From the historian's notes

Ayutthaya, 1686

Thailand · Southeast Asia · November 1686 · autumn (cool dry season; high water just receding)

What it was high

one of Asia's great cosmopolitan capitals — a moated island city of canals, gilded wat spires and foreign quarters (Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, French) strung along the riversfounded 1351 as the Siamese capital on its river island

That year

• the Kosa Pan embassy is at Versailles (arrived mid-1686) — the capital trades stories about elephants of news from France; the French alliance is the season's politics 1686 highcourt and foreign-quarter obsession
• the annual inundation: the rivers rise through the rainy months and the plain floods by design — November finds the water high but turning, boats still the only sensible streets roughly September-December, annually highthe city's defining rhythm — Ayutthaya farms, fights and feasts by flood calendar
• resolution B happens here: her two cards (from Novgorod 1180 and Bruges 1440) are GONE from the Dutch lodge's letter-hold — collected; the first proof in the ring that he moves her visit n/a — ring fiction anchored to a real institution (VOC factories held and forwarded private letters)two pieces of paper; everything

Who held it high

the Kingdom of Ayutthaya (Siam)King Narai the Great, resident much of the year at his Lopburi palace; the Greek adventurer Constantine Phaulkon runs foreign affairs as favorite-ministerthe French embrace: embassies exchanged with Louis XIV — the celebrated Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan is IN FRANCE this very year (1686), dazzling Versailles; French officers and Jesuits arrive in growing numbers. Everyone at court is aware the Dutch dislike it and conservative nobles distrust it — the arrangement that ends bloodily in 1688 is at its glittering peak

Its name high

Krung Si Ayutthaya (กรุงศรีอยุธยา) — 'the glorious city of Ayodhya'Written in Thai

The date, there medium

BE 2229; Chula Sakarat 1048Buddhist era and Chula Sakarat court era, lunar months; regnal usage alongsideWat drums and gongs mark watches; the court keeps astrologers whose calendar governs auspicious days — state acts wait on horoscopes, a fact every foreign envoy complains about. The flood is the year's real clock, and November is its exhale.

Money medium-high

silver pot duang (bullet money): baht and its fractionssalung and fuang fractions; cowries below coin — thousands to a fuang, the true street changea ferry hop or a market snack: cowries; a chicken: fractions of a fuang — order of magnitude only

Weather medium

November: the kind season — rains ended, air drying, low 30s C days; floodwaters broad and slack on the fields, beginning to fallflood height varies by year and is the year's most-discussed number — a period-true 'weather statistic' the card can use qualitatively

Things

Objectspot duang 'bullet money' — silver lumps stamped with dynastic marks; cowrie shells by the basket for market change; Chinese porcelain and Japanese lacquer in the entrepot flow; palm-leaf manuscripts and folding samut books; betel sets — the universal social hardwareFoodrice as the meal's definition; fish from the flood in absurd plenty; fish fermented, dried, pasted — the flavor spine; coconut, palm sugar, bananas, durian in season; CHILIES: yes — arrived via Iberian trade a century-plus back and naturalized; 1686 Siamese food can already bite (unlike her Korea stop); areca-betel after everythingClothwrapped lower cloths (phanung) for all ranks; sashes and jackets by rank and occasion; imported Indian chintz — the prestige cloth, imported specifically patterned for Siam; monks' saffron as the city's most visible colorGetting aboutboats of every scale — the streets are water for half the year; elephants for state and heavy work; oxcarts on the dry roads; royal barge processions as the ceremonial registerIn the airriver water and wet earth everywhere; fish sauce and fermented fish; incense and candle wax at the wats; frangipani and mud

What she'd hear

Thai in the streets; Chinese (Teochew/Hokkien) in the biggest quarter; Malay as the sea's lingua franca; Portuguese-creole as the old European contact tongue; Dutch at the lodge; Persian at court margins. Her Chinese-quarter cover makes accented Thai normal; the Dutch counter transacts in trade-Portuguese or Malay.

Where she could stand

• the river ring by boat — the confluence moat of three rivers around the island; floating houses, house-rafts and boat-shops along the banks
• Wat Phra Si Sanphet spires — the royal temple's three great chedis within the palace precinct
• the Dutch (VOC) lodge downstream — the brick factory-compound of the Dutch East India Company: godowns, flagstaff, letter-chest
• the Chinese quarter market — the largest foreign quarter's shophouses, junk cargoes, apothecaries
• an elephant kraal or working elephants at the walls — the crown's elephants — war, logging, ceremony — watered and worked at the river edge

Researched for this card · confidence high