Victory City(80)

“The king is a fool,” Nagala Devi said. “Marrying you is idiocy, and appointing you queen regent adds insanity to folly. You will pardon my daughter the senior queen and myself. We will not be attending the wedding ceremony, or the ceremony of—let us agree—your very temporary ascension to the Lion Throne, the Diamond Throne, call it by whatever name you like.”

“The palace is full of death,” Tirumala Devi said. “My son is dead. You have brought this curse upon us and you will not be forgiven.” She was smoking opium, lounging in her heavily carpeted and cushioned chamber, and the air was full of the drug’s perfume, as well as the thick scent of patchouli oil. The poet Nosey Thimmana stood by her side.

“Nosey has composed a new masterpiece for us,” Nagala Devi said. “Nosey, recite it for our guest.”

It soon became apparent to Pampa Kampana that the poem was a malicious satire about Zerelda Li’s famous dance, describing it as graceless and clumsy, a performance which had embarrassed all who witnessed it.

“I’ll take my leave,” Pampa Kampana said. “A lie does not become the truth simply because it is spoken. This is a slander against the dead. Poet, you dishonor yourself.”

“Are you sure you would not like a drink before you go?” Nagala Devi asked, indicating a glass jug filled with a pink liquid.

“She’s too scared to drink with us,” Tirumala Devi said scornfully. “Let’s just tell her what I am sure she does not know.”

“Another lie?” Pampa Kampana said.

“A simple truth,” Tirumala Devi said. “While you are languishing here in Bisnaga, attending to clerical matters and roof repairs and legal disputes, I will be accompanying the king on his campaign. By the time we return I am sure the next king will be returning with us, in my womb, or riding by my side.”

“It’s not true,” Pampa Kampana said.

“Ask him yourself,” said the senior queen, and laughed in her rival’s face.



* * *



—

The war elephants of Bisnaga were held in as high regard as the human aristocrats of the city, and the Elephant House in the Royal Enclosure was one of the most majestic buildings in the capital, a grand red edifice of brick and stone boasting eleven giant arches behind which were the homes of the emperor’s personal beasts, two within each of the arches, and of their mahouts—their trainers and caregivers—as well. When Krishnadevaraya needed a quiet place to prepare his mind for action, this was his chosen retreat, just as the rooftop of his Lotus Palace was the favored place of Minister Timmarasu and his pigeons. The king walked among his gray giants, stroking their flanks, murmuring to them in the mahout language they understood, and oftentimes he sat on a simple wooden stool in the depths of the building, beside his favorite of favorites, the largest and most fearsome elephant in the land, Masti Madahasti of the sensitive feet, who was reluctant to trample enemies underfoot for fear of bruising his soles, but would loyally do so if instructed by the king. There, now, sat Krishnadevaraya, breathing the calming aroma of elephant dung, and the elephants remained silent and allowed him to marshal his thoughts. It was here that Pampa Kampana found him on the eve of his departure for the wars which would occupy the greater part of the next decade of his life. She came in wreathed in thunderbolts and destroyed the serenity of the place.

There is no need to describe the argument. She protested that she hadn’t been told that the senior queen would ride alongside the king. He replied that he had made clear his need for an heir. She fulminated further, he roared back. We may imagine them there, gesticulating and arguing amid a growing agitation of elephants, elephants rearing up, trunks raised, and crying out in their own language, which it is not given to us to understand. Finally the king raised his hand, palm outward, and there was an ending. Pampa Kampana turned on her heel and left him with his trumpeting friends.



* * *



—

The next morning before dawn, the army of Bisnaga went forth, a mighty force of more than forty thousand men and eight hundred elephants with Krishnadevaraya in his golden howdah atop Masti Madahasti, and Tirumala Devi, as well as Saluva Timmarasu, on other royal elephants at the front, and Nagala Devi and Pampa Kampana waving them on their way from the royal cupola on the outermost city wall—Nagala triumphant, Pampa mortified, but determined to make a triumph of her time on the throne in the absence of the king, his chief minister, and his senior queen.

Now that we have read Pampa Kampana’s book and know the full story of the empire, we have begun to refer to the next decade, approximately between the years 1515 and 1525 of the Common Era, the time of war and regency, as “the third golden age” of the Bisnaga Empire, but we make the caveat that it was an age that began with a quarrel, and we remember the old saying that what begins with discord never lasts long. It did, surprisingly, last for a good ten years; so maybe old sayings should be left to rest in the comfortable resting-places which the old hope for and sometimes find.

The book describes the triumphant campaigns of Krishnadevaraya as if she had been there, as if she and not Tirumala Devi had been riding on the elephant next to his, as if she and Thimma the Huge and Ulupi Junior had fought alongside him in every battle. Krishnadevaraya communicated regularly with the queen regent to keep her informed of his progress, so those communications may form the basis of Pampa Kampana’s account. Or the reader may feel that Pampa Kampana simply imagined herself looking out through the warrior-king’s eyes. Or both things may be true.