The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  Of course, he had been overwhelmed with guilt and anxiety the next day about what her father and her aunt would think. He had agreed to escort her. Had he betrayed his trust? Had he taken advantage of his position? She had told him that certainly he had, and she was delighted by it. This had filled him with greater gloom, and she had laughed merrily at his predicament. As the weeks progressed he had recovered his cheerfulness, and now seemed quite happy at the prospect of asking her father formally for her hand. She, on the other hand, had never felt any qualms. Since the ship had left the quay in Southampton in a cloud of seagulls and spray it was as if her previous life had dwindled to the size of her aunt waving on the shore, and then vanished into memory. Reality now was the sensation that every new day brought her on this long, so far uncompleted journey. Even the first exciting weeks of the voyage, the squalls in Biscay, the strange Rock of Gibraltar looming out of the mist, the dolphins and flying fish in the Mediterranean, the lines of camels silhouetted against the desert as they passed through the cauldron of the Canal, the spice market at Aden, sights and sounds which, at the time, had electrified all her senses seemed now to belong to a vague distant past, so much had happened since. Bombay. Colombo. Penang. The spice islands in the golden setting sun. Hong Kong. Shanghai. Tientsin. Peking. She lived from day to day in a perpetual, thrilling present, and Tom was part of that present, so it seemed quite natural, almost inevitable, that she should love him. She had no fear of her father. She remembered him vaguely from when she was twelve, and he had arrived at her aunt’s cottage, larger than life, showering presents. It had been the first time she had seen an adult cry. Hugging her, laughing and crying, all at the same time, big salt tears had streamed down his red face, past his swelling nose, into his thick moustache, while his booming voice roared into her ear, ‘My girl. My darling girl.’ After only a few days he had disappeared again. But she remembered him as a warm, loving, comfortable presence, smelling of boiled beef and tobacco, and she, too, had cried inconsolably when he was gone. She felt confident that he would like Tom, or that she could make him like him. But that was days away in the far future. Today she was happy to be standing on a wooden platform in the middle of a desert plain, waiting for Henry Manners to come with the horses. This was the exciting reality of the moment.

  It was strange, though, she thought, as Tom paced up and down, and the wind roared in her ears. She had never had the sort of fantasies about Tom that she did about Henry Manners. Tom, of course, had always conducted himself entirely properly. Beyond the rare—sweet—embrace and kiss, when she loved to melt into the protection of his arms, there was never any question of a physical relationship before marriage. She knew what would happen when they were married, and she looked forward to it, or she thought she did, or would. The truth was that she had not considered it, the act, very much, if at all, until she had seen Henry Manners’s muscles and sinews flowing under his tweed jacket, his thighs gripping his horse on the Peking plain. And now, especially when she was alone, she seemed to think of nothing else.

  Of course she was no naïve. She had touched herself in the past, at school, and felt the intense heat and pleasure in her belly and her loins, but that sort of arousal seemed mechanical, and she had learned to resist the temptation. It seemed an improper, if not unnatural, thing to do, and she did not like to join in the whispering and giggling of the other girls in the dormitory who were doing the same and more to themselves and each other, even though she could not help but overhear them, and pulled the pillow down over her ears. Each night since the Saturday of the picnic, however, she had woken with the same heat and moistness between her legs that she remembered from her schooldays, and a new warm tingle in her belly and breasts. She told herself that it was all right. She had been dreaming about Tom. It was natural for her unconscious mind to anticipate the sensations of the wedding night; but as often as not it was Henry Manners’s face she saw when she closed her eyes, and then she would lie awake in the dark, trying desperately to superimpose Tom’s face on it. She told herself that she did not even like Manners. He was a bad hat, to use Tom’s silly phrase. A philanderer, a man with a past. She wished she were more experienced, wiser in the ways of the world. She doubted that someone as assured as Countess Esterhazy had ever had these doubts or anxieties. But, try as she would, she could never get Manners out of her mind. ‘The sooner you get married, my girl, the better,’ she said to herself, in a vague imitation of what she remembered of her father’s voice.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Nothing. Talking to myself.’

  ‘Watch it. First sign of madness. Where the devil is he? You wouldn’t have thought that a chap like Henry Manners would be unreliable.’

  ‘Certainly not. He’s a paragon, isn’t he?’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, HF? Sometimes I get the feeling you don’t really like Manners. We’re rather dependent on him now, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tom, he’ll come. Paragons always do.’

  ‘There you go again.’

  ‘Mr Manners is fine, Tom. I’m only sorry that the two of us won’t be alone any more. I’ve enjoyed the last three days being with you. I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Oh, you delightful muffin,’ said Tom. ‘Here, let me give you a hug.’

  And it was while they were hugging on the platform that Henry Manners and the mule train appeared, at a canter, in a cloud of grey dust. Helen Frances lifted her head from Tom’s shoulder and looked straight into Manners’s laughing blue eyes. He raised his hat ironically in the air, steadying the neck of his twitching horse with the other hand.

  * * *

  They adapted rapidly to the rhythm of the caravan. A string of eight pack mules carried their luggage, and the provisions for the journey. Manners had hired six mounted porters who also served as armed guards. Helen Frances thought they looked fearsome when she first saw them. They had gnarled, weatherbeaten faces, straggly moustaches and fierce, slit eyes above wide brown cheekbones. They wore knee-length padded coats, leather boots and fur hats, with long rifles strung on their backs and knives in their belts. Their queues were greasy with animal fat. They wore them coiled under their hats, or sometimes curled around their necks. She told Tom that they reminded her of Ali Baba’s thieves. As she got to know them, however, she had become impressed by their gentleness and humour. Each night, round their separate campfire, she would watch them as they passed a flask of white liquor between them, smoked long pipes and sang mournful songs of haunting melody. Lao Zhao, the head man, appointed himself her personal guardian and groom. He would help her in and out of the saddle at each stop (not that she needed help: the Mongolian ponies were tiny), bring her extra helpings of noodles and mutton, unload her boxes and put up her tent, or drape a rug round her shoulders when a cold wind blew. All the time he chattered and laughed, his mobile face contorting into the oddest grimaces and humorous expressions. Of course she could not understand a word of what he was saying, but she knew he was friendly, and after the first day she became comfortable with his attentiveness.

  For two days they rode over grassland and salt flats, and saw little sign of human habitation. Sometimes they would come across a shepherd with a flock of straggly sheep or a herd of goats. Lao Zhao would hail them and there would be a protracted bargaining session, from which he would come away with a sheep or a lamb for supper. Manners and Tom, riding ahead, would keep an eye open for game. Manners shot a bustard from his saddle, pulling the rifle from its holster, aiming and firing at the speck in the sky in one fluid movement. On another occasion, he spotted the spoor of wild deer. He and Tom, with one of the porters, galloped out of view, returning three hours later with a small ibex hung over Manners’s saddle.

  Tom and Manners were becoming firm friends. They would ride side by side, Tom listening in rapt attention as Manners described his hunting expeditions in the Deccan and the Himalayan foothills. Sometimes they would race each other, and Helen Frances would see the eager delight on Tom�
��s face as he tried to outpace his companion. She herself was quite content to ride slowly with the baggage train, feeling the wind on her face, gazing dreamily around her at the endless expanse of grass under a cloudless sky or listening to the wild songs of the porters.

  In the evenings, as they sat round the campfire, Henry Manners was surprisingly good company. Tom had been right: he had wonderful stories to tell, about the Hindu temples overrun by monkeys and creepers that he had discovered in the Indian jungles, the rock carvings of terrifying gods and the Thuggee cult, which he insisted could still be found in the more remote mountains and forests. He described the magnificent palaces in Delhi and Agra; expeditions against the wild tribes of the Northwest Frontier; the ludicrous social whirl at Simla, the modest hill station that was transformed when the Viceroy and his court ascended to escape the summer heat. He talked of his years in Japan. He would not be drawn on the details of his military advisership to the Meiji army, but he spoke of the gardens and temples, the Buddha at Kamakura, the deer park at Nara, the beauty of the coast road on the Inland Sea, Mount Fuji, and the strange rituals of the Japanese Court. He spoke with an enthusiasm and a tolerance of strange places that seemed quite at odds with the cynical, wordly manner he had displayed in Peking. Yet interspersed with his reminiscences were casual references to acquaintances whose names Helen Frances had only seen in newspapers—politicians like George Curzon and Arthur Balfour, writers like Bernard Shaw and Max Beerbohm, theatrical lights like Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry and Beerbohm Tree—all of which indicated that Manners was used to moving in a racy social milieu well above her own. She even understood that he had attended levees with the Prince of Wales—Bertie, as he called him—before his mysterious transfer from the Guards to the Royal Engineers and a posting to India in the early nineties. To Helen Frances this English aristocratic world was as exotic as the bright starlight of the Asian night, and far more intimidating. Yet never once did Manners boast or show any sign of superiority. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she had imagined the predatory flirtatiousness that had coloured her impression of him since she first met him in Peking. He was as charming and solicitous to her, and certainly as gentlemanly, as Tom. But Tom, who in age, she guessed, was only a few years younger than Manners, seemed as gauche as a schoolboy in comparison, as with eager, almost fawning, curiosity he begged more stories about Manners’s colourful past, hanging on his every word.

  On the afternoon of the third day the country changed from flat plain to gentle hills, and they found themselves riding through orchards of apple trees and cultivated farms. Familiar oaks and elm trees grew in clumps on the hillsides. Blue-coated peasants scythed in the millet fields, or drove donkey carts down the rutted tracks. Villages were more common, and on that night and the next, the porters elected to stay in caravanserais specially built for mule trains and travellers. The three Europeans, unwilling to sleep in the smoky rooms with the muleteers stretched together on filthy kangs, had their tents put up in the courtyard outside but, ever wary of stories of bandits and robbers, they were glad of the thick mud walls that gave them an illusory protection from any supposed menace in the village outside. Helen Frances found it thrilling to be sitting among the wagons under the stars, with the giant shadows of the muleteers moving across the bright oil-paper windows and the strains of a whining stringed instrument inside. It reminded her of the inn scene in Don Quixote or one of the medieval romances she had read as a girl.

  She found herself fascinated by every detail of the ancient peasant life going on around her, and it was with some excitement that she greeted the news from Manners on the fifth day that they would soon be approaching the first walled city on their route, Fuxin. He told her that this was where the founder of the Manchu nation, Nurhachi, had set up a western outpost, and it was where one of his nephews, a grand duke, was buried. He told her that the city would not be dissimilar in appearance to their eventual destination, Shishan.

  The towers on the walls loomed from some distance away. It was a small city perched on a hill. The walls were like the great edifices in Peking but on a smaller scale. On a lower outcrop to the west stood an ancient pagoda. Tom and Helen Frances talked excitedly about what they would buy in the marketplace. The road was thickening with people as they approached the great gateway, which they could see in front of them about five hundred yards away. Manners had ridden ahead that morning with Lao Zhao so that he could negotiate supplies and accommodations before the arrival of the main caravan. They were startled to see him now galloping back out of the gate, scattering people as he rode. Their attention was diverted suddenly by the loud cry of many voices to their left. There, on a smooth parade-ground, which lay between them and the approaching figure of Manners, was gathered a large crowd of people ringing an open space. From the height of their horses they could look over the heads of the throng to see the activity in the middle. Helen Frances was puzzled for a moment, and could not understand what was happening. Ten or eleven men were kneeling on the ground, their arms pulled behind them by burly men stripped to the waist. Other men were standing in front of the kneeling figures pulling their pigtails forward so the bare necks were exposed. A grey-haired man in blue robes was standing prominently among a knot of robed officials reading from a scroll in a high-pitched quavering voice. Then he signalled and a group of giant men, also stripped to the waist but holding long, curved swords, stepped forward, each one taking a position by the side of one of the kneeling men.

  ‘Oh, my God, HF, look away,’ cried Tom.

  But Helen Frances could not turn her eyes from the scene. The grey-haired man raised his hand and the blades wielded by the giant men rose in the air. ‘Chie-e!’ screeched the man in the blue robe, and the blades came down in smooth arcs. Eleven heads seemed to bounce from the bodies, which collapsed, then rolled to a stop in the sand. There was a shout of satisfaction from the crowd. Blood was spurting in jets from the decapitated bodies. Helen Frances, stunned by what she had seen, tears of shock forming in her eyes, swung her head away from the spectacle. She saw their own porters craning in their saddles, laughing and grinning among themselves. In a panic—anything to get away—she pulled on the reins of her pony, and drove it into a wild canter down the road, ignoring the shouts of Tom behind her.

  At that moment Manners reached them. He was in the act of reining in when he saw Helen Frances break away. Instead he kicked his horse on after her, reaching for her dangling reins. For a while the two horses cantered crazily together, then slowly, Manners managed to pull them both to a stop. Keeping hold of both reins he swung himself off his own horse, then with his other arm reached up and pulled Helen Frances down off hers. She was gasping with hysteria. Manners steadied her, and pulled her to his chest, stroking her hair and murmuring, ‘All right. All right. You’re all right. All right.’

  Tom, his eyes wide in an agonised face, ran up to them, then hovered, not knowing what to do.

  ‘Come on, man, take her,’ said Manners. ‘Hold her tight for a while. She’s in shock.’

  Gently, he passed Helen Frances to Tom. She felt herself gathered into his strong arms. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. She tried to break away. Her nails scratched Tom’s back, then she slumped and her breathing gradually slowed.

  ‘I tried to get to you to warn you. We’d better not stay here, Cabot. Press on. Foreigners aren’t exactly in good odour in Fuxin at the moment.’

  ‘Who were they, Manners? What’s happening?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. Better get going now. Can you lift her on to your own horse? Ride behind her for a while? Good. There’s Lao Zhao with the provisions. We’d better head off straightaway.’

  The porters had turned the caravan, and steadied the horses. Manners and Lao Zhao lifted Helen Frances tenderly into Tom’s saddle where he put a protective arm around her waist. The road on either side was lined with a silent crowd. The mob who had witnessed the execution had seen the foreigners and were now gathering ominously.

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p; ‘All right,’ said Manners. ‘Quietly now. Lao Zhao, zoule!’

  Lao Zhao jerked his reins, at the same time clouting the leading pack mule with his stick. The caravan clattered off in the direction from which it had come, leaving the silent, hostile populace of Fuxin behind them.

  After a mile they turned off the road to make a detour through the millet fields in a large circle round the city. Helen Frances had calmed down enough for Manners to suggest that it would be safe for her to ride her own horse. They rode on well into dusk and that night they camped by the side of the road. Helen Frances went to her tent early, leaving Tom and Manners to smoke cigars by the fire.

  ‘She’s a plucky girl, Cabot,’ said Manners. ‘As I’ve told you before, you’re a lucky man.’

  ‘What happened back there? I’ve seen executions before. They’re nasty affairs, but I’ve never known such an atmosphere.’

  ‘There was a riot a while back. Merchant was murdered. A Christian, it seems. Authorities came down heavily. Some of the people executed were popular figures in the town. Maybe they blamed the foreigners in some way. Fault of the Christians or something.’

  ‘My God, Manners. It wasn’t Boxers, was it?’

  ‘Boxers? Who knows? What’s a Boxer? People in this country have enough to be miserable about anyway and are quite capable of rising up on their own account. Apparently this merchant who died was cheating the townsfolk by mixing his grains with animal feed. All part of the general corruption of China. Sometimes they don’t get away with it.’

  ‘My God, what are we going to tell HF?’

  ‘Don’t tell her anything. If she lives in China long enough she’ll have her fill of executions. The first time is rather shocking. She’ll get over it. Tell her it’s a matter of law and order, as my friend, Sir Claude, so preciously likes to put it.’

  ‘Are we safe?’

  ‘Yes, we’re safe. We have these, don’t we?’ Manners patted his rifle, which was leaning against his saddle by his side. ‘You’re always safe with Mr Remington.’