The next day, she brought me to meet the other servants and observe what they did. I learned their names and the names of their children and watched as our bonds in the Binding Plane slowly thickened.
Manthara also bid me accompany her when she attended to the highest-ranking noblewomen during their weekly gatherings. They were all wives to the men of the Mantri Parishad, my father’s council of advisors. They had rarely spoken to me when my mother was around. The pleats of their saris fell just so, even when they were seated in chairs, and not a hair was out of place in their high buns. I found their effortless perfection intimidating. But Manthara simply deposited me at the table as though I belonged there.
The first time I attended, the ladies fawned over me, complimenting my hair and dress and asking after my studies. I sat there scowling, plucking at the bonds in the Binding Plane to leave me alone until they finally did.
Afterward, in the privacy of my room, Manthara chastised me. “Why did you behave like that?” she demanded, aggressively straightening my things so that I would know she was angry. “You had a chance to win them over. Think of what you could learn from them.”
I could not think of anything to say, overwhelmed by shame at having disappointed Manthara.
The next afternoon, when they again asked about my studies, I told them the truth, explaining how I found most of the arts extremely boring. At the back of the room, Manthara pressed her lips together. So honesty too was wrong?
I gave a quick, awkward laugh, and said, “I am joking, of course.” What did they want to hear? “I am enjoying my lessons,” and “I hope my father will be pleased with my progress.” I forced a smile onto my face as I added, “I hope to one day be as accomplished as my mother.” At this I received a few sympathetic clucks.
But soon I grew bored of their discussions, of their veiled manner of speaking and of giving polite, forced responses. My mother had not seemed like the type to put up with such chattering—but then again, I had never seen her in such situations. I took Manthara’s advice and decided to see what I could learn, not of the noblewomen themselves, but of the Binding Plane.
So at first, I simply told them, Kaikeyi is so kind and clever, and watched them warm to me, giving me praise for my maturity and intelligence. After a few meetings, when our bonds were better established, I began to ask other questions, things I was curious about. Why is my father displeased with your husband? I would ask, plucking the string, and the woman would sigh and start talking of how her husband had made a small error in his tribute and she was worried about him. Her kohl-lined eyes darted to me as she spoke, as though she was worried about me hearing too, but I gave her an innocent smile and told her, Kaikeyi is too young to understand.
At the end of each gathering, I was weary and drowsy with using the Binding Plane. But our bonds grew stronger, and so did I. With each passing week, my confidence grew. I could be good at this with time. I could take my mother’s place.
Although mornings and afternoons were devoted to my improvement, some evenings I would hitch up my skirt, race to meet Yudhajit at the stables, and ride with him across the great fields behind the palace. In the dusk light, the tall grasses seemed to sparkle, and when the wind whipped around us I imagined we were flying through stars. We would travel for miles, until the palace was a toy house in the distance. In a soft valley between two hills, we would sit on a rough quilt Manthara had given me and feast on foods stolen from the kitchens, laughing freely without the watchful eyes of the court censuring us.
Sometimes, I could even convince Yudhajit to train me in the arts of war.
“Why do you want to learn?” he asked, the first time I made such a request of him.
“You never question why you are taught such things,” I countered.
“I will have to lead Kekaya’s armies one day,” he said. “But women are not allowed on the battlefield.”
There was little I could say to that. The sages had made it very clear: It was the gods’ will that women should be left to tasks more suited to them, to keep our fragile bodies and delicate minds safe. The sages supposedly stayed apart from the governance of kingdoms, living in their temples and devoting their lives to interpreting the will of the gods. They performed penances and studied texts, and in return received visions and guidance. And while some wandered the lands, moving from kingdom to kingdom and sharing what they had learned, others lived and worked in one kingdom alone.
But despite being separate from my father’s council, the proclamations of Kekaya’s sages often became the law of our kingdom—for my father’s council would take their words and turn them into decrees. I could not imagine that other kingdoms did differently. Nobody was so foolish as to risk failing to take advantage of assistance from the gods, or worse, drawing their wrath by ignoring their wishes.
From the time we were small children, it had been instilled in us that the gods required prayer and sacrifice, a life lived according to dharma and moral virtue. The rulers were to care for their subjects. The wealthy were to care for the poor. Parents were to care for their children. And men were to care for women. The sages went beyond this, divining specifics of how the gods wished us to behave to comport with this order. To hear it told by my tutors, the sages protected all of humanity from ruin with their rules upholding these virtues.
And so if I questioned why women could not be unaccompanied in public, or why they should allow their male relatives to speak for them, I was met with sharp admonitions from my instructors to bend my head in prayer and apologize for my audacity. Even the sages, however, could not account for a combination of sisterly annoyance and clumsy tugs in the Binding Plane, and my shameless exploitation of Yudhajit’s vast affection for me.
He showed me how to shoot an arrow and hold a sword. But after my first mistake, he would flop onto the ground and complain about the difficulty in teaching a girl such things, and I would give up, tired by my brief lesson and the strain of using the Plane to convince him to do something he did not want to do.
At least as a princess of Kekaya, I was allowed freedom to practice my riding.
It was a point of pride that even many of the common people of Kekaya knew how to ride. Our horses were sought by other kingdoms, for they were without compare. It was said that they were relatives of the winged steeds that graced the heavens. That long ago, in the time before men rode, Indra clipped the wings of a few of his prized creatures so that they could bear his chariot in a war against the asuras. But when the battles were won, the horses could no longer return to their immortal home. Humans watched them with confusion and fear, for they had never seen horses before. These proud creatures wandered the plains, until they were found by a young man who built a stable for their shelter, cleaned their coats, and kept them warm. In return for this kindness, the gods granted him their blessing. Nobody could stand against his speed and prowess on horseback. Before long, he had united the neighboring tribes and founded the kingdom of Kekaya.
I often wondered, as our horses flew across the fields, as their hooves kicked up dust from sun-warmed earth and their breath dissipated into the cooling air, if they remembered where they came from. If they longed for more, for the vast expanse of the skies. Perhaps we were kin, they and I, yearning for something unnameable, a place where we could stretch our wings and belong.
CHAPTER FOUR