Bride of the Buddha Read online

  He kept smiling. “Our beloved cousin Devadatta has decided to join your former husband’s Sangha.”

  “Devadatta?” Jagdish had succeeded in bringing me up short. Of all people, Devadatta always struck me as the least likely to go forth. But on second thought, why not? He’d always been Siddhartha’s rival, and now that his cousin had disdained the worldly life and succeeded wildly in the realm of spirit, it was logical for Devadatta to carry the rivalry into this arena.

  For all my anger at my former husband, I felt a twinge of concern for him at the prospect of our cousin, so full of envy and competition, joining his Sangha. “Well, the Tathagata will have his hands full,” I said, wanting to end the conversation.

  “And so will I,” Jagdish said, “now that I’ll have to take on many of his duties.”

  I gave my brother a sharp look. Apparently, his whole purpose in speaking to me was to inform me that I no longer had the prospect of marrying Devadatta as a bargaining chip. But I wasn’t rising to the bait. “I congratulate you, Brother. I wish you all success with your new responsibilities.”

  I could only hope that Jagdish would prove a mature leader now that he was without a contender. For there was nothing I could do if he didn’t.

  I spotted Suddhodana across the room and hurried toward him. I told him my plan and the need to keep Rahula away from his father until Rahula calmed down. “I’m afraid that if Rahula is permitted to see Siddhartha again, the monks will take him from us,” I said. “At the very least they will turn him against you.”

  Suddhodana sighed. His eyes were murky and threaded with scarlet, and the circles under them had creased and deepened. “You have my permission,” he said. “I’ll assign a chariot and some guards to escort you.” He gripped my hand, which he had never done before, and looked into my eyes. “I don’t want to lose my grandson.”

  I steeled myself against his new softness, remembering my years of captivity. “I’ll take good care of him,” I said.

  I hurried back to the compound. By now the sun was bright, and the day resounded with the shouts and bellows of farmers and their animials. The third-floor terrace was empty; most of the women were in the dining hall, directing the servants or waiting their turn to have breakfast. I hoped Rahula hadn’t become restless. I’d told him to stay in our room until my return. I’d planned to be back before now.

  I opened the door. I hadn’t locked it. There was really nowhere he could have gone but the terrace, which had only one exit, presided over by a guard.

  Inside our room, nothing was stirring, not even the dust motes in the sunbeams slanting on the varnished plank floor. Was my son still in bed? “Rahula!” I called. “Get up.”

  No answer. I checked the alcove. His blue-striped wool coverlet was neatly pulled over his empty little bed. “Rahula!” I shouted, trying not to panic. “Are you hiding?”

  Still no response.

  I ran out to the terrace, calling his name, pounding on doors to the women’s rooms. I opened the door to the stairway and queried the guard. No one had seen him.

  Terrified, I returned to our room. He had to be there, hiding somewhere. “Rahula!” I said, trying not to scream.

  It was then I saw the chest, the small wooden one next to my pallet, gaping open. I’d kept my purloined clotheslines there, ever since I’d planned to escape with my son by climbing out the window.

  The chest was empty, and now I saw the ropes, tied to the leg of his bed and flung out the window. Rahula, whom I’d taught to climb, had made use of them.

  All I could think of was Deepa’s body lying on the hard ground like a discarded doll.

  I lunged toward the window, dreading beyond dread what I might see below.

  A knotted double rope was swinging in the wind.

  My son had left me to become a monk.

  I fell to my knees and wept.

  6

  Of course, I tried to get him back. Still in tears, I ran back to the dining hall, hoping to enlist Suddhodana’s aid, but by the time I approached him he’d turned to stone. “I should never have trusted you,” he said. Jagdish, who knew me all too well, had already gotten to him, warning him that I most likely had no intention of returning Rahula to the compound. “Your brother wishes Rahula to live with the men and train as a warrior,” Suddhodana said.

  “You would let your nephew rule both your son and yourself?” My desperation had sharpened into cruelty, trying to shame him as an impotent old man.

  “My grandson will not train as a warrior.” The lines around Suddhodana’s bleary eyes deepened with a reproach that at first I didn’t wish to consider. “He’ll remain in the monks’ Sangha,” he said, “where he will be protected.”

  I returned to my disheveled room, thinking that now at least my son wouldn’t end up a warlord. Apparently, the Tathagata had influenced my father-in-law more than I’d known. Small comfort, I thought, as I pulled the ropes up from the window and plotted how to steal my son on my own. But as I glanced down, the memory of my terror when I’d imagined Rahula dead on the ground sent me reeling backwards. I remembered the reproach on Suddhodana’s face, and his words that as a monk my son would be protected. And it was then I had the realization. My anger at Siddhartha and my whole situation had blinded me to how much I would be risking my seven-year-old by taking him with me on the road as a mendicant. He’d be far safer as a monk.

  If I wanted to embark on a spiritual journey, I’d have to do it alone.

  I could come back for him later, when I had my own truth to offer. This was much better than confronting his father now with anger or tears, which at best would upset Rahula and at worst make him see me as his enemy.

  My decision was made.

  Suddhodana, now that I no longer had a function in his court, was happy enough to provide me with an escort back to my parents’ home. Hopefully, Ama could direct me to a group of female seekers, as she had suggested so many years ago. My mother—what with my two older sisters safely married and bearing yearly babies—had made an uneasy peace with her old goddess Adi-Parashakti, but the loss of Deepa and Kisa had left her faith permanently unmoored. As a result, she was more open these days, not only to wandering seekers but also to healers, diviners, and anyone else who might reassure her that her children’s souls were safe. If anyone could help me find a spiritual teacher, she could.

  Most of the week I spent with my family, I was alone or with Ama. As a disgraced wife who couldn’t keep her husband or son, I wasn’t popular with my aunts and cousins, not to mention my father. I stayed in the stuffy little weaving room helping Ama with the sewing and querying her. At first, she just shook her head, but after I pleaded, reminding her of my promise to Deepa’s spirit, she finally remembered a holy woman who lived in the hills and supposedly communicated with the dead. Hopefully, this hill woman could help me uncover some truth about the soul that went beyond the Tathagata’s list of what the soul is not. I could resume my original quest and track down my sister’s true being, whatever it was. And this truth would form a part of what I would eventually offer to my son.

  Ten days after relinquishing Rahula, there I was, staggering up the side of a hill, dodging the scraggly tendrils of a banyan tree as big as an emperor’s palace. Ama had been willing—not overjoyed, for she was risking yet another daughter—to persuade one of her sons-in-law to carry me for three days in his oxcart, staying with relatives along the way, to the edge of the forest, a long day’s walk from my destination. Since morning I’d been trudging along among stands of palm trees and banana plants, their leaves thick with yellow dust, until I’d crossed over a ridge into this deeper, wetter, darker jungle.

  I fought my way through hundreds of aerial roots, the late afternoon sun trickling through leathery green leaves and cascading root-ropes that drooped and slithered over rocks and clawed their way into the earth; I feared if I didn’t make it to the top of the rid
ge by nightfall, I’d lose the trail and end up hopelessly lost, if not devoured by wild animals. Finally, the trees gave way to shrubs and boulders, and I glimpsed some empty sky. The sun had just set.

  At the ridge’s high point, a small fire was burning. A lone woman squatted in front of it, thin to the point of emaciation. Her cheekbones stuck out like knuckles; her eyes, circled with creases, glittered bright black. She wore a ragged orange polka-dot dhoti and a filthy yellow band of cloth tied around her chest. Most unnervingly, affixed to the top of her head was the upper half of a wolf’s head, including its ears, muzzle, and black polished stones for eyes.

  Reflexively, I reached back and touched the satchel tied up in my scarf, which along with my nearly exhausted food supply contained two gold bangles and a sapphire ring—all that was left of my jewelry. Payment for services rendered if necessary. Or perhaps to spare my life.

  She glanced up at me and smiled, but not in a particularly welcoming way. She could have been forty or eighty, and she could be downright mad. “Sakyan,” she said, appraising me.

  I nodded. “I’ve heard that you can communicate with the souls of the dead.”

  “Your people enslaved me,” she said equably.

  My fear mounted, along with a creeping guilt as if for some terrible wrong I’d committed and forgotten about. “I’ve never heard Sakyans doing such a thing. They must have been distant relations.”

  She shrugged, then gestured to the other side of the slope I’d come up. “The Gorge Serpent tribe purchased me from them.”

  “That tribe set you free?” I wished I knew where this conversation was going.

  “They bought me to sacrifice to the Fierce Mother.” She stirred the fire, which had dwindled to black-scummed embers.

  Was she entertaining herself at my expense? What if what she was saying was true? Although I’d never taken the rumors about the hill tribes seriously before, I’d heard that the Sakyan clansmen who lived in this area justified raiding them because of the tribes’ extreme savagery. “You survived,” I said.

  “No thanks to you Sakyans. The Gorge tribe set me free because after they strangled me and threw me in the fire, I went to the spirit realm instead of dying. The fire went out.”

  I had no idea how to reply. I reached back from my satchel and took out my jewelry. “I’m truly sorry for what my people—if that’s who they were—did to you,” I said. “All I want is to contact my sister’s spirit and learn about the soul. I’ll recompense you as best I can.”

  “And why do you think I can help you?”

  “My mother heard from several travelers you supposedly guided into the spirit realm.”

  “Were they Sakyan travelers?”

  “I don’t know! No one I know captures people, let alone sells them to be sacrificed.”

  The woman reached over with a bare bony arm and picked up a gold bangle, which she twirled around her thumb as she talked. “And yet you have servants who clean up your natural filth and fix your meals.”

  “Forgive me for the life I’ve led. I knew nothing else.” I had always been taught—and so had my husband—that servants were a part of life since the birth of the universe. “Please,” I said. I’ll do anything for your help. I could work for you.”

  She quirked a smile. “As a servant?” She glanced down at her ragged clothes, her skinny body. She patted her wolf-head. “I don’t need people to feed and dress me.”

  “I could help you gather herbs, help you mix potions. You only have to tell me something once and I remember.”

  The woman let a few moments drift past and watched the fire, now flaring in sharp yellow flames. In the deepening twilight her wolf-head eyes glittered in harmony with her own. “To see your sister’s spirit, you’ll have to meet the god of death.”

  A chill ran through me. “I’ve never seen a god.”

  “Never seen a god? You’ve been looking in the wrong places. Helping you might be difficult.”

  I nodded toward the jewelry. “I’m giving you everything I own. And along with my accurate memory, I do have some experience with herbs.” As cosmetics, anyway.

  I thought I heard her chuckle. “I do my own herbs. But I could use somebody to haul buckets up from the river.” She gestured to where the ridge dropped off to unknown depths, and my heart likewise plummeted.

  “Don’t worry,” the woman said. “Thanks to me, the people down there don’t sacrifice human beings anymore. Although I couldn’t save you from Sakyan raids.” She gave me the kind of conspiratorial look one might use on an escaped criminal. “Who knows? Your own people might sell you to the Gorge tribe and tempt them to start up their practice again.”

  I stared into the fire. I’d come this far. “I’ll take the chance.” I put off thinking about the buckets.

  She stood up. “You can call me Stick Woman. And I’ll call you the Fugitive Bride.”

  “I didn’t run from my marriage,” I said. My righteous anger, even here, pushed through my other emotions. “My husband left me to become a spiritual teacher and he seduced my son into joining him.”

  “So now you need to show him up.”

  Before I could object, she added, “That’s understandable.”

  “I want to teach my child—,” I said, wanting to put myself in a better light, but she raised her hand as if to discourage further discussion.

  She nodded toward a heap of animal pelts, unidentifiable in the twilight. “You can use these for sleeping.”

  They smelled all too much of their former owners. I tried not to be revolted. She had almost taken my side against my husband and the Sakyan villains.

  “Where do you sleep?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you tomorrow.” She turned into the darkness, which suddenly became enormous.

  “Wait,” I quavered. I’d never spent a night alone in the forest, which had merged with the darkness into an infinite Unknown.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “As long as you stay in this fire circle, the wolves will protect you.”

  Unreassured, I nevertheless succumbed to exhaustion and slept through the night. I awoke to the muted crunch of footsteps too heavy for the skinny likes of Stick Woman. Fear lurched inside me. My eyes flew open to blinding sun and blank blue sky.

  “Greetings.” The man standing above me looked to be in his early to mid-twenties, a couple years younger than I. His butternut-colored face was flat and simple, his cheekbones broad, and his nose wide at the bridge in a rectangular shape. His lips curved to the brink of a smile, and his warm brown eyes seemed soft with a gratitude for his surroundings, which included me. A comforting face but for the multiple gold hoops rimming both his ears and the thick gold ring through his nostrils. He wore only a loincloth and his black hair was chopped off at the shoulders.

  Still wary, I sat up, gathering the pelts around me, although the day was quickly growing warm.

  Stick Woman emerged from the underbrush, carrying a dusty basket woven out of twigs. She wasn’t wearing her wolf head, and her gray hair stuck out in all directions and scraggled down her back. Unlike the man, she wore no jewelry. She gestured in his direction, speaking in the same equable voice she had the night before. “This is Bahauk. He can speak your language, because your people enslaved him for six years.”

  How many more of these cheerfully indirect accusations would I have to endure? “I’m from a distant branch of the family,” I said. “You can call me Yasi,” I added in an effort to be friendly.

  Bahauk was staring at me with his same benevolent expression but intensified enough to unnerve me. Then he glanced over at Stick Woman. “Is this the wife you promised me? She looks prettier than I expected.”

  “You’d marry a Sakyan?” Stick Woman appeared to be feigning surprise.

  “Sure,” the man said happily. Apparently, he didn’t hold his former enslavement against me. Unless, of
course, his people considered marriage as a form of punishment for the female sex.

  Stick Woman kicked the fire into life with her bare feet, their soles polished black with grime. “Well, you can’t marry her. She’d refuse to worship every one of your eighty-three gods. Not only because she’s Sakyan, but also because she’s blind to the spirit world. She’s here so I can cure her blindness.”

  As Bahauk continued to stare at me, I realized that part of my discomfort came from a momentary urge to nuzzle his smooth broad chest. I hadn’t felt such an urge since the days of my marriage, and certainly not for someone who struck me as a primitive savage. What was I becoming without the trappings of my aristocratic life to define me? I steadied the muscles of my face. “I’m here to find my sister’s soul.”

  The man raised the gentle arcs of his black eyebrows. “Why here? Would she not be among the Sakyans?” His words were misshapen in the way of foreigners, but he was easier to understand than many of the distant clans who supposedly spoke my tongue. Perhaps I’d been wrong to label him primitive.

  “Never mind where her sister’s spirit is,” Stick Woman said. “This woman has volunteered to haul water from the river.”

  I’d hoped she’d forgotten.

  By now the sun had risen enough for me to see a trail pitching down a steep slope through jungle scrub, disappearing finally into a deep gorge, where a green silk ribbon of water was intermittently visible. The slope faced east, which meant most of my walk would be in the hot morning sun. A waft of something dead rose from the underbrush nearby. In the midst of the bird and monkey din, I thought I heard a snake hiss.

  “I could get the water,” Bahauk said.

  Stick woman shook her head. “No, I need you here. To help with the herbs.”

  Anger reared up inside me; I jerked it back. She was testing my resolve, I told myself, or my courage. After all, she was a spiritual teacher.