Ch. 4: Whose Wife Is She?

The vetala fell silent.

For a while there was no sound but the king's footsteps on the packed earth, and the faint crackle of a pyre somewhere off to the left, settling into embers. The smoke had thinned. Far away, beyond the river, a dog barked once and stopped. The banyan tree was still a long way off, a darker shape against the dark.

Then the voice at the king's ear spoke again, very softly, almost kindly.

“Now, King,” it said, “give judgment, and settle their quarrel. Whose wife ought the maiden to be?

”Think well before you choose. One brought her back to life with a spell, at the cost of long wandering and a theft that will weigh on him all his days. One carried her bones across half the world to the holy river, so that her soul would not be lost. One lay on her ashes in the burning ground, night after night, among the jackals and the smoke, and never once left her. Each of them loved her. Each of them suffered for her. Each of them has a claim.

“And remember my rule. If you know the answer and do not say it, this head of yours shall split in pieces. Whose wife is she?”

The king walked on in silence for a few more steps.

He was not a man who spoke without thinking, and he was not a fool. He knew what would happen if he spoke. He had already carried this burden once tonight, and lost it once, and gone back for it once. He knew that the moment the words left his mouth, the cold weight on his shoulder would be gone, and he would have to turn around and walk all the way back to the asoka tree, and climb it again, and cut the rope again, and begin again.

But he also knew the answer. He had known it, in truth, from the moment the third suitor opened the book. And a king who knows what is just and will not say it, out of weariness, or pride, or to save himself a long walk, is not much of a king. That was the true trap of the vetala's rule, he thought: not the threat to his head, but the test of whether he could bear to leave a wrong judgment standing in the air.

He thought, too, of Mandaravati herself, standing silent in the middle of the quarrel, shining and bewildered, while three men argued over her as if she were a field or a cow. She had not asked to be fought over. She had not asked to die, or to come back. The least that any judge could do for her was to give her an honest answer, so that the shouting might stop and she might go home.

So he spoke.

“It is not so hard,” said King Trivikramasena. “Listen.

”The one who brought her back to life by a charm, though he endured great hardship to do it, did for her what a father does. A father gives life. He performed that office for her, and so he must be considered her father, and not her husband.

“The one who carried her bones to the Ganges did for her what a son does. It is the son‘s duty to carry a parent’s bones to the holy river, and to see that the soul is helped across. He performed that office for her, and so he is to be considered her son.

” But the one who, out of love, lay on her ashes, and remained in the cremation ground embracing her and practising asceticism, he is to be called her husband, for he acted like one in his deep affection. “

The king's voice was steady, and it carried a little way across the burning ground and was swallowed by the dark.

”A father and a son may love a woman with all their hearts,“ he said, more quietly, ”and give their lives for her. But only one of these three refused to be parted from her at all, in death as in life. That is a husband's love. She is his. “

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the vetala laughed.

It was not the dry, cruel laugh of the asoka tree. It was something closer to delight, as though a teacher had heard a slow pupil give a clever answer. ”Well judged, King,“ it said. ”Well judged indeed. And you spoke. You always speak. “

And with that, the weight was gone from the king's shoulder.

He did not feel it slip. He did not feel it fall. One moment he was holding a cold and heavy body against his neck; the next his arms held only the night air, and something passed above him, swift and soundless, like the shadow of a great bird crossing the stars that were not there. He turned, and looked south, and saw nothing. But he knew without seeing where it had gone.

Far off, at the edge of the burning ground where even the smoke did not like to go, the lone asoka tree would be standing as before, its long leaves hanging down like tongues. And from one of its branches, turning very slowly in no wind, a dead man would be hanging by a rope, as if he had never been cut down at all.

King Trivikramasena stood still for a long moment in the cremation ground.

The pyres had burned very low now. The jackals had gone wherever jackals go. Behind him, under the banyan, Kshantisila was still waiting in his circle of ash, as patient as his name, and the night was not yet half over. The king could have gone back to the mendicant with empty hands and told him the task could not be done. No one in Pratishthana would ever have known. The jewels in his treasury would not have turned back into fruit.

But he had given his word.

He drew his cloak around him, settled his sword at his side, and turned his face south once more, toward the asoka tree. He walked without hurrying and without looking back, through the drifting smoke and the cooling ashes of other people's grief, and he did not doubt that when he reached the tree, and climbed it, and cut the dead man down, and lifted him onto his shoulder, the voice would come again, close and cold and amused, at his ear.

”King,“ it would say, ”the road is long, and the night is dull. Let me tell you another story.”

And so it did.

Here ends the Vetala's Second Tale.