The Rise of Hastinapur

by Sharath Komarraju

  FOUR

  Upon Gandhari and Shakuni’s approach to the front door of the vault, the guards, who had been leaning on their spears, sprang to attention and clicked their knees together. Satyapala waved to the soldiers with his seal on his palm, and behind them, Gandhari held up her ring and Shakuni his bracelet. The guards stayed unmoved.

  Once inside, Shakuni asked, ‘You have so much gold and only two guards guarding it?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Satyapala, laughing. ‘The people of Gandhar are good people, sire. There are very few thieves in the kingdom.’

  Shakuni looked at Gandhari, and she immediately understood what he meant. If there were few thieves in the kingdom, what need was there of these vaults?

  Satyapala slid behind a large table and dragged toward himself a book whose leaves crackled as he thumbed through it. On it were numbers and figures of coins. Gandhari narrowed her eyes so that she could see better in the light of the candle. But she was reading it upside down, so after a while she gave up. Shakuni, on the other hand, had gone over to Satyapala’s side and was peering over his shoulder.

  ‘Ah, yes, here we are. My lady, if you please.’ He turned the book around and pointed at the last row of words on the page. ‘The current amount of gold in this vault is seven thousand coins, and the current number of copper coins issued on their behalf, as you will see here, is the same: seven thousand.’

  Shakuni muttered, ‘You could make words on a page say anything you wish.’

  Satyapala laughed good-naturedly. ‘That is true indeed, sire. Shall we go then to inspect the vault?’

  He picked up a bunch of shiny metal rods hanging off a nail on the wall. Adjusting his turban with one hand and depositing the rods into his pocket, he gestured to them and ambled in through an inner door. ‘We keep the vault locked inside three doors, the keys to which are always with me and only me. Please mind your head, my lady, the ceiling of this building hangs rather low.’ He reached for one of his rods and applied it to the hole of the door that faced them. After a little tinkering and groaning, the latch opened with a snap and it creaked open. Satyapala pushed it with his arm and waved them in.

  ‘After you,’ said Shakuni suspiciously.

  Shrugging, the vault-keeper entered with the fire and lighted two fire-stands to his right, bathing the room in dull orange light. ‘You must forgive my enthusiasm, my lord, my lady,’ he said. ‘No one ever comes here wishing to examine their gold. You are the first visitors the vault has had in four years.’

  By the time Shakuni entered and opened the door for Gandhari, Satyapala had already lit two more fires in the room. ‘My lord and lady,’ he said, ‘see how carefully we store the gold that belongs to the people of Gandhar.’

  Gandhari turned, and in the dim glow of the fire she saw sturdy, black shelves stacked upon one another, and in each one she saw a black silk sack tied at the mouth with a yellow rope. Satyapala stepped over and retrieved the one in the first compartment. The contents jingled when he moved it, and when he placed it in her palm and untied the knot, she saw a gleam that left no more doubt in her mind.

  It was gold.

  Shakuni drew a quick breath and slunk back against the wall. For a moment Gandhari saw his face darken against the dancing light of the torch he carried, and a pall came over his eyes as he regarded the sack in her hand. She held it out to him, hoping to push him back further, and he began to step away, but something caught his eye and he looked at Satyapala. Then his eyes sprang to life, and he lunged forward and grabbed the vault-keeper by the arm.

  ‘Which is the closest vault to this?’

  ‘The closest vault, sire? You wish to inspect another vault?’

  ‘Not I, Satyapala, you shall come with us. Tell us where it is, by the gods, or I shall slit your throat right here!’

  ‘Enough, Shakuni!’ said Gandhari stepping forward and letting the sack of coins drop to the dusty ground. ‘You shall not manhandle any of my men, and you shall not threaten a man who has proven you wrong quite emphatically.’

  Shakuni did not seem to hear her. His vicious gaze was set upon Satyapala, whose knees had given way and was now kneeling against the prince, hands joined, forehead and cheeks bathed in sweat. ‘It is by the north-eastern wall, my lord,’ he stammered, ‘by the statue of Idobhargava.’

  Shakuni let him slump down to the ground and hopped off. ‘We shall go there immediately and inspect the vaults there.’

  ‘What if they too are full of gold?’ asked Gandhari.

  ‘Then we shall inspect every vault in the city!’ Shakuni turned and pointed the sword at Satyapala’s throat. ‘Lock the door securely and come with us. Not a word comes out of you, man, or you shall see how sharp the blade of my sword is.’

  Satyapala joined his hands once again, and glanced at Gandhari as he spoke. ‘Lock just this door, sire? What about the ones inside?’

  ‘Just this one for now. Time presses. Let us leave. You shall tell the charioteer only the directions to the place and nothing more.’

  ‘Y-yes, my lord.’

  The man jogged to the front door, pulled it shut, locked it and threw the bunch of keys into his knapsack. On their way out the guards snapped up to their feet again and saluted. They reached the chariot and Shakuni knocked three times against the edge of the carriage. A scrambling sound came from inside, and the door opened. The charioteer came out, mumbling and putting on his turban. He made the seats with two or three slaps of his wrists, and jumped out, bowing to the queen and prince. He pointed to the open door. ‘Where shall we go, Your Majesty?’ he asked.

  Satyapala replied, ‘To the north-eastern wall, Idobhargava’s statue.’

  They seated Satyapala in the same seat, but Gandhari and Shakuni exchanged theirs. Shakuni kept his sword drawn, and every now and then he would run his thumb along its edge, looking up to make sure that Satyapala was watching. He tapped his bad leg incessantly against the floor of the carriage, in tune to the sound of the horses’ hooves. He shook his head at her.

  ‘Foolish that we are, we told him last night that we would come here this morning. It gave him the whole morning to prepare his vault.’ He turned to Satyapala. ‘How did you send the message to your goons, eh? Do you have a little carrier pigeon that flies for you?’

  Satyapala pushed himself into the corner, as far as he could get away from the sword. ‘Please do not kill me, I have a wife and a daughter who is six months old.’

  Gandhari said, ‘Do not fear, Satyapala. He shall not kill you. You have my word.’

  Shakuni moved closer to the vault-keeper. ‘She has given you her word, but do remember that hers is not the hand that holds the sword. If we do not see the gold in your other vaults, I promise you that her word shall be of no use to you.’

  ‘Hastinapur will not be pleased with the way you are treating me,’ said Satyapala ‘It is written in the treaty that Her Majesty should give vault-keepers at least a week’s notice before conducting an inspection of this nature.’

  ‘Ah, now we begin speaking of rules, do we?’ Shakuni said. ‘The gold belongs to us, Satyapala. Do you understand? It is our gold. Why shall we seek your permission to see our gold?’

  ‘Because our vaults hold it, and we take care of it. It is all in the treaty.’ He looked beseechingly at Gandhari, as though pleading with her to make Shakuni take away the sword that he was pointing at him.‘This … this is quite irregular, all of this, this sudden inspection, and this sudden threat to my life …’

  ‘Irregular, you say?’

  ‘Quite.’ He adjusted his turban with trembling hands. ‘If I complain to the authorities at Hastinapur, they shall be most displeased. If anything were to happen to me …’

  ‘You shall complain.’

  ‘I … I shall … if you use that sword!’

  Shakuni scratched himself on his cheek and shook his head. With a smile, he said, ‘If I use this sword, my man, you shall not be able to complain to anyone. I shall cut you into pieces and feed you to the dogs t
hat sleep at the foot of Idobhargava’s statue. Whom will you complain to, then?’

  ‘Enough, Shakuni!’ Gandhari said. ‘I shall not let him kill you, Satyapala, but you shall do well to learn what not to say when staring at the tip of a sword. If you sit in the corner with your tail hidden between your legs, I shall see to it that my brother does not hurt you.’

  Shakuni laughed. Satyapala raised his knees and hugged them tight. His turban bent to one side and revealed balding scalp. To his immense relief, Shakuni now returned his sword into its sheath. He moved to the other corner of the carriage and folded his hands. His bad leg went over the other. He had none of the panache that a king ought to have, none of the elegance. He did not have the ability to fight wars and win them, everyone could see that, but if only he could compensate for that loss by other gifts. Would the people of Gandhar ever unite behind this man?

  He picked his teeth with his fingernail and examined it for a moment before flicking it away.

  Most decidedly not, she thought.

  The statue of Idobhargava had been erected twenty years back, soon after the death of the general. He had died an old, frail man, and people who saw him in his last days spoke of how he had shrunken to half his size, how his voice had become a hoarse whisper, how his teeth had all fallen off and how his skin had become hard and spotty, like that of a garden lizard. But the statue that went up after his death was a younger Idobhargava, the one that led Gandhar’s army to victory at the battle of Kamyaka. Though he had been a spearman, he brandished a sword here, and though he had often ridden elephants, here he sat atop a horse with a luscious mane, in full gallop.

  The chariot’s horses neighed in protest, the whip lashed, and the carriage ground to a halt. The guards at the main gate cautiously set their spears to stop them from entering, but in their faces she could see uncertainty. They looked at her cloak, at his tunic, at their shoes, and their arms faltered a little. When Gandhari held out her hand so that they could see her ring, they fell to their knees, laid their spears down, and pressed their palms to their chest.

  With a nod they entered, and at the main table sat a man dressed much like Satyapala, except this man was taller and thinner. He looked up from his book as they walked in and got up to his feet. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he said. ‘Guards!’

  Shakuni displayed his seal. The man looked at it, but his manner did not change. ‘You cannot come in here no matter who you are, sir.’ He peeked around them at the just entering figure of Satyapala. ‘Why have you brought them here, vault-keeper?’

  ‘They … wish to inspect the gold you have in your vault.’

  ‘That, I am afraid, is quite, quite impossible.’

  Shakuni reached for his sword and drew it half-way. ‘I should say it is quite possible if you have the keys to the door.’

  ‘It is quite, quite irregular, this … this … attack on the vault.’

  ‘That word, sir,’ said Shakuni with bared teeth, turning to Satyapala, ‘is beginning to grate.’

  Gandhari clapped her hands twice, and it brought the guards into the room. They stood with their spears held to their sides, their heads bowed. ‘If you do not obey us, vault-keeper, I am afraid these guards will hold you down while we get to work.’

  ‘This … this is an outrage!’ said the man, standing up on tiptoe. Gandhari looked up at him. He was quite easily a foot taller than she was, but he looked weak, as though a strong breeze would blow him away. ‘If I were to complain to the authorities in Hastinapur about this …’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Shakuni, stepping up to the table, ‘that they will be very displeased.’

  ‘Yes … yes indeed!’

  ‘Then let them be, for god’s sake!’ He turned to the guards. ‘Hold these two men in custody until we return.’ Turning to the vault-keeper, he said, ‘Give me your keys.’ When the man did not reply, Shakuni said, ‘Give me your keys or I will strip you off all clothes and get them anyway.’ The man then saw reason.

  Snatching a torch from the wall, Shakuni led her first through the dusty low-hanging room, then the room full of brass collectibles, and then finally into the room with the gold. It was built exactly as the other one, with shelves on the right holding heavy black sacks tied at the mouth with yellow ropes. Shakuni lit the two fires in the room, and went closer to the shelves, picking up one sack and examining its weight on his palm.

  ‘Well?’ asked Gandhari, though the jingle that came to her sounded nothing like gold.

  Shakuni gave the torch to her to hold, and opening the knot and tossing the rope away, reached into the sack and brought out a handful of coins. She bent in, so that she could see them better in the feeble light. They were black, these coins, and they left dark spots on Shakuni’s hands where he touched them.

  ‘This is not gold,’ said Shakuni, looking into her eyes. ‘This is copper.’

  FIVE

  White morning light entered through the open eastern windows, and threw on the opposite wall shadows of the insect screens. Gandhari looked back over her shoulders and instructed one of her waiting-girls to raise them. As much as she liked them during the rains, keeping them drawn on days like this made her feel as though she were imprisoned.

  Shakuni followed her into the room.The door closed behind them, and taking the edge of her cloak in her hands, she walked to her seat – the same one on which she had met the ministers the night before – and dusted it with her bare hands before sitting down. A wave of the hand brought an attendant bearing apples and two pitchers of milk; another wave and he was gone, out of sight. Shakuni paced the room with his arms tucked behind his back. Gandhari waited for him to wear himself out. Speaking to him when he was this angry would be unfruitful.

  He had been right, about everything. They had not inspected the other vaults in the city, and she had sent soldiers off to do so as soon as they had arrived at the palace, but that was mere formality. She knew that they would find nothing but copper in all of them. Only the main vault had kept the required amount of gold; they would have known that an investigation could occur at any time, and this had been their contingency. If Shakuni’s suspicions had not been deep enough, they would never have set out in search of the other vault, by the foot of Idbhargava’s statue.

  They had dared to loot them under his very gaze. She tried to think what he would do if he had been the person to uncover this. Would he summon his elephant and call for battle straight away? But this time it would be different. Gandhar could not be content with defending herself; now she had to go forth and retrieve her gold.

  How much of it had there been? Each vault would hold eight thousand tulas at the least, and there were seven such vaults. That meant – that meant all the gold that Gandhar had ever mined. Sure, there were a few hundreds, perhaps a thousand, tulas in the royal treasury, but that counted for nothing compared to the amount that was missing. How had they taken it all without the guards ever suspecting? What was now left of Gandhar? Devapi’s voice rang in her ear, and he was saying that the citizens of Gandhar were getting richer and richer; yes, perhaps they were, if wealth were measured in copper coins.

  Sure enough, Shakuni came to his chair and sat down. He buried his fingers in his hair and stared at the floor. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘When do we announce the imprisonment and execution of all the vault-keepers?’

  ‘You are certain, then, that we must hang them all?’

  Shakuni slapped his thigh. ‘By the gods! I shall not like it if we hang them. I shall have them whipped to death. Their cries must travel all the way to Hastinapur, and they must bring their king running to us.’

  ‘He does come running to us. Then what do we do?’

  ‘Then we fight him, and we take back our gold!’

  ‘Do you suppose he shall just hand it to us if we ask for it nicely?’

  ‘He will not. He will fight for it, as he should. We do not have any time to think, sister – we must act!’

 
‘For you, to act means just one thing, Shakuni, and that is to draw your sword and go threatening people that you will slit their throats. Now vault-keepers may fear you and that thing you wear around your waist, but real warriors will not.’ She set aside her glass of milk on the table and felt anger rush through her, in waves. ‘What has Gandhar got, now? Do we have an army big enough to fight Hastinapur? Do we have the means to raise an army?’

  ‘We still have the mine.’

  ‘A mine that produces seven hundred tulas of gold in a year. Hastinapur has taken a hundred times that from us in the last twenty years.’

  Shakuni slipped forward in his seat and looked at her. ‘We have beaten them once, my lady. We can beat them again.’

  ‘What do you think Hastinapur has been doing with our gold these last twenty years, Shakuni? Do you believe their army is the same size as it was all those years ago, when Idobhargava met them on Kamyaka’s wetlands?’ His face fell, and she softened against her wishes. After all, it was he who uncovered this. ‘I do not wish to yell at you, brother, but today we do not have the means to fight Hastinapur and win.’

  His eyes flashed defiance. ‘We shall not know until we try.’

  Gandhari kept her voice soft. ‘But what will it do to our own people, Shakuni? If we are to hang the vault-keepers in the town hall, what do you think will happen to the people of Gandhar? They will all wonder where their gold went. They will all wish to see their gold, like we did, and what will happen when we tell them that their gold is all lost?’

  He did not say anything, but she saw a glimmer of understanding in his eyes.

  ‘They will turn against us, my boy,’ she said. ‘They will come and set fire to the palace. They will loot our treasury, and each man will kill his neighbour for his share of the gold. And what do you think will happen when it is all done? Hastinapur will march right into our city and set up their throne in the palace. They will not even have to fight. Do you not see that?’