Читать книгу Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 19

For a well-decorated hero I’ve done a deal of surrendering in my time – which is doubtless why I remain a well-decorated hero. Piper’s Fort, Balaclava, Cawnpore, Appomattox – I suppose I can’t count Little Big Horn, because the uncivilised rascals wouldn’t accept it, try as I might – and various minor capitulations. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, which young military men should bear in mind, it’s that the foeman is generally as glad to accept your surrender as you are to give it. Mind you, he may turn spiteful later, when he’s got you snug and helpless (I often do), but that’s a risk you must run, you know. Most of my captors have been decent enough.

The Chinese were not. You’d have thought, the trouble I saved ’em, they might have shown me some consideration, but they didn’t. For two days I was confined in a stinking wooden cage no bigger than a trunk, unable to stand or lie, but only to crouch painfully while I was exhibited in the temple square at Tang-chao to a jeering mob who spat and poked and shovelled ordure through the bars. I was given no food or drink beyond a filthy rag soaked in water, without which I’d have died – but I was in paradise compared with Parkes and Loch, who had survived only to be dragged to the Board of Punishments in Pekin.

The worst of it was not knowing. What would they do to me? Where were the others? What had happened at Five-li Point? The Manchoo thugs who guarded my cage, and egged on the mob to torment me, gloated about the terrible slaughter they’d inflicted on our army – which I knew was lies, for they couldn’t have licked Grant, and why wasn’t Tang-chao choked with prisoners like myself? But I didn’t know that in fact Grant had thrashed their ambush out of sight, with our cavalry driving twenty thousand Tartar horsemen pellmell, and even riding round the walls of Tang-chao before withdrawing to Grant’s new position at Chang-kia-wan. Nor could I guess that Elgin was furiously demanding our release – or that the Manchoos were refusing even to talk.

It beats belief, but those lordly idiots at the Imperial Court still wouldn’t accept the evidence of their senses. No, their army hadn’t been driven like sheep; no, it was impossible that the insolent barbarians could approach Pekin; no, it wasn’t happening at all. So they were telling each other, with Sang-kol-in-sen and Prince I spitting venom into the ear of their imbecilic Emperor, convincing the poor dupe that the sound of our guns twenty miles away was merely our last despairing gasp, and that presently we should be laid in the dust at his feet. They were ready to try to prove it, too, as you shall see.

I knew only from my guards that Pekin had proclaimed that we prisoners would be executed the moment our army advanced; I hadn’t heard, thank God, that Elgin’s reply was a flat defiance: he was coming to Pekin, and if a hair of our heads was hurt, God help the Emperor. Looking back now in safety, I can say he was right; if he’d weakened, those Manchoo idiots would have thought they’d won, and murdered us in sheer gloating exuberance, for that’s their style. But as long as he was coming on, with blood in his eye, they held their hands out of secret fear. And he was coming, the Big Barbarian, at the double and tugging his hair; even while I crouched in that hellish cage, and while they were dying by inches in the Board of Punishments, Grant was throwing aside his map and thrusting his sgian dhu into his boot, and Montauban was haranguing his poilus as they stuffed their cartridge-pouches. It was different, then; touch a Briton, and the lion roared once – and sprang.

They came like a whirlwind on the third day of our captivity, with a thundrous prelude of artillery that had me craning vainly at the thick wooden bars; the townsfolk scattered in panic to get out of the way as Chinese troops came pouring through the square, horse, foot and guns streaming through to the Pekin road. I was croaking with hope, expecting any moment to see the beards and puggarees and lance-heads galloping into view, when I was dragged from my cage and hauled before an armoured horseman. My cramped limbs wouldn’t answer at first, but when they lashed my wrists by a long rein to his crupper, and the swine set off up the street – well, it’s astonishing how you can hobble when you have to. I knew if I fell I’d be dragged and flayed to pieces, so I ran stumbling with my arms being half-torn from their sockets. Fortunately the road was so crowded with troops that he couldn’t go above a trot; we must have been about a mile beyond the town, and more artillery was booming close at hand, when we came in view of an enormous bridge built of great marble blocks; it must have been thirty yards wide by three hundred long, spanning the muddy yellow Peiho. This was the bridge of Pah-li-chao, and here I saw an amazing sight.

On the approaches to the bridge, and for miles to my left, was drawn up the Chinese Imperial Army. I’ve heard there were thirty thousand; I’d say double that number, but no matter. They stood in perfect parade order, regiment on regiment stretching away as far as I could see: Tartar cavalry in their coloured coats and conical fur hats, lances at rest; rank after rank of massive Bannermen in clumsy armour and barred helms; Tiger soldiers like yellow Harlequins, chanting their war-song; robed jingal-men, two to a piece, their fuses smouldering; half-naked Mongol infantry like stone Buddhas with drawn swords; armoured horsemen with long spears and antique firearms, their wide plated coat-skirts giving them the appearance of gigantic beetles; pig-tailed musketeers in pyjama dresses of black silk and yellow pill-box hats; batteries of their ridiculous artillery, long-barrelled ancient cannon with muzzles carved in fantastic dragon mouths, the stone shot piled beside them, crashing out ragged salvoes that shook the ground – and over all fluttered banners of every hue and design, shimmering in the sunrise, great paper tigers and hideously-featured effigies to frighten the enemy. Above the explosion of the guns rose the hellish din of gongs and cymbals and fifes and rattles and fireworks – China hurling defiance at the barbarians. The noise swelled to a deafening crescendo as the guns fell silent; then it too died to a conclusion, and through the ranks of the tremendous host swept a roar of human sound, pealing out into a final great shout – and then silence.

Silence … a dead, eery quiet over the flat fields before the army, stretching off into the eastern haze. Nothing to be heard but the soft flap of a silk banner, the clink of a stirrup-iron, the gentle swirl of a tiny dust-devil on the marble flags of the bridge, until out of the hazy distance came the far-off voice of a bugle, followed by the faintest of whispers down the wind, a piper playing “Highland Laddie”, and the great Imperial army bristled down its length like an angry cat and the horns and cymbals blared again in deafening reply.

My horseman gave an angry shout and spurred up the bridge so suddenly that I was thrown off my feet and dragged across the flags until I managed to stumble up after him. He cast me loose before a knot of mounted officers on the summit; their leader was an ugly, pock-marked mandarin in black plate armour and a pagoda helmet, who flourished a fighting-iron at me.

“Throw this pig in with the rest of the herd!” he bawls, and I saw that behind him, on the parapet, was another of their infernal cages; an iron one this time, as long as an omnibus, containing half a dozen ragged wretches. I was seized and thrust up on to the parapet and through the low iron door; a cry of astonishment met me, and then Brabazon was gripping my hand – a ragged, hollow-eyed Brabazon with his arm in a tattered sling; he was as filthy as I.

“Colonel Flashman! You’re alive! Oh, thank God! Thank God you’re safe, sir!”

“You call this safe, do you?” says I. He stared, and cackled.

“Eh? Oh, my word – not too safe, perhaps! No … oh, but it’s famous to see you, sir! You see, we feared we were the only …” He gestured at his companions – a couple of Sikhs, trying to sit up to attention, a dragoon half-slumped down against the bars, a frail little stick of a man with long silver hair, in a priest’s robe. “But Mr Parkes, sir? Mr Loch? What of them?”

I said I believed they were dead. He groaned, and then cried: “Well, at least you’re alive, sir!”, and the dragoon chuckled, raising his head.

“Shure, an’ why wouldn’t he be? Ye don’t kill Flash Harry that easy – do ye, colonel?” says Trooper Nolan.

He had a bloody bandage round his brow, and there was dried blood on his cheek, but he was wearing the same slack, calculating grin as he stared at me across the cage. Brabazon gobbled indignantly.

“It’s not for you to say so, my man! How dare you address an officer in that familiar style?” He grimaced admiringly at me. “Mind you, it’s true what he says, sir! They can’t keep you down, can they? I’m sure he meant no harm, sir!”

“None taken, my boy,” says I, and sank down in the straw opposite Nolan. I’d forgotten all about the blackmailing brute – and now my fears came rushing back at the sight of that knowing peasant grin. You may think I should have had more immediate cares, but the very sight of these five other prisoners had sent my spirits soaring. Plainly they were regarding us as hostages, and would keep us alive to the bitter end – and when we were free again, there would still be Nolan. I could see he was already contemplating that happy prospect, for when a renewed cannonade by the Chink guns took Brabazon to the bars for a look-see, he leaned forward towards me and says quietly:

“Shure, an’ mebbe we’ll be havin’ our little talk after all, colonel.”

“Any talking we do can wait until we’re out of this,” says I, equally quiet. “Until then, hold your tongue.”

His grin faded to an ugly look. “We’ll see about dat,” he whispered. “Whether I hold it or not … depends, does it not, sorr?”

He sat back against the bars, glowering truculently, and just then there was a sudden uproar on the bridge, and Brabazon was shouting to me to come and look. Smoke was swirling over the bridge from the nearest battery, but when it cleared I saw that the mandarin and his staff were at the parapet just beneath us, pointing and yelling excitedly, and there, far out on the plain, where visibility ended in a bright haze flecked gold by the morning sun, little figures were moving – hundreds of them, advancing out of the mist towards the Imperial army. They couldn’t be more than a mile away, French infantry in open order, rifles at the trail; their trumpets were sounding through the thunder of the Chinese guns, and as the stone shot kicked up fountains of dust among them they held on steadily, moving directly towards us, the Tricolour standards waving before them.

“Oh, vive la France!” mutters Brabazon. “Strange little buggers. See ’em strut, though! Stick it, you Frogs!”

The Chinese horns and gongs were going full blast now, and there was more hullaballoo and racing about on the bridge as lines of British and Indian infantry came into view on the French left flank; in between there was a little line of dust, thrown up by hooves, and above it the twinkling lance-points and the thin slivers of the sabres: Fane’s Horse and the Dragoon Guards, knee to knee. Down beyond the parapet the Chinese gunners were labouring like billy-be-damned; their shot was churning the ground all along the allied line, but still it came on, unhurried and unbroken, and the Chinks were yelling exultantly in their ranks, their banners waving in triumph, for out on the plain could be seen how small was our army, advancing on that mighty mass of Imperials, who outflanked it half a mile on either side. Brabazon was muttering excitedly, speaking my own thought:

“Oh, run away, you silly Chinamen! You ain’t got a hope!”

There was a great stir to the Imperial right, and we saw the Tartar horse were advancing, a great mass swinging out to turn the British flank; the Armstrong shells were bursting above them, little flashes of flame and smoke, but they held together well, weathering it as their stride lengthened to a canter, and Brabazon was beating his fist on the bars.

“My God, do they think Grant’s asleep? He’s been up for hours, you foolish fellows – look! Look there!”

For suddenly a trumpet was shrilling from the allied line, and like a gate swinging on its hinge our cavalry came drumming out of the centre, sweeping round in a deadly arc, the lances going down and the sabres twinkling as they were advanced; like a great fist they tore into the Tartar flank, scattering them, riding them down; as the enemy cavalry wavered and gave back, with Fane’s and the Dragoons tearing into their heart, there was another blast of trumpets, and Probyn’s riders came charging in to complete the rout. Brabazon was bellowing like a madman, and the two Sikhs were dancing at the bars: “Yah sowar! Sat-sree-akal! Shabash!”

Suddenly one of the Sikhs yelled and fell back, blood welling from a gash in his thigh. Nolan caught him, swearing in amazement, and then we saw the Bannerman on the bridge beneath us, screaming curses and brandishing a bloody spear. The mandarin’s staff were shaking their fists at the cage, until the crash of an Armstrong shell on the bridge end sent them headlong for cover; another burst on the far parapet, splinters whining everywhere; the Armstrongs had ranged on the Chinese guns’ positions, and through the thunder of the Imperial salvoes we could hear the thumping strains of the “Marseillaise”; there were the dear little Crapauds storming into the Chinese forward positions, with the Armstrong bursts creeping ahead of them; behind the Chink front line it was like an antheap kicked over, and then another shell burst plumb on the summit of the bridge and we were dashed to the floor of the cage.

When I raised my head Brabazon was back at the bars, staring down in disgust at a bloody palpitating mass on the flags which had been a Bannerman, or possibly two. The ugly mandarin was standing beside it, staring at a bloody gash on his hand, and Brabazon, the eternal oaf, had to sing out:

“Take that, you villain! That’ll teach you to attack a prisoner!”

The mandarin looked up. He couldn’t understand the words, but he didn’t need to. I never saw such livid hate in a human face, and I thought we were goners there and then. Then he strode to the cage, gibbering with fury.

“Fan-qui scum! You see this?” He flourished his bloody hand. “For every wound I take, one of you dies! I’ll send his head back to your gunners, you spawn of the White Whore!” He turned to scream orders to his men, and I thought, oh Jesus, here goes one of us, but it was evidently a promise for the future, for all their response was to line the parapet and blaze away with their jingals at the Frogs, who were still engaged in the forward entrenchments three hundred yards away.

“What did he say?” Brabazon was demanding. “Sir – what was he shouting at us?”

None of them understood Chinese, of course. The unwounded Sikh and the little priest were bandaging the wounded man’s leg; Nolan was a yard off, slightly behind me; Brabazon at my side, questioning. And in that moment I had what I still maintain was one of the most brilliant inspirations of my life – and I’ve had one or two.

Hoaxing Bismarck into a prize-fight, convincing Jefferson Davis that I’d come to fix the lightning-rod, hitting Rudi Starnberg with a bottle of Cherry Heering, hurling Valentina out of the sledge into a snow-drift – all are fragrant leaves to press in the book of memory. But I’m inclined to think Pah-li-chao was my finest hour.

“What did he say, sir?” cried Brabazon again. I shook my head, shrugging, and spoke just loud enough for Nolan to overhear.

“Well, someone’s in luck. He’s going to send one of us under a white flag to the Frogs. Try to make terms, I suppose. Well, he can see it’s all up.”

“Good heavens!” cries Brabazon. “Then we’re saved!”

“I doubt that,” says I. “Oh, the chap who goes will be all right. But the Frogs won’t parley – I wouldn’t, if I commanded ’em. What, trust these yellow scoundrels? When the game’s all but won? No, the French ain’t such fools. They’ll refuse … and we know what our captors will do then …” I looked him in the eye. “Don’t we?”

Now, if we’d been a directors’ meeting, no doubt there’d have been questions, and eleventeen holes shot in my specious statement – but prisoners in a cage surrounded by blood-thirsty Chinks don’t reason straight (well, I do, but most don’t). Anyway, I was the bloody colonel, so he swallowed it whole.

“My God!” says he, and went grey. “But if the French commander knows that five lives are –”

“He’ll do his duty, my boy. As you or I would.”

His head came up. “Yes, sir … of course. Who shall go, sir? It ought to be … you.”

I gave him my wryest Flashy grin and clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, my son. But it won’t do. No … I think we’ll leave it to chance, what? Let the Chinks pick the lucky one.”

He nodded – and behind me I could almost hear Nolan’s ears waving as he took it all in. Brabazon stepped resolutely away from the cage door. I stayed at the bars, studying the mandarin’s health.

There had been a brief lull in the Armstrong barrage, but now they began again; the Frogs were trying to carry the second line of works, and making heavy weather of it. The jingal-men were firing volleys from the bridge, the ugly mandarin rushing about in the smoke, exhorting ’em to aim low for the honour of old Pekin High School, no doubt. He even jumped on the parapet, waving his sword; you won’t last long, you silly sod, thinks I – sure enough, came a blinding flash that rocked the cage, and when the smoke had cleared, there were half a dozen Manchoos splattered on the marble, and the mandarin leaning on the parapet, clutching his leg and bawling for the ambulance.

My one fear was that he’d have Brabazon marked down as his victim, but he hadn’t. He was a man of his word, though; he screamed an order, there was a rush of armoured feet, the cage door was flung open, a Manchoo officer poked his head in, shrieking – and Trooper Nolan, glaring desperately about him, had made good and sure he was closest to the door. The Manchoo officer shouted again, gesturing; Nolan, wearing what I can best describe as a grin of gloating guilt, took a step towards him; Brabazon was standing back, ramrod-straight, while I did my damnedest not to catch the chairman’s eye.

“Take him!” yells the officer, and two of his minions plunged in and flung Nolan from the cage. The door slammed shut, I sighed and loafed across to it, looking down through the bars at him as he stood gripped by two Bannermen.

“Be sure and tell ’em about Tang-ku Fort,” says I softly, and he goggled in bewilderment. Then, as they ran him to the parapet, he must have realised what was happening, for he began to struggle and yell, and I staggered back from the door, crying to Brabazon in stricken accents:

“My God! What are they doing? Why, that lying hound of a mandarin – ah, no, it cannot be!”

They had forced Nolan to his knees before the wounded mandarin, who left off bellowing long enough to spit in his face; then they hauled him up on to the parapet, and while two gripped his arms and bent him double, a third seized his hair and dragged his head forward. The officer drew his sword, shook back his sleeve, and braced himself.

“Mother o’ mercy! Oh, Christ, don’t –!”

The scream ended abruptly – cut off, as you might say, and I sank my face into my hands with a hollow groan, reflecting that who steals my purse may get away with it, but he who filches from me my good name will surely find his tits in the wringer.

“The filthy butchers!” roars Brabazon. “Oh, the poor fellow! But why, in heaven’s name, when they’d said –”

“Because that’s the kind of swine John Chinaman is!” I growled. “They lie for the pleasure of it, Brabazon!”

He gritted his teeth and drew a shuddering breath. “And my last words to him were a rebuke! Did you … did you know him well, sir?”

“Well enough,” I said. “A rough diamond, but … Here, how are the Frogs getting along?”

In fact, they were making capital progress, bayonetting away with élan in the second entrenchment, and while the Chinese positions to the right were hidden by smoke, from the sounds of things the British attack was going well. The Imps seemed to be giving back all along the line; hundreds of them were streaming over the bridge, with officers trying to rally them, riding about and howling, but there was only one way the battle could go – the question was, would they slaughter us before we could be rescued? Torn between terror and hope, I reckoned it was odds on our preservation, unless that reckless fool of a mandarin stopped another splinter – in which case we’d better chivvy up the priest, he being well stricken in years and presumably in a state of grace. I looked anxiously for the mandarin, and saw he was being held up by two of his pals while directing operations; but the Armstrongs seemed to have given over for the moment, and clattering up the bridge came a cavalcade of gorgeously-armoured nobles, accompanied by standard-bearers; my heart rose in my throat as I saw that their leader was Sang-kol-in-sen.

He was reining up, addressing the mandarin, and now the whole gang turned towards the cage, the mandarin pointing and yelling orders. My knees gave under me – hell, were they going to serve us as they’d served Nolan? The Bannermen swarmed in and three of us were hauled out – they left the Sikhs, and in a moment I understood why. For they flung us down on the flags before Sang’s horse, and that ghoulish face was turned on us, pale eyes glaring under the wizard’s helmet, as he demanded to know if any of us spoke Chinese.

Now, he wasn’t asking that for the purpose of execution, so I hauled myself upright and said I did. He considered me, frowning malevolently, and then snarled:

“Your name, reptile?”

“Flashman, colonel on the staff of Lord Elgin. I demand the immediate release of myself and my four companions, as well as –”

“Silence, foulness!” he screamed, on such a note that his pony reared, and he hammered its head with his mailed glove to quiet it. “Snake! Pig!” He leaned down from the saddle, mouthing like a madman, and struck me across the face. “Open your mouth again and it will be sewn up! Bring him!” He wheeled his mount and clattered away, and I was seized, my wrists bound, and I was flung bodily on to a cart. As it rolled away I had one glimpse of Brabazon looking after me, and the little priest, head bowed, telling his beads. I never saw them again. No one did.³⁴

This may seem an odd time to mention it, but my entry to Pekin recalls a conversation which I had a couple of years ago with the eminent wiseacre and playwright, George B. Shaw (as I call him, to his intense annoyance, though it don’t rile him as much as “Bloomsbury Bernie”). I was advising him on pistol-play for a frightful pantomime he was writing about a lynching in a Kansas cow-town³⁵; discussing hangings set him off on the subject of pain in general, and he advanced the fatuous opinion that mental anguish was worse than physical. When I could get a word in, I asked him if spiritual torment had ever made him vomit; he allowed it hadn’t, so I told him what my Apache wife had done to Ilario the scalp-hunter, and had the satisfaction of watching our leading dramatist bolting for the lavatory with his handkerchief to his mouth. (Of course, I didn’t get the better of him; as he said later, it was the thought that had made him spew, not pain itself. The hell with him.)

I reflect on this only because the most prolonged pain I ever endured – and I’ve been shot, stabbed, hung by the heels, flogged, half-drowned, and even stretched on the rack – was on the road into Pekin. All they did was tie my hands and feet – and pour water on my bonds; then they hauled my wrists up behind me and tied ’em to a spar above the cart, and set off at a slow trot. The blazing sun and the bouncing cart did the rest; I’ll not describe it, because I can’t, save to say that the fiery agony in wrists and ankles spreads through every nerve of your body until you’re a living mass of pain, which will eventually drive you mad. Luckily, Pekin is only eleven miles from Tang-chao.

I don’t remember much except the pain – long rows of suburbs, yellow faces jeering and spitting into the cart, a towering redoubt of purple stone topped by crenellated turrets (the Anting Gate), foul narrow streets, a blue-covered carriage with the driver sitting on the shaft – he called to his passengers to look, and I was aware of two cold, lovely female faces regarding me without expression as I half-hung, whimpering, in my bonds. They weren’t shocked, or pitying, or amused, or even curious; merely indifferent, and in my agony I felt such a blazing rage of hatred that I was almost exalted by it – and now I can say, arrant coward that I am, that at least I understand how martyrs bear their tortures: they may have faith, and hope, and all the rest of it, but greater than these is blind, unquenchable red anger. It sustained me, I know – the will to endure and survive and make those ice-faced bitches howl for mercy.

It must have cleared my mind, for I remember distinctly coloured pagoda roofs bigger than I’d ever seen, and a teahouse with dragons’ heads above its eaves, and the great scarlet Gate of Valour into the Imperial City – for Pekin, you must know, is many cities within each other, and innermost of all is the Forbidden City, the Paradise, the Great Within, girded by gleaming yellow walls and entered by the Gate of Supreme Harmony.

There are palaces for seven hundred princes within the Imperial City, but they pale before the Great Within. It is simply not of this world. Like the Summer Palace, outside Pekin, it’s entirely cut off from reality, a dreamland, if you like, where the Emperor and his creatures live out a great play in their stately halls and gorgeous gardens, and all that matters is formality and finger-nails and fornication. Nothing is seen or heard of the rest of mankind, except what his ministers think fit. There he dwells, remote as a god, sublime not in omniscience but in ignorance, lost to the world. He might as well be in the Athenaeum.

I saw most of it, later – the Palace of Earthly Repose, for the Emperor’s consort; the Temple of Imperial Ancestors, for sacrifices; the Gate of Extensive Peace, a hundred and ten feet high, for kowtowing; the Hall of Intense Mental Exercise, for studying Confucius; the Temple of the Civic Deity – don’t know what that’s for, paying rates, I dare say – and the library, the portrait hall, and even the office of the local rag, the Imperial Gazette, which circulates every day to all the nobles and officials in China. That’s the unreality of the country – they nail thieves’ hands together, and have a daily paper.

For the moment all I saw was the great gilt copper tower in which incense is kept perpetually burning, filling the city with its sweet, musky odour; and beyond it the holy of holies, the Palace of Heavenly Tranquillity (which it ain’t). I was dragged in through a round doorway, and flung into a great room utterly bare of furniture, where I lay for several hours on a cold marble floor, too sick and sore and parched even to move, or to do anything except groan. I must have slept, for suddenly I was aware of tramping feet, and a door crashing open, and the glare of torches, and the revolting face of Sang-kol-in-sen glaring down at me.

He was still in full martial fig, brazen breastplate, mailed gloves, spurred greaves, and all, but with a fur-lined robe of green silk over his shoulders. He was bare-headed, so I had the benefit of his bald Mongol skull as well as the obscene little beard on the brutal moon-features. He fetched me a shattering kick and shouted:

“Get on your knees, louse!”

I tried to obey, but my limbs were so painful that I pitched over, and received several more kicks before I managed to kneel, croaking for a drink of water. “Silence!” he bawled, and cuffed me left and right, cracking the skin with his brass fingers. I crouched, sobbing, and he laughed at me spitefully. “A soldier, you!” He kicked me again. He didn’t seem to remember me from Tang-ku Fort, not that that was any comfort.

There were two Manchoo Bannermen flanking the door, and now came two others, bearing an open sedan in which sat Prince I, the skull-faced monster who had raved and shrieked at Parkes at Tang-chao. He looked even more of a spectre in the glare of torchlight, sitting lean and motionless in his shimmering yellow robe, hands on knees – the silver cases on his nails came half-way down his shins. Only his eyes moved, gleaming balefully on me. To complete the comedy trio there was a burly, thick-lipped Manchoo in dragon robes, his fingers heavy with rings, a ruby button in his hat. This, I was to learn, was Sushun, the Assistant Grand Secretary of the Imperial Government, a vulture for corruption and the Emperor’s tutor in vice and debauchery, on which, to judge by his pupil’s condition, he must have been the greatest authority since Caligula. To me, for the moment, he was only another very nasty-looking Manchoo.

“Is this the creature?” growls Sang, and Prince I nodded imperceptibly, and piped in his thin voice: “He was with Pa-hsia-li when that lying dog deceived us at Tang-chao.”

“Then he may go the way of Pa-hsia-li,” snarls Sang. “It is enough for the moment that he is what the barbarian scum call an officer. An officer!” He stooped to scream in my face:

“Who is your commander, pig-dung?”

“General Sir Hope –” I was beginning, and he knocked me flying with his boot.

“You lie! You have no generals! Who commands your ships?”

“Admiral Ho –”

He screamed and stamped on my arm, agonisingly. “Another lie! You have no admirals! You are barbarian swine – you have no nobles, no officers, no generals or colonels or admirals! You have animals who grunt louder than the rest, you offal! That is all!” He was bent over me, raving, spraying me with his spittle, glaring like a maniac. Then he straightened up, snarling, and snapped an order to the Bannermen.

I was huddled, babbling to be let alone, terrified as much by the brute’s frenzied ranting as by what he might do to me. And what happened now reduced me to the final depth of fear.

The Bannermen were carrying in a stool, on which was seated a naked Chinese, a white, shuddering figure who seemed to have no arms – until I realised that they were clamped tight against his body by a horrible coat of meshed wire, bound so tight that his flesh protruded through the spaces in obscene lumps about the size of finger-tips. It covered him from neck to knee, and I’ve seen nothing more disgusting than that trembling, rippled skin in its hideous wire casing.

They plumped the stool down in front of me, the poor wretch slobbering with terror.

“The wire jacket,” says Sang, grinning. “Even a benighted worm of a fan-qui must have heard of it.” Without taking his eyes from me he beckoned, and one of the Bannermen came forward, carrying an open razor. He laid the shining blade on the victim’s shoulder, and the fellow jerked and squealed at the touch of the steel. Sang watched me, and then nodded, the Bannerman flicked his wrist, the trembling mouth before me gaped in a dreadful scream, and one of the flesh-lumps had vanished, replaced by a tiny disc of blood which coursed down the naked arm.

Sang bellowed with laughter, absolutely slapping his sides, and the burly Sushun came forward, chuckling, to peer at the wound. I turned my head aside, gagging, and received a stinging slap across the face.

“Watch, coward!” roars Sang, and slapped me again. “Now,” says he, “a wearer of the wire jacket has been known to receive as many as ten thousand cuts … and still live. Indeed, he may live for months, if the executioner is patient, and eventually he will have no skin at all.” He laughed again, enjoying my terror. “But if a quicker despatch is desired …” He nodded again, and the Bannerman’s razor streaked down the full length of the victim’s arm.

I didn’t faint. I could wish I had, for I’d have been spared the tortured screaming, and the diabolical laughter, if not the bloody pool which remained on the marble after they’d carried that babbling wretch out of the room. I wonder I didn’t go crazy; I fairly grovelled to these fiends, begging them to let me be, not to cut me, anything so they spared me that unthinkable cruelty. Oh, I’ve faced some horrors in my time – Narreeman and her knife, Mimbreno squaws out for an evening’s amusement, Malagassy inquisitors, and Ignatieff with his knout, but nothing more ghastly than the gloating enjoyment of those two devils, Sang and Sushun. Prince I sat in the background, immobile, his face expressionless.

“You have seen, dog-dirt,” snarls Sang. “Now hear. You will wear the wire jacket, I swear, and when your foul carcase has been flayed, an inch at a time, it will be thrown to the maggots – and still you will be living. Unless you obey to the uttermost the orders we give you. Do you hear me, kite?”

I’d do anything, I whined, anything he asked, and he seemed satisfied and kicked me again for luck. He thrust his face into mine, dropping his voice to a mere rasp:

“You are to be honoured beyond your bestial imagining. You are going into the Divine Presence, and you will go like the crawling animal you are, on your knees, and you will speak. This is what you will say.” He gestured to Sushun, and the burly brute swaggered forward, towering over me, and shouted:

“I am a Banner chief in the Red-haired Army, a trusted creature of the Big Barbarian. See, I lay at your Divine Feet the unworthy sword which, misbegotten foreign slave that I am, I dared to raise in revolt against the authority of the Complete Abundance. I was misled by evil counsellors, my master the Big Barbarian and the arch-liar Pa-hsia-li, who tempted me from my allegiance to the glorious Kwa-Kuin, the Tien-tze, the Son of Heaven. I marched in their army, which prevailed by lies and treachery against the trusting and unwary generals of the Divine Emperor. At Sinho, for example, we succeeded only by despicable fraud, for our leaders bade us perform the kow-tow before the Imperial soldiers,³⁶ and when they approached in good faith we fired on them treacherously and so overcame them for the moment. Thus we continued, in stealth and trickery, lying shamelessly to the Imperial ambassadors when they besought us gently to repent our rebellion and return to our duty to you, the Son of Heaven who rules All Under the Skies. Pa-hsia-li lied, the Big Barbarian lied, we all lied, but now we see our error; we tremble under the just wrath of your servant, Prince Sang, who has chastised us; dismay and fear spread through our ranks, our soldiers run crying away, our evil leaders cannot control them. The Big Barbarian bites his nails and weeps in his tent; all our soldiers and sailors weep. We beg your Divine Forgiveness, kneeling, and acknowledge your supremacy, oh Son of Heaven. Be merciful, accept our homage, for we were misled by evil people.”

Well, I’ve talked greater rubbish in my time; he could have it signed and witnessed if he wanted. But even in my abject terror, kneeling almost in the blood of the wire jacket victim, with those madmen screaming at me, I couldn’t help wondering what mortal use they thought it would be. Within a week their precious Son of Heaven was going to be brought face to face with the Big Barbarian, who’d make him eat crow and like it; the despised Red-headed soldiers would march the sacred streets of the Forbidden City, and get drunk, and piss against his temple walls, and accost his women, and kick his mandarins’ backsides if they didn’t stir themselves. And since nothing in Heaven or earth could prevent that – and Sang and Sushun and Prince I knew it – what was the point of stuffing the Emperor’s ears with nonsense at the eleventh hour, when he’d learn the dreadful truth at the twelfth?

I still didn’t understand, you see, the blind arrogant stupidity of the Manchoo mind – that even if Elgin stood in the Emperor’s presence, his ministers would still pretend he wasn’t there at all; that they’d be whispering him just to wait, this foreign pig would be brought to book presently, and his army thrashed; that none of it was happening, because it couldn’t happen, Q.E.D. And in the meantime, here was a high-ranking British Officer to tell him the same tale, what more proof could His Majesty want?

They had me rehearsing it now, and you may be sure I howled it with a will, even throwing in corroborative detail of my own about how my family (including little golden-headed Amelia, of blessed memory) were held hostage by Elgin’s villains, to coerce me into rebellion against my better judgment. D’you know, they were delighted – I ain’t sure they didn’t believe it. Sang bellowed and kicked me with enthusiasm, and Prince I said coldly they had chosen well. Sushun spat on me to show his approval. Then:

“Strip the swine!” cried Sang, and the Bannermen cut my cords, tore off my clothes, gave me a rag of loin-cloth such as coolies wear, and replaced my bonds with ponderous steel fetters whose links must have been two inches thick. I now looked abject enough to satisfy them, but they kept my lancer tunic, belt, boots and spurs, to show their lord and master, and produced a ridiculous Oriental sword which would be laid at his Divine Feet during my speech to the throne. Then they left me for about an hour, half-dead with pain and fear and icy cold, mumbling over the farrago of drivel that I knew I would be repeating for my very life. But after that …

Suddenly it was on-stage with a vengeance, with the Bannermen hauling me out and along passages and up stairways, beating me with their spear-shafts while I laboured with the dead-weight of my chains. We passed through chambers where Chinese officials stared curiously, and uniformed Bannermen guarded the round crimson doorways; I remember a carpeted gallery crammed with porcelain statues of grotesque figures with enormous teeth and staring eyes; then they were driving me out across a polished marble floor like a frozen lake, reflecting a great hall as long and high as a church, with a bass gong booming hollowly in its emptiness. Huge vases, three times the height of a man, stood on either side of that cavernous apartment, which was lit by great lanterns with candles of perfumed wax; three-quarters of its length was only dimly-lighted, but at the far end, above three tiers of broad marble steps, was a dais on which was seated a golden figure, shining in the flames of the great candlebranches flanking his throne, a massive ebony contraption inlaid all over with mother-of-pearl. Robed figures, about a dozen of them, stood on the steps, to either side; there was Sang, and Prince I, and Sushun, but I had little chance to take ’em in, for my Bannermen flung me headlong, and I had to crawl the whole damned way, dragging those beastly irons, and staring at the reflection of the naked, bearded wretch in the glassy floor beneath me. Hollo, Flashy, old son, I thought, bellows to mend again, my boy, but you keep going and speak civil to the gentleman and you’ll get a sugar-plum at tea.

The gong had stopped, and the only sounds in that joss-laden silence were clanks and laboured breathing; I reached the steps, and under the Bannermen’s proddings dragged my way upwards, kow-towing all the way; thirty-three of them were there, and then I stopped, sprawled stark, with a pair of yellow velvet boots just ahead, and the hem of a robe that seemed to be made of solid gold inlaid with emeralds.

“He doesn’t look like a soldier,” said a drowsy voice. “Where is his armour? Why is he not wearing it?”

“Your slave, kneeling, begs Your Imperial Majesty to look on these rags of garments which the Red-headed savages wear.” This was Sang, and it was the first time I’d heard him speak at anything but the top of his voice. “They have no armour.”

“No armour?” says the other. “They must be very brave.”

That’s foxed you, you bastard, thinks I, but after a minute Sushun explained that we were so bloody backward we hadn’t thought of armour yet, and Sang cried aye, that was it.

“No armour,” says the drowsy voice, “yet they have great guns. That is not consistent. You – how is it that you have guns, but no armour?”

“Address the Son of Heaven, pig!” yells Sang, and the Bannermen bashed me with their spear-shafts. I scrambled to my knees, looked up – and blinked. For if the fellow on the throne wasn’t Basset, my orderly from the 11th Hussars, he was dooced like him, except that he was Chinese, you understand. It was just one of those odd resemblances – the same puffy, pasty, weak young face and little mouth, with a pathetic scrap of hair on the upper lip; but where Basset’s eyes had been weasel-sharp, this fellow’s were watery and dull. He looked as though he’d spent the last ten years in a brothel – which wasn’t far wrong.³⁷ All this I took in at a glance, and then hastened to answer his question.

“Our guns, majesty,” says I, “were stolen from your imperial army.” At least that ought to please Sang, but with a face like his you couldn’t be sure.

“And your ships?” says the drowsy voice. “Your iron ships. How do you make such things?”

By George, this wasn’t going according to Sushun’s scenario at all. Here was I, all ready with a prepared statement, and this inquisitive oaf of an Emperor asking questions which I daren’t answer truthfully, or Sang would have my innards all over the yard.

“I know of no iron ships, majesty,” says I earnestly. “I think they are a lie. I have never seen them.”

“I have seen pictures,” says he sulkily, and thought for a moment, an unhappy frown on his soft yellow face. “You must have come to the Middle Kingdom in a ship – was it not of iron?” He looked ready to cry.

“It was a very old wooden ship, majesty,” says I. “Full of rats and leaked like a sieve. I didn’t want to come,” I cried on a sudden inspiration, “but I was seduced from my allegiance to your Divine Person by evil people like Pa-hsia-li and the Big Barbarian, you see, and they made me a Banner chief in the Red-headed Army and a trusted creature of the Big Barbarian himself, and …”

It was the only way I could get into Sushun’s speech and forestall further embarrassment; I poured it out, keeping my eyes lowered and knocking head obsequiously at intervals, and putting a heart-rending pathos into my final appeal for his Divine Forgiveness. If he’d then said, what about all these railways and telegraphs and the Crystal Palace, hey, I’d have been stumped, but he didn’t. Silence reigned, and when I stole a glance up at the Imperial Throne, damned if he hadn’t gone to sleep! Bored stiff, no doubt, but highly disconcerting when you’ve been pleading for your life, and Sang and Sushun glaring like Baptists at a Mass. None of ’em seemed to know what to do; the Son of Heaven smacked his lips, broke wind gently, and began to snore. There were whispered consultations, and finally one of them went off and returned with a stout little pug in a plain robe, who approached the throne, knocked head, and began to tickle the royal ankle.

The Emperor grunted, woke, stared around, and asked sleepily which tortoiseshell was turned over tonight.

“The Fragrant Almond Leopardess, oh Kwa-Kuin Ruling the World,” squeaks the stout party, and the Emperor pulled a face.

“No!” says he petulantly. “She is large and clumsy and without culture. She sings like a crow.” He sniggered, and Sang and the others, who’d been mirroring his disapproval, chuckled heartily. “Let it be the Orchid,” says the Emperor, sighing happily, and everyone beamed; I may even have nodded approbation myself, for he looked at me again, and frowned.

“I saw a picture of an iron ship with three great chimneys,” says he sadly, and then he got up unsteadily, and everyone dropped to their knees, crying: “There cannot be two suns in the heaven!” and knocked head vigorously. I watched him shuffle off, attended by the stout fellow; he walked like an old, sick man, for all he couldn’t have been thirty. The Solitary Prince, Son of Heaven, the most absolute monarch on earth, yearning for a trip on a steamship.

The fact remained that he hadn’t told ’em to give Flashy a pound from the till and a ticket to Tooting; I doubted if Sang would either, for while I’d done my damnedest to carry out his orders, I knew I hadn’t made much of a hit, and if he was displeased … my fears were realised as I was abruptly jerked to my feet, and that hateful voice was snarling at the Bannermen:

“Put him below! Tomorrow he can join the other barbarian curs in the Board of Punishments.”

My blood froze at the words, and as they seized my fetters I was foolish enough to protest. “But you swore to let me off! I said what you wanted, didn’t I? You said you’d spare me, you lying beast!”

He was on me like a tiger, striking viciously at my face while I cowered and yammered. “I said I would spare you the wire jacket!” he shouted, and fetched me a final clip that knocked me down. “So, I will spare you … the wire jacket! You may yet come to beg for it as a blessed release! Away with him!”

They hauled me off, and since I was in such fear that I woke the echoes with my roaring, they gagged me brutally before rushing me down a spiral stairway. It wasn’t the way we’d come, and I was expecting stone cells and dripping walls, but evidently they didn’t have such amenities in the Emperor’s private apartments, for the room they thrust me into seemed to be a furniture store, dry and musty, but clean enough, with chairs and tables piled against the walls. The swine made me as comfortable as possible, though, throwing me back down on a narrow wooden bench and shackling my wrists so tightly beneath it that I couldn’t budge an inch and must lie there supine with my legs trailing on the floor either side. Then they left me, a prey to the most horrid imaginings, and unable even to whine and curse by reason of my gag.

The Board of Punishments … I’d heard of it, and horrid rumours of what happened there – if I’d known what Parkes and Loch and the others were already suffering, I’d have gone off my head. Mercifully, I didn’t know, and strove to drive the awful fears out of my mind, telling myself that the army was only a few miles away, that even mad monsters like Sang must realise the vengeance that Elgin would take if we were ill-treated, and hold his hand … and then I remembered Moyes and Nolan, and the vicious, mindless spite with which they’d been murdered, and I knew that my only hope was that rescue would get here in time. They were so close! Grant and the Frogs and Probyn and Nuxban Khan and Wolseley and Temple, those splendid Sikhs and Afghans and Royals; I could weep to think of them in their safe, strong, familiar world, loafing under the canvas, sitting about on Payne & Co’s boxes, reading the Daily Press, chewing the rag about … what had it been, that evening a century ago, before we rode to Tang-chao … oh, aye, the military steeplechase at Northampton, won by a Dragoon over twenty fences and three ploughs, and spectators riding alongside had spoiled sport … “Goin’ to ride next year, Flash?” “Garn, he’s top-heavy!” “They say the Navy are enterin’ in ’61 – sailors on horseback, haw-haw!” That’s how they’d be gassing and boozing and idling away precious time, the selfish bastards, while I was bound shivering and naked and near-demented with fear of what lay ahead …

I must have dozed, for I came awake freezing cold, racked by pain where the sharp edges of the bench were cutting into the back of my shoulders and thighs. It was still night, for the window was dark, but through the lattice door light was streaming, light that moved – someone was quietly descending the stairway to my prison. There was a murmur of Chinese voices just outside: one a falsetto squeak that I seemed to have heard before, and the other … even to my battered senses it was one of the loveliest human sounds I’d ever listened to, soft and tinkling as a silver bell, the kind of voice a happy angel might have had – a slightly excited, tipsy angel.

“Is this the room, Little An?” it was whispering. “You’re sure? Well, take me in, then! Hurry, I want to see!”

“But, Orchid Lady, it is madness!” whimpers Squeaker. “If we were seen! Please, let us go back – I’m frightened!”

“Stop trembling or you’ll drop me! Oh, come on, fat, foolish, frightened Little An – be a man!”

“How can I? I’m a eunuch! And it’s cruel and mean and unworthy to taunt me – aiee! Oh! You pinched me! Oh, vicious, when you know I bruise at the least nip –”

“Yes, so think how you’ll bruise when the Mongols take their flails to you, little jelly …”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would. I will, unless you take me in and let me see – now.”

“Oh, this is wilful! It’s wicked! And dangerous! Please, dear Imperial Concubine Yi, why can’t we just go upstairs and –”

“Because I’ve never seen a barbarian. And I’m going to, dear Little An.” The lovely voice chuckled, and began to sing softly: “Oh, I’m going to see a barbarian, I’m going to see a barbarian …”

“Oh, please, please, Orchid Lady, quietly! Oh, very well –”

The door opened, and light flooded into the room.