ELEVEN
An hour before Keechaka set out for the dance hall Bheema stole out of his kitchen, wrapped in a length of silk. As he crept through the dark passages of the palace, a soft hand reached out of the night and startled him. It was Draupadi. Like two ghosts, they made their way to the dance hall. They pushed the tall doors open and went in.
Silence reigned over the night. The sickle moon peered in through the windows and they could dimly see the couch at the heart of the hall. Bheema went and lay on it and pulled the silk cloth over his head. Draupadi hid herself behind a pillar that rose to the ceiling nearby. They spoke in whispers, for a while and her excitement was palpable in the darkness. Tonight's revenge would be the beginning of a long redress that time owed her.
Bheema said, "It's nearly midnight, we must be quiet now."
The moon rose above the palace and now only the stars shone into the dance hall. In the stillness, Bheema could hear his own breathing, like a sea and Draupadi felt her heart pounding.
At last, they heard the door ease open; Keechaka had arrived. He glowed in the dark. He was like the dying flare of a flame just before it goes out. Draupadi was as still as the pillar she stood behind. Bheema's stillness was of a beast of prey, before it springs.
Keechaka shut the door softly behind him. He called into the dim hall, "Are you there, my love?"
There was no answer. Then Bheema stirred where he lay and Keechaka caught his breath. In a moment, he crossed to the couch by starlight. He stood there gazing down at the silk-covered form he thought was the woman he was mad for. Hoarsely he said, "This has been the longest day of my life, Malini. Ah, my love, my love, you don't know how happy you have made me!"
He went on in a fever, "When my women saw me, they said, 'How radiant you look today!' I only smiled."
He could not wait any more and, with a sigh, knelt beside the couch. Blindly he reached for his love in the dark. "Come to me, Malini."
Two immense hands seized Keechaka and a terrible form rose from the couch. A deep voice growled, "So you are radiant today! And so you should be, since you have come to meet the woman who loves you. Long she has courted you, Keechaka and tonight she asked me to deliver you to her. She is death, Senapati and she is impatient to have you in her arms."
The shocked Keechaka breathed, "Who are you?"
That veteran of a hundred wars had no time to recover, but Bheema flung him down on his back, planted mighty knees across his arms and chest and fastened inhumanly strong hands on his throat. Keechaka threshed about, his legs kicking the air. But the rage of thirteen years was in his assailant's grip; it was inexorable. Keechaka's tongue lolled from his mouth, his eyes rolled up in his head. Panchali appeared ethereally from behind her pillar. In his final moment, the Matsya general saw her standing above him, joy on her dark face, ineffable triumph. With a sigh Keechaka subsided, his limbs twitched no more.
But killing Keechaka tapped a spring of savagery in Bheema; he was like a beast unleashed. While Draupadi stood watching, he mutilated the dead body. He kicked the corpse, again and again. In frenzy he broke its arms and legs and thrust them into the torso. So, also, the staring, blue head: Bheema shoved it down into the chest. As if in some exact ritual, he reduced the lifeless Keechaka to a bloody lump of flesh.
It seemed he was having revenge for what he, his brothers and Draupadi had suffered for thirteen years: his revenge on Duryodhana and Dusasana, on Karna, on all the Kauravas. Until at last, panting and dripping sweat, his hands and feet bloody, he stopped and the frenzy left him. He lit the torch again and turned to Draupadi, "There, my queen, are you satisfied now?"
She was a flame of fulfillment. Moaning, she came to him and flung her arms around his neck, kissing him searingly. She was like death pressed against him, soft and terrible. A little taken aback, he freed himself from her embrace. He said, "We mustn't be found here together. I will leave. But you stay, so the world will beware of you from now."
Bheema slipped out of the dance hall, leaving her alone with the mangled Keechaka. A current of joy in her blood, a great hope like she had not felt for thirteen years, Panchali ran out into the passage and shouted for the palace guards. She brought them into the dance hall and showed them Keechaka on the floor. "He wouldn't believe me when I told him about my gandharva husbands. Look at your Senapati now."
The guards ran out crying, "Keechaka is dead! The sairandhri's gandharvas have killed Keechaka!"
In no time, the dance hall was full of people, terror stroking them when they saw their invincible general's corpse. Keechaka's one hundred and five half-brothers arrived there, the dazed Upakeechakas. King Virata and queen Sudeshna came there and wept.
The Upakeechakas sat up mourning, the rest of the night. They set their brother's body on a bier and chanted grim mantras over it until dawn. At sunrise, they lashed the bloody corpse to the pall, to take it to the burning ground in the forest. One of them saw Draupadi lounging against a carved pillar and cried, "He died for her; let him have her at least in death."
His brothers took up the cry, "Bind her to his litter, let us burn the sairandhri with Keechaka!"
"It will please his soul."
Some of them went off to the king. They said to Virata, "We want to burn the sairandhri with our brother. He loved her and we want to send her to him."
Virata could hardly refuse what the powerful Upakeechakas asked today. Those kshatriyas wasted no time in laying hold of Draupadi. They bound her hands and lashed her to Keechaka's litter.
"Our brother was your lover. Let death not separate you."
She began to scream, so the palace rang with her cries. "My husbands, save me! O Jaya, Jayesha, Vijaya, Jayatsena! Jayadbala, save me!"
Only Bheema in his kitchen heard her. The others had made sure they were far away from the dance hall, from where the funeral procession set out. Bheema heard her, but it was daylight now. He could not attack the Upakeechakas in the palace or the streets. He panicked, but only briefly. Then he ran out of his kitchen, away from the pallbearers, toward the high wall behind the palace. He scaled it easily and ran like his father Vayu to the forest.
He took the shortest way and arrived at the cremation ground well before the Upakeechakas. Certain that none of her husbands had heard her, Draupadi screamed all along the march through the streets of Virata, lined with the people, out through the city-gates and down the road that led into the forest. She was bound firmly to the litter, her head at Keechaka's feet. She screamed to the sky, the wind, to anyone who would hear her, to please save her life, there was so much she had yet to live for! The Upakeechakas chuckled among themselves.
In the forest, Bheema gnashed his teeth to hear Panchali's screams. He dare not go to her rescue yet; there was no telling how many Upakeechakas might escape him in the open. He pulled up a young sala tree by its roots and waited, seething in the gloom. Solemnly, Keechaka's brothers arrived in the forest. Without a word to one another, or even to stop Draupadi's screams, those hundred and five stalked toward the burning zone.
The sun had risen above the trees, but this part of the forest was a dim place. From the dimness, with no warning, all hell broke loose over the funeral party. They hardly saw who attacked them. It had to be a hundred spirits from naraka, roaring horribly, with trees for weapons: a demon phalanx. Forms of wind, warriors of air: not a hundred but a thousand of them swirled at Keechaka's brothers, bludgeoning their heads off, or driving them bodily into the ground with terrific hammer-blows, striking from every side and from death's awning that was the canopy.
Even their screams were lost in that whirlwind. In moments, a hundred warriors were battered to death. Draupadi, who could not move from where they had dropped her, still lashed to Keechaka's litter, screamed louder than ever. She did not know what was happening and it was terrifying. Five Upakeechakas fled, but they did not escape. Bheema came howling after them and cut them off brutally in the open.
The cremation ground in that forest was like a gory battlefield. Splashed with blood, Draupadi lay whimpering among the Upakeechakas' corpses, hardly daring to hope it was her Bheema who had waylaid them, like Yama himself. But then, it was indeed Bheema who ran up and knelt beside her, a kitchen knife flashing in his hand as he cut her loose. She rose, sobbing in relief. He wiped her tears with his great hands, so terrible a moment ago and so gentle now and held her until she was quiet again.
Bheema said, "How brave you were! You did not call our real names even when you were frightened for your life. We must go back separately and hurry. God willing, no one will suspect anything."
The guards at the city-gates waited for the Upakeechakas to return after burning their brother and the flower girl. They were astounded to see the sairandhri walking up the king's road alone. Without a glance at them she swept into the city, her dark head held high, her gaze fixed straight ahead of her. Word spread; the people ran out of their homes and lined the street along which Malini walked to the palace, her clothes bloody, every inch of her exuding defiance. No one dared come near, terror walked beside her.
Word flew to Virata and Sudeshna that the sairandhri's gandharvas had also killed Keechaka's hundred and five brothers in the forest; she was unharmed and returning to the palace.
Virata was petrified. He told his queen, "This woman's beauty is a deadly thing. She is irresistible; but if any man falls in love with her, her gandharvas come and kill him. Sudeshna, your sairandhri is too dangerous to keep. Tell her she must leave today."
Meanwhile, Draupadi arrived back in her chambers, exhausted and flung herself down on her bed. She was blissful and a delicious languor was upon her. She shut her eyes and drifted off into bright dreams. But she did not dream long, before a sharp knock on her door woke her. It was Sudeshna, her eyes red from crying and fear in her voice.
"You must leave at once!" that queen breathed. "I gave you a home, I gave you freedom of my palace. I treated you not like a flower girl, but my own sister. This is how you have repaid me: my brother Keechaka murdered at dead of night and my stepbrothers slaughtered like rabbits on a hunt. You are a terrible woman, Sairandhri. Go back to your gandharvas, you are not welcome here for another moment."
Malini faced her coolly; the flower girl was more regal than Sudeshna. The sairandhri told the queen, "I warned you, time and again, of what would happen if your brother pursued me. He would not listen and neither would you. As for your stepbrothers, they wanted to burn me alive. Would my husbands stand for that? I am a chaste woman, O queen, I have not sinned in thought or deed."
Sudeshna said, "I want you out of here within the hour."
Her voice firm, Malini replied, "You have kept me like your sister, these eleven months. The curse on my husbands will end in thirteen days. Bear with me till then and you shall find my husbands grateful."
The queen said nothing, only stared dully at her flower girl. Draupadi sighed, "I know how much you must hate me at this moment. But tolerate me for just thirteen days more and I swear you will be glad you did."
The sairandhri spoke humbly, but the queen realized she did not leave her any choice. Numbly, Sudeshna said, "I cannot refuse what you ask, I am afraid of you. But, I beg you, don't let your husbands harm the king or me."
Malini inclined her head, promising. Sudeshna said, "Stay for thirteen days, but I don't want to see you during that time."
The queen walked out of the flower girl's room.