Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  She arrived close to one a.m., her limbs loose and her countenance relaxed from the wine toasted to America’s independence.

  “I have missed you,” she said.

  “And I,” I replied as we reached for one another with desperate, lonely hands.

  Momentarily I paused. “Was the door not locked when you arrived?”

  “Oh yes,” La Contessa said, “but those nice Chinese boys in the hall were most obliging.”

  “You have not been to see me recently,” I said.

  “Oh, Alistair, do you not know that there are moments for speaking and moments for silence?”

  I heeded her counsel and remained quiet, allowed her to lead me, confidently, towards the bed, where together we dissolved our fears, buried our expectations and quenched our desires. And yet even as we moved in now familiar rhythms, even as she soothed me with sweet kisses and murmured wishes, a disquiet held firm in my mind. How recklessly, how certainly, La Contessa had crossed the Legation Quarter in the most dangerous hour, how ardently she embraced me now as though no other thought intruded upon her particular plans, and yet something had prevented her from doing so in the week previous to this encounter. She kissed me feverishly, unquestioningly, paused only momentarily, untangled her form from mine.

  “He shall never do anything,” she muttered, her hair, loose, brushing my shoulder. “He thinks himself a lion, but I know him a lamb.”

  “Your husband?” I began, but she silenced me once more with febrile lips, conquering hands, and I accepted her, pressed her flesh once more to mine, and yet I could not help to think, as our breath rose and fell as one, of the refugees sleeping downstairs, and I wondered what impression this elegant foreigner of curled hair and ruffled silks had left upon them, demanding entry to the Grand in the blackest moment of the night. And, despite the insistent and calming nature of La Contessa’s kisses, I could not help but to ask myself whether Hilde and Edward might too have witnessed her late arrival at the hotel.

  I had told Nina to expect me in the morning; I would collect her and deliver her to the Grand where she might perform her new duties. This proved something of a logistical problem as La Contessa felt compelled to return to the Fairchild home before Nina might spy her at the hotel, and so had to hide in the side porch that morning while I called at the main door for Nina. A servant showed me through to the drawing room, where Nina waited for me, her face softer again in the glow of first dawn. She smiled warmly when she saw me. In the hallway, we happened upon Oscar Fairchild, putting on his light summer jacket, preparing himself for another day of fruitless labour.

  “Good morning,” he said, nodding politely towards me. “Where are you going?”

  “To the Grand Hotel,” Nina said proudly. “I am to help there.”

  “Are you sure that’s quite safe?” Oscar asked, fastening the top button of his jacket.

  I believed he addressed the question more to me than to Nina, but she seized upon it immediately.

  “We are under siege, Mr Fairchild. Just yesterday a bullet tore through the skirts of our monarch as we ate. I am not sure anywhere is safe.”

  “Very true,” he said. “Well, be careful.”

  He dipped politely as we took our leave, watching until a servant closed the door behind us.

  Unfortunately, La Contessa had chosen precisely the wrong moment to emerge from her hiding place and, seeing Nina, immediately tried to steal away once more to the cover afforded by the side porch. Still her emerald skirts glistened in the orange light of morning, resplendent as they had looked at dinner the previous night.

  “Is that La Contessa?” Nina asked.

  “Oh no, it cannot possibly be.” I held Nina by the arm and guided her away from the house. She cocked her head to one side as though she might say more, but ultimately censored herself.

  I had not spoken to Hilde of my plan; it had rather slipped my mind when La Contessa had promised to follow me to the hotel the previous evening, and I hate to say that sensible, industrious Hilde appeared rather unimpressed when I presented Nina to her.

  “What can she do?” Hilde stood with her arms folded at the doorway to the kitchen where a group of Chinese Christians already kneaded dough. Always fond of firearms, Hilde now had a revolver in a permanent bolster around her waist following the death of her best baker.

  “You might be surprised by what I can do,” Nina said promptly.

  “Well, can you bake?” Hilde asked with impatience.

  “I’m sure I could learn.” Nina did not waver.

  “She speaks better Mandarin than the Empress Dowager,” I said hastily. “She was at Prince Su’s palace, teaching the young girls.”

  “I saw her there,” Hilde said mildly. “And why are you not at the Su mansion now, Miss Ward?”

  “Because the Boxers are not the only depraved actors in this conflict,” Nina said.

  Hilde smiled and uncrossed her arms.

  Nina was awarded the responsibility of overseeing the delivery of bread to foreigners around the Legation Quarter and quickly adapted to this new role. Her Mandarin allowed her to provide clear instructions to the converts who made and transported the bread, whilst her recently acquired knowledge of the foreign community within the walls, who lived where and how many mouths they had to feed, ensured the correct quantities were delivered to the right places. When not in the kitchen, Nina resumed similar duties to those she had performed at the Su mansion and entertained the children, telling them stories in Chinese and English to allow their parents some brief moments of respite. I collected her each morning and walked her to the Grand, where I left her for the day.

  Whilst Nina labored in the Grand, I completed my usual rounds of the increasingly weary diplomatic corps who furnished me with neither hope nor news. In fact, so meagre were their offerings that I started to seek out the missionaries who at least shared with me tales of rural hell collected from the refugees in their care. With little political movement, I instead recorded these lurid stories of Boxer atrocities in China’s hinterland: a foreign missionary forced to parade his naked form before an entire village as a prelude to decapitation, unfounded accusations that Christian converts had poisoned wells and the inevitable bloody consequences of such rumors, crude Boxer depictions of Christ as a pig on the cross. I wrote down the morbid details, wondering when I might be able to communicate them to the world outside the Legation Quarter, the walls of which now seemed to press closer upon me. In the early evening I returned to the Grand for Nina and together we would walk to the Fairchild residence; Nina always carried at least two loaves under her arm.

  Working at the Grand had brought Nina somewhat back to herself. Even so, on those walks we shared, dusk-lit strolls that might have been quite pleasant had it not been for the terrible, decaying stench of the place and the unshakeable sense of foreboding with which it was permeated, she was quite honest with me. She dealt out her fears and regrets in neatly parceled words, but not once did she pronounce Oscar’s name, and I avoided the topic as delicately as my powers of discretion would allow. Imagine, then, the bewilderment I experienced when upon my return to the hotel late one Tuesday afternoon Hilde told me that Oscar had arrived unannounced at the Grand that morning and asked for a tour of the premises, claiming that he would welcome the opportunity to meet the inhabitants of the hotel. Hilde escorted me to Edward’s office, where she closed the door decisively and offered me a brief account of Fairchild’s visit. She had been suspicious, naturally, as to why an official charged with the bodily survival of his own people would take a sudden interest in the fate of the beleaguered refugees of the Grand.

  “And why would a humble establishment such as ours be of interest to an envoy of Her Majesty’s government?” Hilde had asked him.

  “Mr Samuels is a British subject,” Oscar had replied. “Besides, at times such as these, unity extends beyond the colors of our respecti
ve flags, does it not?”

  “Indeed.”

  Dutifully Hilde had led Oscar from room to room, presenting the refugees with yet another anonymous foreign face, another man they hoped for a moment might signal their relief, but who, like the others, was ultimately unable to tell them anything more of when salvation might arrive.

  “And when might I see the famous bakery?” Oscar had asked when they returned to the lobby and Hilde had hoped to dismiss him.

  I had not made a single allusion to the scandal while with my hosts at the Grand. Motivated by my loyalty to both Nina and Nicholas, I also feared any mention of it could jeopardize Nina’s position at the hotel. Consequently, while Hilde was surprised by the arrival of the British secretary, she remained ignorant of his motives. Until, perhaps, she took him to the bakery.

  Nina wore her customary uniform of loosely-tied apron and scrap of fabric around her head as she walked around the kitchen where dusty clouds of dough filled the air. Her arms, exposed by rolled sleeves, were dotted with white paste and moist patches of flour created swirled patterns across her apron. She did not immediately perceive Oscar and Hilde in the doorway and continued to work free from self-consciousness, checking each finished product against her list of recipients and delivering prompt instructions in Mandarin to the boys who transported the loaves.

  When Hilde announced their presence, she said the horror that seized Nina’s face was instant and apparent to all. Nina stammered a greeting to Oscar, who replied in even, diplomatic tone that he was most impressed with the efficiency of the operation and thanked her with formality for her efforts to support the wellbeing of all those under siege. And yet, Hilde said, behind the decorum of his stately words glowed an affection so warm that it was detected even by the delivery boys, innocent of love and ignorant of English.

  “Allow me to escort you out, Mr Fairchild,” Hilde had said, but Oscar remained in the doorway, an eager, boyish smile on his face, his stance suggesting a reluctance to leave. He insisted he stay a little longer so he might take a loaf with him for lunch. Hilde acquiesced, and returned to the lobby, leaving Oscar alone with Nina and the bakers. What passed between them in those moments, Hilde did not know. She watched with her usual healthy inquisitiveness as Oscar left with a loaf tucked under his arm. No official had shown any such interest in the Grand in its new incarnation as refuge to the desperate and the faithful; most complained that they no longer liked to visit the bar, where one could scarcely rest one’s feet on the floor without colliding with some poor soul from the countryside. She had proceeded to the kitchen where she observed Nina, teary-eyed and pallid, the authority gone from her voice as she instructed the delivery boys which addresses to go to next, and without the need to ask a single question, Hilde’s curiosity was satisfied.

  “I thought you ought to know,” she said finally. “You are close to the Wards. I am not a missionary, Mr Scott, nor am I an official. But I am a woman, and I know a bad business when I see one.”

  Nina waited for me as usual in the lobby, her baker’s guise removed, her face cleaned of any residue of the day’s production. Typically I found her chatting animatedly with the refugees, but this evening she was withdrawn, her arms crossed and elbows pointed at uninviting angles. It was a brief walk through the Legation Quarter, but far from easy; the imperial troops opened fire as we were half the way home, and so we saw no alternative but to stay close by the walls, seeking the protection of sloping eaves. As we approached the Fairchild residence, Nina suddenly grabbed my arm.

  “Careful,” she cried. A bullet soared in a close arc over my head. We both ducked instinctively, crouching by the verandah of a small house belonging to British trade official Arthur Bloomfield. The bullet’s emissary had evidently seen us and as such he followed his soft opening with a hailstorm of bullets that just passed over our heads. One bullet left a neat hole in a window; I spied the stricken face of Arthur’s wife Kitty by the window, and almost as rapidly she disappeared from view.

  “Lie down,” I said to Nina. “There, on the verandah.”

  With impassive expression Nina followed my instructions and I crawled across the verandah to take position beside her. The bullets sounded continuously, but our prone position meant they soared in easy arcs above us.

  “I heard Mr Fairchild paid a visit to the hotel today,” I said.

  I raised the topic on impulse; naturally I recognized that the environment could not have been less favorable to discussion, but there was something in the way Nina held herself that evening, in her passive acceptance of my instructions, of our situation, displaying no indication of her usual bloody determination or even simple fear, that told me the secret weighed upon her.

  “Yes,” she said. She rested her chin on her hands and did not look at me. “He came to inspect our little bakery.”

  “Nina,” I said, inching closer to her. “I have no idea what may have passed between you and Mr Fairchild and I do not wish to make you uncomfortable or to insinuate anything…”

  “You are quite right, Mr Scott,” she said, meeting my eye with level gaze. “You have no idea.”

  “Yet, if you will forgive my impropriety, I only wish to help. Your father is a good man, Nina, but he knows little of these matters, and I know he would find it difficult to raise such an issue with you.”

  “Mr Scott, there is nothing of which to speak,” Nina continued. “I did not ask Mr Fairchild to come to the Grand; in fact I expressly asked him to leave.”

  “Nina,” I said softly. “I understand that my questions may make you feel uncomfortable, but understand, please, that I think only of you. Your relations with Mr Fairchild are already discussed in the Legation Quarter and rumors unheeded soon grow two heads. If you wish to speak to me of this matter, I assure you that you shall enjoy my full confidence. We live in suspension, but our lives will one day, God willing, be lived normally once again. And then what shall you do?”

  The flurry of shooting had come to an abrupt stop as I spoke. Nina stood quickly, brushed down the front of her dress, and without looking directly towards me, said: “Come, Mr Scott.”

  I rose to my feet, saw Benjamin Moore through the window, occupying the same position Kitty Bloomfield had moments earlier. I waved, he turned away, and Nina and I walked in silence through those fetid, putrid streets.

  I watched Nina that evening and in the days that followed, but her actions and words revealed nothing of her innermost feelings to me, or, I imagine, to any other observer who might have taken an interest in her comportment. Dinners at the Fairchild house were a studied performance in normality; Nina’s pretense had become so fluent that she was able to occasionally direct questions to Mr Fairchild, just as she might have done before that terrible moment in which Lillian Price revealed the intimacy between the two. At the Grand, Nina kept up both her work and her spirits; her enthusiasm and ability never faltered. She worried still for her former students at the Su palace and asked Hilde if she might bring Lijun to help at the hotel, and soon the girl was working alongside her in the bakery. Hilde was happy for the additional support, and set Lijun tasks beyond simple baking, harnessing the girl’s industriousness into cleaning and cooking, and taking advantage of her formidable temper by having her scold those refugees who failed to keep their lodgings tidy enough.

  “One must never let standards slip,” Hilde explained to me. “You let one piece go and the whole structure comes tumbling down.”

  On the ninth day of July, word reached me at the Grand that a Chinese sent out of the Legation Quarter to collect information was safely returned within our walls. I stopped by the bakery to invite Nina to come with me to the chapel where the messenger’s news was to be posted. Lijun followed, tripping along excitedly behind us. We were so starved of information in those days that any glimmer of fact seemed a great promise of hope, a shaft of light to guide us out of misery and towards real, unconfined life. The notice pin
ned to the message board, its text set in stark relief by the midday sun, disappointed in its contents. The Emperor and Empress Dowager remained in Peking, it read, ending with the dismal sentence: “Nothing known of the approach of foreign troops.” Nina’s hand reached for mine and I held it tightly, feeling her palm slick. Lijun puzzled at the sign.

  “The English words are too long. What does it say?” she asked Nina, who responded with only a silent shake of her head. She rested her forehead on my shoulder in the sorrowful stance that normally precedes tears, but none came. Lijun, sensing the gravity of the moment, fell away, and left Nina and I to confront the notice alone.

  “Nina,” I said finally. “I am so sorry.”

  “When shall we leave?” she whispered fiercely. “Shall we ever leave?”

  “Of course we shall,” I said briskly, lifting her chin with my knuckles and looking into those sorrowful green eyes. “I promise you and your father shall be back in the hutung before autumn.”

  I cannot say now if I truly believed the words I said, but they were enough, sufficient at least to propel Nina back to the Grand, arm-in-arm with Lijun, to bake more loaves of bread.