Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  The King looked at her out of the glittering narrow eyes that reminded her so often of a bird’s.

  “You’re mad!” he said. He regarded her with a cold stare, full of suspicion, and then leaned over and laughed in her face. She started to her feet as if he had slapped her. Rallying her strength she faltered to a pillar and leaned against it, looking at him. As her face was stripped of its ordinary patina of polite social intercourse by the sudden impact of his laugh, so also was his by the emotions rampant behind it. She saw something indescribably revolting in him, something fiendish that she had never seen before. He was not interested in the merits of Tuptim’s case, nor even in the possible innocence of the priest who had become enmeshed in it. His sense of decency and justice was gone, swallowed in a bestial need to sate in blood the injured pride of the scorned male. Anna was seized with an inexpressible horror of him. She was stupefied and amazed, as much to find herself still trembling against the pillar as at the naked evil she had seen within the King’s heart. Thought and speech had left her. She turned to go.

  But the King had read and known what her face said. Her disgust had shocked him back to normal and instantly he made one of his characteristic about-faces. “Madam,” he ordered, “come back! I grant your petition. The woman will be condemned to work in the rice mill for the rest of her life. The man will be set free. I will send my decision to the court in a few minutes. You do not need to return there. You had better go to school now.”

  Anna could not thank him. Her revulsion was too great. Her head throbbed and she felt dizzy. She went away without a word. At the head of the stairs she passed one of the women judges bringing the records of the trial to the King. Instead of going to the schoolroom Anna went home. She felt too ill to do anything but go to bed.

  It was two o’clock when she awoke, heavy and unrefreshed. The house was quiet. Beebe had taken Louis down river to spend the day with the Bradley children and they would not be back until bedtime. Anna’s little maid brought her some lunch on a tray, but she scarcely touched it.

  The sound of a crowd milling around drew her to the window. She was startled to see two scaffolds being set up on the plaza close to her house. Workmen were driving stakes and bringing up strange machines under the instruction of high officials. A vast throng of men, women, and children had collected to see the spectacle, whatever it might be. There was appearance of great excitement among the crowd.

  Anna summoned her maid and asked the reason for all the preparation and commotion. The maid reported that a Parachik (a guilty priest) and a Nang Ham were to be exposed and tortured for the improvement of public morals that afternoon. The King had reversed his decision! Anna thought frantically of what she could do, but she had exhausted the resources of the Palace. Mr. Knox, the British Consul, might have helped, but he had gone to Moulmein to settle a lumber claim. The American Vice-Consul was a local merchant and without influence, and the French Consul, the hated Aubaret, was on the high seas.

  The scaffolds were about five feet tall. To each were attached long levers, which could be fastened to the neck of the victim to prevent his falling off. They were so arranged as to strangle him if that were the sentence. On the Palace wall across the square was the long pavilion from which the King and his court watched public ceremonies and processions. As Anna stood at the window she saw the shutters thrown open. Slaves rushed about preparing the pavilion for the King, the princes and princesses, and such of the great ladies of the court as were to see the torture of their former associate and the priest.

  Anna looked on in helpless despair. What had gone wrong? She did not know until months later that she had hardly left the King before the proceedings of both trials had been laid before him. When he read them he flew into a violent rage that included Anna as well as the concubine and the priest. He ordered the two Siamese tortured publicly and then executed, but he could think of no way of punishing the Englishwoman except by having the scaffolds set up directly under her windows. And he swore vengeance against any person who dared in the future to oppose his royal will and pleasure. Anna considered escaping down the river and taking refuge with the missionaries. It would have been difficult, but not impossible, although the crowd was already dense. But much as she longed to run away, she felt that to desert Tuptim was unthinkable. There was nothing she could do but sympathize and pray for her, and yet she could not leave the girl to suffer alone.

  A little before three o’clock the instruments of torture were brought and arranged beside the scaffolds. Soon a loud flourish of trumpets announced the royal party, and the King and all his court were visible at the open windows of the pavilion. Amazons dressed in scarlet and gold took up their posts in the turrets to guard the ladies of the harem. Suddenly the crowd sent up a cry. Guards had come from the Palace enclosure with the two prisoners. The priest, apparently too weak to walk alone, was hoisted upon the scaffold to the right, while Tuptim tranquilly ascended the one to the left without assistance. This was the nearer of the two to Anna’s windows. They were closed, but she could see clearly through the latticed blinds. She saw the priest turn his face toward Tuptim, with an expression of love and grief.

  The girl’s hands, no longer chained, were folded on her breast. She looked down calmly at the rabble who flocked close to gloat over the spectacle. They would greet with ferocious animal howls the cries of the victims. But something in the girl’s attitude stilled them. Anna felt that a kind of unwilling awe was being drawn out of them by Tuptim’s quiet steadiness. And a few, evidently believers in her innocence, prostrated themselves before her as if she were a martyr. Anna could not take her eyes from the tiny figure whose scarf fluttered like a brave red flag in the breeze. Fascination and horror kept her leaning against the shutters.

  Two trumpeters, right and left, blared forth the crime of which the pair were accused. Ten thousand eyes were fixed on Tuptim and Palat, but the crowd was mute, not to lose a single word of the sentence. Again the trumpets sounded, and the conviction, with the judgment that had been passed, was announced. The spell was broken: A great shout went up from the crowd. Foul abuse was rained on the girl standing calmly on the shaking wooden posts. Nothing could have surpassed the dignity with which she endured the storm. Anna could see the color coming and going in her face, first crimson and then deadly pale, as anger flashed from her eyes, but that was all. The fear she must have felt was not revealed either in her face or in her attitude. She did not bow her head or quail.

  The trumpets sounded for the third time. The multitude was quiet again as the executioner mounted a raised platform to apply the torture to Tuptim. The blows began to fall. Now her back was crimson with more than the fluttering of her scarf. For the first few moments it seemed as if the agony would prove too much for her powers of endurance. She half turned from the royal spectator at the window. Her body writhed involuntarily and she tried to hide her face in her hands. But almost immediately, by a supreme effort of will, she stood erect again, and her voice rang out across the square like a deep-toned silver bell: “I have not sinned! Khun Phra Palat has not sinned! We are innocent! The holy Buddha in heaven knows all!”

  She just managed to finish speaking before she pitched forward upon the two levers of the scaffold, with a piercing cry which went through Anna like a sword. The girl lay insensible until physicians restored her to consciousness, and then the torture was resumed. Once again her voice rang out, more musical than before: “I have not sinned! Khun Phra Palat has not sinned! The holy Buddha knows all!”

  One by one every excruciating device that would agonize but not kill was used to wring a confession from Tuptim. But every torture, every pang, failed to bring forth anything but her incomparable courage. She confessed nothing, she asked for no mercy. With sublime stamina she confronted her persecutors, her judges, and the King with her innocence. The honor of the priest seemed more precious to her than her life. The last words Anna heard her cry were: “All the guilt was mine. I knew that I was a woman, but he did n
ot!”

  After this Anna neither heard nor saw anything more. She was not aware of her own exhaustion, that she had no strength left to endure the sight below her window. Consciousness simply left her and she knew no more.

  The house was very still when she awoke. Lying on the floor, crumpled and weak, she saw that the room was full of shadows. Outside there was no sound. It was minutes before she could recollect why she was there. Then fearfully she pulled herself to her knees and looked through the window blinds. The scaffolds were gone and there was no one in the square. The sun had set. She strained her eyes to see across the great common before the house. There was a thick mist loaded with vapors, a terrifying silence, an absolute quiet as of the tomb.

  At last she saw a figure slipping through the darkness toward her. Her maid was nowhere about so she tottered downstairs herself, and unbolted the door to admit Phim. The slave had come in secret to tell Anna of Tuptim’s and Palat’s end. They had been condemned to death by fire at the King’s command. Neither had confessed anything under torture, and at last torture had been abandoned for fear it would extinguish life before the flames could be applied. They had been dragged through the streets to Wat Saket, and there burned publicly outside the wall of the cemetery. The common people who followed had been terribly affected by the sight of the priest’s invincible courage and Tuptim’s fortitude.

  Phim’s whole soul was in her face as she told how the awe of the people had increased until there were no scoffers left. Gradually a muttering had begun to grow against the two priests who had been the informers. Under her low and massive brow the slave’s glistening eyes were wild as she described the final glimpse of her mistress, enveloped in flames, holding up her mutilated hands, and crying feebly but clearly, so that all could hear: “I am pure! And the priest, my lord Palat, is pure also! See! These fingers have not made my lips to lie. The holy Buddha in heaven judge between me and my accusers!”

  The people had been so overcome, so convinced of the blamelessness of the concubine and the priest, that they would have lynched the two informers if they could have found them, but the men had prudently fled to another town.

  Phim’s grief was deep and lasting. She owed her life to the resolute bravery of her mistress. To the end Tuptim had refused to implicate anyone in her escape. Every seventh day the slave offered fresh flowers and perfumed tapers on the spot where Tuptim and the priest had suffered, believing that their disembodied souls still hovered about it at twilight. When she met Anna she would assure her that she could hear their voices moaning through the mellow evening air, growing deeper and gathering strength as she listened. She said that she could hear them, now weeping together, now exulting, until they became indistinct, and finally died away into the regions of the blessed and the pure.

  Anna did not see the King for a month after Tuptim’s death. He had gone almost immediately to Ayuthia where the citizens were erecting a temple to which he had subscribed. By the time he returned his brother, the Second King, was very ill, and he was often at his brother’s palace a mile up the river. The rest of the time he was occupied with preparations for the tonsure of his son Chulalongkorn, which was to be celebrated in magnificent style.

  At last one day he summoned Anna to his presence. She had never felt so cold, so hard, so unforgiving as that day in December when she once more entered the breakfast hall. He took no notice of her manner, but as soon as he saw her continued their previous conversation as if no interval had occurred.

  “I have much sorrow for Tuptim,” he said, and Anna saw that with his usual quixotic change of attitude it was true. His face was genuinely sad. “I shall now believe that she is innocent. I have had a dream, and I had clear observation in my vision of Tuptim and Palat floating together in a great wide space, and she has bent down and touched me on the shoulder, and said to me, ‘We are guiltless. We were ever pure and guiltless on earth, and look, we are happy now.’ After discoursing thus, she has mounted on high and vanished from my further observation. I have much sorrow, Mem, much sorrow, and respect for your judgment; but our laws are severe for such crimes. But now I shall cause monument to be erected to the memory of Palat and Tuptim.”

  And he did. At Wat Saket on the spot where they had died two tall and slender chedis were erected by the King’s order. Each bore the inscription—“Suns may set and rise again, but the pure and brave Palat and Tuptim will never more return to earth.” Believing as he did in the endless cycle of birth and rebirth that ended only in the attainment of Nirvana, Nipphan, his words were a testimony to his conviction that Tuptim and Palat had escaped by their purity from the wheel of reincarnation.

  32

  THE DEATH OF THE HIGH PRIEST

  One evening as the lingering sun trailed shadows through the columns of the temple a group of pages came hurrying to where Anna worked alone in the cool depths of the schoolroom. The King wanted to see her at once. Long association with him had taught her not to pause even to collect her papers and books. She put on her bonnet and cloak and prepared to obey—reluctantly, because so many of these sudden interviews had been painful. She followed the pages out through the gates to Wat Rachapradit, which was only forty yards from the eastern wall.

  Anna had watched this temple in the building and felt a peculiar interest in it. Here Tuptim had lived and studied, and from here she and Khun Phra Palat had been taken to their death. The sculptures and carvings on the pillars and façades were of half-fabulous, half-historical figures, conveying allegories of the triumph of virtue over passion. They were the King’s tribute to the great Abbot Chao Khun Sa, who lived there.

  Usually at evening contemplative priests in saffron robes could be seen walking slowly back and forth along the graveled paths between the trees and shrubs, but tonight there was no one. The pages hurried through the temple grounds and led Anna to the monastery. It had been built in medieval style, and like the temple was substantial and elaborate. The sun was setting below a red horizon as she reached the monastic buildings. Wide tracts of corn and avenues of oleander screened from view the distant city with its pagodas and palaces. The air was fresh and balmy. It sighed among the betel and coco palms that skirted the temple confines.

  The pages led her to the steps of the principal building and told her to wait while they announced her to the King.

  “What is it?” she asked, astonished to be brought to this part of the temple, ordinarily forbidden to women. “What does the King want of me here?”

  The pages all raised their joined palms in salute toward the building and one of them said, “The High Priest is dying.”

  Anna sat down on the stone steps to wait. The sanded yard of the monastery was very peaceful. Lacy shadows from palms shifted across the ground. Behind her in the building she could hear the evening chant of the monks:

  Thou Excellence of Perfection, I take refuge in thee.

  Thou who art called the Enlightened One, I take refuge in thee.

  As she sat quietly listening to the solemn cadences starting low and gradually rising, the cares of the day melted into the gathering darkness. Long after the moon had come out, clear and cool, Anna sat thinking of other moons in happier days—of India and the good years, of little Avis in Fulham, and of the priest who lay dying within.

  The King had told her about him many times. More than a year ago on a day when she had been working in his library with some French correspondence he had asked her, “Do you understand the word ‘charity’?” He had been sitting at a desk reading the First Epistle to the Corinthians. “I hate the Bible mostly,” he had once said to his friend and teacher of long ago, the American missionary Jesse Caswell. Still it fascinated him, as Luther fascinated him, as the missionaries themselves fascinated him—for some quality, dimly perceived, that he could not grasp.

  “Do I understand ‘charity’?” Anna had inquired, looking up. “Is that what Your Majesty asked?”

  “Yes. Tell me, do you understand maitri, or ‘charity’ as your apostle Paul
explains it in the thirteenth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians?”

  “I believe I do,” she answered slowly. She was puzzled, for off and on during the morning they had been discussing the religion of the Buddha.

  “Then tell me, what does St. Paul really mean, what custom does he allude to when he says, ‘… though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing’?”

  “Custom?” she asked. “I don’t know of any custom. He considered the giving of the body to be burned as the highest act of devotion and purest sacrifice that man could make for man.”

  “Exactly!” said the King, beginning to pace up and down. “You have well said! It is the highest act of devotion that can be made, or performed, by man for man, the giving of the body to be burned. But if it be accomplished from a spirit of opposition, for fame or popular applause, is it still regarded by him as the highest act of sacrifice?”