Victory City(86)
The unbearable dry heat of the drought unleashed a sickness that was killing people all over Bisnaga and even the cool of the thick-walled palace rooms did not offer enough protection. It was an unpredictable illness whose cause nobody knew; a curse piled upon a curse. The young people’s fevers rose very high, then returned to normal, then rose again. They coughed, then they did not cough, then they coughed. There were days of diarrhea, then no diarrhea, then there it was again. Up and down, up and down: it was like riding an ocean wave. Tirumala Devi and Nagala Devi suffered along with the youngsters, and it is true that a part of their suffering was caused by motherly and grandmaternal love and concern, but it must be said that they also knew that their own futures were tied to the life of the young ones, in particular the life of the crown prince. Princess Tirumalamba recovered her health first and could not help noticing that this happy news caused her mother and grandmother a good deal less joy than the recovery of Prince Tirumala Deva ten days later. This was wounding, made her feel unloved, and embittered her toward the women in her family for the rest of her life. After she was married off at the age of thirteen to a certain Aliya Rama, a much older, ambitious, conniving fellow with royal aspirations of his own, she separated herself from Tirumala Devi and Nagala Devi, and turned to face in a new direction.
* * *
—
Golden ages never last long, as the horse-trader Fern?o Paes once said. Krishnadevaraya’s time of glory was coming to an end. The drought tarnished the gold, the rains came to burnish it again, the king returned from Raichur in triumph, the heat sickness went away, but a short while later the deterioration began, and the beginning of it was the death of the crown prince Tirumala Deva. The king had come home with a great plan. He would abdicate the throne in his son’s favor, ensuring a trouble-free succession, and after that he would act as the lad’s mentor and guide, forming a trinity of high advisers along with Timmarasu and ex–Queen Regent Pampa Kampana. But no sooner had Krishnadevaraya announced his intentions than the boy fell sick again, his forehead was on fire while the rest of his body shivered, and this time there was no recovery. He slid rapidly down into darkness, and died.
The king broke the skull of his burning son and entered a state of screaming, ranting agony driven by grief, rage at the gods, and furious suspicion of everyone in the vicinity. The palace was plunged into chaos as courtiers tried to avoid the royal presence lest they be accused of having had a hand in the boy’s death. Rumors of foul play burst out beyond the palace walls and filled the city’s bazaars. The most repeated theory was that a traitor at court, in the service of the vanquished Adil Shah, had somehow managed to poison the prince. And the moment poison was mentioned people’s thoughts turned to the two notorious Poison Ladies, the senior queen and her mother, but nobody could understand why they would wish to assassinate their own son and grandson. So confusion reigned. Then Queen Tirumala Devi and her mother Nagala Devi themselves came forward with an accusation that changed Bisnaga’s history.
“The king sat on his Diamond Throne, weeping, inconsolable, looking for someone to blame,” Pampa Kampana tells us, “and the two wicked ladies with their nails as long as daggers and painted the color of blood pointed their fingers at wise old Saluva Timmarasu, and also at myself.”
“Can’t you see? Are you blind?” Tirumala Devi declaimed. “This woman, this fraud and murderess, has become drunk on power and plans to seize the throne with your dishonest minister’s help. They are whispering about you behind your back. ‘The king is mad,’ the whispers say, ‘the king has lost his mind and cannot rule, and it is the duty of the two most able persons at court to take his place.’ The whispers are spreading everywhere. People are starting to believe them. They wake up every morning with the whispers in their heads.
“Your son was the first victim of these two traitors. If you do nothing, you will be the second. I ask you again: are you too blind to see what’s in front of your face? Only a blind man could fail to see something so obvious. Has the king my husband gone blind?”
Krishnadevaraya in his agony shouted at his minister. “Timma? What do you say to this?”
“It is contemptible,” Timmarasu said. “I say nothing. I let my years of faithful service speak for me instead.”
“You told me to kill more people,” Krishnadevaraya cried. “It’s what people expect, you said. Then I did, I beheaded the soldiers, one hundred thousand of them, is that enough for you, I asked you, will that satisfy the people? But then people started to call me insane. The king is mad. I see it. I see your plan. That was your idea all along.”
He turned to Pampa Kampana. “And you? Will you also refuse to plead your case?”
“I will say only that it is a kind of derangement in the world when a mere accusation, supported by nothing, feels like a guilty verdict. That way madness lies for us all,” said Pampa Kampana.
“Madness again,” the king bellowed. “You seduced the people while I was away. Yes, yes. You made yourself queen of their hearts and now you want to clear your path to this throne. Women should be kings, that’s what you always say, isn’t it? Women should be kings as well as men? This is what’s behind your actions. It is very clear.”
Pampa Kampana said no more. A terrible silence fell. Then the king stood up and stamped his foot. “No,” he declared. “The king is not blind. The king sees very well what is in front of his eyes to see. But these two will see no more. Seize them! Blind them both!”