The Rise of Hastinapur (14 page)

Once a wandering sage came to me for water, and while I asked him to wait he stared at me through the doorway and asked if I was a priestess. Quite taken aback, I said, ‘No, my lord, not to my knowledge.’ He said he was from the Northern Mountains and that he needed a place to stay for the night. Though I understood his meaning, I pretended that I had not, and guided him to Sage Parashurama’s hermitage.

I still had desires, and I did not hide them from myself, for had the High Sage once not said that a priestess ought not to be ashamed of that which comes from the Goddess? But I no longer had the ravenous fire within me that demanded a man by my side, the fire that I had grown up with, the fire which – during my time with Salva and with Vichitraveerya – had at times threatened to devour me.

Now it just seemed to glow somewhere deep in me, blue and cold.

THIRTEEN

T
he queen who knelt in front of her was no more than a girl, thought Amba. She was dressed in all her royal finery – a green and yellow fabric stitched together to wrap her up like she were a silkworm. The heavy gold pendant hung off her neck and dragged it down like it was a millstone. Her mind went back, for one fleeting second, to that day eight years ago when she had come to Parashurama’s hermitage, dressed just like this.

‘Which kingdom do you come from, child?’ she asked softly.

‘My lady, I come from the city of Anga, which resides on the shore of the Eastern Sea.’

‘That is quite some distance.’

‘My need is pressing, my lady,’ she said, bowing low.

‘We shall come to it, my dear. But first, tell me your name.’

‘They call me Anjasi, after the river.’

Amba nodded at the attendant waiting outside. When he entered, she said to both of them, ‘You will need to cast away your clothes and dress in garments that we shall give you.’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘Every spring, we keep the rite of fertility. All four of my priestesses take part in it. This year’s rite is perhaps too soon for you, but if you do well, you can keep it next year.’

‘Yes, my lady.’

‘I must tell you that this one year will be the hardest of your life, child.’ She tried to keep her voice free of derision, but she was not certain that she succeeded. A hint of scorn crept into her tone. ‘This is not a palace, and you will have no attendants serving you.’

Anjasi bowed. ‘I shall serve you with all my love and care, my lady.’

Amba saw the glittering rings on the girl’s fingers. She had half a mind to instruct her to give away her jewellery too, but she caught herself. Amba herself had not given up her coronet until the third year, she remembered. It was one of the hardest things for a girl to do, giving up her jewellery. It was akin to asking a king to set aside his sword, even if he had never fought a war.

‘We do not have mirrors in our hermitage,’ said Amba, ‘nor do we speak to each other unless we must. We all know our duties, and lord knows there is enough to keep you on your toes from sunrise to sundown.’ She paused to look at the queen. ‘Have you seen to any household chores in your father’s house, girl?’

Anjasi shook her head, shamefaced.

Amba sighed. This was going to be harder than she had thought. They all came with twinkling eyes and pretty smiles, but after two days of the life of a priestess, they fled, covering their ears with their dainty little hands. She wondered if she should tell Anjasi of all the other hardships she would see in the next one year, but she cut herself short. Anjasi would learn all in due course, like she – and all other priestesses – had. It was like crossing a bridge of stones; only after stepping on one did you think of the next.

‘Do you have any questions?’ she asked.

The queen began to shake her head, but mustered courage and looked up at Amba. She said, ‘My lady, they say you walked through fire after you had become a priestess. Is that true?’

Amba thought of the night three years ago, after her five-year period of training had ended. Parashurama had pointed her towards a bed of burning coals and asked her to walk through it. Without hesitating for even a second, she had closed her eyes, joined her hands, and stepped on the red embers with the mother’s name to her lips.

Amba wondered if she would do the same today. Three years of being a priestess had dulled the keenness of her senses, somewhat. Now she had four young women doing her bidding – and a fifth was about to join them. Though she kept up her basic training, she doubted if she had been firm enough with herself to withstand the test of fire. She had thought becoming a priestess was hard enough; in the last three years she had come to realize how wrong she was: staying a priestess was the real challenge. She smiled to herself, hoping the Goddess could not hear her think.

‘It was a long time ago, my child, but yes. I did walk through fire.’

‘Will I … be required to do the same, when I am done?’

‘Nothing will be required of you that you cannot do, my child,’ said Amba, holding the girl’s chin with her forefinger. ‘But you shall not become a whole priestess, therefore you shall not be asked to walk through fire. You will merely be taught the ways of a priestess so that you may bring forth a son that your kingdom is proud of.’

The girl nodded, but Amba saw fear in her eyes. Smiling at her, Amba pointed Anjasi to a bundle of clothes in the corner. ‘Wear them, child, and send back your clothes and chariot with your attendants.’ She waved to the attendant, bidding him to leave the room.

Anjasi asked, ‘My jewellery, lady?’

‘You shall not wear them, but you may keep them for a moon or two. Come midwinter you must cast them off as well, all your rings and necklaces.’

‘As you wish, my lady.’

Amba called out without raising her voice: ‘Parushni.’ When she arrived on tiptoe and bowed to her, she said, ‘Anjasi will sleep with you in your hut, and she will stay with us until next year’s rite. Will you show her our ways and take care of her so that she would not miss her kingdom?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Now it is time to water my plants,’ said Amba,rising up. Just then she saw the doorway to the hut darken with a shadow. She knew who it was without having to look at it a second time. ‘Sage Parashurama,’ she said, ‘I shall be with you in a second.’

Amba met him on the edge of the courtyard by the well. She picked up the vessel full of water and gestured to him to walk with her around the hut to the farm at the back. Through one of the windows, the sage asked Amba,‘Another priestess to train, my lady?’

‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘She wants to have a child by one of the gods.’

Parashurama fell in step with her and held his hands behind him. ‘Do you really believe that, my lady, that it is gods who father children born at the fertility rites?’

‘That is what the mothers believe, Sage, and that is all that matters.’ They came to the fence. She opened the log gate and bent the can over her hand so that water trickled off the tips of her fingers onto the soil. ‘You have something on your mind, do you not?’

‘Yes,’ said Parashurama from behind her. ‘It is regarding King Drupad.’

Amba stopped, just only for a second. Her hands continued their motions as if she had heard nothing. She had thought – no, convinced herself – that all matters related to Panchala and Bhishma had been buried deep enough in her past, but one mention was enough to bring back those memories. She had to shut her eyes to drive them out of her mind.

‘How is Panchala any of my concern?’ she managed to say.

‘It is not,’ said Parashurama. ‘But King Drupad is still childless, after all these years, and now that Hastinapur has two heirs–’

‘He wishes for one too.’

‘Yes, he does. He came to my hermitage yesterday, and he had a proposition.’

Amba saw in her mind’s eye a blood-tipped arrow lifted by an invisible hand and, set to a bow with a string of gold. Without being told she could guess what the proposition was, and a part of her leapt at it, but she held herself back. She was now a priestess. ‘But Sage,’ she said, stepping to the next row of basil plants, ‘I am past childbearing now. I am already six-and-twenty.’

‘But my lady, that is what Drupad wants. He wishes to lay with a sterile priestess.’

Amba stood up and turned to Parashurama. ‘I do not understand.’

‘The priest at Drupad’s court told him that laying with a priestess who was past child-bearing would bring back his virility, and he would be able to have children.’

‘That is impossible,’ said Amba, ‘and you know that too. An impotent man is an impotent man for life, Sage, no matter how many priestesses he beds.’

‘I do not know that for certain,’ said Parashurama. ‘The Goddess of Fertility works in her own mysterious ways.’

Amba turned back to her plants. ‘Be it so, but I would not lay with that man even if I had to die.’ In her mind the image of the arrow sharpened, and the string got stretched back so far that Amba wondered if the bow would snap in two. Then the arrow flew into the air and pierced a man’s chest through his armour, drawing a single stream of blood that flowed downward, to his waist. Amba recognized the man with the sharp face and the beard, and his cry of pain which was but a whisper.

There will be a child,
she heard someone say from deep within her.
There will be a child, and it will be the death of Bhishma
.

Amba looked up at the clear blue morning sky. She broke into a loud chuckle. Mother, she thought, why do you play this game with me? I do not care about Bhishma any more, nor do I care about the fate of Panchala or of North Country. I am yours; I have given myself to you and you have accepted me. All I want to do for the rest of my life is to serve you, and now you bid me to have a child. But how will I have a child, Mother? How will I survive having a child at my age?

‘You know of enough herbs, do you not, that would prevent a maiden from giving birth to a child after laying with a man?’

She nodded, her mind still lingering over the voice that she had heard. It had come from within her, so it had to be hers, but a little part of her wanted to believe the Goddess had spoken to her.

‘Then what do you fear, my lady?’ said Parashurama. ‘You shall not bear a child, and the High King will get his manhood back. You have helped many maidens become mothers; perhaps you can think of this as step toward helping a man become a father.’

Parashurama was right; she would lose nothing by doing this. On the contrary, doing a good turn to a High King of a kingdom such as Panchala would only serve her well in the future. All she had to do was to bear with the discomfort for one night – and if Drupad were truly impotent, it would not be a long night – and she could go back to her own world.

But there was that voice.

Deep within her, something stirred and awoke. Her mind began to race. If the voice had, indeed, been the Goddess’s, it meant that She had put into Amba’s hand another tool by which she could take her revenge on Bhishma. For the first time in perhaps eight years, she thought of Ambika and Ambalika atop Hastinapur’s throne, playing with their children, and her eyes suddenly awoke with stinging, scalding tears.

If the Goddess willed it so that her wrongs were to be avenged, who was she to deny her? She was not right in questioning whether she would survive, either; if the Goddess gave her instructions to birth a child, she would have her own plans of looking after her. Amba was no more than a servant to her, and her duty was no more than to follow her bidding.

So she said to Parashurama, ‘Tell the High King that I shall receive him at the fertility rite this year.’

FOURTEEN