The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (74 page)

‘My apologies,' answered Manners, and let out an animal roar of pain. ‘Is that better? When do I actually expire?'

‘You are impatient, like all foreign devils. You should know that the art of torture in this country is much refined over many years, and we are expert at keeping people alive for excruciating lengths of time. I would ask you, please, to put more concentration into the task. The split bamboo that has been carefully inserted into your rectum should now be tearing at some of your lower organs. A very loud scream would be much appreciated, then I might allow you to faint for a while.'

Henry howled.

‘Thank you. That will do. You may now consider yourself unconscious.'

‘Thank goodness for that,' said Henry. ‘I never was very good at amateur dramatics.' He looked down ruefully at his bloody legs where the manacles had chafed his skin to a nearly raw condition. ‘Not that I have been acting overmuch lately.'

‘No, the cage must have been very uncomfortable. Of course, it is designed for smaller criminals so you will have felt even more cramped than the usual occupants. That is one of the penalties you must pay for being a large, and very hairy, barbarian. Perhaps you will write a book one day describing our heathenish and diabolical practices.'

‘I'll leave that to the missionaries,' said Henry. ‘If any survive. Do you really have to execute so many?'

‘The imperial edicts are very clear on that point. I am, as you know, a loyal civil servant. And, anyway, for the moment I am not exactly the master of my own establishment. Iron Man Wang has a bloodthirsty appetite, which I am afraid that I will have to indulge.'

‘You know that the powers will come back with an army? Very foolish of the Empress to attack the Legations. China can't win on this one.'

‘I am sure that you are right, and no doubt they will utterly destroy this very weak dynasty—but we are, thankfully, a long way from Peking. And chaos provides opportunities for the unscrupulous—especially if they have guns. Who knows? Your powers may even be grateful for a loyal local ally who has cleaned his city of bandits and Boxers responsible for the most wicked of atrocities.'

‘You're an evil man, Da Ren,' said Henry.

‘That is what my dear friend, the
daifu,
keeps telling me. But you should not be one to complain, Ma Na Si. Under our arrangement, I will have the guns but you will have my gold. Think of the rewards your government will bestow on you for providing so amply to their coffers. That is, if your government should ever receive the gold. In a disordered land so many things can go astray. What was I saying about chaos breeding opportunities for the unscrupulous?'

‘I'll bear that in mind. We have to get out of here first, though. While I'm still unconscious I wouldn't mind if you could tell me the arrangements. You will still hold to your bargain about the doctor and Helen Frances?'

‘If my conditions are met.'

‘I am painfully aware of your conditions.'

‘You should be grateful for my generosity. It is foolish in my position to spare anyone but yourself. You are necessary to me. The others are not. But I confess that I have a soft spot in my heart for the
daifu,
and his agreement to my proposal concerning your own paramour would be an interesting development of a philosophical debate that has afforded me much pleasure over the years. Of course, I will have to spare his wife and children too. So high-minded is he that he may not agree to come on his own if they are not included in our arrangement.'

Henry coughed a bloody gobbet of spittle on to the stone floor. ‘Your bastard of a major might have damaged my lungs as well as breaking my ribs. You're an evil, lecherous bastard too, by the way. And I'm a bastard for letting you have your way.'

‘You don't really have a choice, if you want to keep the girl. My advice all along to you has been to let her go and find another, but there is no accounting for western sentimentality. I resent your use of the word “lecherous,” however. You are the lecherous one. If you are hurting from your beating by Lin you have only yourself to blame. Did I not warn you to avoid that courtesan of his?' The Mandarin stretched, and yawned. ‘Am I lecherous?' he asked distractedly. ‘No, but I am curious. Did I tell you that I once saw your woman from my palanquin? Her hair was of a most intriguing colour.' He smiled. ‘Like fox fur. Come, come, these are bathhouse conversations. I am allowing myself to be distracted from my torture of you. A long drawn-out scream would be welcome if you can manage it. Please try to imagine that you are a man waking from unconsciousness to an agony of pain.'

‘You haven't answered my question: how will I be getting out of here?'

‘Did I not say? How remiss of me. In a coffin, my dear Ma Na Si, in a coffin. How else?'

‘And when I have collected the doctor and the others, where are we to be taken?'

‘Initially to the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure. Can you think of anywhere more appropriate?'

*   *   *

Dust puffed up from white summer roads as the pony-trap clattered down the hill. The harness jingled and the frame creaked under their weight. All around them the bushes were exploding with flower and bloom, and the oak trees swayed above their heads. Of course birds were singing and the sunshine made a warm glow of their faces. In the far distance they could see Ashdown Forest rising in blankets of gorse, and mountainous white clouds erupted into the sky, ships and castles and prancing stallions. Helen Frances was sitting on her father's knee. His tweed coat was rough on her bare arms, but she hugged him, half scared, half excited, totally content, and the sun beat down, and the cool breeze of their passing brushed her skin, and her father rattled the reins whooping out his jovial laugh, and the pony-trap gathered speed, while farmers, hoes on their shoulders, paused to watch their hurtling passage, and waved. The air was scented with all the perfume of all the flowers in the world. She looked up with adoration into Frank's deep-set brown eyes, which twinkled with merriment under the heavy black eyebrows. ‘Hold tight, my little darling,' he roared. ‘We're coming to the ford.' She hugged him tighter, hardly daring to look, and then there were fountains of water bursting around them, and the thunder of the weir, and they were through, and Frank was laughing, laughing, and she was screaming and laughing and crying, and the trap was bouncing along the dirt-track road, the seat was squeaking as it lifted them up and down, up and down, a rhythmic cradle rocking to and fro, to and fro, and she reached up and stroked her father's florid cheeks and bushy black moustache …

And the movement continued up and down, up and down, and she was laughing and screaming and crying, and inside her she felt a heat she could hardly contain, volcanoes of fire in her belly, suffusing her breasts, her arms, her thighs, her cheeks, and her head was shaking from side to side, and when she opened her eyes again she saw Henry above her, his features contorted as he thrust and thrust, burning, burning, and she squeezed with her thighs, her calves and her heels pressed into his behind so that he would go further, and further, and further inside her, and her fumbling hands pulled his wet hair down on her neck and breast, sweat mingling, flesh tingling, stomachs slapping and sucking. And Henry groaned, and molten lava surged from her loins to her womb and throughout her body, and the movement became a shudder, and then Henry lay beside her and she saw the beauty of his form, the perfect white limbs, the hollow of his belly, and she moved over him and drank the moisture in the matted hairs of his chest, and his stomach, and touched his red stalk and watched it rise again, and her mouth closed over the delicious soft flesh, kissing, caressing, sucking …

Sucking the smooth wood of the opium pipe, waiting for the sickly sweet smoke to enter her lungs and take away care. Anticipating the ensuing languor, the peace, the absence of all thought or desire. Such a little puff of smoke: that was all she needed. Just one pipe. She could even see the poppy paste heating over the candle. Surely it would be ready soon. She sucked the pipe, tasting the tar. Surely it would be ready soon … but the paste bubbled over the candle, and she sucked the pipe. And the smoke did not come …

She woke in despair. For a moment she did not know where she was. In a panic she looked for the familiar curtains of her home in Sussex and listened for the rustle of thrushes on the sill. But all she saw were the shutters that could not keep out the bright sunlight of north China; nor could they block out the stifling heat of a north China summer, or muffle the calling of the Boxers outside. And above the dripping, sweat-soaked sheets on which she lay hung the hated white ceiling, where a spider was swinging patiently on a strand from a crack in the plaster.

She hated her dreams. What right had her father to come back to life again and make her relive the happy times of her childhood? What right had Henry to make love to her, reigniting those still fires in her loins? Henry and her father were dead, and that was fine, because she, too, would be dead soon, and then there would be an end of it.

Every day she hoped that this would be
the
day. Sometimes in her imagination she had a chance to kiss the blade before it was wielded to strike off her head. She even imagined kissing the executioner's hand, like a grateful penitent genuflecting to the cardinal's ring. And she hoped that there would be no Heaven after, just nothing, an eternal nothing, oblivion that neither sleep nor the opium pipe nor the syringe could bestow.

And now she would have to get up for another day. She had slept very late. It must be afternoon. Mechanically she put on her skirt and blouse. She was tidying her hair when there was a knocking on her door. It was the doctor, and he looked extremely flustered. ‘I'd like you to sit down,' he said. ‘I have some rather startling news.'

She sat down on the edge of the bed as commanded. The doctor was fumbling in his pockets. ‘My pipe,' he said. ‘Would you mind? It's a disgusting habit, I know, and this is your room, but it does help calm my nerves.'

She watched him as he fussily lit his pipe and puffed away. ‘It can't be worse news than we already know,' she said, after a while.

‘No, my dear, no. It's the opposite. It's good news.'

‘You don't look very happy about it,' she said.

‘Oh, I am. I am. It's just—I don't know the best way to tell you. And bits of it may come as a shock.'

She waited, a little bored.

‘It's—you see—it seems that there may be a chance of a rescue.'

‘I don't want to be rescued,' she said.

‘There you go again,' he said. ‘You don't mean that. Well, I've received a letter—very secret, you mustn't tell the others, not immediately—but it seems that some of us have been chosen to be spared.'

‘Some of us?'

‘Yes, unfortunately only some were named, but there it is. Some is better than none. Well, you were one of the lucky ones. With my wife and Jenny and George, thank goodness. And, of course, Tom. Yes, Tom is one of the lucky ones. Yes, definitely Tom was one of the names mentioned. In the letter.'

‘The letter from whom, Doctor? Can I see it?'

‘No, I've burned it. Better that way. Can't let this slip out just yet, get into the wrong hands. In fact,' he lowered his voice, ‘I haven't told anyone else except you.'

‘You're being very mysterious, Doctor. Why only me?'

‘I want your help, Helen Frances. With Nellie. She's very headstrong, as you know, and—well, she may refuse to go if she knows that I'm not escaping with her.'

‘You're not one of the lucky ones, then?'

‘No. No, alas, not. No, nobody would want a silly old man like me along. Strictly women and children. That's as it should be. Right and proper.'

‘But it's not just women and children, is it? What about Laetitia Millward and her children? You didn't mention they were on the list, did you? And why is it that Tom is? Look, I don't want to go. Doctor, you must take my place. I mean it.'

She was startled to see Airton's agonised look.

‘Oh, Helen Frances. Don't you think I want to live? But I can't. I can't go with you. My place is here, with my—with my flock, for want of a better word. I can't leave them. Don't you see that?'

Helen Frances suddenly realised the truth. ‘Your name
was
on the list, wasn't it? And you're trying to save me instead of yourself.'

‘You're a silly girl,' the doctor snapped, but his cheeks had flushed a deep red. ‘Who do you think I am? God? To choose who will live and who will die? You think that I'm capable of such—blasphemy?'

Helen Frances reached out for his hand. ‘No, Doctor, I think you're a very kind, brave and generous man. But I'm not worth saving. And you have a wife and children to protect.'

Airton pulled his hand away. ‘Listen to me, lassie. I did not substitute your name. You were specifically chosen. And you are going, if not for your own sake, for the sake of your unborn babe. And Tom. And I need you to go, because otherwise Nellie might not. She'll go to look after you.'

‘She'll go to look after her own children. Doctor, you're not telling me everything. The Mandarin wouldn't want to save me. He doesn't even know who I am. Why? Why me?'

Airton's trembling fingers fiddled with his pipe. ‘It wasn't the Mandarin who sent the letter,' he brought himself to say, after a while. ‘It was Manners. He's alive.'

Everything suddenly shone with a still clarity, as if a phosphorescent lamp had illuminated the room. She noticed the thread on the sleeve where the doctor had lost one of his buttons. She saw the stitching in the rug where it had been frayed away, and the blue enamel washbasin and jug on the stand, and the dust on the mirror, and the little framed watercolour of the Hebridean islands on the whitewashed wall. It was as if time had stopped, and she and the doctor had become figures in a photograph, frozen in an eternal moment. Then, with a crash, the noise of drums returned, and she felt the blood rushing to her head, and the still room began to turn, and the worried look on the doctor's face was almost comical as he reached out to steady her. ‘I'm all right,' she heard herself say, from a far distance, and then she was floating above a tropical sea where, in the black starlit night, a lightning storm began to rage.