The news arrived on a Thursday.
Eshaan heard it first from the grain market - the way most news travelled in Pataliputra, carried on the voices of merchants who heard it from boatmen who had heard it from travellers coming west along the river road. By the time it reached the record hall it had already been through six mouths and gained several embellishments, but the core of it was intact and the core was this:
Ballal Sen's advance had stopped.
The eastern approach roads were underwater as the monsoon floods were unusually severe this season, people were saying, "Maa Ganga[1] is angry with the Senas and the gods themselves are displeased with this conquest."
The flood had inundated the agricultural tracks completely. Supply carts could not move. War elephants could not move. An army that had been three weeks from Pataliputra's eastern boundary was now looking at two to three months of waiting for the water to recede, reorganizing its supply lines and finding alternate approaches that did not exist in any convenient form.
And then came the second piece of news, quieter, traveling on fewer voices because it was more dangerous to repeat - "Ballal Sen has fallen ill. Seriously ill.[2] His son Lakshmana Sen had taken command of the Sena forces."
Lakshmana Sen was a young man with his father dying in a tent somewhere east of the flooded roads and a kingdom that needed its king, and the advance on Pataliputra was no longer his most immediate problem.
Eshaan heard all of this standing at the edge of the grain market on a Thursday morning, eight weeks after he had replaced the documents in his father's study.
He stood there for a moment, the city moving around him, the grain merchants haggling, a cart of sesame oil creaking past, Pataliputra exhaling with the particular relief of a city that had been holding its breath for two months and had just been told it could stop.
"It worked," he thought.
Then he bought the lentils his mother had asked for and went home.
Eight weeks had changed Eshaan's body in ways that were becoming difficult to hide.
It wasn't something drastic, he was still small, still the boy who had nearly died of a fever two months ago. But something has changed about him, the chest tightness that had plagued him for the first few weeks was still present in the early mornings, but it cleared faster, within the first ten minutes of exercises rather than lasting through half the day. Eshaan's arms also strengthened, before it managed seven pushups which is now scaled around sixty.
Vasu had noticed before anyone else which was appropriate since Vasu was the one responsible for a significant portion of it.
Eshaan and Vasu developed a morning routine which had now developed a shape over eight weeks. Eshaan went to the courtyard before dawn doing his solo work, then a walk or run to the banks of river Ganga where Vasu was usually already there after helping his father bring in the early catch, and then they did an hour of what Vasu called training and what Eshaan privately categorized as controlled suffering administered by someone twice his size.
Eshaan and Vasu ran on the river bank, swam in the shallows when the monsoon current allowed it. Vasu had started teaching Eshaan the basic wrestling holds that the fishermen's boys learned from their fathers, and Eshaan had started teaching Vasu the basics of how to count in larger numbers and how to calculate the weight of a catch against the day's market price before the merchant had a chance to establish the terms and he disguised all of it as a game.
This morning Vasu had shown up with a new piece of information delivered in his characteristic style, which was to say as a passing observation while doing something physically demanding.
"My father says there are families coming in from the east," he said, not breaking his swimming stroke. "Five families yesterday. Seven the day before. They left everything."
Eshaan kept pace beside him in the water. "Where are they going?"
"Here. The temple quarter mostly. Some to the western wards." Vasu paused, treaded water, looked at Eshaan with the direct expression he used when he was thinking seriously about something. "The flood was bad out there."
"Yes," Eshaan said. "It was."
Vasu looked at him for a moment longer than necessary, the way he occasionally did, as if he was checking something, running some internal calculation about his friend that never quite resolved. Then he turned and swam back toward the bank and the moment passed.
Uma had noticed the change in the body before Mahesh did, which Eshaan had expected. She noticed everything about him but it wasn't the motherly eyes, it was more of a woman who had been watching his son for the past ten years and suddenly sees a deviation from his usual habits.
She said nothing about it directly which meant that she was playing on her reason of doubt, but she did increase the amount of ghee in Eshaan's morning meal. A small increase, from the usual one spoon full of it. And she also added a second cup of the ginger preparation she had been giving him since the fever.
Eshaan accepted both the changes without comment. She accepted his acceptance without comment. Over the course of eight weeks, the mother son duo had developed a domestic language of small adjustments and quiet acknowledgments that required very few actual words and communicated a great deal.
This morning his mother had glanced at his arm when he came in from the courtyard but immediately went back to the cooking, Eshaan's heart skipped a few beats as he noticed this behaviour.
"She knows something is different," Eshaan thought, washing his hands at the courtyard well. "She has known since the first morning and is waiting for it to make sense."
He was not sure it ever would, entirely. But he appreciated the patience.
Mahesh had been coming home late.
It started approximately ten days ago which was around the time, Eshaan had calculated that the embankment work orders would have completed their passage through the administrative system and been filed in the completed labour records.
Mahesh said nothing at the dinner and continued eating with the same quiet efficiency he brought to everything, asked Eshaan the standard questions about the day's copying work, listened to Uma's account of the household with his full attention. But there was something different in the quality of his silences. Earlier his silences felt comfortable but these new silences meant something was turning over him from inside that wasn't resolving.
Three times in the past week Eshaan had come to the record hall in the morning to find his father already there, the lamp lit, a specific bundle of documents open on the desk which wasn't the current work but older records that were put off as completed orders.
Each time Mahesh had looked up, noted Eshaan's arrival, and shifted the documents to the side without a word.
Eshaan noticed this and knew the moment was coming back to haunt him, the deed from the night when he replaced the documents. He was prepared for it the way he has been prepared for everything which was by thinking through every possible version of it and deciding in advance how to respond.
What he had not been able to fully prepare for was the specific expression on his father's face during those silences. Not anger. Not suspicion, exactly. Something more uncomfortable than either. It was the look of a man who trusted his own mind completely and was finding evidence that made that trust complicated.
The temple of Lord Vishnu near the processional road was a modest structure by the standards of larger cities but well-maintained, its carved lintels freshly whitened, its courtyard swept clean of the monsoon's leaf debris. Mahesh went there on the evenings when the record hall's weight had become heavier than usual. It wasn't out of devotion but it was more like when people cannot think straight and look for things to freshen their minds, like sitting by the riverside, walking in open air, reading a book.
Eshaan had gone with him this evening which was not unusual since he accompanied Mahesh perhaps twice a week, carrying the small offering Uma prepared, standing in the temple's cool interior while his father completed his prayers with the focused brevity of a man who respected the gods too much to waste their time.
They were leaving through the courtyard when Mahesh stopped as his eyes fell on someone.
An old man, who sat on the stone bench near the temple entrance, a travel-worn cloth bag at his feet, a palm leaf manuscript open on his knee, reading in the last of the evening light with complete absorption. He looked like someone for whom the world outside a text was largely optional. He was thin as if a man who forgot to eat because other things were more interesting, his white hair pulled back simply, his dhoti clean but creased from travelling. His face had the particular quality of great sage who had known and lived in the world longer than the people who exist in this time.
Mahesh's face changed.
"Acharya Kripa," he said, and his voice carried something Eshaan had not heard in it before. It was genuine surprise shading into genuine pleasure.
The old man looked up from his manuscript. His eyes looked sharp and dark which moved towards Mahesh and showed a tint of warmth immediately.
"Mahesh Shrivastava," he smiled. "Still keeping the Samanta's accounts in order?"
"Trying to." Mahesh smiled back and folded his palms. "What brings you to Pataliputra? Last I heard you were at the Paramardideva's court in Kalanjara."[3]
"I was. Before that I was in Varanasi. Before that I spent three months in the south." Kripa closed his manuscript with the care of someone returning a child to its cradle. "I am traveling, as I always am. The road is my residence; the courts are my occasional guests." His eyes moved to Eshaan, standing slightly behind Mahesh. "And this is your son."
"Eshaan," Mahesh said. "He assists me at the record hall."
Eshaan folded his palms and bowed his head calculating the appropriate amount, not too deep, not cursory, the precise degree that acknowledged a scholar of Kripa's evident standing. He was aware of the old man's gaze on him and it was not the way adults usually looked at children, which was either with affection or indifference. This was the gaze of someone assessing something.
It lasted perhaps three seconds. Then Kripa smiled, genuinely, warmly and returned his attention to Mahesh.
"You must come to our house," Mahesh said immediately. "Uma will not forgive me if I let you sit on a temple bench when there is a proper meal available. Please... honour us."
Eshaan had to run towards the house and give the news of an unexpected guest to Uma which she took it with grace as she had maintained this household for too long to understand that unexpected guests are to be expected when your husband is the chief scribe of Pataliputra. She had reorganized the evening's supper into something considerably more suitable for a traveling scholar of obvious distinction within the time it took Mahesh to show Kripa the courtyard and the three structures within it while also explaining the arrangement of the house.
The family and Acharya Kripa ate in the main room, illuminated by a single lamplight. Kripa ate with the genuine appreciation as he had been on the road for several weeks and had been subsisting on temple food and travellers' provisions. He and Mahesh were leisurely indulged in a great conversation and were talking about the political situation in Kalanjara, about the Gahadvalas and the Sena situation, about the state of the Nalanda University, Kripa also talked about a manuscript that he had found in a Varanasi archive that had not been catalogued in any collection he knew of.
Eshaan sat and listened.
This wasn't unusual since children ate and listened while the adults talked. In 1178 CE as in most eras, the tales of travels and stories relating to stuff happening around the world were the main source of entertainment for people. But, Eshaan has always been a good listener and he listened to everything with full attention, partly because he was a historian and partly because he wanted news about the political situation around the subcontinent.
Eshaan continued extracting useful information - political news, scholarly gossip, manuscript discoveries. The subtext about what Kripa's travel route told him about which courts were worth visiting and which were declining, what his interest in the Nalanda University suggested about his scholarly focus, what the specific manuscript he had found in Varanasi might contain based on the oblique way he described it.
He also watched Kripa watch him.
It was subtle and the old man was very good at it, which itself was information. Most people, when curious about something, looked at it directly. Kripa looked at everything except Eshaan, which meant he was looking at Eshaan constantly from his peripheral vision. He was doing it the way an experienced scholar examined a difficult text - giving it no obvious attention while giving it complete attention.
Eshaan kept his face at the appropriate level of polite childlike interest but noted everything.
It happened during the second course.
Uma brought the rice, and in the shifting of vessels and the brief reorganization of the meal's arrangement, Eshaan's sleeve pulled back slightly from his right forearm. The birthmark was visible for perhaps four seconds before he adjusted the fabric.
Mahesh, who was mid-sentence about the grain levy situation, did not notice.
Kripa's eyes moved to the mark for exactly the duration it was visible. Then they moved back to Mahesh. His expression did not change. His voice, when he spoke next, was on exactly the same line it had been before.
"...and of course the Gahadvalas will have their own position on the matter," he said smoothly, completing the thread of the conversation as if nothing had interrupted it.
Eshaan pulled his sleeve straight and reached for his cup.
Acharya Kripa pointed at the unusual shape of Eshaan's birthmark and gestured to Mahesh for an explanation.
"The boy has had that mark since birth. A birthmark with unusual shape for one, his mother always said."
Kripa glanced at Eshaan's arm with the polite interest of a man hearing something mildly noteworthy. "Mm," he said. "Children's birthmarks can take remarkable forms." And then, turning to Uma, "This preparation... is that black pepper and something else? The balance is excellent."
Uma told him about the preparation and the conversation moved on.
Kripa left after the meal had settled, declining Mahesh's offer of the spare mat in the main room, he was someone who had been declining hospitality his entire adult life without giving offense.
"The temple's guest quarters are adequate and I am accustomed to them," he said, gathering his cloth bag. "But this was a genuine pleasure, Mahesh. Your household does you credit." He looked at Uma with a bow of his head that carried real respect. Then his gaze moved to Eshaan, standing in the courtyard.
For a moment... Just a moment, the social performance dropped. It wasn't entirely but was enough for Eshaan to see something underneath it. The old man looked at him without the warm vagueness of a scholar acknowledging a child. It was for a moment and then it was gone, replaced by a gentle smile, and Kripa folded his palms to Eshaan with a slight bow that was more than was customary for a child, less than he would give an adult.
He slid his hand into the cloth bag and took out something which he pushed into the palm of Eshaan and closed it immediately.
"Open this when you are alone." He whispered in Eshaan's ears and immediately walked out through the courtyard gate into the evening.
Eshaan watched him go with his fist closed.
The gate was still swinging on its hinge when he heard his father's voice behind him.
"Eshaan."
Eshaan immediately hid the thing that Kripa gave him in the folds of his dhoti and turned back. Mahesh was standing in the doorway of the main house, the lamp behind him throwing his shadow long across the courtyard. In his hand was a palm leaf document - a loose leaf, its edges slightly different from the archive material around it, its text in a hand that was almost his own.
Almost.
His face in the lamplight was not angry. It was worse than angry.
"This," Mahesh said quietly, holding up the loose leaf, "is not my handwriting."
He looked at his son across the courtyard. "But it is trying very hard to be mine," Mahesh said.
The courtyard was completely silent. "Explain this to me," his father said. And then, in a voice so quiet it was almost not a voice at all, the voice of a man who did not want the answer he suspected he was about to receive:
"Please."
[1] River Ganga has been referred to as Maa Ganga or Mother Ganga because Indians strongly believe and worship the river and revere her as a mother. After cremation, the ashes of the people are also immersed in river Ganga.
[2] Historically, Ballal Sen fell ill in 1178 CE and Lakshmana Sen, his son assumes the reins of the Kingdom as the regent crown prince and assumes full control after the death of his father by 1179 CE.
[3] Paramardideva, also known as Paramardivarman was the Rajput King of Jejakabhukti Kingdom and reigned from 1165 to 1202 CE. He belonged to the Chandel Dynasty of Bundelkhand.