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in a previous life to deserve his twisted and stunted body, his eyes are sharp as a hawk’s. There is not a plant to cure our ninety-six af-flictions that he can’t spy twined around a tree or matted beneath his crooked foot.
    Nu-Nyunt had lain too close for too many days by the fire to cool her body from the heat of childbirth, and one side of her body was blistered and almost black. Old Min-Tun gathered the leaves to make an ointment to soothe her scorched skin. It had pained me to see her blistered body. How better to be born a man, I told him, and live without the pain women must bear. He told me, as he has told me many times since I was old enough to listen, that if I followed the right path I might be reborn a man. Min-Tun is a good worldling and a wise man. All of us, men and women, suffer, he said. It is in our nature, and if I thought blindly I could escape suffering, then my suffering would be even greater.
    “Don’t go crashing through life like the silly hog deer. Listen to the Buddha and you will leap over the fallen trees life puts in your path.” He cupped his good hand, and he offered me an invisible bowl of rice to give me strength and patience. Min-Tun’s body chose his path for him, but he knows that I am ready.
    I will stay if my father says I should stay. I will leave if he says I should leave. I am ready to let go. I am ready to take root in a new field.

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    6 November 1598
    Dear Joseph,
    Tell Uncle I am tending to my health with extra attention, since Win told me today that if I die in Pegu, all I possess would go to the king. I have paid for these jewels in absence and longing, and I do not intend to finance the king’s foreign adventures that many complain have put the kingdom in peril. Maybe if news of the kingdom’s troubles had traveled as fast as talk of profit to be made, I would not have undertaken this journey at all. Or perhaps Uncle felt that in times of unrest, jewels could be gotten at a bargain price. We may feast on others’ troubles—I only hope we can get up from the table in time.
    Win owes his position to Nandabayin, the king, and will speak only in his house or mine, and even then in hushed tones, of the king’s folly, his hard-heartedness, and the fear and suspicion he harbors for his closest lords. The king’s line is not from this place. He is a Burman from Toungoo and not much admired by the Mon people of Pegu. He sees enmity in their eyes when, under sword and gun, they are conscripted to subdue the rebellious vassal regions that no longer pay tribute in money and soldiers. Imagine if we Venetians ruled Florence, the Florentines would find that a heavy yoke to bear.
    They would not step forward willingly to bear arms to preserve our power. They might even seek refuge in other cities not under our sway. Win, who seems to have eyes and ears throughout the kingdom, hears that more and more paddy fields lie fallow and villages grow quiet—the only sound the shuffle of those too old and infirm to survive in the forest or on the exodus to neighboring lands.
    Win reads omens not in the stars but in the bellow and tromp of the kingdom’s fighting elephants. These wondrous beasts are the heart of the kingdom’s power, like galleys are to the Republic. I have seen but a few on parade in the city streets, and they are frightening creatures when bedecked for battle, with wooden castles, large enough for four men, atop their backs. With streamers flying, bejeweled collars and harnesses, and swords swinging from their trunks, they would strike fear in the stoutest heart. A Portuguese filibuster turned merchant told me that before going into battle they drink specially prepared spirits to fortify their martial spirit. He swears that after the surrender of one city, he saw with his own eyes the king’s soldiers gather up the slain children lying in the streets and feed them to the elephants. The soldiers, swords dripping blood, dismembered and cut these innocents into small