by John Burgess
My place now was a small sleeping pavilion that carpenters had hastily assembled at the top level of the unfinished mountain-temple. I was strangely calm and contented.
How did I come to be here? It was by Subhadra’s doing. As he had walked away from the war council hall that past day, he had resolved that whatever His Majesty said, I would not remain so close at hand. He knew that moving me without permission would infuriate the King and make him want to go straight to me. So the priest chose a place where strictures against sacrilege and defilement would be at their strongest.
That night, he came to the door of the room where I was held. He showed the two soldiers standing guard outside it a palm leaf with writing on it. It was a list of silver ewers, but these two young men could not read and took his word that it was an order for my relocation. Soon I stepped through the door. The priest greeted me with warmth, an emotion I had never associated with him, and hurried me off. He gave no hint he was acting on his own or of where I was going. Perhaps he thought I would object to the destination, or become nervous and give away the plot. In any case, he put me in a closed oxcart. It began immediately to roll and travelled much longer than I expected. The sky was still black when it finally stopped. I stepped down and was astonished to find myself amidst rows of large stone blocks, placed as if waiting for something. Then I understood – it was a builder’s staging yard. I looked up and saw outlines of the great temple looming in the darkness above.
A priest stepped forward to show me through a stone gateway and up a covered stairway. Two wordless assistants appeared to help me ascend the final steepest of steps. At the top I found my sleeping pavilion, laid out with texts, a mat and sleeping cover, a lamp and a day’s supply of food and drink. And a small shrine, of course. Then I was again alone. I shuffled to the shrine and began prayers. But before long I stopped – my mind was too restless. I would try instead to settle in. I lay down, but I could not sleep. As dawn approached, my disquiet over King and rebellion gave way to concern I was offending Heaven by my presence here. Yes, this place was unconsecrated. Only two towers rose, and near me an arcade awaited its roof. Stone fragments and dust freed by masons’ chisels littered the floor. But none of these signs of incompleteness reassured me. I felt certain that gods must live in this place already, or at least be watching over it.
The sun rose, morning commenced, hours became days, yet no gods revealed themselves. I encountered them only in the way I always had, as wraiths, silent listeners to my prayers, and their responses were whispered so softly that they were sometimes lost in the breeze. I had been certain that here stone must be smooth to the touch, that a lamp must burn with divine brightness. Yet one night I stumbled and scraped my knee – this stone was rough like any other. And my lamp burned just as a lamp did below. Its oil leaked. Gradually my concerns abated, but still I did not know what to make of this place and my presence in it, only perhaps that the gods had chosen to test me, to see if my faith endured when they declined to show themselves even here. Or perhaps the teaching to be drawn was that whether a prayer was said in this most holy of places or at a common streetside shrine, gods demanded purity of heart as the price of manifestation to the worshipper and I was coming up short.
Every morning, the two assistants climbed the steps to deliver food and incense and jars of water for drink and bath. I was allowed no contact. Rather, a voice would call out from below announcing their imminent ascent and that I would kindly keep away until they had stepped back down. Nor was I allowed any news of events below. I could see with my own eyes that construction of the mountain-temple had stopped but I could only guess the cause.
In this way my life continued for many days and nights. Then, one night I awoke with a start to see a figure over me.
I gasped and put hands together to begin a prayer of greeting. Then I saw it wasn’t a god. It was Sergeant Sen.
‘Lady!’ he whispered, kneeling quickly at my side. ‘You’re all right, then! There are so many stories....’
‘I’m well.’ I managed to say that, sitting up. I looked to him, my sleeping cover falling away. I felt the strongest urge to steal into his arms and cry. But I did neither. ‘Yes, I’m well, but…why did you come?’ I was suddenly worried for him.
‘To do my job, Lady. To take you away from here.’
‘Sergeant, you have always worried about me, never yourself.’
‘Heaven will see to me, and I will see to you. Now, Lady – what will you take with you? You have some things here? We must be ready. The King has placed guards below and they walk a circuit every fifteen minutes. We’ll need to be ready to descend as soon as the next one passes. I’ll take you to a hermitage far from here, and you’ll be safe. It’s all arranged. People all over the Empire know of you and they will protect you.’
‘I can’t go.’ It took all I had to say that.
‘But you must!’
‘If Heaven wills it that I leave, the guards will withdraw and there will be no need to steal out. If Heaven wills it that I stay, I will stay. I can’t be a fugitive, Sergeant. I once ran away from trouble and I never felt any peace again.’
‘Whatever it was, I am sure…’
‘Sergeant, I cannot leave. I must stay and face up to this. But you go away quickly. Please! You’ll be found here.’
The old soldier blew out a breath. ‘You are sometimes not of this world, Lady. While you are waiting for a signal from Heaven, many people below are doing their best to get you out. Did you know? Your son, your daughter, your husband, the Brahmin Subhadra.’ He explained briefly the actions of each one. This was the first I had heard and how it did lift my spirits.
‘How that lifts my heart, sergeant. But you know…you forget your own efforts.’
‘A small thing, Lady.’ He smiled in the darkness. ‘One of the men walking the circuit below was in my squad some years ago. I had help. And before I came here I said prayers at a shrine, the one that you endowed outside the mountain-temple Pre Rup. Yes, I came, but I also guessed you would refuse to come down. You will face up to the charges rather than run from them and your virtue will carry you through.’
‘I hope there will be enough virtue for that.’
‘Of course there will be. We all know it. But anyway, I knew you would not come. So I brought you something to keep with you up here.’
I noticed now that he had a small woven bag. He took out something wrapped in straw and gave it carefully to me. I removed the straw. He watched so approvingly my every motion.
Inside was a set of Chinese tea cups and pot. ‘You are so thoughtful, Sergeant.’ I held up a cup in the starlight. How smooth it was, how like the ones from the set in the old little house, when life was simple.
We sat together in the darkness and for a while had no need to say anything. But then words stole into me. ‘How I wish that those stars overhead were…Chinese stars.’
Then I made him come to my little shrine and I said prayers for his safe return to his barracks.
We passed back to the steps. There I had a final message for him. ‘Sergeant, it is so hard to send you away. In your presence I have always felt safe and contented. I have always felt that I belonged. I hope that, that in the next life...’
‘I hope for the same, Lady. I have said prayers for it ten thousand times. Most recently when I prayed before coming to you here.’
He took my hands in his and squeezed them gently. Then he disappeared down the steps. How nimble that aging body could be.
I lit a stick of incense and bent my head for another prayer, tears cascading from cheek to forearm.
Sometime afterward, troubling sounds carried in from out toward the western gate – shouts, the clank of metal on metal. I lay down and closed my eyes and said a plea to Heaven that there was some benign explanation.
When I awoke, I looked again at the tea set. In the light of day, I was astonished at what I saw. It was my set, the very one Nol had sold the day that the Brahmin came to our house! The carefree p
eople were still at play on the side of the pot. One of the cups had the very same chipped lip.
How long had Sen spent searching for these things, how many people had helped?
For so many years I had waited for a god to appear in front of me. And all the time, gods had been making themselves known through people, people like Sen, and I had stubbornly refused to notice.
62: The vigil
I remained ignorant of what those sounds meant, but by the next morning, people all over Angkor were trading whispered stories of the tragedy, the heroism of my dear Sergeant Sen. Without even a knife in his waist, he had set out to reach me, in defiance of the scores of guardsmen who walked their rounds at the unfinished mountain-temple. He returned without me. His body, bearing too many wounds to count, was found half way down the western causeway. To this day it is my deep regret that I did not keep him with me atop the great edifice. Had I, had it, he might well be with us today.
Subhadra quietly convened an inquiry. Watch commanders and guards were brought to the palace and interviewed under holy oath. Some of the men recounted taking part in the discovery and removal of the body. But all claimed, quite sincerely, it seemed, to have had nothing to do with the chase, other than to have heard it. Still, the man who had been on duty at the west gate offered some disturbing testimony. Shortly before the sergeant’s death, he said, he had seen several figures in the darkness beyond the bridge and he had moved toward them, thinking they were members of his squad arriving to relieve him. But when he reached the place, there was no one. He was left thinking he had imagined them, or had seen a group of wandering ghosts and so said nothing to his commander.
The inquiry was broadened to include people outside the construction complex. Most had nothing to offer, but a girl who’d been walking by herself along a nearby road that evening recounted seeing a closed oxcart. A man was keeping pace alongside it. He carried no weapon, but looked so frightening that the girl stepped behind a bush to avoid his eyes. And fresh footprints were found on a trail that no worker was using. It had been closed pending an exorcism, after a load of laterite blocks being dragged by an elephant overturned, taking off the leg of a mason.
The Brahmin began to form a theory. A conspiracy had been born among certain individuals but in the end failed in its main objective. Somehow, word had been obtained by these people that the sergeant had a plan to enter the temple. An armed party had entered the outer temple grounds, away from the guards, to lie in wait. It let him pass inside undisturbed, in hopes that on his return there would be not one but two people to kill in the darkness. For now, there was insufficient evidence to bring a formal accusation. So the Brahmin continued the inquiry, interviewing more of the soldiers. When the King demanded to be brought up to date, he was told only that the dead man was a thief who had entered the site to steal whatever was lying about. The Brahmin did not like to soil the sergeant’s memory in that way, but that was the only story he could concoct on the spot when the question was put to him.
Nol was given a full and truthful account, both because I was his wife and because the priests hoped his sharp mind would make connections they had missed and help identify who was behind this murder. But he had little to offer. I can only conclude that his concentration was dulled by fear for me. I was still safe and untouched atop the temple, but the fact remained that even there I was the King’s prisoner. There is a village saying that a hungry man must never be allowed to guard rice. How long would this hungry man really stay away?
And there were new pains in Nol’s back. And at the palace, daily humiliations. He began to feel that guards, scribes, priests, even common sweepers of floors – everyone in the royal household, it seemed – were casting judgmental glances his way, as if comparing him with the departed sergeant. It was all near intolerable. Pride prevented acknowledgment that their opinions meant anything to him, yet what pleasure it would have given to shout at them: I can hardly walk, my back exists only to generate pain! How could I climb the mountain-temple in the dark and carry my wife away?
But in his defence, I will say that he fought for my freedom in the only way he could, with offers of money and property. It is true that he did not immediately put up everything he had, but who would have done that? Even in the holy epics, captives are ransomed by just a portion of the wealth or magic bounty of the victim’s loved ones. Was not the price of freedom for Garuda’s holy mother a single cup of the nectar of immortality? Garuda was not commanded to surrender everything he had. The challenge in these situations, on earth or in Heaven, is to determine which items the captor is really determined to have.
Nol’s first effort in this regard came two days after his return to the Capital from the parasol village. He managed to gain admission to the throne room. He knelt before the royal dais, holding a list of offered property between joined palms, like incense at an altar. His Majesty snatched it, scanned it for a few seconds, then tossed it back. Is that really all she’s worth to you? Those were his words as he strode from the room and how they would have stung, even though Nol knew that rejections of first offers are often accompanied by insults for effect. He would of course offer more, but he knew too that this could not happen until the King’s anger had subsided.
That was what was happening inside the palace, but outside other events had begun, though they seemed at the time to be of little consequence. As the death of Sergeant Sen had spread from ear to ear, a few people of Angkor had taken it upon themselves to go to the mountain-temple site. They put down mats as close as they could to the western entrance. They prayed to Heaven to accept the sergeant’s soul and to give me freedom. Some of them hoped too for a more immediate effect, that from my place atop the edifice I would see their gathering and take some small comfort. But I’m afraid that the dimensions of the temple my son was building were too big. I was able to see nothing at all of this.
After Nol made his appearance in court, word spread beyond the palace walls that ransom was being offered. Soon a woman arrived at the western entrance with a blackened cooking pot. She set it on a mat and announced that it too was being offered to His Majesty. This inspired others and by the end of that first day there were quite a few other things pledged for my freedom: an ox harness, an old bronze necklace, a spare woman’s garment, a hoe, laid out with other humble things on the mat for all to see.
Later the afternoon of that first day, a squad of soldiers from the palace arrived. An officer, a spearman standing to either side, demanded that everyone leave. But this same cooking pot woman stepped right up to him and declared that regardless of what he and his men did, she would remain. The better thing, she said, was that he and his soldiers go. There was no honour or next-life reward, she told him, in applying force against people assembled in Heaven’s service. Other people pressed closer, the same kind of resolve showing on their faces. The officer lost his nerve. On his order, the men stepped away. Many of them were more than grateful to do so.
As night fell, more people arrived. It was a grievous risk, but I am told that among them were a few of those same soldiers, who were now wearing the garb of ordinary folk and carrying possessions from the barracks to add to the mat. The stack of pledged property grew higher. More mats were unrolled and people lay down. No one had planned it, but a vigil was getting underway. A vigil in support of this lone woman who did not deserve such help and still was ignorant of it all.
The following morning, Nol sat on the veranda of our house, his mind doing sums again, thinking out new lists and sublists of property. He called for his scribe. He had made up his mind – he could not wait any more. He would dictate a new petition for presentation to His Majesty. He would offer much more than he had in the last time – two more villages, five hundred laks of silver.
But then a male servant approached, bowed, and said that the master should go and see a remarkable thing taking place in front of the new mountain-temple. What is it? The master demanded. A wonderful sight, the servant replied. An army come to free the
Lady.
Anxious, Nol went quickly in his palanquin. But as he drew near, he saw that it was no army, just a mass of ordinary people milling about. He gave orders that he be taken home, but just then a boy at the edge of the crowd spotted him and spread the word. People turned to look. Some of the braver approached, crouching. Soon more than a hundred people were pressing all around the conveyance, jostling the shoulders of the slaves who held it aloft. ‘Come this way!’ they whispered to the slaves. ‘Take your master straight ahead!’ The palanquin began moving, though Nol had given no order; the crowd parted for it.
Ahead was the stack of ransom – people wanted him to see it. He squinted; his eyes weren’t good enough to discern what the things were.
An aged priest stepped forward.
‘Parasol master! We welcome you. We offer our support and our property. We hope that the things collected here will grow further in number and, when presented at the palace, will help win freedom for the Lady Sray.’
Now Nol was close enough to see how cheap and battered these things were. Common things from common farms and households.
‘You are right, parasol master,’ said the priest, reading his feelings. ‘Most of these things are of little value.’ He put his hand to the blackened cooking pot, which had been set aside to honour its status as the first donation. ‘This would fetch hardly anything at the market. But it is the most valuable possession of the woman who gave it. She has used it for many years to cook sweets that she sells in the market. It was her family’s only income. Now she has no way to make a living. But she accepts this result.’
‘But why has she done it, then?’ Nol demanded. ‘Does she know the Lady?’
‘Let her tell you herself, sir.’
Word was passed through the crowd that the woman’s presence was wanted. Nol waited, aware that all eyes were on him. The gazes were all hopeful, sympathetic, as if his arrival were a signal that the goal was close to being achieved.
