Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  Chiara knocked gently. I opened the door and we faced each other for a moment.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said finally.

  “The pleasure is mine.” She pushed past me and sat on the bed, removing her shoes with one careful hand, unbuttoning the back of her dress with the other. “My husband shall be in one of those interminable meetings today.” She smiled. “At least I hope it may be interminable…”

  We were becoming increasingly confident and rather less wary. At first we had worried about causing suspicion when we met, but Pietro Mancini’s preoccupation with the ongoing ministerial negotiations and the concerns of the other inhabitants of the Fairchild residence for their own survival meant our fears of being discovered had all but disappeared. We felt, as lovers so often do, that our secret moments together were noble and majestic, that we were protected somehow from the dangers ordinary people might face.

  Nevertheless, when a swift, strong rapping sounded at the door, Chiara started.

  “Who?” she whispered. I shook my head. Edward was a professional; there was no way he would allow anyone to disturb me. I motioned to Chiara, already naked, to hide behind the screen by the side of the bed. She gathered up her dress and stole behind the divider of swooping birds and drooping willows. I couldn’t help but glance at her elegant buttocks as they disappeared.

  “Alistair.” It was Edward who waited on the other side of the door, his stocky form filling the frame. “I am very sorry to disturb you, I know you must be hard at work. I thought you should know.” He looked both ways down the corridor. “May I?”

  I beckoned him into the room. He stepped inside, the floorboards groaning beneath his feet.

  “Von Ketteler has died. He was close to the Tsungli Yamen when they across some Manchu soldiers…”

  “Manchus? Not Boxers?” I asked.

  “No. Imperial soldiers. There was some crossfire…He died.”

  “Christ.” I sank down onto the bed, not bothering to embarrass myself over the wrinkled sheets or the sight of my discarded socks on the floor. “So the old Empress Dowager wants war. She has turned her soldiers not against the Boxers, but against us.”

  “Von Ketteler killed that Chinese boy. You might say he had it coming.” Edward sat beside me, placed a hand on my shoulder. We both felt the heat of La Contessa’s unacknowledged presence. “Alistair, if I may… Perhaps you might think about staying here. It would be foolish now to take for granted your safety outside of the Tartar walls. I wouldn’t expect you to pay for the room, I simply…”

  “Thank you, Edward. I am fine at home, though I would like to keep this room for my work. It is most conducive to writing. Very quiet.” I stood and guided him back towards the door. “Thank you for telling me about von Ketteler.”

  “Of course, Alistair.” He closed the door softly behind him.

  “Von Ketteler’s dead?” Chiara emerged from behind the screen, partially dressed and with delightfully tousled hair. “Killed by Manchu soldiers? How can this be?”

  I said nothing, put my arms around her.

  “You should go back now,” I said.

  She left me with a brief, bittersweet kiss.

  It was not long until I saw La Contessa again; deciding once more to stop by Fairchild’s for dinner I encountered her instructing the servants to pour a little more wine in each glass before the guests were seated. Nina and Lillian took their places at the table, but did not speak. Lillian fanned herself listlessly. Nicholas, agitated, circled the room as we waited for the meal to be served.

  “Alistair,” he said suddenly, bringing his latest circle to a halt at the head of the table. “Thank God they seem to have abandoned this nonsense idea of us leaving.”

  “Quite,” I said. Lillian regarded me from the corner of her eye as she rhythmically turned the painted fan in her hand.

  Pietro Mancini announced himself with resigned exhaustion. I noted the purple hue that colored the papery skin under his eyes and found myself, I am sorry to say, quite unable to take the pride I might normally in having stolen the affections of another man’s wife.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I would like to speak to my wife for a moment.”

  Their conversation, which took place on the other side of the door, began in controlled, terse tones before giving way to more voluble accusations. Naturally, the couple expressed themselves in Italian, but the language of discontent is universal, unhappiness is more visceral than grammar.

  “Non ora,” La Contessa pleaded, and the volume of their exchange dipped once more.

  “Poor Contessa,” Lillian said, setting down her fan. “He wishes for her to leave.”

  “To leave?” I repeated.

  “Yes, that is what she told me earlier. Since that German was murdered, he believes it is too dangerous for her to remain here.”

  “Dangerous to remain? Yet it is suicide to leave!” My voice had risen, I cleared my throat. “A most ridiculous idea.”

  Lillian shrugged. “Mrs Moore told me today that she also wishes to leave, and to take her children with her too. Her husband has promised to try to secure her safe passage.”

  “Mr Moore did receive rather a shock,” I said, remembering Benjamin, flushed and gibbering after witnessing the murder of the Japanese. “And yet he is normally so phlegmatic.”

  Chiara returned a moment later, her chest flushed red, one cheek a stinging shade of pink.

  “Mr Fairchild has arrived,” she said in hollow, controlled tones. “I suppose we might eat now.”

  I had seen neither Nicholas nor Nina alone for days. La Contessa had filled my thoughts, time and bed, until I had been disturbed one morning by the delivery of a neat box at the front door. My ashen-faced servant presented it to me, opened its corners with trembling fingers and revealed within its confines a severed head, eyes unblinking, flesh drained of color, its pallor a sickening, sunken grey.

  “Who is that?” I demanded.

  “The man I paid to take your telegraph,” my Number One Boy said, his voice dull and catching. “The Boxers must have found him…”

  I closed the box, thrust it back into the servant’s hands.

  “Take it away from here,” I said severely.

  My boy, unmoved, watched me with downcast eyes.

  “Now. Kuai! Hurry up!”

  He carried the box in his thin arms, walked slowly, reluctantly away from me.

  Dizzied, I walked out to my small courtyard, took great gulps of the dusty air and uselessly closed my eyes against the image of that life, stilled, ended, wrenched from existence. I had seen much death by then, considered myself hardened to the inevitable conclusion of every life, and yet I could not deny the effect of this unknown man’s end upon my spirit. How lightly one lives when one simply observes, and how great a weight life is to bear when one acts, when one, however unknowingly, sets in motion a chain of cause and effect. The man, whose name I did not know and did not wish to know, had died opaquely by my hand, ignorant in his last, tortured breaths, of the source of his demise.

  I did not leave the house that day, but sat in the company of my guilt, and was not surprised to find Number One Boy gone by the time the sun dipped pink against the evening sky. I ate a perfunctory meal alone, and when La Contessa visited I found it impossible to muster passion, and so we simply lay together, hands entwined, her body still and calm, and I envied the peace of the innocent.

  “What troubles you?” she asked me.

  I could not look at her, but with my eyes fixed upon the ceiling I told her.

  “It is not your fault,” she said. “It is the Boxers, and I know they do not deny themselves sleep for this man’s death.”

  I allowed La Contessa to kiss me then, to quell my spiritual agitation with the undeniable corporeality of desire, and I forgot, for the best part of an hour at least, the gruesome sight of that head cl
eaved from its owner, and the culpability it wrought.

  The following day I committed to visit the Wards at Fairchild’s home. I had gone to see Nicholas and Nina as often as my other obligations allowed. Yet never did an opportunity for conversation present itself beyond the most superficial circumstances. The other inhabitants of the house seemed forever present, and even when the moment afforded me time alone with either Nina or Nicholas, we spoke in tones friendly and yet aware, knowing that in that crowded place we were never far from another pair of ears. As more Chinese poured into the Legation Quarter the area itself felt overwhelmed, swamped by people, so that even in the relative quiet of the Fairchild residence one felt always pressed, close, never unobserved. That evening was no exception: the guests gathered together in the drawing room and remained until late; hopes of sleeping dimmed each night as the Boxers grew closer and noisier and many residents resisted nightfall until physical fatigue finally welcomed slumber. And so around ten I excused myself, leaving them to their gin and rummy, wondering when I might find an opportune moment to speak with Nina.

  I wavered as I reached the gates of the Legation Quarter, thinking of my home, vacant now of servants, with few neighbors to either side, situated on a street already well-trodden by the Boxers. I consider myself a brave man, but also an intelligent one, and ultimately I decided to return to the Grand, where Edward greeted me with warmth.

  “Please, stay as long as you like,” he said, leading me across the lobby. “It is too dangerous elsewhere.”

  From the window of my new room I looked out over the Legation Quarter, marked out the silhouettes of the foreign soldiers that dotted the perimeter. From the city beyond the walls, silent and unlit, I heard the first rousing cries of the Boxers. Sha! Sha! I pulled the curtain and extinguished the lamp, falling gratefully upon the bed. I did not know, of course, as I lay my head, that I beckoned not only sleep but also siege. For the next day, the twenty-first of June, would mark the first day of our besiegement, a tragedy tangible and official, a series of events to be recorded in the history books, and for me also a blockade of the most deeply personal nature, a barricade built not only around my physical person but an imprisonment that called for courage beyond the merely physical, a set of restrictions that forced me to question the nature of the man I might become if I were to once more achieve absolute liberty.

  London, July 1902

  Dearest Alistair,

  I read your words and I weep, and yet I am compelled to continue the story you have so faithfully committed to paper. If only those events could remain far from me in Peking, but how quickly winged memories cross the seas…

  James. At times I see him in my dreams, I wake with his name on my lips. And reading the sequence of events as accurately and logically described by your fine hand, how desperately I wish that I might return to that time. How gently I would wipe his brow, how earnestly I would listen to his thoughts, how carefully I would nurse him to full health. He might have lived, and where might I have been?

  And O. How my heart aches imagining what more is to come. Alistair, your words pain me in their insistence that I hide no longer from that past, and still they prove a balm to my senses. Perhaps I might expunge myself of this terrible sadness and protect the next generation from my folly? For that, I thank you.

  Yours always,

  Nina

  VII

  Some men cannot pass a public house without yielding to the tart whisper of its spumous barrels, others abandon restraint at the first glimpse of a generous décolletage, unbridle themselves for any painted lip or curled hair. And while I too have been partial to such common pleasures, I am equally able to resist them in pursuit of some higher objective. There is only one temptation to render me rudderless and that is the siren call of chaos, the ominous allure of disorder. We newsmen are strange creatures: masters of words and slaves to events. How it invigorated and exhilarated me to step amongst the ragged throngs that surged through the Legation Quarter in those infant hours of the siege. A thrill, foreboding but heady, gripped me as I took my place amongst the soldiers of every flag who marched the streets, barking orders at the disorientated and displaced, corralling them towards the Su palace. The Boxers had pressed closer overnight, compelling dozens more of China’s forsaken peasants into the Legation Quarter and the foreign enclave now played host to thousands.

  It was a short distance from the Grand to Fairchild’s residence, a mere half-mile at most, and yet the journey appeared interminable as I struggled against the waves of grim-faced refugees, uselessly guided by the gilt-buttoned soldiers. I continued in determination to see Nicholas, Nina and La Contessa. In disarray I have always found great clarity; when the structures of one’s life splinter, the foundations are suddenly revealed. In five years in Peking, I had made countless connections, filled leather-bound pages with names and addresses, but as the city surrendered to its crude conquerors I thought only of those three faces. Upon arrival at the house, I found Phoebe Franklin addressing the women of the household in the drawing room. All wore grave expressions.

  “We must think of our Chinese brothers and sisters,” Phoebe said. “I implore you to come with me, to visit them, to hold hands together in prayer!”

  My natural suspicion of the religious flared. I tried to catch La Contessa’s eye but her face turned blankly towards Phoebe.

  “Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of His kindness when I was in a city under siege,” she continued. “We must open ourselves to kindness and serve the Lord in His plans.”

  “Mrs Franklin,” Lillian bristled. “If it’s quite all right, I think we might be better employed doing something useful. Mrs Moore told me that some of the women are making sandbags out of pillowcases, that kind of thing.”

  Phoebe smiled tightly.

  “I see the news of our besiegement has reached you,” I said as I stepped into the room.

  “Naturally,” Phoebe Franklin said tersely. “And we must display unity, stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Christians.”

  “And so we pray?” Lillian insisted. “We pray and hope that the Boxers shall go away?”

  “Miss Price,” Phoebe began, before resigning herself with a curt shake of the head and turning to Nina. “Miss Ward, I do hope that your personal history in China might allow you to see why we must support our fellow Christians. Come, girls.”

  “Lillian,” Nina said graciously. “Let us go with Mrs Franklin.”

  Lillian frowned, but uncrossed her arms. Phoebe turned with authority and the girls stood to follow her. I was surprised by Nina’s compliance. Nicholas was not a Christian man, and in his decades in China had endeavored to expunge from his spirit those hallmarks the Church of England presses upon any man native to the land of its spires and greens; he had attempted, with rather notable success, to exchange public virtue for private philosophy. Nina, he had told me once, had been christened to please his wife, but Nicholas had not entered a church since that day, uncomfortable as he was to share a pew with foreign proselytizer and merchant alike. Nina had surprised me more than once with her ignorance not only of formal religion but also of its inflections in shared speech and thought. Blind to an eye for an eye, Nina knew nothing of water into wine or feeding the five thousand. She watched me meaningfully as she left, telegraphed with rounded eyes signals I failed to read. She was, I thought as I observed her leave with back straight, neck long, carriage confident and thoughts unknown, increasingly a stranger to me. I wished to reach for her, to pull her back to me, to uncover those unshared reflections that filled her mind.

  La Contessa stopped in the doorway, the hem of her skirt kissed my shoes.

  “I am afraid it wouldn’t be right,” she called to Phoebe. “I am a Catholic after all.”

  Her breath warm and close against my ear, Chiara extended an invitation.

  “And Nicholas?” I asked.

  “
Upstairs,” she said quietly. “Come.”

  We were reckless, uncaring, we went without shame to the very room she shared with her husband. Later I would justify such actions to myself, I would say that we were fearful, that we were moved by the certain death we faced, but these rational motivations came long after we pressed trembling lips together in carnal prayer. It appears ignoble to me now, naturally, but it was beautiful and pure then, our dance in the shadow of death. She dressed quickly; we were, as always after the act, both searingly conscious of our circumstances.

  “Have you heard?” she asked, her voice low as I helped to lace the back of her dress. “They took an Englishman last night. Beheaded him.”

  I pulled the fastening tight.

  “Professor Aldred. Do you know him?”

  “Aldred?” I stepped away from her. “Yes, yes, I have met him several times. He lived in the Chinese city.”

  “And they weren’t Boxers,” she said, tidying her hair with quick fingers. “Imperial troops. That’s what Pietro told me, at least.”

  “We really are at war,” I said, fixing the top button of my shirt.

  Chiara followed me to the drawing room where we found Nicholas, hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the sloped grooves of the city beyond the Legation Quarter limits.

  “Oh, Alistair,” he said gravely, turning as we entered. “I thought I was alone.”

  Slowly his eyes moved over La Contessa and me, taking in the high color that dappled her chest, the dampness around my temples. He said nothing, and looked once more towards the city.

  “They have gone to pray, I believe,” he continued, directing his words to the window. “I wonder how long God might take to resolve this particular crisis.”

  “God,” said Chiara, “might have abandoned us to Peking.”

  Amidst tumult, nothing comforts more successfully than organization, and the foreigners of Peking rapidly divided themselves on that very first day of the siege into groups created for specific administrative purposes, joining committees headed by missionaries that promised stability and regulation for however long the siege might go on. A committee for water, a committee for food, a committee for health and sanitation all sprung into life as an acceptance of the inevitability of a long stay in the Legation Quarter took hold. It seethed with the discontent of the displaced; the unhappiness of the foreigners, their existences suddenly vague, incalculable, matched that of the Chinese Christians, their bodies safe but their souls wretched, their heads brimming still with memories of razed villages and charred fields. Walking back towards the Grand, I thought of the Chinese expression for a huge crowd, people mountain people sea: these hundreds of bodies, thousands of limbs, tens of thousands of eyes dry with tears unspilt were an unending ocean of misery. And for how long might these well-meaning committees satiate so many thousands of empty stomachs?