Geoff Ryman - The King’s Last Song

There were groans and protests: no you are not old.

‘I give you my cloud-flower of virtue and respect whose name will join the web of stars overhead!’

He hugged Jayavarman’s shoulders, and leaned on him. The King’s breath smelt of wooden teeth and palm wine. The Little King smiled and thought, this could be dangerous. The King whispered to him, ‘My harrow after death.’

Finally, finally he and his wife were left alone. They walked hand in hand to the household reservoir. It creaked with frogs and crickets. So, the Prince thought, I have a wife as beautiful as the moon, as tuneful as the birds. But I don’t really know her. All our friends surround us.

And from somewhere came grief and he found he was crying.

‘Husband,’ said his new wife. ‘You weep?’

She tried to pull him around. It was not manly to weep. He tried to stop. But suddenly he found he could not stop, and that his legs were giving way under him. He slumped down to the ground. Gracefully, Jayarajadevi lowered herself next to him. ‘My Lord, be happy?’ she chuckled, her voice also unsteady.

‘I don’t know why I do this.’

He looked up at the leaves, stars, moon, and the temple, black and red and gilded, dancing with torchlight.

‘I wish my mother was here,’ he said, locating the grief. ‘I wish my father was alive. I wish I’d been with him when he died.’

‘Ah,’ she said, like wind in the trees. She sat in her gold-embroidered gown on the dry ground. She took him in her arms. ‘It is our fate to lose our families.’

‘I will not see her or my father again. My brothers are taken by the wars. My mother said she did not choose this, that she would always think of me.’

‘She was a very wise and loving mother to say that.’

‘I don’t know why I do this!’ He was so frightened of looking unmanly for his bride.

‘You are weeping because you have come home after such a long time.’ Her own words rocked as if over a bumpy road. She cradled him closer and kissed his forehead. She kissed his closed eyes, for all of their dead. ‘Your father. My father. Your mother.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘What is your name? I don’t know your real name.’

Jayavarman smiled embarrassed and shrugged. He closed his eyes and said his real name. ‘Kráy.’

Jayarajadevi’s face froze.

He said, ‘Kansri, don’t tell anyone, please. It is not a name I can live up to!’ The name in Old Khmer meant Huge, Powerful, Exceeding – Too Much.

Jayarajadevi asked, ‘Your father gave you that name?’

‘No, my mother.’ Jayavarman grinned. ‘She had a vision of me. Mothers do.’

Jayarajadevi Kansri sighed. ‘I won’t ever know your parents.’

‘That’s OK, neither do I.’ He looked smiling, accepting. ‘They were the reverse of what you expect a man and a woman to be. My mother was brave, strong and calculating, but also wilder. She saw things. My father, Dharan Indravarman, was sweet and gentle, always saying look, look at the butterflies. Look at the flowers. Maybe the flowers take wing as butterflies. He cried when animals died.’

His wife took his hand. ‘They sound like exceptional people.’ The tears came again. ‘They were. And I hardly knew them.’

She made him look at her. ‘We will make a new family,’ she promised. ‘We will people that family with children who will honour and respect you. We will build a house of our own, a great house where all our families can come home.’

‘And I will learn about the Buddha. My family were Buddhists. Did you know that?’

She smiled. ‘Everyone knows that, Nia.’ She shook her head. ‘That is why we were matched.’

The Prince bounced up and down. ‘Well. We will build a Buddhist capital! We will make a city of compassion.’ Jayavarman, Victory Shield, clenched his fist. ‘We will make a precious jewel of a kingdom and keep it safe from thieves and hold it up as a shining star to light the rest of the world!’

His wife, his queen, draped herself across him. ‘Yes, my Lord, yes,’ she said. There was a sensation as if they had mounted on the back of a swan. Their world was winging.

Then, Jayavarman went away to war.

The hatch clunks open.

Luc feels sweet air move on his cheek. He smells sun-baked wood, muddy water and reeds. Something in that smell tells him it’s early morning and he imagines open blue sky and the expanse of the Great Lake.

The boys on the deck grunt. ‘Ugh! It smells like a pigpen. You. Out here to wash.’

Wash! The only thing Luc wants to do now is wash; dust and sweat coat him like a layer of latex. Luc tries to sit up and bashes his forehead on the low ceiling. He inches his way forward on his buttocks. He hears the General being seized by his ankles and hauled backwards across the shallow hull.

No thanks. Luc rolls over onto his hands and knees, and backs his way towards the hatch. He hates not being able to see anything. The joists press into his shins.

Hands grab his arms and pull him up the hatch, peeling off skin from his elbows and ankles.

But the air is as sweet as spun sugar, and the sunlight as warm as a mother’s touch. The bungee cords around his wrists are unsprung. He can move! He hears the tape being torn away from the General’s face and then the plunge when the other man jumps off the boat. The thought of cool, cleansing water makes Luc chuckle with anticipation.

Then a boy shouts. ‘He’s gone under. There! There! There!’ Terrifyingly close to Luc’s ear, gunfire slams out towards the reeds. Feet thud on the deck and the water parts with a puff-whoosh as someone dives.

The General is trying to escape.

Luc reacts like a child. I won’t get my wash, he thinks. He wants to cry from disappointment. He imagines the General diving under the thick layer of floating plants and slipping away through the reeds. He imagines himself left alone with the kidnappers. Despair comes instantly.

Then a thumping on the deck and a streaming of water. ‘Get back up here you old roostershit! Move!’

And despite himself, Luc feels relief, a certain warmth around the heart. He will not be left alone.

Something is heaved onto the deck. The General starts to call out but two quick snaps of gunfire cut him off and he keens like a seagull.

They’ve shot him. The General yelps and squeals as he’s hauled across the deck. The boat’s tiny engine begins to throb and gurgle.

The boys shout, ‘Get in! Get in!’ The boat moves and turns. Cold wet hands grab Luc and push.

‘I’m going, I’m going!’ Luc grunts through the tape. He stumbles down through the hatch and the boys club his head with the butt of a rifle or pistol, to beat him down into the hull. He ducks and dives, slamming his forehead.

The boys clamber down after him and cram him up against the General. The General’s cold skin twitches and he makes a thin continuous wheedling sound, fighting pain. Tape is ripped around him; he howls in agony as someone lifts his legs presumably to bungee them together.

The boys leave the General tossing back and forth like a child trying to rock himself to sleep.

The hatch closes. The boat drones on for hours.

William pulls up at the Phimeanakas at 8.00 a.m. and finds the forecourt crammed with foreigners he doesn’t know.

They are climbing into the back of the dig’s pick-up truck. ‘They say the airport is open again,’ says an Australian tourist.

‘What has happened?’ William shouts to him.

‘They say one of the archaeologists who is staying here has been kidnapped.’ The man’s mouth sours into an odd mix of the fearful and the exhilarated. ‘We’re heading out.’

William tries to find the team’s Cambodian director. Prak the security guard stops him, a hand planted on his chest. William is only a motoboy and not allowed even into the forecourt of the Phimeanakas.