The King’s Last Song

The adults were all in their hammocks. Only insects were awake, buzzing in the heat. To fill the silence, the Prince stomped up the wooden steps as loudly as he could.

The King’s gallery was empty. The gold-embroidered curtains breathed in and out as if they were asleep. The only other person he could see was a servant girl dusting the floor.

The girl was about four years older than the Prince. Maybe she’d want to play. He broke into a run towards her, but then lost heart. Old palace women with wrinkled faces and broken teeth would pick him up and fuss over him, but pretty young girls with work to do would be told off for it.

The Prince grew shy. ‘Play with me,’ he asked, in a soft breathy voice.

The girl bowed and then smiled as if there was nothing more delightful than to be approached by a person of his category. ‘I must work,’ she beamed, as if that were a pleasure too.

He was a sujati, a well born person. The girl was bare-chested, some category of worker. A diadem of wooden slats was tied across her forehead, and the stain across her temples was her passport into the royal enclosure. The Prince watched her clean. For a moment it was interesting to see the damp cloth push grains of food through the knotholes and gaps in the floorboards.

Then boredom returned as unrelenting as a headache. Boredom drove him. It was nearly unbearable, the silence, the sameness.

The thin floor rested high off the ground on stilts. The floorboards gave the boy the foot-beat of a giant. He lifted up his bare foot, drove it down hard, and felt the whole house quiver. He giggled and looked back at the girl and then took more high, hammering steps across the floor.

The girl paid no attention.

No one wore shoes, so dusty footprints trailed across the red gallery floors where the girl had not yet cleaned.

To the Prince they looked like the tracks of game across a forest floor.

He was a hunter in the woods. He charged forward. ‘I see you, deer! Whoosh!’ He let fly imaginary arrows. ‘I see you, wild pig! Whoosh I get you!’

He looked back at the girl. She still dusted.

Suddenly the footprints looked more like those of enemy troops. He imitated the sounds of battle music: conch shell moans and the bashing of gongs. He paraded, thumping his feet. He was a Great King. He waved the Sacred Sword over his head and charged.

He thundered back down the length of the gallery, wailing.

The girl still dusted, looking hunched.

He could be naughty, this prince. He had a formal name, but everybody nicknamed him Catch-Him-to-Call-Him, Cap-Pi-Hau.

All right, Cap-Pi-Hau thought, you want to be slow and boring, I will make you play.

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.