The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (66 page)

He had repressed the chill that coursed down his neck and spine and asked the question to which he already knew the answer: ‘That's a Boxer weapon?'

‘Yes, Daifu,' said Lu Jincai quietly.

‘So they are in Shishan?'

Lu Jincai nodded. Jin Shangui was cleaning his spectacles with a silk handkerchief he had pulled from his sleeve.

‘Well, what's the Mandarin doing about it?' he asked, a little over-belligerently.

There was no reply. The two merchants looked down at the floor.

‘I see,' said Airton. Then reason revolted in him, and he spoke angrily: ‘No, I don't see,' he said. ‘We're talking of murder here, bloody murder, of a foreigner. The Mandarin has no truck with Boxers. What's he going to do about it?'

The merchants remained silent. Jin Shangui shrugged. Airton felt his wife's hand on his knee. ‘Calmly, Edward,' she whispered. ‘These good men are not to blame.'

Lu Jincai had a sad smile on his handsome face. ‘Shangui and I have feared this for some time,' he said. ‘Who knows why the world should go through cycles of madness, but Fate metes them out to each generation. Now we must all be prepared to face … difficulties. Great difficulties. This is only the beginning, Daifu. We must be thankful that the suffering of our dear friend, De Falang, was not great. Truly, he would have known little pain. Perhaps a little surprise, before the end.' His smile broadened affectionately. ‘In truth, he was a little intoxicated at the time. I believe that the gods were merciful to him as they are to great, simple men whom they love. Who knows? We who face perhaps a more terrible future may one day envy him that quick and easy end. I am speaking to you what is in my heart, Daifu.'

Airton cleared his throat. His cheeks were hot and he felt a sentimental tear forming in his eye as he thought of Frank, dying alone in the sand.

‘Your words are hard,' he said, ‘but I think that poor Delamere was lucky in his friends.'

‘We may have to answer for that one day,' said Lu quietly. ‘These are not understanding times.'

‘But you are Chinese,' said Airton. ‘Surely the Boxers are only directing their cruelties against foreigners?'

‘This is China, Daifu. We reserve our greater cruelties for other Chinese. It is our way. It has always been our way.'

‘Then you were brave to come here,' said Airton, when he had collected his emotions.

‘De Falang was our friend,' said Jin Shangui simply. He had finished cleaning his spectacles, but they seemed to mist up again as soon as he settled them on his face.

They had saddled the children's ponies for the two merchants to ride back to Shishan. Lu Jincai thanked the doctor for his consideration and promised to return them when he could. As they left, by a back way to avoid the small crowd that was still hanging about the front gate, Lu Jincai had warned the doctor not to trust anyone, even his servants. ‘It is the times,' he said. ‘There will be pressures on every man.' There had been something final in their farewells.

Airton and Nellie had returned with some trepidation to the first courtyard where Frank's body still waited on the cart. Flies were buzzing over the bloodstained sacking, although Ah Lee was trying vainly to wave them away. It took a few moments for Airton to determine what he had to do.

He had blocked his mind to the thought of how they would break the news to Helen Frances in her sick condition, and to Tom who was recovering from his wounds. First they would have to find somewhere to lay out the body and presumably tidy up the damage of the wounds and prepare Frank for burial. Well, Caterina could help with that. They had had enough experience together of preparing corpses during the plague. He was concerned about the nun, however. It was days since they had had any news of Sister Elena, and now with this murder, it would be a wonder if Caterina did not anticipate the worst for her colleague, whose continued disappearance was beginning to be worrisome. Well, that was another problem with which he would have to deal in due course. He found himself comforted suddenly by the fact that Burton Fielding had arrived in the early hours of the morning. He was in the house with the children, resting after his hard journey. At least there was a man he could rely on, a practical man of action, inured to hardships in the Wild West. They would discuss together this evening how they would approach the Mandarin for help. They might perhaps seek the protection of some of his soldiers to guard the mission or at least to secure his aid in evacuating the women and children to Tientsin, should that be necessary … But all that would come later. First he had to deal with Frank Delamere. Poor, poor drunken Frank, who had finally had a drop too much. He was angry with himself that he could even think of such a joke but, to his shame, he was beginning to feel a little lightheaded. Frank's murder had undermined his certainty about their comfortable existence. The horror of it, coupled with Lu Jincai's ominous forebodings about Boxers and the Mandarin's diminishing control of his city, had unnerved him, had confirmed his own fears after his unsatisfactory experience in the Mandarin's court that morning, not to mention his nagging worry about Sister Elena, and the fact that Tom lay in one ward wounded by gunshots and Helen Frances lay in another fighting the effects of opium addiction. All these formed a tableau that had all the characteristics of a bad dream.

He had not had time even to unwrap the sacking covering Frank's body before he heard a loud banging at the mission gate. Leaving Caterina he had run down the corridors of the hospital in the evening's waning light to find that Nellie and Burton Fielding were there before him. Ah Lee and Zhang Erhao were standing by the bars obviously scared to open them. ‘Open in the name of the
yamen,
' he heard from outside, followed by another thunderous pounding on the doors.

‘What do you think?' he asked Fielding.

‘If the man's saying open in the name of the
yamen
I think you'd better do just that,' was the laconic reply.

‘You're right,' said the doctor, feeling a sudden spurt of hope. ‘It might be a message from the Mandarin. About the murder. Maybe they're starting an investigation after all.'

‘If you don't open up you won't find out,' said Fielding.

‘Do you think it might be the Mandarin himself?' said the doctor, gesturing to his servants to pull back the bars.

But it was not the Mandarin. It was Septimus Millward, and his family, and another unruly crowd pelting the American missionaries with mud.

A
yamen
runner, whom he did not recognise, was proffering a document for him to sign. ‘You are the
daifu
Ai Dun? We are handing over these incendiaries and criminals for your safekeeping pending their trial. His Excellency the Mandarin has decided that all ocean barbarians are to be housed together until the emergency in the city is over.'

‘Emergency? What emergency?' spluttered the doctor—but the man did not answer, only proffering the piece of paper, brush and ink for the doctor to sign his name.

‘Better do as he says,' said Fielding, observing the Millwards warding off the missiles of mud and vegetables, ‘or before long they'll be so filthy you won't have enough bathwater to clean them all—and I guess they're coming in anyway, whether we like it or not. Strange,' he added, ‘I was going up to town to see them myself tomorrow. Reckon the mountain's come to Muhammed instead.'

Again it was Nellie who took the situation in hand. As soon as the gates were safely closed, the Millwards, ignoring their deliverers, dropped to their knees in the courtyard. Septimus, the extremely soiled bandage round his head resembling a Bacchanalian wreath because of all the cabbage and spinach leaves hanging from it, raised his arms heavenwards and loudly thanked the Almighty for preserving His chosen ones, adding for good measure a few invocations for the Lord of Hosts to smite the ungodly and the depraved.

Nellie was having no truck with this. ‘Now, come on, you,' she cried sternly, pulling a surprised Septimus by his beard. ‘Up you get, and your unholy brood with you. It's baths and beds for the lot of you, if you are to be my houseguests. You can do all the praying you like, but only after I've put a hot meal inside you first. Do you hear? My goodness, the state of those poor wee bairns. It's enough to break your heart.'

And perhaps the strangest event on that unsettling afternoon was that the Millwards meekly followed her.

The doctor and Burton Fielding had remained alone in the courtyard. Neither spoke for a while, then Fielding reached into his pocket for his case of cheroots. ‘Enjoy this one out, Doctor. We'll have to make the rest of them last.'

‘What do you mean, Fielding?'

‘I mean the situation's becoming pretty clear-cut. Seems we're expected to hole up in Fort Laramie with the women and children while the redskins rampage on the warpath outside. Trouble is, I don't see any US cavalry coming to rescue us. And don't repeat that last remark to the ladies, will you?'

‘I simply cannot believe that the Mandarin would—'

‘You may be correct. You know the man and I don't … But I don't think we can be certain that the Mandarin's in a position to help us, even if he wants to. My advice to you, Doctor, in a situation like this, is to be self-reliant, cut your losses. I say first light tomorrow we load our loved ones onto our wagons and high tail it to the railway camp, before that engine I came in on this morning steams back to Tientsin. When it does leave we want to be on it.'

‘You're not serious? My dear Fielding, that sounds like the counsel of panic. And how can we just leave? I have sick here who need to be tended. It's unthinkable.'

‘You know your duty, Doctor. I know mine. If it was my kith and kin I know what I would do. Thank goodness my responsibility lies only with that misguided family who've just arrived here. I was coming here to take them out anyway. The board's decided they're a menace to themselves and the community at large so I'll be leaving, with the Millwards, even if I have to tie them up to make them go. I'd intended to stay longer but there it is. Guess it's up to your own conscience what you decide to do.'

‘Fielding, Fielding…' Airton did not know what to say. He felt that he was drowning in the rush of events and decisions. ‘Even the Millwards have their dependants. What about all the orphans in their mission?'

‘If anyone's looking after them it's not the Millwards, is it? Mandarin's seen to that by sending them over here. Look, Doctor, it comes to the point where you can only do what you can do. In desperate situations you must make hard decisions. If you can't save everybody you save whom you can.'

‘I suppose I'm not convinced yet how desperate our position has become. I could ask Nellie if she and the children … But, then, there's also Helen Frances and Tom. Helen Frances is really in no state to travel. And Nellie wouldn't leave her. She'd refuse flat. I know her. So would Tom. And then there are all my Chinese patients…'

‘Hard decisions, Doctor. Hard decisions,' murmured Fielding, puffing on his cheroot.

Within two hours there was another banging on the mission gates, causing yet more alarm in the hospital. This time Lin's troopers were bringing in Herr Fischer and Mr Bowers ‘for their protection'. Nellie, Fielding and the doctor had taken the two frightened men up to the house and listened in silence to their terrible story, too numbed now by the earlier events of the day to show any undue reaction or surprise. Herr Fischer had broken down in tears when he had tried to describe the death of Charlie. The news that Henry Manners had also apparently been beaten to death by Major Lin only elicited a sad shake of the head from the doctor, while Nellie took his hand and squeezed it with the gentlest pressure. After the two men had told their tale, drunk their glass, and finished the bowl of soup Nellie had produced for them, there was little more conversation. They were all exhausted and decisions of any kind could be left until the morning. For now it was enough to know that they were trapped in Shishan.

*   *   *

There is a natural safety valve in civilised society that makes people cling to the idea and the forms of normality even in the most impossible circumstances. Two days after the death of Frank, the unlooked-for arrival of the Millwards and the railway engineers, Nellie was managing her extended household as if she were conducting a house party. As the doctor sat at the writing desk in his study preparing his memorial to the
yamen
he could hear the sounds of children playing in the corridors, and from the kitchens came the clatter of pans and the usual shrill arguments between Ah Lee and Ah Sun. The comforting smell of stew wafted into his study.

As proud as he was of Nellie, he also felt a great paternal pride in his two children. who had not shown any rancour at having to give over their playroom to the Millward family. Here, for the first time ever perhaps, the Americans were not living in squalor. They had adapted quickly to Nellie's punctilious regime of aired mattresses and blankets, stowed clothes and regular inspections, Nellie holding a big feather duster and Laetitia following meekly behind in her magisterial wake. It had been touching to see the Millward children, on the first morning after their arrival, looking at George and Jenny's toys stacked on the shelves, half with wonder and longing, half with fear as their eyes turned to their father reading his Bible in the corner.

George and Jenny had rapidly sized up the situation. There was a moment's uncomfortable silence after the doctor had introduced them. Then George, with a whoop, had lifted the smallest Millward child onto the rocking horse where she sat blinking behind her spectacles. After a few furious rocks she was gurgling with delight. Jenny had handed out dolls to the girls and George had unpacked his box of toy soldiers for the boys. Laetitia had continued to look nervously at her husband, but Septimus remained immersed in his reading. That the children did not know what to do with the dolls and the soldiers made no difference to George and Jenny. Their patience and good nature had been endless, and now there were signs of a growing friendship between some of the older children. Hence the noise in the corridor. Nellie and Airton had been prepared for some eruption or protest from Millward, but the man seemed to have withdrawn into his own world. He spent the day turning the pages of his Bible, eating his meals in his room. Nellie felt she had achieved a small victory when, on the afternoon of the second day, Laetitia had offered hesitantly to help her with the housekeeping.