Anna and the King of Siam

by Margaret Landon

  Among the many small discourtesies endured by the Second King was the continual presence with him of a certain doctor. He knew, as did everyone else, that the man was a spy placed close to his person by King Mongkut. The doctor was in a position to poison the younger brother if and when it suited the older one’s plans to order it. In spite of the rift between the brothers there was no open break for many years. Then one day the Second King sent a request to the Royal Treasury for a large sum of money. By the express command of the First King the order was not honored. On the next day King Phra Pin Klao left Bangkok with his most trusted courtiers for the North. He went directly to Chiengmai, the most powerful of the tributary Lao provinces. The Prince of Chiengmai was a spirited ruler who had more than once confronted the King of Siam with a haughty and intrepid resistance. King Mongkut had never dared push him too far, fearing open revolt which might throw the Lao provinces into the hands of the British.

  As soon as the prince knew of the insult to the Second King, the money he had required was brought and laid at his feet without ostentation. This gesture of sympathy was the beginning of a solid friendship. The prince declined to accept the entire sum, but did take part of it. Instead of returning to the capital he went to Saraburi, a hundred miles northwest of Bangkok on the Pasak River, and erected a fortified palace, which he named Ban Sita (The Home of the Goddess Sita). After that he rarely went to Bangkok except when business demanded it, or when he was required to go for the semiannual oath of allegiance.

  King Mongkut, alarmed by the possibilities in the friendship of the Prince of Chiengmai and his brother, ordered the Lao Prince to send his son to Bangkok as a hostage. When the summons was repeated more peremptorily, the son of the prince fled to Ban Sita for a time. Nor did he ever appear at the Grand Palace. His stout old father came down the river in state and brought his own hostage to Bangkok. Although King Mongkut chafed at this flouting of his authority, he accepted it with a show of graciousness. To do otherwise was fraught with danger.

  The friendship of the Prince of Chiengmai for the Second King resulted in the marriage of his beautiful niece, the Princess Sunatda Wismita, to Phra Pin Klao only a little more than a year before his death. She was a celebrated and much coveted beauty, whom King Mongkut would have liked to add to his own harem, but had been unable to secure. Etiquette forbade the royal brothers to pry into each other’s serail, but King Mongkut knew very soon of the marriage of his brother and the princess. He grumbled that when he traveled no one came around with pretty girls for him, but that wherever his brother went the chiefs threw their loveliest daughters at his head until it was a disgrace.

  The Second King had been at Ban Sita when his final illness began. The King’s physician, fearing that he might die there, took hurried steps to get him back to the capital. He was rushed downriver to the palace of Krom Luang Wongsa, physician to King Mongkut, and half-brother of both, who was a member of the Academy of Medicine of New York. Prince Wongsa saw at once that there was nothing he could do. Death was only a matter of time.

  So the Second King was taken to his own palace, and laid in a chamber looking to the east. That was on December 6, 1865. The same night he asked to see his brother. King Mongkut and the Kralahome hurried to his bedside. No words were spoken. The brothers embraced each other, and the older wept bitterly. The younger was, as he had been all his life, the greater: he had sent for his brother to make clear to him before he died that all that had lain between them was forgiven.

  Something else happened at that interview, however. The First King, suspicious as always, and more than ordinarily well versed in the medical science of the time, was puzzled by the nature of his brother’s illness. Some of the symptoms were strange.

  When Anna went to the Palace after the Second King’s death, the tonsure had been almost forgotten in the excitement that surrounded the beginning of national mourning. The King had already issued an order to stop work on the Nantha Uthayan Palace. When his oldest children had been about five he had begun the construction of a large palace and series of mansions directly across the river from the Grand Palace. He had arranged that his wives and children should be transferred there if he died before his brother and if his brother succeeded to the throne. Now that brother was dead and the reason for the palace, which had been under construction nine years, had ceased to exist.

  All the royal artisans were transferred to the Second King’s palace to complete a building in which the First King might live temporarily. It would not have been suitable for him to stay in one of the already occupied mansions. But his brother had almost finished a handsome structure in the Chinese style just north of the main palace. Here the First King took up his residence within a week.

  Ostensibly this was so that he might act as administrator of his brother’s estate, and at his brother’s request. Living in the harem of the Second King’s palace were daughters of the Second Kings of all four reigns, and these, so it was said, had been entrusted by the younger to the older brother as a solemn responsibility. In the circular which King Mongkut issued he himself explained:

  The Second King, on his being worse, has said to his eldest and second daughters, the half-sisters of the eldest son, distempered so as he cannot be in the presence of his father without difficulty, that he (the Second King) forenamed on that time was hopeless and that he could not live more than a few days. He did not wish to do his last will regarding his family and property, particularly as he was strengthened to speak much, and consider anything deeply and accurately: he beg’d to entreat all his sons, daughters, and wives that none should be sorry for his death, which comes by natural course, and should not fear for misery of difficulty after his demise. All should throw themselves under their faithful and affectionate uncle, the Supreme King of Siam, for protection, in whom he had heartfelt confidence that he will do well to his family after his death, as such the action or good protection to several families of other princes and princesses in the royalty, who deceased before. He beg’d only to recommend his sons and daughters, that they should be always honest and faithful to his elder full brother, the Supreme King of Siam, by the same affection as to himself, and that they should have much more affection and respect toward Paternal relative persons in royalty, than toward their maternal relative persons, who are not royal descendants of his ancestors.…

  In the afternoon, the Second King invited His Majesty the Supreme King, his elder full brother, and his Excellency Chow Phya Sri Surywongse Samuha P’hra-Kralahome, the Prime Minister, who is the principal head of the Government and royal cousin, to seat themselves near to his side on his bedstead where he lay, and other principals of royalty and nobility, to seat themselves in that room where he was lying, that they might be able to ascertain his speech by hearing. Then he delivered his family and followers and the whole of his property to His Majesty and His Excellency for protection and good decision, according to consequences which they would well observe.

  When day after day passed and the King did not return, the harem became restless. Some of the bolder spirits abandoned themselves to gaiety, while many of the women sent their confidential slaves to consult the astrologers and soothsayers. Gossip was rife. Little groups could be seen whispering together any hour of the day. Feminine telegraphy and secret service were working full time. It was believed that the King had been bewitched by some enchantress in his brother’s palace and was no longer a free agent.

  It had long been bruited about Bangkok that the ladies of Phra Pin Klao’s harem were the most beautiful from among the women of Laos, Pegu, Burma, and Cambodia. The women of the First King’s harem were reported to be much inferior. The famous Princess of Chiengmai was supposed to be the loveliest woman in either harem, although not many people had ever seen her. There were rumors, too, that she was talented musically, very graceful and charming.

  Then one day Lady Son Klin whispered to Anna that the most attractive and accomplished women from the Second King’s harem had been quietly transferred
during the previous night to King Mongkut’s. It was contrary to all precedent. The whole Inside was indignant and scandalized. There was more open murmuring against the King than Anna had ever heard before. The following day she saw some of these women for herself. She was particularly impressed with the Lao women. They were taller and fairer than the Siamese, and much handsomer. Their hair grew long and luxuriantly black, and was gathered into a knot at the nape of their necks. Their dress, too, was different. Instead of the panung, which was pulled up between the legs like an inverted diaper, they wore graceful skirts called pasins, which reached to their feet. Some of the skirts were of heavy silk woven with gold.

  The jealousy and rage of the Inside against the “interlopers” united for the moment the entire city of women. They could not express their resentment against the King for taking his brother’s wives, so with one accord they turned on the wives. They found a thousand ways of showing their contempt and of ignoring the existence of the new arrivals.

  “Is the Princess of Chiengmai with them?” Anna asked Son Klin.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said, scarcely moving her lips. “No, she isn’t here—at least not yet.”

  “And the King? Has he come back?”

  Again Lady Son Klin shook her head.

  Even the royal children were infected with the uneasiness that stirred the inner city. They whispered among themselves, and giggled. Anna could scarcely hold their attention. She finally gave up, dismissed them an hour early, and went home with Princess Somawadi to call on Lady Thiang. The King’s absence had relieved her of the responsibility of the royal kitchen. She was playing with her youngest child, a little girl named Khae, who was about two. A son, Lady Thiang’s ninth child, had died the year before only a few days after his birth.

  “Mem,” she said with pleasure when she saw Anna. “Come in, come in! You see I have nothing to do.”

  “Yes, I see. You’re having a real vacation.”

  They talked of the children and the school, but inevitably their conversation swung around to the topic uppermost in every mind. Had Anna seen the Lao women? She had! Lady Thiang sniffed.

  “If HE isn’t careful,” she said with an ominous shake of her head, “HE’ll find himself poisoned.”

  Anna looked at her quickly, sensing a meaning deeper than the words. “Why do you say that?” she asked, half expecting an evasive answer.

  Lady Thiang shot Anna a glance out of her clear intelligent eyes, closed her lips firmly, thought a moment, and then said: “I mean that HE’ll come to the same end as his brother. Someone ‘up there’ will put poison in HIS food. HE’d do better to stay here with me for his meals. After all, I’ve guarded HIM for years from such a fate.”

  The implication was appalling. “Do you mean,” Anna said slowly, feeling her way, “that the Second King died of poison?” She did not wish to ask more than Lady Thiang cared to answer.

  The latter nodded. “But he didn’t know it,” she whispered. “They have just found it out, HE and the Kralahome. HE suspected something when HE first saw HIS brother after they brought him down from Ban Sita.” And she went on to tell Anna the whole story.

  Among the Second King’s concubines there was a woman named Klip. She was the mother of many of his children, the oldest of whom was more than twenty. Like Lady Thiang in the First King’s palace she had been appointed to control the royal cuisine. But she was envious of the other women, suspicious of their designs upon her position, intriguing and ambitious. Years before, when she found that she could not have the influence she coveted over the King’s affections, she had gone to an old and infamous sorcerer, named Khun Het Na (Lord of the Future). He was an adept of the black arts, much consulted by women of rank from all over the country.

  For enormous fees he had prepared a variety of charms, philters, and incantations for her. She had mixed his nostrums in the Second King’s food, not just once, but many times over a long period. The poisons had done their work slowly, and had gradually undermined the sturdy physique of the Second King. Then they had affected his mind, so that near the end of his life he was despondent and excitable, the prey of nebulous fears. He had consulted many physicians, none of whom could diagnose his illness. At last he had been carried home to die, still unaware that he had been poisoned by his own wife. Anna remembered the story of the horoscope that had been told her by the old priest, Phra Net. The dire prediction had come to pass after all!

  “And I think,” Lady Thiang concluded, “that HE is going to punish Klip and Khun Het Na publicly.”

  “You mean proclaim their crime and then torture and execute them?”

  “No, no, no, no!” exclaimed Lady Thiang in horror. “Of course, HE’ll never proclaim it! No one knows that the Second King died of poison, and if they did there would always be idle tongues to whisper that HE was really to blame and that Klip was just an accomplice, or even that she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Anna conceded the wisdom of this. The Lao and Peguans as well as the Cochin-Chinese and Cambodians living in Bangkok were all passionately devoted to the Second King. Add to that his popularity with his own people, and the situation was full of explosive possibilities. If it became known that the Second King had died of poison, the jealousy of the First King for his younger brother would arouse suspicions—all the more because of the constant presence with the Second King of the physician who was known to be the First King’s spy. There would be some to say that the physician had actually given the poison and that Lady Klip was merely a scapegoat. These suspicions might even result in action, if the Prince of Chiengmai, say, were to put himself at the head of a group of insurgents, or solicit the all-too-willing French to help him with their large military force from Saigon.

  “Has anything been decided?” Anna ventured, seeing Lady Thiang was still communicative.

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice, “yes, it has. The royal physicians and the San Luang are all sworn to secrecy. But the sentence will be carried out tomorrow. If you look out your window, you will see the procession go by.”

  And so it proved. The concubine Lady Klip, the fortune-teller Khun Het Na, and nine female slaves were tortured and publicly paraded through Bangkok. Their crime was not named to the curious crowds that gathered to watch them. Afterward they were thrown into an open boat, towed out to the Gulf of Siam, and abandoned there. Among the women of the Palace it was whispered that celestial avengers had slain them with arrows of lightning and spears of fire.

  Two weeks after the King had left his own palace to take up residence at his brother’s he returned suddenly and without warning. He was in a villainous mood that baffled everyone. The most tactful measures failed to placate him. Lady Thiang summoned Anna hurriedly one day to play her old part in their little drama. For the first time it failed to work. Anna walked into the King’s presence diffidently with her Sanskrit book. He ordered her out, and told her that she was not to come back until he sent for her. Daily after that women suffered from his tyranny, cruelty, and spite. It became a common experience to pass along the streets of the Inside and hear women and children sobbing in house after house. There were sullen complaints on every side, and there was not a woman in the harem who did not think the King was a victim of black magic.

  Anna had her own private theory. The Princess of Chiengmai had not appeared in the harem. If she were as strong-willed as her uncle, it was quite possible that she had resisted His Majesty’s overtures. She was known to have been deeply attached to the Second King. The First King, however, was tenacious. He had been openly envious when the famous beauty became his brother’s wife. Since all the women seemed to agree that it was not his brother’s financial affairs that had kept His Majesty so long, perhaps there was room to believe that he had tried a second time to win the princess for himself. If she had scorned him, his ill-temper was easy to understand.

  35

  THE MYSTERIOUS PRINCESS

  Anna was too weary to care much about the King’
s ill-temper. She was even glad that she could be relieved for a little while from struggling with his correspondence, although she pitied the women whose life was fast becoming almost unbearable. Her thoughts were much with young Prince Chulalongkorn, who was to enter the priesthood in July for three months. Anna’s influence over him would end at that time temporarily, perhaps permanently.

  He was dreamy-eyed and thoughtful during this period. The tonsure ceremony had impressed him deeply. From his studies both in English and Pali he had evolved an exalted ideal of life, and precocious, inexpressible yearnings. Anna wished helplessly that she could spare him the shock of his first contacts outside the Palace but that was impossible. She could only hope that he would not jettison all his lofty aspirations when reality first impinged on him.

  Anna had wondered if the tonsure, which had cost hundreds of thousands of ticals, and had employed the energies of many thousands of people, would fill him with self-importance. He had been the principal figure in a drama that would hardly be equaled in his lifetime. It would not have been strange if the effect had been to inflate his ego, but apparently this was not the case. He had said to her recently in a burst of self-abnegation that he envied the death of the venerable priest, his uncle. He would rather be poor and have to earn his living than be king. “It’s true,” he said thoughtfully, “a poor man has to work hard for his daily bread, but then he is free. And his food is all he has to win or lose.” He seemed to be examining his own motives and desires. “He can possess everything that is important in possessing the First Cause who pervades all things, the earth, the sky, the stars, the flowers, and little children.” He paused in his effort to frame thoughts almost too deep for his thirteen-year-old mind. “I can understand that I am great, since I am part of the Infinite. But great in that one thing alone. And that all I see is mine, and that I am in it and of it. If I could only be a poor boy, I could be perfectly happy, I think.”