The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  It was downright eery. One moment the noise and bustle of the camp, and now the dead silence of a spacious tent that was walled and roofed and even carpeted in yellow silk; filtered light illuminated it in a golden haze; the furniture was gilt, and the young clerk writing at a gold table was all clad in yellow satin. He put down his brush and rose, addressing me in good Pekinese:

  “Mr Fleming?” He called it Fremming. “The gentleman from the Missionaries of London?” I said I was, and that I wished to see General Lee Hsiu-chen (whom I was imagining as Timoor the Tartar, all bulk and belly in a fur cloak and huge moustachios).

  He indicated a chair and slipped out, returning a moment later in a brilliant scarlet silk jacket – the effect of that glaring splash of colour in the soft golden radiance absolutely made me blink. I rose, waiting to be ushered.

  “Please to sit,” says he. “This is not ceremonial dress.”

  He sat down behind the table, folded his hands, and looked at me – and as I stared at the lean, youthful face with its tight lips and stretched skin, and met the gaze of the intent dark eyes, I realised with shock that this slim youngster (I could give him several years, easy) must be the famous Loyal Prince himself. I tried to conceal my astonishment, while he regarded me impassively.

  “We are honoured,” says he. His voice was soft and high-pitched. “You were expected some days ago. Perhaps you have had a troublesome journey?”

  Still taken aback, I told him about the river ambush, and how Szu-Zhan and her friends had brought me across country.

  “You were fortunate,” says he coolly. “The tall woman and her brigands have been useful auxiliaries in the past, but they are pagans and we prefer not to rely on such people.”

  Not encouraging, but I told him, slightly embarrassed, that I’d promised her two hundred taels, which I didn’t have, and he continued to regard me without expression.

  “My treasurer will supply you,” says he, and at this point in our happy chat a servant entered with tea and tiny cups. Lee poured in ceremonious silence, and the trickle of the tea sounded like a thundering torrent. For no good reason, I was sweating; there was something not canny about this yellow silken cave with the scarlet-coated young deaths-head asking if I would care for distilled water on the side. Then we sat sipping in the stillness for about a week, and my belly gurgling like the town drains. At last he set down his cup and asked quietly:

  “Will the Powers welcome our army at Shanghai?”

  I damned near swallowed my cup. If he handled his army as briskly as his diplomacy, it was a wonder there was an Imp soldier left in China by now. He waited until I had done hawking and coughing, and fixed me with those cold dark eyes.

  “It is essential that they should.” He spoke in the flat, dispassionate tone of a lecturer. “The war in China is foregone. The dragon will die, and we shall have killed it. The will of the people, inspired by God’s holy truth, must prevail, and in the place of the old, corrupt China, a new nation will be born – the Taiping. To achieve this, we do not need European help, but European compliance. The Powers in effect control the Treaty Ports; the use of one of them, Shanghai, will enable us to end the war so much the sooner.”

  Well, that was what Bruce had said, and what we, in our neutrality, were reluctant to grant, because it would put a fire-cracker under Pekin’s backside and Grant would have to fight all the way to the capital against an Imperial Government who’d feel (rightly) that we’d betrayed ’em to the Taipings.

  “We are aware,” he went on, “that Britain has a treaty with the Emperor and recognises his government, while not acknowledging even our existence. Perhaps she should recall the saying of an English poet, that treason cannot prosper because with prosperity it ceases to be treason. The Taiping is prospering, Mr Fleming. Is that not a sound reason why your country should look favourably on our request to come to Shanghai in peace and friendship?”

  So much for Oriental diplomacy – long fingernails and long negotiations, my eye! There was his case, stated with veiled menaces, before I’d got a word in, let alone Bruce’s “tactful persuasions”. One thing was clear: this wasn’t the time, exactly, to tell him we didn’t want his long-haired gang anywhere near Shanghai.

  “But there is more, much more, than mere practical interest to bind our countries.” He leaned forward slightly, and I realised that behind the impassive mask he was quivering like a greyhound. The dark eyes were suddenly alight. “We are Christian – as you are. We believe in progress, work, improvement – as you do. We believe in the sacred right of human liberty – as you do. In none of these things – none!” his voice rose suddenly “do the Manchoos believe! They respect no human values! Why, for example, do they shuffle and lie and evade, rather than permit your Ambassador to go to Pekin to sign the treaty to which they are pledged? Do you know?”

  I supposed, vaguely, that they hoped we’d modify a few clauses here and there, if they put off long enough …

  “No.” His voice was level again. “That is not why. They would sign today – at Canton, or Shanghai, even Hong Kong. But not at Pekin. Why? Because if the ceremony is there, in the Hall of Ceremonies in the Imperial City, with your Lord Elgin and the Emperor, the Son of Heaven, face to face …” he paused, for emphasis “… then all China, All Under the Skies, will see that the Big Barbarian does not go down on his knees before the Celestial Throne, does not beat his head on the ground before the Solitary Prince. That is why they delay; that is why General Grant must go up with an army – because Lord Elgin will not kow-tow. And that they cannot endure, because it would show the world that the Emperor is no more than any other ruler, like your Queen, or the American President. And that they will not admit, or even believe!”

  “Touchy, eh?” says I. “Well, I dare say –”

  “Is a government to be taken seriously, that would risk war – conquest, even – rather than forego the kow-tow to that debauched imbecile? Come to a Taiping prince, and he will take your Ambassador’s hand like a man. That is the difference between a power blinded by ignorance, pride, and brutality, stumbling to its ruin, and a power enlightened, democratic and benign. Allow me to pour you some more tea.”

  Now you’ll have noticed that for all his cold, straight talk, he hadn’t said they were coming to Shanghai willy-nilly; he’d urged powerful reasons why we ought to invite them, with a strong hint of the consequences if we didn’t. Well, we’d have to wait and see, but it was plain I was going to have the deuce of a job fobbing him off for as long as Bruce wanted. This was the kind of steel-edged young fire-eater who’d want a straight answer, p.d.q., and wouldn’t wear any diplomatic nods and winks. By gad, he wasted no time; how long had I been with him – ten minutes? Long enough to feel the force that had brought him in ten years from apprentice charcoal-burner and private soldier to the third place in the Taiping hierarchy behind Hung Jen-kan and the Tien Wang himself. It was there, in the cold soft voice and hard unwinking eyes; he was a fanatic, of course, and a formidable one. I didn’t care for him one damned bit.

  However, I had a part to play, even if we both knew it was a sham. So I thanked him for his illuminating remarks about his great movement, which I looked forward eagerly to studying while I was in Nanking. “I am only a traveller, as you know, but anxious to learn – and to pass on what I learn to my countrymen who are … ah, deeply interested in your splendid cause.”

  “What you will learn, and pass on,” says he, “will include the elementary scientific fact that revolutions do not stand still. Tomorrow I shall conduct you personally to Nanking, where I hope you will do me the honour of being my personal guest for as long as it pleases you to stay.”

  So that was that, and he must have slipped a quick word to his treasurer, for in the outer tent – and how free and airy it seemed after that golden bath – a little chap was waiting with a bag of silver and a scroll, which I was invited to sign with a paint-brush. When in Rome … I painted him a small cat sitting on a wall, he beamed, and I strode out to t
he cart … which wasn’t there.

  I stopped dead, looking right and left, but there was no sign of it; nothing but the limitless lines of tents, with red-coats swarming everywhere. I turned in astonishment to the officer who had admitted me.

  “The woman who was here, with the cart – the very tall woman … and six men –”

  “They went away,” says he, “after you had gone in to the Chung Wang. The woman left that for you.”

  He jerked his thumb at one of the little flagstaffs planted before the marquee; something was hanging on it, something shining. I went over and was reaching for it in bewilderment, when I made out what it was. Her steel-chain collar.

  Wondering, I took it down, weighing it in my hands. Why the devil had she gone off – leaving this?

  I stared at the officer. “She left this … for me? Did she say why?”

  He shook his head, bored. “She told me to give it to the big fan-qui. Nothing more.”

  “But she said she was going to wait!”

  “Oh, aye.” He stopped in the act of lounging off. “She told me to say … that she would always be waiting.” He shrugged. “Whatever that may mean.”

  Chapter 6

  There’s a test which I apply to all my old flames, when I think back sentimentally to moments of parting, and it’s this: if she’d been mine to sell, how long would I have kept her? In the case of Szu-Zhan, the answer is: another night or two at most. Aside from the fact that she was wearing me to a shadow, I needed no encumbrances in Taipingdom; by all accounts they were a strait-laced lot who mightn’t take kindly to a bandit mistress, and I couldn’t afford to lose face. Perhaps she sensed that, and had the good sense to make herself scarce.

  Yet as I stood by the dusty camp road with the flags and ribbons fluttering in the evening wind, and the sun going down misty beyond the lines, I confess I felt a moment’s pang at the thought that I’d straddled her for the last time. And I still keep the chain collar in my drawer upstairs, with the Silk One’s scarf, Lakshmibai’s stirrup, Lola’s letter, Irma’s little glove, and that mysterious red silk garter with “Semper Fidelis” embroidered on it that I’m damned if I can place. Anyway, it shows I still think kindly on Szu-Zhan.

  But even she pales in memory when I look back to that time, for now I was entering on one of the strangest episodes of my life, which I wouldn’t believe myself if I were to read it in someone else’s recollections, but which you may take my word for, because I was there, in the Eternal Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, and you know I ain’t about to start stretching at this time of day. I can say I’ve walked in Nephelococcygia,a as old Arnold would have called it, and when I tell you that it beat even Madagascar for craziness, well … you shall judge for yourselves.

  There was little sign of it during the two days I was in Lee’s camp, and as I compared the tales I’d heard with what I was now seeing for myself, I wondered if perhaps the Taipings hadn’t been grossly misrepresented by Imp and foreign propagandists. That they were savage and blood-thirsty, I knew from the journey up – but what Oriental army is not? They were no mere barbarian horde, though, but a splendidly-disciplined force far more formidable than we had imagined. As for their lunacy, I’d spoken with one of their great men, and found him sane and intelligent enough, if a bit of a zealot. Very well, their Heavenly King might be a barmy recluse with odd notions of Christianity, but it all seemed a far cry from the days when the early Wangs, or princes, had been as crazy as he was, and went about calling themselves Kings of the East, West, North, and South, and murdering each other right and left. The titles of their successors were undoubtedly odd – Shield King, and Assistant King, and Heroic King, and Cock-eyed King (that is true, by the way), but if their Loyal Prince, General Lee, was anything to go by, they were business-like enough. So I reasoned, and the shock was all the more unexpected when it came.

  We went into Nanking on the second afternoon. Lee, borne in a chair of state by Taiping stalwarts, was magnificent in yellow robes and satin boots, wearing a gold crown in the shape of a tiger with ruby eyes and pearl teeth, and carrying a jade sceptre; this, he explained, was ceremonial dress for a council of all the Wangs, who would deliberate on what should be done now that the Imps had been driven from the Yangtse Valley. Like marching on Shanghai, no doubt.

  We made a brave procession, with a company of red-coat spearmen marching ahead, singing “Who would true valour see” in Chinese, and damnably off-key, and in the rear a squadron of mounted bowmen in backs-and-breasts, mighty smart – I’d noted that the Taipings had comparatively few hand-guns, but artillery by the park. I rode a Tartar pony beside Lee’s chair, so that he could point out such objects of interest as the distant Ming Tombs, one of the wonders of ancient China, and the huge siege-works from which the Imps had been expelled two weeks earlier, massive entrenchments bigger than anything I saw later in the Civil War or in France in ’70, and filled now with thousands upon thousands of decaying corpses raked together from the battlefields which extended for miles around. The stench was appalling, even with armies of coolies burying for dear life, with quicklime by the cart-load. Lee said it was nothing to ’53, when the river was so solid with corpses that boat traffic had had to be suspended.

  Nanking lies on the Yangtse bank, girdled by hills, and long before we reached it we could see those famous beetling walls, sixty feet high and forty thick, which enclose the city in a great triangle twenty miles about. It’s one of the finest cities in China today, but when we’d passed through the long tunnel at the south gate I was shocked to find myself gazing on a scene of ruin and desolation. The suburb had been razed flat, and was swarming with crowds of miserable-looking serfs labouring at nothing, so far as I could see, under the direction of Taiping troops; starving beggars everywhere, ragged children played among the pot-holed streets and piles of rubble; all was foul, muddy, stinking squalor.

  Any doubts I might have had about the social nature of the Taiping revolution were dispelled in the next hour. The Great Kingdom of Heavenly Peace obviously consisted of two classes: the State (the Wangs, the officials, and the army) and the populace, who were the State’s slaves. Everyone, you see, must work, according to his capacity, but he ain’t paid. How does he feed and clothe himself, you ask? He has no money, since it and all his valuables and property have been confiscated by the State, but there are no shops anyway, since all is rationed and distributed by the State. He is thus free of all care and responsibility, and can give his mind to work and absorbing the precepts, decrees, and heavenly thoughts of the Tien Wang, or Heavenly King. And if the rations are shorter and the work harder and the laws more savage than under the evil Imps – well, there’s a good time coming, and he can take comfort in the knowledge that what is happening to him is “correct”. The foul old system has given way to Heavenly Peace, and while the baskets of heads are even more numerous than in Shanghai, and there’s no lack of malefactors crawling about in wooden collars placarded with their offences (disobeying “celestial commands”, mostly), well, there’s a certain tranquility about that, too. At least every man-jack had his wooden token with the Heavenly Seal on it, to prove his existence and to use as a passport in and out of the city – what happened to anyone who lost his token I don’t care to think.

  But if the folk were ground down in misery, the military were riding high, and no mistake. I recall one splendid figure in crimson coat and hood, marking a subordinate Wang, mounted on a mule and attended by three skinny urchins carrying his sword, his flag (each Taiping officer has a personal flag), and his umbrella; all three, I was informed, aspired to being “ta-jens” (excellencies) some day, like their master, with power of life and death over all despised civilians – such as another urchin sitting naked in the gutter offering stones for sale. I was so bemused by this that I bought one (and still have it) amidst the laughter of Lee’s retinue; only later did it occur to me that it must be a State stone, which the little bugger had no right to be selling, presumably. He probably owns half Nanking by now
. It’s pleasant to think that I may have founded his commercial career.

  Lee didn’t seem to notice the filth and poverty of the state he’d been extolling to me two days earlier, but he drew my attention to the incessant drum and gong signals booming across that muddy desolation, and to the fluttering coloured flags on the walls relaying messages to the central watch-tower ahead; all was efficiency and discipline where the military were concerned, with battalions of red-coats chanting at their drill, and there were thousands of off-duty Taipings sauntering among the coolie crowds; I reckon every fourth man was a soldier – which explains why the slave population voiced no audible discontent.

  All this was plainly the “progress, work, and improvement”, to say nothing of the “sacred right of human liberty”, which Lee had described to me. Now I beheld proof of his “benign enlightened democratic” government, as the ruins gave way to the splendid new palaces and offices being built in the city centre for the Wangs and their favoured subordinates. We passed through broad, well-kept streets, flanked by magnificent yellow walls, with lofty minarets and towers beyond, tiled in red and green and lavishly decorated; extensive gardens were being laid out by coolies hard at it with mattocks and spades, scaffolding clung to the new buildings like spiders’ webs, and great loads of brick and paint and timber and tile were everywhere to be seen. The place was humming like a beehive; well, thinks I, if this is the revolution, I’m all for it.

  To remind everyone of what a bloody good idea it all was, every other street corner had an official orator reading out His Heavenly Majesty’s poems and meditations to rapt crowds of soldiers and officials and a few hang-dog peasants, all no doubt reflecting what fine transcendental stuff the monarch was turning out these days.12

  “The Grand Palace of Glory and Light,” says Lee, as our cavalcade turned a corner, “the earthly residence of the Tien Wang,” and I had to admit that it laid over everything we had seen before. There was a forty-foot yellow wall emblazoned with ferocious dragons and hung with yellow silk scrolls of His Majesty’s ghastly poems in vermilion ink; a vast gilded gateway guarded by cannon and splendidly-caparisoned sentries with matchlocks; and through the gate you caught a glimpse of the palace itself, a half-completed monstrosity of minarets and peaked roofs, tiled in every conceivable hue, with dragon designs and silken banners and revolting Chinese statuary; it must have covered acres, and was slightly more grandiose than the Taj Mahal, if in more questionable taste. There was even an enormous granite boat to commemorate the Heavenly King’s arrival in the city in ’53 – the real boat was rotting in a shed round the back.