Part VII · The Court of Burne
Chapter 23
Burne
Brunei, Borneo
At Burne, now Brunei, the Europeans ride elephants to the court of Rajah Siripada, and Pigafetta counts twenty-five thousand hearths in a city built on piles over the water.
8–9 July 1521
As they sail along the coast of Borneo, the island seems to Pigafetta to be climbing upwards. They reach the harbour in pitch darkness, and St. Elmo’s fire appears to them in the rigging once more.
The next day, the 9th of July, the king of the island sends out a very beautiful boat. Its bow and stern are worked in gold, and at the bow flies a white and blue banner topped with peacock feathers. Musicians play and drummers drum. Eight old chiefs come aboard and sit on a carpet in the stern. They bring a painted wooden jar full of betel and areca, jasmine and orange blossoms, a cloth of yellow silk, two cages of chickens, a pair of goats, bundles of sugarcane, and three jars of distilled rice wine. It is as clear as water, Pigafetta writes, but so strong that it gets many of the men drunk. It is called arak.
After weeks of hunger and wandering, the Europeans have come to the edge of a real kingdom: rich, ceremonious, and very sure of itself. For the first time on the whole voyage, they are the ones who look poor.
15 July 1521
Six days later three more boats come out, circling the ships with music, drums and gongs. The men aboard salute the Europeans with their small cloth caps, and bring gifts of food made from rice: some wrapped in leaves, some shaped like sugarloaves, some like tarts made with eggs and honey. The king, they say, will let the Europeans take water and wood and trade as they please.
Seven men, Pigafetta among them, go ashore with presents for the king. There is a green velvet robe in the Turkish style, a violet velvet chair, red cloth, a cap, a gilded drinking glass, a covered glass vase, three books of writing paper and a gilded writing case. For the queen there are yellow cloth, a pair of silvered shoes, and a silvered case full of needles.
At the city they wait two hours in the boat. Then two elephants arrive, dressed in silk, with twelve men each carrying a porcelain jar covered in silk to hold the presents. The Europeans climb onto the elephants and ride to the governor’s house. There they are given supper, and they sleep on cotton mattresses lined with taffeta, between sheets of fine Indian cloth.
A year earlier Pigafetta had been eating rats in Patagonia. Now he is riding an elephant to see a sultan.
16 July 1521
At noon they ride to the palace. Every street from the governor’s house to the king’s is lined with men holding swords, spears and shields, on the king’s orders. They ride into the palace courtyard, climb a ladder, and enter a large hall full of nobles, where they sit on a carpet with the presents beside them.
At the end of the hall is a second, smaller, higher room, hung with silk, where three hundred soldiers stand guard with bare swords. At the far end of that room is a large window with a brocade curtain. The curtain is drawn back, and through it they see the king sitting at a table with one of his young sons, chewing betel. Behind him there are only women.
They are told they cannot speak to the king directly. They must tell their message to a chief, who will pass it to someone of higher rank, who will pass it to the governor’s brother in the smaller room. He will speak it through a tube in the wall to someone inside with the king. They are taught how to bow three times, hands clasped above the head, lifting one foot and then the other, and kissing their hands towards him.
They say they come from the king of Spain, who wants peace and permission to trade. The king sends word that he is very willing to be the king of Spain’s friend. As each present is handed over, he nods slightly. Then the curtain is drawn and the windows are closed.
July 1521
That evening nine men arrive from the king with large wooden trays, each holding ten or twelve porcelain dishes: veal, capons, chickens, peacocks and fish. The Europeans eat on the floor, on a palm mat, from thirty or thirty-two different kinds of meat. With each mouthful they drink a small porcelain cup of distilled wine, and they eat rice and sweets with gold spoons. At night, white wax torches burn in silver candlesticks, and servants trim the lamps’ wicks all night long.
The city itself is built over salt water, apart from the houses of the king and some chiefs. Pigafetta counts twenty-five thousand hearths. All the houses are built of wood on tall piles. When the tide is in, women go through the town in boats, selling everything people need. In front of the palace stands a great brick wall with towers like a fortress, mounting fifty-six bronze guns and six of iron.
The king is a Muslim named Rajah Siripada. He is forty and heavy. He is served only by women, the daughters of chiefs, and he never leaves the palace except to go hunting. No one may speak to him except through the tube. He has ten scribes who record what he does on very thin bark.
July 1521
In Brunei, Pigafetta starts to glimpse a much larger world: one that runs on Chinese goods and Chinese money, and in which Spain barely matters.
The people use bronze coins pierced through the middle so they can be strung together. On one side are four characters, “letters of the great king of China.” Their porcelain is made, he is told, from a very white earth that is buried for fifty years before it is worked, a father burying it for his son. If poison is put in a fine porcelain dish, the dish breaks at once. He records the prices of everything. Six porcelain dishes cost about two pounds of quicksilver, and a book of writing paper buys a hundred coins. What the people want most from the Europeans is iron, and spectacles.
The sick here drink quicksilver to cleanse themselves, he notes, and the healthy drink it to stay healthy. The island produces camphor, which the people call capor. Borneo is so big, he is told, that it takes three months to sail around it.
The king is said to own two pearls as big as hen’s eggs, so round they will not stand still on a table. Pigafetta asks to see them. The king says he will show them tomorrow. He never does.
Monday, 29 July 1521
On the morning of the 29th of July, more than a hundred war boats in three squadrons come out towards the ships. The Europeans suspect a trap, and they panic. They raise sail so fast that they leave an anchor behind. Fearing they will be caught between the boats and some junks anchored behind them, they attack the junks instead, capturing four and killing many people.
On one of the captured junks is the son of the king of Luzon, captain-general of the king of Burne, a young commander feared across the region. He is returning from sacking a city that had defied his master. With him in their hands, the Europeans could have asked the king for anything. But Carvalho quietly lets him go, for a sum of gold, as the others learn later.
The king sends word that the war boats were never meant for them. They were going to fight the heathen city across the harbour, and he sends heads of the dead to prove it. But the damage is done. Two of the fleet’s men are ashore trading, along with Carvalho’s own son, the boy born in Brazil. The king refuses to return them. They are never seen again.
The fleet keeps sixteen chiefs from the junks as prisoners to take to Spain, and three women, supposedly as a gift for the queen of Spain. Carvalho takes the women for himself.