Magnus shook his head in dismay – the man was no more than an idler.
“A poor example to set the Chinese converts, Mr Conger.”
“One must agree, my lord. Fortunately, it does suggest that he is unlikely to have taken horse and ridden to Taku. Too much like hard work, my lord!”
Magnus gravely agreed that he thought that to be so.
“He remained in the ox-cart all the way from Yanking, sir. He refused to mount a pony. I suspect, of course, that his motive was in part to keep him close to the side of the unfortunate young girl he was persecuting with his attentions.”
There was no harm in emphasising the deep wickedness of Daubney’s nature. The Americans would be more likely to cover up Daubney’s disappearance than make any great fuss about it if they believed him to be a villain.
“He was certainly a weakling, Mr Conger, for making no attempt even to disarm the mad missionary in his sleep. I must imagine that he was frightened to take action. I have small respect for one who will not play the man’s part.”
“Quite right, my lord. Any red-blooded man must say so! If he has not pursued the Lakehams, then where might he be?”
“I shall ask of my interpreter, Mr Conger. A clever young man and one with contacts through his family.”
Jian had accompanied his master and chose to play the meek Chinaman in front of his betters. The American Minister was much impressed, being a firm believer that the lesser races should show a proper humility.
Jian bowed before venturing to answer a question.
“The missionary gentleman, Mr Daubney, my lord? Is the honoured gentleman not to be discovered in his place of relaxation, my lord? The House of Nine Plums, my lord, is his favourite. The females there are younger in age than to be found in many houses of pleasure, and the American master does seem to prefer such, my lord.”
Mr Conger was horrified by Daubney’s depravity and was even more appalled that it should be known to the Chinese. He begged Magnus to dismiss his man while they discussed his revelations. He ushered Magnus out an hour later, leaving him to compose a telegram to Washington, begging advice of his masters while not publicly disclosing the nature of Mr Daubney’s sinfulness. Telegrams were normally encoded, but every nation employed code-breakers.
“What is this House of Nine Plums, Jian?”
“I invented it, my lord.”
“That perhaps explains the name, Jian.”
“It is a very good name, my lord. I am sure the Minister believed it.”
“I did not.”
“You know a little of China, my lord. He knows nothing.”
They grinned at each other, each knowing just how accurate the comment was.
“Have you heard anything yet?”
“Nothing, my lord. I doubt I shall for days, until the rumours are spread. The poor man will die badly, wherever he is. They will probably transport him to Yanking, to be seen to pay the price of his transgressions in the place where he committed his offences. You will not wish to know the details, my lord.”
The coming journey to Shanghai was more important in Magnus’ mind. He ignored Daubney and his fate.
It was not possible to organise a naval ship for the passage. Jardine Matheson had a passenger freighter due and it was simple to send a telegram to book aboard her and to arrange to meet her tender at Taku on the day.
“Ten years ago and it would have taken two months to organise a passage outward from Peking. Things do improve in China, my love.”
Ellen admitted that they did and hoped, dubiously, that the desirable state of affairs might continue.
“It will not if these Boxers have their way, Magnus.”
“They will not prevail, of that I am almost certain. The clock will not tolerate being turned back, or so it seems to me. Even the horrible Boers in South Africa are now facing defeat, despite their early successes. Progress is inevitable.”
She was less wholly convinced, but it did appear to be the case that change could not be prevented or even slowed to any great extent.
“I shall be pleased to return to civilisation in Shanghai, Magnus. Peking lacks all of the amenities of a European city. I shall enjoy electric light, for example!”
“Reliable running water will be another luxury. It is rather pleasant to turn on a tap and know that it will offer clear, safe water.”
Both knew that the funds had been made available for such municipal improvements but had been stolen, diverted to other projects such as the refurbishment of the old Summer Palace, destroyed in the wars of the previous generation.
“Jian, I would like an escort for the journey to Taku, just in case Mr Tsu Run is angry at me. A detachment of trained riflemen would be welcome indeed.”
Jian accepted that it was possible that Magnus could be a target for the triad leader’s anger. On the morning of their journey they drove into the railway station and discovered a half-battalion of imperial troops to be embarking on their train.
“They are transferred to Taku to join the garrison there, my lord. Half of the men are marching, the remainder, with their rifles, are enjoying a free ride on a train.”
Magnus did not know, never discovered, whether the precaution was necessary, but he enjoyed a safe journey down to Taku and onto the small steamer there for the passage out across the bar.
Four days brought them to the Bund at Shanghai and a very rapid transfer to their own house, fully staffed with all of its servants, warm and waiting for them.
“There is much to be said for money, I find, Ellen. Travel especially is comfortable.”
“I estimate thirty minutes before my father joins us, Magnus.”
“Twenty-five?”
“You may be right.”
They glanced at the clock in the main room.
Blantyre was present in twenty-seven minutes, invalidating both estimates.
“What brings ye back, my lord? Not that I am not glad to see ye both, but your intention was to remain in Peking for your two years.”
“Not the place for Ellen, sir. I can run, fast if needs be. I will not have her in the position that she needs to. Leaving aside that she has raised my hopes, sir, I do not see a peaceful future for Peking. If these Boxers do not march on the capital, like the Tai Pings, then sooner or later a warlord will. The Qing are dead, sir, and need but to be buried.”
Blantyre seized on the important information first.
“In the family way, you say, my dear?”
“So it would seem, Papa.”
“Excellent! Grandchildren!”
“Just so, sir, but only one at a time, I trust!”
He laughed delightedly and agreed it was better far she should be safe in Shanghai with all of its amenities.
“A nasty, dirty place, Peking, or so it has been on the few times I have seen it.”
Magnus assured him it had not changed.
“What of you, my lord?”
“I must speak with Captain Hawkins and pass word on through him, sir. Apart from that, I would wish to confer with Mr Sia – he will have knowledge, if he is willing to share it. I have brought an interpreter who is also and increasingly in my confidence, sir. The man is named Jian and is very capable. I would bring him to your attention, especially if you are thinking of setting up a London office for the Hanshan business.”
“Trustworthy?”
“He has no family and wishes to establish himself – and foreign will be better for that purpose.”
Blantyre agreed – a bright young man could make himself a fortune and a place in mercantile society overseas. In China, a man of peasant birth would not go very far and even if he enriched himself would always be at risk from his superiors. The warlords had little love for peasants who stepped out of their place. It was much the same as England had been a couple of centuries previously.
“Bring him to my attention this week, my lord. I’ll talk with him. Now then, what about a doctor? Must make sure that you’re looked after properly, my dear.
”
Ellen had known that she would be smothered in cotton wool as soon as she informed her father of her pregnancy. There was no gain in argument, but she would be able to take sensible steps behind his back, she did not doubt.
“You’ll need another maid, with experience of a nursery.”
“Not for a few months, Papa.”
He accepted that to be true, invited them to dinner next day and trotted off, hands rubbing gleefully, planning all that he must do. He was sure that he should take the responsibility, for his son-in-law was a likable lad but was incapable of looking after himself in the domestic line, being a sailor and a lord.
“Makes sense he won’t know what to do,” he told his senior clerk, who agreed gravely.
An hour of busy orders and Blantyre had organised the creation of a nursery in his daughter’s house and had staffed it and given instructions to the best doctor in Shanghai. Then he turned to business.
“A note to Mr Sia, begging the honour of speech with him at his early convenience. He’ll know that Lord Eskdale is back and will want to know why… Put the word out that we want to hear of anything that’s known about the Boxers. Particularly any intention they have of marching north and east from their present bases.”
His clerk scribbled down the instructions and then opened a folder from a desk drawer.
“Reports from inland, sir, from Chihli and Shantung, where the Boxers originated and still have the bulk of their strength, suggest that the leadership, such as there is, of the Boxers are in contact with the Imperial army. Some of the generals are inclined to support the Boxers, though others are actively trying to wipe them out. There is a feeling that the generals in Peking are mostly in favour of using the Boxers to extirpate the foreigners in Peking and Tientsin, and then perhaps to move south and east and in the first instance regain the treaty ports of Tsingtao and Wei-Hai-Wei. The feeling is that the Dowager Empress will then use this as an excuse to execute those army officers who are less than wholly loyal to her. All is conjecture at the moment – there is no hard evidence.”
Blantyre had heard much of the clerk’s reports before, but in dribs and drabs, never as a coherent set of probabilities.
“Who is Hawkins’ man in Shanghai these days? Is it still the same fellow? No need to mention his name.”
Blantyre knew, or was in his own mind certain, that his clerks were all in the pay, or under the influence, of triads, the Qing and various foreign powers. Courtesy demanded that he should not mention the name of British intelligence gatherers in Shanghai, though he had no doubt that they were mostly already known.
“I shall ensure that he is informed and makes contact with my lord, sir.”
“He will do so in any case. Lord Eskdale will make his number with the Senior Naval Officer, Shanghai and will drop into the man’s office as a courtesy. Who is the new chap? Can’t remember his name.”
“It is one of these very peculiar English names, sir. Captain ffoulkes – which, for some reason vouchsafed only to the English race, sir, is spelt without a capital letter. One must ask, sir, why a language which has rules then breaks them?”
Blantyre had not the slightest idea, and cared very little, but he employed his senior clerk, and paid him well, for his qualities of precision and exactitude. He appreciated that he found rule-breaking offensive.
“It is most strange, I agree. I think, meself, that it’s no more than putting on airs to be interesting. They tell me that it’s nothing out of the ordinary in Mayfair, which I don’t know about for never having been there. All posh buggers there!”
The clerk had, naturally enough, no experience of the haunts of High Society, merely noted that such existed.
The Leading Seaman Writer manning the desk at the naval offices at the Bund also had no knowledge of High Society, and possibly even less wish to remedy that ignorance, but he stood and saluted as Magnus entered.
“Commander Lord Eskdale, attaché in Peking, to see SNO if convenient.”
“Yes, sir. Moment, sir.”
The seaman entered the rear office, came out again in seconds.
“Captain ffoulkes can see you now, sir.”
“Thank you. Would you inform Mr Empingham that I am here, please?”
A full and correct salute on entry – Magnus had never met Captain ffoulkes and too much formality was wiser far than too little with an unknown senior officer. He tried to gain a quick first impression of the man.
‘Fortyish, high on the list, should have a first-rate cruiser or an old battleship by now. What’s wrong with him that he’s in a backwater shore posting? Admiral don’t like him, perhaps? Not a boozer, by the looks of his eyes. Not fat and deskbound. Something wrong here!’
Ffoulkes made no attempt to offer a handshake.
No courtesy suggested that either he was upset by Magnus’ brother’s dealings or he was one of Charlie B’s people, opposed to the Fishpond and all of its denizens. Either was possible. It would be instructive to bring up Jellicoe’s name – the Flag Captain was one of the most prominent of Fisher’s professional supporters.
“I had thought you were in Peking, Lord Eskdale.”
“Leave of absence for a fortnight, sir, to settle my wife back in Shanghai. She is pregnant, and I preferred her not to be in Peking and facing the summer that is coming.”
Ffoulkes understood his meaning, was aware ot the rumours and the conjectures stemming from them.
“Possibly, wise, my lord. What have you heard?”
“Too much of rumour, too little of hard fact, sir. I am inclined to the belief that the Boxers are a menace to all foreigners and will march this year. Where they will march, in what numbers, and with what support from the Imperial forces, I can only conjecture.”
“Unhelpful, my lord. I could have told you that myself. Why do we know so little?”
That was, in Magnus’ opinion, a monumentally foolish question.
“We have asked the wrong people, sir, when we have asked at all. Too many of our senior men seem willing to believe that the Boxers are a delusion; as a result, they have made no attempt to discover any facts about them. I expect to meet with a senior man from one of the triads while I am here, sir. He may be inclined to offer his knowledge to me because I am under a degree of obligation to his people and they will wish to make me even more one of theirs.”
Captain ffoulkes was horrified that a naval officer might be in the power of a bunch of Chinks.
“I am not, sir. Admiral Seymour and Captain Jellicoe, and now you, are aware of the situation. They know that Lord Ping of Hanshan is the leader of the Green triad and that his son came to my assistance – rescue some would say – during the business with the Russian mutineer ship Otvajni. As a result, they know well that I shall look kindly upon Lord Ping and will no doubt do much to assist him in his ambition to establish his family in London as merchant princes. They also know that I will do nothing to in any way betray or compromise my country. Funny thing is, Ping knows the same. For the while, we work together.”
Captain ffoulkes did not approve, but where Admiral Seymour had consented, he would not say nay.
“Very strange. Easier at sea, you know, Eskdale. Wish that’s where I was, but I’m ashore on medical grounds for the while – may be a long while, too. Sea-sickness, of all things! After years of service, suddenly was attacked with violent nausea last year. Vertigo, the quacks call it. Spewing up blood within the day of it starting. Cleared up as soon as I was ashore; started again when I ventured out of harbour. Finished my career, of course. Taken this posting for the time being. Trouble is, don’t know how I can get back home, Eskdale. Three months aboard a passenger liner might be the death of me. Hoping it might get better.”
Magnus was immediately sympathetic – an illness could suddenly take any man and was a disaster that could not be planned for or averted. To be left stranded in a foreign land was even worse than losing a long and honourable career.
“A week to Vladivostok, sir. Less
if there is a fast cruiser to hand. You would be able to take a break in Wei-Hai-Wei perhaps. Then it’s the railway to Moscow and then to Paris and Calais. Two hours on a good day and you are back in Dover. Not the most comfortable of journeys, I suspect – I cannot imagine that a Russian railway is one’s ideal means of transport! But you will survive it, or so I would believe. Damned unfortunate turn up, sir. A bad way to end one’s time in the service, sir.”
Captain ffoulkes had not considered the Trans-Siberian Railway – it was new, after all. He became more cheerful, able to consider something other than his own woes.
“You are married into Blantyres, are you not, Eskdale?”
“I have that good fortune, certainly, sir.”
“Met him at a dinner last week. He seems to believe in the Boxers.”
“He has commercial contacts all over China, sir. He does not speak to the missionaries, of course, but he has more reliable sources.”
Captain ffoulkes did not acknowledge the religious types either, in his case because they tended to be drawn from the lesser ranks of Society.
“Not the types I would wish to hold converse with, Eskdale. You know what they say about that sort, don’t you?”
Magnus had heard most of the comments generally made about missionaries, had made a number of them himself. He tried to make a pacific response.
“What is it that Kipling said, sir? ‘The lesser breeds without the law’?”
“Not heard that, Eskdale. Damned good line!”
They chuckled together.
“What’s this business with some damned Yank missionary, Eskdale? I heard you had pulled them out of some sort of trouble, the family at least.”
Magnus told the story, briefly and within reason accurately.
“All the same, Eskdale. Can’t ever keep their trousers’ buttons done up!”
Magnus laughed obligingly – he could not remember how many times he had heard that comment, only a few years before applied to himself.
Chinese Whispers Page 12
