by John Harris
‘Yes. We met officials of the court. My wife was interpreter.’
‘A woman?’ MacDonald’s eyebrows lifted again. ‘That’s unusual.’
‘The Empress is a woman,’ Abigail said gently. ‘She’s done okay.’
‘There was nobody else who spoke the lingo,’ Willie explained. ‘We talked for an hour or more. I didn’t understand it but my – er – wife – she did. She wrote it all down later.’
Abigail held up the notebook in which she had written up the Chinese offers before leaving Pangyan. ‘I’ve also got a scroll here that I was asked to present. It’s a copy of a decree they’re going to issue. They’ve had enough of exile and want to return to Peking. We think the Empress Dowager had it written out.’
She offered the scroll and MacDonald asked her to read it.
‘“Our Sacred Mother’s advanced age,”’ she intoned, ‘“renders it necessary that we should take the greatest care of her health, so that she may attain to a peaceful longevity. She ardently wishes to return to her home in Peking and, all being willing, wishes to make the journey as soon as possible.” There’s a lot more of the same sort. It ends with the usual “Tremble and obey.”’
‘This is from the Emperor?’ MacDonald asked.
‘Given to us by Minister Na-Chang. He said he was representing Prince Ch’un.’
MacDonald was impressed. ‘This seems to be most important,’ he said. ‘Will you kindly wait next door while I summon Mr Conger and the other ministers? You’ll be given refreshments.’
Half an hour later they were summoned back into the office. This time, the American minister, round-faced and black-browed, was there with the French minister and the man who was running the German Legation since the murder of Baron Von Ketteler, as well as Generals Gaselee, Chaffee and Count Von Waldersee, the German who had arrived to command the Allied forces.
The American minister moved forward at once to shake Willie’s hand and then Abigail’s.
‘Splendid, splendid,’ he said. ‘You young people have shortened the negotiations by months.’
There were congratulations all round, then a Chinese servant brought in champagne which was handed round before they got down to brass tacks.
‘It’s going to take some negotiating,’ Conger said. ‘We’re not satisfied with their offers. Some of these people need more punishment than they’re suggesting. And there’s the matter of the forts at Taku. They’ve got to be levelled to make access to Peking certain. There also have to be amendments to the Treaties of Commerce and Navigation and a change at the Tsungli Yamen. It has too much power over Chinese foreign policy. They also make no mention of indemnities. My government considers two hundred million dollars would be agreeable.’
‘Not enough by a long way,’ MacDonald observed. ‘Three hundred and fifty would be more realistic.’
‘That’s too much.’
Von Waldersee gestured. ‘We should have pursued them with every man we’ve got when they fled,’ he said.
‘The United States would never agree to that,’ Conger said.
Waldersee turned on him. ‘It seems to me the United States wants nobody to get anything out of China. We should fix a hard sum. Something that would be difficult for them to raise.’
‘We’ll never get it.’
‘Then we should take over some of their resources. Maritime Customs, part of the Internal Customs.’
The argument went on, with Willie and Abigail forgotten in the background. Eventually, they decided the discussion was nothing to do with them, and slipped out unnoticed. But they had barely sat down when an official appeared with a request for them to return at once.
Only MacDonald and the American and French ministers were there this time. MacDonald apologised for ignoring them.
‘Would you be willing to return to Sian,’ he asked, ‘and inform your friends that we’re prepared to talk? It’s only fair to say you might not be so well received this time, because we can’t agree on their offer and feel the dynasty should suffer greater punishment than it offers.’
Willie looked at Abigail. Through both their minds was running the thought that if they could persuade the Chinese to agree to their demands, they would be in a position to profit from both sides of the deal.
‘We’ll go,’ Willie said.
Na-Chang seemed relieved to see them again. He rose as they appeared at the house at Pangyan and summoned servants with tea and the usual sticky buns. When they explained why they were there, he frowned.
‘Prince Ch’un will object,’ he said. ‘The Empress Dowager will never agree to so much.’
‘Tell him they haven’t much choice,’ Willie told Abigail. ‘If they don’t agree, they’ll never be able to go back to Peking.’
It was agreed that they should return to Yang Chih and that Na-Chang should carry their message to Sian. Three days later they were summoned back to Pangyan with instructions that they were to be escorted to see Prince Ch’un at Sian. Willie looked quickly at Abigail and saw that her eyes were bright with excitement.
‘We’ll go,’ he said.
Sian, the capital of Shensi province, on the River Weiho above its consequence with the Yellow River, was the old imperial capital and was considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation. It was a jumble of low buildings and pagodas, the walls high and buttressed so they could see only greentiled roofs as they approached.
Na-Chang seemed nervous and anxious to talk, almost as though he feared their mission might fail.
‘The Empress Dowager knows what is going on,’ he told Abigail. ‘She always knows. People have plotted her downfall in the past, but there were never any secrets from her. Old Buddha is a vital and forceful woman. She is almost seventy, but she is still a force to be reckoned with.’
A troop of horn-blowers and bannermen was waiting for them outside the town and they were escorted with considerable ceremony through its narrow streets to a large pagoda near a stream fringed with willows. Prince Ch’un, the tall thin Chinese they had met at Na-Chang’s house at Pangyan, was waiting for them. His expression didn’t change and he made no indication that he had ever met them before.
Behind him there was a set of gauze curtains of some filmy material beyond which they could see a small figure sitting silently in a black and purple enveloping garment. Alongside it were two other small figures, dressed in red, but, though the faint warm breeze moved the curtains, they were unable to see beyond them, and could only guess that the watching, listening figures were the Empress Dowager’s representatives, sitting in on the talks to be able to report back to her.
Rice wine was brought and handed round with a basket full of the usual sticky pink cakes. Na-Chang started to talk to Abigail and, as she told him what she had been instructed, he turned and spoke to the tall thin man. There was a lot of whispering and nodding and head shaking and once a furious whispered argument. At one point Na-Chang turned to Abigail to confirm what had been said and there was more head wagging before he turned once more, his hands inside his voluminous sleeves, and spoke again.
‘Prince Ch’un,’ Abigail murmured to Willie, ‘isn’t happy with the demands, but he thinks it might he possible to talk. The Empress is tired of exile.’
‘They agree?’
‘They want more talks, but they accept that their representatives should meet ours.’
As they turned away, the breeze, which had been moving the gauze curtains throughout the talking, banged a shutter and the curtains drifted sideways. Beyond them, for a brief second, they saw two women, their faces enamelled, and between them a tiny figure, whose long hands were folded on its lap, six-inch fingernails lying on its knees. Jade ear-rings dangled from small ears and an elaborate pearl necklace encircled its throat. The woman was looking straight at them as they turned away, a once-beautiful face with jet black eyes that were totally without expression.
Outside, Willie looked at Abigail as they climbed into their chairs.
‘You know who that was?’
he asked. ‘It was the Empress Dowager herself. And that was what they call an audience curtain.’
A few days later a messenger brought the news to Pangyan that the court would accept most of the demands, but that there needed to be more talk on others, and once more they began the long journey back to Peking, for most of the way with an advance guard of trumpeters and bannermen to make everything official. This time they were received without delay and gave their message to a full council of Ministers from the Legations.
Because they were asked to hold themselves in readiness in case of the need to exchange more messages, they confined their activities for the time being to the area round Peking while talks were held. It made little difference. Their reputation was already made. More looted artefacts turned up at the Sumters’ and it was clearly pointless to suffer from any conscience over them because it was impossible to decide where they had come from and the vendors certainly had no intention of informing them. Just as quietly and quickly, they were sold to officers returning to Europe.
It was early in the following year as she organised the display of the goods they had picked up, that Abigail was called to an elegant sedan chair which stood in the street outside. She recognised the man inside at once as one of NaChang’s officials. He handed her a scroll of paper bound with red ribbon.
‘My master sends this,’ he said. ‘The Empress Dowager insisted that a copy should be brought to you. She expressed great admiration for your courage as a woman.’
The scroll was a copy of a decree issued by the Emperor.
‘Our Sacred Mother,’ it announced, ‘has decided after much consideration that it is time to return to Peking, where she hopes to live in peaceful longevity…’ There was more in the same strain, saying that, since a long journey in the heat was undesirable, the route to Peking would be by way of Honan. ‘We have fixed,’ the decree ended, ‘on the nineteenth day of the seventh moon to commence the journey.’
‘She’s coming back?’ Abigail asked.
‘All is agreed.’
Some time later, they watched with Na-Chang from a specially erected pavilion as the royal caravan left Sian, two thousand carts and baggage waggons containing silks, jade, furs and bullion, and escorted by cavalry and hundreds of mounted officials. Thousands of coloured flags, the imperial yellow predominating, fluttered in the autumn breezes, hundreds of mounted Manchu bannermen preceded the cortège, and mounted trumpeters with blaring horns cleared the roads ahead.
Several days later feasts and theatricals were held, and the Empress’ birthday was celebrated with fireworks. In the centre of the procession was the Imperial party in yellow sedan chairs surrounded by courtiers and servants. This was no defeated ruler crawling back to beg mercy, but the return of someone who knew her own value and had only stayed away to let tempers cool.
The cortège had to cover a matter of seven hundred miles and progress was slow, because not only were the roads unpassable after the rains, but it was encumbered by its own baggage and the tributes to the Emperor and the Empress Dowager that had come in from the provinces. As it drew nearer Peking, the caravan assumed an almost triumphal aspect and Willie and Abigail watched the ladies of the court cross the Yellow River in a gilded barge specially constructed in the shape of a dragon, with garlands of flowers floating on the water around it as it moved. Imperial standards fluttered on the banks under the autumn sky, with choirs to intone litanies in a smell of burnt incense. The road had been levelled and made wider to make progress easier, and the peasants had turned out in hundreds to witness the passage.
Feeling that the Empress Dowager’s presence would restore some order to the chaos that had reigned since the end of the siege, Peking had been preparing for the arrival for days and streets were cleared of rubbish and as many of the scars of the recent fighting as could be removed were erased. Guards of honour were drilled until they were dizzy with fatigue, uniforms were cleaned, brass and leather polished, moustaches waxed.
The last part of the journey was undertaken by rail, the first half from Chengting to Fengtai on a Belgian-operated section of the line, then from Fengtai to Peking on a Britishoperated section. The British terminus in Peking had been brought especially from Machiapu to a point inside the city where a pavilion had been constructed and furnished with thrones of gold lacquer, jars of cloisonné and vases of fine porcelain.
The special train was waiting at Paotingfu and, so concerned was the Empress that she should arrive at the very moment when her soothsayers and scribes had prophesied would be most portentous, she insisted on a railway official being brought to her presence to swear the driver would neither delay nor hurry unnecessarily and that the party should detrain outside the city and enter in the traditional way.
The train was exactly on time and, as it rolled in, a military band struck up a rousing march. European soldiers in full dress uniform snapped to attention to present arms with a clash of weapons. There was silence as a door opened and a Chinese official stepped out. Men stiffened and the silence increased, then a tiny figure in the favourite black and purple appeared, and Sir Claude MacDonald stepped forward, bowing low.
There was a hurried whispered conversation as the ministers crowded round the peacock figures of the Chinese court officials. Somebody set off at a trot down the platform and returned with the railway official who had been riding at the front of the train with a watch in his hand to make sure the promise to arrive on time was kept. He looked slightly dishevelled as he stopped in front of the Empress to receive her thanks, then she turned and, from a cushion held out to her, she produced a yellow sash with an enamelled and jewelled decoration on the end of it, which she handed to one of her officials to hand to the railwayman.
The entrance to the city was made in full panoply, heralded by yard-long trumpets blaring a tuneless call, then, under a canopy of fluttering banners, the Imperial Chariot, transported for speed on the train, rolled through the Yung Ting gate, up the broad thoroughfare of the Chinese City and through the Chien Men gate.
The road was lined with Imperial troops, who knelt with bowed heads as the cortège swept by – at full tilt because the higher the dignitary the greater had to be the speed. Foreign ministers had warned their nationals against showing themselves, but no one had paid any attention and most of them were on the wall above the Chien Men gate. A line of shops around the outer wall had been destroyed by fire during the siege and a tower gutted, but despite the strong wind that was lifting the yellow dust in clouds, hordes of people had gathered.
In a new dress sewn in a hurry by a Chinese seamstress and wearing a new hat sent up from Shanghai by steamer, Abigail stood in the official party alongside Willie, who was dressed in a new suit with a buttonhole, a high starched collar sawing at his ears. They had spotted Emmeline in the crowd as they moved to their places. She was accompanied by a young man of pale appearance in a grey suit with spats, and Willie wondered what duties he was performing for her.
First to appear were the Manchu bannermen on very little steeds like woolly bears, trotting up in fours wearing gorgeous brocaded robes. Next came a group of officials in gala robes, then the Imperial palanquins. At the wall, the chairs halted and the Emperor and Empress stepped down to burn incense and recite prayers in the tiny temple set into the wall. As the Empress Dowager appeared, she glanced up at the crowd lining the wall and, though the eunuchs tried to move her on, she remained there, supported as was customary for a great personage by two of her ladies holding her arms, then she lifted her head to gaze at the Europeans on the wall, closed her hands under her chin and made a series of little bows.
‘I think,’ Willie whispered, ‘that we’ve just seen the beginning of a new policy.’
Eleven
As Willie had predicted, their involvement with the Imperial Court was the turning point.
They were known – not only to the hoi-polloi in Peking but also in the Legations and to the Court officials. The North China Daily News made a point of mentioning th
eir involvement in the talks and the Illustrated London News correspondent even produced an article with pen drawings of the Empress Dowager and of Willie and Abigail, all done from imagination.
A minor decoration had been suggested for Willie by Sir Claude MacDonald, and it duly arrived from England in a red leather box and was handed over without much ceremony at the Legation by the Minister. Not to be outdone, the Germans offered one also. But that wasn’t the end. Willie was informed by the Minister that he would be one of a group attending the Imperial Palace, and to dress himself in a morning suit. Done up to the eyebrows in borrowed pearl waistcoat, black jacket and spats, he was convoyed with a whole group of Legation officials into the Imperial presence.
The Empress was small, but, despite her age, she had kept her figure. She had a fine broad forehead and delicate arched eyebrows over brilliant black eyes. Her hair appeared still to be jet black, but Willie noticed that she wore a tight-fitting black satin cap so that it was difficult to tell where the cap finished and the hair started. She had used no paint on her face or lips since she had been widowed and her skin was smooth and unblemished.
She was dressed in embroidered garments which combined silk threads of different hues to outline the image of a dragon. Because of the gold in it, the robe seemed to be surrounded by a halo of violet rays, and, as she moved, the alternating blue and green thread had the effect of changing colours. Over it was a flowing coat of gold net over gold leaf, and a long tassel of eight strings of large pearls hung to her right shoulder from the wing of a headdress decorated with the tiny feathers from a kingfisher’s breast. She wore a cape of pearls, while the hem of her skirt was also fringed with hanging threads of pearls. In her hand she held a snuffbox which he realised was an enormous hollowed-out pearl.
‘God,’ he thought. ‘She must clank when she sits down.’
