Chapter 13 — The Two Promises

Dasharatha entered Kaikeyi's apartments carrying the happiness he meant to share with her. The preparations for Rama's installation had begun. He had come to tell the queen he loved what the next day would bring.

Instead he found her on the ground in the anger chamber, stripped of ornament and lying still as if struck down by illness or grief. The room that had been prepared for royal grievance held no music or attendants' bustle, only the hard floor and the terrible concentration of Kaikeyi's silence.

The sight frightened him. He knelt beside her and asked who had wronged her. Who had insulted her? Whose good did she want? Whose harm? Let a condemned person be released, he said, or someone protected be punished; let wealth be given or taken away. The kingdom and the king himself were at her command.

Kaikeyi answered that no one had attacked or insulted her. She wanted only one thing: a promise that Dasharatha would do what she asked.

He gave it. He named Rama as the person dearest to him and swore by the truth of his word that he would fulfill her desire. Kaikeyi pressed him to say it again and summoned the gods, the lights of heaven, the directions, the earth, and all beings to hear. The scene did not turn a promise into an impersonal law. It made Dasharatha bind himself publicly to the truthfulness on which he had long set his honor.

Then Kaikeyi named the two boons he had once granted her after the battle in which she had saved him.

“Let Bharata be installed in the rite prepared for Rama,” she said. “And let Rama live for fourteen years in Dandaka forest. Let him wear bark cloth and animal skin, bind his hair in matted locks, and live as an ascetic.”

The words did not ask Rama to step aside for a day. They named another heir, a particular forest region, a fixed term of fourteen years, and a life outside the court's wealth and protection.

Dasharatha could not answer. The king who had spoken so freely of power and gift seemed to lose his breath. He fell into grief and then into a silence so deep that Kaikeyi had to ask if he still heard her.

When he could speak, he pleaded with her. Rama, he said, had never harmed her. He was the son who honored his mothers, who had won the love of the people, who had done nothing to deserve exile. Dasharatha offered wealth, cities, anything else she might name. He begged her to take Bharata's installation if she wished, but to leave Rama in Ayodhya.

Kaikeyi did not change the terms. She returned again and again to the vow. A king praised for truth, she said, could not break a promise once given. If he refused, she would die before him. Her insistence did not lessen Dasharatha's grief; it made the room a place in which his love for Rama and the truth of his pledge were held against each other.

At last he said he was bound by the bond of dharma and no longer knew what to do. He wanted to see Rama. Kaikeyi herself ordered Sumantra, the king's old charioteer and minister, to bring the prince at once.

Sumantra heard the command and assumed it concerned the installation. Morning had come. Priests learned in the Vedas, ministers, commanders, leaders of the city, and many others had assembled with glad expectation. The vessels for consecration stood ready. The moon had reached Pushya, the favorable lunar constellation Dasharatha had chosen for the installation.

He passed through Ayodhya, where the streets were still bright with banners and flowers. People crowded around the palace gates. No one in that waiting city knew what had been demanded in the anger chamber.

At Rama's residence, Sumantra found the prince prepared for the day, seated with Sita beside him. He gave the king's summons. Rama guessed that Dasharatha and Kaikeyi must be consulting about the installation and told Sita so before he left.

He went quickly toward his father's house. Behind him, Ayodhya waited for the ceremony it believed was about to begin.