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But Kaikeyi wasn’t sure she had a choice. The emperor had made his promise, and his eyes spoke of many more to come. Kaikeyi felt a thrill run through her.
Although Kaikeyi wanted to be wise like the queen she would be, she felt the question bubble up. She couldn’t stop it.
She turned to Manthara. She needed to know. “What is the reality of this situation?”
Manthara stopped everything she was doing and assessed Kaikeyi. Her breathing was slightly wheezy from walking through the palace corridors rather hurriedly, swept up by the momentousness of the evening. Kaikeyi waited patiently for Manthara’s breathing to turn full and calm. But Manthara still did not answer.
“Tell me,” Kaikeyi insisted. “I can take it. I need to know.”
Manthara turned the question back to her, daring her to step into her role as queen. “You tell me. What is the reality of the situation here?”
Kaikeyi thought quickly, assessing the recent events as Manthara had taught her to do.
There was the marriage proposal. The emperor’s spotless reputation. Her father’s delight in the match. The bride-price. Her father’s whisper to her. Manthara’s comment that the emperor was too old. And most of all, the electrifying touch of the king’s hand. It all made her head spin. She sat down next to Manthara. She would see it all for what it truly was!
“I’m getting married to the most powerful man on Earth,” she said, shocked at how true her words were. She hardly knew what it would mean for her life, but it sounded incredible.
“And?”
“And . . . there is always a price to pay.” Kaikeyi looked into the future, thinking immediately of her horses, her father’s horses. “I will have to leave Kekaya, Father, and Brother. I will have to adopt the rules and customs of a new place. I will not be free to ride my horses every day. I’ll be trapped in my role as a wife.”
All these seemed like heavy prices to Kaikeyi. But she could tell Manthara was not impressed.
“Yes, and no,” Manthara said. “The reality of the situation is that you are marrying an old man, whose favor you’ll have to fight for. You are not his first wife or his second. You are 62
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his third wife. You will never be the true queen of Ayodhya. That position has already been taken, twice over.”
Kaikeyi stood up. “Why would Father want this for me?”
“Actually your father has outdone himself. The bride-price is magnificent. The kingdom in return for your hand. Your son will be king. When that day comes, you will be the only queen that matters.”
“You are satisfied, then?” Kaikeyi searched Manthara’s face. The wisdom lines on Manthara’s face enhanced the intelligence in her eyes.
“Am I ever?” the old woman scoffed, and they both laughed.
“I still have my doubts,” Manthara said. “Whether that old king can sire at all. His other two wives have not produced children, not even girls.”
Manthara took hold of Kaikeyi’s hand. “But don’t worry about that. Leave it to me. Your father has paved the way for you to become more powerful than you can imagine. You must guard your heart closely. Do not let yourself fall into those love games that befuddle others.
Play the game—you cannot avoid it altogether when you are married—but don’t get caught in its web. What is it that your father taught you?”
“Never give anyone the power to break your heart,” Kaikeyi recited. Ashvapati had incul-cated this in both her and Yuddhajit. Their father lived by those words.
“Good. Don’t make the mistake your father made. He loved your mother passionately. I think we’ve all seen the results of that.”
Kaikeyi became aware of the throbbing in her arm. “Hand me the salve,” she said.
She could have borne the pain. It was nothing compared to when she had broken her arm and her ribs. But she didn’t like it when Manthara said, “Don’t make the mistake your father made,” because on other days Manthara would say, “Don’t be a fool like your mother.” Kaikeyi could not be like her father or her mother. Yet she had grown to look exactly like her mother—a beauty, Manthara had conceded. Who and what Kaikeyi would become was not entirely in her own control.
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With the Love of a Mother
s Manthara left the princess, she itched to seek an audience with King AshAvapati. She did not like the alliance with Ayodhya; she did not like the emperor. Kaikeyi’s obvious infatuation with him made it all the more concerning.
Yes, the girl had tried to hide it, but was there anything about Kaikeyi that Manthara did not know?
Although night had snuck up on them before she could leave Kaikeyi’s chamber, Manthara was on the edge of going straight to the king. Before she did that, however, she had to collect her thoughts and be sure of what she wanted to say. She paused in the unlit hallway, feeling like a spirit in the darkness. Releasing an exasperated huff, she admitted to herself that her thoughts were jumbled. Too emotional. She leaned on her cane, hobbling toward her room. When another servant passed her in the corridor, she pushed herself up with her cane and attempted to glide forward.
The servant bowed and moved ahead. Manthara did not acknowledge the gesture.
She should have been used to the deference of the other servants by now. She liked her elevated position, but it still felt uneasy, like someone might turn around and make a joke out of her again. It was also difficult to discern who was genuine in their supplications and who was merely dutiful. No doubt the other servants
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had coveted her position from the beginning. But King Ashvapati had chosen Manthara to mother his daughter—not any of them.
When Manthara walked into her room, she did not light any of the candles or wicks in the brass night-lights. The darkness suited her just fine, the amorphous shapes around her as deformed as she was. Though her feet ached, Manthara paced slowly in the darkness of her room. She had put her cane aside; in her private chambers she didn’t care what she looked like, and the thump-thump of it had become synonymous with the immense effort she made during the day. She couldn’t bear that sound.
Manthara let her head and arms hang loosely toward the floor, surrendering to gravity for a moment. She sighed deeply. Though Kaikeyi insisted on treating Manthara’s hump as some sort of magical treasure chest, Manthara had never been able to adopt or embrace that thought. It was like having your worst enemy sit on your back, growing meatier and heavier every year and jabbing you with knives in your most tender spots. Just to lift her head upright, she had to cajole her neck, or curse it, whatever it took to convince it that she was still its mistress. It had only gotten worse with each of her forty-eight years, despite occasional ministrations by the king’s physician. He had told her long ago what to expect: it would tax her lungs and heart and worsen with every year, which it had.
She resumed her walking, letting her head hang. The tendons in her neck exhaled with relief. Her eyes rested on her feet, which peeked out beneath the gray silk robe with each step. Manthara had to gather her thoughts before it grew too late.
“It is already too late,” the princess had said. But she was just a girl; she didn’t know how easily and quickly things could change and be changed. That was the world of politics.
“It is never too late,” Manthara said now, into the darkness.
She had long ago fallen into the habit of speaking to herself out loud. “It is precisely in the moment when a course is set that one has to intervene.”
That’s what Manthara liked to tell herself. It gave her hope and power. She felt determined to change what she could, when there were so many things she could not. Though she meant to focus on her misgiving about Kaikeyi’s betrothal, she felt her mind gravitate toward self-pity. It held immense power over her. It wasn’t a pathetic self-pity, but an empowering one, and it was interwoven with every thought she had.
Her hunchback had branded her for life as an outcast. Even before that, she had barely been tolerated. Her belonging to society was conditional and depended entirely on the acceptance she got from people like Ashvapati and Kaikeyi. In order to survive, Manthara’s primary aim was to maintain those relationships. They anchored her and justified her existence, when every other pair of eyes demanded to know what such a misfit was doing among them.
“You must be clever when you speak to Ashvapati,” she told herself. “Nothing could be more crucial.”
She was not afraid to speak her mind in front of him. But he had become completely intolerant of sentimentality, especially in women.
“Ever since that foolish woman,” Manthara muttered, meaning Kaikeyi’s real mother.
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By the gods, Ashvapati had done everything in his power to turn his one daughter into a son. Kaikeyi acted like a man and moved easily in a man’s sphere. It made Manthara giddy sometimes, the way Kaikeyi could match wills with a man and win. She won every single time!
But Manthara was also aware of how the gaze of men’s eyes followed the princess. Kaikeyi herself ignored it. She was forever preoccupied with this mare or that steed, a new foal, or the splendid new trick she’d learned. It was on Manthara’s say-so that Ashvapati had assigned four of his most trusted men to guard her. No man was to be trusted with a girl of Kaikeyi’s beauty. Manthara did what she could to safeguard her charge.
When Manthara’s feet began to send warnings up her calves, she surrendered and collapsed on her chair, falling back onto the plush cushions and rubbing her cheek against the soft satin. She had to get to the bottom of this. Time was ticking. As she mentally prodded her psyche, she tried to find why she disliked that handsome emperor, for, yes, he was handsome, even extraordinarily so. That was enough of a reason for Manthara to personally dislike him. “But that’s private,” she reminded herself, “and even petty. It will never suffice as an objection.” She concealed this prejudice even from Kaikeyi, one of the most beautiful women in Kekaya, as her mother had been. Manthara couldn’t afford to have any wedge between herself and Kaikeyi.
“Kaikeyi must never know that you feel stung when you see her beauty.”
Manthara couldn’t admire that beauty the way others did. Sometimes it made her stomach curl into knots that scarred her organs. It was unspeak ably unfair.
“If only ugly, misshapen people like me were treated the same as the beautiful ones, then I wouldn’t care. But it has never been that way, and it will never be that way.”
Those who were born with symmetrical and anatomically perfect bodies treated Manthara as if she purposefully was unlike them. The very sight of Manthara was a blemish on their perfect lives. She saw it in their dismissive gestures, their unavailable eyes, and their empty greetings. The exception was, of course, Ashvapati. Manthara was sure even an impartial judge would find Kekaya’s king superior to the visiting emperor. This thought brought her back to the problem at hand, and she again tried to pinpoint the source of her anxiety.
“You really do not know this Emperor Dasharatha enough to make any sound objection,”
she reminded herself. “Put him aside and search for the true cause of your misgivings.”
It had been a long day, full of unexpected news. The plush cushions on the chair began to swallow her, so she pushed herself up, sitting as upright as her body allowed. She opened her mind to clues, seeking clarity. It had always been her strength: her intuition and her ability to articulate it. Ashvapati had commented on it more than once.
A memory surfaced. Yes! Manthara thought. This would guide her.
Kaikeyi had been three years younger, nearing her thirteenth birthday, and suddenly her transformation had been complete. Her small budding breasts became full. Her body filled out and curves appeared. Manthara had just turned forty-five; her cycles had dried up, ending her chance to have her own children, if that had ever been a choice. As Manthara 67
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ceased to be a fertile woman, Kaikeyi became one. Though Manthara had been carefully watching her charge and had anticipated this event, she had not been prepared for the upheaval it brought on. Kaikeyi was no longer her child, and Manthara had panicked. In a rare display of emotion, she ran to Ashvapati with tears pouring, pointing out the girl’s maturity and demanding that Kaikeyi be guarded vigilantly. She still remembered clearly how the king had instantly shied away when he saw her emotions. Manthara had been upset enough to keep going anyway. She begged the king not to marry Kaikeyi off. As though Manthara was not being hysterical, the king promised her that he was in no hurry to part with his daughter. He had commented that Kaikeyi now looked exactly like her mother, and Manthara’s shock at that made her stop crying. Ashvapati never spoke of the exiled queen.
Shortly after, he had told Kaikeyi the truth about her birth mother and the reason for her exile. This revelation did not seem to affect Kaikeyi at all; she had no recollection of ever having a mother, other than Manthara. Since then, they had dismissed countless suitors.
Though Ashvapati never announced a contest for his daughter’s hand, Keyi’s beauty made suitors bold.
“Or desperate, more like,” Manthara spat.
There were few things Manthara detested as much as a man claiming to be in love. Dogs, all of them. Manthara knew it was carnal, nothing else. It was so elemental and yet men and women liked to give it big names and obscure it from what it was.
Manthara stifled a yawn. Something fluttered in her rib cage, and she was compelled to stand up. She was ready to face the king now. Never mind that it was the middle of the night.
This was important. She had tarried long enough. She had to seek an audience now, before she missed the opportunity.
As she grabbed her cane and rushed out as fast as a hunchback could, she considered what the memory had come to tell her. What would she really say to Ashvapati?
The guards at the door appeared sleepy and let her in without a word. Manthara was a frequent night visitor. This had certainly given rise to rumors about her and the king’s relationship. All lies, of course. It secretly delighted her that people could imagine something so preposterous. Ashvapati hated womankind altogether.
Manthara tiptoed in, barely using her cane. Ashvapati sat in the innermost part of his chambers, looking into the fire that burned there. How many times had she seen him sit exactly like this?
She paused for a long moment, regarding his profile.
“Yes, Manthara?” he said, without turning to look at her.
He must have heard her cane, though she had used it very lightly.
“Sit,” he said, waving her to the seat next to him.
It never failed to move her when he acknowledged her like this. So natural, so easy. As though she was his equal. Carefully, almost tenderly, Manthara sat on the seat opposite Ashvapati.
“You are worried about Kaikeyi’s future,” he stated.
Manthara sighed deeply. He always understood her.
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“I’m afraid this marriage will entail only suffering and heartbreak for Kaikeyi,” she said.
The old memory had clarified to her how much she abhorred the idea of marriage altogether.
She did not want Kaikeyi to get married to anyone!
“Why do you say this?”
“What else is there in carnal relationships?” Manthara asked. “Surely the emperor seeks to enjoy her young flesh, and no more.”
Ashvapati turned to stone; not even his chest moved with a breath. Manthara shuddered and reminded herself to tread carefully. He was a man, after all. There were limits to what he could understand. “I’ve seen firsthand what marriage can do to the most intelligent person.”
She meant this as a not-so-subtle hint about his failed marriage. Though Manthara was unspeakably loyal to Ashvapati, she did not think he was a whole person anymore or a very lovable one at that. He was like Manthara. Only a great few could see beyond the obvious and find the hidden gold. Manthara actually smiled in the darkness, closing her eyes. She liked comparing herself to Ashvapati, her lifelong friend. Manthara felt more relaxed, seeing the contours now of her misgivings.
“You counsel against marriage altogether?” Ashvapati asked.
Manthara opened her eyes, staring into the fire with him.
As much as Manthara wished Kaikeyi would stay unmarried, the truth was plain to see in every curve of Kaikeyi’s body. Manthara’s own curve had deflected the desires of men, but Kaikeyi’s invited them.
“No, Your Highness. That would be folly. But am I the only one suspicious of the fact that he has sired no children until now.”
“That is the first valid point you make.”
“Well?”
“He is a man of his word.”
Manthara waited. But that was all the answer she got. Evidently, she was the only one who thought in obvious arithmetic. Manthara was forced to grasp for straws again.
“Princess Kaikeyi is a child of Kekaya. Is it wise to send her so far, to a place where she will always be an outsider?”
In truth, it was in Manthara’s best interest to stay in Kekaya. Here the crippled were welcome, even honored. That would not be the case in Ayodhya.
“Ayodhya has a flawless reputation,” Ashvapati said. “It is grand beyond imagination. Its common inhabitants possess more culture and knowledge than the most elevated Kekayan.”
“Cultured folk are often the most cruel,” Manthara countered.
Ashvapati looked at her then.
Manthara’s tormentors had made it clear that she only had one acceptable identity. She had the ugly face of a witch, and her body agreed. Deformity was its true nature. She had, over the years, made sure to oust those aggressors from the palace. Not one of the eight who had attacked her was allowed anywhere near the palace. Manthara would have liked to do even more, but there were limits to her power. Sitting beside her king, Manthara rubbed 70
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her eyes and gnashed her teeth. Most people were cruel and judgmental, like those children had been.
