The Sandals — All Is Well
Chapter 1 — All Is Well
That morning no one woke the king.
The court bards did not come to the door of his chamber. No one carried sandalwood water out to the veranda. Behind the half-drawn curtain, the king of Ayodhya lay inside a great trough filled with oil, where he had lain the whole night through, the oil covering his body up to the neck.
In the assembly hall, the brahmanas of the court had gathered before the sun stood high. The ministers sat among them. All of them faced an aged sage with a white beard who sat in the very front. His name was Vasishtha, priest of the royal house.
“This past night was a hundred years long, Sage, and we have come through it,” said the brahmana sitting closest to him. “The king has ascended to heaven out of grief for his son. Rama is in the forest, and Lakshmana has gone with him. Bharata and Shatrughna are still in Kekaya, in their grandfather’s house.” He pointed toward the king’s chamber without turning his head that way. “Choose a king this very day.”
The brahmana beside him leaned forward. “In a land without a king, no man sows rice. A son does not obey his father. Men devour one another like fish.”
“This kingdom was given by the king to Bharata,” Vasishtha said. “He is living quietly with Shatrughna at his uncle’s house. Send messengers on the swiftest horses, and bring the two brothers home. What say you?”
“Let them set out,” the hall answered almost with a single voice.
Four riders were summoned to the courtyard. Their horses were already saddled, with saddlebags of provisions slung at their sides. Vasishtha came down the steps of the hall and stood before them.
“Listen carefully. Leave your grief behind you here, in this courtyard.” He waited until all four lifted their faces. “Say to Bharata, ‘The royal priest and the ministers ask after the Prince’s welfare. Set out at once. There is business that cannot wait.’ Do not add a single word.”
He raised his hand before anyone could stir.
“On no account are you to say that Rama has been banished. Do not say that the king has died, or speak of what has befallen the house of Raghu because of it.”
An attendant came carrying a small chest. Inside lay neatly folded silk garments and ornaments wrapped in red cloth.
“Take these for King Bharata,” Vasishtha said, “and for his grandfather and his uncle.”
The oldest messenger repeated the message word for word. Vasishtha nodded at each sentence down to the last, then stepped back a pace. The four horses rode out through the palace gate and turned west.
They rode for days. They crossed small streams of clear water and pools thick with blooming lotuses, and never stopped to look at them. At Hastinapura they crossed the Ganga. On the bank of another river they came upon an ancient tree inhabited by a god. They dismounted, bowed to the tree, walked around it in respect, and mounted again. Along a river that had belonged since ancient times to the house of Ikshvaku, they saw brahmanas drinking water cupped in both palms. The road kept climbing north and west. The horses began to stumble over stones, and foam flecked their mouths.
They reached the city of the king of Kekaya by night. The gate was opened for them, and they did not wait for morning.
On that same night, shortly before daybreak, Bharata had a dream.
He woke with a dry mouth. He sat on the edge of his bed until the sky in the window turned gray, and when an attendant came bringing water, he did not drink it.
All that morning his companions gathered around him on the veranda. Someone plucked a vina. Someone tapped a small drum. Dancers were summoned, and then comic players who ordinarily made the whole palace laugh. They acted out a husband afraid of his wife, and then a son-in-law calling his father-in-law by the wrong name. Bharata’s friends laughed loudly so that he would laugh with them.
Bharata watched them and waited for them to finish.
His closest friend sat beside him and touched his knee. “We are all here for your sake. Why do you not laugh with us, friend?”
“Listen to why I am like this,” he said. “Last night I saw my father. His face was pale, and his hair hung loose. He fell from a mountain peak into a pit of cow dung. He floated there, laughed briefly, and drank oil cupped in both his palms.”
The vina player stopped plucking the strings. His friend did not take his hand from Bharata’s knee.
“He ate rice mixed with sesame seeds. His head hung limp, and again and again he plunged headfirst into oil, his whole body smeared with oil. Then I saw the ocean dry up. The moon fell to the earth. The tusks of the king’s state elephant snapped into pieces. A blazing fire went out all at once. The earth split open, the trees withered, and the mountains billowed smoke.”
“It was a dream, friend,” his companion said softly.
“I have not finished.” Bharata stared out across the courtyard, toward the road leading east. “I saw my father sitting upon a black iron seat, dressed in black cloth. Dark-skinned and yellow-skinned women were beating him. Then he put on a garland of red flowers, his body smeared with red sandalwood paste, and mounted a cart drawn by donkeys. That cart drove fast toward the south.”
No one was playing anything now. The dancers had sat down on the floor.
“Women in red garments laughed at him. A fierce-faced rakshasa dragged him away. One of us is going to die. I, or Rama, or the king, or Lakshmana. Whoever rides in a donkey cart, the smoke of his funeral pyre will soon be seen.”
“I have nothing to fear, and yet I am afraid,” Bharata said. “My voice rings hollow. Life tastes flat to me, and I do not know why.”
Bharata was still speaking when a guard came running onto the veranda. Envoys from Ayodhya had arrived during the night, he said, and were waiting now in the king’s hall.
He stood up faster than his friends.
In the hall, the four envoys had already bowed low at the feet of the king of Kekaya. Bharata’s grandfather sat in his chair, and Yudhajit, Bharata’s uncle, stood beside him. Road dust still clung to the envoys’ garments. When Bharata entered, they turned and bowed low before him.
“The royal priest and the ministers ask after the Prince’s welfare,” the oldest envoy said. “Set out at once. There is business that cannot wait.”
He opened the small chest. Silk garments and ornaments were lifted out one by one and laid upon the floor.
“These are for the Prince’s grandfather and uncle.”
Bharata lifted the garments with both hands and presented them himself to his grandfather, and then to Yudhajit. He motioned to the attendants, and the envoys were given gifts and seats. Then he knelt before them, close enough to smell the horses on their clothes.
“Is my father, King Dasharatha, well? And Rama? And great-hearted Lakshmana?”
The oldest envoy stared at the floor between his knees. The envoy beside him adjusted his belt.
“Mother Kausalya, Rama’s mother, who always walks in dharma, is she well? Mother Sumitra, mother of Lakshmana and Shatrughna, is she well?” Bharata paused briefly, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “And my own mother, Kaikeyi, quick to anger, who always looks to her own advantage and prides herself on her cleverness, is she well too?”
The oldest envoy raised his face.
“All those after whom the Prince asks are well. The goddess of fortune who sits upon the lotus is seeking the Prince.” He touched his forehead to the floor. “Let the Prince’s chariot be made ready.”
Bharata stood up.
“I shall tell the king that you are pressing me to set out.”
His grandfather did not hold him back.
“The envoys ask me to return to my father, Grandfather,” Bharata said. “Whenever you call me to mind, I shall come again.”
The old king drew his grandson’s head to his chest and kissed the crown of it. Bharata’s hair was still damp from his morning bath.
“Go, my boy. I give you leave. Because of you, Kaikeyi is the mother of a noble son.” He released Bharata’s head and held him by both shoulders. “Tell your father and your mother that we are well. Tell the royal priest and the brahmanas. Tell those two great archers as well, Rama and Lakshmana.”
After that gifts were brought out into the courtyard. Choice elephants, woolen blankets, deerskins, trained horses, and gold pieces in leather pouches. From the inner quarters of the palace were led out great hounds bred there, as tall as tigers, with long sharp fangs. Yudhajit added mountain elephants and swift horses. The king also appointed several trusted retainers to escort Bharata all the way to Ayodhya.
Bharata walked among it all and scarcely saw it. He patted an elephant’s neck only because the beast stood in his way. A hound sniffed at his hand, and he drew his hand back.
At the gate, Shatrughna was already standing beside their chariot. Behind him stood a line of a hundred baggage carts drawn by camels, oxen, horses, and donkeys. His grandfather’s guards sat mounted upon their horses.
“Brother,” Shatrughna said. “Why does your face look like that?”
Bharata climbed into the chariot and gripped the rail.
“How many nights to Ayodhya?” he asked the driver.
“Seven nights, Prince, if the horses hold out.”
Bharata looked east, down the road the envoys had ridden the night before.
“Do not stop unless the horses can go no farther,” he said. “Drive on.”