“Follow me,” John Williams ordered, sheathing his sword.
Running all out at the moon-gate, he stumbled on an abandoned jingal and, recovering in midstride, scooped up the crude weapon. At a full run, he smashed the jingal against the bricks that sealed the moon-gate. The fresh mortar was already flaking, and his third blow yielded a broad crack. Bricks tumbling inward, the barrier collapsed after three more blows.
Williams stumbled through the gate into a second courtyard. A tile wall emblazoned with writhing dragons guarded a second moon-gate from evil spirits, which can only move in straight lines. For the first time, John Williams beheld the previously invisible enemy. Four die-hard Boxers faced him. Painted amulets hung on their bare chests, and cloth bands adorned with red Chinese characters encircled their foreheads. A dark-faced Hopei farmboy stared incredulously at the overseas devils, loose lips gaping to reveal stained, broken teeth. His face exploded into red pulp when the Fusiliers fired, and the Boxer fell beside his three companions. His last sensation was astonishment that the bullets could actually injure him.
The morning was as abruptly silent as a concert hall after the final crescendo. John Williams smelled the sweet stench of blood and the musky tang of the yellow earth, the acrid odor of gunpowder and the heavy fragrance of incense.
A musket’s throaty rasp punctured his exhausted preoccupation. His sergeant spun around and fell to his knees, dropping his weapon. The next instant, the sergeant stood erect, ruefully contemplating a rifle butt shattered by an iron slug. Greasy smoke drifted over the tiled wall’s guardian dragons.
“Cover me,” Williams commanded and sprinted toward the spirit wall. He flourished his sword above his head, his revolver dangling forgotten from its lanyard.
Twenty yards separated him from the spirit wall, and he ran as he had never run on the rugby field. Ten yards from the gaudy spirit wall, a blow to his left shoulder checked his momentum. He gathered himself and hurtled across the intervening space.
Behind the wall, a Boxer in a scarlet silk robe was reloading his musket. Williams was astonished to see that his enemy wore a massive necklace of sea-green jade and gold. The Boxer raised his musket in a vain parry as the Lieutenant’s sword descended on his head. A gush of bright blood stained the jade necklace. His sword dangling by its retaining knot, Williams caught the dying man and tore the jade circlet from his neck. He was stuffing his prize into his pocket when he collapsed from the delayed shock of the musketball embedded in his shoulder.
“Rapine and pillage,” Hilary Metcalfe said heavily, “rapine and pillage. The brave British soldiery foremost in the fray—and the looting. We maintain our hallowed traditions in the new century.”
“Greater evil will spring from the deeds of the past months,” Sir Jonathan Sekloong observed somberly. “Gunpowder and swords have hewn a chasm between Europe and China. Torrents of blood will flow in that chasm.”
Elizabeth Metcalfe looked up from her embroidery in surprise. Sir Jonathan, who was normally fluent in English, was obviously translating as he spoke from the formal Chinese of his thoughts.
“Such vehemence in your home violates good manners.” He nodded apology to his hostess. “We Chinese were ashamed. Our cheeks were red with shame for the barbaric Boxers—though many sympathized in their hearts. What are we to think now of the barbarism of the enlightened European troops?”
“It was a mission of mercy,” Mary Osgood protested. “The Boxers would have slaughtered the diplomats just like the martyred missionaries.”
“And to the victors belong the spoils?” Metcalfe asked ironically. “The rape and the killing are justified?”
“The Boxers would’ve been less merciful, much less merciful,” Elizabeth Metcalfe countered. “I shudder when I think of what might have happened. They got what they deserved.”
“And the Fusiliers first into the breach,” Mary added. “They fought bravely. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
“Ladies! Ladies!” Metcalfe threw his hands up in mock supplication. “Why so bloodthirsty?”
The women spoke simultaneously, ignited by common indignation. Mary began, but yielded to the older woman.
“Mr. Metcalfe, that’s not fair—”
“Hilary, you are provoking,” Elizabeth said. “You yourself argued the expedition must move fast or the Chinese would massacre the Europeans in Peking, and then when the Allies finally arrived, you said they would slaughter Chinese.”
“I commend your political acumen, Liz, Mary.” Metcalfe smiled. “Since it had to be done, ’twas better ’twas done quickly. But afterward?”
“You’re right, Hilary.” Sir Jonathan nodded. “Have the ladies seen Dr. Morrison’s cable to The Times?”
“You, too, have an understanding with the Great Eastern Telegraph and Cable Company, do you, Jonathan?”
“I’m a simple Chinaman, Hilary,” Sir Jonathan laughed, “but I did arrange for my own copies. Think of the cumshaw we’d save by buying the company.”
“When is a bribe not a bribe?” The pair chanted in practiced chorus. “When it’s cumshaw on the China Coast!”
“You two could always do a music-hall turn,” Elizabeth Metcalfe said tartly.
But she smiled at the overwrought middle-aged men who were boisterously relieving their pent-up tension in her cluttered drawing-room. The chorus goaded the dozing Chinese boy on the veranda, and the punkah’s frantic flapping stirred the cloyingly moist heat.
“What,” Elizabeth asked, “did Dr. Morrison say in the dispatch you’ve stolen?”
“Let me recall,” her brother answered. “Siege lifted, as you know. Heartfelt welcome for relieving troops—Britain’s might displayed as first assault mounted by Royal Wessex Fusiliers—light resistance crushed—the Manchu Court, including the Empress Dowager and the Emperor, fled toward Sian … Allied troops pacify Peking, after regrettable instances of looting of abandoned mansions by both Boxers and Allies … widespread reports of alleged (Morrison is cautious) killing and torture by Allies … three young women came forward to complain they’d been outraged … inquiry ordered … discipline restored and troops now marching to relieve missionaries isolated in small villages (if any survive). Negotiations offered to Manchus—that’s about all.”
“And the Regiment?” Mary asked. “Anything more?”
“I believe there may be,” Metcalfe teased.
“Miss Osgood,” Sir Jonathan interposed, “casualties were light. Four privates, a lance-corporal, and a sergeant killed, another sergeant severely wounded. But, otherwise, only minor wounds. Captain French was the first man into Peking, and Lieutenant Williams fought well. Both are mentioned in dispatches. Lieutenant Williams is making good recovery from his wound.”
“His wound?” Mary’s heart lurched. “John wounded?”
“Slightly, my dear,” Metcalfe reassured her. “No more than a flesh wound, Dr. Morrison says.”
“And my father?” Mary asked. “No word?”
“None, I’m afraid,” Metcalfe answered. “But no word means he’s safe. And the young Lieutenant, I imagine you’ll hear more directly when the post comes in.”
A flush crimsoned Mary’s throat and cheeks. Her heart had resumed its normal rhythm, but her hand trembled when she set her teacup down.
“As the English poet wrote, it was a famous victory.” The heavy irony was intensified by the lack of emphasis in Sir Jonathan’s voice; his lilt was hardly noticeable, and his lean features were expressionless. “My fears for the faraway future may be too great. But repercussions in Hong Kong are no idle fear. Viceroy Li Hung-chang in Canton is worried. His own hotheads, you know.…”
“What do you expect, Jonathan?” Metcalfe asked.
“The usual: demonstrations, posters, perhaps riots. After seizing the New Territories, the British despoil Peking. The hotheads can’t let it pass.”
“Damn it, Jonathan,” Metcalfe objected, “you know more than that.”
“Well, perhaps I do. I
t won’t be good for trade. I’ve heard … that is, I’m advised to warn that …”
“Hilary, please don’t bore us to death with talk of trade,” Elizabeth Metcalfe interjected. “You’ve already frightened Mary to no purpose. But she might as well spend the night here, not alone in her bungalow.”
“Capital idea, Liz, though there’s nothing to fear. Now, if you’ll excuse us—”
Mary’s concern for John Williams was overlaid by curiosity roused by Sir Jonathan’s tantalizing hints. She wanted to hear the men’s talk. Perhaps ungraciously, she resented Elizabeth Metcalfe’s assertive maternalism, the arbitrary decision as to what was best for herself. But it proved well that she did not return to the bungalow off Murray Parade-ground for three days.
Staying with the Metcalfes was like living in a command-post during a battle. Hilary Metcalfe sat at the center of his web while civilian officials and military officers brought reports and sought advice. Sir Jonathan was often present, and Mary saw that he and Metcalfe exercised great power, though they held only the relatively modest appointments of comprador and secretary to Derwent, Hayes and Company. Theirs was the power of knowledge that was intelligently applied and actually solicited by the authorities in the emergency. Only a few others in Hong Kong, men like Robert Hotung and Mosing Way, understood the psychology of both sides in the confrontation between self-righteous Chinese indignation and equally self-righteous British anger.
Her most vivid memory of that time in later years was, however, not her elders’ wisdom. Toward the end of the second afternoon, she was sketching her impression of the Regiment before Peking with a fine brush in Chinese ink on rice paper, when Charles Sekloong hurried into the drawing-room. His nankeen silk suit was soiled and torn. A stained bandage swathed his left hand, and his hazel eyes flashed.
“Called me a damned Chinaman,” he raged. “Me—a damned Chinaman! Who do they think messed me up?”
Mary extended her hand in quick sympathy. Charles grasped it with both his own.
“What happened, Mr. Sekloong?” she asked. “You’re not badly hurt?”
“No, Miss Osgood. Just bruised. But it’s so unfair.”
She wanted to comfort him. Like a small boy who had just discovered that not all the world loved him, he was more bewildered than angry.
“Unfair?”
“A crowd of patriots—Chinese patriots, they claim—attacked me. ‘False foreign devil,’ they called me. ‘Running-dog of the British’ and—and other things I can’t repeat.”
Mary knew instinctively that the insults Charles could not bring himself to report were not merely obscenities, but jibes at his hybrid ancestry. He was, she had already learned, almost morbidly sensitive about the mixed blood that made him an outsider to both the Chinese and the British.
“I finally broke away. Just down the street, fifty yards down this street, I bumped into an insolent puppy—an English subaltern. He said: ‘Out of my way, you damned Chinaman!’”
Mary realized that Charles was wounded chiefly in his self-esteem. His loyalties were already fixed—by both circumstances and choice. The Sekloongs of necessity exerted all their influence to bolster British law and to sustain the established order. Yet their position was equivocal. Formally esteemed by both the British and the Chinese authorities, they were suspect to both the Chinese mob and the British plutocracy.
Elizabeth Metcalfe cleaned the gash in Charles’s hard cricket-player’s palm. Mary mouthed almost the same consoling, meaningless syllables that had in the past soothed small boys whose feelings had been outraged.
“I deeply appreciate your kindness, Miss Osgood.” Charles thanked her effusively. “Miss Metcalfe, you have always been very kind to me. Now I must see Mr. Metcalfe.”
“Mary, my dear, Charles is uncommonly grateful for a small service,” Elizabeth Metcalfe observed slyly when the young man had bounded up the stairs.
“You think so? He was shocked, and he needed sympathy from … from one of us.”
“You mean because you’re white?” Elizabeth could be as forthright as her brother.
“I imagine so. And he was very grateful to you.”
“Fiddlesticks. He’s used to me. I’ve always been around, just like an extra mother. But you’re another matter. Of course, he knows you’re white, and that’s important. But he’s also very much aware that you’re a girl—a very pretty girl.”
Elizabeth’s pronunciation “gel”—the new manner—cleansed the common word “girl” of both familiarity and offense. Mary bent over her painting to hide her confusion. In any event, Elizabeth’s insinuations were temporarily relegated by violent events outside the sheltered house behind the flower market. Messengers reported battles and bloodshed. Public demonstrations shook Hong Kong and Kowloon, while gory clashes rocked the New Territories that had lately been leased to Britain by a reluctant but impotent Imperial Government.
Gangs of Chinese youth tramped through Victoria, overturning sedan chairs and rickshaws, burning wooden buildings, and posting placards that demanded British withdrawal from not only the New Territories, but the entire Crown Colony. The street-gangs dispersed before the loyal Sikh police, but soon coalesced again. The demonstrations were apparently not spontaneous. Sir Jonathan spoke of an alliance between, on the one hand, the gangsters, pirates, and brigands who considered the New Territories their private kingdom and, on the other, the Triads, the quasi-criminal Secret Societies originally formed to resist Manchu rule two hundred and fifty years earlier. Clandestine encouragement, financial support, and overall direction, he felt, came from resentful young Mandarins at the Viceregal Court in Canton. Their strategy of disruption concentrated on the unsettled New Territories.
The Governor, Sir Henry Blake, moved decisively when he received a report that Chief Superintendent of Police Francis May was “besieged with six Sikh and ten Chinese constables by a mixed Chinese force in a mat-shed police-post in a hamlet at the head of Tolo Harbor” on the mainland sixteen miles from Victoria. Sir Henry was charged to maintain order—and he was determined to disprove whispered accusations that he had been too lenient with the natives. For the moment, his dream of bringing Hong Kong’s Chinese inhabitants into equal partnership with the British was superseded by the necessity to maintain British power.
Dated midnight, August 17, 1900, Sir Henry’s hasty note instructed the Commodore Commanding Hong Kong Naval Forces to dispatch two steam frigates to Tolo Harbor to rescue Superintendent May.
H.M.S. Whiting sailed first with a hundred and ten Sepoys of the Bengal Regiment and twenty-eight Sikh policemen. Since Government had reverted in the emergency to its distrust of the small Chinese contingent in the police force, no local constables were embarked. H.M.S. Fame followed to serve as a command and dispatch vessel. Whiting grounded on a shoal at the entrance to Tolo Harbor, but the troops landed from small boats and routed the irregular Chinese force. Superintendent May and his small unit were rescued, though two Sikhs were killed and the flimsy mat-shed police-post was burned. The British held the field, and their enemies were dispersed. But the next day saw worse conflict. Later the British major commanding the two-hundred-man detachment of the Volunteer Hong Kong Regiment (recruited from Europeans, Eurasians, and Indians) at Taipo, just three miles southwest of Tolo Harbor, recalled:
It was damned unpleasant for a while. At dusk, more than a thousand “Braves” in Imperial uniforms appeared on the ridges encircling our camp. They discharged jingals, muskets, a few rifles, and what they call fire-arrows, small rockets. My men stood to and fired in volleys. We held till two in the morning. Fortunately, there was a bright moon. Then the ships came up and began shelling the reverse slope. Well, the buggers scuttled—and that was that.
That was not quite that for the Hong Kong Government. Though rejecting the hotheads’ demands for a punitive expedition against Canton, the Governor was determined to impose firm British rule upon the restive New Territories.
“We’ve had enough of expeditionary forc
es,” Sir Henry snorted. “Viceroy Li wants a direct confrontation no more than we do. But our writ must run in the New Territories.”
The military and the police were to be occupied for months rooting out the brigands who treated the wild New Territories as their own domain, defying both British and Chinese authority. Though complete “pacification” was to take decades, more potent forces than arms were already at work. As implacably as—and, of necessity, even more slowly than—the Allied Force had moved on Peking, Western civilization was on the march in the border territories that had known no orderly government since the Sung Dynasty some seven centuries earlier. Supported by scattered troop encampments and police-posts, civilian officials imposed, first, their own summary will and, subsequently, the rule of British law leavened by traditional Chinese laws and customs. Ferry services were established, and roads were laid. Pagodas were leveled, and their stones were used to build houses, barns, and pigsties. Postmen, those heralds of modern civilization, defied the brigands’ harassment to serve isolated mountain villages. Commerce came in their wake, and farmers in remote valleys gave grudging obedience to the new order that offered them new markets and new goods. The obvious benefits of British rule, backed by the manifest superiority of British arms, were slowly to win over a suspicious, illiterate, superstitious, and stubborn populace. Nonetheless, two towns on the east coast of the New Territories, accessible only by sea, were to hold out as virtually autonomous pirate havens until the year 1923.
Protracted negotiations dealt with the larger issues between the Western powers and the Manchu Dynasty. Those issues were ostensibly settled after a year—to no one’s complete satisfaction. During that time, Sir Jonathan Sekloong was, as Hilary Metcalfe said, “almost constantly on his travels, like a new Charles Stewart with nothing to gain for himself.” Trusted as much as anyone by both sides, he played his essential conciliatory role in the shadows. He loathed some of the messages he carried, particularly the Western powers’ arrogant demands on the Chinese. But he knew the satisfaction of mitigating the harsher conditions the West wished to impose; and he served China further by persuading haughty Imperial officials, who had learned little from successive debacles, to moderate their own imperious language.
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