The Rise of Hastinapur (36 page)

The same could be said of carpenters. The teak of Gandhar was soft and soggy, and lent itself to delicate structures with curves and steep angles. Hastinapur’s was tough and durable, and as a demonstration, her carpenters would set up stalls in the town hall and challenge anyone willing to try and break one of their cots or chairs with his bare hands. Men who twisted Gandhar’s furniture into grotesque shapes could not so much as move Hastinapur’s. After a few years of this, carpenters in the city took to creating tiny artistic pieces designed to hold candles.

But all of this did not matter as much as the arrival of the vault-keepers – or as some in Gandhar called them by their later name – the lenders. Nobody seemed to remember when they first came to the city, but most people agreed that it was around the time of Igobhargava’s death. They came not on camels but on elephants, and they came not bearing light wads of silken clothes but giant metal enclosures with heavy doors. When they set up their stall in the town hall, one of the miners went to him and asked what their contraption did. ‘Nothing,’ said the vault-keeper, ‘except that it allows you to sleep well at night.’

For the people of Gandhar, among whom everyone owned gold, it was the first brush with fear of loss. Before the vault-keepers arrived, no one had told them that their gold could get stolen, and once they were told of the danger they were in, it refused to go away from their minds. All vaults, naturally, were sold out in no time.

For each coin the keeper put into his vault, he gave out a copper coin which he called a ‘token’, and in no more than a month, all of Gandhar’s gold was in his vaults, and the people who owned the gold had copper coins in their hands.

Soon the people of Gandhar began exchanging the copper coins because all of them knew that the gold was safely held within the vaults, and when the king – Gandhari’s father – stepped in and made copper coins the legal tender and decreed that all gold vaults would be kept under the supervision of the king, the tokens issued by the vault-keeper became the money in which Gandhar traded.

The vault-keepers charged a tiny fee for storing the people’s gold, and they were paid in copper coins. Whenever they left for Hastinapur they would stop by at the royal treasury and change their copper coins for gold. The traders, too, did business with Gandhar in copper, but everyone knew that each copper coin really stood for a gold coin; so on their way out of the city, the traders would stop at the treasury and exchange their copper coins for gold.

From that day to this, the vault-keepers would come and go, but the vaults would sit in their huts, locked up and filled with Gandhar’s gold.

But now Shakuni had seeded the doubt in her mind:
was the gold still there?
Gandhari shifted in the chariot as it rattled along on the rocks with the mine fires flickering in the distance to her right. The morning breeze brought with it remnants of rain in the faraway basin of the Sindhu river. We have a great river of our own, she mused; why do we not use her water to till our own lands? Why do we allow ourselves to be at the mercy of these barbarians?

To her side Satyapala was nodding off to sleep under his heavy white turban, and opposite her, on the hard wooden seat at the base of the chariot meant for the charioteer’s companion, sat Shakuni, bent to one side and rubbing his palms together. When they passed an occasional street fire, the ruby in his ring gleamed with an orange light.

The sky had not yet turned grey with the first light of morning, and as they passed the town square she saw milkmen look up sleepily from lugging their brown jars of milk in the dust. If nothing else, Gandhar had once been the city of cattle; people used to say that for each man in Gandhar, there were six cows and bulls – but now even those numbers were dwindling. Milk was milk, whether one extracted it in Gandhar or in Hastinapur. How, then, did their milkmen drive ours out of work?

Shakuni’s face was set in a smile, and his eyes danced from her to the bent, sleeping head of Satyapala. ‘I have made you think, sister,’ he said, in a voice just above a whisper.

‘You have filled me with slander and lies!’ she said. ‘I cannot believe I have let you talk me into digging for our own gold when our citizens are rolling in wealth.’

‘Rolling in wealth, sister? Wherever did you hear that?’

‘Devapi told me today.’

Shakuni lifted his head and laughed. ‘Devapi, the idiot! I have stopped wondering why you surround yourself with such asses, my dear. The only advisor of yours that has been blessed by a brain is Chyavatana.’

‘You would say that. I have seen how well he licks your feet.’

Shakuni grimaced at first, but then looked down at his feet. He leaned back and held one of them up for her. ‘Then pray tell me,’ he said, ‘why my shoe is so dirty and yours so clean.’

The chariot sped away toward the eastern gate of the city, where the main vault of the people’s treasury was kept. The smooth stone road had given way to loose dust and mud now, and Gandhari made a mental note to herself to order this road to be mended. Satyapala muttered something in his sleep when the chariot began to sway, but soon he fell in with the rhythm and resumed snoring.

‘You say your citizens are wealthier,’ said Shakuni, leaning in and grabbing her arm. ‘Devapi must have told you how many more copper coins your citizens have this year compared to last.’

She tried to pull away from him, but he held firm. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘But what do they own, sister? What do your citizens own? Do they own their lands? They do not. Do they own cattle? They do not. Do they own any skill with which they could make something someone else would want? They do not!’

‘They own their lands, of course they do!’

Shakuni spat into the wind and smiled viciously at her. ‘The vault-keepers bring copper coins from Hastinapur, my lady, and they use them to conduct trade in this country. Why do you think the price of milk is going up as it is? Why do you think your citizens have more copper coins with them than ever before? Ha! Wealth!’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Each copper coin is equivalent to a gold coin, as per the decree of our father’s law.’

‘Sister, my lady, Your Majesty, for one second, will you please think? One copper coin can never be the same as a gold coin. A copper coin is made of copper, by the gods, and a gold coin is made of gold!’

‘Oh, come off it, you know well enough that if the number of copper coins is the same as–’

‘If, sister, if! Your own Adbudha must have told you that we have mined the same amount of gold this year as last?’

She nodded.

‘Then how did the number of copper coins go up? Where is all the copper coming from?’

Gandhari felt her head swim, as it did whenever she let Shakuni speak to her at length. For him everything was a conspiracy, every man a traitor. She closed her eyes and let the wind hit her face for a few moments, and the smell of faraway rain made her smile. She opened her eyes and asked, ‘You tell me, where is the copper coming from?’

‘They bring it,’ he said in subdued voice, nodding at Satyapala.

‘To what end?’

‘So that each person in Gandhar has more copper coins today than he did yesterday. Then they can price their Hastinapur goods higher, and on their way back they collect gold for their copper.’ He bared his teeth in an expression of disgust. ‘We have been giving them gold for copper, Your Majesty, for thirty years, one coin for one coin.’

‘I do not believe you.’

‘You do not have to believe me, my lady. Just look around you. Your own advisers have told you that the amount of copper in Gandhar has gone up, and year after year we send more and more miners into our mines, for the
same
amount of gold. Why?’

Gandhari looked about her. ‘Because it is harder to find gold.’

Shakuni slapped his thigh. ‘Because we give all the excess gold away to them!’

‘But … but we keep our gold … our vaults …’

‘That we shall see soon enough,’ said Shakuni, sitting back and hoisting his bad leg over his knee. He began to wave his foot with ardour. ‘We shall see soon enough.’

FOUR

U
pon 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.’