A Woman of Angkor

by John Burgess

  The King was rocking slowly on his heels, his head down.

  ‘Majesty, you must send this woman away. It must be by your own order, and it must be because you have decided that it is best.’

  The King waited a moment before answering. ‘You are certain about this, there is no doubt?’

  ‘I am certain, Majesty. I have known of this woman’s identity in Heaven for many years, but have not wanted to trouble Your Majesty with it. The principles of conjugal life that the holy men devised for you served the purpose for a long time. But now it is time that you know the truth.’

  ‘Then let her leave!’ he cried, looking away.

  I moved for the door. I ran to the gate and found Bopa, waiting with a clutch of concubines and servants. I took her arm and marched her off. I resolved that I would do whatever was required of me to never come together with His Majesty again, to remain faithful to my husband, to respect holy law.

  At our house, I left my daughter in her room in the care of Yan, then went to my own and closed the drapes. I lay down, and for close to an hour I wept. For so many things. My anger with myself, my frustration, my betrayal, and for a very selfish concern, my inability to know how long the Brahmin had been at the door before he spoke up, how much he had seen and heard. There was one thing of which I was certain, however: the priest had invented on the spot this notion of the Heavenly brother and sister. Had such a link been real, I was sure I would have felt some inkling of it long ago.

  Later Nol came in. He had heard what had happened, at least an account that portrayed me in the kindest possible light. We embraced. I wept again and did nothing to correct his misunderstanding.

  The following day, Subhadra called on me at the house, unannounced. I was of course apprehensive as we sat down over tea. But as we spoke, there was nothing in his words or manner that conveyed disapproval of anything on my part. I took this to mean he had seen nothing. I knew that had it been otherwise, he would have said nothing but his convictions about personal probity would have brought a certain coldness into his demeanour. However cordially we might have behaved, my friendship – I think I can call it that – with this man who had been only a force for good in my own life and the life of the Empire would have come to an end. So there it was – my secret safely locked up again. I could continue to pose as the virtuous female wanting only for the attentions to end.

  No, the purpose of the visit was to inform me that the King had decreed I must leave the city. I immediately thought of the hut in the village, and suggested it, but Subhadra said no, much greater distances would be required and an absence of a considerable length of time.

  ‘The Empire will soon be sending an embassy to China,’ he said. ‘There are many things to discuss with the authorities there. Trade is one of them. Lady Sray, I urge you to go with the group. It will be far away, and certainly you know well the things that the Empire can offer for sale.’

  Had I not just promised myself to do whatever was required of me? I could only submit. ‘I will go. And I will take my daughter.’

  ‘That…that I’m afraid would not be advisable.’ He seemed to struggle with his next words. ‘There are many young men on the ships. It would not be an appropriate place for a young unmarried woman.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Furthermore, I am prepared to oversee her safety in your absence and give her instruction in the texts. I pledge that no harm will come to her, that she will in all ways lead a moral life. She will be very well seen to.’

  In the end, I gave in to this too. I asked myself, what success have you had in setting your daughter on the right path? Surely the Brahmin will have more.

  But before I took my leave, I had a request. ‘Could you see to it that she spends no time with Rom?’

  ‘Lady Sray, your daughter will have no contact with her, of that you can be absolutely certain. I recognize as well as you the character of the concubine. The incident at the orchid farm made this once again very clear.’

  ‘Do you mean, sir, that the concubine Channary is not to be punished?’

  ‘She will not be punished – His Majesty agreed to that this morning. On the face of it, the evidence was against her, but I feel that the hand of the senior concubine was involved in the incident at the farm. Channary will not remain in the pavilion; she will return to her home village and take up residence with her parents.’

  ‘His Majesty is merciful.’

  ‘Yes…’ He looked to me as if to say something more, but did not.

  Our meeting was over. ‘I will go to China, with peace of mind. Thank you!’

  The following morning, I left the house with a maid. Sergeant Sen and a small guard detail awaited us at the city’s south gate, prepared like us to be gone for a full year.

  42: A house that floats

  When my maid and I arrived at the port on the Freshwater Sea, Mr Chen was waiting in his solicitous way at a wharf where a very large ship was tied up. He helped us females along the boarding plank, talking all the way to allay the nervousness that I’m sure he could sense. Preparations for the voyage are proceeding on schedule, he said. You’ll find the ship to be safe, and comfortable too. On what other kind of travel conveyance, he asked, can you have your choice of food, and room to walk around when your limbs get stiff?

  But the first thing I saw on deck was cause for shock: two very large wooden cages. Inside each was a bulky grey animal, its body the size of a horse’s, but with short, stocky legs and on the snout the strangest sight – a horn. One of the beasts lay on its side in laboured sleep, the other stood feeding from a basket of leaves placed between the struts of the cage. I stared; I had never imagined such beasts could exist.

  ‘Gifts to the Chinese emperor,’ explained Mr Chen. ‘They run loose in the forests in the far west of our Empire. The Chinese monarch has a menagerie, and they will join it.’

  He led me through a tiny door, then helped me down a set of very steep steps. I had imagined a great open chamber below; instead there as a narrow corridor. Mr Chen told us again, don’t worry. He opened a door. Inside was a room brightened by scented flowers and light from a tiny window; mats had been laid on the floor for sleeping. There was a teak box for storing clothes and a small table on which sat my portable shrine.

  ‘Your home for the voyage, Lady Sray.’

  I did feel better now, and thanked him for seeing to everything so thoughtfully.

  Then he showed me a smoky compartment in the rear where food would be prepared. A cook was sorting through bundles of rice, fruit, spices and vegetables bought in the market. There were live chickens too, in wicker cages. The supplies would last quite a few weeks, I could see, and Mr Chen explained that in any case the ship would be stopping during the first part of the voyage at waterside towns and fresh food would be bought in markets there.

  I returned to my cabin to find my maid on the floor, weeping.

  ‘I’m so afraid, Lady,’ she whimpered. ‘A house can’t float on water! When I was a girl, the river next to my village rose, and carried away all of the houses. We watched from the top of a hill. They broke into pieces and disappeared in the water.’

  ‘That won’t happen here, Da. The ship is not a house. It’s a very large sampan. It has gone to China many times, and it is blessed by the gods, Mr Chen told me. We must trust the gods, as always, and we must trust him. He is a man of his word.’

  I sat beside the girl and put a hand on hers. She was new to the household staff, young and energetic – on land, at least. I had never seen tears.

  An hour later, gongs rang to signal departure. We went up on deck. Chinese crewmen were running this way and that, wielding ropes and strange metal implements. Yet we remained at the dock. The ship did in fact seem too big to move. But, then, without Da or me even noticing, it edged away – our sleeping ship was taking up! We soon saw how: In the water up front, at the end of a long rope, was a sampan with six stout men, each paddling furiously. Somehow their small boat was pulling this large o
ne, advancing it majestically down a narrow channel at what was even less than a walking pace. Ahead was open water – the Freshwater Sea, explained the always helpful Mr Chen, who had silently appeared at my side. Soon the sampan broke away, its men shouting farewells, and our own crewmen hoisted large sections of rigid bamboo matting up a pole, thick as a tree trunk, that grew straight up from the deck’s middle. They did the same to a second, smaller pole up front. Wind took the matting suddenly in its grip, and the ship lurched ahead, slicing through waves with the strength of a wild animal set suddenly free. I scurried to the centre of the ship. The motion was making me feel ill.

  From behind, Sergeant Sen shouted. I hadn’t seen him come up. ‘Mr Chen! Please slow the ship down. The Lady is experiencing discomfort!’ He said it for me, but I could see that he found the speed disorienting too.

  Mr Chen called in his language to the captain, who called out orders to the crew, and the boat settled down to a tolerable pace.

  The merchant came to me. ‘My apologies, Lady Sray. I think the crew wanted to show off what their ship can do. You’ll feel better quickly, I promise. Everyone has a bit of trouble at first. But you will get used to this and quite a bit more. When we’re out on the sea that tastes of salt, the waves will be quite a bit higher, sometimes higher than the ship itself.’

  This was hardly reassuring. ‘They don’t flood the ship?’

  ‘They don’t. Otherwise, we would never see Chinese goods in the Empire. It’s like the ship and the sea are talking to each other, like they’re good friends. The ship knows exactly how to rise and fall to keep the sea happy, and the sea is careful that it never rises or falls more than the ship can manage.’

  I took comfort in that, and went back to the railing. Ahead was a second ship, a near copy of ours, which carried a minister from the Council of Brahmins who would act as representative of the King.

  I walked to the ship’s rear and from a railing there said good-bye to Hanuman’s hill and the towers of the Temple of the Trinity atop it. Pennants, tiny at this distance, were flying from poles up there, lashed to guesthouses I had rebuilt. I looked back to the water. My stomach was calm now, as Mr Chen had promised. For the first time in days, I felt at ease.

  ‘Lady.’

  It was Da. I turned to find her holding out a straw bag.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lady, but I forgot to give this to you. It was delivered to the house last night by a runner with instructions that it be handed to you personally.’

  She left me. Inside the bag was a small filigreed box made of tin. I opened it and let out a small gasp. Two golden bangles, resting in silk, lay inside.

  What a shock! What did he mean by sending these? Did he too remember that my wrist was the place he had first touched me? Were I to wear these things, I would forever be feeling his hand on me again. My calm evaporated; I tried to push aside the memory of lying before him that night in the lamp’s glow.

  How long I stood at that railing turning this all over I don’t know. But then the idea came that I must not keep these things. They were a link between two people who rightfully had none. Had I received them at the house, I could have sent them back to the palace by runner. But what about here? There was of course the water. I peered down into the swirls of the ship’s wake and wondered what spirits lived down there. How might they react to seeing golden jewellery sinking past them into the murky depths? Would they have powers to know they were gifts from His Majesty?

  Perhaps just the box, then. I let it fall. It sank quickly as I said a prayer to the spirits not to be disturbed.

  Five minutes later, I was down in my cabin again. Thankfully Da was not there. I opened my own jewellery box and placed the bangles carefully in it, underneath other silver and gold.

  I went back on deck with a holy text. I found Da and for an hour we sat together, I reading aloud, a passage about protection that gods afford to deserving travellers. All the time I was trying not to think about those bangles.

  Later the cook appeared with bowls. ‘Rice and grilled fish for the lady and her maid!’

  As we ate, Mr Chen returned.

  ‘The food meets your approval, I hope?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Chen. Very much so.’

  He motioned approvingly toward the text. ‘The Lady pays much attention to the life of the spirit.’

  ‘You are kind, Mr Chen. Not as much as I should. But I can see there will be lots of time on this voyage. And in China too, I hope. So tell me – in China, will there be a temple near the place where we stay?’

  ‘Yes, Lady Sray. There will be a temple, but it won’t be exactly like what you know in the Empire. In China people worship gods with different names than the ones we know in the land of the Khmers.’

  ‘But how can there be different gods? There are only the ones in Heaven, known to us all.’

  Mr Chen took a moment to sit down next to me. ‘Lady, I have travelled to many places, and I have found that in each place, the people worship gods that, if not actually different from the ones you know, are at least known by different names. There are islands on the east side of the Salt Water Sea where people worship only the spirits in the forest. There are no temples, no priests, no texts of any kind. Yet still the people worship. And they seem quite content. Their gods help them to lead moral lives, as yours do for you.’

  ‘Still, how can there be other gods?’

  ‘I think because people believe in them, Lady Sray. That is all I can say. In China, you will find, there are some that are different for every family. They are the spirits of those who came before us. We have a place in the home for images that commemorate the deceased, and we pray to these images, and if their spirits look on us and feel that we are deserving, they cause things to happen in our favour. And of course, they can make things go in the other direction as well – so we have to be careful in what we ask.’

  ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘as I said, we do have temples in China and inside each one is a large image, but this god is not really a god. Rather, he was a human like us, but he found the way to achieve a state of perfect harmony with the universe. We believe that before he devised his teachings, men and women were imprisoned by ignorance. But now, if we pray and study his texts, we can learn the way. It’s up to us to take it or not.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, a memory stirring. ‘There are people in the Empire who have similar beliefs. Did you know there is a special temple on the east side of the Capital – perhaps you’ve been there? Several years ago, I stopped in. The priests said that a King of many reigns past had worshipped there and that later Kings allowed the temple to stay, out of respect to their forebear. Inside there was a large image of a sacred being, sitting and meditating. They called him the Lord Buddha. I had never seen such a likeness – his face was so calm, as if he was shutting out all the worries of the world.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps he is the same being whom we honour, in our way, in China. And in the Khmer Empire there are others that seem quite familiar to us. In your country, you have the Naga, in our country we have the dragon. It has a frightening face and scales like a crocodile’s, but at the same time it can be quite friendly toward people. Like the Naga.’

  For two days, we followed the shore of the Freshwater Sea, leading toward the sun in the morning, away from it in afternoon. We called at a small port. There slaves carried tied-up bundles aboard our vessel for stowage below deck. The cargo, I was told, included silver utensils, spices and many bolts of silk. Selling them in China would help pay the cost of the embassy.

  As the loading progressed, I walked in the waterside market, buying fruit as a gift for Da, who was feeling better about the journey now, and for Sergeant Sen and his men. Do you know, I had the bangles in my bag as I walked that market. I had thought I might come across some place fit to deposit a gift of a King – the pristine water of a fast-running stream, perhaps, in a hidden spot where no one would happen upon it. What foolish thoughts. The bangles came back on board with me. They took their place again
beneath my own jewellery and there they remained for the rest of the voyage. But let me say that whenever I opened the box I did my best not to look at them.

  The ships resumed sail, making good time beneath clear skies. I had also bought some sugar cane in the market, and now I asked the cook to cut it into sections. These I gave one by one through the slats of the two cages to the great horned animals inside. They chewed gratefully. Poor animals – their travel would be so much more confined than mine.

  Late that day, I noticed I could now see both sides of the Freshwater Sea at once. The far shore came closer and closer and after a while the ships seemed to be not in a sea at all but in a very wide river in which the current was barely perceptible, but nonetheless helpfully carrying us travellers along with it. Here and there on, villages and temples showed themselves. Children swam naked in the water and called to us.

  Three days later, the river widened so much that the shores were again barely visible. The water began to change in colour, from the familiar bright brown to an almost glowing blue hue that I had never seen, with swaths of gleaming white where waves broke.

  ‘We are near the Saltwater Sea,’ Mr Chen announced. ‘We’ll turn north and sail along the coast for a few days, then head out to open water.’

  Two days after that, I awoke to a strange stillness in the ship. It had stopped. I went up on deck and was surprised at the sight there: to either side rode a large vessel, flying strange red and green banners. Men in helmets moved about on the decks.

  ‘The ships are Cham, Lady Sray,’ said Mr Chen, from behind me. I hadn’t seen him approach.

  ‘Oh! The enemy.’

  ‘No, Lady Sray. The Chinese Empire and Champa are at peace, so there’s no reason to worry. The Chams treat these waters as theirs, that’s all. They require all Chinese ships that go through to carry documents issued by their authorities. Sometimes they stop us to check the documents. Sometimes they even ask us to bring our vessels to one of their ports for a bit and there they always find something to tax.’ He made a resigned laugh. ‘But don’t worry, it’s all very routine. We’ll tie up and negotiate what taxes we will pay on the goods we’re carrying, then we’ll be on our way.’