Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  “I knew it! I simply knew you would try to go without me.” She caught her breath as she reached us. “What were you thinking, Father?”

  “Nina,” I protested, but Nicholas raised a hand to stop me.

  “Let her come,” he said tenderly. “It is her home too.”

  The journey was short, a walk of barely ten minutes, and yet along the way we saw at least three dozen refugees, their belongings wrapped in crude knapsacks, their feet faltering over the inhospitable ground. They shielded their faces from us as we passed.

  “Where are you going?” Nina called out in Mandarin to one group.

  A little girl, cheeks smeared with dirt, hair pulled into hasty pigtails, turned and called: “The foreign devils shall destroy the city!” Her mother yanked on one of the girl’s frayed plaits, reprimanded her for speaking with the foreign devils themselves.

  “Destroy the city?” Nina repeated, turning the words, unpalatable, unsavory, over in her mouth. “Destroy the city?”

  “When shall the Chinese stop running?” Nicholas asked.

  I could offer no response.

  From the far end of the Wards’ narrow hutung we could see that the red door to their courtyard house lay open and ominous. As we drew closer, I noted that it hung raggedly, portentously from its hinges. I sensed Nicholas stiffen at the sight, and Nina lightly, almost imperceptibly, recoiled from the doorway, her shoulders curled round and defensive.

  “I shall go first,” I suggested, and Nicholas nodded.

  “Very well,” he said, and I left the pair in the street behind, felt their eyes on my back as I slipped into that oft-visited place with a gnawing sense of foreboding.

  The front courtyard was eerily empty. The Wards’ had been a household of quiet, cheery labor, never without the gentle rustling sounds of servants passing down corridors, water splashing in pots, brooms sweeping over cobblestones. I passed through the shadeless courtyard, moving towards the main room in which Nicholas had hosted me countless times. With trepidation I stepped inside. At first glance it was as it had ever been: the same scrolls hung on the walls, the same books lined the shelves, yet everything seemed slightly awry. Pieces of furniture had moved a little, ornaments were arranged in new positions, some missed their corners, and the four walls closed around a scene at once disturbing and strangely comforting. People had been here, of that I had no doubt. The Silk Road rugs lay askew, their woven intricacy crinkled unnaturally. The floor was stained with mud, carpeted in dust, some books had fallen from their shelves, spines cracked and pages spilling. The head of a jade turtle looked up at me lost and despondent from its resting place next to the leg of an armchair. I moved towards Nicholas’ bedroom. There the bed was imprinted with the silhouettes of half a dozen different bodies, the silk throw muddied and bloodied. Nina’s bedroom was worse; the damage to its decorous delicacy formed a starker contrast than the destruction wrought upon Nicholas’ more practical sleeping arrangements. The paintings on Nina’s walls hung at odd angles, her bed was without clothes, the doors of her wardrobe were splintered and several dresses had disappeared.

  “Not as terrible as one might have expected.”

  “Nina!” I turned. “I told you to wait.”

  “I would have to see it some day,” she said quietly, her eyes drifting over each corner of her bedroom. “It won’t take long to clean this. Everything shall be just fine, you’ll see.” She placed a hand on my shoulder and I held it there with my own, the two of us witnesses to an old life dismantled.

  “Come!” Nicholas called. “You must see the kitchen.”

  This room provided the greatest evidence of alien presence: unwashed plates and bowls streaked with grease, littered with bones, suggested someone had eaten here not long ago. Most impressive was the collection of curved swords piled in one corner of the kitchen, their tips crimson.

  “Good God.” Nicholas lifted one from the heaped stack. The blade glittered. “Would you believe it, my girl? Our home, a Boxer hideout?” He chuckled, placing the sword down. “I don’t see why we cannot return soon. The Boxers have gone, and they have at least left the old house standing.”

  “Oh, Nicholas,” I said. “Leave it a few days. You’ll need to find someone to clear all this away. Let the troops secure the city first.”

  “I’d like to return as soon as possible,” Nina agreed. “Don’t fret, Father, we shall be back where we belong sooner than you know.” She smiled sweetly and embraced her father. “Mr Scott,” Nina said over Nicholas’ shoulder. “Might we see if Chang is at home?”

  “Nina, I imagine Chang and her family will be as far away from Peking as possible. Do you really think her father would have kept the family living next to Boxers?”

  “Please. Let us see.”

  The gate to Chang’s home was locked tight. Nina and Nicholas stood back as I scaled the wall, feeling the inactivity of the past weeks in the reduced capacity of my lungs, in my ungraceful, lumbering fall to the other side. I moved towards the house, darkness through the windows warned that no trace of life would be found within its walls. Many of the family’s belongings were gone; the rooms bulged with emptiness. I left quickly, the lifelessness of their household, its closed doors and stale air, somehow more discomfiting than the evidence of the Boxers in Nicholas and Nina’s quarters. I climbed the wall again, shaking my head as I landed on flat feet in front of the Wards. Nina nodded, and in silence we walked back to the Legation Quarter.

  It was much to my surprise and somewhat to my displeasure to discover upon my return that our saviors had brought with them a man of my profession. The young man was waiting in reception when I arrived at the Grand, feeling weary and unready for his enthusiastic pleasantries.

  “Why, you must be Alistair Scott.” Slim and sprightly, he sprang from his chair and proffered a smooth hand. The man’s hair was a gleaming black, his skin was tanned and dry from weeks under the Chinese sun. “Imagine my envy when I discovered a fellow journalist had the luck to live through it all.”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as luck,” I said, standing opposite him, my hand hanging limp in the air where he had shaken it.

  “The stories you must have, eh? Hilde invited me to stay for lunch, I do hope that’s all right.”

  “Not my hotel.” I attempted a pleasant smile, but sensed its wanness. “You’re American?”

  “Indeed. A New York man now, raised in Georgia. Walter Wingfield.”

  “Must have had a hard time getting here?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll tell you all about that.”

  And he did. We ate quietly, listening as he told of the hundreds of foreign casualties accumulated in the efforts to liberate Peking, the days without food and water, the troops who fainted while marching through wide open positions, their legs giving out under them, submitting them to the summer of death.

  “I’m not a man given to exaggeration,” Walter Wingfield said, chewing his words as forcefully as he did his dry mule meat, “but I don’t think the American boys had seen such a fight since the Civil War.”

  “Is that right?” Hilde asked.

  “Oh, yes. What we saw at Tientsin was much worse than any of these stories from South Africa, although I suppose the world is less interested in the fate of China than that of a jewel of empire.”

  “Our duty to change that, I suppose,” I offered.

  Walter nodded seriously.

  “I hear Tz’u Hsi plans to leave Peking,” he said.

  “Yes, I plan to mention the departure of the Empress Dowager in my next dispatch.” I placed my cutlery down. “Thank you again, Hilde.”

  Yet when I returned to my room I found I could muster no enthusiasm to write of Tz’u Hsi’s mooted retreat from the capital, or the most terrible conflict since the American Civil War. Instead I wrote of the Wards’ home, its courtyard bleached barren by the unforgiving sunlight, i
ts rooms disturbed in elegant discomposure, its atmosphere empty of its habitual warmth, its climate devoid of its quotidian intimacy. And finally, dozens of pages filled, I allowed my head to rest upon the desk, and for sleep to welcome me.

  Nicholas waited for me in the bar at Grand the next morning.

  “This is becoming something of a habit,” I greeted him.

  Hilde had already prepared a cup of coffee, which I sipped gratefully while Nicholas explained that he planned to visit Pei, who, according to the last communication Nicholas had received from her several weeks prior, had taken shelter with an aunt.

  “I am aware that it is a little further away, but perhaps you’d like to venture deeper into the city,” he said.

  “And Nina?”

  “She sleeps,” he said simply. The pause that followed his words was meaningful, but I knew not in which way. He cleared his throat, looked intensely at his hands as he prepared to speak, the grey hair that dusted his knuckles glimmered white in the kindling light of morning. “We had more guests last night, more of the same, as you might imagine. All very jolly, celebratory. Nina was very quiet, but she stayed with the others long after I had retired. Mrs Franklin tells me she woke in the night and found Nina alone in the drawing room, that she appeared distressed.”

  “Oh.” I took a sip of coffee. It burned bitterly against the back of my throat. I was aware that Hilde watched me, but dared not meet her eye.

  “I wonder if I ought not have allowed her to come with us yesterday,” he said. “I was relieved to see the house still stood, but perhaps she was alarmed by the damage we witnessed.”

  “It must be very hard for Miss Ward,” Hilde said.

  “Yes.” Nicholas exhaled.

  “Before I depart,” I said to Hilde, “would you give this to one of the boys? And don’t let Wingfield see it.”

  I passed an envelope to her, my latest dispatch folded inside it. I was proud of the story, it contained a great number of the elements of any good news story: intrigue (Tz’u Hsi’s departure), vengeance (already the European diplomats told me of great compensation to be demanded of the Imperial authorities) and blood (I had artfully reproduced Wingfield’s claim that the fighting on the North China plain had matched the horrors witnessed at Gettysburg), but I remained preoccupied by those other ignominious, unread pages, those profiles I had written of La Contessa and Nina, those descriptions of horse meat dinners and left-behind jewels. I had learned over the course of my career that both the press and the public craved stories of victory and optimism, narratives that placed their countrymen in danger long enough to lacquer events with a surface of tension, but that swiftly rescued them and painted them heroes, tales that assured that all conflict could be neatly ended and folded away, and leave behind no lingering melancholy. And yet in liberated Peking, there at the apex of Europe’s vigor and fortitude, where Western fettle thundered mightily over Eastern submission, I felt nothing but a lingering melancholy, a pensive anxiety no newspaper editor would allow to sully the robust righteousness of his pages.

  The streets lay quiet; Nicholas and I pushed against the silence. Every door we passed was barricaded, every window fixed shut; one could imagine trembling occupants behind those taciturn walls. Occasionally we saw figures in the street, hastening away from the Legation Quarter and its environs, meagre collections of belongings bundled in their arms.

  “It gives you pause, does it not?” Nicholas said as a stooped elderly man moved past us, gnarled feet carrying him as quickly as their cracked soles would permit. “These people did not run from the Boxers, yet they flee the foreign powers.”

  I stopped at the squat doorway of a humble one-storey home. A Union Jack was strung across a window, a sign in unsure English pasted to the neighboring wall said, “No shoot. We are good people”.

  “My God, Nicholas, what’s this?” I asked.

  Nicholas shook his head, gestured for us to continue on our way. I followed him, but could not forget that incongruous flag.

  It was when we turned the corner to the street where Pei’s aunt resided that we discovered the motive for such a curious display of allegiance. A group of soldiers, British and American from the sounds of them, ran from home to home, piles of furs and silks heaped in their arms. The doors to the houses lay carelessly open, and Chinese residents occasionally followed the soldiers from those gaping mouths, darting behind the turned backs of the foreign men, handfuls of precious belongings, gold chains and books with worn covers and twills of ermine, clutched in their fists. I had seen this numberless times before, the pillage that follows victory, that flavors it sour for parties both vanquishing and defeated.

  “What do you think you are doing?” I marched towards the dispersed company of young men, unable to find amidst their sprinting bodies a core that bound them, unable to identify a leader to whom I might direct my words. And so I spoke loudly, tried to capture their collective attention.

  “You are aware, gentlemen, that looting is against the Hague convention?”

  Some of the soldiers stopped, faced me in defensive, uneven lines, their uncaring expressions mocked me. No shame crossed their faces, no regret troubled their brows.

  “Well?” I pressed. “Are you going to return these things? You are here to liberate and civilize, not to terrorize.”

  “Alistair,” Nicholas said, his voice feeble behind me. “Let us find Pei. Please.”

  “One moment,” I said sharply. “Well?” I demanded.

  “I am sorry we interrupted the garden party you have been so enjoying this summer,” one of the soldiers said with disdainful sneer. “We are simply collecting any valuable items for safekeeping. What do you suppose they make of that at the Hague?”

  The other soldiers laughed then, guffawing in animal unity, half a dozen blue-green eyes trained upon me.

  “Come, Alistair.” Nicholas beckoned, and I followed with grudging steps.

  “This is simply unacceptable,” I said. “They must be stopped.”

  “Yes, yes,” Nicholas said, but he did not break his path to Pei.

  The aunt’s grey-walled house stood at the end of the street. We approached cautiously, and found its wooden door swinging open to the street.

  “Alistair.” Nicholas stopped upon the threshold. “Do you suppose those men might have been here?”

  Nicholas hesitated to enter the house, rocked uncertainly on his heels. I pushed ahead of him and into a dark hallway of low ceilings and narrow breadth. The air within the house was not stale, not faded, the windows, although they were shut tightly now, had not been long barricaded, I decided, suggesting that life had continued under the building’s roof of sloping tiles as the Boxers had rushed Peking. I hoped that Pei had been here, felt this was a place unviolated. Yet as I progressed steadily down the corridor, Nicholas a few paces behind me, both of us glancing into the rooms we passed, devoid of human presence but with furniture unbroken and no evidence of looting having occurred, the ponderous quiet of the place weighed upon me.

  I glimpsed the horrors of the bedroom first, saw the corner of a bed stripped of its coverings and a sheet soaked with blood abandoned on the floor. I took an intake of breath, intense enough for Nicholas to stop.

  “Alistair? What is it, Alistair?” he asked urgently.

  “Let me.” I raised my hand and he did not move, remained in position within the confines of the corridor. I closed my eyes momentarily, gathered strength, and willed myself into the room. And there I saw her: Pei, strung from a wooden beam, feet dangling over the blood-stained bed, neck broken, dress torn. I stumbled backwards from the sight. On the other side of the bed a body lay slumped, an older woman with vacant eyes, a neat gash divided her torso from neck to navel.

  “Don’t,” I cried. “Don’t, Nicholas. Do not, do not enter.”

  My words came too late. Nicholas was inside the room, his face turned upwards tow
ards Pei’s corpse, his eyes round, his mouth slack.

  “Alistair!” he called wildly, released an animal cry. I went to his side, supported him with my own shaking arms, but already he was collapsing in on himself, sinking to the floor.

  “No, no, Nicholas,” I pleaded. “Not here. We must get back to safety. Please, stay upright.”

  He was on his knees now, his face a terrible grey color, his lips bloodless, arms trembling under my grip.

  “Nicholas,” I said. “Please, try to stand.”

  “Who did this? Who did this? Did they do this?” His voice was thin, fissured and breaking.

  “Come, Nicholas, come. We must reach safety. Pei would hate for anything to happen to you.”

  I tried to lift him, but his body, unwilling, resisted my efforts.

  “Excuse me.” A young woman’s voice startled me. I relaxed my hold on Nicholas, let him fall back to the floor. She was not yet twenty, with the plain-faced appearance of a country girl. “Ta shi Nicholas xiansheng ma?”

  “Yes, he is Mr Nicholas.”

  The girl knelt on the floor opposite Nicholas. In gentle tones she said: “They were foreigners. They came last night. She called your name. She said she loved you.”

  At this Nicholas wept, sobs tore from the back of his throat, his chest shuddered. The girl took his hands in hers.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “Her aunt, my mistress, she perished at their hands. Pei couldn’t live with the shame, couldn’t face you again after…”

  “Oh no, oh no,” Nicholas cried. “I would not have cared, not at all… It was not her fault, never her fault.”

  The girl moved closer and embraced him closely. I stood above their rocking bodies, my eyes drawn to Pei in her terrible lifelessness.

  “We must get her down from there,” I said.

  The girl rose, standing by my side.

  “I’m sorry. We have been hiding since they came,” she said. “Please do not worry. We shall organize the rites. You must take him now, take him away from here.”