Heart of Iron (34 page)

“Just the two of them?”

“Some officials.” The guard thought for a while, and then added, “And a Russian envoy.”

“Who would that be?” Lee Bo asked me as soon as we passed the guards.

“No idea,” I said. “I thought the Emperor Constantine did not want an alliance… but maybe my aunt has convinced him.” I smiled then, hopeful my work would be easier.

The Forbidden City seemed the Abandoned City now. We walked along the path lined with strangely shaped rocks and pillars; what they were supposed to represent was obscured by the snow. The trees that craned their slender, snow-weighed branches over the path must’ve been magnificent in the spring, when the white flowers frothed and cascaded over the boughs, and I squinted and imagined that the snow mounding on the stones were white petals of plum and cherry flowers.

“This is the Palace of Earthly Peace,” Lee Bo said and pointed at the large pavilion that dwarfed everything else around it. It also stood out from the surroundings because it had two roofs, one stacked on top of the other. The building itself was an arrangement of smaller pavilions, some lower and some taller. A wide staircase led toward it and several subordinate structures, topped with matching copper-colored rectangular roofs with steeply curved eaves.

“It is beautiful,” I told Lee Bo, and really meant it. “I’ve never seen anything quite so… ” I paused, searching for an appropriate epithet. It seemed so strange and otherworldly, especially considering that we just fought the people who were supposed to be on our side. “It’s very beautiful,” I concluded in a rather uninspired manner. “I am sorry for getting us into that fight — Wong Jun’s letter… ”

Lee Bo shrugged. “If we ran into Qing forces, that letter would’ve had an opposite effect. In any case, you’re a barbarian, and it would be foolish to expect people to trust you.”

“Kuan Yu does.”

Lee Bo shook his head, smiling. “This is very naive of you. Do you think he is helping you because you’re serving the purpose he finds agreeable, or because you’re so precious that everyone who runs into you just has to help you?”

“The former.” I tried not to sulk.

“Right. So don’t take it personally, but do remember that people… people will do what suits themselves first. Don’t expect them to stop everything because you happened to wander by and need help.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Is it another one of those arguments you mentioned before?”

He nodded. We ascended the white staircase to the Palace itself, and I thought of how unlike the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg it was. Irrelevant and minor thoughts always plagued me at such important times, and I shook my head to clear it.

There were more guards here, but they wore Qing queues, and I wished I still had Wong Jun’s letter.

My stomach growled and acted as if it was about to do a flip and exit my body through my mouth and disappear forever. I swallowed hard. “I am bringing important information about the British.”

Lee Bo translated.

The guards did not seem especially spirited — they barely acknowledged our presence and let us through the double doors leading to the palace. I stepped through, simultaneously hopeful and apprehensive.

To my disappointment, we did not see the emperor. I supposed that he must have been rather discouraged by the woefully underdressed Taipings tracking muddy footprints across his beautifully paved floors and fine carpets. There were quite a few of them about; they gave us suspicious looks, but Lee Bo’s banter seemed to put them at enough ease to let us through. The walls were decorated by friezes and hangings made of richly embroidered shimmering silk that moved in the breeze, and the people in the battle scenes, artfully depicted, waved their banners and raised sails of their war junks.

We found General Feng in one of the smaller halls of the palace — it was almost intimate, decorated with soft rugs and low, embroidered couches, almost European in their design. On one of these couches, Feng, a small man who looked to be in his early thirties, stretched luxuriously, oblivious to the fact that his leather slippers left a round wet stain on the upholstery. His long hair was pulled into a horsetail on top of his head, and his wide, curved sword rested across his lap. Otherwise, he looked like any of his men.

He sat up when he saw me, and spoke sharply in Chinese.

I smiled and shook my head, and opened my satchel. I always suspected there was a huge relief in stopping the struggle and simply giving up the thing that had motivated one for weeks and months and years on end. I suspected that Sisyphus himself heaved a sigh of relief when the boulder rolled down the hill and he stood on the slope, empty-handed and free for a moment, truly happy because in that brief instant he had lost everything again, and had not yet regained hope and motivation for the next impossible task.

This is how I felt when I extracted the blueprints and the letters detailing the English treachery, when I gave general Feng the signed copies of treaties between the British and Ottoman empires, as I piled proof after proof after proof that China and the Taiping Tianguo, if they were to survive, would have to form an alliance with someone, and Russia seemed a logical choice, a neighbor driven by the same necessity and less foreign than any other.

Lee Bo translated, pointed things out, answered the general’s questions.

Feng’s voice rose as he gestured at one of the papers. Lee Bo frowned and spoke faster and in a higher pitch. I looked from one foreign face to the other, suddenly aware of how much I did not belong here. My suspicions intensified when Lee Bo bowed his head, pressed his hands together before his chest, and spoke softer, but with the unmistakable strain of pleading that was always the same, no matter whether the language spoken was Russian, English, or Cantonese.

Feng listened and sat up straighter, his back growing rigid with resolution. When he spoke, he was not addressing either Lee Bo or myself, but rather talking over our heads to someone in the hallway just outside.

My heart sunk as Feng tossed the papers I had given him carelessly on the couch cushions, and waited for the two Taipings to enter and flank me, in a way much less reassuring than the manner in which Kuan Yu and Lee Bo had so shortly before. When their hands clasped my wrists, freed my saber from my sheath, and took my shoulders — gently, gently, like a mother cradling a helpless child — my spirit gave out. I did not sob but I did not struggle; I let my head droop and my thoughts swim, as I could almost see myself — like another person would; detached, floating — being led down a corridor, all golden lights and filigreed panels on the walls, flowers and fantastic beasts, my heels hitting the tiles too loudly.

Then we were outside. Deep snow in hidden courtyards littered with splintered bamboo shafts and shredded red paper muted my footsteps, and I thought of it as a relief. We arrived at a small pavilion, and I thought it was a jail. But instead it turned out to be a small shrine. There were several statues placed on a dais; one corner of the cold stone floor was covered by a threadbare straw mat. The stone rang hollow and frozen with my bootsteps, went silent as my legs gave way and I crumpled to the floor, just as the key on the other side of the door turned, leaving me more cold and alone than I ever thought possible.

I had time to think now. The rushing about of the past weeks came to such an abrupt and disreputable stop that the very cessation of motion felt more crushing than the imprisonment. And I was in prison, even though instead of a jailer I had jade statues of some unfamiliar gods and a goddess, and there were no bars, just a room with dais with rounded corners and a wooden door.

It was too cold to sleep, and I curled into a comma, pulling my worn pelisse over my shoulders, like a too-short blanket. The carved goddess looked at me from the corner of one eye, not to notice me, but looking nonetheless.

My only blessing was the realization of how lucky I had been until that day, and how an abrupt end of my good fortune cast the incredible run of luck that preceded it in stark relief. Of course my luck had to run out some day, and it seemed more than coincidence that it did so just a few days after Jack’s capture.

I searched under the dais, not really hoping to find anything but to keep moving. To my surprise, in the dusty, cold darkness under the smooth wood my fingers felt a jagged piece of rock. I pulled it out and discovered it was a flint stone, and my heart squeezed tight in my already constricted chest, then let go again.

The empty sheath of my saber was not a very good weapon, but its steel-encased tip would serve as a perfect counterpart to the flint stone, if only I could find something to set fire to. Encouraged and newly energized by hope, I crawled on my hands and knees, looking into every crevice between the floor tiles, and under every side of the dais.

My reward was a thin splinter of bamboo lodged between the wall and a floor tile, and half of incense stick. It was better than nothing at all.

Then it struck me: I tore at my jacket, exposing the accursed reverse corset (which, I worried, was permanently altering the shape of my body) and tore off a chunk of cork off one shoulder, my fingers clawed and insensitive from cold. With my bamboo splinter, I arranged the cork shavings into a small pile, and set to striking the stone against the sheath’s steel tip.

Just moving about warmed me up, and the surge of blood to my face and hands chased away the ennui and sense of indifference which victims of cold are so susceptible to. When the cork began to smolder, it seemed an extravagant gift, and I spread my fingers toward the pale stunted flames.

I burned the incense almost as an afterthought, and the smoldering stick filled the shrine with thick smoke. I coughed and almost put it out, but a new idea occurred to me.

I shoved the burning incense tip through the keyhole in the door — I did not have enough fire to burn the door, or worse yet, risk suffocation, but I could send a smoke signal — much like in a James Fenimore Cooper novel. My only worry was that there was no one on the outside to care enough to receive it. And still I waited, until the smoldering red line crawled back through the keyhole and burned my fingers before going out.

The night came and went — I had not realized it, but when my feeble incense stick ran out and I sucked my burned fingers numbly, a golden shaft of light forced itself through the keyhole. It seemed so tangible, so solid, that I imagined myself grasping it like a magical key and turning it, the door squeaking open and returning to freedom. It felt so vivid, the fresh air on my face… I shivered and curled back into a small depressed ball. Even if I could break through the door, there was an entire country beyond the shrine and the courtyard and the Forbidden City — a country whose language I did not speak and to whom I looked like an enemy. I only hoped that Lee Bo was working to exercise his influence over Feng — if he wasn’t thought a traitor and locked away elsewhere, of course.

The door opened then, as if my thoughts and the power of conjured images compelled it to. I sat up and blinked at the flood of bright light, simultaneously pulling my jacket closed and hoping that the dents in my shoulders were not too obvious. Two dark shadows solidified against the blinding whiteness and resolved into my escorts from day before. I looked at them, trying to suppress any hope. It became easier the moment General Feng stepped inside.

It turned out he spoke passable English. He gestured to me and said, “We saw your smoke this morning. Thank you. It has been so busy here, I forgot about you. My apologies.”

I did not have the standing to sulk, although I was tempted. I did not particularly relish being a forgotten casualty of a foreign and ultimately strange conflict where if I were to die no one would likely know my name or remember my face. “Thank you for remembering me,” I said. I did feel some gratitude — not to Feng but to Fenimore Cooper. “Now are you willing to listen to my proposal?”

Feng took a step back, as if suddenly unbalanced. “We examined the papers you brought,” he said. “There is some interesting information, but I doubt your ability to speak for your ruler.”

“I never said I did,” I answered. “I merely gave you tools so you may seek alliance with those who can help you and whose trust you would have to win.”

Feng looked at me quizzically. “And you took it upon yourself to do so. What made you decide to interfere in the fates of empires?”

I could not tell him the truth — namely, that the decision was pure hotheaded foolishness on my part. Instead, I stared at the tips of my boots and said, “I was in possession of these documents as well as an opportunity to travel. I hope you are not suspecting any untoward motives.”

“I was,” Feng answered. “But today, we spoke to the Russian envoy who confirms your offer, and even brings assurances of the Russian emperor. Would you accept my apologies and join us?”

I found myself back in the palace, where Lee Bo greeted me with exclamations of relief.

Feng spoke in Chinese again, relieved at the presence of Lee Bo.

Lee Bo translated. “He says, the Russian envoy will be here any second. Even though he is inclined to reconsider the meaning of your information because of new events, he will of course have to take it to Hong.”

“Good.” I was about to ask who the envoy was, when there was some commotion in the hallway, and a small bamboo litter was carried into the room. I doubted the necessity of traveling by litter indoors, and thus waited with interest to see who would emerge from it. The carriers set the litter down, the curtain at its side moved, and my Aunt Eugenia, her own black-clad and unmistakable self, stepped out, smiling, with tears in her eyes.

I cried as well, and I introduced Aunt Eugenia to Lee Bo, and Lee Bo introduced her to Feng, and Feng asked Eugenia and myself about our feelings on the Taiping philosophy, which he kindly offered to summarize right away for us, and did so. I stopped listening when he mentioned strict separation of the sexes, and hugged Eugenia, and she hugged me back, and even though we both felt like we should have no tears left by now, we cried some more, and it was all very exciting.