PRINCE IN EXILE (30 page)

‘Of course I do,’ he said softly. ‘That’s the reason why I don’t want you to suffer alone.’ 

This time her cry was more heart-rending than before. He felt its impact sear into the pores of his skin, like liquid metal seeping in. It freed him of the spell of numbness and detachment, breaking through to the core of his own anguish and anger. The dam burst, and his emotions flooded his mind in a white-hot wave. 

He gripped her tightly in his arms and swung her to the side. She gasped as he pressed her down on the bed, kneeling beside her, feeling the heat in his own eyes now, the constriction in his own throat. 

‘Then what do you want of me?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you understand? I have to do this! Accept it and get on with your life, Sita Janaki! There’s nothing more I can say or do for you. Do you understand? I must go into exile! This is my fate. It cannot be undone no matter what you say or do,’ his voice broke, ‘or what we feel and share with each other, no matter how extraordinary that feeling happens to be.’ 

They stared at each other, breathing harshly. After an instant, he realised that the rhythm of their breath was perfectly matched. He clambered down from the bed and regained his feet, careful to keep his back to her. He feared that if he looked at her face, he would not be able to do what he now must do. It was time. 

‘Rama,’ she said. There was no pleading or cry in her voice. She only said it with love, more tenderly than he had ever heard his name said before, except by his mother. 

Don’t turn. Just walk to the door, open it, and keep walking. Don’t look back. If you look back, you will be lost for ever. 

But she didn’t repeat his name. Only said it that once, and then fell silent. He heard the sound of her payals and jewellery clinking and tinkling as she rose from the bed and stood behind him, but she didn’t speak his name again. As if she knew that no amount of crying and wailing could persuade him to turn now that his mind was made up, now that his foot was set upon the path of dharma. She said his name that one time, and waited. And in the end, it was that perfect faith, that blind belief, that made him turn. For how could he ignore she who loved him dearly enough to respect his wishes and let him go, even though it meant the certain destruction of everything she had hoped for and aspired to? How could he just walk away from a soulmate so perfect that her very sorrow harmonised with the pain he himself carried in his own breast like a dying broken-winged sparrow? 

He turned. And found her tearless and calm once more. She raised her arms to him, asking, not pleading. 

‘Then let me go with you,’ she said. 

TWO 

The kosaghar doors stood open by the time Kausalya and the rest of the party arrived. The two guards on duty saluted Pradhan-mantri Sumantra, Guru Vashishta and the two queens but barred their way. Sumantra was rapidly approaching his endurance limit. 

‘We have urgent business with the Second Queen, soldiers. Move aside and let us pass.’ 

The two Kaikeyans, part of the Second Queen’s personal rani-rakshak regiment, looked at each other nervously. They both had the trademark curling moustaches of the western kingdom, shined to perfection by the daily application of clarified butter. ‘Rani Kaikeyi has left the kosaghar,’ one of them said. ‘She has gone to the sabha hall, we believe. Before she left she sent couriers to the houses of the ministers, calling for a special plenary session of the council.’ 

Sumantra stared at them, flabbergasted. ‘
She
has called a session? Have you two been sipping soma on duty?’ 

They looked at each other again, unhappily, as if coming to a harsh decision. Then, with one movement, both men prostrated themselves before the prime minister. ‘Great one, we beg to be relieved of our duties as Rani Kaikeyi’s bodyguards. Pray, grant us sanctuary in the ranks of Kosala’s army.’ 

Sumantra looked even more bewildered. ‘You no longer wish to serve your clan-queen? Do you know what this means?’ He added impatiently, ‘Rise to your feet, men!’ 

They stood up, putting their lances aside. The way to the kosaghar was unbarred now. Seeing her opportunity, Kausalya moved past them and entered the chamber of complaints, followed by Rani Sumitra. The guru and Pradhan-mantri Sumantra remained with the guards. Sumantra was very curious to know their story. Kaikeyans were famous for their national fealty. Why, even the Second Queen’s personal bodyguard consisted solely of men, in keeping with the Kaikeya nation’s chauvinistic conviction that the only true Kshatriyas were men. For these two to have cast aside their clan-oaths and sought refuge in Kosala’s army indicated some great crisis. 

‘What occasions this behaviour?’ he asked them sternly. ‘Why do two Kaikeyans sworn to protect their queen wish to leave her service thus? You know that as a consequence of this desertion your names will be forever cast out of the annals of Kaikeyan Kshatriya clans and seven generations of your descendants will be forbidden water, food, or shelter beneath any Kaikeyan Kshatriya roof? In effect, you will be as if in exile the rest of your natural lives.’ 

‘We know this, my lord,’ said the first guard. ‘But we cannot serve our duty any longer. There are some things that are beyond a clan-oath and fealty.’ 

‘Such as?’ Sumantra’s heart was pounding now. He thought he glimpsed what might have upset these men so deeply, but he wished to hear them say so in as many words. There were only two acts which could cause a Kaikeyan to break his clan-oath and forswear fealty to his queen. Two acts which no Kaikeyan could condone, whatever the circumstances, and which absolved even the extreme betrayal of desertion. 

‘Denial of a mother’s duties,’ they said with one voice, naming the first, most heinous of crimes that could possibly be committed by a Kaikeyan woman. And as he had feared, they went on, naming the second of those unforgivable acts, ‘And king-slaying, my lord.’ 

Kausalya entered the kosaghar first. The pungent reek of some foreign agent assailed her nostrils, and the miasma of misty vapour that filled the air irritated her eyes, causing them to sting and water at once. Her entire being cringed and crawled with an unpleasant sensation, as if she had passed through a thicket of poisonous bramble-flowers and her skin had been afflicted by their noxious pollen. The kosaghar was gloomy and silent as ever; this was not a happy place at the best of times. But there was something more than the usual oppressive atmosphere that hung over a chamber reserved for mourning, grieving, or wretched retreat from the world at large. 

She stepped into a viscous patch of something wet and unpleasant and recoiled. At first, in the gloamy murk of the sputtering diyas–almost all of them had burned down to the wick–she was certain the stain on the carpeted floor was blood. A terrible vision filled her mind’s eye, of Kaikeya dressed in her tight-fitting armour suit, flinging the gleaming spear she had carried back from the Holi mêlée. Only this time the spear was directed not at Kausalya, as it had been that day in the Seer’s Tower, but at Dasaratha himself. She pictured the spear striking Dasaratha and driving him back, to fall to his knees, spilling his life-blood. 

She bent and felt the patch with great reluctance. She had to know. The relief that she felt as she recognised the familiar greasy feel and smelled the unmistakable odour of mustard oil was out of all proportion to the simple act. 

But the sense of dread she felt remained. Like the tip of a thorn broken off deep inside an impaled thumb. She rose to her feet and resumed her course down the long pillars of the kosaghar. Behind her, footfalls sounded lightly. 

‘Kausalya?’ Sumitra’s voice betrayed her fear. 

Kausalya gestured at the Third Queen to wait there by the door. She could hear Sumantra’s voice speaking to the guards outside, then Guru Vashishta intoning in his quiet, calming way. Then she took another few steps further into the chamber and the voices faded to a distant murmur. This section of the kosaghar was duskier than the area by the doorway. Here, the diyas had almost all been extinguished, and the only light came from a single lamp flickering in the wind brought in by the open doors. As Kausalya approached this solitary flame, hidden yet behind a row of pillars, she saw a distorted shadow cast upon the floor and left-hand wall, as if a person were bending over with the diya in hand. She felt a flush of relief, her footsteps hastening to cover the last few pillars to the flickering source of light. 

‘Dasa,’ she said. ‘Are you well? We were so worried. What happened—’ 

She came around the last pillar and stopped dead in her tracks. 

The hunchbacked form of Manthara-daiimaa reared up before her. The daiimaa was holding a diya in her hand, and the light cast upwards by the little clay lamp threw her wizened features into garish relief. Normally, Kausalya was not offended by the sight of an ageing face–if anything, she loved the careworn lines of an ancient visage just as much as the wrinkled pinkness of a newborn babe–but there was something in Manthara’s sneering features that put her in instant remembrance of those childhood tales of chudails and vetaals. An expression of utter disgust for everyone and everything that could not be considered lovable by even the most trusting person on earth. 

The daiimaa straightened as best as she was able, given her deformity. ‘Rani Kausalya. You have come at last. And about time too. The maharaja was just asking for you by name.’ 

Kausalya saw the huddled form leaning against the pillar behind Manthara. The daiimaa’s lower body concealed most of it from her view, but she saw enough to know it was Dasaratha. Why was he just lying there? Was he unconscious? But Manthara had just said that he was asking for her, Kausalya. 

Caution bade her keep her distance until she learned more about what was really going on here. The guru and Sumantra would be with her in moments. She bit back the accusations that were boiling up in her throat and spoke to the daiimaa as levelly as she could manage under the circumstances. 

‘What are you doing here, Manthara?’ 

The words came out harsher than Kausalya had intended, she realised. But it was too late to take them back. She let them hang in the air, like a challenge.
Let her make something of it if she wants to. Maybe she’ll show her hand at last, reveal her true self and condemn herself once and for all. 

Manthara sighed with the utter weariness of one who has suffered long and hard under the yoke of royal servitude. ‘Tending to the maharaja, of course. Rani Kaikeyi asked me to stay and adminster to his needs as long as he chose to remain in the kosaghar.’ 

‘Chose to remain?’ This time the sharpness in Kausalya’s voice went up a notch. She took a step closer to the daiimaa as she spoke. ‘He was not the one who came voluntarily here. You said so yourself earlier. It was Kaikeyi who shut herself up here, after taking her vraths. It was at your behest that he came here at all.’ 

‘Surely.’ Manthara tilted her head, reminding Kausalya of a carrion bird she had seen once as a child, gazing greedily across a battlefield strewn with grisly dead, as if deciding with which poor fellow’s innards to start the feast. ‘But his majesty’s health seemed to take a turn for the worse after his arrival here. I was only adminstering this herbal tonic to revive him somewhat.’ 

The daiimaa held out a glass jal-bartan with her left hand, showing Kausalya the dregs of some dark fluid within. 

A cold fist grasped Kausalya’s heart, squeezing until she could barely breathe. Suddenly she understood the reason for the sense of dread she had felt upon entering. It was more than just the serving girl’s dying words, or Kaikeyi’s words as spoken through the medium of the dying serving girl, whichever one believed. ‘Where is your mistress?’ she asked harshly, not caring about her tone any longer. ‘Where is the Second Queen? Why did she send for my husband and then leave him here alone with you? What have you two wrought this dark night in this cursed chamber of pain and sorrow? Answer me!’ 

The daiimaa sketched a brief bow. It came off as a grotesque mockery due to her dwarf-like stature and protruding hump. ‘My mistress is in the sabha hall, as the guards outside, treacherous oafs that they are, have already informed you.
First
Queen Kaikeyi is overseeing an emergency samiti of the council of ministers even as we speak. As for why she sent for Maharaja Dasaratha,
her
husband, why, that is a matter you must discuss with her directly. Or with him, if you can rouse him now. And to answer your final question, well, she and I have been doing exactly what you and your son Rama Chandra have been doing these past weeks, securing our rightful place in the kingdom after his majesty’s passing.’ 

The daiimaa paused, a scornful smile flickering across her distorted face. ‘And now that I have answered your queries,
Second
Queen Kausalya, let me add this one further statement. You have enjoyed the luxury of reigning supreme for these past years despite the maharaja favouring my mistress in the boudoir. But now, with the balance of power suitably redressed, I urge you not to address me as offensively as you have done till now. Before, I may have been a humble daiimaa. Now, I am the governess-regent of a king of Ayodhya. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that you are now addressing
Lady
Manthara!’ 

There were bounds even to Kausalya’s legendary limitless patience, and she might have flown at the woman had a voice not spoken from behind just then. Guru Vashishta’s booming baritone carried the length of the kosaghar, preceding the sage as he approached.