by John Wilcox
Fonthill adopted what he hoped was a commanding posture: one booted foot on the sideboard of the wagon, one arrogant hand on his hip and the other holding the Colt at his side, the sun glinting on its long barrel. He nodded sharply to Gerald.
‘Show your gun, young man. You too, Alice.’
Small beads of perspiration were now showing on his wife’s upper lip, but she nodded and moved to the open rear of the wagon and began making a great show of loading her little automatic pistol. Gerald Griffith crept up behind her and held up his fowling piece as though about to shoot a passing bird. Mrs Griffith knelt a little unsteadily on an old leather case, her hands clasped together and her eyes tightly closed as she prayed. Chang, one of whose eyes had partly closed following yesterday’s affray, had taken up his post on the driver’s seat, waiting in silence.
Simon turned his gaze back to the missionary. He had now reached the Boxers, who immediately opened their ranks and allowed him to mingle with them. He stood out, tall and erect, in their midst, both hands held high, one of them holding his Bible. The Chinese had fallen silent now and the missionary’s voice could just be heard, speaking quite slowly and evenly and sounding even more mellifluous in Mandarin. To Fonthill, he cut a biblical figure, as though he were a medieval preacher addressing his flock. His mind went back to an old painting that had hung in his father’s study. The metaphor was made even more apt by the rapt, open faces of the young men surrounding him. Simon was reminded that they were peasants, many of them seemingly still in their teens. As far as he could see, few of them wore shoes or sandals. Violence suddenly seemed far away on this warm, sunlit morning.
Suddenly, there was a sharp report from within the wagon and Fonthill swung around to see Gerald Griffith staring at the smoking barrel of his gun.
‘What the hell—?’ snarled Simon.
‘It just went off.’ The young man’s mouth hung open.
The heads of everyone in the group turned towards the wagon and the scene froze for a split second. Then a chant began from the back of the rabble, ‘Sha! Sha! Sha!’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Alice, wide-eyed.
‘Means kill,’ called back Chang. ‘I think they come at us now.’
‘Reload your gun,’ Fonthill ordered Gerald. ‘Quickly now, man, for God’s sake.’
The chant was taken up by the rest of the Boxers and Simon caught a momentary glimpse of Edward Griffith holding out his hands in a placatory gesture, when a sword flashed and he disappeared into the crowd.
‘Ah no!’ cried Alice.
‘Get to the front, Alice,’ shouted Simon.
Several more swords were swung high in the middle of the crowd and then the Boxers turned towards the wagon. ‘Don’t fire yet, 352,’ yelled Fonthill. ‘I’ll try and warn them off.’
He held up his free hand, palm facing outward towards the mob, and then fired his revolver above their heads.
It had the reverse effect to that intended – indeed it seemed to act like the starting gun in a race, for the front row of the Boxers immediately produced swords and began to run towards the wagon.
‘Fire, Jenkins,’ cried Simon. There were only about sixty yards between the attackers and the defenders and Fonthill realised that he had only six shots with which to deter the charge, for there would be little time to reload. He took careful aim, fired and brought down the leading man. Cocking back the hammer with his thumb, he fired again, and then again and again. Behind him, he heard the bark of Alice’s automatic and the deeper report of the fowling piece.
The front row of the attackers seemed to melt away and the second line tripped over five bodies on the ground and the remainder halted, their swords held aloft still truculently, but their aggression now replaced by indecision.
In those few precious seconds, Simon thrust three more rounds into his Colt. Coolly, he aimed again and fired, then twice more. At almost the same time, he heard firing from the field to his right and glimpsed an erect Jenkins, hammering back the cocking mechanism of his revolver with his left hand as he let off round after round in rapid succession.
It was enough. The surprise of the attack from the right – although at too great a distance for Jenkins’s handgun to be a killing piece – broke whatever resistance was left among the Boxers and they turned and fled back up the road from which they had come. In an amazingly few moments, they had shrunk to diminutive figures in the dusty distance. The attack was over almost as soon as it had begun.
Fonthill leapt down from the wagon and ran towards where he could see the Reverend Griffith lying in a pool of blood.
He bent down. ‘Oh my God.’ Suddenly, Alice was by his side. ‘Are we too late?’
Simon gently turned the missionary over. His left shoulder bore a deep gash and his right arm had been almost completely severed at the biceps, although the fingers of the hand still clutched his Bible. Blood oozed from a sword thrust to the breast and another to the stomach. A half-smile remained fixed on the old man’s face, as though something in that vicious outburst of violence had amused him. Or perhaps he was pleased at the end to be exchanging one world for another, for he was quite dead.
‘Don’t let Mrs Griffith …’ began Fonthill. But he realised that he was too late. The missionary’s wife was looking down at her husband, her hands clasped before her, one tear threading its way down her cheek.
Alice rose and gathered her aunt into her arms. But she was gently pushed away. Mrs Griffith gestured over her shoulder to where the Chinese lay in the road.
‘Some of these poor people are wounded,’ she said. ‘We cannot help Edward now, but we may be able to reduce the suffering of those whom we have injured. Alice, in my main case, there is a little leather first-aid box. Please bring it and you and I will do what we can. Now, Simon,’ she looked up at him, ‘perhaps you would be kind enough to leave me for a moment with my husband, so that I can say goodbye. Thank you.’
Fonthill bent his head and walked towards where Jenkins was picking his way back across the field. ‘A bit bloody late with your covering fire, 352,’ he said. ‘What happened? Did you doze off?’
‘Doze off be buggered, beggin’ your pardon, bach sir.’ He gestured to his Colt. ‘This bloody thing jammed, just as the firin’ started, see. That’s why, once I ’ad it cleared, like, I started blazin’ away in case they ’adn’t noticed me. Sorry about that, but it wasn’t my fault, see.’
He gestured towards where Mrs Griffith was kneeling beside her husband. ‘’As the Reverend copped it, then?’
‘I’m afraid so. Come on. I want a word with young Mr Gerald.’
They found the young man rather too frantically helping Alice to find his mother’s first-aid box. Chang was kneeling by the front wheel of the wagon, quietly sobbing.
When the box had been found and Alice ran with it to her aunt, Fonthill addressed Gerald Griffith. ‘Why the hell did you fire your piece,’ he demanded, ‘when I told you not to fire until I did?’
‘I didn’t fire it. It sort of went off on its own.’ Gerald’s eyes were staring and his mouth set hard under its thin moustache. ‘It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t told us to show our weapons – for all the good that did – the thing wouldn’t have gone off. I wouldn’t have had to wave it about.’
Jenkins clenched his fist and took a pace forward. ‘Don’t you talk to the captain like that,’ he growled. ‘You’re not fit to clean ’is boots.’
‘That will do, 352.’ Fonthill’s voice was low with disgust. He addressed Griffith again. ‘Now, I am afraid that you have lost your father and your mother will need all the help you can give her. I suggest you go to her now and help her in what she is doing – and I suggest you take your brother with you.’
‘He’s not my bro—’ He broke off when he saw the light in Fonthill’s eye. ‘Oh, very well.’
Simon and Jenkins watched the two walk slowly to where Mrs Griffith and Alice were now tending two Boxers, who were sitting up in the road. ‘As far as I can see,’ sai
d Fonthill, ‘not one of the people who attacked us was hit by buckshot from that lad’s piece. He must be a particularly bad shot. It would have been almost impossible to have missed at this range.’
‘Ah.’ Jenkins sucked in his moustache. ‘And do you think ’e let off that thing deliberately early?’
‘What?’ Fonthill looked at his old comrade sharply. ‘And deliberately cause the death of his father?’
‘Hmm. Wouldn’t know about that, bach sir. That’s a serious thing to say about a feller, ain’t it? I wouldn’t know.’
‘Neither would I. Come on. Let’s wrap up the reverend in a sheet or something and lay him in the wagon. We can’t leave him here. But we can leave them,’ he indicated the dead Boxers. ‘Best put them in the ditch. No time to bury them for we must be on our way. I shall be glad to be out of here.’
Simon looked around him reflectively. There was no one else to be seen, for the Boxers had long since disappeared and, for all the firing, nobody had materialised from a village that could be glimpsed about half a mile away. The fields were barren. Five dead bodies, in addition to the missionary, lay in the roadway. Alice was tying a bandage around the calf of one of the wounded Chinamen and Mrs Griffith was fixing a sling to the other’s arm. Both men looked bemused but submissive. No danger there. He sighed. It had been six years since he had last experienced violence; since he had last seen men cut down in their prime. Now, within nine days of landing in China, he had experienced it twice. He wrinkled his brow in dismay. Was he born to attract it, he wondered? Did his life now have to be a choice between the boredom of a pastoral existence in Norfolk and the undoubted excitement of the last two days, with its concomitant sadness of the killing of a good man like the Reverend Griffith? Wasn’t there a middle road he could tread? He sighed. One thing was sure: the answer wouldn’t be found on this bloodstained road. Best to get out of here as fast as possible. There might be other bands of Boxers in the vicinity. Within fifteen minutes, the body of the clergyman had been wrapped in a waterproof sheet and gently placed in the rear of the wagon, and the dead Chinese rolled into the ditch. A crutch had been fashioned for the man wounded in the leg and he and his comrade had been told to retrace their steps back to the nearest village behind them – not, Simon insisted, that which lay ahead.
That, in fact, proved to be as deserted as the others they had passed through and Simon wondered whether its inhabitants were staying indoors, for surely they must have heard the sound of gunfire. Or had they fled at the threat of trouble? Chang, peering through his good eye, which was still weeping tears at the loss of his ‘father’, was proving to be a skilled handler of the mules and they made good progress through the village and also through that which Gerald had warned could be a place of ambush. It was as though they were journeying through a landscape torn by war, although there was no obvious sign of conflict or depredation.
The terrain changed somewhat, however, as they neared Peking. Shallow canals, which still retained a vestige of water, crossed the fields and crops of kaoliang, a form of millet, some of it ten feet high, were standing tall around them. They gave Simon cause for concern for they could easily conceal parties of Boxers.
His anxiety increased when Gerald was able to question one worker in the fields not afraid to talk with them.
‘He says,’ reported the young man, his face animated, ‘that Boxers have attacked and set fire to Fengtai, the railway junction not far from here, and that the rail link has been cut. He says we are in danger.’
‘Well,’ snorted Jenkins from his post riding behind the wagon, ‘we didn’t need ’im to tell us that, now, did we?’
Alice looked up from the rear, where she was cushioning the head of Mrs Griffith on her shoulder. ‘How far to Peking now, then?’ she enquired quietly.
Chang sniffed and answered, ‘Not far, cousin. Say three, four miles. Should soon see city.’
And so they did. It rose from the plain like some medieval fortress, surrounded with walls of stone some forty feet high and topped by castellated battlements. Towers with the distinctive flared roofs of the Chinese stood out like sentinels from deep within the city and, unlike the surrounding countryside, there was much traffic through the high gates within the walls.
‘Where do we go?’ asked Fonthill, riding alongside Gerald.
‘We must make for the Legation Quarter in the heart of the city. This is almost a city within a city and houses the diplomatic corps.’ His lips curled at the words.
‘How many legations are there?’
‘Eleven. All the fat birds that have been picking clean the bones of the Chinese Empire for so many years are there.’ He numbered them by ticking off his fingers. ‘The British, the Austro-Hungarians, the Americans, the Belgians, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Italians, the Japanese, the Russians …’ He paused, attempting to recollect the last. ‘Ah yes. The Spanish. They are all represented by these pompous ministers with their fancy uniforms and plumed hats. No wonder the Empress hates them all.’
‘Does she?’
‘Oh yes.’ The young man smirked. ‘If she had her way she would let her army clean them all out. But the Boxers will probably do it for her.’
At this point the wagon trundled through the deep opening of one of the gates and they were immediately among narrow streets that teemed with humanity. Fonthill frowned. The Legation Quarter did not sound like much of a sanctuary.
‘Is the Quarter walled?’ he asked.
‘In some places. Peking is a city of walls.’ Gerald became animated. ‘The Legation Quarter is an enclave about …’ He mused for a moment, his forefinger on his chin. ‘Roughly about half to three-quarters of a mile square, I suppose. Part of it borders on the Imperial City – the palace and the Forbidden City, you know?’
Fonthill nodded, although he didn’t know.
‘Alongside the legations the yang kuei-tzu—’
Simon interrupted. ‘The yang what?’
The young man shook his head impatiently. ‘I told you. The yang kuei-tzu means the foreigners. The foreign barbarians.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Fonthill put his hand on Gerald’s arm. ‘Barbarians! Gerald, you are a foreigner. Your father was. Your mother is. I am. We are not barbarians.’
Gerald Griffith flushed. ‘That is what the Chinese call you … us. But I am not a foreigner. I was born in China. That makes a difference, you know.’
‘Really. Very well. Now continue to tell me about the Legation.’
‘Well, within the enclave and all around the legations the foreign commercial houses have established themselves: the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Russo-Chinese Bank, two shops, Imbeck’s and Kierulff’s, the Peking Hotel and the Club.’
‘The Club?’
‘Yes. All of the people who matter – the white people, that is – are members.’
Fonthill thought for a moment. ‘The Quarter – the enclave – could it be defended?’
Gerald gave a lofty smile and indicated the houses all around them. ‘You see how closely the houses are built. They go right up to the edge of the Quarter. It would be difficult, I think.’
‘Is the Quarter completely walled?’
‘Oh no. There is the Tartar City to the north, in which the Forbidden City and the palace is built, and this is walled where it meets the Quarter, and in the south, the great Tartar Wall acts as a boundary to the Quarter, but these are the only places where you could say big walls help to protect it. But I don’t know. I am not a soldier.’
‘Hmm. And how many people – foreigners – are there working and living within the Quarter?’
‘I think about five hundred.’
‘I see. Thank you, Gerald.’ But Simon was not at all reassured. A ‘city within a city’, with houses pressing up close to the boundaries and sides seeming comparatively open. Not exactly a fortress …
* * *
Soon they entered the Quarter and approached the British Legation, the largest of all the diplomatic buildings, by
the look of it, built of stone but with the distinctive Chinese roof tiles sweeping low and turned up at the gutters. A Union Jack fluttered from a flagstaff outside. There they dismounted and the ladies were handed down, Mrs Griffith standing upright and firm, no tears now evident on her rough cheeks, although her eyes remained moist.
Within minutes the members of the party were seated before a large desk behind which sat the British Minister to the Chinese Court, Sir Claude MacDonald. He was a tall, raw-boned man, in his late forties, with a thin face and the ruddy cheeks of a highlander, framed by a wide sweeping moustache, the ends of which had been waxed so that they stood out like the wing tips of a bird of prey.
He listened with fierce concentration, his bulbous eyes fixed intently on Simon’s face as the details of their journey, including the two encounters with the Boxers, were related. At the end, he stood, took Mrs Griffith’s hand and bowed low over it.
‘How frightful, madam,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry. I never had the pleasure of meeting your husband, but I heard much of his good works in the province. You have my deepest condolences.’
Mrs Griffith inclined her head in acknowledgement. ‘We must make immediate arrangements,’ he rolled his ‘r’s slightly on the word, ‘for your husband’s interment here in the Legation’s cemetery. I presume, ma’am, that is what you would wish?’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Sir Claude rang a bell and a Chinese servant in an impeccable loose, white tunic entered. The minister spoke to him in Mandarin and turned back to the visitors.
‘I have given instructions for your things to be taken to the Peking Hotel, a short walk from here, and for rooms to be booked for you all. I suggest that you go there immediately – my servant here will show you the way – and take some rest and refreshment. I will be here at your service should you need anything. We can talk later about your future. I hope that it won’t be long before you will be able to return to your house and church, Mrs Griffith.’
They stood but the tall man laid a hand on Simon’s arm. ‘I believe you were a captain in the British army, sir?’
