Victory City(90)

Aliya went to Queen Tirumala Devi and her mother Nagala Devi. “As senior queen,” he said, “you must intervene with the king. Isn’t the crown the reason why you wanted Tirumalamba to marry a man of consequence, an older, more authoritative figure than some callow youth? Wasn’t this your way of getting your family on to the throne of Bisnaga? Well then. Now is the hour when you must make your move.”

Tirumala Devi shook her head sadly. “My daughter hates me,” she said, “and she has turned away from her grandmother too. She thinks that when she was sick we didn’t care if she lived or died and our attention was focused solely on our son. Now she has averted her gaze from us both. There is nothing for us to gain by helping put her, and you, on the Lion Throne.”

“And is that true?” Aliya asked. “About your attention?”

“What a question,” said Nagala Devi. “It’s obvious rot. She always was a petulant child.”

Aliya returned to the weakening Krishnadevaraya. “You made a great mistake with Mahamantri Timmarasu and the lady Pampa Kampana,” he said. “Don’t make this second colossal error before you leave us.”

“Send for my brother,” Krishnadevaraya commanded him. “He will be your king.” It was the last decision of his life. A few days later he was dead. The once-great Krishnadevaraya, master of all of the south below the river whose name he shared, greatest victor who ever ruled the city of victory, in whose time Bisnaga became more prosperous than ever before, died in a kind of unspoken disgrace, much reduced in honor, and people were blind to his achievements, as if he had blinded all Bisnaga when he put out Pampa Kampana and Minister Timmarasu’s eyes.

The whispers told Pampa Kampana that his last word had been a bitter rebuke to himself.

“Remonstrance.”





PART

FOUR


   | Fall |





20





After her father died Princess Tirumalamba Devi wandered the streets of Bisnaga like a lost soul, with Ulupi Junior following her from a distance, in case of need. But nobody approached the sad princess with bad intentions. Her sadness was like a veil protecting her from the unwelcome gaze of uncouth strangers. In the main bazaar street Sri Laxman and his brother Sri Narayan offered her fruit, pulses, seeds, and rice, but she passed on by with a small rueful shake of the head. On the banks of the river at dawn she watched worshippers praising Surya the god of the sun, but she herself had lost the desire to worship any god. The hilly landscape of immense rocks and boulders dwarfed her and increased her feeling of insignificance. She felt like a mosquito or an ant. Her father had died without recognizing her rights and had insulted her husband by dismissing him without discussion. Her mother and grandmother were poisonous shrews. She was alone in the world, except for the old man to whom she was married, who spent his days lost in intrigue, trying to get his allies into positions of influence before the new king arrived in town. He had no time for her troubles. She drifted in and out among the quarters of the foreigners where porcelain, wine, and fine muslin could be found, and through the neighborhoods of noble families, and the gullies of the courtesans too. Only the Royal Enclosure where she had grown up, with its emerald pools and architectural beauties, failed to interest her. She meandered past the irrigation canals and the Yellamma temples whose dancing girls were the best in town. I no longer have a place in this place where everyone knows their place, she thought. In this way, lost and aimless, she found her way to the Mandana mutt, and her feet, which knew what she needed better than her head, brought her to Pampa Kampana’s door.

The whole city was holding its breath. Stories of Achyuta’s approach, his wild nights at hostelries on the road, the drunkenness, the gluttony, the women, the brawls, ran ahead of the royal party, and Bisnaga rightly feared that its new age would be very different from the regal grandeur of Krishnadevaraya in his prime, and the culture of art and tolerance which Queen Regent Pampa Kampana had fostered during the king’s years of military absences. Something louder and cruder was on the way. It was time to keep one’s head down and one’s nose clean. There was no telling in what direction Achyuta Deva Raya might aim his fabled vulgarity, to say nothing of his violent streak. Stories of men strung up by Achyuta and left hanging by the wayside because of some real or imagined act of disrespect rushed down the road from Chandragiri, like heralds of the new order, and struck fear into every heart.



* * *



—

“May I come in?” Tirumalamba Devi softly asked, and the woman squatting in the far corner of the room moved a hand very slightly in a gesture of invitation. The princess came in quickly, taking off her sandals, and moved forward to touch the blind woman’s feet.

“Don’t do that,” Pampa Kampana said. “In this place we meet as equals or not at all.”

Tirumalamba Devi sat down near her. “You are the mother of Bisnaga and have been so cruelly treated by its children, who are also yours,” she said, “and I am a child cruelly treated by my mother and my grandma too. So maybe I’m looking for a mother and you are in need of a child.”

After that they were friends. Tirumalamba Devi came every day, and soon Ulupi Junior left her there alone, telling her that she didn’t need security in this place, in which everyone was safe from harm. Sometimes the woman in the corner did not want to talk and they sat silently together. It was a good silence in which both women felt cared for, a silence that brought them closer. On other days Pampa Kampana wanted to talk, and told the younger woman stories from her earlier life, about the bag of seeds with which Hukka and Bukka gave birth to the city, and the battle against the pink monkeys, everything. Tirumalamba Devi listened in awe.