21/09/2026
THE LIONESS OF ULLAL
A Historical Novel
Written by Anita Saran
PROLOGUE
Even in captivity, far from Ullal, Queen Abbakka sometimes caught the smell of salt on the wind. At those moments the prison receded from her awareness, and she found herself once more upon the harbour wall before sunrise, watching the fishermen prepare their boats while merchants opened the warehouse doors and the sound of temple bells travelled faintly across the water.
She remembered the sound of the harbour before sunrise.
There was always somebody awake in Ullal before the birds. Fishermen called to one another from boats still dark against the water, ropes scraped over stone, women arrived with baskets before the catch had properly come ashore, and a little later the first call to prayer travelled over the traders’ quarter.
In the cell there was very little sound before dawn.
Sometimes a guard shifted his spear in the passage. Sometimes a rat scratched behind the stones. When the rains came, water found its way into a crack near the roof and fell slowly through the night, drop after drop, with such regularity that Abbakka once found herself waiting for the next one.
She disliked herself for waiting.
The opening high in the wall gave her a piece of sky and nothing more. At first she tried to judge the hour by it, but the seasons altered the light and clouds made liars of mornings. Eventually she stopped caring whether dawn came early or late.
What she wanted from that opening was the wind.
Every few days it brought her some scent from beyond the walls: wet earth, smoke, cattle, flowering trees she could not see.
For that brief moment the stone walls loosened their hold upon her.
She was at Ullal.
Not the Ullal of cannon smoke and burning boats which Portuguese chroniclers would one day remember, nor the Ullal of councils, treaties and royal messengers. She saw the town on an ordinary morning. A merchant stood in the customs house arguing over the weight of pepper. A fisherman carried a torn net under one arm and complained to anyone willing to listen that young men no longer knew how to mend anything properly.
Somewhere Devakka was scolding a servant, probably with justice and certainly at length. Somayya would already have collected enough papers to ruin the peace of breakfast.
Abbakka could almost hear him telling her that one matter could not wait.
Most matters, she had discovered, could wait.
Nobody understood that while they were free.
There had been mornings when she had resented the endless petitions. A boundary stone had moved during the rains. A goat had eaten somebody’s seedlings. Two brothers inherited a grove and immediately discovered that affection between brothers depended greatly upon the number of coconut trees involved. Traders complained about harbour dues, priests about repairs, farmers about water and wives about husbands who had made promises before witnesses and developed poor memories afterwards.
She had listened to them all.
Now there were days when she would have welcomed a quarrel over a goat.
The salt faded from the air, but Ullal remained.
She saw the western courtyard after rain and the old mango tree bending beneath the weight of water. Lakshmappa had planted it when both of them were young enough to believe that anything planted with hope must grow in the direction intended.
There were things she would rather have remembered about him: the arguments, the pride, the long separation, the choices neither of them had forgiven completely. Those memories would have been easier companions. Instead he came back fastening a saddle strap, handing a sweet to a child when he thought no one saw, riding beside her through monsoon rain, or falling asleep over a letter he had insisted upon finishing.
Time had stripped the quarrels of their noise and left her with the man.
Perhaps that was its final cruelty.
She wondered sometimes whether he had lived long enough to remember her in the same way.
She never allowed herself to wonder for very long.
A key moved in the lock.
Abbakka rose before the door opened and straightened the folds of her plain saree. There was no mirror in the cell, but she smoothed her hair with her hands and stood as she had stood to receive envoys in Ullal.
The guard entered carrying water.
He did not meet her eyes.
Perhaps he had been told not to. Perhaps captivity embarrassed him more than it did her. She had stopped trying to guess.
He set the vessel down and withdrew.
The door closed.
Abbakka waited until his footsteps had disappeared along the passage before going to the opening again.
The wind had changed. There was no salt in it now.
Still, for a little while she remained beneath that square of morning sky.
Somewhere beyond walls she could not see, people were opening doors, lighting fires, waking children and beginning another day. Somewhere much farther west, the tide would already be moving into Ullal harbour.
She knew exactly how the water would sound against the stones.
The first light of dawn crossed the floor of the cell.
She watched it for a while, remembering the morning when the story had begun.
