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After being humbled for days, she was taken to the King. Hundreds of courtiers and noblemen lay prostrate on the deep red carpet of the palace. The King watched her with his "hard shrewd bird's eyes." He marched up & down in front of her, placing one foot, encased in a golden, gem-encrusted slipper, directly before the other, as if performing some intricate drill. Suddenly he shouted: "How old shall you be?" Anna was so angry she replied: "One hundred and fifty years old, Sire." The King coughed, laughed, coughed, said, "In what year were you borned?" When Anna said, "1712," the King asked, "How many years shall you be married?" When Anna replied, "Several years," the monarch thought hard, finally roared out, "How many grandchildren shall you have by now? Ha, ha! How many?" The King had won. It put him in such good humor that he took Anna by the hand and led her to his wives and his 67 children.
Royal Progressive. The King was a believer in progress. He even let his wives leave the harem occasionally to go to a cremation. Twice a week, at midnight, the King held a secret council of the San Luang, the Royal Inquisition. This nocturnal Gestapo kept spies in all influential households, kidnapped subjects. It was dreaded. Its members communicated with each other by a stealthy, warning tapping.
Anna had no trouble with them. They thought she was a member.
Anna was a more subversive influence than anyone knew. She read Uncle Tom's Cabin to the slaves. Her favorite pupil among the King's wives, Son Klim, signed her letters, "Harriet Beecher Stowe Son Klim." Once Anna found the wives bidding for an 18-months-old white baby girl, the child of a native woman and an English sailor. Anna bought both mother and child for $72 to save them from slavery.
Anna did not get in as much trouble over religion or her antislavery views as over protocol. On a royal invitation, it was said, she had put the name of the U.S. consul below that of the English consul, and the American protested to the King.