Casca 18: The Cursed (12 page)

The Year of the Boar was coming to a close, to usher in the Year of the Rat, the first year in each cycle of twelve years. In the Western calendar the new year would also signal the start of a new century.

In London there was dignified but frantic diplomatic activity as the ambassadors of Germany, Holland, Portugal, the United States, Japan, Russia, and France sought to dissuade the British government from declaring Queen Victoria empress of China.

Reports of these maneuverings came back to China and prompted Mr. Song to make another journey to Tsungkow, before the new year, this time to consult with Casca.

"There is only one colonial power who has not exacted cession of territory," Casca pointed out,
“and that is the United States. Why don't you go to Washington and talk to them?"

Mr. Song smiled bitterly. "It is true that America has not seized any of our territory, but under what England's Lord
Palmerston derided as the Me Too policy, they demand in each ceded territory the same privileges as the foreign power who holds the territory.

"Worse yet, some of the colonial powers have able and incorruptible administrators and soldiers whom we deal with. Even the worst of them have some awareness of our position and of the limits to exploitation. With America we must deal with businessmen. And, as I am one myself, I can tell you there is no end to the rapaciousness of a businessman."

Casca nodded. "True. Even looting soldiers can be controlled to some extent, but there is no controlling a greedy businessman."

"Besides" Song shook his head "I am a true Chinese and I will never leave China. When I was a little boy pulling a
ricksha, I saw the great English general Chinese Gordon. He walked into battle with nothing to defend him but the Bible under his arm. I was converted on the spot to the power of the Bible."

"You are a Christian then?"

"Certainly not. But I saw that there were going to be many Bibles sold in China, so I started selling them. Perhaps only one Chinese in ten thousand buys a Bible, but that is a lot of Bibles. Nor are my three daughters Christians. I have great ambitions for them as I have not been blessed with sons."

"If you wish me to give you advice," Casca said, "you should be frank with me about your ambitions."

Song shrugged. "Our society is divided into the Shih, the educated scholars; Nung, the fanners; Kung, handicraft workers; and at the bottom of the scale, Shang, the merchants.

"It is no disgrace for me that I was once a
ricksha coolie. But while the Shih may retire from their studies and professions to become public leaders, the Shang may not. I know myself to be an intelligent man, and I can afford to be honest on behalf of my country, but as a merchant I am not welcome in the halls of power."

"Then you should certainly go to the United States. There, merchants are welcome in places of power."

"So I have heard. Perhaps I shall send Sun Yat Sen to America. If his revolution succeeds I will marry my daughter Song Mai Ling to him. In this way I will achieve a say in the affairs of my country."

"And the other two daughters" Casca queried.

Again the Chinese shrugged. "I will marry them to his most promising rivals."

After the departure of Song, Casca was left to celebrate the New Year and the start of the twentieth century with a splendid dinner, some bottles of rice wine, and the enjoyment of all five of his duty concubines.

He had managed, while avoiding insult, to persuade Tian Yuanlong to select half of his fifty wives from the Hakka people, claiming that, as they made up about half of the population, their daughters should share the honor of sleeping with the Hsia and catering to his every need and whim.

He did not mention that the attraction for him was their unbound feet. But despite her deformed feet, Liang
Yongming remained his favorite and shared his bed more often than all the others.

Casca's five million subjects in the city and county didn't commence their New Year festivities until two weeks later, the sixteenth of January on the European calendar.

Then the merchants balanced their books, giving thanks to the gods for their gift of a prosperous year and praying for another one. All debts were paid so that the new year might start in perfect communion with other merchants. In households knives and scissors were hidden so that none might cut the continuity of luck for the future.

In the palace Liang
Yongming sealed the lips of the kitchen god, Tsou Shen, with a malt jelly so that he would only say sweet things on his visit to the heavens at this time. She also gave him rice wine to make him drunk so that his reports would be lax and erroneous. And she provided him liberally with paper money for his journey.

"I could use a good report with the gods," Casca said as he added a whole English pound to the pile. "Let's see what the Chinese gods in the other world think of English money. The whole of this world is crazy about it."

Tsou Shen and the money disappeared, and while the idol was away the whole of the palace was thoroughly cleaned, every member of the household, including Casca, Tian Yuanlong, the doctor Poon Fong, and Huang Chu, now colonel of the city, helping to clean, rearrange, and paint.

A new idol appeared in the oven and a banquet celebrated his return. All the children in the palace got special attention, new clothes, and some money.

The youngest members of the palace guard formed a dragon, one of them carrying the great papier mache head, and eighteen others running under the red, gold, and green tail as, accompanied by fireworks, the dragon visited every doorway and room in the palace.

For a whole month the celebration went on. Each ward of the city, and each town and village in the county, had its own dragon, and night after night these dragons chased away the evil spirits that might have taken up residence during the past year. The dragons scared them into the open where fireworks and rockets terrified them back to their own evil realms.

On the fifteenth of February on the English calendar the festivities for the Festival of Lanterns ended. Thousands of lamps were carried through the streets and houses and in and out of every room and cupboard to show the good spirits that no evil spirits remained in places or people, and to light the way so that these good spirits might find themselves comfortable abodes with the families for the forthcoming year.

The festival ended with a prodigious meal, and all families went quietly and early to bed. By midnight the city was silent, except for the European quarter, where the celebration went on all night, European style, with champagne and whiskey and cigars.

On the sixteenth, all hell broke loose.

At the first explosion, just before dawn, Liang
Yongming leaped from Casca's bed and ran to the window. Casca laughed heartily as she cowered behind the curtain, trembling as she stared out at the palace grounds.

"What happens? What happens?" she moaned.

The door burst open and the two concubines from the outer chamber rushed in looking similarly terrified. Eyes wide in their heads, they fluttered to the window in frightened bewilderment.

Casca chuckled delightedly at the performance they were putting on for his benefit, pretending fright at the fireworks, which certainly were the loudest and most prolonged of the month's festivities.

But when Huang Chu, the colonel of the city, appeared in the doorway, Casca hurtled from his bed, cursing himself for not registering alarm earlier.

Behind Huang Chu were half a dozen men carrying the many pieces of his
armor, and they started, placing these on Casca's body as Huang Chu explained to him that the peasants were attacking the foreign legations, mission churches and schools, and foreign owned warehouses and businesses.

All Chinese would know that there would be no fireworks after the Festival of the, Lanterns, which signified that all evil spirits had been frightened away. But the rebels had banked on the foreign devils' ignorance, hoping that they would take the explosions for harmless celebration.

The Boxers had taken matters into their own hands without waiting for the nobles, the rich merchants, or the Freemasons to come to a decision.

"And damned good thinking too," Casca muttered as the armorers linked together the separate pieces that protected his arms, shoulders, armpits, and abdomen. All were made of canvas sewn with iron plates that had been elaborately lacquered to prevent rusting, the plates covered on the outside with blue silk and red velvet. The shoulder pieces had a golden dragon embroidered on each.
The separate pieces were covered by a vest of the same material, and apron-like pieces covered the legs.

Casca thrust his feet into the boots of black silk with heavy cord soles as one of the men looped over his shoulders the straps for an
armored bow case of fringed velvet, and the quiver for the five ceremonial arrows of yellow willow with spiral goose feathers. Taking from one of the armorers a sharkskin scabbard, he drew from it a straight, double edged sword with a grooved blade almost a yard long, the hilt of carved white jade. He was already walking quickly from the chamber as the other armorer placed on his head a helmet of steel with gilded mounts set with ruby, coral, malachite, and turquoise. Casca added the face mask he had taken from the dead Hu Wei and stuck the Webley in his belt. Lastly he snatched up his armored gloves. As he walked through the doorway a smiling Huang Chu handed him a mace.

Casca thanked him and hefted the leather wound iron handle. The pear shaped brass head had a Chinese character repeated around it in relief. Casca chuckled and bowed to Huang as he recognized "
sho" – long life.

From the top of the palace wall Casca could see fires burning throughout the European quarter. In the city itself there were other fires burning in mission churches, monasteries, and schools. And the whole of the waterfront and warehouse district appeared to be in flames.

"Shit," Casca breathed. "They're not fucking about, are they?"

Inwardly he fumed. He should have known. If there were to be an uprising it had to be soon or never. He should have seen that and insisted that Baron Ying and his supporters and allies come to the necessary decisions and make appropriate preparations. Had he thought more about it he should have been able to predict that this very morning would be the time for the uprising to
start.

As it was, the baron was still surveying the route for the stringing of a telegraph wire from
Chaochow to Tsungkow, when they might have already completed it by simply following either the road or the river.

Well, at least the things that were within Casca's own domain had been seen to. Baron Ying had charged him with the
defense of the city and the palace, and these defenses and the troops were in the best possible condition.

So now, the rebellion was here. But who was fighting whom? And what side was Casca on?

The only man who could tell him was two days away downriver, and, no doubt, just as confused and busy with a similar situation. Which meant that Casca had to make his own decisions. Fine.

Under the Treaty of Tientsin, every one of the dozens of fires he could see was the direct responsibility of the emperor and himself as the emperor's representative.

So, to comply with the terms of the treaty, he should immediately devote his entire resources to extinguishing the fires, finding and punishing the perpetrators, and crushing the incipient rebellion.

In the first place, for all Casca knew, Baron Ying and his allied nobles, and perhaps even the emperor, had joined the rebels. In the second place, extinguishing the fires was clearly impossible.

In the third place, he didn't want to. His own sympathies were squarely with the rebels.

If the colonial powers were to win, they would certainly unleash the same sort of reprisals as had followed the collapse of the Taiping Rebellion, shelling cities, laying waste to the countryside, executing ringleaders and responsible nobles, exacting the cession of more territory and power.

Casca had no choice. The Boxers must win. He turned to Huang Chu. "Ready the troops. We're going to sack the British legation."

"Yes, sir."
Huang saluted briskly and signaled to his waiting captains. Their pleased smiles removed the last of Casca's doubts.

Casca had no sooner issued the order than he began to kick himself for his own negligence. He scarcely even knew where to find the British Legation, much less how to attack it. He had naturally made a point of staying well away from it. To be discovered by the British could only result in the hanging that he had been promised in Hong Kong.

From the ramparts of the outer wall of his palace, Casca and Huang Chu surveyed the burning city. It wasn't hard to pick out the European quarter. The lightening sky was not as bright as the fires that blazed in all of the foreign legations.

"Do you know anything of the defenses of this British legation?" Casca asked Huang.

"Oh yes," his colonel replied, and Casca breathed a sigh of relief which was followed by a sharp intake of breath as Huang continued, "It's virtually impregnable."

"Great."

Casca turned from the raging conflagration to scan the palace
defenses. He was quickly satisfied. He had been much impressed at first sight with the defensive layout of the palace, and was confident in the improvements he had ordered. If worse came to worst, and the palace came under attack, he was confident he could hold it against any force that was likely to come against it, short of the entire British army.

And the city walls were similarly secure against attack from the outside. But from inside the city there was the certain threat of a counterattack from the foreign legations. Of these, only the British had forces of any significant size. Hence a pre
-emptive strike against this legation made good military sense.

But, from what Huang said, the British had already taken this into account and so had taken the appropriate measures to protect their legation.

Casca didn't have to think too hard to envisage some of these measures: a fortress as near to impregnable as stone and steel could make; a contingent of well trained, highly disciplined, and well-armed troops; stores and supplies and ammunition sufficient to withstand a siege for almost forever and lots of Martini Henry and Lee Enfield rifles with dumdum bullets, water cooled machine guns, and assorted cannon. And all of this enclosed in a bastion of earthworks faced with stone.

And Casca's troops would be attacking this fort with bows and arrows, lances, and swords.
"Hmmm."

And the initiative had been taken out of his hands
. The Boxers were already leading thousands of peasants in suicidal attacks on all the foreign legations, clambering up the outer walls on bamboo ladders and ropes hung from crude iron hooks.

In the near distance Casca could see the Chinese attackers already falling back from the walls of the British legation, leaving bodies lying at the foot of the walls. The firing from the half awake and
hungover defending troops was sporadic, but effective enough against people armed with billhooks and scythes, hoes and kitchen knives.

The only redeeming feature that Casca could see was that there was a fierce fire burning inside the legation, as there was in almost every building in the foreign quarter.

"These fires were started by Chinese servants inside the, legations?" he asked Huang. The colonel nodded.

Casca didn't bother asking about the fate of these servants. By now all the foreign devil officers would be well awake, their hangovers only serving to worsen their tempers. Few of the servants who had set the fires would still be alive.

A beautiful opportunity had been wasted. The precious element of surprise had been squandered. But, fortunately, the morning breeze was fanning the fires, and inside the legations the defenders would have to use more and more men to try to quench the flames, leaving less to defend the walls.

The time to attack was now: But how?

Already Casca's troops infantry, archers, pikemen, and cavalry were amassed by all the palace gates, waiting only for the word to pour out into the city.

Runners had carried the message to the several troop stations throughout the city and at the city gates, and these troops, too, were now waiting for the order to attack the detested foreign devils. All told, something like thirty thousand warriors
were waiting on Casca's order to attack perhaps three hundred British soldiers.

Still Casca hesitated.

Besides his regular troops there were the peasants led by the Boxers, and these probably numbered another thirty thousand, perhaps many more.

Still Casca hesitated.

With good reason. The Boxers and their peasants were already in tragic disorder. Here and there they were hurling themselves at the walls of one or another of the legations, most of them cut down by rifle fire before they even reached the earthworks. The ground around the walls was littered with corpses, and the shrieks of the dying carried to Casca on the palace walls.

The narrow, twisting streets were jammed with tens of thousands of shouting Chinese, the ones at the rear vigorously shouting slogans and pushing forward, those at the front bleeding and screaming, holding their wounds as they sought escape from the withering hail of lead from the legation walls, which increased in force and effectiveness by the minute.

The entire foreign quarter was protected from any attack by Casca's troops by the mass of peasants milling uselessly in the streets.

From all quarters the city's captains were looking up to where Casca and Huang stood on the palace wall. Beside them the signal archers waited expectantly, their great eight foot bows, the largest Casca had ever seen, in their hands;
ming tis
, the whistling arrows, ranged along the parapet ready to carry Casca's message to the thousands of waiting warriors.

Casca glanced along the line of
ming tis
. The smallest of them was four feet long with a huge head of lacquered wood the size of an apple pierced through with holes so that it emitted a piercing shriek as it flew. Other arrows had heads of bone or of iron and, with their cunningly pierced holes and their sharp, heavy points, could be relied upon to deliver their message effectively both to the attacking troops who heard them, and to the unfortunate defenders who received them.

Casca had familiarized himself with the
signaling system, and had come to admire its ingenuity. Each arrow made a distinctive sound, carrying its own unique message to the troops who heard it as it winged its way to the enemy.

But just now he could see no way to use the system.

What he needed was a signal that would tell the rioting peasants and their fanatic leaders to go home and leave the fighting to those who knew something about it.

Unfortunately, the whistling signal arrows were part of the old China, which was totally despised by the Boxers who were leading the rioting peasants. If by some chance they should understand an arrow's message, they would certainly ignore it, no matter how sensible. On the other hand, they would slavishly follow any message they might receive through some modern agency such as the telegraph. But there wasn't any telegraph other than that operated by the British.

At the thought Casca turned to Huang. "Get some men through to the telegraph lines. Cut the wires. Fell the poles. Set fire to them, anything. Break the communication any way you can."

He knew it was already too late, that already the wires had carried news of the uprising to the British authorities in Swatow, perhaps to Hong Kong, very likely even to London.

The Morse telegraph girdled the earth. How far could a whistling arrow hope to reach?

He asked the archer next to him and was astonished when the man casually pointed to the French legation almost half a mile away.

The British legation was much closer, perhaps only three hundred yards. A rare enough bow shot. But when he pointed to it the archers nodded confidently.

It was now full daylight, and on the bastion of the legation a red coated British officer was in full view, the morning sun glinting on the splendid gold braid on his helmet and epaulets as he directed the fire of his men.

Casca pointed him out to one of the archers.

He selected a
reed arrow with a simple pointed iron cap and fitted the horn nock to his bowstring. Casca heard the slap of the bowstring against the bamboo bracer, which protected the archer's left wrist, and in the same instant saw the officer tumble backward from the wall.

"Well," Casca mused, "perhaps all is not lost."

He quickly ordered Huang to put all of his archers into action immediately, stressing that they should shoot from the greatest possible range, and stay under cover as much as possible.

A second later three giant whistling arrows flew toward the legation walls, and in another second they were followed by a hail of perhaps a thousand arrows that swept the walls clear of defenders.

Screaming and shouting exultantly, hundreds of peasants clambered up the ladders and threw new ropes over the walls.

Few of them even made it to the top of the wall, as new defenders appeared and cut them down with rifle shots or bayonet thrusts.

But many redcoats died, and the Chinese dead were quickly replaced from behind. The corpses piled up at the foot of the legation walls, but each corpse had cost the British a bullet.

"And I've got more Chinese than they've got bullets," Casca muttered, but cursed that he could not order a retirement of the peasants, conserving some of their lives, and clearing some space for an attack by his warriors.

A new sound struck Casca's ears, and the chatter of machine guns was accompanied by a horrible cacophony of screams and shrieks and groans as the withering fire hosed the rioters into bloody heaps.

Still, as fast as the Chinese fell, others pressed from behind to take their place.

Casca grimaced at the slaughter, but reckoned the cost in bullets to his own advantage.

Another wave of arrows silenced the machine guns, and a few peasants made it onto the wall where they fought hand to hand with the British soldiers.

Uselessly.

They were all dead within moments, and the deadly chatter started again.

Soon the mass of the peasants would realize what was happening and, Casca reasoned, they would break and run, leaving the streets free for his troops. He told Huang Chu to start the attack as soon as this happened, and Huang Chu ran to where an ostler waited by the gate with his horse.

The moment came, and the tide of shouting Chinese turned. Those at the rear who did not realize the retreat was occurring still tried to press forward but were trampled by the terrified ones fleeing in horror. They had seen close up the effects of the hollow nosed ammunition as it
plowed through the bodies in front of them, exiting through holes the size of a man's fist, spraying those behind with buckets of blood and chunks of hot dripping flesh.

But Casca's archers, still firing from cover at long range, continued to whittle away the gunners, and when the guns were quieted for a moment the first of Huang's infantry
rushed the legation walls.

The sudden arrival of disciplined warriors was a bad shock to the defending soldiers, who quickly found they had a real fight on their hands.

The carnage amongst Casca's troops was enormous, but here and there where the defense faltered one of Casca's men would gain the top of the wall, in many cases because a rifle had jammed, or the defender had run out of ammunition. Empty rifles and bayonets were poor defense against swords and the small bows and arrows carried by the Chinese infantry.

The machine gunners were special targets, and they were butchered mercilessly as they strove to turn their clumsy weapons from aiming at the street to fire along the top of their own wall. And, when they did succeed, they shot as many of their own men in their frantic attempt as they did attackers.

Casca raced around the walls of the legation, his horse slipping and sliding in puddles of blood, leaping over the dead and dying, or pounding them into the cobblestones with its hooves.

In one street he came upon David Sen
Yung, haranguing the fleeing peasants, exhorting them to return to the walls and certain death. Casca grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him onto his horse, turning to head back to the palace gates.

Inside the portal he lowered Sen
Yung to the ground.

As the young Boxer opened his mouth to speak, Casca cuffed him unceremoniously with the back of his
armored glove, knocking him to the ground.

"Kowtow," he shouted, as the dazed rebel managed to get to his hands and knees and obediently bowed his head to the ground.

"Are you all right?" Casca asked, carefully keeping the concern out of his voice.

"Yes, I've been lucky or unlucky."

"Damned fucking lucky, you young fool. Luckier than you deserve, and don't you mistake it. Now get up off the ground and get yourself a decent weapon and get your ass back out there.

"Regroup all the men you can behind buildings the enemy's guns can't reach. Order any other Boxers, in my name, to do the same in dispersed areas of the city.

"And wait for fucking orders do you know the whistle code?"

"Of course."

"The gods are smiling."