by Tim Symonds
My mind flashed to the Queen of Hearts throwing a fit of temper: ‘Off with her head. Off with her head. Off with her head! Off... with... her... head. Off with her head. Off with her head. Off with her head. Off with her head. I rule Wonderland alone. Your interference will not be tolerated.’
‘And the odds on our heads being spared?’ I asked.
He paused.
‘A woman’s mind, Watson. That I can’t foretell.’
***
Our time in Peking had come to its end. Dogs bark. Caravans move off. Our heads were still on our shoulders. The sages-in-ordinary had fixed the day and even the auspicious hour, 2pm, for our departure. Our luggage was stowed in a large coach. Life in the Forbidden City had proved not only stranger than we supposed but stranger than we could ever suppose. Until we passed out of the territory under Peking’s direct control I decided to keep wearing my hat and lapel displaying the honours which the E-D had insisted on bestowing. Though their plans had gone badly wrong for the General and the Empress, they regrouped with extraordinary resilience. They were back in unassailable command.
Despite now knowing my own invitation to China had come mainly as an afterthought I completed my assignment by adding a short chapter on modern pistols to the Field Book. I borrowed Yuán’s Colt and described its internal layout, function, field stripping and the evolution of the design.
Once aboard our coach I tapped a finger on my pocket. My notebook was safely tucked on my person, the jottings for use as aides-memoire. Out of fear of mislaying it I had telegraphed much of the content to Mycroft Holmes. In the wrong hands, the material would be of considerable strategic value. If a German or Russian force wanted to attack and capture the Summer Palace my notes on the lake and the canal linking it to the city contained precise detail on the width and depth of the waters and how best to manoeuvre in them, even how to employ the Shishaquita and the Yong-he in military terms.
Particular memories of Peking would stay with me to the end of my days - the comforting roll of the Imperial palanquin taking me back and forth to visit the wounded Emperor, screened from prying eyes by the heavily embroidered silk hangings, listening to the grunts of the bearers picking their way through the maze of blue- and yellow-tiled palaces and pavilions. The Peony Terraces at the Summer Palace, the colours graduated up the hillside from deeper to the lighter hues at the top as though the landscape itself was fading away into the far distance.
Had John Bunyan ever visited China I would have sworn Peking was the model for the town of Vanity in Pilgrim’s Progress whose fair was filled with ‘whores, bauds, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearly, precious stones and whatnot’.
Wang was waiting at the Gate to wish us a safe journey at the same spot among the row of young Pittosporum trees where I had first met him. He gave a deep bow, saying lyrically, ‘May there be no violent wind or excessive rain in the skies on your journey, and no waves rising from the sea.’
We thanked him for the companionable days spent together.
‘When we are back home Sir Sherlock and I will raise a glass to your esteemed ancestor Fang Bao,’ I told him.
‘One day I hope to come to see you in Ying-ji-li,’ he replied. ‘I have already learnt a lot from your way of life which will be of great benefit to my country.’
‘What are your immediate plans?’ I asked.
‘In the light of what Sir Sherlock and you have taught me I am composing a zhāngbiao, a secret Palace memorial, for the imperial courier to deliver direct to Her Majesty,’ came the reply. ‘Under lock and key to ensure it comes into her hands. I’ve things to say I wish the Empress Dowager alone to hear.’
Precisely on the auspicious hour our carriage moved on through the great Ch’ien-Men Gate into ‘the Great Without’ for the last time. Briefly, like Alice, we had been strangers in an extraordinary land, as though we had fallen through a rabbit hole into the England of the Tudors, in the reign of the autocratic and capricious Faerie Queene. I looked forward to the friendly streets of London, the cheerfully-lit store windows, the men showing off their black astrakhan collars imported from Ballaarat, the multitudes of companionable strangers moving unceasingly down Regent Street. I especially yearned for England’s countryside, a place of steady and placid work where bells rang out for church. Goldcrests and swallows above the fields. Primroses, pyramid orchids, bluebells and dog’s mercury giving way to goldilocks buttercups. Hay-making.
Peking’s high walls fell back. The paranoia seeping through the miasma of the Forbidden City, the crowded street-life, the parade of camels laden with coal from the mountains, all so recently stark, even oppressive, dropped away with the passing minute.
We heard no more the cries of vendors, the harsh discordant sounds of dancers, scribes, wine sellers, jugglers, tumbling dwarfs. The charcoal sellers’ drums. The clack-clack-clack of hollow bamboo announcing the passage of a Chinese street doctor. All would fall silent. To the right of us lay temple-crowned hills, the upturned roofs nestling on the slopes. Only the watch-towers and the green tiles of the triple-domed Temple of Heaven remained visible from afar.
I would not forget glancing back at the Great Ancestress after we had been dismissed from our final audience only that morning, the solitary, diminutive figure seated on a little yellow satin stool at the apex of the white marble Jade Girdle Bridge. She wore her favourite stork hairpin of coral, silver and pearls. The protective collar behind her neck drooped bright yellow bejewelled ribbons. The front of her dress was covered with similar beautiful large pearls, some disposed in the seal-character for long life. She sipped tea as she gazed out across the lake at the palaces and the pavilions, the setting which had been her life.
At a respectful distance a large retinue of eunuchs stood silent and watchful, around them ladies-in-waiting and Palace maids bearing her shoes, handkerchiefs, combs, brushes, powder-boxes, looking glasses of various sizes, pins, perfumes, black and red ink, yellow paper, cigarettes, and water pipes. A further eunuch looked on, empty-handed, waiting to carry the yellow, satin-covered stool. Another eunuch who was a great expert on birds stood by his Mistress. At his high-pitched trill specially trained birds were released from bamboo cages nearby. They flew to a long, wand-like stick held out by the Empress Dowager, waiting to be fed with caterpillars, grasshoppers or grain brought for that purpose. I stared back at the impassive bird-trainer. It may have been he who took a young corvid from the nest and over months, a year even, taught it to fly to the shoulder of someone in a plain yellow beizi embroidered in the middle of the back with jewel-beetle wing-cases, the man who released the war-crow on that fateful day.
To say our goodbyes, Holmes and I had been led to the Jade Girdle Bridge by the Chief Eunuch Li to be presented with parting honours and gifts. The Empress stood up as she heard our approach. She gave her slight, watchful smile. The honours and baubles were taken one by one from two heavily-laden eunuchs at her side and then passed back to them to be carried to our transport. Holmes received the High Order of the Double Dragon and the Manchu Flaming Pear, plus the Ancestral Rank of the First Class of the First Order for Three Generations, the latter bestowed on Holmes and his ancestors. It was the first time the Order had been conferred on a foreigner.
‘I’m certain past generations of my Celtic squires in the orbis alius will appreciate it greatly,’ Holmes remarked, tongue in cheek.
The First Red Button Grade of the Mandarin was bestowed on me, with the ennobling of my descendants for three generations to equal rank, coral thumb-rings, the gold and pearl Imperial Order of the Double Dragon, the Double-Petalled Flower Feather, and the Purple Whip, plus the right to ride a horse around the Forbidden City. Tears flooded my eyes, startling the Empress Dowager. If only my darling Mary were alive. But for her untimely death we may have had descendants to entertain with the Red Button story.
In turn, with an irony my comra
de Holmes insisted upon, we presented the Dowager Empress with the Aeroscope camera. The Empress lifted her closed hands under her chin and made a series of little bows. The disarming and graceful gesture of the closed hands from an autocrat who for a moment in Holmes’s and my life had wielded - but not exercised - the power of death over us took us by surprise.
The Celestial Ruler remained standing for a few more seconds, holding her smile like the thespian awaiting the drop of the stage-curtain. We stepped away, keeping our faces towards her until she turned back, seated herself, and resumed looking out on the most beautiful vista in all China, even the world. It was time to celebrate. We were returning home alive. I reached for my tin-box and extracted the precious box of Trichinopoly cheroots.
Just after we passed out of the City walls Holmes seemed to catch my thoughts.
‘Cixi will go down in history, Watson, mark my words,’ he said. ‘The Old Buddha is wonderfully adapted for the hostile milieu of life in the Forbidden City. She is the perfect Darwinian exemplar of the survival of the fittest.’
Holmes was right, I reflected. Justice is approximate. The Venerable Ancestress must be judged not by our standards but her own. She was no more a savage monster than she was the benevolent Lady Bountiful described by the simpering ladies of the Diplomatic Body. To my sympathetic eye the Empress of the Western Palace had become a figure engulfed in loneliness. Out of sight toiled 400 million souls whose fate lay in her hands, more than all the peoples of Europe and America combined. Neither she nor I nor the High Court itself could know she had no more than twenty months of earthly existence left.
Every hour took us a few more miles further from the Purple City. I had left Peking behind as perplexed as I had been throughout my stay there. My natural sympathy for the Kuang-hsü Emperor had grown considerably. We were laden with honours and treasure ostensibly for saving his life yet the minute the news reached the Forbidden City of our departure another attack could be made on him, as merciless and probably far more direct than the one Holmes’s brilliance had foiled.
***
Shortly before dusk we came to the railway station for the final leg to Shanghai. Aboard the train Holmes took down a jade box given to him by the Empress Dowager.
‘I think we can open this now,’ he said, prising up the lid.
He withdrew an object about five inches in height and leant forward to pass it to me. It contained all the principal parts of the human body made out of gold, jade and pearls.
‘The Old Buddha has a fine sense of irony,’ Holmes said. ‘When the crow was set on the Emperor do you recall which particular Temple he was due to pray at?’
‘The Temple of Longevity,’ I replied.
‘As you say - The Temple of Longevity. Yet she wanted him dead at a mere thirty-six years of age.’
Looking down at the figurine I asked ‘Where does her sense of irony show in this?’
‘It represents her favourite deity, Kwan Yin, Goddess of the Compassion and Mercy,’ came the reply.
Another hour passed. For some time Holmes had been staring out of the compartment window, his forehead scored with thought. Without turning his face to me he said, ‘Yuán must have asked himself time and again whether it would be better for him to come down on the Empress Dowager’s side or the Emperor’s. He must have known it would be a close-run thing. Which side would come out on top if a conflict broke out? If he jumped and discovered too late he’d jumped the wrong way he knew he could die the death of a thousand cuts.’
‘You seemed surprisingly lenient on him,’ I returned a little stiffly. ‘You chose to let him go scot-free, his reputation unsullied. Why? Is it because the General is such a dyed-in-the-wool admirer of all things English?’
‘Not at all, Watson. Only the E-D could have ordered the Emperor’s assassination. The lion was the Empress Dowager. Yuán was merely the jackal.’
‘There’s a question which has been niggling me for some time, Holmes,’ I said.
This time I was treated to the cautious scrutiny I knew so well.
‘Which is, my dear Watson?’
‘At no time almost to the point our departure from the Peking did you bring me into your confidence. I am therefore far behind in my notes on the case. Surely you know by now I can keep a secret!’
‘I did so on purpose. Our lives were in jeopardy. You had to be kept in the dark to safeguard you - and not incidentally myself - from any possibility you might let slip a hint we were on Yuán’s tracks. We may never have seen the white cliffs of Dover again, let alone spend a day together at the Gatwick Races. My bees would have been orphaned, your illustrious London patients abandoned to their fate.
We had nothing to protect us until we had the evidence of the Aeroscope pictures. One awkward pause, one evasive reply from you to any of his questions and Yuán’s sharp mind would have been on the qui vive at once, too early for us to bait the trap. One slip of the tongue, one hint we were interested in his activities in Brighton - which led us to the fact he attended a production of Hamlet - or his route from Brighton to Sherborne which led us to his walk in the New Forest, and you and I would have found ourselves alongside Hamlet’s ghost, explorers in that undiscovered country ‘from whose borders no traveller returns’.’
‘Enlighten me now,’ I enjoined.
‘Starting where?’ Holmes replied, in an accommodating tone.
I took out my notebook.
‘From the beginning, if you don’t mind.’
‘The beginning was a long time coming - until you remarked that a shattered eardrum is about as rare as a lunar eclipse yet you had administered to two such injuries in two days... Add in the characters and the settings - Chief Eunuch Li administering the violent cuff to a eunuch, the Emperor attacked by a crow carrying a firecracker - and at the very least the coincidence bore further investigation.’
‘How early on did you conclude General Yuán was involved?’
‘The moment the Emperor implicated him.’
I looked up from my notebook in surprise.
‘But Holmes, you were never alone with the Emperor. I was with you at the Palace every minute. He did no such thing!’
‘He most certainly did,’ Holmes replied, grinning broadly. ‘Just as we were leaving his presence. He was lying on the couch with the Empress Dowager and Yuán hanging over him.’
Suddenly a recollection flooded back.
‘His finger,’ I cried. ‘The way he was rotating it in the air. Was that some sort of code?’
‘You might call it a code,’ came the reply. ‘In Mandarin the word for a round object - like a round coin - is yuán. Hence the circling finger.’
I said, ‘The General might well have been acting entirely on his own, a rogue assassin. It’s well-known he and the Emperor are at daggers drawn. What set your thoughts off in the E-D’s direction?’
‘That business with the beizi. Why did the Empress send him a cloak at all? She had a great deal else to think about, rushing off to the Ancestral tombs. She would have known there was at least one feng ling stashed aboard the Shishaquita for the Emperor to wear in rain or damp air. Clearly if a plot was brewing the beizi must be playing a part.’
‘It was crucial because of the embroidery, Holmes, surely?’
‘They could have embroidered a feng ling in precisely the same way. Then it struck me. The hood. A feng ling has a sturdy hood. A beizi does not. The Emperor may well have raised the feng ling hood over his head against the damp air. That would have prevented the firecracker shattering the eardrum. The plot would have stalled at the very moment the curtain rose. The E-D would certainly know the hood of a feng ling from personal experience. She told you how she had to flee the city to save herself from attack. She put on a feng ling - and why? Because it had a hood. The hood helped disguise her. At all costs, for the plot against her nephew to
succeed, she had to stop him donning one.
She came up with a brilliant idea, a show of contrition for the so-called last-minute change of plan, setting off for the Eastern Tombs. A gift of one of her beizis to ward off the damp air would show her concern, a beizi primed with the vital embroidery to catch the crow’s eye - but crucially lacking a hood.
Then I returned to the embroidery, why the lack of embroidery other than the sigils on the back. Why was this beizi so different from her others? The answer had to be the crow was trained to fly to that particular patch - but how was it able to identify the sigils? Everything about the plot was ingenious. It could well have defeated us completely. However, it was the necessity for the Emperor to wear the beizi which trapped her on the horns of a dilemma.’
‘Which was?’ I asked, pencil poised.
‘The cape had to fit the Emperor yet she couldn’t betray she had tailored and embroidered it specially for him. Otherwise, like footsteps on wet cement, the crow attack might be traced straight back to the Summer Palace. If the beizi had really been hers, it would have been tailored for her small size, in which case the Emperor would struggle to pull it on over his ceremonial clothing. He might cast it aside in favour of a shipboard feng ling. She pretended the coat was hers but there was another reason even apart from its size that contradicted this. Yellow is the colour of the Imperial Dynasty. It’s well-known it doesn’t suit her complexion. None of the clothing she wears exposes so much yellow - but to avoid confusing the crow the rest of the cloak had to remain free of any other adornment - ribbons, jewels and so on. It was a risk she had to take.’
‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about that patch, Holmes,’ I said. ‘What brought it so forcibly to your attention? Can a crow be trained to fly to a cloak bearing a circle containing nine rather than eight dragons?’
‘It was trained to fly at that particular sigil, yes, but not for the reason you may suppose. It wasn’t the fact the sigils were dragons and represented chaos magic or that there were nine of them which attracted the bird.’
