“Ah, but you are one of my wisest advisors,” he tried again. “Please advise me.”
I gave a put-upon sigh. “Very well, if I must.” I paused, and Dasharath gestured at me to go on. “They are not here. They let you count and ran off outside. You have been duped, oh great Raja.” I had seen them play such tricks on their caretakers before, and I knew they would leap at the chance to do it to their father too.
He threw his hands up. “I have spent half of an hour searching their rooms and they left?” Dasharath took off down the corridor, toward the training grounds, and I followed. We emerged blinking into the sunlight, to find Bharata, Shatrugna, Lakshmana, and Rama holding wooden swords, seeming for all the world like they were studiously practicing their sparring. But Bharata’s shoulders were shaking slightly, and Lakshmana kept glancing toward the entrance.
“You thought it would be funny to trick your poor father,” Dasharath called out, and they all whirled around. “But I have found you, and you cannot outrun me!”
He began chasing after them, and the boys shrieked and scattered. I thought of what my father would have done had my brothers tried anything similar. He would have been furious, I was sure.
But this was a different time, of different kings. My father did not even sit on the throne of Kekaya anymore—he had abdicated in favor of Yudhajit so that he could receive treatment for an old war injury.
Dasharath caught Lakshmana first, gently tackling him into the dirt. “I have captured your brother,” he shouted to the rest. “Are you going to defend him?”
He picked up one of the wooden swords that had been discarded in the dirt and gestured for Rama, Bharata, and Shatrugna to take up the rest. Bharata charged first, shouting out, but Dasharath easily batted his sword away. I watched as he expertly fended off all three at once, a grin of delight on his face. Behind Dasharath, Lakshmana got to his feet, and I silently cheered him on, watching as he quietly approached his father and then jumped on his back. Dasharath fell to his knees dramatically and the rest of the boys swarmed onto him. He gave a great cry as he tussled with them on the ground.
“Radnyi Kaikeyi, help me!”
I stepped forward, and the boys turned to look at me. “What do you think?” I asked them. “Should I help him?”
“No, Ma—” “Stay there—” Their shouts overlapped.
I looked to Dasharath, lying on the ground. “I am sorry, my raja. It seems there is nothing I can do.”
“I have been betrayed,” he moaned.
I could no longer contain my laughter. It spilled out of me, echoing around the grounds, and soon the rest of my family was laughing too.
I felt peaceful, light in a way I hadn’t been in years. I had a place here, with four perfect, beautiful sons, who could be happy in a way I had never been as a child. I had a family, and they loved me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LONG AFTER I RIPPED apart the entire kingdom, old servants claimed that they saw me behave cruelly toward Rama when he was a child. They said it was proof that I disliked him from the beginning. They had always seen me as neglectful, and indeed I was busy, for by the time my children were ten years old and I had acquired twenty-nine years, the idea of a Women’s Council had spread beyond Ayodhya, brought there by the wives of nobility and diplomats who had witnessed our success and wished to find their own. I wondered how they would fare, for they did not see, of course, the continued—if ineffective—opposition of the more traditional men, like Manav. They were not privy to Dasharath’s occasional meetings pacifying our sages, who performed their public duties to bless the kingdom and praise its ruler but privately warned that the Women’s Council was a step too far. They certainly did not see the retaliation some of the poorer women who came before us faced, including one who was banished from her husband’s home and her father’s after telling us of the beatings she was forced to endure.
But these women who aspired to start their own councils were right about one thing—there was a power in listening, in trust between women.
By the age of ten, all of the boys were polite and well-spoken, but Rama especially so, and so I did not notice at first when things began to go wrong. In fact, Asha was the first one to realize it. She had volunteered to watch the boys one afternoon, and when I returned to my rooms, she was waiting for me.
“Have you noticed anything odd about Rama recently?” she asked me.
I shook my head, alarmed. “Is he ill?”
“No! No, nothing like that, but…”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I have some work I need to do for tomorrow’s council meeting—perhaps we could discuss this later?”
“He is physically well, but this is urgent nonetheless, Radnyi.”
Asha almost never addressed me so formally when we were alone. I finally took a good look at her. She was biting her lip and twisting her hands. Incredibly nervous, by Asha’s standards.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Rama and I were talking. He asked where everyone else had gone, so I explained. I think the nurses and tutors don’t speak frankly with the boys, because he had never heard of the Women’s Council.”
“That’s hardly a sin,” I told her. “He’s young. I’m sure you provided him with a good explanation.”
Asha’s face fell. “I thought I did. He stayed silent for a few minutes and I went to check on Bharata and Shatrugna. I hadn’t heard anything from them for some time, and that got me worried. But they were just painting with intense concentration.” She smiled slightly.
“That’s lovely,” I said. “But what does this have to do with Rama?”
“When I came back, he told me that he had been thinking carefully about what I said. And that he believed we should stop.” She looked at me, uncertainty in her eyes. I nodded encouragement. “He said that women shouldn’t hold a council because it was immodest. That it defies the laws of the sages, and thus of the gods.”
My stomach tightened. My son, accusing me of behaving immodestly. He was only ten years of age.
“Why?” I exclaimed. “Do you have any idea what led him to say such a thing?” Could it be one of his tutors, filling his head with such ideas? It wasn’t impossible. Though their tutors were considered the brightest scholars Kosala had to offer, we hardly interrogated them about their views on reform when appointing them.
Miserable, Asha shook her head. “I asked him who told him such things and he said nobody did. He informed me that it was a fact of life and everybody should know it. And then he told me not question him, and he tried to send me away.”
“Send you away?” I echoed weakly. It must have been his tutors. He would not have learned such behavior from Dasharath, who allowed us to create the Women’s Council and continue it without complaint. His tutors must have taught him this, or perhaps other men and boys he interacted with at court. I had not considered the possibility that my sons might learn such old-fashioned attitudes from others.
Asha stepped forward, her warm hand reaching out to gently rub my arm. I realized I was hugging myself around the middle. “I told him I answered to you, not him.”
A wet laugh bubbled out of me. I could imagine Asha, arms crossed, telling the prince of Ayodhya she wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m sure he didn’t like that.”