Victory City(77)

Pampa Kampana told her. What she said did not make her granddaughter happy.



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—

The “mother of the empire” was no longer accustomed to the deference with which she was now being treated. It had been a long time since she walked these halls as a two-time queen, and this new respect went deeper even than the formal salutes offered to a monarch. This, she realized, was reverence, something like the reception accorded to her old adversary the sage Vidyasagar in his prime. She was not sure that she liked being revered, but, if she was honest, she was also not sure that she didn’t like it. She still wasn’t feeling strong, and entered the throne room leaning on a frowning Zerelda Li, whereupon waves of courtiers subsided around her like a receding tide. Krishnadevaraya was waiting, and as she approached the Lion Throne both the emperor and Minister Timmarasu knelt down to touch her feet. Tirumala Devi had heard that Pampa Kampana had been asked to judge between the unborn children, and she had arrived in the throne room at speed, or at least as quickly as her body permitted, determined to overthrow any judgment except the one she wanted. She did not bow, or genuflect, or touch Pampa’s toes. She stood erect and grim, like an avenging angel. Zerelda Li’s eyes found Tirumala Devi’s, and neither woman looked away. A deadly fire flowed along their line of sight.

“Well, well, I see that feelings are running high,” Pampa Kampana said airily. “Let’s try to cool things off. My judgment is this: it would be ludicrous to settle the question of the royal succession before the candidates have even learned how to breathe the world’s air or fart. Which of them would be best able to rule? Let’s ask that question again in eighteen years or so, by which time, maybe, we will know the answer. Only then let us argue about girl or boy.”

It was an answer that pleased nobody and confused many. Both Tirumala Devi and Zerelda Li began to speak loudly, demanding the king’s intervention, and the attendant throng of courtiers split into argumentative factions. Krishnadevaraya himself did not know what to make of Pampa Kampana’s judgment. Minister Timmarasu, firmly in the Tirumala camp, whispered urgently in his ear.

Pampa Kampana spoke again. “While our king is healthy and in full command of his mind and spirit and of the empire too,” she said, “it is absurd that we are wasting time on the rights of unborn babies. Our only concern, as we were taught more than a millennium and a half ago by the great emperor Ashoka, whose name means ‘without sorrow,’ should be for the greatest good and maximum happiness of all the citizenry. When we have done our best to create that paradise on earth, that place without sorrow, then by all means let’s discuss who can best continue to guard it.”

“Ashoka was a Buddhist,” Tirumala Devi said. “He did not believe in our gods. How can we have faith in an ancient king who adored a man who renounced kingship?”

“Ashoka was the beating heart of our land,” Pampa Kampana replied. “If you do not know the heart, you cannot understand the body.”

Tirumala Devi did not argue the point. But when calamity struck, she was the first to say that it was the judgment of the gods upon Pampa Kampana, not only for her bad advice, but also for her “blasphemy.”



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—

Zerelda Li, junior queen of Bisnaga, most-beloved consort of Krishnadevaraya the Great, died in childbirth, and her son was also born dead. One week later, Tirumala Devi gave birth to a child, also a boy, also stillborn. She, however, survived. The triple tragedy felt like an omen of doom to everyone in Bisnaga, and was read outside the borders of the empire as a sign of weakness. Krishnadevaraya emptied the throne room and was not seen in public for forty days. It was understood he was seeing nobody except Timmarasu. It was understood that Tirumala Devi was being comforted by her mother and that Pampa Kampana had asked to be left to mourn her great-great-great-great-granddaughter, the last of her line, by herself. It was as if the head of the empire had been chopped off, and consequently the body lay inert. Bisnaga’s enemies readied themselves to invade.

Zerelda Li’s body wrapped in flames had released a flood within Pampa Kampana. Her failure adequately to mourn all those she had lost had caught up with her and all that ungrieved grief overwhelmed her. She had asked the king to allow her to hold the bamboo stave and break Zerelda Li’s skull to release her spirit and even though that was man’s work according to tradition the king in his generosity allowed it. After she had performed that duty Pampa Kampana lost consciousness and collapsed and had to be carried away to her quarters to recover. Again, this scene was the cause of much discussion. To Bisnaga and its friends it revealed the broad-mindedness for which Bisnaga had often been praised, and suggested that the old project of raising the value of women, which had led Bisnaga to promote women in all walks of life from the earliest days of its existence, had gained new momentum under this king. It showed that his early promise that “the reign of love will be established across the empire” had been no hollow boast. To Bisnaga’s enemies it was another sign of weakness, of a crumbling power center.

This was how the world was in those days. Tragedy gave birth to armies, and the symbolic or allegorical meaning of individual human responses to disaster—heartbreak, generosity, loss of consciousness—had to be tested on the field of war. Everything was a sign, and the signs lent themselves to many interpretations, and only the battlefield—only force—could decide which version was most true.