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“I do not control him. He is the king. I don’t tell him what to do.”
“You are lying. To me or to yourself. I see the love in his eyes for me, for all of us, and yet I see how he restrains himself. I often feel as though he fears your disapproval. But he is the king, as you said. Why would he allow one woman to control him?”
“As I said, I’m not here to answer to you.”
“He is, and should be, our husband. We can work in harmony to share him equally.”
This was what Kausalya had really wanted to say. She felt her earnestness melt away any grievances. She closed the distance between them. “Kaikeyi, I promise you, I give you my word, I will not use his time to my advantage. I will not undermine you in any way.”
“You couldn’t, even if you tried. You do not have that kind of power.”
“Is that what this is about then, proving your prowess? You would destroy relationships thirty years strong simply because you can?”
“Those relationships have expired. They have exceeded their value. When you go to war, you pick a fresh horse.”
“This is not a war!”
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“What else would it be? A dance in the gardens? A playground where we hold hands and make merry? Wake up!” She snapped her fingers in front of Kausalya’s nose.
Quicker than thought, Kausalya’s hand darted out, gripping the younger woman’s hand.
For a moment, she gripped it with all her force. Then she held it to her heart, pulling Kaikeyi in toward her. “Let’s not fight,” she whispered. “We can be friends. We can live in harmony.”
Kaikeyi was quiet for the first time. Something had shifted between them. Kausalya held her breath. Kaikeyi did not snatch her hand away, so Kausalya continued.
“I called you here to reveal the wish I’ve had since you came to Ayodhya. I remember clearly the moment I saw you. You were unlike any other woman I had ever seen, so confident and elegant on horseback. I—” She hesitated. Kaikeyi’s eyes were intent on her, though shadows hid her expression. “I wanted to be your friend.” The actual word was mother, but Kaikeyi would not like that term. “I’m sure we can be friends.”
“If,” Kaikeyi said softly, “I share the king with you.”
Was that Kausalya’s condition? She released Kaikeyi’s hand. The queens remained close, closer than etiquette normally allowed. Kaikeyi was fragrant; underneath the jasmine, there was a musky, womanly odor.
“He is not yours to share,” Kausalya said softly.
It was the truth, but they were the wrong words in this delicate moment. Kaikeyi took a step back, a shadow falling between them as clear as a wall.
“Then why are you here?” Kaikeyi asked. “Are you not offering your friendship in return for him?”
“Everything is not a negotiation,” Kausalya answered. “Until now, you have not welcomed me as a friend. We could be allies. Co-mothers. Co-wives. Within the royal house, you may seek supremacy. But the goals of life are not limited to these palace walls.”
“And we are back to lectures.”
Kausalya felt a sadness sweep over her. They had been so close to understanding.
Kausalya had felt Kaikeyi’s heart come out of its hiding place. They had been so close. But this meeting was folly after all. Kaikeyi had already crossed beyond reasoning. She acted out of impulse and desire. Her motives were hidden even to herself. And so, Kausalya did not ask the final question she had, which was simply, Why? Why was Kaikeyi set on destroying herself?
Kausalya wanted to embrace the younger woman, as if she was that girl again who had ridden confidently into Ayodhya. Kausalya had seen her fragility, had even then thought, She could be my daughter. It was not only her youth that had brought this idea to Kausalya.
“Anything else?” Kaikeyi demanded. “Or am I free to go?”
Kausalya did not answer. She felt a tear trickle down her cheek.
Kaikeyi brushed past her, leaving the scent of jasmine behind. Kausalya grabbed the closest thing her hands could find and threw it down with all her might. The clay pot smashed against the marble floor. Kaikeyi froze.
“I am capable of destroying you,” Kausalya said. She threw another pot to the ground, and then another. The younger woman did not turn around, but neither did she leave.
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Kausalya smashed everything within reach. “I am the queen of Ayodhya. I rule the treasury. I train the servants. I speak to ministers and their wives.”
She flung a pot against the wall. “Look at me!”
Kaikeyi turned and faced Kausalya, the Queen.
“I have influence you could never dream of,” Kausalya said. “If I set my will against yours, if I set my mind to undermining you, you would stand with nothing but Manthara at your side. But I do not wish to harm something that is dear to my husband, the king. I do not wish to destroy him. I do not use my power for my own selfish ends.”
Kausalya saw her own power with blinding clarity. She held on to the pots in her hands and approached Kaikeyi. The candle lights flickered with her steps.
“That’s where we are different, you and I,” Kausalya said, breathing forcefully. “I sacrifice my personal enjoyment, every time, in favor of his. I am the first to rise in this kingdom and the last to sleep. And that is what a queen must do and the very reason you will never ever be queen.”
She flung the pots at Kaikeyi’s feet. The younger woman turned and ran.
Kausalya stood in the same spot for a long time, fury coursing through her veins. She had never displayed her anger in this way before. She looked at the demolition of the beautifully crafted clay pots. Only a few remained whole. She hadn’t realized how many she had smashed.
She walked out of the room into the next one. Without meaning to, her eyes sought Kaikeyi. The rules of the House mandated that one stay through the night. But Kausalya was alone. It was a disappointment and a relief. The battle was over.
The darkness around her soothed and repelled her. She would not run away, as Kaikeyi had. She needed this complete privacy to put the situation into perspective.
The next morning, Kausalya walked out from the House of Wrath, lingering in the final sunlit room. As promised, the sun’s rays warmed her entire body. She paused in the middle of the room, sending a prayer to that warm sun. Kausalya was satisfied with her own com-portment, even if she knew now that Kaikeyi would not yield. The difference was that now when Kaikeyi continued in her same frivolous manner, she would know that she could do so only because Kausalya allowed it. Kausalya was the Great Queen, but she could not set her will against her husband, the Great King. The consequences of his choices would fall on him, and on them all. That was the glory and the ghastly truth of autocracy.
Kausalya let the warm rays spread across her back, caressing her neck, before she walked onward, back to her life as the queen who ruled Ayodhya but spent solitary nights yearning for a husband who never came.
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chapter 23
A Dirty Fight
His sons turned four and then five. Dasharatha still treasured the very first moment he had held Rama, his firstborn, in his arms. Cradling his son to his chest, Dasharatha had felt a joy so intense, he ceased to be himself. He had whispered Anaranya’s prophecy into Rama’s ear, just as Dasharatha’s father had done into his.
The tradition was too strong to resist, although Dasharatha had come to doubt the prophecy itself. It was quite possible that King Aja too had known the improbability of any human slaying the blood-drinker king.
After Rama’s birth, it took Dasharatha years to feel like the same old man again.
The two queens, Kausalya and Kaikeyi, had entered an unspoken truce when the boys were born. But in some ways, Dasharatha felt more on edge; he could sense their rivalry simmering beneath the surface. As a father, however, he was determined to keep his sons unblemished by it. It seemed to him that he had closed eyes in a moment of joy and opened them to see that his sons had turned five years old.
In a rare respite from his royal duties, Dasharatha watched his sons play in the gardens below. One, two, three, four, he counted, studying each of them. Losing any one of them would bring him unimaginable grief, and so the old curse sometimes resurfaced, whispering its threat into his ear. First Dasharatha saw Bharata, who was whispering into Lakshmana’s ear. Or was it Shatrugna’s?
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Even if the king had been closer, he might not have been able to tell the twins apart. Lakshmana and Shatrugna were so alike they could hardly tell themselves apart. Dasharatha, who had prayed for one son, could hardly absorb these four miracles. His boys brought sunshine to his autumnal years, and they became his reason for living. Without that sunshine, winter would prevail.
Sometimes the four boys sounded like four hundred running around on reckless legs.
The royal gardens were a perfect playground for the boys—filled with streams, fountains, tame animals, and huge trees of various kinds to climb on. Dasharatha sought his oldest son and found Rama climbing a tree. As Rama dangled from one of the branches, Dasharatha was suddenly struck by a vision of the boy floating in the air beside him. He had dreamed of Rama often before the boy was born. Now he recalled the vision from that time and place when he was neither dead nor alive. The boy in that vision had walked into Dasharatha’s heart, and now he was playing in Ayodhya’s gardens, a real prince made of flesh and blood. Dasharatha gripped the balcony, the marble smooth under his palms. If anything happened to Rama . . .
Loud cheers brought him back to his sons below. The young princes had come upon a pool of mud, a child’s heaven, in the otherwise well-groomed landscape. They were sliding around in it noisily when Kaikeyi arrived. Laughing with them, Dasharatha’s beloved sat down on a swing that hung in the shade of an enormous banyan tree. His eyes were drawn to her; he never tired of beholding her beauty. She was settling in and arranging her dress when a mud cake splattered against her cheek. She sprang out of the swing in surprise, making it sway back behind her. With her eyes wide and her mouth O-shaped, she faced four naughty grins—and five, counting Dasharatha’s.
“Rama!” she called out, dodging a second mud ball.
By now, they all had realized that Rama was the leader of his brothers. The mud ball was dropping down from her chin onto her light-colored silk sari. She, who had grown so meticulous about her appearance, how would she react?
Kaikeyi darted forward to grab mud in her clean hands, and flung it at the boys. Shouting with glee, they ran in four directions, dodging her. Her teeth sparkled as she laughed aloud.
Though Dasharatha was not close enough to hear clearly, it sounded as if she said, “Not fair!
Four against one!”
Still, she hit at least three of them with her rapid firing. She was, of course, a far better shot than they, and his sons soon looked like beggars. The mud fight grew more heated, and the king’s eyes darted back and forth as he noticed that every single one of Rama’s mud balls hit their mark. His queen was unrecognizable, covered from head to toe in grime.
Kausalya’s voice reached him from a distance. His sons below heard it too and promptly hid behind the banyan tree, leaving Kaikeyi alone in the sunshine to face Kausalya. As Kaikeyi broke into a grin, her teeth were white against the mud on her face. Kausalya did not smile. Suddenly anxious, Dasharatha strained to hear their conversation.
“You must have been attacked by monkeys,” Kausalya said, scanning the area for the boys and speaking extra loudly so they would hear her. “Some very naughty monkeys.”
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Kaikeyi bent down and wiped her hands clean on the grass, as if that would make her more presentable.
Kausalya said, “I presume that you did not roll around in the mud on your own.”
The boys giggled behind the tree, but Kaikeyi’s smile disappeared. “What if I did? It’s only mud, Kausalya. Let them play.”
The two women faced each other then, speaking in low voices. Even from a distance, Dasharatha could feel the tension between them. Dasharatha made his way downstairs.
Just as Dasharatha entered the gardens, he heard Kaikeyi call for Manthara. The hunchback had cemented her position by Kaikeyi’s side when Bharata was born. Dasharatha’s revulsion toward Manthara was like an itch from an insect bite, irritating but bearable.
“Help me get the boys inside,” Kaikeyi told the hunchback.
No one had noticed him yet. He had dismissed his guards at the entryway. Dasharatha leaned against a tree, thinking he had imagined the moment of tension between the queens.
His wives looked peaceful and cooperative, as harmonious as the trees and leaves swaying in the wind.
Manthara went toward the banyan tree, muttering under her breath and looking sour as always. As much as had changed since the birth of his sons, Manthara’s demeanor had not.
When Manthara was close to the tree, she was bombarded with a torrent of mud balls.
The boys came into view, clapping and chortling.
Manthara sputtered, covered head to toe in mud balls. Kaikeyi choked on a laugh.
“You would never torment me like this,” Manthara yelled, “if I were not so ugly!”
The boys froze, genuinely startled by Manthara’s outburst.
Dasharatha stepped away from the tree.
Rama ran up to Manthara, saying, “No, no.” He reached up to her and wiped some mud off her cheek. “You are not ugly.”
His childish voice was endearing. Manthara swatted his hand away and sneered at the boy. Dasharatha’s insides swelled with instant anger, and he rushed forward. Rama was not only a prince of highest rank but a child!
“Never mind these children,” Kaikeyi intervened. Patting Manthara lovingly on her curved back, Kaikeyi led her away. “Let’s get clean, you and I.”
Kaikeyi looked over her shoulder and smiled reassuringly at the boys. She didn’t see Manthara’s over-the-shoulder grimace. Manthara stared hatefully at Rama, as if he had thrown all the mud single-handedly.
Dasharatha stepped into their path.
The queen and the hunchback were covered in mud, one looking dashing, the other hideous. Manthara’s eyes were on the ground; her cane trembled in her hand. Dasharatha’s harsh rebuke stopped on his tongue when he saw Manthara’s face. Her eyes were closed; her head hung. Tears ran down her mud-covered cheeks, creating clear trails. These were not false calculated tears, for she had not seen the king. He sensed the terror she felt, as if she feared for her life. It was completely irrational, and yet Dasharatha was genuinely moved by Manthara for the first time in his life.
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Kaikeyi saw Dasharatha, and there was a plea in her eyes. Without words, she understood his anger and saw his hesitation. Dasharatha let them go. The hunchback muttered inaudibly while Kaikeyi caressed her back.
Dasharatha turned to see Kausalya taking Rama into her arms. She called the boys close.
“Some people don’t like games,” she told them.
Dasharatha thought it a fitting explanation to five-year-olds.
“Do you like games, Mother?” Rama asked, curling his arm around Kausalya’s neck.
“Of course I do,” Kausalya replied, wanting to placate him.
Rama laughed and rubbed his hands on her face, smearing it with the mud.
“You tricky boy!” she exclaimed, putting him down.
Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrugna followed Rama, as they always did, and ran their muddy hands all over Kausalya; the Great Queen actually toppled over in the grass.
“Boys, I warn you,” she said, struggling to sit up.
They in turn ran away from her with the same glee as before. Clearly, they thought the game was starting all over again. Would Kausalya, his royal queen, deign to roll in the mud with her dirty sons?
Rama had clearly teased something out of his serious mother, for Kausalya threw herself into the game as if she was five years old too. They were so absorbed in their game that not one of them noticed Dasharatha. He settled himself into the swing, watched the sunset, and savored the sounds of their play. It was a perfect and peaceful evening.
Kausalya came running back and threw herself on the grass, saying, “No more!” Then she saw Dasharatha on the swing and sat up at once, wiping her face with her hands, managing only to appear more mud-streaked. He wanted to tell her that he liked seeing her so carefree.
“Father!” Rama called, and the other boys echoed his call. The mud on their skin had dried and fell off in big flakes as they clambered onto the swing, crawling all over him, truly like little monkeys. Talking all at once, they told him about their day.
He listened attentively, adoring their incoherent words, the way they saw the world.
Dasharatha forgot about the hunchback and her outburst toward Rama.
Kaikeyi, clean and beautiful, returned. Had he not known, he might have thought her innocent of any mudslinging. He felt his face break into a smile. His grimy sons crowded around him eagerly as Kausalya watched from a distance.
“You are a very good shot, Rama.” Dasharatha ruffled his son’s hair.
“What is a good shot?”
“It means you will shoot your bow like a king.”
“The other boys are just as good,” Kaikeyi objected.
“Who is the best shot?” Dasharatha asked, looking at his sons instead of Kaikeyi.
“Him!” “He!” “Rama!” The three boys pointed excited fingers at their oldest brother.
Rama looked at their fingers but said nothing.
“What do you say, Rama?”
Rama pointed to Kaikeyi. The queen kissed his hand.
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“You clever boy,” Dasharatha said. “I meant among you boys, and you know it.”
Rama fidgeted. “I’m not allowed to say. Mother says one should not praise oneself.”
“So you know you are the best shot?”
