Victory City(59)

“And so you have come,” Pampa Kampana said.

“None of my ancestors believed what they were being told, thinking it impossible that you could still be in this world. For some reason I had no doubt that it was all true, and so I began my search, which was long and hard. I had to cut my way through the thorns to find you,” said Zerelda Li, “with this sword, which you will recognize. Then I kissed you, I hope you don’t mind that, but apparently that’s what has revived you.”

“An act of love,” Pampa Kampana said. “And your mother was correct.”

“That you owe me everything?”

“Yes,” said Pampa Kampana, “I do.”

Time returned to greet her, and history was reborn. It was the year 1509. Pampa Kampana was one hundred and ninety-one years old, and looked like a woman of thirty-five or so—thirty-eight at the most. “At least,” she said to Zerelda Li, “for the moment, I still look older than you. And yes, I see that you have inherited this famous sword. But have you inherited the swordsmanship of your ancestor as well?”

“I have been told that I am as good as the famous Zerelda Sangama and Grandmaster Li Ye-He combined,” the young woman replied.

“Good,” said Pampa Kampana. “We may need those skills.”



* * *



—

Pampa Kampana now used the power of metamorphosis for the second of the three times which were the goddess’s gift. She gave Zerelda Li a cheel feather from one of her pockets and held another herself, and then they were flying, flying toward Bisnaga, where the greatest king in the history of the empire was about to take the throne, and the love story at which Pampa Kampana had hinted would soon begin; at first it would not be her own story, but one that would cause her heartache, and afterward turn into the strangest description of love she had ever known.





PART

THREE


   | Glory |





14





There were twenty-two rayas of Bisnaga before the final destruction of the city, and Krishna Raya was the eighteenth and most glorious of them all. Not so long after he became king he began to add deva, god, to his name to indicate his high opinion of himself, and he became Krishnadevaraya, Krishna-god-king, but at the start of his reign he was just Krishna, named after the beloved blue-skinned deity, yes, but neither blue nor godly; although “beloved” fitted him well. During his life and after his death his court poets celebrated him in three languages, and their portraits were uniformly laudatory, and there were many statues made of him and these flattered him too—he became more handsome in stone, his body grew slimmer and more muscular, and if the sculptor had put a flute in his hand and some adoring milkmaids at his feet he could easily have been mistaken for the god after whom he was named. In reality he was, to be frank, a little chubby, and his face showed the marks of a childhood attack of smallpox which he had happily survived. However, he boasted a luxuriant handlebar mustache, a strong jawline, and it was said, though this may have been simply more of the flattery of his courtiers, that his sexual prowess was second to none.

For an account of his ascension to what was now being called the Lion Throne, or sometimes also the Diamond Throne—for an actual throne had by this time replaced the original royal gaddis, or mattresses—there presently exist not one but two rediscovered manuscripts. As always in this retelling we rely primarily on Pampa Kampana’s work, but the journal of an Italian traveler, Niccolò de’ Vieri, who visited Bisnaga in Krishnadevaraya’s time, has also come to light—that Vieri who nicknamed himself Signor Rimbalzo, Mister Bounce, because for much of his life he bounced from place to place. Between them they provide seven different narratives of how Krishnadevaraya became king. (Vieri’s tales are more bloodthirsty than Pampa Kampana’s, which may tell us more about the yarn-spinners than about the historical event.)

Vieri tells us that there was bad blood between Krishna and his much older half-brother, Narasimha. They were both sons of the first king of the Tuluva dynasty, Tuluva himself, a low-caste army commander who had seized the throne; but their mothers, both ambitious former courtesans—Tippamba was the mother of the older son, and Nagamamba of the younger—hated each other and brought up their sons to do the same. When Tuluva was dying, Narasimha ordered the king’s chief minister to blind his younger brother Krishna and bring him the eyes as proof (writes Niccolò de’ Vieri). However, this minister, Saluva Timmarasu, about whom much more will be said, killed a goat and brought the goat’s eyes to Narasimha instead, and then made sure it was Krishna who succeeded the king when he died.

Pampa Kampana, however, tells us that there was no bad blood between the half-brothers, and in fact Narasimha willingly gave up his right to the throne and handed Krishna the signet ring of kingship.

But no!, cries Vieri, what happened is that Narasimha’s mother, the vicious Tippamba, plotted to murder Krishna, and Timmarasu had to hide him to keep him safe.

Nonsense, responds Pampa Kampana, the truth is that the brilliant Prince Krishna was playing his flute on the riverbank and all came to listen and wonder, saying, truly, the god walks among us, and that settled it.

To which Vieri answers with the story of how on his deathbed Tuluva, the father of both Narasimha and Krishna, told the two sons that whoever could pull the signet ring off his finger would be king. Narasimha tried, but the finger was too swollen, because the old man was too full of death; then Krishna simply cut off his father’s finger and grabbed the ring for himself.