Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  “Blasphemy,” Phoebe said sharply. “Refreshing, indeed.”

  “Good night.” Nina dipped her head in the missionary’s direction and fled upstairs. Only when we heard the closing of the bedroom door did Phoebe note that Nina had forgotten the jug of water. I offered to take the jug upstairs to her, and left Oscar and Phoebe to continue their discussion.

  I stood outside Violet Fairchild’s bedroom, my hand raised to knock on the door, when I heard the unmistakably poised tones of Lillian Price.

  “Imagine Mr Fairchild taking advice from you. Do you suppose he shall formulate military strategy according your opinions?” she asked Nina.

  “Oh, no, Mr Fairchild is very polite. A necessary quality for diplomats, I suppose,” Nina said quietly, and I felt impelled to save her from this shame with which she had unwittingly tarred herself. How might a young woman like Lillian Price, blonde, vivacious and rich, a product of the most elite institutions of the New World, an heiress not only of financial security but also of such elevated social status, ever understand such a strange creature as Nina? I knocked loudly upon the door and called Nina’s name.

  “You forgot the water,” I said, and Nina slipped out of the room to meet me in the dark corridor.

  “Hello, Mr Scott,” she said, with uncharacteristic formality. We were both aware of the figure of Lillian Price behind the dark wood door. “How very careless of me.”

  “We all have rather a lot on our minds,” I said carefully.

  Nina took the jug from me, but made no move to return to the bedroom. Rather she looked at me in a manner almost beseeching. Nina’s pride would not allow any petition to be written plainly upon her face, instead the suggestion that she was burdened by words unspoken was evinced in the slightly awkward manner in which she stood, the swaying of her weight from hip to hip, the tilt of her head.

  “Miss Ward,” I said, feeling myself an actor for the benefit of Miss Price, “won’t you accompany me to the front door?”

  Nina followed me downstairs, together we paused outside the drawing room.

  “Are you all right?” I asked in low tones. “You have been most courageous, you and your father, leaving your home to reside with strangers. I know it has not been easy, dear Nina, but it is for the best.”

  “How like me these people look,” Nina said in whispered wonderment, “yet how differently to me they think.”

  I pitied Nina: Europeans had featured so little in her young life that of course the temperaments and characteristics of the individuals around her were shrouded in codes and signs that she struggled to decipher. The lives lived by these people of her own lily-colored race were unknowable, impenetrable.

  “I am very proud of you,” I said. “You defended your views and there is nothing wrong with that. If you ask me, these people will benefit very much from your experience. They live in a China without Chinese, caring only for the natives when they are of use to them, to be taxed or converted or sold something. You remind them of the existence of another country and it is not your fault if it results in their discomfort.”

  “Really? I would so hate to embarrass Father, and I feel that perhaps I said too much. The way that woman, the missionary, the way she regarded me as though I were the Devil Himself!”

  I shook my head, clasped her shoulder.

  “Come, I must bid goodnight to our host. Sleep well, Nina, and do not concern yourself further with such thoughts.”

  Nina turned to ascend the stairs once more, but stopped, one foot hovered over the bottom step.

  “I did not say goodbye to Chang,” she said slowly. “She might wonder where I am. Father said I ought not to leave the Legation Quarter alone, but perhaps you might accompany me to her home tomorrow?”

  I replied in the affirmative: Chang was Nina’s best friend, the daughter of a Chinese academic and sometime political reformer who lived in the same neighborhood as the Wards. Nina had known her so long she did not remember meeting her; like her father, Chang was simply a fact of Nina’s existence. I imagined Nina, a square peg forced suddenly into a round hole, felt the steady rhythm of her existence suddenly jangled and discordant, and I wished to offer her some comfort. Steadily, calmly she climbed the stairs, and I called to Oscar that I was to leave.

  The First Secretary led me to the front door, one hand placed familiarly upon my back.

  “What an extraordinary young woman Miss Ward is,” he said.

  “Quite.” I puzzled at his expression, but Oscar Fairchild possessed the diplomatic ability to conceal any motive behind a pleasantly neutral arrangement of features. I wondered if there might be some hint of condescension in his words, some disapproval couched in layers of most polite deception, but he betrayed no such ironic feeling.

  “Two Italian guests arrive tomorrow evening,” he said. “Would you care to join us again for dinner?”

  “I would be most obliged,” I said, and it was not much of a lie, not for a man like myself. I did not care for Lillian Price or Phoebe Franklin and certainly not for Beatrice Moore, but officials such as Oscar lived close enough to the kindling of events to prove useful to my work, and the Wards were my most intimate acquaintances in an increasingly hostile city. “Good night, Mr Fairchild.”

  III

  I waited as Nina knocked on her best friend’s door. The entrance was painted a deep red like the Wards’ and framed by scrolls decorated with New Year couplets, their corners curled in the months that had passed since the Spring Festival. I watched a servant open the door with a show of lavish caution, head appearing warily around the edge of the hatch.

  “Zao,” Nina wished him good morning in her enviable Mandarin, smooth and standard where mine, cultivated by coolies and inelegant as the villages in which I had learned it, was rough and rudimentary. “Chang zai ma?”

  I could not make out the servant’s mumbled reply from my position a few feet behind Nina.

  “When will she return? Shall I wait for her?” Nina asked.

  The servant spoke no words, dipped his head and gently levered the door closed. The house was sealed now, its thick walls impenetrable to Nina. With reluctant tread she stepped back into the lane and faced me. The day’s heat rose already from the dust and beaded sweat atop her lip.

  “I thought I saw her,” Nina said glumly. “Running across the courtyard.”

  The commitment of Chang’s family to modernity and emancipation was writ in flesh and bone in their daughter’s freedom to wriggle her toes and roll her ankles; Chang had escaped the common fate of bound feet, and was, I suppose, quite unlike her Chinese peers. That was what made the friendship of Chang and Nina, two cranes amongst their respective hordes of chickens, so successful.

  “I’m sorry, Nina. You must be terribly disappointed,” I said. She nodded heavily. “Well, as we are so close to your home perhaps you might like to collect some more of your belongings. Then the morning is not lost.” Chang lived only two lanes west of the Wards.

  “I suppose so,” Nina sighed.

  Languidly we walked together, following east the twists of the hutung, noting the unusual silence of the streets, the paucity of life around us. No old women gossiped in doorways, no rag-and-bone men rang their bells, no familiar click of mahjong tiles sounded beneath the curved eaves. And then, the sound of quick strides. We turned to see Chang, hair loose about her shoulders, long dress pooling around her feet as she ran.

  “Chang. They told me you were not at home,” Nina said.

  “They won’t let me see you.” Chang came to a halt, her chest rattled by short, shallow breaths. “Father says it is too dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous?” Nina repeated.

  “To consort with foreigners.” Chang’s eyes swept the length of the lane and she chewed her bottom lip. A rabbit, I thought, innocent and true, but capable just the same of fear. “Nina, this shall pass, I know it shall, and aft
er the bitter shall come the sweet. But I fear I may not be able to see you for some time. ”

  “Chang…” Nina faltered. “Father and I are staying in the British Legation,” she said finally.

  “Good,” Chang said. “You ought to be very careful. When the Boxers have been defeated all shall be as it was before. Hopefully soon enough that we might still take the boats out on Houhai.”

  Nina reached for her friend’s hand, gripped it tightly. The previous summer she had spent many breezy afternoons on the lakes with her friend, wide-brimmed parasols shading them from the sun as they sailed in dallying circles on the placid waters. Chang pressed a kiss against Nina’s cheek, and waved shyly to me.

  “Take care.” And then she was gone, running quickly in the direction from which she had come.

  Nina looked wordlessly at me and it was in that moment that I witnessed the fear seize her. Its shadow may have crossed her before, when the troops arrived in their neatly-pressed uniforms, buttons tightly fastened and shining for war, when the blade of the man’s knife had glinted in the sunlight yesterday, its tip sharp and unforgiving, when Nina woke in Fairchild’s house and felt the bed beneath her strange and uncomfortable. Yet it was only now, as she stood before me in this neighboring lane, its every brick and gutter as familiar as the lines of her own palm, the figure of her friend vanished, the houses all around shuttered and mute, that true fear descended, choking and fetid upon her. This girl, who had known no home beyond Peking, this girl, whose tongue danced effortlessly to the tones of Chinese, this girl was to be avoided by the people she had known all of her life. With wild eyes she reached for my arm and together we sped towards her home, our fear carrying us from a beast we could not name.

  Nina, Nicholas and I walked together to the Fairchild house for dinner. Nicholas had returned home for the day to continue working on his current book despite my insistence that he would be safer within the Legation Quarter. As long as the Boxers did not sound their drums or twirl their knives during daylight hours, Nicholas said, he would return to his study as normal. Given my fervent determination to remain in my own house I could not protest his decision too strongly.

  We joined the other guests around the dining table, where our pre-dinner conversation concerned, as one might expect, the Boxers. Mention was made of an Italian couple due to join us, a countess and her diplomat husband, but talk focused on anything but our enemy withered quickly in the febrile, expectant atmosphere of those first days in the Legation Quarter. Lillian told us of a visit she had paid to the student interpreters; she had learned that they were to be given leave of their lessons for some time, with the understanding that they might well be expected to take up arms. She was lamenting James Millington’s poor backhand at tennis, suggesting he might lack the coordination for battle, when La Contessa came into view. Standing respectfully behind Oscar Fairchild, her hands clasped neatly by her waist, she wore a silk dress of deep forest green. Her figure was full and exuberant and her very presence overwhelmed that of the man by her side, slight as he was, with a sharp-cut nose and an expression of earnest nervousness.

  “I present to you Mr Pietro Mancini and his wife, La Contessa Chiara,” Fairchild said.

  “Good evening,” La Contessa said, her accent rising and falling over each syllable like fingertips upon the keys of a flute.

  “Buona sera,” I said amidst the chorus of good evenings, and thrilled as Chiara rewarded me with a smile both indulgent and dazzling.

  Oscar gestured for the couple to be seated. I watched, enchanted, as La Contessa lowered herself precisely into the seat next to Lillian, arranging her skirts around her with collected purposefulness. Once settled, she rose again suddenly with sharp, feline movement.

  “I forgot,” she said. “We have some gifts.” She left the room, dress cascading around her, each crease glimmering as it caught the light. Pietro Mancini shook his head as she left.

  “My wife…She is a little disturbed,” he explained. “There have been many problems in our Legation. The servants…” He pulled his finger in swift motion across his throat. “All of them. She is very happy to leave. Thank you for your kindness and hospitality.”

  “What are you saying, Pietro?” La Contessa returned with a bottle of champagne in each hand, dust obscuring the French names printed on their labels. She tapped the door closed with a gracefully extended leg. “We had so many in the cellar I thought I must bring some. Oh, Mr Fairchild, please be a darling and ask the servants for some glasses. We shall make a toast to peace!”

  What pleasure it brings me now to recall the unrepentant display of life performed that first night by Chiara, her spirit vivid and undeniable, her essence frivolous and light, under the disapproving glare of Beatrice Moore and the austere portrait of Queen Victoria that looked imperiously down upon us all. La Contessa insisted upon filling each glass herself, seeming neither to notice nor to care when drops of champagne dribbled and pooled over the linen tablecloth, dismissing the servants when they offered assistance. Perhaps she did not perceive Beatrice Moore dabbing at the spilled droplets. More likely she preferred not to pay her any heed.

  “Alla salute,” La Contessa crowed when all glasses were full. “Cento di questi giorni!”

  When dinner was finished and each glass was dry, Nicholas announced that he would retire for the night. Oscar invited Pietro and I to join him in his study for port, and the women moved to the drawing room, where La Contessa promised them Swiss chocolates rescued from her abandoned pantry. Phoebe Franklin declined the offer, saying she had no interest in fiddling while Rome burned and left instead to check the conditions of some of the Chinese Christian refugees housed elsewhere in the Legation Quarter.

  Oscar’s library was low-lit and decorated in comfortably dark, masculine tones. I felt quite at home as I received a glass of port and allowed myself to skim the titles on his shelves. The spines of the most serious tomes were unbent, but one volume upon his desk appeared well-thumbed.

  “Far From The Madding Crowd,” I said, touching the corner of the novel.

  “How pleasant I found it to lose myself in those bucolic English scenes when the heat of the Subcontinent raged,” Oscar replied. “And each time I read it I fall in love once more with Bathsheba Everdene.”

  “And how does Mrs Fairchild feel about that?” I asked.

  Oscar gave a low laugh and lit his pipe.

  “She was something of a Bathsheba herself before we married,” he said. “Violet was widowed at a very young age, you see, and I feared no suitor would ever win her affections again.”

  I was tempted to press further; one never knows when personal information regarding a man with official capacities may prove useful, but Pietro Mancini interrupted, demanding Oscar set out the British government’s position on the protection of missionaries in the countryside. We sat in a loose circle, and talked of the latest Boxer developments. Each new day only brought more of the same: reports of atrocities in the hinterlands, sightings of Boxers ever closer to the Legation Quarter, the arrival of more Chinese Christians to Peking and official befuddlement across the representatives of all nations about what exactly ought to the done next. Pietro wore his customary expression of stalk-eyed surprise; a bird-like, small man, he seemed perpetually startled by events. Yet it was possible to read even in his face a profound sense of shock when Oscar suggested we call for Nina to join our discussion.

  “Miss Ward? Whatever for?” I asked.

  “The Wards are experts on the Chinese, are they not? They live amongst them, and Mr Ward has written profoundly about their belief systems and philosophy. What’s more, Miss Ward is most frank in her opinions,” Oscar said.

  Pietro protested that we ought to call for Nicholas instead, an opinion I happened to share, but Oscar, undeterred, summoned a servant and demanded Miss Ward be brought to the library. This was a most unusual suggestion. While women were permitted, perhaps even
encouraged, to speak of the Boxer threat in the most general terms of unease and anxiety, they were seldom included in conversations of strategy and defense. Only women of God, who through chastity and hardship had made themselves almost akin to men, were allowed within such circles, and even then only when the occasion called for their particular brand of expertise. War and politics were men’s matters; publicly we declared that women were excluded to protect their dignity and prevent their becoming afraid, while reason unspoken ruled that no woman would have anything of import to contribute to such discussions. For a senior British official to call upon a young woman of no special position was so very unconventional that I found myself rather intrigued by Oscar Fairchild. His hitherto pleasant and upstanding character was shrouded suddenly in an elusive, unorthodox air and suggested to me he possessed rather more layers of personality to unravel than I had first estimated.

  Nina followed the servant into the room with precise, careful step, her brow lightly creased.

  “Thank you, Lin. You may leave,” Oscar said to the servant, who bowed and retreated. The First Secretary turned his attention to Nina with an easy smile.

  “Miss Ward,” he began.

  “Perhaps we ought to ask for the girl’s father,” Pietro said in sharp, but somewhat pleading, tone. “He is the scholar, after all.”

  “I shouldn’t like to disturb him,” Oscar replied mildly. “Besides, in my admittedly limited experience, Miss Ward has no trouble speaking her mind. She is a native of this place, Mr Mancini, but one who is not against us. That makes her, in my judgement at least, one of the most valuable individuals in Peking at present. Miss Ward, kindly take a seat.”

  Nina, hesitant, remained standing.

  “Miss Ward, we wouldn’t wish you to trouble you,” Pietro Mancini continued.

  Oscar raised a hand to silence him.

  “Miss Ward, I wish to ask your counsel,” he said.

  I gestured for Nina to take a seat by me, with a grateful smile she lowered herself by my side.