Party in Peking

by Margaret Pemberton

  Lewis Sinclair disregarded her. If she broke her ankle trying to descend the hillside, she would have no one to blame but herself.

  He turned instead to Olivia. ‘ You will find Chinese dress easier to walk in.’

  She nodded, and as there was nowhere else to change, walked quickly towards the gatehouse.

  The flames from the burning villa cast a lurid red glow over the surrounding hills and trees. Somewhere, in their depths, were the Boxers. Perhaps even at this very moment they were watching them. She shivered, and in the deserted gatehouse quickly abandoned her apple-green dress with its long skirt, and stepped into the strange and oddly comfortable coarse blue cotton garments. The smock was long, falling narrowly over loose trousers that enabled her to move with ease.

  When she returned, Lady Glencarty said scathingly, ‘You look a disgrace, Olivia.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ Lewis Sinclair said, ‘Chinese dress suits you.’

  She looked up at him and as their eyes met, a curious sensation ran down her spine. ‘It would be even better if your hair was unpinned,’ he continued, eyeing her speculatively. ‘Then if we are attacked you won’t look at all European.’

  He stepped towards her, reaching out, taking the pins deftly from her hair. She felt her cheeks flame, and then he was saying in a voice that sounded oddly gentle, ‘Now you really do look Chinese.’

  She moved away from him sharply, curiously disconcerted, reminded abruptly of the existence of his wife. Where was she now? Had he been journeying to meet her? She tilted her chin upwards. It was no concern of hers if he had. She would not think of Lewis Sinclair or his Chinese wife. Instead, she would think of Phillippe. Tall and blond and devastatingly charming. His face seemed a little indistinct, but that was because she was tired. She braced her shoulders. There was a fifteen-mile walk ahead of her, most of it over rough terrain. She could not afford to feel tired. Again she tried to think of Phillippe but as she followed Lewis Sinclair’s broad-shouldered figure away from the villa and into the darkness, she was aware that she was once more remembering the flash of pain she had surprised in his eyes, when he had thought himself unobserved. It had been so raw, so deep, it had almost taken her breath away. She wondered what had occasioned it. What kind of life he lived in the countryside far from Peking.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ her uncle asked her as they made their way carefully down the roughly made track that they had ascended with such ease in the carriage only hours ago.

  ‘Yes,’ Olivia replied, but her voice was vague, her thoughts elsewhere.

  Chapter Two

  Olivia had never before realized how quiet the night could be. In the surrounding silence their footsteps on the roughly made track sounded deafening. She looked around apprehensively as the horse sent a flurry of pebbles tumbling into the undergrowth. Surely they would be heard? The Boxers could not have retreated far.

  Lady Glencarty was breathing heavily, keeping pace with them in a manner that earned her Olivia’s grudging admiration as first one arduous mile was covered, and then two.

  The moon scudded out from a bank of cloud. The trees receded and the great, parched plain spread out before them. Ahead of them Lewis Sinclair halted and Lady Glencarty collapsed on to a boulder in relief.

  Sir William hurried forward and stood beside Lewis Sinclair, regarding the vast expanse of open country with anxious eyes. ‘No sign of Boxers?’ he asked queryingly, struggling to regulate his breathing and appear unaffected by the tiring descent.

  Lewis Sinclair shook his head.

  ‘That’s good,’ Sir William said, resisting the temptation to emulate Lady Glencarty. He had not realized that he was so unfit. His heart hammered painfully and the muscles in his legs ached.

  Lewis Sinclair turned and regarded the perspiring Lady Glencarty with a slight frown. He was well aware that Sir William had found the way down the hillside arduous, and certainly Lady Glencarty must have done so. She was a heavily-built woman in her early sixties, unused to exertion.

  He glanced across at Olivia. She, alone, was showing no signs of tiredness. Her hair was thick and dark, hanging down freely, almost to her waist, her slenderness heightened by the native dress she wore. His heart contracted violently. For a moment it was as if Pearl Moon was once more at his side. Pearl Moon, whom he had buried with his bare hands after the Boxers had razed to the ground the village in which they were living. Pearl Moon, with her sweetness and gentleness and happy laughter. Pearl Moon, whom he had loved and irrevocably lost. His hands bunched into fists and a muscle jerked savagely at the corner of his clenched jaw.

  Pearl Moon had been a Christian, and Chinese converts to Christianity were hated by the Boxers almost as much as Europeans. He had been at a distant village when the attack had taken place, setting the broken leg of a young peasant boy. He had not been with her when she had died, and he wondered in a sea of pain that he was barely able to conquer, if he would ever he able to forgive himself.

  ‘I think the ladies need a rest,’ Sir William was saying.

  Lewis passed a hand over his eyes. After Pearl Moon’s death he had ridden hard to Peking, leaving his five-year-old son in the care of the Vicar-Apostolic of Peking, Monseigneur Favier. Then, for five long months, he had done his best to summon aid for the hapless Chinese converts unprotected against the Boxer’s wrath.

  He had been unsuccessful. Sir Claude MacDonald had expressed his condolences on being told of the death of Pearl Moon, but had been unable to provide him with even a small body of men. If the Chinese converts needed the protection of Peking, they would have to find their own way inside the city walls.

  He had approached the other legations: the American, the Belgian, the Italian. The response had been the same. They were not responsible for the numberless Chinese who had abandoned their own faith and gods for Christianity. His eyes darkened as he remembered the insolent young diplomat at the French legation who had dismissed Pearl Moon’s death as being only that of ‘another native’. His fist had shot out and he had floored the suavely dressed Frenchman with a savage blow to the jaw, storming from the legation before anyone could have the satisfaction of evicting him.

  Disgusted by the apathy which he had met, appalled at the inability of the ministers to grasp just how many innocent Chinese were about to lose their lives, he had ridden to outlying missions himself, escorting as many converts as he could to the relative safety of the city. The Boxers were now only days, perhaps hours away and he could ill afford to waste time shepherding the Harlands and Lady Glencarty to Peking when so many others required his help.

  ‘I think the ladies need a rest,’ Sir William repeated, not liking the grim expression of Lewis Sinclair’s face.

  This time Lewis heard him. ‘Of course,’ he said tersely, walking over to his horse and removing a bottle of water from his saddlebag.

  Sir William helped his wife to dismount, and the water was passed round. Letitia Harland accepted the bottle and held it gingerly, unaccustomed to drinking without the benefit of a glass.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, hurry up, Letitia,’ Lady Glencarty said bad-temperedly, ‘You’re spilling more than you’re drinking!’

  ‘Yes, of course. I am sorry, Clarissa,’ Letitia said apologetically, tipping the leather bottle once more to her lips, and this time spilling only a little water on to her bodice.

  ‘Are there any other European villas nearby?’ Lewis asked Sir William abruptly

  ‘The Hoggett-Smythes have a summer home half a mile away on the rim of the trees, but they aren’t in residence, thank God. One of the children has chicken pox and was too ill to travel.’

  ‘But there will be servants there, preparing the villa for their arrival?’ Lewis persisted.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ Sir William said, not understanding the reason for his interest.

  Lewis picked up his rifle. The chances were that the Hoggett-Smythes’ servants were Christians. Half a mile there and back would take him very little time. It woul
d enable Lady Glencarty to rest before they set out across the plain and, if the Hoggett-Smythes’ villa had not already been attacked it would enable him to warn the inmates and offer them the chance of returning to Peking.

  ‘I say, Sinclair… What the devil…?’ Sir William began as he prepared to leave.’

  ‘I’ll be ten minutes, perhaps less.’

  ‘But you can’t leave us here, unprotected!’ Sir William protested in alarm. ‘I’ve told you, the Hoggett-Smythes are still in Peking. The villa is deserted.’

  ‘Except for the servants,’ Lewis said dryly. He took the water bottle from Lady Glencarty’s startled grasp. ‘I’ll take this with me. I may be able to refill it.’

  Olivia, remembering the dead and wounded that might have so easily have been left in the wake of the Boxer attack on their own villa, stepped towards him. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said quietly. ‘You may need help.’

  A flash of surprise crossed his eyes, and then he merely nodded.

  ‘Olivia, you must not go into the woods with Mr Sinclair! It is quite improper,’ Letitia Harland remonstrated tearfully.

  ‘I must go, Aunt Letitia. There may be people hurt. I shall be perfectly safe with Doctor Sinclair to escort me.’

  ‘No, Olivia! I forbid it!’ her aunt said, but Olivia’s mind was made up and she simply squeezed Letitia Harland’s hand and turned, following Lewis Sinclair into the depths of the trees.

  Letitia Harland pressed her hand against her mouth, smothering a cry of anguish, wishing desperately that they had never left Peking; that they had never left England. Never even heard of China.

  ‘I shall complain about Doctor Sinclair’s attitude to Sir Claude,’ Lady Glencarty said, when he was safely out of earshot. ‘His manner is unpardonably overbearing.’

  ‘I hope that you will also inform Sir Claude that he saved our lives,’ Sir William said dryly. ‘And now, if you please Clarissa. I think it would be best if you were to remain silent. We don’t want to attract any unwelcome attention.’

  Olivia’s heart beat light and fast as she walked quickly along at Lewis Sinclair’s side. The track was dry and sandy, the trees pressing in closely all around them. There was a rustle in the undergrowth as a small wild animal darted for cover and she drew in her breath sharply. He looked down at her, the expression in his eyes unreadable in the darkness.

  ‘Are you afraid?’

  ‘A little,’ she answered as he slapped a low-lying branch out of the way. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that a slight smile had softened the harsh contours of his mouth. After a while she said hesitantly, ‘Doctor Sinclair, why do the Boxers hate us so?’

  ‘China has always discouraged foreigners, Miss Harland, and the treaties that she has been forced to make with other countries over recent years has opened the gates to a flood of them.’ He paused and then said with a curious edge to his voice, ‘ Unwittingly, it has been the missionaries who have most offended the peasant population from which the Boxers have sprung.’

  She remembered that his parents had been missionaries and said tentatively, ‘Because of the church spires that offend the feng-shui?’

  He nodded and though she could not see, she knew that his face was once again sombre. ‘We have paid far too little heed to the deeply ingrained superstition of the peasantry. The telegraph poles that we have strung across the country also pierce the sky and offend the spirits. Unfortunately, when the wind blows the wires make a low moaning noise and the country people believe that it is the sound of the spirits in pain. They also rust and the rainwater dripping from them is tinged a dark red.’

  A small frown creased Olivia’s brow. ‘I can understand why the noise would distress them, but I do not understand about the rainwater.’

  ‘They believe that the rusted rainwater is blood,’ Lewis Sinclair said with stark simplicity.

  Olivia gasped. ‘But that is terrible! Has no one taken the trouble to explain to them? To set their minds at rest?’

  ‘No, Miss Harland,’ Lewis said, aware that Pearl Moon would have liked Olivia Harland exceedingly. ‘No one has.’

  The path curved and dipped and Olivia said, ‘Are there other things, too? Do the railway lines offend them?’

  ‘Being flat, they do not offend the feng-shui in the same way as the telegraph lines do, but hardly a mile of track can be laid without the grave of someone’s ancestors being disturbed and ancestor worship is the most deep-rooted of all Chinese superstition.’

  They continued on in a silence that was curiously companionable and then Olivia said, ‘I understand now why the Boxers savaged the telegraph lines between here and Peking, but I still don’t understand why the missionaries are hated so. They do so much good. In Peking, unwanted girl babies are simply left outside the city walls to die and the missionaries take them in and shelter them, and school them.’

  A spasm of pain crossed Lewis Sinclair’s handsome face. Pearl Moon had been just such an unwanted child. Left to die of exposure and saved by his parents. For the first few years of his life, he had believed that she was his sister and been puzzled that she looked so different from himself. Then he had understood and they had become friends, the bond between them as deep as any filial bond could possibly have been. When he had been sent away to school in England it had been Pearl Moon that he had missed. Pearl Moon that he had been homesick for.

  ‘So how,’ Olivia was saying, ‘ can the Chinese possibly object to them? They save hundreds and hundreds of babies every year.’

  Lewis closed his eyes to the painful images of the past and said, ‘The Chinese have exposed unwanted girl babies at birth since time immemorial. They cannot, and do not, believe that the missionaries save the babies for no other reason than the sheer goodness of their hearts.’

  Olivia’s frown of perplexity deepened. ‘Then what on earth do they believe?’ she asked, brushing a tangle of undergrowth out of her way.

  Lewis glanced across at her. She was an intelligent girl and she deserved the truth. ‘ That they have an ulterior motive,’ he said, his voice grim. ‘It is a widely held belief that Europeans can turn lead into silver. Because so many of the babies rescued are in advanced states of malnutrition, large numbers of them die. The Chinese do not believe that their deaths are due to natural causes. They believe that they are killed by the missionaries for the purpose of alchemy.’

  Olivia halted abruptly, her eyes wide. ‘They can’t! It’s too horrible!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘ But you asked me for the truth and there it is. There are other things, too, equally horrible. The Christian rites of baptism for the dead and Extreme Unction are similarly misunderstood.’

  Somehow she forced herself once more to walk, fighting down a wave of nausea. At last she said unsteadily, ‘ Do people know this? Does Uncle William? Does Sir Claude?’

  ‘I’m not sure about your uncle. Sir Claude does, certainly. And he regards it as another example of peasant ignorance not to be taken seriously.’

  ‘But it must be taken seriously,’ Olivia said aghast. ‘ People are dying because of it! Missionaries in Chihli and Shansi, and now missionaries nearer to Peking.’

  ‘And their converts,’ Lewis said, and at the savagery in his voice, she looked across at him, startled. His mouth had compressed into a hard, bitter line and the skin across his cheekbones was taut, white as parchment.

  He had withdrawn from her. Lost in the hellish world that she had glimpsed so briefly, when she had caught him unawares and the suffering in his eyes had been exposed to her gaze.

  She fell silent, wondering what it was that had happened to cause him such pain. Perhaps his parents had been murdered by the Boxers. Perhaps the Chinese that they had converted to Christianity had suffered death and worse.

  Her heart tightened. Only that very morning she had been intoxicated by the beauty of China. By the hoopoe swooping low across the valley; by the cloudless sky and the serried ranks of endless pine. Now the beauty was destroyed. Transfigure
d into ugliness and monstrosity.

  The white stone of the Hoggett-Smythes’ villa gleamed palely between the trees. She felt a prickle of fear run down her spine. It was very quiet. Very still. But that did not mean that the Boxers had not been there before them. That bodies were not strewn upon the grass.

  They broke free of the trees and Lewis surveyed the silent house through narrowed eyes. The windows were naked, devoid of blinds; the flowerbeds, barely discernible in the moonlight, were gouged and trampled by scores of rampaging feet.

  ‘Stay here,’ he said quietly.

  ‘But why…’

  ‘The Boxers have been here and it’s just possible that they are still here. Now do as I say.’

  She shivered, despite the airless heat as he strode away from her, watching as he mounted the light flight of steps that led to the entrance with panther-like agility. A night owl gave a raucous cry and she gritted her teeth. It would do no good at all to panic. There was nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.

  Lewis strode swiftly through the deserted, ransacked rooms. He had known instinctively, before he had entered, that the Hoggett-Smythes were not in residence. It had been the sight of dead and mutilated bodies that he wished to spare Olivia by insisting that she remain outside. There were no bodies on the ground-floor rooms. No smell of blood. He mounted the stairs, striding along the delicately tilted corridors, flinging open door after door. In the nursery, a rocking-horse lay overturned on its side, great glass eyes staring.

  ‘Thank God for the chicken pox,’ he said to himself, retreating to the disordered kitchen, refilling his water bottle, rifling through the cupboards for packets of biscuits.

  To Olivia it seemed an eternity before his tall, broad-shouldered figure took shape once more in the darkness.

  ‘Can you carry these?’ He thrust several packets of biscuits into her arms. ‘The villa has been ransacked but there’s no sign of anyone killed or injured.’

  ‘But the servants must have been there when the Boxers attacked,’ Olivia said as he began to lead the way round the back of the villa and towards the stables. ‘ Where can they have gone?’