The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (65 page)

They rode in silence through the chattering summer countryside each locked in their own thoughts. Preoccupied as they were they did not notice the quiet of the railway camp, and only when no
mafu
s turned out to meet them at the stables did Henry grasp that something was very wrong.

‘Hiram,' he said, ‘I want you to stay here and look after Fan Yimei. If I'm not back in ten minutes, or if you sense anything out of order at all, I want you to get back on your ponies and ride, as hard as you can, away from here. Make for the doctor's house—you remember the way we came—but stay hidden. Ride off the road where possible. Will you do that for me?'

The two of them were gazing at him in astonishment. Henry grasped Hiram's hands, and looked urgently into his eyes. ‘You're the man here, and you've a lady to protect. I don't know what's going on but I have to find out what's happened to Herr Fischer and the others. I'll probably be back before you know it—but if I don't come in ten minutes, will you do as I asked?'

For the first time since his rescue there was a spark of animation in Hiram's eyes. ‘Yes, sir,' he said hesitantly.

‘Good man.' He embraced him, then kissed Fan Yimei on the forehead. ‘You're to stay with Hiram, whatever happens,' he ordered. ‘Do you understand?' She nodded, her eyes contemplating him steadily.

‘And take this,' he said to Hiram, pulling his revolver from its holster. ‘This is the safety-catch. You click it, so. Only use it if you have to—but remember my promise. Neither of you is ever, ever going back to that house.'

He ran to the tent-lines. He peered cautiously round the corner of the first tent, then stepped lightly over the guy ropes and disappeared from their view.

*   *   *

Bowers was phlegmatically boiling the kettle on the tent stove. There was a bandage round his head, but he seemed none the worse for that. Herr Fischer was pacing up and down, muttering in German. They had spent an hour and smoked six pipes between them discussing what they should do or, rather, Herr Fischer had come up with one inconceivable plan after another, and Bowers had watched him, occasionally shaking his head. When Fischer had exploded his last plan, and laid another curse on the head of the absent Manners, Bowers had suggested a cup of tea.

‘If you'll excuse me, sir, for hesitating a view,' he said, when he had poured two strong cups, ‘in situations like these it's Providence we'd best rely on. We've not been served badly so far. We have our lives, and there's not much even a bunch of coolies can do to break up a good engine manufactured in a York yard. So far so good, say I, barring of course the sad loss of your friend. While the three gentlemen standing outside the door have our guns I think it would be foolhardy to try anything too adventurous, so I say, let's wait and see what happens.'

‘But what can we do?' Fischer waved his hands. ‘We are prisoners of murderers and crazy men who believe in demons.'

‘Yes, sir, it's not pleasant—but you did mention Mr Manners, sir, as being a resourceful fellow. And if there is a government in Shishan still I doubt that they'll take too kindly to the smashing up of state property. I dare say it'll all turn out right in the end, sir, if we give it time.'

‘But where is Manners?' Herr Fischer squeaked in frustration. ‘I tell you, he is picnicking. That is what he is doing. Picnicking with whores. He may be hours.'

He was startled to see the enigmatic Mr Bowers chuckle. ‘Excuse me, Mr Bowers, I see nothing humorous either in our situation or in what I said.'

‘No, sir, forgive me.' Bowers coughed, his face still red with mirth. ‘I was only thinking how the Lord will sometimes pick the strangest instruments to work his wondrous ways.'

And it was rather in the fashion of a winged saviour or a
deus ex machina
at the end of a melodrama that, a few moments afterwards, Henry Manners appeared. The two engineers gaped as the tent flaps shook and a figure wearing a coolie's hat and a railway worker's straw raincoat straightened to reveal itself as the English
Junker
. Under his arm were three Remington rifles, one of which he threw casually to Mr Bowers and another to Fischer.

‘Gentlemen,' he said. ‘Excuse my attire. English serge is a little conspicuous today. I suggest you follow my example.' He reached behind him through the tent flap and pulled in a bundle of clothes. ‘The three guards at the door are … resting, shall I say?, and won't miss their garments, but we don't want to be here when they wake. Coast seems clear otherwise, and I have some saddled horses at the stable.'

‘But my railway camp, Mr Manners? Are you suggesting I abandon it?'

‘Yes, Herr Fischer, considering that it has been overrun by your workers and is already being redecorated with the heads of some of your colleagues.'

‘Heads? My Charlie was brutally murdered but—'

‘It seems others have shared his fate. I recognised your stoker, Bowers. The grin on the end of his pole is nearly as cheerful as Charlie's. It's getting bloody out there, gentlemen. Very bloody.'

The black-bearded engineer bowed his head, but his face was steady when he looked up again. ‘There's no chance of us getting to the engine, sir?' he asked. ‘If we could only drive that away…'

‘Sorry, Bowers, it's an ant's nest out there. Come on, Captain Fischer, your ship is sinking fast. It's time for you to abandon the poop deck. Sensible rats should be scampering. Now. Before it's too late.'

But it was already too late, as they found out before they left the tent.

*   *   *

Hiram saw all that happened. When he and Fan Yimei had noticed the dust on the hill and heard the thunder of galloping horses approaching, Fan Yimei had wanted to return to the camp to warn Henry. He had tried to prevent her but she had beaten the rump of her mare with her stick and lurched off in the direction of the tent lines. Hiram, grasping for her reins, fell off his own horse, which bolted. So he had been lying on the ground, invisible behind a rock, when the stream of uniformed cavalry had poured out of the trees, rapidly overtaking Fan Yimei, whose bridle was quickly caught and her pell-mell canter halted. The officer commanding the troop, an elegant man with a cruel, hawk-like face, had trotted his white stallion up to her, and the two of them had gazed at each other for some time, he impassively, she with a look of defiance mixed with resignation, her eyes wild. In a quick movement the man had lashed at her with his cane, leaving a thin red mark on her white cheek. Then he had snapped an order, and two soldiers moved to take their positions on either side of her. Guarded thus, she could do nothing but follow the column as it continued its ride to the camp.

Hiram watched the dust settle as the horses disappeared among the tents. He had learned as a child, playing with the Shishan street urchins, how to move silently and inconspicuously. With great care he followed in the same route that Mr Manners had taken earlier, keeping within the shadows of the tents and crawling on his belly across the open spaces. He found himself a hiding-place among a pile of tin cans that had originally contained diesel oil and were now left abandoned. From here he had a good view of the administration tent. Here the soldiers had halted in a fan, their carbines levelled at the entrance. Behind them milled several hundred railway workers, peering to see what was going on. The hawk-faced officer had dismounted and was talking to a grizzled railwayman, who seemed to be in authority. He was pointing in turn at the entrance to the tent and to three naked coolies sitting sheepishly on the ground rubbing sore heads. Hiram was relieved to see Fan Yimei still sitting on her pony with her two guards, one of whom was holding an umbrella over her head against the strong sunshine.

He watched as the officer strolled towards the entrance of the tent, and called loudly, ‘Ma Na Si.'

A conversation followed, which he could not make out. The officer returned to his line of horsemen and gave an order. One of the soldiers fired his carbine into the air. The sharp crack echoed round the still camp, followed by a murmur from the assembled railway workers. The officer waited for about a minute, then barked another order. The soldier fired his carbine towards the top of the tent. The bullet nicked the metal tent pole and there was a clanging sound as it ricocheted.

The tent flap opened and three men in Chinese peasant clothes stepped out. One was Mr Manners, the other Mr Fischer and the third was a tall, bearded man he had never seen before. They were holding rifles and, for a moment, Hiram thought that they were about to use them. He pulled the revolver from his belt and slipped off the safety-catch.

Then Mr Manners laughed and threw his rifle on the ground. The others did the same. Quickly six soldiers ran forward and pinioned their arms.

The officer turned towards the crowd and raised his voice in what sounded like a proclamation. Hiram could make out the words ‘safe conduct' and ‘protection'.

Mr Manners was smiling nonchalantly at his captors. Then he looked in the direction of Fan Yimei and started. Her face expressed alarm and she called something Hiram could not hear. Mr Manners tried to struggle out of the grasp of the two men holding him.

The hawk-faced officer looked slowly from one to the other. His lips curled in a lopsided sneer. He walked towards Mr Manners, his sabre furrowing the sand behind him, took a rifle from one of the soldiers, rammed the butt into his belly, and again, down on his head as he fell. Deliberately he kicked Mr Manners in the side, in the face, and brought the gun butt with full force down on the back of his head.

Hiram felt hot tears stinging his eyes. He pointed the revolver at the officer's back, but the barrel shook, wavered, and inclined to the ground. He stifled a sob of anger and shame, but he could not take away his eyes.

The officer handed over the task of beating Mr Manners to his men. The two soldiers picked him up and he hung in their arms while a stocky sergeant punched him. His face was a mask of blood and bruises. They continued long after he was unconscious. The crowd watched in silence, and the only sounds were the thump of the blows and whimpers from Fan Yimei, who was being held back by her captors. The officer watched sardonically.

After an eternity the officer gave the order to stop. There was no visible life in the body. They left it lying in bloody contortion where it had fallen on the sand.

The two other foreigners had watched in scared silence. The officer now moved towards them and bowed. He gave orders that they should be released from the grip of the soldiers. Two horses were brought for them, and a small company was despatched to ride off with them in the direction of Shishan.

The officer spent some time more in conversation with the railway foreman. Orders were given for the crowd to disperse, and soldiers were sent in the direction of the makeshift station. After an hour the troopers who were left prepared to saddle up. As an afterthought the body of Henry Manners was thrown over one of the troopers' saddles where it hung limp and lifeless. The cold-faced officer rode out of the camp with his men behind him. He paid no attention to Fan Yimei, still escorted by her two guards at the back of the column. She had long ceased crying and her face was now as cold and expressionless as his.

When he judged that the coast was clear Hiram moved silently from his hiding-place, leaving the way he had come. Without a horse he had no need to travel by the road, and within minutes he was skirting a course through the millet fields in the direction of the town.

*   *   *

Nellie had coped magnificently, thought Airton. She never ceased to amaze him and, not for the first time, he thanked Providence for bestowing on him such an indispensable helpmate. A lesser woman—he was no expert on the sex and much of his knowledge was drawn from his collection of romantic novels—would have pleaded the vapours and withdrawn to her boudoir. Not that there was a boudoir to go to in such a relatively small house, but she might have panicked, as he nearly did, when Zhang Erhao burst in on them with the dreadful news. Shortly afterwards Frank Delamere's body had been brought, wrapped in sacking and tied to a handcart, to the mission gates.

Airton and Sister Caterina had been in the middle of a complicated operation to remove the swollen appendix of a farmer, so it had fallen to Nellie to face down the curious crowd that had followed the corpse from the town. With Ah Lee's and Zhang Erhao's help she had separated the handcart from the people peering and touching the bloodstained sacking and pull it into the courtyard, after which she had single-handedly drawn the heavy bars to lock the gates. She had first, however, had the presence of mind to notice Frank's two merchant friends, Lu Jincai and Jin Shangui, standing irresolutely on the edge of the crowd. They had organised the passage of the body from the town but now they were both in a state of nervous exhaustion. She had pulled them into the compound, sat them down in the hospital waiting room and ordered Ah Sun quickly to prepare them some tea. Leaving Frank—what could she do for him?—she saw that the greater need was to comfort his two friends, so she had sat between them, holding their hands, until the doctor had finished with his patient. In any other circumstances the two Confucian gentlemen would have run a mile before allowing themselves to be touched in such an intimate fashion by a foreign woman, but so great was their shock and relief to be away from the mob that they were unprotesting, and with their free hands dutifully sipped their tea.

That all seemed a long time ago now, and much had happened since, but he vividly recalled the curious scene, and the disbelief, and shock, when Lu Jincai, recovering his presence of mind and a little of his dignity, pulled from inside his robe a package wrapped in grey silk, which he untied to reveal an axe with a red tassel and told them that this was the weapon that had killed Mr Delamere. Thinking back, the doctor realised that that was also the moment when he knew that their lives and their circumstances in Shishan would never be the same.