Victory City(16)
Pukka Sangama, the one who wanted answers, asked questions. “When the three of you lean your heads together like that,” he wanted to know, “is that an even more secret form of communication, a wordless form? Are you talking to one another brain-to-brain? Or is that a comfortable way for you to rest while standing up?”
“Pukka, Pukka,” Commander Adi reproved him, “do not ask questions whose answers you do not have the capacity to understand.”
Chukka Sangama lost his temper. “What is going on around here?” he demanded. “We’ve been sitting in this tent for so long that the days have become blurry and I can’t remember what time it is. Somebody needs to tell us what we are supposed to do and when we are supposed to do it. We are not men accustomed to sitting on our behinds like pet dogs waiting for a treat.”
“Thank you for your patience,” Sister Gauri replied. “In fact we were planning to tell you this evening that the army is ready to march. We will set out at dawn.” It was the exact moment at which Pampa Kampana was informing Hukka Raya I and Crown Prince Bukka that the city too had been told its stories and its creation was finally complete. Soldiers as well as civilians were ready for whatever history had in store.
Chukka jumped to his feet. “Thank god,” he cried. “Finally something that makes sense. Let’s go to war and bring peace to the land.”
“Do as you’re told,” Gauri said, “and everything should go well.”
Music burst out from the city, and the three Sangama brothers in their cantonment tent could hear the celebrations clearly even through the thick city walls. They heard, too, the shrieks and cries that greeted the sight of the first fireworks in the history of the land soaring up above the gathered masses. But they were unable to join the party. “Sleep,” Sister Gauri commanded them. “Dancing doesn’t matter. It’s tomorrow that the empire will begin to be born.”
5
Domingo Nunes would remain in Bisnaga, the city he had named, until Pampa Kampana broke his heart. In the early years, when he was still unsure of his status, and feared that one or other of the royal brothers might send a knife looking for his ribs on a moonless night, he was absent for long periods, traveling west across the sea to buy horses from the Arabs, and bringing them back through the port of Goa to sell them to the head groom of the city, whose cavalry—which featured large numbers of elephants and camels as well as horses—grew larger every year as the empire’s reach spread ever wider. When in Bisnaga he tried not to draw attention to himself, continuing to find lodgings in the head groom’s humble hayloft. Pampa Kampana visited him there more often than was wise, but everyone in the groom’s family pretended not to notice; they, too, were afraid of drawing royal wrath down upon their complicit heads. However, in the end Domingo Nunes’s skill with explosives, his value to the empire as a specialist in munitions, won him favor. He was given the title of Trusted Foreigner in Charge of Explosions, paid a generous salary, and encouraged to give up horse-trading and devote himself to the cause of Bisnaga. And when Pampa Kampana and Hukka Raya I got married, this now-eminent foreigner was considered important enough to be invited to the wedding celebrations; which he did, in spite of his own emotions, and after a considerable internal struggle, attend.
The marriage of Hukka Raya I and Pampa Kampana was not a love match, at least not for the bride. The king had desired her since the moment he first saw her, and had waited—longer than any king was comfortable with waiting—for her to accept his proposal. He was not blind, and his eyes and ears were everywhere in the city’s streets, so he knew perfectly well that his beloved paid regular nocturnal visits to a certain hayloft, and on the day she finally surrendered to his blandishments he confronted her with what he knew. He invited her to walk with him in the palace gardens, where they could speak more privately than was possible in the eavesdropper-filled interior chambers, and asked her why she had finally made up her mind.
“There are things that must be done that are important for the general good, things larger than ourselves,” she said. “Things we do in the service of the future.”
“I had hoped for some more personal reason,” Hukka told her.
“As to the personal,” she responded, with a shrug, “you know where my heart lies, and let me tell you that I will not abandon the interests of my heart even though I will accept your hand to establish the bloodline of the empire.”
“You expect me to put up with that?” Hukka asked, and he was angry now. “I should have the bastard’s head cut off this very afternoon.”
“You won’t do that,” she replied, “because you too are bound to act in the service of the future, and you need his Chinese artistry. Also, to speak more personally, if you harm him, you will never lay a finger on me.”
Hukka’s frustrations boiled over. “Very few men, let alone a monarch, would be prepared to consider marrying—excuse my frankness—a loose woman—some would say a slattern—at the very least a hussy—who freely—some would say shamelessly—let me say, sports—with a person who is not even a member of her race or religion—and who informs her husband-to-be of her intention to continue with her intolerable activity—I could say her debauched activity—after they are wed,” he cried, not caring if he was being overheard; but he was knocked out of his stride by her unexpected response, which was to unleash a loud peal of laughter, as if he had just said the funniest thing in the world.