by Kane, Clare
“Rather unpleasant, is it not?” one said as we approached. We murmured our agreement. “A few dozen Chinese already arrived this morning. Last night was terrible, they say.”
Despite the destruction that surrounded its borders, the Legation Quarter boasted a semblance of routine in the absence of mutilated corpses and collapsed buildings, and yet already it felt crowded, constricted, as though too much humanity existed between its walls.
“I had meant to say,” La Contessa said slowly. “You needn’t worry. God decided I am not to have children. I once thought that a curse. Now I see it is a blessing.”
I said nothing, and simply led her back to the Fairchild home. As I made to leave her at the doorway, I selfishly worried that the danger she had witnessed might render her somewhat reluctant to repeat our coupling. But as I turned to leave her hand snaked towards mine, the sweet ovals of her fingertips brushing against my knuckles.
“Thank you, Mr Scott,” she said with a delightfully impish smile.
“Arridiverchi,” I replied.
In my long career chasing disaster I had witnessed some impressive fires, but this, this was the most spectacular blaze I had ever seen. A day or two following my assignation with La Contessa, the sixteenth of June or thereabouts, the Boxers unleashed their full, terrifying power by unceremoniously razing the commercial heart of Peking’s Chinese city. They set out to torch any “foreign” establishment, and did so according to a loose definition that included both shops that sold imported goods and those that explicitly catered to foreigners; such vague definition permitted the Boxers to destroy thousands of businesses. They burned them all: the jewelers, the furriers, the antiques and curio-sellers, the bookshops. Once again, the Chinese paid the foreign price: those who had swayed with the wind as it blew towards the West found themselves exposed and vulnerable, with neither protection nor sympathy forthcoming from their customers. The fire announced itself first in abstractedly elegant plumes of smoke, great slender flames that undulated over the merchants’ quarter, but soon these converged to form a menacing, unbroken awning above all of Peking. As usual, I ran against the current, racing past the crowds that surged from the direction of fire, and sprinted towards the very heart of the blaze, imprinting on my mind the blistered corpses I saw along the way, the burned bodies of traders caught unawares amongst singed furs and blackened silks. A small collection of European soldiers had been dispatched to the scene where they milled awkwardly, coughing gently, fingers worrying the triggers of their guns.
“Don’t see how we can shoot a fire,” one of them commented as I slowed my pace to observe the smouldering frame of a former bookshop.
“Let’s find some Boxers then,” a young British soldier replied. He stood with his hips thrust forward, his eyes on the smoke-filled horizon. “You coming, Scott?”
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, coating my lips with ash.
“Naturally,” I said, experiencing a sense of boyish pride that the young soldier knew my name.
The British soldier, whom I learned later was named Henry Cagill, led a band of variously uniformed troops behind him through streets clogged with smoke. The men ordered to protect the Legation Quarter were too few and too young to do much more than carry out patrols around the area’s walls, designed more for show than for security, and they were more than content to follow someone so clearly disposed to lead. Cagill came to an abrupt stop; his arm in the air brought us to heel. We fell into muddled lines behind him, the soldiers readied their guns.
“Found them,” Cagill said under his breath.
He faced a modest house, the door of which had been knocked down to leave a gaping space through which I perceived a dozen Chinese kneeling on the dusty floor. Their hands were bound behind their backs, their mouths gagged. Six Boxers with proud red turbans wrapped around their heads paced before their captives. One crouched before a man whose gag hung loosely by the side of his bruised face, exposing a swollen mouth.
“Say it!” the Boxer commanded.
The man rolled his lips over his teeth and did not utter a word.
“Say it! I am a worshipper of foreign devils. Say it!”
The man jutted his chin forward and remained silent.
“I believe in a false God. Say it!” The Boxer’s hand jerked towards the sword by his side.
Silently Cagill raised his gun, and took a perfect, clean shot at the Boxer. The bullet he set forth landed in the dead centre of the Boxer’s forehead. The prisoners emitted screams from behind their gags; the other Boxers leapt to action. Momentarily they entranced me with their sweeping arm movements, their graceful, circular kicks, moving before us a demonic dance troupe.
Cagill punched my shoulder.
“Here.” He handed me his gun. “You take one.”
I held the gun, searching for a point of focus. The movements of the Boxers were fluid, rapid, their limbs blurred until I could not tell where one man’s leg ended and another’s arm began. All were young and slight, their sagging robes revealed slender, almost concave torsos. These were not practiced warriors, but they were young, and enjoyed all the benefits such perceived distance from death brings a man: speed, foolhardiness, an unsubstantiated belief in one’s own immortality. I selected one for no reason beyond the sharp, unpleasant angles of his face. He was not an easy target; quickly he darted back and forth, twisting a two-headed blade between bony fingers.
“Go,” Cagill urged.
The Boxers had ceased their menacing dance and charged towards us. I pulled the trigger. The Boxer staggered, attempted a desperate lunge towards me before falling to his knees, desperately his knife sliced at the air. Emboldened, others in our number began to fire, offering unfocused shots that hollowed the walls and pierced the furniture of that humble home. The Boxers scattered, abandoning the house. Still, my focus remained fixed upon him, my Boxer, the man who died slowly amongst it all. His body, the flesh he had been told was indestructible, clung grotesquely to life, grasping for another chance.
“Well done.” Cagill’s voice broke my concentration. “Here, help us untie them.”
The soldiers moved quickly to unbind the prisoners’ wrists and free them of their gags. One weeping woman wrapped herself around the legs of an Italian solider.
“Where do we take them?” the Italian asked.
“To the Su palace,” I said. “Let me show you the way.”
The sunlight was a balm as I gulped in the smoky air on the street. I ought to have felt victorious; instead dullness overwhelmed me, a vague, nameless nausea. I had followed war around the world, stood on the dividing line between right and wrong and every shade of justification in between, I had recorded every act of senseless barbarism, each final breath, yet until now I had mostly succeeded in remaining an observer, avoiding the role of actor in my own story.
“You forgot something,” Cagill said, coming close behind me. He thrust a frayed red rag into my hand. “A souvenir.”
We led our begrimed, bloody refugees to the Legation Quarter. They approached with awe, marveling at the young uniformed men who stood at its gates and wondering at the ordered grid of its streets. The Chinese city may have been reduced to smoldering rubble, but here our Oriental imitation of the village green lived on. The entrance to Prince Su’s palace was quiet when we arrived; a cheerful hubbub came from further inside. I led the rescued Christians towards the sound, noting their murmured surprise as we passed collections of jade carvings and landscape paintings. For these escaped villagers, the simple wooden construction of the local church was likely the limit of any splendor they had witnessed. We found the residents gathered in the central courtyard, grouped around an American minister who stood above two kneeling Chinese youngsters. The pair looked to be children of tender age, their bodies were thin and hard as reeds, while their faces were round and soft. The girl wore plain dress of muddy brown and her calloused toes
peeked through the broken seams of battered shoes. Yet around her shoulders was wrapped a dash of silk in brilliant bridal red. Her lips, too, had been painted crimson. The pair held hands, their eyes locked. The minister began the vows in Mandarin.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God…”
I looked up at the sky, saw that it was dense still with black smoke. I was the only one. The others, the beleaguered, the broken who had been forced from their homes, whose villages had crumbled to dust, were saved, at least momentarily, by the simple majesty of this union. The crowd clapped when the vows ended, cheering and laughing as the young groom embraced his wife with juvenile bashfulness.
Then began the unmistakable strains of the erhu, a stringed instrument able to produce the most wonderful or terrible of sounds depending on the talents of the one who played it. A member of Prince Su’s harem knelt by the new couple, her fingers moving smoothly, expertly over the strings, her head bent in concentration, an elaborate headdress swaying in time with the music she played. Another of his women, dressed in midnight silk, stood from the depths of the crowd and sang in sweet accompaniment. I moved towards the exit as the ceremony drew to a close, and heard someone call my name. Turning, I saw Phoebe Franklin wave at me from a corner of the courtyard, where she sat surrounded by small, bare-legged children.
“Mr Scott.” She stood as I approached. “I see you have brought more friends to us.”
“Yes.” I looked back at the group of freed captives. They were splintered now, mixing with the others, asking questions, sharing stories, enquiring as to whether anyone had seen a man by the name of Wang or a young girl called Mei.
“We found them in the Chinese city, about to be executed by Boxers. They have survived quite an ordeal.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she said, hooking her arm around mine and steering me away from the children. “Thank you for securing the palace for our people. Such kindness shan’t be forgotten, Mr Scott, I can assure you of that.”
“Oh, it was nothing. I have known Prince Su a while,” I said.
“Do not let kindness and truth leave you, bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart,” she said, her tongue sliding easily over words often repeated.
“I must be on my way,” I said.
“Wasn’t the ceremony beautiful? God unites, even as man fragments,” she continued.
I agitated to depart; such industrious cheerfulness at a time of tragedy irritated me. Did Phoebe and her flock not see reality? And if they did, was it faith or ignorance that meant they did they not fold under the shadows of her broad, heavy wings?
“They are very young,” she said. “Perhaps they are too young. The boy told us he wished to protect the girl as best he could. A formal union, we believed, might be a source of strength for both.”
“I must be on my way. Good afternoon, Mrs Franklin.”
By the time night ought to have fallen, the sky still shone in a sinister imitation of day. I stopped by Fairchild’s for dinner: a host of motivations, including the disappearance of my cook, the desire to speak with both Nina and Nicholas and, not least, the promise of seeing La Contessa, allowed me to reason that such regular visits to a house at which I was not a formal guest were warranted. We dined in the eerie glow of the extended day; the candles spread the length of the table were left unlit.
“I must apologize for the rather small portions,” Oscar said after we were served paltry helpings of steak and mushrooms. “Supplies were already low and the fire has further disturbed trade.”
I watched Fairchild closely. I hoped for some evidence of internal struggle, I wished to see some affirmation of his embarrassment, at least a modicum of discomfort, but the diplomat appeared just as before: suitably affable for a man of his position, implacably polite, decorously modest, the shadows under his eyes only confirmed his role as our weary protector, the great strategist denied sleep in the service of his countrymen.
“Quite understandable,” Pietro Mancini said warmly, lifting his glass. “To our most generous host.”
“Hear, hear.” I too raised my wine, glancing from Pietro to his wife, who sat silently beside him. La Contessa nodded, and the symmetry of her features, from the knit of her eyebrows to the sweet bow of her lips, offered me a muted thrill, afforded an easing of tension after a trying day.
“Oh, no. I’m afraid I’m a terrible host. If my wife only knew,” Fairchild said graciously.
Lillian arched her eyebrows, but voiced no rebuke. Instinctively I desired to observe Nina to my right, urged by the need to confirm the narrative that constructed itself in my mind. Would she hold her eyes unblinking, twitch her lips in dismay, or would her features remain placid, cloudless, suggesting a connection between the two of only the most shallow nature? But I could not betray her, could not expose to those smiling adversaries the suspicions my heart harbored, and so I did not glance her way.
“And what of the Chinese?” I asked Fairchild, wishing to banish visions of Oscar’s wife, with her warm politeness and impeccable, trained manners, from the minds of his guests. “Surely they shall try to stop this wanton destruction?”
“I wish, Mr Scott, that I might tell you what the authorities plan to do,” Fairchild said, taking care over each word. “At present I may only assure you that we are doing everything within our power to protect all foreign residents. Reading the signals such as they are from the Qing government, I hazard that we might feel fairly positive.”
“Well then, why have they not extinguished the fire?” Lillian asked. “Look.” She gestured to the window through which light poured as at the warmest peak of a summer’s afternoon.
“They are trying, Miss Price,” Fairchild said patiently. “The Chinese fire brigades were somewhat underprepared for an event of this magnitude.”
“This ought to herald a change,” Nicholas said, setting his glass upon the table after a long, full sip. “The Qing must respond to such aggression.”
“There was a wedding today,” Phoebe Franklin offered, diverting the conversation. I looked down at my lap and caught sight of the Boxer’s red turban, its corners escaping from my pocket. I eased it out, turned it between my fingers, crushed it into a ball and, leaning forward slightly, I passed it under the table, draping it across La Contessa’s lap. She shifted only a little as my fingers brushed her thighs. Her expression remained absolutely unaltered.
“How lovely,” I watched her say to Phoebe Franklin. “A little joy amidst the terror.”
I did not look away as she glanced down, as her forehead furrowed momentarily. I appreciated the curl of her lips as she recognized the origin of my offering. She raised her head to look squarely at me and offered the reward of a small smile.
Following the meal, I endeavored to speak with Nicholas.
“Really, Alistair, I have rather a lot of reading to do this evening,” he said, before reluctantly leading me to his room. How strange he looked in that small space of low ceilings, its walls crowded with paintings of ships at sea and bucolic pastures of green and grey, his collection of books littered across every surface. The room seemed to diminish him, the intellectual giant so serene in his own habitual light and spare surroundings. He removed a hardbound dictionary of Classical Chinese from the bed and allowed me space to sit.
“Nicholas,” I began.
“Please, Alistair, speak a little more quietly.”
“But everyone is downstairs.”
Nicholas shook his head uncertainly, looked towards the closed door.
“Have you spoken to Nina?” I insisted.
“I have been very busy,” he said vaguely. “And she is so rarely alone.”
“But you must, Nicholas.”
He smiled wistfully, picked up a book and turned it over in his hands. He was a good man, a loyal friend, a devoted academic and undoubtedly a well-intentioned f
ather. But Nicholas was not a practical man; he cared little for worldly matters, he dismissed gossip as frivolous and therefore harmless. He had been abandoned by his British wife, a woman of whom he never spoke, and had been quite unconcerned since then with foreign society in Peking. I may have looked upon most of the city’s European population with lightly concealed disdain, but my contact with them was at least regular and meaningful enough to remind me of why I had abandoned the old country in the first place. I may not have admired their practices, but I was able at least to understand my people, and to recognize the roots of a scandal before its first blossom. Naturally the pruning of such infant scandals was commonly practiced by women, but in the absence of a mother or sister figure, a father would have to make do for Nina.
“Nicholas, I understand that this might be an uncomfortable subject to raise with your daughter, but you must think of Nina’s future,” I pressed.
“I think of nothing else,” he said firmly. “I think of nothing but whether she shall live to see tomorrow. I think of the Boxers and what they might do to her, daughter of China, if she were to fall into their brutal grip. I think of the terrible things these people may say of my dear Nina, and I believe that your desperate whisperings to me in various corners of this house shall do nothing to cease such talk.”
His voice was low, controlled and uncannily, uncharacteristically cold.
“Nicholas, it is precisely because of the gravity of this situation that I so desperately whisper to you, as you put it. If you might only speak with Nina then I would have no need to do so.”
Wearily my friend exhaled and opened the book in his hands.
“Nina is my daughter. I know her, and I know what is right for her. Good night, Alistair.”
I stood abruptly, crossed that small, cluttered room. I paused at the door, watched Nicholas place his reading glasses upon the end of his nose, sensed his proud refusal to look in my direction. I wondered what more I might say, whether I ought to remind him that a small fire is easily extinguished. But I only bowed and left, closing the door behind me with finality.
