When I was able, I wandered the palace halls, learning my new home as best as I could on my own. I occasionally attended Dasharath’s open courts in the main hall, seated in a balcony with the other women, or skirted the training fields when the men were too engrossed in practice to notice me. I made appearances at celebrations and rituals, observing all of the rites of the gods, knowing full well it would not help me even in this new land. I attended evening dance performances in the elegant main courtyard, a practice that had been confined to temples in Kekaya, and admired the talent of these men, who floated despite the weight of bells at their ankles, arms extending toward the sky, spinning and leaping as they told wordless stories that made my heart ache. I even tried to search out the library, but the cellars were hard to find in Ayodhya. I discovered one, near the kitchens, but it was filled with food, not scrolls. A servant happened upon me and hovered at my elbow, clearly wishing for me to leave. Fearful I would gain a reputation for being a glutton or a nuisance, I stopped searching.
Dasharath was the only person in Ayodhya I regularly spoke with, other than Manthara, for he summoned me to his rooms at least once a week, save when I was bleeding.
The first time he kissed me, on our wedding night, I had flinched away, and he laughed, presumably finding my strange virgin behavior endearing and amusing. The next time he kissed me, on my third night in Ayodhya, my body bucked involuntarily, and in desperation I had tried to use our cord to stop him. He did not find it endearing the second time. “Surely you cannot be surprised now,” he had said, his voice gentle but firm. “You are the one who wanted a son.” The look on his face worried me, for I needed him at least to like me, and so I held myself stiff but did not move away.
After several weeks in Ayodhya, I had become accustomed enough to his attentions that I had learned to mime the correct response, even though I did not understand why it was necessary. Our bond was not yet strong enough for me to influence or redirect his desires—perhaps it would never be. So I would bear his kissing for a few minutes, and then he would lead me by the hand toward his bed. He would set to my clothes with a brisk efficiency, the pleats of my sari unraveling under his hands as I stood still as a statue. He thought me submissive and meek in the bedroom, but that was better than him sensing my disinterest in the acts he wished to perform.
“It does not matter what you feel for him,” Manthara had told me, one week before my wedding. “All that matters is what he thinks you feel for him. And perhaps, in time, you will grow to like it.”
“I will never like it,” I had said then.
Manthara had only chuckled. “That matters very little when you are a radnyi.”
And she was right. For although I had no appetite for such things, I pretended to, and he pretended to care about what I felt, using his body and, on a few occasions, his tongue. In a way, I was thankful that I had a kind husband, one who at least wished for my pleasure as well as his. I knew I could have done far worse than this.
And yet, sometimes I found myself wishing that I did care for him in this way, that I could give myself to at least this duty of a radnyi. Men were allowed to be more open with their desires, but I had of course heard women speak of the wanting that accompanied marriage. They had all made such desire seem like one of the most important parts of becoming husband and wife. But I lacked it. What did that make my marriage?
Once, I came to Dasharath earlier than he had expected, and when he did not open the door, I let myself in. It was an old habit, formed by years of entering my brother’s rooms without warning.
I found him poring over a cloth laid out on a large table. I approached it, curious, and saw a very detailed map of Kosala, beautifully and precisely inked, depicting the settlements within the kingdom.
I took a step closer, and at my movement, Dasharath glanced up.
“Kaikeyi, I did not expect you so soon!”
“I apologize for disturbing you, Raja,” I said immediately. “I can leave if you are occupied.”
He shook his head, smoothing out the map with one hand. “I was merely thinking.”
I stared at the map for several moments more, taking it all in. I had seen versions of such maps of Kekaya in the library cellar but had never had the opportunity to study a map of Kosala. My eyes were immediately drawn to where the kingdom’s borders began just east of the Sarasvati River, although to look at this map, that area was no longer well populated.
Despite my brother telling me about the might of Kosala, and my own distant awareness of it as our southeastern neighbor, I had not had a true awareness of how vast my husband’s kingdom truly was. The Indra Mountains ran diagonally across the top of Bharat, forming the northernmost borders of Kekaya and Kosala, which divided at the source of the Sarasvati River, high up in the mountain peaks. But in addition to the section of the Indra Mountains within Kosala’s control, its borders encompassed an entire mountain range to the south, as well as several cities beyond even that. I swept my eyes over the map again, a bit awed.