The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (52 page)

At about the same time in the Black Hills, dawn trailed pink clouds over the clearings where the huntsmen were rousing, in a camp where only one man, Colonel Taro, still slept peacefully that night.

An equally florid sky irradiated the larger sleepless clearing where chastened companies of Boxers were seated round their fires, eating gruel and peering at the innocuous-looking trees from which, a few hours previously, they had witnessed the descent of the gods. Iron Man Wang, looking little like a god this morning, was seated with his new captains under a rough wooden shelter examining a map and growling orders through a leg of mutton he held in his large hairy hand. Behind him the Boxer priest slept on a mat, attended by his boy, his sightless eyes open to the sky.

It was already raining four miles to the east, where Ren Ren, now a Boxer captain, was riding proudly through the forest, bearing orders in his satchel from Iron Man Wang to the Black Sticks elders, bringing them the news of the change of leadership in their society, and calling on them to attend their new grand master. Ren Ren did not mind getting wet. He was thinking how he would surprise his mother with the news of his new status. He liked to surprise.

And it was also raining in Shishan, where Fan Yimei was looking out of her window towards the main house in which the foreign boy was imprisoned. Now that she was alone—with both Lin and Ma Na Si away—she had had leisure to kneel at her small shrine and pray for a plan to rescue him. Saving Hiram had become the only meaningful purpose in her useless life. She thanked the Merciful Lady Guanyin for giving her this opportunity to redeem her sins and failures. She had failed with Shen Ping, but Providence had given her another chance. She knew that Ma Na Si would help her now that she had given herself to him. He had promised, and he was a man who could be trusted. Now all she needed was a plan.

And outside the city walls, in the mission, two children whimpered and tossed through their nightmares while their mother slept in a chair between their cots. In the hospital, Ah Sun was spooning congee into her injured husband's mouth to his great embarrassment. In another, more dilapidated mission in the west of the city, the Millward family were on their knees in prayer.

Black clouds rolled over northeast China, presaging a storm.

And hundreds of miles to the south, grey mists hung over the capital city, swirling round the green and black roofs of the Legations where Sir Claude MacDonald and the other ministers slept.

The great sprawl of the Forbidden City still slumbered in the dark of the morning, although the lanterns on the watchtowers were paling as light penetrated through the heavy cloud. Lamps burned bright, however, in the Dowager Empress's state rooms, where the old lady, cowled in a cloak to keep away the cold, was reading a document presented to her by Prince Tuan and some of the other senior courtiers. Her chief eunuch and adviser, Li Lien-ying, stooped attentively by her side.

‘So let it be,' she said, lowering her spectacles and reaching for the brush and the vermilion ink. ‘“Exterminate the foreigners and save the Ch'ing.”'

Part Two

Eleven

We march for our Emperor; we will drive the foreign devils from Tientsin into the sea.

 

Dr Airton was fussing, as he always did when one of the nuns was about to make an expedition to an outlying village. Some years previously when Sisters Elena and Caterina had first announced their intention to carry on Father Adolphus's pastoral work, he had conjured up all sorts of dangers and had offered to accompany them on their visits. Nellie had had to remind him of how inappropriate this would be. ‘You don't want to make our dear Roman colleagues think that you're scheming to steal their flock and turn them into Presbyterians,' she had told him, before rounding on him for being foolish. ‘Besides, Elena and Caterina were wandering alone around the Chinese countryside for months before you arrived in Shishan. Whatever makes you think they need your protection? They're doughty Italian peasants, my dear, and they'd probably end up looking after you.'

And, indeed, he had to admit that the nuns had never come to harm, even though some of the Catholic villages were a days' journey away, nestled on the slopes of bandit-infested mountains. Father Adolphus had been an indefatigable traveller within the parish he had created. Not only was his saintliness revered, but the old priest had also possessed Jesuitical skills of organisation and diplomacy. And he had won the respect of even the non-Christians who lived side by side with his converts in these remote hamlets. The doctor had heard many stories of how the white-bearded old man on his donkey had averted this dispute over a well, or practised the wisdom of Solomon over that family quarrel, or mediated on a generations-old land feud to the satisfaction of all parties.

Father Adolphus had established small churches in some ten or more different villages, claiming between them as many as a thousand converted souls. He had chosen as his pastors worthy men who were liked in their communities, but it was rarely they who managed to keep the hotheads at bay after Father Adolphus's death, or stem the resentments that naturally arose each year when the Christians refused to pay the traditional dues to the local temple. If harmony was maintained, it was due to the memory and example of the good old man. The doctor therefore recognised the importance of the nuns visiting regularly. Not only were they the link with the wider Christian community outside: they also provided continuity with the saintly Adolphus, and this had a settling effect on Christian and non-Christian alike. So, whatever his fears for their personal safety, he knew that he could hardly forbid them to go.

He realised, too, that the recent incidents in some villages where non-Christians had apparently burned Christian property could not be ignored. These incidents, Boxer-inspired or not, were serious enough for the local militia under Major Lin to be called to investigate—although no malefactor, as far as he knew, had yet been punished. In these troubled times it was even more important for the nuns to keep in communication with their parishioners.

‘But it's still my right to fuss,' he said to a laughing Sister Elena, who was loading a pack mule by lantern-light in the dark hour before dawn. She had exchanged her nun's coif for a simple peasant scarf, and her plump figure was even more shapeless than usual under the heavy padded jacket and trousers. It was the nuns' custom, when journeying beyond the confines of Shishan, to dress in the sensible travelling clothes of the Chinese.

‘Now, I repeat, have you packed enough food for the journey?' asked Dr Airton.

‘And I repeat yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Mamma mia!
You are like my grandmother.
Carissimo Dottore,
y
ou will see. On my return, I am as fat as this mule with eatings. You will have to give me medicines for swollen tummy.'

‘Very well,' grunted the doctor. ‘I suppose you know what you're doing. You've been to this village before?'

‘Many times. Many times,' said Sister Elena, straining to tighten a rope. ‘Listen. I am going to be among friends. You need have no fears. They love me in Bashu. And Caterina, when she goes to Bashu, they love her too. They say welcome, welcome, and give us foods, and strong wines too. You have nothing to worry.'

‘I daresay. I daresay—but I don't know why you refuse to take a groom with you.'

‘For why do I want a
mafu
? I am a sister of the poor. Not a lady in fine clothes, fa-la-la. Oh, Doctor,' she grasped Airton's hands, ‘do not worry so. The Lord Jesus will protect me, and the good Father Adolphus who is always watching from Heaven.'

For once she was being serious. The doctor looked down at the crabapple cheeks and the warm brown eyes intent on his own, and noticed the care marks on her rough skin, the crow's feet and the lines that crossed her forehead. Sister Elena looked older than her twenty-eight years. ‘Doctor,' she said, ‘it is for you that I worry. Caterina and I, we notice you are changed since you come down from the Black Hills. For why, Doctor? For why are you so alarmed? It cannot just be these fantastical Boxers. Is it … Miss Delamere?'

Airton tried to pull away his hands. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘It is the way that you are looking at her. When you think that nobody is noticing. Your eyes—they have pain,' she said simply.

‘What nonsense.'

‘No, Doctor, we see it, Caterina and I. And you are right to worry about Miss Delamere … Miss Delamere is not well. Listen to a simple peasant girl. Her soul, it is troubled, and maybe there is more.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Women they see things, and you,
Dottore,
I think you also see, although maybe you prefer not to see. But she is a fine lady, Doctor, full of love and life.' Her hands tightened her grip. ‘You will help her, Dr Airton, through this dark time? Sister Caterina, she tells me, say nothing. But I think that you know something is wrong, very wrong, and you will do what is right.'

‘I don't know what you—what you are talking about,' muttered Airton, his whiskers quivering slightly.

Sister Elena's shrewd eyes held his for a moment longer. Then she smiled, and in a quick movement leaned forward and pecked the doctor on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Doctor.
Grazie
. You are a good man.' And she released his hands. ‘Oh, you make me late,' she complained, glancing at the pink clouds appearing above the roofs, ‘and I have to ride far today if I am to reach Bashu by sunset. Goodbye, Doctor, I will see you in four days, maybe five. Lao Zhang, please open the gate. I am ready.'

Airton cleared his throat. ‘Goodbye, my dear.' His cheeks had reddened and there was a moistness in his eye. ‘Look after yourself,' he called. And he watched her clatter out of the compound.

He did not move from where he was standing. His major-domo, Zhang Erhao, closed the gates and looked at him curiously as he passed. Airton pulled his pipe from his pocket but made no effort to fill it, just twisted the stem in his fingers, gazing at the ground.

He knew what he had to do, but he had always held off taking any action. Sister Elena was right: he
had
been behaving out of character ever since his terrible experience in the Black Hills. For the first time in his life he had not shared with Nellie what he had discovered. Nor could he bring himself to tell her his suspicions about Helen Frances's condition—no, they were more than suspicions. He was a doctor and saw the signs: it was a fact, and if he could see it, others would soon notice as well. Obviously the nuns had sensed something already. He must face it. The girl was pregnant. With Manners's child.
With Manners's child
. At the thought his mind clouded with confusion. Her father and Tom would be returning any day. What was he to do?

Then there were his darker suspicions. There was something else about her, which could not be explained by morning sickness. Her pallor, listlessness, the black shadows under her eyes. For months he had denied the obvious conclusion. A well-brought-up girl like Helen Frances? How could it be possible? Yet now he saw her in a new light, as Henry Manners's paramour, and what could not be possible where that man was concerned? Yet he had done nothing, despite the Hippocratic Oath, despite his role as guardian. He realised, to his shame, that he had been hoping that the lovers between them would create their own solution, by eloping, by marrying, by going away; by doing anything so that the responsibility would not be his. How he despised himself. What a hypocrite he felt when he stood in the chapel and preached a sermon on the Good Shepherd looking after his flock. For the first time in his life he was living a lie. And what would the Mandarin say if he knew? He would laugh.

And now weeks had passed. The lovers had not solved his problem for him. In fact they had hardly seen each other during that time. It was true that Henry Manners had called at the mission a day or so after their return from the Black Hills. They had all sipped tea in the stilted fashion of the English abroad, Nellie making small talk, he abetting convention in a jocular manner that made his skin crawl. Helen Frances had come when she was asked and listened silently to the conversation, contributing the monosyllabic utterances that they had now come to expect from her. He had seen how Manners had tried to catch her eye, or manipulate the situation so that he could be alone with her. The doctor, feeling like a pander, had manufactured an excuse to take Nellie with him to the kitchen and leave the lovers alone—but when they returned, the two were sitting like statues: Helen Frances immobile in her high-backed chair, Manners resting his chin on his forearm gazing into the fire. A week after Manners had left, he had suggested to her that they visit the railway camp—the ride would do her good, he said—but she had muttered something about being busy in the wards. It was as if she wanted to retire into the darkness of her own soul. Even Nellie was finding the atmosphere strained, although he believed—he certainly prayed—that she did not realise the cause.

Yet something had to be done. She was ill. She was pregnant. God forbid, she might even be planning to take her own life.

And where was his compassion? Was he so concerned about moral appearances in their little foreign community that he would not lift a hand to help a lost soul?

‘Oh, you hypocrite. Oh, you Pharisee,' he murmured, and clasped his face in his hands. The pipe fell to the ground.

After a while he drew out his pocket-handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Then he blew his nose. He squared his shoulders and made his way deliberately through the corridors and walkways until he came to the dispensary behind the opium ward. He tried the door. It was locked. He always kept a spare set of keys in his jacket. It took him some time to find the right one. He pushed open the door and saw Helen Frances sitting on the floor by the window. She had removed her apron and unbuttoned the top of her dress. She was breathing heavily and he saw the shadow of her breasts moving rhythmically under her chemise. One white freckled arm was out of the sleeve and lay limply at her side; it looked as if it were detached from her body. Her hair was untidy and fell in haphazard locks over her face, which was smiling seductively. Her lustrous kitten eyes catching the early-morning light gleamed a welcome that reminded him of the merry girl who had first come to Shishan such a short and such a long time ago.