For Carol and Roy
The Thai Amulet
by Lyn Hamilton
Characters
IN THE PAST
Chairacha, king of Ayutthaya
Prince Thianracha, his brother
Lady Si Sudachan, royal concubine
Prince Yot Fa, son of Chairacha and the concubine
Prince Si Sin, younger brother of Yot Fa
Khun Worawongsa, court official
Chakkraphat, king of Ayutthaya
IN THE PRESENT
William Beauchamp, antiques dealer
Natalie Beauchamp, William’s wife
The Chaiwong family:
Thaksin, patriarch
Wongvipa, his wife
Sompom, Thaksin’s first son by a previous marriage
Wannee, Sompom’s wife
Nu, daughter of Sompom and Wannee
Chat, first son of Thaksin and Wongvipa
Dusit, second son
Prapapan, daughter
Yutai, family secretary
Wichai, family friend
Busakorn, Wichai’s daughter
David Ferguson, U.S. consular official
Robert Fitzgerald, artist
Bent Rowland, literary agent
Tatiana Tucker, producer
Prasit, assistant manager, PPKK
Praneet, Will’s neighbor
While the characters of the narrator and his mother in the ancient story are fictional, the other characters and the political events and intrigue in the ancient Thai capital of Ayutthaya described here are real. They took place between about 1534 and 1548. The same cannot be said for the present, where all events and people are figments of the author’s imagination.
Prologue
Khun Worawongsa is dead because of me. I did not strike the blow that killed him. The others saw to that. He died, though, because of what I said and to whom I said it. Sometimes, when the moon is full, illuminating the deepest recesses of my mind as it does the dark shadows of night, the specter of guilt overwhelms me. I do not mean that I was wrong to do what I did. I know what I saw and have no doubts as to his culpability.
Three things, I think, contribute to the turmoil in my soul. The first is a dreadful sense that if I had been more observant, or rather, since I have promised myself I will be completely honest in recounting what happened, had I been less self-absorbed, the others might not have died. The second is the question of whether Khun Worawongsa was driven to the terrible deed by the person I consider to be truly evil, the one with the power to seduce even the most righteous among us, and was therefore entitled to some measure of compassion. The last is the realization of how much I have benefited from his death, so much more than I could reasonably expect from life, beyond, indeed, my wildest imagination: a royal appointment that brings with it wealth, but more than that, my place among King Chakkraphat’s closest advisors, and most important, the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world.
Tomorrow, if what our scouts tell us is true, we will engage the enemy. We know that our bitter foe, King Tabinshwehti of Burma, hoping to profit from the political turmoil of the last many months, has swept through the mountain pass with a large army, even as we are attacked on our eastern flank by the Khmer king of Lawaek. We are besieged on all sides.
I am certain that, led by our good King Chakkraphat, our own courage strengthened by his example, we will most certainly prevail. But I may well fall in battle, if not tomorrow, then soon enough. It is for this reason that I chronicle the events leading to the murder of Khun Worawongsa and the others, and my role in his death.
Chapter 1
It is possible I am responsible for someone’s death. I don’t mean that the corpse found floating in the Chao Phyra River died by my hand. There were others all too willing and eager to do the deed. But sometimes, at the darkest part of night, when the world is so quiet it’s impossible to still the demons of fear and guilt, I wonder if what happened was justified, even were all evidence of culpability laid out for everyone to see.
Looking back on it, I search for explanations for what I did and what I said, the point at which I lost all objectivity, where survival instincts took a backseat to revenge.
Mai pen rai, in Thai, means “It’s nothing, it doesn’t matter.” It’s an exotic and more cynical version of “Don’t worry, be happy,” a kind of collective shrug at the vagaries of life. Its spirit carries the average Thai through the average day of frustrations, setbacks, irritations, and even pleasures. But when William Beauchamp locked the door of his antique shop on the second floor of a building off Bangkok’s Silom Road for the last time and then quietly disappeared off the face of the planet, I found that mat pen rat could be a thin yet almost impenetrable veneer over a seething mass of corruption, evil, and even murder. Mai pen rat means “It doesn’t matter.” The trouble was, it mattered for Natalie Beau-champ, and for me, perhaps, it mattered too much.
My transformation from antique dealer to murderer’s accomplice, willing or otherwise, began, as I suppose so many things do, in the mundane, if not downright banal, tasks of a perfectly ordinary day.
“Have you ever wondered what happens to some people when they go to the Orient?” Clive Swain said that day, standing back to admire the display of Mexican patio furniture he’d just arranged. “Is it the heat? I mean you’re there at least twice a year, Lara, and you come back more or less the same person. Tired and a little grumpy, maybe, but essentially unchanged.”
“Is this relevant to something we’re doing at this moment, Clive?” I said, sorting through invoices at the counter. “In fact, is it apropos of anything at all?”
“You remember Will Beauchamp, don’t you?” he said.
“Of course I do,” I said.
“Well, he’s disappeared!”
“I see,” I said. “Fellow antique dealer goes to Asia on a buying trip and sends a fax—a fax!—to his wife and child saying he’s never coming back, and we call that disappeared, do we?” I closed the cash drawer with a little more force than was absolutely necessary.
“Ancient history,” Clive said. “Two years at least. Now he’s really disappeared. Poof, gone. You know, mail piling up behind the door, green slime in the refrigerator. That kind of disappeared. He’s vanished.” As he spoke, I caught sight of a streak of orange hurtling toward me and felt a familiar paw swatting my ankle.
“Speaking of vanished,” I said, eyeing a strategically placed mirror in one corner of the shop, “you had better go and see what in the back room has got Diesel agitated. I believe vanished is what is about to happen to one of our little jade Buddhas in the alcove. Young woman in yellow blouse,” I added.
“Well, she didn’t get the Buddha,” Clive said a few minutes later, as Diesel, McClintoch Swain’s Official Guard Cat, stood in the doorway growling at the retreating back of the would-be thief. “Nor anything else, I hope. Really, Lara, sometimes I think we should just move a table out to the street with a sign saying Free Stuff, Please Help Yourself. It would save us a lot of trouble, and we could just retire. Broke, of course. Nice work, by the way, Diesel,” he said, tickling the cat’s chin. “You will have your reward as soon as I get to the deli. Shrimp, I’m thinking. No—Black Forest ham! How about that?” The cat purred.
“I’m sure that’s not good for him, Clive,” I said. Both cat and ex-husband cocked their heads and looked at me. It surprised me that, given how long I’d known both of them, I’d never noticed until that moment how alike their expressions were nor how they both managed to avoid doing what I wanted them to.