The first time he kissed me, on our wedding night, I had flinched away, and he laughed, presumably finding my strange virgin behavior endearing and amusing. The next time he kissed me, on my third night in Ayodhya, my body bucked involuntarily, and in desperation I had tried to use our cord to stop him. He did not find it endearing the second time. “Surely you cannot be surprised now,” he had said, his voice gentle but firm. “You are the one who wanted a son.” The look on his face worried me, for I needed him at least to like me, and so I held myself stiff but did not move away.
After several weeks in Ayodhya, I had become accustomed enough to his attentions that I had learned to mime the correct response, even though I did not understand why it was necessary. Our bond was not yet strong enough for me to influence or redirect his desires—perhaps it would never be. So I would bear his kissing for a few minutes, and then he would lead me by the hand toward his bed. He would set to my clothes with a brisk efficiency, the pleats of my sari unraveling under his hands as I stood still as a statue. He thought me submissive and meek in the bedroom, but that was better than him sensing my disinterest in the acts he wished to perform.
“It does not matter what you feel for him,” Manthara had told me, one week before my wedding. “All that matters is what he thinks you feel for him. And perhaps, in time, you will grow to like it.”
“I will never like it,” I had said then.
Manthara had only chuckled. “That matters very little when you are a radnyi.”
And she was right. For although I had no appetite for such things, I pretended to, and he pretended to care about what I felt, using his body and, on a few occasions, his tongue. In a way, I was thankful that I had a kind husband, one who at least wished for my pleasure as well as his. I knew I could have done far worse than this.
And yet, sometimes I found myself wishing that I did care for him in this way, that I could give myself to at least this duty of a radnyi. Men were allowed to be more open with their desires, but I had of course heard women speak of the wanting that accompanied marriage. They had all made such desire seem like one of the most important parts of becoming husband and wife. But I lacked it. What did that make my marriage?
Once, I came to Dasharath earlier than he had expected, and when he did not open the door, I let myself in. It was an old habit, formed by years of entering my brother’s rooms without warning.
I found him poring over a cloth laid out on a large table. I approached it, curious, and saw a very detailed map of Kosala, beautifully and precisely inked, depicting the settlements within the kingdom.
I took a step closer, and at my movement, Dasharath glanced up.
“Kaikeyi, I did not expect you so soon!”
“I apologize for disturbing you, Raja,” I said immediately. “I can leave if you are occupied.”
He shook his head, smoothing out the map with one hand. “I was merely thinking.”
I stared at the map for several moments more, taking it all in. I had seen versions of such maps of Kekaya in the library cellar but had never had the opportunity to study a map of Kosala. My eyes were immediately drawn to where the kingdom’s borders began just east of the Sarasvati River, although to look at this map, that area was no longer well populated.
Despite my brother telling me about the might of Kosala, and my own distant awareness of it as our southeastern neighbor, I had not had a true awareness of how vast my husband’s kingdom truly was. The Indra Mountains ran diagonally across the top of Bharat, forming the northernmost borders of Kekaya and Kosala, which divided at the source of the Sarasvati River, high up in the mountain peaks. But in addition to the section of the Indra Mountains within Kosala’s control, its borders encompassed an entire mountain range to the south, as well as several cities beyond even that. I swept my eyes over the map again, a bit awed.
A cluster of red markings just to the north of Kosala’s borders caught my attention. I peered closer, to find dashed arrows from villages at the foothills of the Indra Mountains running in and out of Kosala’s borders—raids, it seemed.
“Who are they?” I asked, brushing my fingertips against the shading. I worried perhaps I was being too forward, but I didn’t wish to stop. I had not had any real conversation with my husband since our unexpected moment in the throne room so long ago.
He raised an eyebrow. “You read that quite fast.”
“Thank you?” I said, uncertain.
Dasharath’s eyes flicked up to my face before looking down at the map with a sigh. “It is a newer kingdom, or at least, they proclaim themselves to be a kingdom. In reality they are just a collection of villages united by the warlord Sambarasura, who has promised them a share of Kosala’s riches if they only arm themselves.”
“They’ve been targeting trade routes,” I observed.
“Yes, but you see there?” He pointed to a cluster of villages next to the River Ganga, and when I looked closer, I saw annotations—burned, thirty dead, harvest ruined. “They have made several forays into our farming towns and are growing more violent. Stealing is one thing, but this—” He shook his head.
This time, Dasharath actually studied my face, and I could see him losing interest in the conversation as he remembered why I was there. “You do not need to worry,” he said, coming around the table to take my hand. “It will be taken care of.”
“All right,” I told him. “Kosala is my home now too.” I wanted to add, If there is anything I can do—but no, it was not worth going down that path. After all, what could he possibly need from me?
Without Manthara, I might never have survived those first months. In the privacy of my rooms, free from the restrictive dress and the formal speech of court, I was often too dispirited to do anything but spend hours lying in bed. Manthara would sit patiently beside me, embroidering and teaching me the names and roles of nobility I was certain I would never meet. Once she even offered to practice swordplay with me, as we used to do. I could tell from a glance at the Binding Plane she did not really want to, and it made me realize just how worried she was about me, so I rose from bed to stretch and pace, and then lift objects and review the footwork Yudhajit had once taught me.
But when Manthara was not around, I would lie back in bed and enter the Binding Plane and stare at the strings, despairing at how I had so quickly become useless. If there was other magic out there, something that might help me become a part of this foreign place, it was within the purview of the gods. I was alone.
On one such day, she returned early from whatever other work she did in the palace and found me lying in bed once again. Where before she often viewed me with sympathy, instead she clucked her tongue at me. “Get up,” she ordered. I was so surprised to hear this tone in her voice, one that had been missing for so long, that I obeyed instantly. “Wear your pale blue sari, the one from Kekaya.”
“The court will laugh,” I muttered.
“We’re not going to court.” Her voice brooked no argument and so I dressed myself, intrigued despite the fog that still surrounded me. I followed her down the hallway to a small door, presumably the entrance to a servants’ passage, designed to help them move more easily through the palace. After descending a rickety stair and navigating a short maze of walkways, Manthara pushed open a second door, giving a quick nod to the guard stationed there. He just yawned, barely glancing in our direction.
We had emerged onto a small side alley, on the other side of the palace wall.
“What—” I began, turning around. But Manthara gripped my arm and pulled me out of the alley and into a bustling road.
This was nothing like Kekaya, where the quarters nearest the palace were sparsely populated. Here, just beyond the palace, merchants sold their wares to the streams of city dwellers passing by on their business. Manthara’s arm snaked around my shoulders, and she pulled the pallu of my sari up so the cloth covered my head.