THE FIFTEENTH WIFE
Mateo, my Filipino servant, was helping me sort over specimens one dayunder the thatched roof of a shed which I had hired to use for suchwork while I was on the island of Culion, when I was startled to seehim suddenly drop the bird skin he had been working on, and fall uponhis knees, bending his body forward, his face turned toward the road,until his forehead touched the floor.
At first I thought he must be having some new kind of a fit, peculiarto the Philippine Islands, until I happened to glance up the roadtoward the town, from which my house was a little distance removed,and saw coming toward us a most remarkable procession.
Four native soldiers walked in front, two carrying long spears, andtwo carrying antiquated seven-foot muskets, relics of a former era infire arms. After the soldiers came four Visayan slaves, bearing ontheir shoulders a sort of platform covered with rugs and cushions,on which a woman reclined. On one side of the litter walked anotherslave, holding a huge umbrella so as to keep the sun's rays off thewoman's face. Two more soldiers walked behind.
Mateo might have been a statue, or a dead man, for all the attentionhe paid to my questions until after the procession had passed thehouse. Then, resuming a perpendicular position once more, he said,"That was the Sultana Ahmeya, the Sultana."
Then he went on to explain that there were thirteen other sultanas, ofassorted colors, who helped make home happy for the Sultan of Culion,who after all, well supplied as he might at first seem to be, was onlya sort of fourth-class sovereign, so far as sultanas are concerned,since his fellow monarch on a neighboring larger island, the Sultanof Sulu, is said to have four hundred wives.
Ahmeya, though, Mateo went on to inform me, was the only one ofthe fourteen who really counted. She was neither the oldest nor theyoungest of the wives of the reigning ruler, but she had developeda mind of her own which had made her supreme in the palace, andbesides, she was the only one of his wives who had borne a son tothe monarch. For her own talents, and as the mother of the heir,the people did her willing homage.
When I saw the royal cavalcade go past my door I had no idea I wouldever have a chance to become more intimately acquainted with HerMajesty, but only a little while after that circumstances made itpossible for me to see more of the royal family than had probablybeen the privilege of any other white man. How little thought I had,when the acquaintance began, of the strange experiences it wouldeventually lead to!
At that time, in the course of collecting natural historyspecimens, most of my time for three years was spent in the islandof Culion. Having a large stock of drugs, for use in my work, andquite a lot of medicines, I had doctored Mateo and two or threeother fellows who had worked for me, when they had been ill, withthe result that I found I had come to have a reputation for medicalskill which sometimes was inconvenient. I had no idea how widely myfame had spread, though, until one morning Mateo came into my roomand woke me, and with a face which expressed a good deal of anxiety,informed me that I was sent for to come to the palace.
I confess I felt some concern myself, and should have felt more if Ihad had as much experience then as I had later, for one never knowswhat those three-quarters savage potentates may take it into theirheads to do.
When I found that I was sent for because the Sultan was ill,--ill untodeath, the messenger had made Mateo believe,--and I was expected todoctor him, I did not feel much more comfortable, for I much doubted ifmy knowledge of diseases, and my assortment of medicines, were equalto coping with a serious case. If the Sultan died I would probablybe beheaded, either for not keeping him alive, or for killing him.
It was a great relief, then, when I reached the palace, and justbefore I entered the room where the sick monarch was, to hear himswearing vigorously, in a combination of the native and Spanishlanguages which was as picturesque as it was expressive.
I found the man suffering from an acute attack of neuralgia, althoughhe did not know what was the matter with him. He had not been ableto sleep for three days and nights, and the pain, all the way up anddown one side of his face had been so intense that he thought he wasgoing to die, and almost hoped that he was. His head was tied up in alot of cloths, not over clean, in which a dozen native doctor's charmshad been folded, until the bundle was as big as four heads ought to be.
As soon as I found out what was the matter I felt relieved, for Ireckoned I could manage an attack of swelled head all right. I haddoctored the natives enough, already, to find out that they had norespect for remedies which they could not feel, and so, going backto the house, I brought from there some extra strong liniment, sometincture of red pepper and a few powerful morphine pills.
I gave my patient one of the pills the first thing, administeringit in a glass of water with enough of the cayenne added to it sothat the mixture brought tears to his eyes, and then removing thelayers of cloth from his head, and gathering in as I did so, for mycollection of curiosities, the various charms which I uncovered, Igave his head a vigorous shampooing with the liniment, taking pains tosee that the liquor occasionally ran down into the Sultan's eyes. Hesquirmed a good deal, but I kept on until I thought it must be abouttime for the morphine to begin to take effect. I kept him on morphineand red pepper for three days, but when I let up on him he was cured,and my reputation was made.
It would have been too great a nuisance to have been endured, had itnot been that so high a degree of royal favor enabled me to pursuemy work with a degree of success which otherwise I could never havehoped for.
After that I used to see a good deal of the palace life. Althoughnominally Mohammedans in religion, the inhabitants of these moredistant islands have little more than the name of the faith, and followout few of its injunctions. As a result I was accorded a freedom aboutthe palace which would have been impossible in such an establishmentin almost any other country.
One day the Sultan had invited me to dine with him. After the meal,while we were smoking, reclining in some cocoanut fibre hammocksswung in the shade of the palace court yard, I saw a man servant leada dog through the square, and down a narrow passage way through therear of the palace.
"Would you like to see the 'Green Devil' eat?" my host asked.
I have translated the native words he used by the term "green devil,"because that represents the idea of the original better than anyother words I know of, I had not the slightest conception as to whoor what the individual referred to might be; but I said at once thatI would be very glad indeed to see him eat.
My host swung out of the hammock,--he was a superbly strong andvigorous man, now that he was in health again,--and led the waythrough the passage. Following him I found myself in another courtyard, larger than the first, and with more trees in it. Beneath oneof these trees, in a stout cage of bamboo, was the biggest pythonI ever saw. He must have been fully twenty-five feet long. The cagewas large enough to give the snake a chance to move about in it, andwhen we came in sight he was rolling from one end to the other withhead erect, eyes glistening, and the light shimmering on his glossyscales in a way which made it easy to see why he had been given hisname. I learned later that he had not been fed for a month, and thathe would not be fed again until another month had passed. Like allof his kind he would touch none but live food.
The wretched dog, who seemed to guess the fate in store for him,hung back in the rope tied about his neck, and crouched flat to theground, too frightened even to whine.
The servant unlocked a door in the side of the cage and thrust thepoor beast in. I am not ashamed to say that I turned my head away. Itwas only a dog, but it might have been a human being, so far as thereptile, or the half-savage man at my side, would have cared.
When I looked again, the dog was only a crushed mass of bones andflesh, about which the snake was still winding and tightening coilafter coil.
"We need not wait," the Sultan said. "It will be an hour before hewill swallow the food. You can come out again."
I did as he suggested. It was a wonder to me, as it is to every one,how a snake's
throat can be distended enough to swallow whole an objectso large as this dog, but in some way the reptile had accomplished thefeat. The meal over, the huge creature had coiled down as still almostas if dead. He would lie in that way, now, they told me, for days.
It was while I stood watching the snake that Ahmeya came throughthe square, leading her boy by the hand. The apartments of the royalwives were built around this inner yard. This was the first time Ihad seen the heir to the throne. He was a handsome boy, and lookedlike his mother. Ahmeya was tall, for a native woman, and carriedherself with a dignity which showed that she felt the honor of herposition. Mateo had told me that she had a decided will of her own,and, so the palace gossips said, ruled the establishment, and herassociate sultanas, with an unbending hand.
It was not very long after I had seen the green devil eat thatMateo told me there had been another wedding at the palace. Mateowas an indefatigable news-gatherer, and an incorrigible gossip. Asthe society papers would have expressed it, this wedding had been "avery quiet affair." The Sultan had happened to see a Visayan girl ofuncommon beauty, on one of the smaller islands, one day, had boughther of her father for two water buffalos, and had installed her atthe palace as wife number fifteen.
For the time being the new-comer was said to be the royal favorite,a condition of affairs which caused the other fourteen wives as littleconcern as their objections, if they had expressed any, would probablyhave caused their royal husband. So far as Ahmeya was concerned,she never minded a little thing like that, but included the lastarrival in the same indifferent toleration which she had extended toher predecessors.
I saw the new wife only once.--I mean,--yes I mean that.--I saw her asthe king's wife only once. She was a handsome woman, with a certaininsolent disdain of those about her which indicated that she knewher own charms, and perhaps counted too much on their being permanent.
That summer my work took me away from the island. I went to Manila,and eventually to America. When I finally returned to Culion a yearhad passed.
I had engaged Mateo, before I left, to look out for such propertyas I left behind, and had retained my old house. I found him waitingfor me, and with everything in good order. That is one good thing tobe said about the natives. An imagined wrong or insult may rankle intheir minds for months, until they have a chance to stab you in theback. They will lie to you at times with the most unblushing nerve,often when the truth would have served their ends so much better thatit seems as if they must have been doing mendacious gymnastics simplyto keep themselves in practice; but they will hardly ever steal. Ifthey do, it will be sometime when you are looking squarely at them,carrying a thing off from under your very nose with a clevernesswhich they seem to think, and you can hardly help feel yourself,makes them deserve praise instead of blame. I have repeatedly leftmuch valuable property with them, as I did in this case with Mateo,and have come back to find every article just as I had left it.
Mateo was glad to see me. "Oh Senor," he began, before my clothes werefairly changed, and while he was settling my things in my bed room,"there is so much to tell you."
I knew he would be bursting with news of what had happened during myabsence. "Such goings on," he continued, folding my travelling clothesinto a tin trunk, where the white ants could not get at them. "Younever heard the likes of it."
I am translating very freely, for I have noticed that the thoughtsexpressed by the Philippine gossip are very similar to those of hisfellow in America, or Europe, or anywhere else, no matter how muchthe words may differ.
"The new Sultana, the handsome Visayan girl, has given birth to a son,and has so bewitched the Sultan by her good looks and craftinessthat he has decreed her son, and not Ahmeya's, to be the heir tothe throne. She rules the palace now, and when her servants bear herthrough the streets the people bow down to her." He added, with a lookbehind him to see that no one overheard, "Because they dare not dootherwise. In their hearts they love Ahmeya, and hate this vain woman."
"How does Ahmeya take it?" I asked.
"Hardly, people think, although she makes no cry. She goes not throughthe streets of the town, now, but stays shut in her own rooms, withher women and the boy."
A furious beating against the bamboo walls of my sleeping room,and wild cries from some one on the ground outside, awoke me onemorning when I had been back in Culion less than a week. The housein which I slept, like most of the native houses in the Philippines,was built on posts, several feet above the ground, for the sake ofcoolness and as a protection against snakes and such vermin.
It was very early, not yet sunrise. A servant of the Sultan's, graywith fright, was pounding on the walls of the house with a long spearto wake me, begging me, when I opened the lattice, to come to thepalace at once.
I thought the monarch must have had some terrible attack, andwondered what it could be, but while we were hurrying up the streetthe messenger managed to make me understand that the Sultan was notat the palace at all, but gone the day before on board the royalproa for a state visit to a neighboring island from which he exactedyearly tribute. Later I learned that he had tried to have the Visayanwoman go with him, but that she had wilfully refused to go. Whatwas the matter at the palace the ruler being gone, I could not makeout. When I asked this of the man who had come for me, he fell intosuch a palsy of fear that he could say nothing. When I came to know,later, that he was the night guard at the palace, and remembered whathe must have seen, I did not wonder.
At the palace no one was astir. The man had come straight for me,stopping to rouse no one else. I had saved the Sultan's life. Atleast he thought so. Might I not do even more?
My guide took me straight through the first court yard, and downthe narrow passage into the inner yard, around which were builtthe apartments of the woman. Ahmeya, I knew, lived in the rooms atone end of the square. The man led me towards the opposite end ofthe enclosure. Beside an open door he stood aside for me to enter,saying, as he did so, "Senor, help us."
The sun had risen, now, and shining full upon a lattice in the upperwall, flooded the room with a soft clear light.
The body of the Visayan woman, or rather what had been a body, layon the floor in the center of the room, a shapeless mass of crushedbones and flesh. An enormous python lay coiled in one corner. Hismottled skin glistened in the morning light, but he did not move,and his eyes were tight shut, as were those of the "green devil"after I had seen him feed.
I looked backward, across the court yard. The door of the big bamboocage beneath the trees was open. I turned to the room again and lookedonce more. I knew now why the night guard's face was ash-colored,and why he could not speak.
For the child of the Visayan woman I could not see.