The Rise of Hastinapur
Page 15
For one whole month after my conversation with Durvasa, we set about plotting our way in. Every day we would ride down the Yamuna and look at the donkeys and their keepers. Sage Durvasa had a staff that looked like a bamboo shoot which, if you looked through it, made the riverbank appear as though it were at arm’s reach. (When I asked him about it, he said it was just a trick of the light; he would say no more.) Using his looking-tube we would try and locate any guards that may be concealed by the bushes.
After two weeks of watching, we sailed across the river and landed on the other shore so that we could watch the tradesmen from closer. The donkeys appeared weary, and Sage Durvasa said that from the way the sacks hung off the animals’ backs, it appeared to be foodgrain of some sort. A few tradesmen mounted their wares on little carts pulled by oxen. Once in a while, Durvasa asked me to stay back in the bushes so that he could go and strike up a conversation with one of the men, and at times he would be gone such a long time that I would make myself a pillow out of his linen sack and go to sleep, especially if it was a night on which the breeze was soothing.
So it was a month to the day, on the third night of the moon’s waning cycle, about four weeks to go for midwinter, when Sage Durvasa said to me what I’d been waiting to hear: the day had arrived for us to go to Mathura in search of Devaki and Vasudev.
SIX
Devaki looked at the forlorn figure of Vasudev slouched over his gold-cushioned chair. She set aside the linen and sewing needle on the bed and motioned to the guard for a tumbler of water. Her brother had been right; but for the restrains on their freedom, he had looked after them well. She did not find this altogether different to the way she had always lived her life; once the prison was the size of her chambers, now it was the size of one room. In a way she even liked it here because her husband was by her side always, and she could speak to him whenever she wanted. During their courtship, there had been an occasional letter or an elaborate visit during which Vasudev would come to her castle for an hour or two during the day. Even now, after they were wedded, if they had gone back to Shurasena, he would have no more time for her than perhaps a few days a month.
But now was different. Yes, Vasudev brooded a lot, mostly about why the armies of Shurasena and Kunti were taking so long to mount a rescue. The first few days he had raged against the guards, as though they had anything to do with their plight. ‘Mathura will be razed to the ground,’ he had declared on the first day. ‘My father and uncle will descend with their armies when they find out how you have treated me, and you and your families will be destroyed.’
The guards had responded to that with stoic silence, and like self-inverting hourglasses, they would come at the same time everyday to enquire about their needs, about whether they could do anything to make their lives more comfortable. In the early days Vasudev would say sarcastically that they could give them the key to the door, but they would shake their heads and say, ‘We cannot do that, Your Majesty.’
As more and more days went by without word from across the river, Vasudev’s excitement rose to fever pitch. ‘They are assembling their troops, Devaki,’ he would tell her. ‘They shall be here for us any day now. I can feel it!’ And she would say mildly, ‘I am certain they are, my lord,’ and get back to sewing another green flower onto the satin hood. But in her mind she had always known that Shurasena and Kunti would not come; Mathura had her temples to protect her, and she also had the might of Magadha to fall upon, just in case. In her castle she would often hear the young maidens speak with wide-eyed enthusiasm about the priests in the temples, and how they empowered Mathura’s boats to glide over the river on their own, without needing oarsmen.
Now she folded her arms and sighed. In the last forty days she had seen her husband’s spirit slip away, inch by inch, and today he seemed to have reached a new low. Perhaps he had begun to see now what she had known all along; that they would do better to plead Kamsa’s forgiveness and beg for his mercy than to hope for a rescue mission from across the Yamuna.
But why would Kamsa relent, she thought, gazing at the blue figures of children that she had sewn on the white tunic a few days ago. The faces of the children were her biggest hope. She was certain that Kamsa’s heart would not melt at the sight of Devaki and Vasudev. If they had any hope of softening her brother, they would have to have children; and they would have to hope that the sight of a fresh-faced babe would make Kamsa see the folly of his ways.
Otherwise how long could they go on like this, she sewing and he moping about in his chair? And what was the worst that Kamsa would do if they had children in this prison? He would not kill them, would he? Her brother would not stoop so low as to lay a hand on a newborn infant. He would probably send him away to a far-off land for fostering, perhaps to a kingdom beyond the Southern Mountains, from where he could be certain the child would not return.
She had spoken to Vasudev about this before, and he had flatly refused. But then that had been during their first week here, when hope still flickered in his heart. Now it appeared to have extinguished itself. ‘Two Great Kingdoms, my lady,’ he said,‘and in unison they cannot rescue their own prince.’
‘Perhaps it is as you say,’ Devaki said. ‘Perhaps they have sent envoys all across North Country, enlisting help.’
Vasudev snorted and ran a hand on his chin. ‘It is time we faced it, Devaki,’ he said. ‘They are not coming for us. Cowards, all of them!’
Devaki did not say anything. She had learnt from experience with her brother that there were certain things that men said to which a woman must only respond with silence. She motioned to the guard to take away the linen and light the lamps. She looked out of the window (fastened with inch-thick metal rods) and saw that the sun had just set, and a faint shade of grey had begun to take over the sky.
‘If they wanted to come, they would have by now,’ he said, and she ached for him once more. It must not be easy for a king of his stature to know that his subjects would not risk their lives to save his. Loss of pride for a man and loss of shame for a woman were worse than death, she had once heard.
‘Perhaps,’ she said,‘there is only thing that we can do which could give us our freedom.’
‘Promise your brother that we shall not have kids?’
‘No, my lord, if we are to remain childless, what good would all the freedom in the world do us?’
‘Hmm.’
‘The only way out is for us to have a child here, my lord.In this prison. Perhaps, when he holds his nephew in his hands and sees how small he is, my brother’s heart will melt.’
The last time she had said this, he had flared up as though she had uttered something blasphemous, so now she was glad that he was at least considering it. The patch of sky visible through the window had turned black now, and she saw three or four stars just beginning to twinkle. Without so much as a glance at her,Vasudev strode to the front door and drew the shutter on the glass window through which the guards could see them.
He smiled at her as she settled down on the bed. This was the first smile she had seen on his face for a month. She smiled back.
Pritha fingered her forearm and winced, less from actual pain than from the memory of it. The night was cold and quiet, and because they were outside Mathura’s walls they had not yet come upon any hostile boats. Every now and then a fishing boat from a stray settlement would pass them by, and they would stare at them with fear, but then Durvasa would wave cheerfully and they would smile back. The lamps they carried had a yellow sparkly glow to them, and when they held it in front of their faces they looked like beings from another world. When they smiled, their broken teeth glowed with a brown light, and Pritha thought that if Durvasa had not been with her, they would have bundled her up into their ferry and taken her away.
She felt her forearm again. It had been two weeks ago now that Durvasa had branded her, and for four nights after she had not slept a wink. The medicine that he had given her seemed to work better on his skin than hers, and only afte
r the seventh night did the pus stop oozing out of the seared flesh. Durvasa’s wound had healed in a day; the night after he had branded himself, she had seen that the circle and star had already become black and dry.
His foot nudged hers, and though she pulled it away, she could not help but smile at the river, and from the corner of her eye she saw his mouth curve upward in a half-grin. It had not been easy these last thirty days to resist his charms, and once or twice she had succumbed and allowed him to touch her underneath her upper garment, and she had run her fingers over his bare chest and played with his nipples, but each time her sense had prevailed, and she had warded him off before they could go far enough. (Not far enough, too far, she reminded herself.)
But on numerous occasions his hands would find hers when no one was looking, and she would allow him to hold them. His palms felt oily and smooth, and the way he squeezed his fingers and pressed them over hers awakened every cell within her body, and she would pine for more. During dinner with her father he would seek out her foot with his under the table, and he would slide his toe up her calf. Once or twice she resisted, but on the third time she responded, and on the fourth and fifth she reached for him first.
And he would whisper such delightful things in her ear in that hoarse voice. ‘Your hands take me to the very abode of the gods, my lady,’ he would say. ‘I know not what shall happen when our bodies come together.’ The first few times she had only gulped and blushed, but soon she would find things to say, even if they were mere moans of approval.
The sound of the river brought her back, and with it she remembered Agnayi’s warning. She had not been happy at all with Pritha’s trysts with the sage, but what could she do? She was trying her best to resist. At least Pritha had had the good sense to stay true to her word and not sleep with him. No other man she had ever seen had controlled her this way, and even now, when she looked at him in the darkness, it appeared as though a golden light shone through from within his head.
‘I had always been told that Sage Durvasa would be an old man,’ she said. ‘I had thought that I would have to seduce him against his will.’
He bent his head and chuckled. ‘The land in the North is full of Mysteries, my dear. The Durvasa before me was indeed old, but the old must always make way for the young and the new. That is the way of the world.’
‘But what of all that he knows, my sage? He must have seen a lot, and he must have been wise.’
‘He was,’ said Durvasa, nodding. ‘Each sage, at the end of his life, gives his knowledge and memories to his successor. So I have in my brain all the knowledge that he has gathered, and I have all his memories.’
‘Is that a Mystery, then? Will you teach me how one can give his life to someone else?’
Durvasa laughed. ‘It does not come as easy as that, my lady. One must be worthy of it. One needs to train to become a sage.’ He looked behind over his shoulder to mark the path. Turning back to her, he said, ‘And it is not as charming as you think, Pritha. It is quite burdensome to remember incidents from ten lifetimes. Sometimes, I wish I could live as you do, unfettered and free.’
They rowed in silence for a time, the only sounds coming from the whoosh of their oars and the slosh of the water. There was no moon in the sky, Pritha noticed, and on a quick reckoning on her fingers she frowned, for it should have been the thirteenth night on the waxing cycle, two nights before the full moon. And yet–
‘The moon is present,’ said Durvasa. ‘I just covered her up with a patch of sky so that people will not see us.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘They teach us little tricks, and this trick is truly little when you set it aside the Mysteries. But do not concern yourself with all this, my lady. Your life shall be a lot more pleasant without them, I promise you.’
They neared the bank, and they worked the opposite oars so that the boat aligned itself against the grassy shore. Durvasa drove his oar into the earth with a mighty heave and held it. Pritha also did the same, and the boat steadied. Getting to her feet, she jumped onto dry land. Durvasa threw her the rope and pointed at a nearby tree. Pritha went around it twice with her arms and secured it with a double knot.
‘Good,’ said Durvasa, climbing out. Panting a little, he went up to the knot and confirmed its tightness. Letting his sack drop to the ground, he kneeled down and opened it. He gave Pritha a necklace made of seashells and a silver coronet. ‘Wear this,’ he said, and proceeded to smear himself with grey ash. ‘If you put some of this on your body, you shall look just like the wife of a trader from Magadha.’
‘Wife?’
‘Fine. Sister, if you like that better.’
Pritha took the garments in the sack and went behind a tree to change into a gown and a knapsack. She tied her hair in two small buns, the way Durvasa had asked her to, and put the coronet on her head. Wearing the necklace she came out, to see the sage look grey-haired and wrinkled, with ash dropping off his arms and legs. He raised his eyebrows at her and said, ‘Your beauty is such that you cannot hide it with such adornments, my lady. Even in the clothes of a pauper you look like a queen.’
‘I wish I could say the same about you, my lord,’ she said, stepping out and tossing her clothes into the boat. ‘But you do look like a beggar!’
He laughed at that, but in a moment his eyes moved away, and he frowned. ‘I hear the song of the traders, and animals approaching.’ He came to her and took her hand. ‘We do not have much distance to cover, my dear, but I think we shall do well to run so that we may not miss the caravan.’
With that, they set off into the darkness.
SEVEN
They came upon a thirty-foot marble arch, on the centre of which was mounted a serrated disc of gold. On the face of it was written a single line of Sanskrit: ‘Fire moves water’. Pritha looked down from the disc at Durvasa’s face, who inclined his head to the side. The trader ahead of them got asked a few questions, and now the guards were rummaging through the sacks on his donkey. Every now and then the animal would bray questioningly when prodded in the side with the tip of a spear. Pritha noticed that the guards here wore the same red armour that she had seen on the people of the war barges on the Yamuna. One trader passed through the gate, and the queue inched ahead.
Fires burnt on either side of the entrance, and whenever a breeze blew the flame flickered, sending shadows over the taut, wooden faces of the guards. When they spoke, it seemed to Pritha that only their mouths moved, and their voices were all gruff and rude. Her hand was nestled in Durvasa’s, and when she turned to him to say something she saw him staring up at the golden plate and the strange words. She looked at his eyes – two blue marbles – and wondered at where the man had taken his birth. Blue-eyed men, she had been told, came from the kingdoms further north from even the mountains of ice. She would have to ask Durvasa once about his homeland.
When they arrived at the gate Pritha became aware of a pungent smell of burning oil. She assumed it came from the fires surrounding them. The guard put his arm out and raised his eyebrows at them.
‘We come from Magadha,’ said Durvasa. ‘I am a trader, and this is my sister.’
‘Show me your arms,’ the guard said.
Both Durvasa and Pritha showed their arms. The guard peered at Pritha’s mark, rubbing it hard with his thumb and then examining it in the light of the fire. He then looked at her from head to toe, frowning. ‘You do not look like a Magadhan trader girl,’ he said. ‘Even your clothes do not look Magadhan.’ He turned to Durvasa. ‘Have you something else from Magadha?’
Durvasa said, ‘Sir, we have come from far away, please let us pass. This girl goes by the name Uddalaka in Magadha.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She is quite an important person in the court of High King Jarasandha.’ Then he cleared his throat. ‘His Majesty would not be pleased if he knew that Uddalaka was not allowed to enter Mathura.’
The guard’s stony face did not yield. He repeated: ‘Do you carry the seal of High King Jarasandha?’
The guard’s eyes widened when they fell on the stones, and he beckoned his partner over to see. ‘My, oh my,’ he said, smacking his lips. He raised his hand and attempted to touch the stones, but Durvasa closed his fist and withdrew it just in time.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we came all the way here in the hope that Lord Kamsa would buy these stones from us. We know he is a lover of all things beautiful, is he not?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the guard uneasily, shifting on his feet.
‘Besides, these stones are said to be touched by the magic hands of Indra himself, the lord of rain and water, and they are said to have been forged in the quarry of Agni, the lord of fire. A sage from Meru once gave these to my grandfather, and it was passed down to me through my father.’
Behind them Pritha became aware of a clamour, and people crowded around them, jostling and peeping over one another at Durvasa’s clenched fist. ‘Show them to us!’ someone said. But Durvasa waited for the sounds to die down and then said, ‘High King Jarasandha said that these stones will bless Mathura so that her defences will never break, and she will rule the Yamuna for as long as the river flows in the lands of men.’
His voice had taken on a strange, echoing quality now, noticed Pritha, as though he were speaking from deep within a heavy fog. A hush fell around them, and when he opened his palm to expose the red stones to the fire again, holding them just at the right angle so that they would catch and reflect the light, everyone sighed at once. The guards, once again, leaned forward and pursed their lips in indecision.