China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  So I told her everything: about my wife and children, my little boy being sick, how Mr. Chen got me into the palace, Mr. Liu’s dislike of me—the whole tale, right up to the trick Mr. Liu had played on me and how I’d hidden in the Peony Terrace. I knew this might make Mr. Liu angry if it got back to him, but I needed to defend myself, and she’d know that it would have been madness on my part to make such a thing up if it wasn’t true. The only thing I left out was about my money and where I’d hidden it. It’s always a good rule in life to be as honest with people as you can, but never tell them where the money is.

  “Well,” she said, “isn’t that just like Mr. Liu? What an awful person he is.”

  “Your slave admires him, Princess,” I said. “He thinks of everything. I just wish he didn’t dislike me.” Which was all true.

  “You shall stay with us, Lacquer Nail,” she said. “I’m sure Prince Gong can use a person of your abilities.”

  When Prince Gong came back in the early evening, he was looking quite grim. It wasn’t long before the servants all knew what was happening. He had protested to both the French and the British barbarians about the disgraceful looting of the Summer Palace. But he’d got nothing from them except demands that he return their hostages. Worse still, the envoys he’d sent to Lord Elgin got the impression the British soldiers were angry that only the French had been given the chance to loot. And other spies reported that the French officers had been showing the British officers around the Yuanmingyuan that very day.

  After he’d eaten his evening meal, Prince Gong sent for me. He gave me a curt nod. “I’ve been told about your adventures. Is it all true? I shall have you thrown in jail if you’ve lied.”

  “Your slave swears on his life it is all true,” I answered.

  “She wants me to employ you.” He gazed at me for a moment. “At least you can take out the chamber pots!” he suddenly cried, with a shout of laughter. Then he waved me away.

  I didn’t mind. I was just glad that he was in a good mood and that I could stay there.

  * * *

  —

  I was going to bed that evening when I was told the princess wanted me again. She received me in the same room, but her maid was already undoing her hair.

  “Lacquer Nail,” she said, “I want you to perform a great service for me. In all the confusion yesterday, I left something in the Summer Palace to which I am very attached. And if it is still there and if the British barbarians come to loot the place again, I fear it may be lost forever. It is a beautiful jadeite pendant that the emperor himself gave me. It is of great sentimental value.”

  “Of course, Princess,” I said with a low bow. “Your lowly servant would be honored.” And I gave her a smile to show that I really meant it.

  “The pendant is on a ribbon,” she explained, “and it’s hidden inside a secret compartment in a cabinet.” And she told me where the cabinet was and explained exactly how to get the compartment open. “It takes a few moments,” she said. “You’d never know the compartment’s there. Just so long as the barbarians didn’t start breaking up the furniture.”

  I couldn’t imagine even the British barbarians would start smashing the palace furniture.

  “I suggest that I go at first light, before anyone goes out there,” I said.

  “Do you want any soldiers to protect you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “If the British were to turn up early, a few soldiers wouldn’t be able to help me much. It’s probably best if I just slip in and out before anyone sees.”

  * * *

  —

  It was early dawn when I went out of the western city gate. Before sunrise I passed through the main entrance of the Yuanmingyuan. There were no guards on duty.

  I had just one task to perform: Find the princess’s jadeite pendant and return.

  All the same, I did make one small detour on my way in from the entrance. I walked across to look into Mr. Ma’s enclosure of penzai trees. I didn’t expect to find him there so early; and indeed, I couldn’t have stopped to talk to him if I had. But I wanted to make sure that no one had damaged his precious trees.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Ma was in the entrance to the enclosure, lying on his back. His jaw was hanging open and his blue cheeks had drawn in so that his mouth made a meaningless little O. His eyes stared blankly up at the sky. There was a circle of blackened blood in the middle of his small chest where someone had shot him. I wondered why. A few of his penzai trees had had their ropes cut, as if the French troops had meant to liberate them from their bondage. But I didn’t think any of the trees had been taken to a new home. I expect he’d tried to prevent the looters from coming into the enclosure, and they’d shot him because he was in the way.

  I suppose that’s how it is with war. Some people are killed for a good reason, some for a bad reason, and others for no reason at all.

  * * *

  —

  The cabinet was just as the princess had described it—beautiful double-doored, dark rosewood—standing against one wall. There was no sign that the cabinet had been tampered with. It should be easy enough to open, I thought. I went across, opened the right-hand door, and felt inside for a little sliding panel, exactly as the princess had told me to.

  Ten minutes later, I was still flummoxed. Five steps: Slide the panel, press the wood behind, slip one’s fingers into the cavity, reach up to a small lever, and pull down.

  I couldn’t find the lever. Was there another panel to slide? Had she mistaken the cabinet door? Patiently I tried every different alternative I could think of. Nothing.

  Had she got the sequence wrong? I spent nearly an hour trying one thing after another. Once, having opened the door on the other side, I thought I had found the lever, but though I pulled down, then up, and side to side, the cabinet remained impregnable, refusing to yield up its secret. If only I could speak to the old lady, maybe she could tell me what I was doing wrong; but obviously I couldn’t.

  It occurred to me that if I’d come there with a single assistant and a cart, we could have carried the cabinet out and hauled it away in far less time than I’d already spent trying to open it. But it was too late to think of that now.

  What was I to do? Time was going on. Were the British going to arrive? In the worst case, I supposed, I might leave the pavilion and come back after the British had gone. After all, if I couldn’t find the pendant, it wasn’t very likely they would. But I didn’t want to fail in my mission. The princess might not care for me so much. Love is conditional in palaces.

  There was only one thing I could think of: Break the cabinet open. But how? With an axe? What kind of damage was that going to do to the cabinet, which was a work of art itself? How would I explain it? I suppose I could say the barbarians did it.

  I started to hunt around the adjoining rooms to see if there was any implement I could use. I couldn’t find a thing. And I was just about to go over to the palace kitchens to see what I could find there when outside I heard the sound of voices. Loud voices. Barbarian voices. I looked out from a doorway and saw red uniforms, a hundred yards away.

  The British had come.

  I rushed back to the cabinet. In one last attempt I reached in, slid the panel I’d tried first, pushed…And this time, lo and behold, I found the lever. I pulled it down.

  And nothing happened. I couldn’t believe it. With a howl of rage and frustration, forgetting I’d wounded it, I slammed the flat of my hand against the side of the cabinet as hard as I could. I felt a huge shock of pain in my hand. I cursed the rosewood cabinet.

  And from somewhere inside it, I heard a faint click.

  I reached in. The secret compartment was open. A moment later, the jadeite pendant was in my hand, and I was gazing at it. I couldn’t help myself. The jadeite was so beautifully carved, with birds and bats, for luck. Yet
it retained the watery purity of this most lovely of all the jades. Such stones are not to be found within the entire Celestial Kingdom. They are brought by merchants from Burma. Soft as a reflecting pool, yet tougher than a diamond. You can carve it, and it will never break. The gift of an emperor to his love. And I was about to carry this wonder, resting against my own unworthy body.

  For there was only one thing to do: I hung the pendant around my neck. It was quite invisible under my clothes. The question was, could I get out of there without being captured or killed by the British? Cautiously, I went to the door.

  * * *

  —

  The British barbarians were already fanning out around that end of the lake. A second column of troops had just arrived from the entrance. In front of my eyes they peeled off to the left and right, going to the islands by the look of it. Then I noticed something else. They were laughing, as if they were at a festival.

  Of course, I realized: Their officers had brought them there as a reward. A big treat. A day in paradise, looting the emperor’s vast treasure house to their hearts’ content. All they could carry. No wonder they were happy.

  I started to walk away from the pavilion. They saw me, but nobody made a move towards me. I suppose if I’d carried a gun or brandished a knife someone might have taken me down. Or if I’d been pushing a handcart full of gold, they’d have had that off me. But all they saw was a lone palace eunuch, unarmed and carrying nothing, trying to get out of their way. I kept going, towards the main entrance.

  I was only twenty paces from Mr. Ma’s enclosure when things went wrong.

  I may have difficulty telling one barbarian from another, but this one was an exception. His uniform wasn’t quite the same as the other men’s, and he had a sword. He was standing alone, watching the troops as they fanned out.

  He was average height for a barbarian, I think, but strongly built. He had a short light brown mustache. He face was regular, broad of brow, intelligent. And he had the bluest eyes that I have ever seen. They gave me a keen look, but not unfriendly, as if he’d let me pass.

  He didn’t. He drew his sword and made a gesture that I should stop. He surveyed me thoughtfully. Then, with the tip of his sword, he raised my robe, to see if I was hiding anything between my legs. He didn’t find anything, but he wasn’t satisfied.

  Just then, I heard a voice calling him. “Goh-Dun!” He took no notice, but kept his eyes on me. “Goh-Dun!” the voice called out again. I supposed this must be the officer’s name. Then the voice said something in his barbarian tongue that sounded like: “Wat yur gat dare?”

  Goh-Dun half turned. I did the same. It was another officer, dressed the same way and walking towards us. Goh-Dun waited for him to arrive and said something to him. The officer nodded and patted me down: legs, arms, my crotch. He turned back to Goh-Dun and shook his head.

  But Goh-Dun still wasn’t satisfied. His bold blue eyes gazed at me, like an engineer inspecting a bridge. He said something, and the other officer opened the top of my tunic. Goh-Dun let the blade of his sword rest lightly against my neck. Then he started tracing the blade along my collarbone. I kept very still, but I tried to lower my collarbone imperceptibly so that the sword blade would slide easily over the ribbon. It nearly worked, but not quite. I saw him give a tiny frown, then a half-smile. He drew the blade back a few inches, inserted the point under the ribbon, and pulled it up.

  A moment later, the jadeite pendant was hanging down my front for all to see.

  “Aha,” said Goh-Dun.

  The two officers inspected it. They were talking and nodding. It was obvious that they thought the pendant was very fine. Then Goh-Dun took it in his hand and cut the ribbon.

  “No,” I cried, and tried to cling on to the pendant.

  But he only smiled and put it in his pocket.

  I shook my head and tried to explain that it belonged to Prince Gong himself, so he’d better not touch it. But of course he didn’t understand a word I said. I fell to my knees and begged him. I was almost weeping.

  The other officer said something and laughed. As for Goh-Dun, he gestured towards the pavilion, pointed to me, and made a grabbing motion. Then he pointed to himself, made another grabbing motion, and pointed to his pocket. His meaning was clear: I’d looted the pendant from the pavilion; and now he’d looted it from me.

  After all, he and his men were there to loot. So he assumed that I was looting, too. When I remained on my knees, shaking my head and protesting, he took me by the arm, pulled me up, gave me a friendly whack on the backside with the flat of his sword, which hurt more than he knew, and then indicated that if I didn’t run off, he’d give me another.

  It was humiliating, of course. Far worse was the thought that this jadeite pendant should be polluted by the touch of his barbarian hands. And worst of all, I was wondering: What was I going to say to Prince Gong and his auntie?

  * * *

  —

  It didn’t go well. The princess was kind to me. She believed me, or said she did. But she looked so sad and disappointed I could hardly bear to see it. As for Prince Gong, I discovered what he thought that evening. I happened to be near the door of her room after he’d gone in to speak to her. So I listened to what they were saying.

  “First he deserts instead of going north with the rest of the court,” I heard him say. “Then he fakes his own death. Then he steals a sword that’s worth a small fortune.”

  “He was fighting. I saw the blood on it.”

  “For all we know he stuck it into one of our own people who was trying to prevent him stealing it. Or a barbarian who tried to get it off him.”

  “He saved my life.”

  “If you say so, Auntie. It’s the only reason I haven’t thrown him in jail. But now he goes off to fetch your jadeite pendant and returns with a story that a British officer took it. Don’t we see a pattern here? He goes from one story to another, each more improbable than the last. I bet he’s hidden the pendant somewhere.”

  “I believe him,” she replied. Then I heard footsteps coming towards the door, and I ran.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning Prince Gong went to the Yuanmingyuan to inspect the damage. To my surprise, I was ordered to go with him. I suppose he wanted to keep an eye on me. We went up there with twenty bodyguards. He was carried in a sedan chair. I had to run behind it.

  There were still no sentries at the entrance. When we got to old Mr. Ma’s enclosure, we stopped and Prince Gong got out.

  Mr. Ma’s corpse was bloated and putrid now. The prince turned to me. “That’s him?” Seeing me nod, he asked me: “You knew him well?”

  “He was very kind to me, Highness,” I answered.

  “He shouldn’t be left like that,” the prince said. But we moved on.

  We seemed to have the entire Summer Palace to ourselves. It was quite amazing. I saw no corpses at the entrance to the emperor’s residence, nor any sign of Shaking Leaf in the Noble Consort’s apartment, so I supposed that most of the palace people had got away.

  We went from one pavilion to another, from island to island. Had I not seen with my own eyes what I saw that day, I do not think I would have believed it.

  They had not taken everything. They had taken gold and silver, jewelry and pearls; they had taken paintings and religious statues and silken dresses by the hundred. I have heard that some of the soldiers put on the silk dresses—whether to carry them more easily or in the spirit of some festival of their own, I cannot say. But they had not taken everything for the simple reason that there was too much for even an army of thousands to carry away.

  It was not the loss that shocked me most. It was the destruction.

  Silken robes torn, priceless scroll paintings unrolled just to see how long they were and left on the ground to be trampled on. Lacquer boxes broken, mother-of-pearl smashed, temple
ornaments torn down. This was not done in revenge or anger. Not at all. They were just enjoying themselves on their holiday. They had no respect for the Celestial Kingdom, its rulers, its scholars and artists, or any of the finer things of life.

  I’d lingered behind the rest of the party for a few moments, and I was alone, kneeling in one of the temples on the far side of the lake, picking up the pieces of a cloisonné box that had been crushed under some barbarian’s boot and silently weeping, when I realized I was being watched. Was it one of the soldiers? I turned, brushing away my tears, and saw it was Prince Gong. I struggled to my feet and bowed. But my cheeks were wet.

  “So what do you think, Lacquer Nail?” he asked me quietly.

  “Truly, Highness,” I blurted out, “your slave thinks that these barbarians are animals. No,” I cried, “not animals. Lower than the beasts! I’d execute them, every one.” And I meant it. I meant it with all my heart.

  He didn’t say anything, just turned and left, and I followed him out.

  But as we came to the enclosure where Mr. Ma’s bloated little corpse lay, he stopped the cortege and called me.

  “Lacquer Nail,” he said, “as soon as we get back to Beijing, go to the palace and see if you can find Shaking Leaf.” I noticed that he used Mr. Yuan’s palace nickname. “If you can’t, then you are to act yourself, on my authority. Discover whether Mr. Ma had any family. It shouldn’t be too difficult. Everything in the palace is recorded. I want Mr. Ma’s body properly buried as he would have wished. Everything’s to be done well. Bring me any bills. Take this.” He gave me a piece of paper stamped with his seal. “Show that wherever you need to. It carries my authority. Let me know your progress.”

  * * *

  —