyes are so plaintive that Tanaji nearly reconsiders. But a look at Lakshman is all it takes to steel him.
“Look at my son. Haven’t I sacrificed enough, Shahu?” Tanaji’s voice chokes. “Time you take the consequences of your actions.”
“You are my general, my minister, my friend. I will have no other one but you, uncle. I cannot replace you. I won’t even try. I need you, uncle.”
“No more, Shahu. Look at my sons, broken and bleeding. Enough.”
Shivaji lifts his head, in a way that reminds Tanaji of General Shahji. “The day of reckoning comes, Tana. The die is cast, there is no bringing it back.”
“Not with me, Shahu. I’m done.” When Shivaji reaches out to him, Tanaji spurs his horse, to ride next to Lakshman.
“Forget it, Shahu,” Hanuman says, turning in his saddle. “He’s just upset. It’s hard on him seeing Lakshman hurt. Give him a day or two, and everything will be back to normal.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Shivaji replies. “I think he’s right. Don’t you?” And without waiting for an answer, Shivaji reins his horse briskly to the head of the line.
Hanuman looks after him, wondering: Has Father really broken their friendship with those few short words? What does that mean for me?
By the time the riders reach the crowd, the cheers have faded. Shivaji goes to the front of the line, close to Iron. “Here is your hero!” Shivaji calls. Iron struggles to smile, though it’s clear he is hurting; he raises his hand. A few voices cry out “Iron! Iron!” but mostly people simply crowd around his horse, trying to touch him, as though to offer comfort.
Some of the men from Poona, on the other hand, rush toward Lakshman. With them is Jyoti, who along with Maya has made her way from the temple. Gathering up her skirts, she runs right through the puddles, calling: “Hanuman! Hanuman!”
By the time she reaches his side, her face is wet with tears. All she sees is that he is whole. She stands near his horse, just staring. For of course, what else may she do? She is a servant, and he is a soldier. It’s not as if they are married or betrothed. She can’t even touch his hand.
So she gazes up at him. And he lifts his hand ever so slightly, moving his fingers so she might see.
They won’t let Iron walk from his horse to his house and they carry Lakshman in as well. The servants make up a bed in Iron’s small bedroom where Lakshman can be tended. Iron’s old manservant chases everyone away but the shastri and his wife. Tanaji, Hanuman, and Shivaji he allows to sit in the next room; the rest must wait outside.
Maya peers through the crowd, her arm around Jyoti. She nods as Jyoti describes Lakshman’s terrible injuries and Hanuman’s apparent good fortune, but listens all the while for word of Shivaji. She caught only a glimpse of him, riding tall on his great Bedouin, his hair flying in the morning breeze.
The sky grows dark. Thunder rumbles. Some of the people from the temple eye the sky and talk of heading back. Others wait. They want to know what happened. Maya thinks: Who can blame them? She wonders why Shivaji doesn’t come out to tell them.
The door to Iron’s house groans open. It is Amba, the shastri’s wife. “Maya!” she calls, waving her hand. Maya picks her way toward the door, aware that many eyes are looking at her. Jyoti clings to her elbow. Amba pulls her inside the house. “We know your skill in healing. Can you help?”
“Maybe,” Maya answers. “I will do what I can, auntie.” She steps into the bedroom and forgets everything else.
What takes Maya’s breath away is Lakshman, lying flat on a bedmat on the floor before her. His bandages removed, she sees his ghastly wound, and she has to turn away. Jyoti holds her arm, as if to give her strength.
The shastri sits near Lakshman’s head, dabbing slowly and gently at the twists of skin that hang from his face. His flesh, purple and swollen, has fallen away to expose a bleeding mass of muscles, veins and fat. The eyelid dents downward over the empty socket where his eye should be, the eyelashes glued shut by dark, dried blood. A trail of orange oozes from its corner. The shastri lifts his sorrowful face to Maya.
“Can’t you help, dear?” Amba whispers in her ear. Maya takes a soft cloth and a bowl of warm water from the shastri. Steeling herself, she stares directly at the injury. She begins to drench the wound, and as she does so, Lakshman lurches on the bed. His good eye opens wide, and his hand snakes around her wrist. “Kiss it and make it better?” he whispers.
“Let her go, Lakshman,” the shastri says. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Trust me: I know.” His breath comes in harsh, angry rasps.
“Get bhang,” the priest says to his wife. Instantly she vanishes from the room. Jyoti stares, uncertain of what she ought to do. At least I can keep my mistress company, she thinks. She smooths her hand along Maya’s arm. Then she slowly pries Lakshman’s fingers from Maya’s wrist.
Through it all, Maya simply stares at the floor, as though she were in pain; pain worse than Lakshman’s.
Soon Amba returns, a cup in her hands. Lakshman makes a terrible face when he drinks the warm brown cup of bhang. It smells like old leaves and earth.
With each swallow Lakshman grows a little easier. In a few minutes he closes his eyes and begins to hum; after a while, his humming stops.
“I saw something like this fixed once,” Maya explains to the shastri. She drenches the wound again and again, until no blood colors the water. Then she lifts the torn skin, gently spreading its curled edges, pushing the flaps over the tissues they used to cover, stretching the skin with gentle fingers. She probes and presses until the edges match up fairly well. Lakshman stirs beneath her touch when she does this, but he does not wake.
The shastri chants an endless Sanskrit prayer while Maya presses on the wound. Outside the sky darkens, and thunder tumbles through the stone walls of the house. Sweat drenches Maya’s sari, though she hardly moves. Beneath her touch the angry flesh, once dead, seems to glow.
When she’s done, she leans back, exhausted. The ragged edges of his skin are pink now; they nearly join in places. Amba hands Maya a hair-fine needle threaded with a single strand of silk. She passes the needle’s point through Lakshman’s wounded flesh. Then she ties an exquisite, tiny knot.
She makes a score
of tiny knots along Lakshman’s ravaged face. Amba brings a bowl of neem leaves ground with myrrh. Maya paints the greenish paste across the ragged seam of Lakshman’s wound, presses his broken face with a clean cotton cloth, and ties a bandage over his cheek.
Lastly she sighs as if steeling herself for one final, difficult encounter. She places her hands on Lakshman’s head, closes her eyes, and breathes deep, as though breathing through her hands and arms into Lakshman’s face. Her breath comes deep and strong.
When Maya lifts her hands, the shastri thinks he sees them joined by threads of light, all red and golden. “She’s a wonder,” he whispers to his wife, as Maya shuffles out with Jyoti by her side. “I thought she was a just nautch girl. I didn’t understand why Gungama chose her.”
“And do you now know, husband?” the shastri’s wife asks.
“I’ll never look at her the same way again,” he says with awe.
“That will be a relief,” his wife replies coolly.
Hanuman gets to his feet and goes to Iron’s bedroom. The shastri and his wife are picking up their things with a formal finality. A terrible fear overcomes Hanuman. He glances at his brother, and sees his face so peaceful it seems to him he must be dead. Hanuman lets out a stifled cry.
“Do you think we’d let him die?” Amba exclaims.
“That nautch girl …,” the shastri says, then corrects himself, “that devadasi, it was she who fixed your brother. I can’t imagine where she learned to do all those things she did.”
“He’s going to be well?” Hanuman asks, hardly daring to believe. The shastri nods. “And Iron?” Hanuman whispers.
“It would take more than a sword to kill that old log,” Amba snorts.
Shivaji stands when Hanuman returns, his long hair still loose over a clean white shirt. He places his hand softly on Hanuman’s shoulder. It is an unexpected gesture, formal yet intimate, the gesture of a kindly general toward an untried lieutenant. Hanuman looks into Shivaji’s dark, intense eyes.
“I need a right-hand man to help me in my work, Hanu,” Shivaji whispers.
“I’m always here to serve you, Shahu.” That last word bothers Hanuman. “Lord, I mean.”
“Have we stopped being friends, Hanu?”
“No, lord,” Hanuman answers. “But things are different.”
“And more changes are coming, Hanuman. More than you can guess.” Shivaji nods toward Lakshman on the bedmat. “You and your brother are more dear to me than life itself. Do you know that? Your brother’s task is hard, far harder than I had any notion of. The pain that he must face …” Shivaji winces as though thinking about some unnamed horror. “I feel unworthy of the honor he does me. You won’t fail me, either,” Shivaji sighs, as if he’s heard Hanuman voice some binding oath. “You have the easier path to tread, Hanu, if that’s any comfort. Or at least the shorter one.”
“What path, Shahu?” Hanuman whispers, but Shivaji does not answer.
“Come,” he says, nodding toward the verandah door and holding out his hand to Hanuman, “I must talk to these people.” As Hanuman stands beside him, Shivaji stares at him once more. “Say you’ll do whatever I ask.”
“Why, Shahu?” Hanuman asks.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I’ll do whatever you ask,” Hanuman replies simply.
Shivaji lifts his hand to Hanuman’s face. For a moment, Hanuman thinks Shivaji might slap him, but instead he pats his face with his broad, soft palm, once, twice, three times. “Good man,” he says.
As they walk to the verandah door, a thought strikes Hanuman. “Is this about that vow we made, Shahu? Years ago, at the temple?”
Shivaji grins, the old familiar grin that Hanuman remembers. “You guessed.” He nods. “Yes, Hanu. Yes.” His eyes crinkle as though with pure delight. “Don’t you think it’s time we did something about that vow?”
Hanuman grins back. “It’s way past time, Shahu.”
When Shivaji and Hanuman step outside, the waiting crowd barrages them with questions. Shivaji stands motionless as if he is listening to some far away sound. One by one people fall silent. Hanuman motions for them to sit, then he takes a seat before Shivaji. There is some shushing and hushing as people wait for Shivaji to speak.
Shivaji has told so many stories in his life that even when he simply wants to give some news, he tells it like a story. He spins the tale for them, and the crowd responds with wide eyes. He weaves the scene: the fight at the gate, the battle of arrows, Tanaji’s and Hanuman’s struggles, Iron’s courage on the stairs, Lakshman’s torture, Iron’s valor. Every one of them a hero, except Shivaji himself. When he is finished speaking, some of the men brush tears from their eyes; women weep.
Near the verandah door is an open window. Suddenly the curtain is pulled aside, and Tanaji thrusts his head out. “Very nice,” he croaks. “It wasn’t really nice, though, was it, Shahu? Why did we kill those men, men no different from ourselves? Why did we bleed? For what, Shahu?”
Shivaji gazes at the floor. “Ask him,” he says, nodding to Hanuman.
Hanuman looks shocked. “It just seemed right,” Hanuman begins, speaking directly to Shivaji, but Shivaji nods for him to face the crowd. “Why shouldn’t that fort be ours?” he continues, his voice gaining volume as he starts to speak. “Why should Iron’s village be held captive to some far-off king?”
“Queen,” Bala says.
“Queen, then,” Hanuman says. “That fort was built by Hindu hands, by the sweat of our grandfathers’ grandfathers. And up until a hundred years ago, we were ruled by Hindu kings! Kings we knew!” As Hanuman speaks, a man near him pats his knee. “Maybe our fathers lost some war. That was years ago! What about today? What about us? Must we live beneath the heel of a far-off king because our grandfathers were weak?”
“Queen,” Bala says again, and this time everyone laughs.
“It’s your father’s fault, Shahu!” Tanaji says from the window when the laughter falls away. “It wasn’t our fathers that lost that fort. It was your father! It is Shahji that’s the villain!”
“Shahji was no villain,” one of the Poona riders says. Some people nod and agree, others seem to wonder. Shivaji says nothing.
“Let me tell you about Shahji,” Bala says. People are surprised to see that Bala is not smiling now. “My father fought with Shahji. Lots of our fathers did.” Bala looks at Shivaji. “Of all of us here, who got the worst deal when Shahji surrendered? Shivaji did. Shivaji might have been a king today. Do you blame him, Shahu? Do you call him villain?”
Shivaji says nothing.
“No,” says Bala. “And why should you condemn him? After all, Shahji tried, didn’t he? He took back the land … the forts our grandfathers built, this home we called our own for countless generations! He failed. But at least he tried!” Bala looks around him: few of the people here have heard him speak this way. “That fort up there, where the saffron flag now flies, that fort is ours! And so it should be! That was Shahji’s bargain: the forts to be returned when Shivaji came of age.”
Anger begins to show on people’s faces, the bruises of old insults.
“I knew I might get hurt,” Hanuman says above the murmurs of the crowd. “I knew I might die. I’m sick of being some queen’s hostage, paying some queen’s taxes. Sure we got hurt, but look up there!” The saffron flag flutters on the hill far above them. “Shivaji went up, same as us. He was the first to bleed! Show them your arm, Shahu! Shot through the arm! Pinned to the wall!”
“He didn’t bleed as much as Lakshman,” Tanaji growls.
“You were ready to die, father, and for us to die beside you,” Hanuman replies. “You chose us to go. You hate your choice now? Fine. I stand by my decision. Lakshman, I do not doubt, will stand by his as well.”
“Tell us what’s next, Shahu,” Balaji speaks up, sensing that the crowd now is ready to listen to a leader.
“Tell us, Shahu,” Hanuman whispers. “Tell us,” many voices ask.
“We’re
going to take back what’s ours,” Shivaji says quietly.
Eyes dart from side to side, faces turn frowning, waiting for him to speak again. But Shivaji holds his silence. Then, one by one the people seem to reconsider what he said. “Take back what is ours!” a voice shouts. “Take back what’s ours!” others call. Then cheers erupt, and clapping, and thumping as hands strike the wooden floor, as the crowd at last realizes that a line of battle has indeed been drawn, and Shivaji has drawn it.
Then as the shouts subside, eyes turn to Shivaji, eyes bright now, full of fire. “Who’s with me?” Shivaji says.
Across the verandah, people cheer again, getting to their feet. “Shivaji ki jai!” Bala’s voice rings out.
“Shivaji ki jai!” Victory to Shivaji, everyone shouts. “Shivaji ki jai!”
Soon the crowd is chanting, bouncing on their feet, dancing in place. Shivaji walks among them as they shout, pressing each man’s hand, looking deep into each face. “Har, har mahadev!” Even the shastri and his wife are shouting, holding on to one another’s hands, dancing. Then Shivaji takes Jyoti’s hand, and presses it, and then Maya’s, who looks at him with tearful eyes.
“It’s over now,” she says.
“It’s just beginning,” he replies above the din. Even when he shuts the door, the chant goes on and on: Har, har mahadev!
“You’ll be in charge,” Shivaji says to Hanuman. “Take twenty men and occupy the fort. Pick five men to march the Bijapuri prisoners back to Bijapur. Put Govindas in charge of the escort. No injuries are to befall them.”
“Yes, lord,” Hanuman replies. It seems right to say this, now.
“Prepare an inventory. Guns, gold, anything of value. Send it to me as soon as possible.”
“Yes, lord. The horses?”
“Keep them here for now. Send the prisoners back on foot.
