The King’s Last Song

He ran back and forth up and down the empty gallery until the entire floor shivered. He shouted like a warrior. He cried like egrets on the Great Lake, surprised by battle and keening up into the sky.

He stalked down the front steps and out into the thinly grassed enclosure. He pummelled his way back into the gallery. He ran in circles around the girl. He bellowed as loudly as he could and jumped boldly, no steps at all, out of the house and fell face down onto the dry ground. He billowed his way back into the gallery, trailing dust behind him.

Each time he ran past her, the little girl bowed in respect, head down.

Most devilish of all, he clambered up the staircase to the forbidden apartments on the storey above. He rumbled all the way to the head of the stairs and spun around, to see if he had succeeded in making her follow him, to chastise him and pull him back down. Instead the little girl looked mournfully at her floor. Everywhere she had already cleaned there were footprints and shadow-shapes of white dust.

She dared not look at him, but her mouth swelled out with unhappiness. Abruptly she stood up and took little whisking steps towards the entrance.

Cap-Pi-Hau tumbled out of the door after her to see if he could join in.

She took nipping steps down the front steps to the ground, holding up her beautiful skirt, palace-blue with gold flowers. What was she doing?

‘Ha ha!’ he said, a harsh imitation of a laugh to show this was good, this could be fun.

She held up her mournful face. She took her cloth to the ceramic water butt and wrung it out. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘I will dust the floor again,’ she said, and turned away from him.

He followed her up the stairs. Suddenly, his feet felt weighed down. He hauled himself back into the gallery and saw the floor patterned with his dusty footprints.

Cap-Pi-Hau only slowly realized that the weight he felt was sadness. He had wanted to make the little girl happy, he had wanted to have fun, and now he had a terrible sense of having destroyed something.

He felt his eyes swell out, as if to burst like fruit into tears. Why did everything turn out bad? Why was fun never possible? Why was it always learning, chanting, sleeping, bowing, and silence?

The girl knelt down and began to dust again. Maybe she would get a scolding or a beating.

Cap-Pi-Hau trundled towards her, softly now. ‘I have a thought,’ he said.

Her swollen, sad face still would not look at him.

He had thought of a way to make dusting fun. Gently he coaxed the cloth out of her hands. ‘I’ll show you,’ he whispered.

He laid the cloth flat on the floor. Then he stepped back, ran at it and jumped.

The floor had been smoothed by years of cleaning. It had to be free of splinters so that bare feet could walk on it.

Cap-Pi-Hau landed on the cloth, and it slid across the floor, bearing him forward, harvesting dust.

He giggled and turned back to her. ‘See? See?’ he demanded.

A butterfly of a smile fluttered briefly on her lips.

He laughed and applauded to make her smile again. Then he walked all the way back to the edge of the pavilion and ran. It seemed to him that he shook the entire house. When he jumped onto the cloth, physical inertia swept him even further across the floor.

‘I am the Great King who leads his people!’ he shouted. ‘I am the Great King who leads troops in polishing floors!’

The slave girl giggled and hid her mouth.

‘You go!’ Cap-Pi-Hau insisted. ‘It will be fine. I will say that I ordered it.’

The girl gathered up her skirt. Her ankles looked like twigs. In comparison, her feet looked big, like the heads of buffaloes. She ran and jumped and slid only a moment.

Not enough. She spun and commandeered the cloth, and stepped back and ran again. She was older than the Prince and her co-ordination was better. She pelted down the floor, leapt and was swept on. She stood erect, skirts fluttering, and she turned to him and this time her mouth was swollen with a huge, smug grin.

The next day Cap-Pi-Hau asked one of the nannies, ‘Where do slaves come from?’

The old woman waved her hands. ‘Oh! Some are the children of people taken in battle. Some are presents given to the King. Many are given to the temples, simply to get rid of them. Most are attached to the land, like cows.’

The woman had a face as hard and polished as wood furniture. Taken in battle? Given away? Do they know their families did not want them, did not love them?

The other six- and seven-year-olds were corralled together outside in the shade of the enclosure temple. There was to be a great procession soon, and they would have to learn their parts.

The royal temple of the Aerial Palace, Vimana-akasha, rose as a holy mountain in stone and stucco layers. Painted red, black and gold, the temple baked in the heat. Birds landed on the steps and hopped away back into the air, the stones were so hot. The palace children roasted inside their quilted jackets.

The Prince demanded, ‘If I wanted to find one of the slave girls, how would I do it?’

‘Oh!’ The nanny showed her false teeth, which were made of wood. ‘You are too young for that, young prince. That will come later.’ She beamed.

‘If I want to be friends with one of them now, how would I find her?’

The smile was dropped suddenly like an unleashed drapery. ‘You have your cousins to be friends with. Your destiny is to lead troops for the King. I should not grow too attached to the slaves of the royal household. You will not always live here. Your family lands are off in the east.’ She looked suddenly grumpy, and for some reason wiped the whole of her face with her hand.

The children, seated in ranks, stirred slightly with the light breeze of someone else getting into trouble.

The nanny’s face swelled. ‘You will be turned out of this house. You forget your real situation. The time has come to stop being a child.’

Before he thought anything else, the Prince said aloud, ‘Then we are all slaves.’

The nanny’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh! To say such a thing!’ She gathered her skirts and stood up. ‘It shows your foolishness, Prince Whoever-you-are. Slaves work, while you sit still in your jacket. You will be at the head of the troops so that the enemy will kill you first, and that is your destiny!’

She started to strut. The thin line of her mouth began to stretch into a smile. ‘You think you are a slave? We will call you slave, ah? Khnom! Or are you a hereditary slave, a nia? Shall we call you Prince Hereditary Slave?’ Her voice was raised. Some of the Prince’s cousins, rivals, giggled. ‘Children, children listen.’

The nanny grabbed Cap-Pi-Hau’s shoulders and pushed him in front of her, presenting him. ‘This young prince wants to be called Nia. So will we call him Nia? Ah? Yes?’

This was going to be fun. The children chorused, ‘Nee-ah!’

The Prince tried to shrug her off, but she held him in place.

‘Nia! Ni-ah-ha ha!’ chuckled the children of other royal wives, other royal uncles, other royal cousins. They had already learned they had to triumph over each other before they could triumph over anything else.

The nanny settled back down onto the ground, full and satisfied, as if she had eaten. The laughter continued.

Cap-Pi-Hau also knew: there are many princes, and I will be nothing if no other princes follow me.

He strode to her and faced her. She was sitting; their faces were level. His gaze was steady and unblinking.

Seated, the woman did a girlish twist and a shrug. What of you?

The Prince felt his face go hard. ‘I am studying your face to remember you, so that when I am older you will be in trouble.’

From a prince of any degree, that was a threat. She faltered slightly.

The Prince turned his back on her. He said to the other children. ‘This woman is a slave. This is what we do to slaves who mock us.’

Then he spun back around and kicked her arm.

‘Oh, you little demon!’ She grabbed him.

Cap-Pi-Hau sprang forward and began to rain blows about her face. Each time he struck her he called her, accurately, by the name of her own lower category. ‘Pual!’ He said it each time he struck her. ‘Pual! Pual! Know your place!’

‘Get this monkey god off me!’ she cried.

Perhaps she had also been hard on the other women, because they just chuckled. One of them said, ‘He is yours to deal with, Mulberry.’

Her legs were folded, tying her to the spot. She could hit back, but not too hard, even if this was a prince far from the line of succession.

Finally she called for help. ‘Guard!’

The bored attendant simply chuckled. ‘He’s a prince.’

‘Nia! Nia! Nia!’ the other children chanted not knowing if they were insulting him or cheering him on.

The nanny fought her way to her feet. ‘Oh! You must be disciplined.’

‘So must you.’ The young prince turned, and stomped up to the guard. ‘Your sword.’

‘Now, now, little master …’

Cap-Pi-Hau took it.

The woman called Mulberry knew then the extent of her miscalculation. She had imagined that this quiet child was meek and timid.

‘What are you going to do?’ she said, backing away.

He charged her.

She turned and ran and he slapped her on her bottom with the flat of the sword. ‘Help! Help!’ she was forced to cry.

The children squealed with laughter.

The tiny prince roared with a tiger-cub voice. ‘Stop, you pual! Talk to me or I will use the blade.’

She yelped and turned, giving him a deep and sincere dip of respect.

‘Hold still.’ he ordered. ‘Bow.’

She did, and he reached up to her face and into her mouth, and pulled out her wooden false teeth. He chopped at them with the sword, splintering them.

‘These teeth came to you from the household. For hitting a prince, you will never have teeth again.’

She dipped and bowed.

‘Now,’ said Prince Hereditary Slave. ‘I ask again. How do I find a particular slave girl I like?’

‘Simply point her out to me,’ the woman said, with a placating smile. She tinkled her little bell-like voice that she used with anyone of higher rank. ‘I will bring her to you.’

The guard was pleased. He chuckled and shook his head. ‘He’s after girls already,’ he said to his compatriot.

The next day, Cap-Pi-Hau found the girl for himself.

It was the time of sleep and dusting. He bounced towards her. ‘We can play slippers!’ he said, looking forward to fun.

She turned and lowered her head to the floor.

‘Here,’ said Cap-Pi-Hau and thrust a slipper at her. She had no idea what to do with it. It was made of royal flowered cloth, stitched with gold thread. She glanced nervously about her.

‘You do this!’ said the Prince. He flicked the slipper so it spun across the floor. ‘The winner is the one who can throw it farthest.’ He stomped forward and snatched up the shoe, and propelled it back towards her. She made to throw it underhand.

‘No, no, no!’ He ran and snatched it from her. ‘You have to slide it. It has to stay on the floor. That’s the game.’

She stared at him, panting in fear. Why was she so worried? Maybe she had heard there had been trouble.

Cap-Pi-Hau said to her in a smaller voice, ‘If you make it go round and round it goes farther.’ It was the secret of winning and he gave it to her.

She dipped her head, and glanced about her, and tossed the slipper so that it spun. It twirled, hissing across the wood, passing his. She had beaten him first go, and Cap-Pi-Hau was so delighted to have a worthy adversary that he laughed and clapped his hands. That made her smile.

His turn. He threw it hard and lost.

The second time she threw, she lost the confidence of inexperience and the shoe almost spun on the spot. The Prince experimented, shooting the slipper forward with his foot. So did she. The two of them were soon both giggling and running and jumping with excitement.

He asked her name.

‘Fishing Cat,’ she replied. Cmâ-kančus.

The name made him laugh out loud. Fishing cats were small, lean and delicate with huge round eyes. ‘You look like a fishing cat!’ Instead of laughing she hung her head. She thought he was teasing her, so he talked about something else, to please her.

‘Do you come attached to the royal house, like a cow?’ he asked. Groups of slaves were called thpal, the same word used for cattle.

‘No, Sir. I was given away, Sir.’

This interested the Prince mightily because he had been given away as well. He pushed close to her. ‘Why were you given away?’

Her voice went thin, like the sound of wind in reeds. ‘Because I was pretty.’

If she was pretty, he wanted to see. ‘I can’t see you.’

She finally looked up, and her eyelids batted to control the tears, and she tried to smile.

‘You look unhappy.’ He could not think why that would be.

‘Oh no, Prince. It is a great honour to be in the royal enclosure. To be here is to see what life in heaven must be like.’

‘Do you miss your mother?’

This seemed to cause her distress. She moved from side to side as if caught between two things. ‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘You’re scared!’ he said, which was such an absurd thing to be that it amused him. He suddenly thought of a fishing cat on a dock taking off in fear when people approached. ‘Fishing cats are scared and they run away!’

Her eyes slid sideways and she spoke as if reciting a ritual. ‘We owe everything to the King. From his intercession, the purified waters flow from the hills. The King is our family.’

The Prince said, ‘He’s not my family.’ Fishing Cat’s head spun to see if anyone could hear them. The Prince said, ‘I miss my family. I have some brothers here, but my mother lives far away in the east.’

Cat whispered, ‘Maybe I miss my mother too.’ Very suddenly, she looked up, in something like alarm. ‘And my sisters, too. And my house by the river. We lived near the rice fields and the water. And we all slept together each night.’

Cap-Pi-Hau saw the house in his mind.

He saw the broad fields of rice moving in waves like the surface of the Great Lake, and long morning shadows, and the buffaloes in the mire, and rows of trees parasolling houses along the waterways.

He saw home.

He himself had been brought from the country, carried in a howdah with nine other distressed, hot, fearful children. He dimly remembered riding through the City, its streets full of people. Since then, he had not been allowed outside the royal enclosure.

Cap-Pi-Hau had only been able to hear people from over the walls. The calls of stall owners, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of ox-cart wheels and the constant birdlike chorus of chatter. For him, that was the sound of freedom. He kept trying to imagine what the people were like, because he heard them laugh.

Cap-Pi-Hau asked, ‘What did you like doing best?’

She considered. ‘I remember my brother taking the buffalo down to the reservoir, to keep cool. It would stay in the water all day, so we could too.’

Cap-Pi-Hau thrust himself up onto her lap, and suddenly she was like an older sister, tending the babe for her mother.

‘I want to stay in the water all day,’ he beamed. ‘I want to drive water buffaloes. Great big buffaloes!’ Something in the sound of that phrase, big and hearty, made him explode with giggles.

Finally she did too. ‘You are a buffalo.’

‘I’m a big big buffalo and I smell of poo!’ He became a bouncing ball of chuckles. Even she chuckled. Laughter made him fond. He tilted his head and his eyes were twinkly, hungry for something different. He writhed in her grasp. ‘What else did you do?’

She had to think. ‘My brother would catch frogs or snakes to eat. He was very brave.’

‘You hunted snakes and frogs?’ Cap-Pi-Hau was fascinated. He could see a boy like himself, skinnier maybe. They would hunt together in the reeds. He mimed slamming frogs. ‘Bam! Bam!’ he grinned. ‘Flat frog! Yum. I want to eat a flat frog.’

She joined in. ‘I want to eat mashed cricket.’

‘I want to eat … monkey ears!’

That joke wore out. He asked about her family. She had six brothers and sisters. They were the nias of a lord who lived far away from the perfect city. Their canal branched off from the meeting of the three rivers, far to the south. She could see all of that, but she could not remember the name of the place.

All of her brothers and sisters slept in a tidy row on mats. When one of them was sick, that child slept cradled by their mother. So they all pretended to be sick sometimes. One night, so many of them said they were sick that Mother turned away from them all. Then their mother got sick herself. With no one to work the fields, they had to do something to feed all the children, so Fishing Cat was sent away.

The Prince still wanted fun. ‘And you never went back, never, never, never.’ He rocked his head in time to the words. ‘I never went back either.’

Something seemed to come out of them both, like mingled breath.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked, because Cap-Pi-Hau was a nickname.

‘Nia!’ he said, delighted, and started to chuckle again. ‘I am Prince Slave!’

‘I will give you orders!’ she chuckled, something irrepressible bubbling up.

‘I will have to dust floors for you,’ he giggled.

‘I will say, you, Prince, come here and help me with this thing.’ She snapped her fingers.

‘You can call me Prince Nia.’

She chuckled. ‘You can call me Princess Nia!’

For some reason the laughter faded.

‘I hardly remember my home either,’ said Cap-Pi-Hau.

Until the day of his marriage, Cap-Pi-Hau called himself Prince Nia. When people expressed astonishment at the choice he would explain. ‘All princes are hereditary slaves.’

The day of the procession arrived.

The Sun King’s great new temple was to be consecrated.

Prince Nia stood high on the steps of an elephant platform. Ahead of him the next batch of hostage children crowded the platform, scowling at the sunlight, flicking their fly whisks.

The Prince had never stood so high off the ground. He was now level with the upper storey of the Aerial Palace. There were no walls and all the curtains were raised.

He saw servants scurrying, carrying, airing, beating – taking advantage of their mistresses’ absence to perfect the toilet of the rooms. Category girls ran with armloads of blackened flowers to throw them away. They beat cushions against each other. They shifted low bronze tables so that the floor could be wiped.

In the corners, musical instruments were carefully stood at attention, their wooden bellies gleaming. The lamp hooks screwed into the pillars were swirling bronze images of smoke or cloud-flowers. The rooms had handsome water butts of their own, with fired glazed patterns. The pillars on the upper floor were ornately carved, with images of celestial maidens, as if the rooms were already high in heaven.

He could see the lintels and the gables close up. Monsters called Makara spewed out fabulous beasts from their mouths. Gods abducted women. Brahma rode his giant goose; Krishna split a demon asura in two. Regularly recurring shapes of flames or lotus petals were embedded with glass pieces. And the roof! It was tiled with metal, armoured like a soldier’s breastplate. The metal was dull grey like a cloudy sky, smooth and streaked from rain. So many things had been kept from him!

An elephant lumbered towards them. It was old, and the howdah on its back wobbled on its loose skin.

It was not a good elephant. The howdah was functional, no carvings. The beast came close to them and coughed, and its breath smelled of dead mice.

Now the King’s elephant! Its tusks would be sheathed in gold, and the howdah would rest on a beautiful big carpet!

The children began to advance one at a time onto the elephant’s unsteady back.

And the King himself, is he blue, Nia wondered, like Vishnu? If he is the Sun Shield, is he blinding, like the sun?

Someone shoved Nia from behind, trying to push him aside. Nia thrust back and turned. It was an older, more important prince. ‘Get out of the way. I am higher rank than you.’ It was the son of the King’s nephew.

‘We all climb up and take our turn.’

At the top of the steps, a kamlaa-category slave herded them. ‘OK, come on, press in, as many as possible.’ He wore only a twist of cloth and was hot, bored, and studded with insect bites. He grabbed hold of the Prince’s shoulders and pulled him forward. Nia tossed his shoulders free. He wanted to board the howdah by himself. In the future, I will be a warrior, Nia thought; I will need to be able to do this like a warrior. He saw himself standing with one foot outside the howdah, firing his arrows.

The kamlaa peremptorily scooped him up and half-flung him onto the howdah. Prince Nia stumbled onto a girl’s heel; she elbowed him back. Nia’s face burned with shame. He heard older boys laugh at him.

Then the kamlaa said, ‘OK that’s enough, step back.’

The King’s nephew’s son tried to crowd in, but the kamlaa shoved him back. The higher prince fixed Nia with a glare and stuck his thumb through his fingers at him.

The elephant heaved itself forward, turning. Was the procession beginning? Prince Nia craned his neck to see. All he saw was embroidered backs. Nia prised the backs apart and squeezed his way through to the front. Two older boys rammed him in the ribs. ‘You are taller than me,’ Nia said. ‘You should let me see!’

The elephant came to rest, in no shade at all. They waited. Sweat trickled down the Prince’s back.

‘I need to pee,’ whispered a little girl.

Adults lay sprawled in the shade under the silk-cottons. Soldiers lay sleeping, wearing what they wore to battle, a twist of cloth and an amulet for protection. Cap-Pi-Hau scowled. Why didn’t they dress for the consecration? Their ears were sliced and lengthened, but they wore no earrings.

The musicians were worse. They had propped their standards up against the wall. A great gong slept on the ground. The men squatted, casting ivories as if in a games house. Did they not know that the King created glory through the Gods? That was why their house had a roof made of lead.

The afternoon baked and buzzed and there was not enough room to sit down. Finally someone shouted, ‘The King goes forth! The King goes forth!’

A Brahmin, his hair bundled up under a cloth tied with pearls, was being trotted forward in a palanquin.

The Brahmin shouted again. ‘Get ready, stand up! Stop sprawling about the place!’ He tried to look very important, which puffed out his cheeks and his beard, as if his nose was going to disappear under hair. The Prince laughed and clapped his hands. ‘He looks silly!’

Grand ladies stood up and arranged themselves in imitation of the lotus, pink, smiling and somehow cool. Category girls scurried forward with tapers to light their candles or pluck at and straighten the trains of threaded flower buds that hung down from the royal diadems.

The musicians tucked their ivories into their loincloths next to their genitals for luck. They shouldered up long sweeping poles that bore standards: flags that trailed in the shape of flames, or brass images of dancing Hanuman, the monkey king.

A gong sounded from behind the royal house. A gong somewhere in front replied. The tabla drums, the conches and the horns began to blare and wail and beat. Everything quickened into one swirling, rousing motion. The procession inflated, unfolded and caught the sunlight.

The footsoldiers began to march in rows of four, spears raised, feet crunching the ground in unison and sweeping off the first group of musicians along with them. A midget acrobat danced and somersaulted alongside the musicians and the children in the howdahs applauded.