by Kane, Clare
“And what of it?” I said. “One cannot pretend to love every man who makes such a declaration.”
“No, but… he left. He came out to the verandah this morning and thanked us all very much for our hospitality, told us that he wished to return to the student residence.”
The women of the Fairchild residence at first protested this idea, relenting when James insisted no harm would come to him during a short walk across the British Legation. Naturally they had weighed the wisdom of his departure with no knowledge of the bloody events that had taken place on the streets of Peking that day, even within the ringed defense of the Legation Quarter. Had they known of the day’s happenings, without doubt the hitherto most horrifying of the Boxer standoff, they would not have even remotely entertained the possibility of an injured party stepping out into that scorched battlefield.
“Oh, Nina,” I said. “It is not your fault. Mr Millington was foolish to leave the house unaccompanied and foolish to speak to you as he did last night, but you mustn’t blame yourself. No one was to know what would come to pass in the Legation Quarter today.”
Nina nodded, automatically and without feeling.
“Please, Nina.” I told her then of James’ actions at the racecourse, explained that he had murdered a Boxer then repainted as a regular citizen by the Chinese, repurposed for diplomatic leverage, and that he had become a most valuable target to the enemy. “Any Boxer, any indignant Chinese, would have wanted him dead. Walking the streets with that distinctive laceration across his cheek, his limp still discernible even as he ran, he might have been killed tomorrow or the next day or in three months’ time. Mr Millington’s foolhardiness sealed his fate, and you, my dear, are utterly blameless.”
“You are too kind to me,” Nina said, both her hands reaching for mine. We sat a moment, our fingers entwined, her head bowed.
“Does Miss Price know what Mr Millington said to you last night?”
“No,” Nina said. “She had been so ill-tempered that I did not know what I might say to her, and so I waited a while reading in the drawing room. She was asleep when I returned to bed and knows nothing but that I went to see him and then today…”
“You have done nothing wrong,” I said, “but I believe it quite correct for you to keep his words a secret, for the sake of Mr Millington’s dignity as much as anything else. Am I the only one who knows of this?”
Nina’s eyes darted away from me, she snaked one hand out from under mine.
“Nina?” I looked at her, tense and fragile, her emotions wrought not in her expressionless face but in the hard, crooked angles of her body, in her defensive stature. How difficult the past days had been for her, how ill-suited she was to her environment, and how little I wished those women, the wives and missionaries, the citizens of a small, self-satisfied empire, to possess any weapon to use against her. Of course Nina was not to blame for James’ death, but it has never ceased to astonish me how quickly, how desperately people engaged in battle search for enemies on their own side. Against a formidable, unfathomable foe, it is easier to turn against one more familiar, it is more comforting to draw divisions along habitual lines, rather than to name one’s true opponent, to recognize his existence and face his vanquishing power. “Your father?” I pressed.
“Yes,” she said finally.
“And where is he now?”
“He said only work might calm his mind, and so he went to his room,” Nina said.
I suggested Nina go to fetch her father for dinner, promising that I would stay for the meal so she need not face Lillian Price alone. Weakly she attempted a smile and I followed her through to the drawing room, aware of the other women’s eyes on her as she walked to the stairs with self-conscious gait.
“Mr Scott,” La Contessa said, sudden and direct. “How are your food provisions?”
“Fine,” I started, before recognizing the suggestion in her eyes, the possibilities written in the arch of her brows. “For now,” I redressed myself. “I suppose I am running a little low.”
“I thought as much. A man alone. I’m sure food is the last thing on your mind. Won’t you take some of our supplies? My husband and I have so much and Mr Fairchild cares for us so well here. Please, come with me.”
I followed, aware that Phoebe Franklin watched us, her expression quietly comprehending. How could this untouched woman perceive what the others appeared to miss entirely? La Contessa walked with purpose, her body held at sufficient distance to give me pause, to cause me to wonder momentarily if I had misunderstood her intentions. But when we crossed into the room she shared with her husband Chiara turned to me with alacrity, hurriedly pressing her lips against mine.
“Mr Scott,” she said, drawing back from me. “We need a plan. We have no time now, and this is not an easy place. Your home would be better, no?”
“Yes,” I said. “If it still stands after today.”
“So, we are agreed.”
She took a step back and I reached forward to kiss her again.
“Now we must return,” she said, coyly rejecting my approach. “You shall tell them you have invited me to see your collection of… I have no idea. African hunting bows? What does a man like you keep at home? You shall collect me tomorrow.” She turned from me, reaching into a box by the bed. “Here.” She passed me a package of dried fruit.
In a charade of naturalness we traced our steps back down the hallway, meeting Nina and Nicholas, who appeared still stunned, stupefied, at the foot of the stairs. I told the assembled guests that I had been provided with vital nourishment and in return had offered to show La Contessa my collected African artifacts. Beatrice Moore mumbled about the safety of leaving the Legation Quarter, but her protest was forgotten as the front door opened and we heard the chiming voices of a pair of servants.
“Good evening, Mr Fairchild.”
Large strides. Aggressive pace. He was approaching. And then nothing. The sound of feet pounding up the stairs. A door slammed.
“I suspect Mr Fairchild might not join us for dinner,” Nicholas said. “It has been a most difficult day.”
“Yes,” Lillian said, and I noticed the glass in her hand was now empty. “Especially when Mr Fairchild was already so tired.” She smiled bitterly then, and as her gaze settled upon Nina a small victory colored her doleful, blue eyes.
VI
I set out shortly after breakfast to collect La Contessa, my steps towards Fairchild’s home accompanied by a lingering scent of burning, that rich, woody, at times almost pleasant fragrance, tinged with the pungent sweetness of decay. Beside me walked Speculation; once more, my constant companion had rouged her cheeks, painted her lips and commanded my attention. Coquettishly she crossed my path, archly she teased my thoughts, compelled me to return to the night of Queen Victoria’s birthday party when I had unknowingly set in motion a chain of events that led to Lillian Price’s pernicious comment the night before. With frustration I wondered what invisible gestures had unfolded since my first meddling with destinies, what words had been spoken, sweet, low and unheard, between dear, lost Nina and the steady Mr Fairchild. The assembled group had carefully sidestepped Lillian’s comment, following its devastating delivery with discussions of the evening’s dinner menu, and Phoebe Franklin had valiantly filled the terrible, scraping silence at the table with tales of the plight of rural refugees, while La Contessa poured wine for each guest in joyously exuberant measures. Nina was withdrawn, but unyielding; and perhaps her fatigued expression betrayed no secret feeling to the others beyond our common despair. And yet to me, Nina’s turmoil was transparent as a carp in a pond, flitting back and forth, tail spasming in panic, fins fluttering helplessly under threat. Jaggedly she cut the roast chicken upon her plate, with lightly trembling grip she held Fairchild’s polished silver cutlery, with tensed, curled fingers she lifted the embossed napkin from her lap to dab at downturned mouth. I watched this per
formance, this caricature of a normality entirely new to Nina, this unmastered impersonation of a person who existed on a diet of boiled potatoes and idle gossip, and I swelled with pride. How brave the men of the Legation Quarter considered themselves armed with guns against an enemy wielding only swords and passionate convictions, and how easily they would dismiss such quiet courage as displayed by Nina, surrounded by close, hostile foes, naked of armor, her weakness exposed.
Quickly had the assembled guests retired for the night, the efforts of feigned quotidian conversation too demanding even for such seasoned operators as La Contessa. Nicholas had walked with me to the door, leaving Nina alone in the drawing room.
“Nicholas,” I began. He raised a hand to silence me. “Please, speak to her,” I continued.
“Not here,” he said urgently. “No, Alistair, not now.”
“I do not know what Miss Price insinuated by her comment,” I said in hoarse whisper by the imposing mahogany of the front door. “Yet you must speak with Nina. I do not understand what happened last night, she has told me too of Mr Millington’s declaration, and I wonder if perhaps Miss Price has confused the two.”
“Mr Millington?” Nicholas frowned, shook his head. “Alistair, I appreciate your intentions, but please, we must speak no more of this now.”
He opened the door, and the night, cloying and thick, settled over us.
“Yi lu ping an,” he said. May the route be peaceful.
I recalled this exchange as I entered the Legation Quarter, my feet treading the same streets, exposed as dusty and charred now in the unforgiving light of day. I wondered, as I nodded to the young guards standing duly by, if it really were Speculation who joined me this morning, or if her plainer-faced cousin Intuition, sure and constant and true, walked by my side. For I knew now that Nina had not told Nicholas of James Millington’s declaration, and yet I remained convinced that she had revealed his words to someone else. Following the incident she had remained in the drawing room, reading, she said, and which particular volume had I so recently spied in her hands? Oscar Fairchild’s preferred novel, Far From The Madding Crowd, the tale of a woman unusual and irresistible to the men of narrow experience who populated her environs. How neatly those fragments of facts, those dimly recollected moments pulled together now, to underpin and expand Lillian Price’s terrible words. Every man who has attempted seduction knows a few of its rules, and I was aware of the effective nature of flattery in literary form, of desire concealed in the intellectual cloak of poetry and prose, of the promise contained in the lending of a slim volume of Wordsworth, in the erotic charge of the shared reading experience. I had colored pink the cheeks of more than one woman with claims of love like a newly-sprung rose, women I had, in the end, not cherished until the seas had run dry. It was then, with the grudging admiration of one who recognizes his own tricks performed with impressive sleight of hand by another, and intense displeasure at such maneuvers being played upon Nina, that I knocked on Fairchild’s door.
La Contessa’s magnificence that morning was a welcome affront to the muted barbarism of the streets. I did not regret my return when I witnessed her posed in the drawing room with regal flair, her hair carefully coiled and arranged, her dress fitted and bustling, her frank beauty, her wild vitality a contrast to Nina, who greeted me in taciturn, weary tones, and Lillian, who in quiet hauteur awarded me only a curt nod.
“Good morning, ladies,” I said to that room of melancholy smiles.
“How is it out there?” Nicholas asked, his fingers twitching over his mustache.
“The Continentals are becoming ever more nervous,” I said, repeating the news I had heard when taking my nightcap with Edward Samuels at the Grand. “The French and Germans are ready to shoot their own shadows. The Austrians, in their infinite wisdom, opened fire last night and succeeded only in taking down some telegraph lines. The Boxers, of course, take the incompetence of the Austrians as further evidence of their powers of invulnerability.”
“Oh, when shall this end?” Lillian said, mournful eyes turned on me. “I cannot bear another day trapped inside like this.”
“Patience,” I counseled. “The troops are on their way.”
La Contessa came to my side, hands clasped by her waist.
“Well, I promised our Italian countess a tour of my Africa collection,” I said. “So we must be on our way.”
“Are you sure it is quite safe?” Nicholas began to protest. I attempted to speak with my eyes, to convey silently to him that he ought not to question me further. “Go safely,” he said finally.
I was by then a great admirer of married women, and the glimpses I had had of La Contessa further convinced me of this long-held preference for women sworn by oath to other men. How they pleased me with their mature abandonment of girlish pleasures, their conversations exempt from the half-sincere judgments of others’ faults. Honesty compels me to admit that other men’s wives had not been strangers to me, and to recognize that despite the fleeting delight such women had provided, not one had boasted the force of personality or exquisite pulchritude of La Contessa. And yet, for all her bravado, she held my arm closely as we crossed the border of the Legation Quarter, and I perceived her apprehension in the wrap of her fingers around the cradle of my elbow. I had seen enough war by then to know how to meet the bloodied corpses; I never so much as glanced at their faces, never allowed myself to imagine their names, and I ignored the bodies on the ground, focused instead on hailing a rickshaw. Chiara struggled to aver her eyes from the bodies, those evaporated lives paused in expressions of agony, their limbs askew and bent at unnatural angles.
“Alistair,” she breathed as we skirted two young girls, both with their hair pulled in tight pigtails. “There are dozens of them!”
“Look ahead,” I said. “Apart from anything, you put yourself at risk when you don’t look where you are going. The Boxers might approach from anywhere.”
“But they are children! Women!”
“Christians,” I said soberly. Her hand slipped down my arm to meet my palm, and like that we grimly, stoically walked the length of the street, looking for all the world like a married couple as we ascended a lonely rickshaw. We finally reached my home, and I was surprised that no servant came to the gate. I opened it myself, and Chiara stumbled as we entered the courtyard. I reached to catch her, my hands firm on her waist. She straightened herself.
“Is it safe for you to remain here?” she asked.
“Probably not,” I conceded. “But I have no intention of being held prisoner in the Legation Quarter.”
We crossed my modest courtyard and I pushed open the door to the main house, feeling the welcome darkness, the familiar coolness of my home. La Contessa stepped inside, her back to the wall, her eyes quickly taking in the surroundings: the shelves lined with books, the desk piled with papers, the still-open bottle of whisky.
“Would you like some?” I suggested, moving towards the desk. “Calm your nerves.”
She followed me across the room, but as I reached for the bottle she knocked my hand away, and turned my head to face her.
“Alistair,” she said softly. Her nails dug into my cheek; the pain was quick and spirited. She grabbed me hungrily and we kissed, arms and legs entangled. She pulled off her dress, my fingers fumbled on the ties of her corset. I unbuttoned my shirt, watching her, thankful to have found a complicit soul. Never is the desire for life stronger than in the shadows of death. We made love hurriedly, without elegance, pulling apart sharply when the deed was done. Then I reached for her once more, placing a last kiss upon her lips.
“Thank you,” I said, turning from her to dress myself.
“I feel better now,” she said. Nimbly she replaced her clothes and settled herself before the desk, scanning my papers. “What’s this?” She lifted one sheet, holding it stiff between her fingers, as I poured us both two small measures of whisky. She took t
he drink from me, not looking up from my words.
“Oh, that.” I pulled the paper quickly from her hands. “Don’t worry. I have not written a story.”
Naturally I did not promise that I would not, one day, write the story.
“They beheaded him?”
“You mustn’t say anything to the women. We took him to a church.”
She drained her glass.
“That was good of you. Those bodies on the street…just left there. In pieces. Not even human.”
I kissed her forehead.
“You mustn’t dwell on it. People think wars are won with weapons when victory really lies in the mind,” I said. “Let me walk you back. I ought to visit the Germans, see if they’ve calmed since yesterday.”
We discovered my Number One Boy in the courtyard, warily circling its perimeter. Although he appeared unsure, his display of loyalty moved me. He had been with me since my first days in China; long before I came to Peking he had accompanied my travels through Shantung in those first days of forgetting and regret.
“You’re still here,” I said.
“The others have left,” he said, dry and severe. “They say it is too dangerous to stay.”
La Contessa smiled warmly towards him, but he did not acknowledge her.
“I shall come home shortly,” I said to the servant, and wondered if he would be present upon my return.
I offered La Contessa my hand as we left. She did not hesitate in taking it, pressing her cold palm hard against mine as we rode back towards to the Legation Quarter.
“That body…that person,” she said at one moment. “It moves! The body moves.”
“Keep walking,” I said. “Remember it is in the mind.”
“We must go back. If we can save one person-”
“Chiara.” I pulled on her wrist and we let our hands slip out of their tense union as we neared the Legation Quarter gates. I paid the rickshaw coolie his exorbitant price, and we nodded at a pair of youthful French soldiers, guns hoisted over their shoulders, guarding our tiny patch of empire.
