“White tie, unless he’s told not to.”
“Oh, good. And you and your husband?”
“Long dress for me. Henry likes to wear an old black frock coat—it’s quite presentable—and a clerical collar.”
“Yes, there are two other clergymen coming. I’m sure they’ll do something similar. Dressing for dinner’s so easy for clergymen, isn’t it?” She smiled. “Perhaps Henry will be a bishop one day. I do so like those violet clerical shirts they wear, don’t you?”
“I happen to know that Father has worn white tie only once since he came,” Emily informed her, “so his shirt will be all starched and ironed, just as it was when he unpacked his trunk.”
Lady MacDonald’s eyes opened wide. The little laundry they’d set up in the legation was doing a wonderful job keeping everyone’s shirts clean, but there were no facilities for ironing them. A starched shirt had become a rarity indeed. “I am so looking forward to this,” she declared.
And that evening her father played his part perfectly. None of the men looked so handsome. And although the Italian minister was wearing white tie and all his medals, Trader allowed his one eye to rest upon the diplomat’s unpressed shirt just long enough to cause the MacDonalds much amusement.
It had to be said, the British legation did things with style. They dined twenty people. The table was beautifully set, for the legation had still preserved its handsome dinner service, glass, and all the rest.
As for the food…it represented everything that ingenuity could contrive.
They began with soup, made with vegetable extract; then fish paste on toast, curried sparrows, and rissoles. The main course was meat, and this was eaten with solemnity, for it was, after all, one of the precious racing ponies, of which there were only a few left. It was accompanied by tinned peas and potatoes—all washed down, of course, with excellent claret.
It was at this point that MacDonald himself, who had been suffering from dysentery, was obliged to leave the party.
But the rest of them carried on, and Trader had just asked Lady MacDonald what was coming next, and she had said, “I hope you like pancakes,” and he had just replied, “I do, very much,” when a Chinese explosive shell burst into the house somewhere over their heads, and there was a great bang, and the entire ceiling seemed to give way over their heads. As plaster rained down, those who could dived under the table—though Lady MacDonald, who was sitting in a tall wooden chair with arms, and Trader, who was a little too old to move so fast, remained in their places. For a moment, after the dust had settled, there was silence. Then, with a sound of scraping chairs, people reappeared and started dusting themselves off. Fortunately, it seemed, nobody in the dining room had been much hurt. But the table looked like the aftermath of a battle, a long field of broken plates and glasses.
In the doorway, the pale face of Sir Claude MacDonald appeared. Young Tom was beside him.
“Are there any casualties upstairs?” his wife inquired.
“Nobody there except myself and young Tom here. Our girls are in the downstairs sitting room. They’re all right. No damage in the kitchens.” The minister indicated his empty chair and told Tom to sit in it. “I’m going back to bed,” he announced.
“This is most unfortunate,” said Lady MacDonald calmly. And she rang the bell for the servants, who were mostly Catholic converts that night, to clear the table.
While they were at work, she turned to Trader. “What do you think we should do now?” she asked.
“Have you more glasses, back there?” Trader indicated the butler’s pantry.
“Certainly.”
“In that case, Lady MacDonald,” he said, “I think this calls for a bumper of champagne!”
Later, as they were retiring, Lady MacDonald took Emily to one side. “You know, my dear,” she said, “if I hadn’t met my husband, then I’d like to have married your father.” She smiled. “I do like a man who knows how to behave.”
* * *
—
But the hot days dragged on, and there was still no news of the relief force. Each day the Chinese snipers seemed to be improving their aim. British, French, German, Japanese troops: their numbers were gradually dwindling. Emily wondered how long things could go on.
She discovered one evening.
There were two kinds of sewing inside the besieged legations. The first was making sandbags for the walls and barricades. The women used whatever cloth they could get their hands on—sacking, old shirts, pantaloons—anything that could be fashioned into a small sack the size of a pillowcase, filled with earth, and sewn up with tough thread. In the rain, these makeshift sandbags tended to leak a grey sludge onto the ground; and they often burst. A fresh supply was always needed, and Emily would often help the women make them.
There was another, grimmer kind of sewing to be done, however: the winding sheets in which the bodies must be buried. There were no coffins, just winding sheets, which were often made in a hurry, using whatever material there was to hand. Since the burials were carried out after dark, when it was cooler, the shortcomings of the winding sheets weren’t so visible.
There had been two men to bury that night. She and Henry attended at the makeshift grave. One was a small fellow, neatly enclosed in his shroud, which made her think of the sandbags of earth she’d been making. But the other man was tall, and the winding sheet she’d made was too short, and his bare feet stuck out in such an ungainly way. And try as she might, she kept thinking of her father, wondering if she would soon be burying him, and what she could do to cover his feet if the shroud was too short, and it made her want to cry.
When they got back, she went to make sure that Tom was asleep. And she had just come from Tom’s room onto the upstairs landing when she heard her father speaking in a low voice in the hall below.
“How long do you give it?”
It was MacDonald who answered. “At the present rate of attrition, there won’t be any troops left by the end of the month.”
“And ammunition?”
“About the same. End of the month.”
“Well, that still leaves the relief force a bit of time. By the way,” her father went on, “I heard something underground by the French legation this afternoon. Thought I’d better mention it.”
“You think the Chinese are digging mines?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Nor me. Goodnight.”
Emily tiptoed quickly to her room. She wondered whether to tell Henry. Not now, anyway. He seemed to be asleep. But then he opened one eye.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, hoping he’d go to sleep again.
“Emily.” He sat up. “Please tell me.”
So she did. “We can only pray,” she said when she’d finished.
“God will not desert us.” He said it with such a sweet smile. “And one thing I know for certain,” he added firmly. “The only thing that really matters is that God’s will be done.”
That comforted her a little. At least she supposed it did.
* * *
—
Trader had prepared his family for what was to come. “The relief force is on the way,” he told them. “The closer they get, the more desperate Cixi will be to kick us out. Her hope will be that if we’ve departed or been killed, she can close the city gates and tell the relief force that there’s nobody left to rescue. I’m saying this,” Trader continued, “so that when the next big attack comes, you’ll understand clearly what it means. It’ll be desperate—their last attempt to dislodge us before the siege is lifted. If we can just hold out, the relief will arrive, and we’ll all be saved—including the converts, God willing.”
Ten days passed, the Chinese edged a little closer, the sniper fire went back and forth, and from time to time they could hear the faint sound of picks and
shovels in the tunnels underground. Although they had no definite news, Trader felt sure the relief force could not be far away.
So when, at dawn on Friday the thirteenth of July, a huge bombardment began, he told Emily: “This is it. We’re almost home. One last stand, and our boys will come through.”
All day the Krupp guns rained shells upon the Fu. Around the converts, the low buildings with their tiled roofs were catching fire and collapsing in upon themselves. To the south, the positions on the city wall were just holding. To the north, the Chinese were trying to break into the British compound through the ruined library.
At four in the afternoon, the bell in the little tower where the message boards were began to ring wildly—the signal that the legations were under general attack on every side, and that everyone must defend themselves as best they could.
Despite Emily’s begging him not to, Henry had gone to the Fu. She and her father were standing with Tom in the hall of the MacDonald residence. Lady MacDonald and her daughters were in the back parlor inside. Trader had his Webley revolver in his hand. He glanced at Emily. She nodded and drew out the little pistol he’d got for her.
“You’ve got six shots. Use the first five of them,” he said quietly. He looked down at his grandson. “Don’t you worry, boy,” he said. “They won’t get this far, but if any of them do, we’ll deal with ’em.” Tom was pale, both frightened and excited by the look of it, but facing forward bravely. “Good lad,” said Trader approvingly. “Well done.”
And now they heard a new sound. A chant taken up by a thousand throats, seemingly all around them.
“Sha!” Kill. “Sha! Sha! Sha!”
There were roars of Krupp guns and small cannon, fusillades, screams. God knows how many men were fighting—hand to hand, by the sound of it. A German soldier rushed in, calling for MacDonald.
“Out by the bell tower,” shouted Trader, and the German disappeared.
The terrible racket continued. They could hear bullets banging and rattling on the roof above. The chanting seemed to be getting louder. Was it closer? Hard to tell.
MacDonald appeared.
“Did the German find you?” Trader called.
“Yes. The Russians are helping them. They’re holding the line.” He went down the passage to check on his family, then emerged again. “The Japanese in the Fu have a new line of defense. They’ve halted the Chinese advance for the moment.”
“My husband?” asked Emily.
“Don’t know. Can’t say. But there’s a new attack coming just south of the Fu. Through the French legation.”
He hurried out. Minutes passed.
Then came the thunderclap. The ground under their feet shook. And moments later, as though a tornado had just passed, objects began falling from the sky. Bits of masonry were crashing onto rooftops. Other things, softer things, were falling, too, with bangs and bumps and thuds. And as they rushed to the doorway they saw a thick, dirty cloud peppered with red cinders rising like some demonic spirit over the Fu and heard screams, terrible screams.
“It’s a mine,” said Trader. Was it under the Fu? Close to it? He couldn’t be sure. Was this the final moment? Were the Chinese about to come streaming in? “Back indoors,” he ordered Tom and Emily. God knew if Henry was still alive. “Back indoors.”
So they waited in the hallway. They waited and listened for the shouts of “Sha! Sha!” from the approaching Chinese troops.
But no shouts came. Indeed, as the minutes passed, the firing seemed to falter. And soon after that, to their astonishment, the figure of Henry appeared—his face sooty, his clothes covered with grime, but still recognizably Henry and very much alive.
“Did you hear the mine go off?” he asked them.
“Of course we did,” cried Emily. “I thought you were dead.”
“That’s why I came back. To let you know.”
“Are the Chinese coming?” Trader demanded.
“I don’t think so. They blew themselves to bits with their own mine. There’s a huge crater where the French legation was. The Chinese were advancing. I suppose they knew the mine was going off, but didn’t understand the power of the thing. It must have killed scores of them. Anyway, they’ve pulled back.”
“I bet that wasn’t the only mine,” said Trader. “They probably planned to let off several. Now they’re wondering what to do.”
As the hours passed, this seemed to be the case. MacDonald came in and confirmed: “Assault’s paused on all fronts.” Henry went back to comfort the converts in the Fu. Emily took Tom upstairs and put him to bed.
Trader poured himself a glass of brandy, went out onto the veranda that overlooked the garden, sat down in a wicker armchair, and gazed at the lawn bathed in the pale moonlight. Even the sniping had ceased. Only the faint crackling of fires from around the smoking crater broke the silence.
He’d been sitting there for a little while when he became aware of Emily, in a pale gown, coming towards him. She also had a glass of brandy. He rose and offered her his chair, but she shook her head.
“You sit in the chair, Father. I’d rather sit on the stool beside you. It’s quite comfortable.”
“Is Tom asleep?”
“Yes. I think all the excitement wore him out.”
“Henry’s not back?”
“No. Which makes it rather a good moment to talk to you.” She paused and he waited. “Do you remember,” she went on after a moment, “when we thought they were about to break in, you told me I had six rounds and to use five of them on the enemy?”
“I do.”
“That would have left me with one shot to use on myself.”
“I’d assumed that’s what you wanted the pistol for.”
“It was. But I realized this evening that I could only fire four shots at the enemy. I needed another two, you see.”
“Two?”
“One for Tom, one for me.” She looked up at him sadly. “What do you think they’d do to him? Bayonet him, at best. Isn’t that right?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to think about it.
“Well, I do. So I needed two bullets. But that’s the problem. I realized I couldn’t trust myself. I knew I should do it, but I didn’t think I could. I was just so afraid I’d hesitate, and then it might have been too late.”
“Well, thank God there was no need. It’s all over now.”
“What about the next time?”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“There might.” She sighed. “If there is, I’m awfully sorry, but you’ll have to do it.”
“You’re asking me to shoot my grandson?” He looked at her in horror. “Talk to your husband, Emily, not to me.”
“Henry’s man enough to do it, but I’m afraid he might refuse. His faith might prevent him, you see.”
“His faith?”
“Henry’s faith is very strong, you know.”
Trader said nothing.
“Will you promise me?”
Trader paused. He thought of Tom. He thought of the bayonets.
“I might be killed first,” he pointed out.
“Please don’t be,” she said.
* * *
—
“Cixi wants a truce,” said MacDonald the next day. “We’ve had a message from the Tsungli Yamen: all a misunderstanding. My eye. Cixi herself sends her regrets.”
“She’s got the wind up,” said Trader. “Was it the mine blowing them up, or is there something more behind it?”
“I’ve just heard that the relief force has broken through and is already on its way up the canal. Eleven thousand men. She probably knew last night.”
“That was the last try, then, as I thought.”
“Probably,” said MacDonald. “Let’s hope they get here soon.”
It felt
strange to walk about the legation again without having to duck one’s head and watch for sniper fire. On the second day of the truce, Trader even went up on the wall. He watched some Chinese collecting their dead from outside the legation barricades. Looking across the quarter towards the Imperial City, he could see into the open square of the Mongol market on the western side of the British legation. To his amazement, there were already a few stalls there selling food again. He saw an old Chinese fellow, a crate of eggs on his back, making his way across the market to the British barricade. Turning to look east across the canal to the Fu, he caught sight of Emily moving amongst the converts there.
He was on his way down from the wall when he tripped. He wasn’t hurt. Nothing to worry about. But to be sensible, he went over to the infirmary.
The infirmary was quite impressive. It had been enlarged to include a couple of old storerooms. There were two doctors, aided during the emergency by several women nurses, two of whom were fully qualified doctors themselves—a higher level of care, Henry had pointed out, than one could ever get under normal conditions. The two doctor-nurses had checked him thoroughly, diagnosed a bad sprain, and let him go. They’d given him a crutch and told him to use it. But he’d soon exchanged this for a silver-topped ebony stick that MacDonald lent him and that he thought looked better.
“I’m so glad, Father,” said Emily with a smile, “that you haven’t lost your vanity.”
The truce seemed to be holding in the days that followed. There were occasional shots fired at the Catholic cathedral in the distance, but nothing more.
And it was one day at this time that, awaking from an afternoon siesta on the veranda, Trader found himself looking into the face of his grandson Tom.
“Are you asleep, Grandfather?” Tom said.
“Not anymore.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
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