Victory City(75)
Zerelda Li rode out beside the king and at night when she saw the crowds beginning to push and shove the small female figure with the upraised arms she galloped through them to defend Pampa Kampana. “Get back!” she cried. “Can’t you see she’s the one responsible for it all?”
After the miracle of the walls the whole of Bisnaga believed in Pampa Kampana’s power, and understood at last that they lived in a city which she had brought into being, which she had seeded; they knew that the old mythologies were literally true. Everyone from Sri Narayan who had sold her the seeds and his brother the sweet-talking fruit vendor Sri Laxman, to Niccolò de’ Vieri, the foreigner whose bed she had left to begin her work, was in awe. The king himself was obliged to concede that he was not the only person in the empire touched by a god or goddess. Zerelda Li told him the true story of Pampa Kampana, as she had been told it in her turn, and Krishnadevaraya did not dismiss it. The proof was all around him, made of stone.
“I have been blessed with her glory,” he said, “and it will magnify my own.”
Finally, at midnight, Pampa Kampana sank to her knees, exhausted, and pitched forward, unconscious, into the dust. She was brought back to Bisnaga in the king’s own carriage, attended by the king and Zerelda Li on horseback, and Great Minister Timmarasu as well. (Tirumala Devi was absent, sulking in her rooms, knowing that her influence at court had just been powerfully diminished.) She was put to bed in the rooms reserved for visiting kings and queens, and Zerelda Li slept beside her on the floor, lightly, with her hand on the hilt of her sword: like a crouching tiger, ready to destroy any foe who might approach.
She woke up one month later. Zerelda Li was there, moistening her lips with water as she had done throughout Pampa Kampana’s long sleep.
“Are the walls standing?” Pampa Kampana asked, and when Zerelda Li said they were, they were high and strong, the older woman smiled and nodded.
“Now I will see the king,” she said.
When she entered the throne room, unsteady on her feet and with one hand resting on Zerelda Li’s shoulder, Krishnadevaraya came down from the Lion Throne, fell to his knees and kissed her feet, sending a message to the watching wives and courtiers and to the whole empire beyond the palace. “Forgive me, Mother,” he said. “I was too blind to see and too deaf to hear, but now my ears are open and my eyes have seen the truth. You are not merely an apsara, even though an apsara is a wonder too. I understand now that the goddess herself lives in you and has sustained you ever since you gave birth to our world, almost two hundred years ago, and that your youth and beauty are the manifestation of that divine sustenance. From now on you will be named the mother of us all, mother of the empire, and your rank will be higher than that of any queen, and I will build a temple where we must worship the goddess within you every day.”
“I don’t need any rank or crown or temple,” Pampa Kampana said. Her voice was faint, but she did not allow it to tremble. “And I don’t need to be worshipped. I wanted to be known, that’s all, and perhaps to be allowed to stand alongside Mahamantri Timmarasu and offer advice and guidance as the empire enters its time of greatest glory.”
“Excellent,” the king said. “Then let the time of glory begin.”
“On that subject,” Tirumala Devi interjected, coming forward to kneel at the king’s feet, “allow me to inform Your Majesty with sublime happiness that I am honored to be bearing your firstborn child.”
Zerelda Li’s face colored brightly, and she too moved forward, leaving Pampa Kampana behind, and stood before Krishnadevaraya. (Her refusal to kneel was a silent but scornful criticism of her rival’s obsequious genuflection.) “To which I would like to add,” she told the king, “that, as I am certain you will be overjoyed to learn, so am I.”
17
Well! The competing pregnancies of Tirumala Devi and Zerelda Li certainly set the mongooses among the cobras, as the saying goes! In the months that followed, the court—and beyond the court, much of the empire—was plunged into an agony of speculation, dispute, and indecision. What if Zerelda Li had a boy and Tirumala Devi a girl? How would that shift the balance of power in the palace? What if they both had boys or both had girls? Should the thorny old subject—the bee in Pampa Kampana’s bonnet—of the right of women to inherit the throne be raised again? What unintended consequences might such a debate make possible? If Tirumala Devi was demoted in seniority because of the outcome of the baby lottery, how would that affect Bisnaga’s alliance with her father, King Veera of Srirangapatna? If King Veera backed away from the alliance, how weak might the empire’s defenses at its southern border become? And if Bisnaga became preoccupied with trouble in the south, might that leave it vulnerable to new assaults from the Five Sultanates to the north? Might Bidar and Bijapur, vanquished at the battle of Diwani, rise again and join forces with Golconda, Ahmednagar, and Berar—re-creating the army of the now-fragmented Zafarabad sultanate—in a dangerous joint attack? What was the best attitude to adopt? How should courtiers align themselves, or was non-alignment the best policy? How possible was it that a Tirumala faction might seek to harm Zerelda Li, or vice versa? Oh, how uncertain the universe felt all of a sudden! Were the gods angry with Bisnaga? Was this pregnancy conundrum a test imposed by the Divine, and how should one act to pass the test and placate the gods? What did Mahamantri Timmarasu have to say about this? Why was he saying nothing? Why was the king himself silent? If the empire’s leaders did not know how to offer guidance, how could the people possibly understand what was for the best?