The Book of Bones (19 page)

A great hubbub was coming our way—a huge procession in the middle of which was a bejeweled sedan chair. From inside the chair I heard laughter, brittle as the chime of bells. A lady was holding back silken curtains to peer out. She had a perfect oval face, pale as a bowl of milk, and black eyes burning under arched brows. A beauty, they whispered of the Empress, a tyrant. She had ruled China since the death of her husband nearly ten years ago, often over-ruling her weak nephew, the Emperor Kuang-hsu. Empress Orchid, as she was called, wore a fabulous yellow satin gown embroidered with vivid pink peonies. Her teapot headdress towered like a crown, studded with jade and emeralds and more pink peonies. Over the gown she'd flung a cape made of thousands upon thousands of magnificent pearls, each one as big as a bird's egg. The only other thing I had time
to notice were her hands, adorned with massive rings and gold fingernail protectors curving over the ends like witch's talons.

A great crowd of eunuchs ran before and after her sedan chair carrying everything the Empress might need: combs, pins, powder boxes, fans, mirrors, cigarettes, paper and ink—everything you could think of. There were also two old ladies in her train, plus servant girls. This procession made a great hullabaloo and everyone who saw them fell to the ground kowtowing. I banged my head on the ground enthusiastically, for something in the way the Empress had cast her black eyes over us made me shiver. She looked very shrewd. I did not want to give her too much opportunity to study us as I was sure she would not be fooled by our Chinese disguises and would quickly spot us as imposters.

No sooner had the Empress's procession swept by than Mandarin Chao hurried along. “We see oldest son. He now finish Imperial examination.”

He led us past a vast palace sprouting fantastical roofs, the Hall of Heavenly Peace, our footsteps quick and light in our Chinese cloth shoes. Then we came to another vast building, guarded by a giant stone dragon.

“Palace of Preserving Harmony,” Mr. Chao explained. “Place of examination.”

Guards were stationed outside the palace. They were
fearsome Manchu Bannermen, Tartar warriors from the steppes of Mongolia, with high cheekbones and slanting black eyes. They bristled with swords and bows and arrows and looked as though they would as soon slice off your head as say hello. Only now did Aunt Hilda remember to ask about the healer. I did not want to tell her anything, so Rachel broke the news. For a moment I don't think she believed my friend. She blinked and asked her to repeat herself. When she did finally accept what had happened, she reacted as Waldo had. We would set off tomorrow, she said, to find the Book of Bones.

A terrific boom resounded through the palace. Guards broke the seals on the doors, and hundreds of youths streamed out, Mr. Chao's son among them. He was a thin, scholarly-looking boy. I expected them to embrace, but had forgotten how reserved the Chinese can be. While we were passing out of the Palace of Preserving Harmony our host was questioning his son.

Like fathers all over the world he was probably asking him how he had done in his exams!

I did not know if the son had acquitted himself well, for the father wore a somewhat gloomy air. He had not long to worry about his son's success—or lack of it—for a servant ran up to him and began babbling in Chinese. It was obviously some bad news as Mr. Chao turned pale and trembled.

“All is lost,” he hissed to my aunt.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

Hundreds of students were milling around us in the great court outside the Palace of Preserving Harmony. Mr. Chao and my aunt had to whisper fiercely to be heard.

“The Empress herself suspect you. She say spy in Forbidden City.”

“Pish and tush!”

“This very serious. Terrible for reform party. My enemy must be behind.”

“We'll brazen it out,” my aunt replied.

“No. If they find you, they hang you. Or maybe death by a thousand cuts.”

My aunt went very quiet at this, for the gruesome Chinese punishments were legendary. Death by a thousand cuts involved literally bleeding someone to death by making countless small cuts all over their body.

“They won't dare,” she said. “I'm a subject of Queen Victoria. They would never insult the British like that. Why, the Royal Navy would blow up Shanghai like that!” She clicked her fingers. I could tell, for all her bravado, that Aunt Hilda was terribly frightened. When she is scared she becomes even more proud and defiant.

In the distance, in the direction of those Imperial gardens full of scented wisteria and willows, came a terrible commotion. I had a view of some Bannermen
running and the rat-tat-tat of gunfire. So they were armed with more than just swords and arrows. Mr. Chao was pulling at his pigtail while he thought. Then suddenly he said a few words to his son and, indicating to three of his servants to follow him, he darted away into the crowd of weary examinees. The last I saw of him, he seemed to be running.

The son, a short, sallow youth with Mr. Chao's scholarly air, turned to us and bowed deeply. “My father trust me honor of looking after you. They look for imposters in my father's servants. He ask me to smuggle you out of Forbidden City.”

We had little choice but to follow the younger Mr. Chao as he strode away, his pigtail bobbing down his blue coat. We hurried to keep up with him. Despite Aunt Hilda's bluster, we knew we were in deep trouble if we were discovered in this place that was sacred to the Chinese Imperial family. We went past pagodas, gardens and lakes toward the gate where we had entered. No one stopped us—we were only poor servants in the employ of one of the numerous students. In the shade of palm and jasmine trees we came to a small pavilion and a cluster of five guards, who were on their break. They stood in the shade of the trees smoking their cigarettes and chattering.

Mr. Chao Junior turned to Waldo and said, “We are in
nasty place. I have plan to take us out of here, but you must trust me.”

“We do,” Waldo replied. “What's your plan?”

“Surprise,” Chao said. Then he barked out something to Yin, her eyes grew distant and she murmured, “Stand like a Pine, Sit like a Bell, Move like Lightning.”

I stared at her, alarmed. This was a fine time for Yin to have one of her funny spells.

“Soft as Cotton, Light as Swallow, Hard as Steel.”

“Yin, you're not making any sense,” Waldo said gently.

“Kung Fu,” said Yin. “These are the rules of Kung Fu.”

I had heard of Kung Fu. It is a sort of acrobatic fighting. What did it have to do with us? But my attention was suddenly diverted by Waldo, who was gripping my hand. Mr. Chao Junior had vanished, reappearing like magic in the group of guards. He was chatting to them, smiling. I blinked, and in that instant two of the guards were lying on the ground, their bodies twisted.

“What the …?” I stuttered.

“He's fighting them. Three against one—he's got no chance,” Waldo hissed. “I've—”

“No,” Yin held him back. “The best way for you to help is stand in line, make sure no one sees this fighting.”

She managed to restrain Waldo, who squirmed under her grip. The rest of us fanned out into a line. The three remaining guards were shouting for help. Luckily this
spot was set well back from the main thoroughfare and there was no one around. One man had managed to draw his sword. He was slashing savagely at Mr. Chao.

Mr. Chao jumped back and forth, deftly evading the blade. With a vicious grunt the guard hurled himself at the student. The side of the sword caught Mr. Chao's leg, slashing his trousers and drawing a thin line of blood. He cursed and for a moment I thought it was all over. Then, with a lightning movement, Mr. Chao flicked his other leg and kicked the sword out of his opponent's hand. It rose in a glittering arc, falling blade first toward the earth.

Mr. Chao and the guard both rushed for it. Our friend caught it awkwardly in his left hand, blade against palm. I winced as a crimson drop fell from his hand. The sight jerked the other guards out of their stupor. Except for the swordsman, they were sluggish. I wondered if they had been smoking opium.

But now their hackles were raised. They came for the student, three of them in a snarling pack of rage. Waldo had managed to break away from Yin and with a few bounds was in the fight. But Mr. Chao now had the upper hand and was wielding the sword like a pike. Throwing it from hand to wounded hand, he advanced on the three guards—who backed away nervously. Then he did something completely and utterly insane. He shocked us
by throwing aside the sword and moving empty-handed on the guards.

They were just as surprised as we were. Their heads jerked to the side as they watched the sword fall under a jasmine tree. Mr. Chao took advantage of their momentary inattention. With a swift upward movement he had landed a blow on one guard, on his solar plexus. The man crumpled silently in a heap. The second guard was caught with a series of kicks—but now the third guard, the man who had pulled the sword, had a knife glittering in his hand. He was more vicious and much more sneaky than the other two. While Mr. Chao felled his comrade with a kick to the stomach the third guard sneaked behind the student, dagger drawn. His knife was an inch away from Mr. Chao's back when Waldo waded in, punching him from the side on his cheek. It must have been a ferocious blow. The man slumped heavily, and the knife slithered out of his hands into the grass.

“Thank you,” Mr. Chao said, swinging round to Waldo.

“Why did you throw away the sword?” I interrupted. “It was madness.”

“If I had the sword I might have killed a man,” Mr. Chao replied. “I trusted in my Kung Fu. These men are just doing their work.”

“He would have killed you,” I said, gesturing to the swordsman.

“Nevertheless, I do not want a life on my conscience.”

We gaped at Mr. Chao Junior as he calmly wiped a sweaty frond of hair away from his forehead. His wounded hand left a streak of blood. Yin went up to him and taking out a handkerchief wiped away the smear. He was so callow looking, with his spectacles and air of frowning scholarship. Like a Chinese Isaac. Yet he had dispatched four guards almost before the rest of us had time to react.

While the rest of us were still dazed by these events, Yin was moving swiftly. She knelt down by a fallen guard and began to strip him of his jacket.

“I don't understand,” Rachel said. “You provoked that fight. The guards weren't harming you.”

“I needed something they have.”

“What?”

Chao Junior gestured to Yin, who had stripped one of the guards nearly naked. “Their uniforms. The soldiers at the gate are looking for foreigners disguised as servants. Not look for guards. It is only way to escape from Forbidden Palace.”

“Quick!” Yin said, turning round. “Help me.”

Swiftly we dragged the remaining guards behind the trees and stripped them of their uniforms, praying no one would see and raise the alarm. Mr. Chao had chosen the spot for his attack well, an isolated place a little away
from the throng of eunuchs and servants that bustle through the Forbidden City.

In a matter of minutes we were all dressed in the padded blue trousers and coats and yellow sashes of the Bannermen. Of course the uniforms were ill-fitting and ridiculous. Rachel and me, in particular, looked as if we were wearing clothes that belonged to our older brothers. But at least we were better off than the unfortunate guards. They sprawled higgledy-piggledy in their underclothes. They were nearly naked, poor things—as unaware of their fate as babes sleeping in the sun.

“Do you think this will work?” Rachel asked, looking at me dubiously.

“It has to,” I hissed fiercely. “Stand tall. Look confident. We must get out of here.”

I rose to go, but Yin was frantically searching her pockets. “We need tally,” she muttered.

“Tally?” I asked.

“A guard's identification tally has two halves. We must have matching half to one held by senior officer at gates. Otherwise we may not leave.”

Mr. Chao Junior was holding something up and smiling. Something that glinted in the sun. He'd found the precious tally, the piece of twisted metal that would get us out of the Forbidden City. We trooped after him, joining a long queue that snaked up to the smallest gate.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Mandarin Chao, in his sedan chair, was queuing at the larger gate, the one for grander folk. All sorts of humble people were in our queue—vendors of chicken and silks, servants, guards, eunuchs. To onlookers we were just another group of guards, pleased to be ending their shift. As we got closer to the gate my heart began to thud painfully in my chest. The soldiers at the gates had been tripled and everyone leaving the Forbidden City was being thoroughly searched. The soldiers only had to ask us one simple question in Chinese and we would be sunk! We queued silently behind a man carrying a couple of squawking geese. Then it was our turn to go through the gates, but five burly Manchu Bannermen, with their yellow sashes, were barring the way.

“Courage!” I mouthed to Rachel, but my hands were trembling.

One of the guards was talking to Mr. Chao Junior, joking and smiling. Our savior handed the stolen identification tally to the officer. I noticed that he held his wounded left hand to his side, not revealing it to the soldiers. The officer barely glanced at us as he clicked the two halves together—thank heavens they matched.

We were through. Free, at least for the time being.

Free, it turned out, was the last thing we were. The day after our escape from the Forbidden City, Yin and I ventured out into Peking to buy some provisions for our journey to Henan. We had scarcely made it to the next street when I saw a pen-and-ink drawing stuck on the bronze door of a magnificent
hutong
.

It was a “Wanted” poster.

The six of us stared out at the world, looking decidedly shifty. Waldo and Isaac looked mean, while Rachel was unfairly plain. Aunt Hilda and I were sketched snarling like bulldogs. All of us wore our Chinese disguises. None of us, except Yin who was also included, were very convincing as Orientals. To be honest, I didn't recognize the people in the Wanted poster at all. But the sketch was still frightening in the way it pointed straight at us. There couldn't be many foreigners disguised as natives wandering around Peking.