The Eleventh Tiger (12 page)

‘Yes. I sing to my beloved. He’s dead now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right. He wouldn’t have gone off to the army if I’d asked him to stay with me.’

Barbara felt an immediate sympathy. The poor girl was probably still in mourning for a man killed. If the song was a lament that would explain its melody.

‘It can’t be your fault,’ she said.

‘It was my fault for not telling him I love him, and for not luring him to marriage. He’d still be alive then, and I’d still be a lover.’ The woman looked around. ‘The house would not be so cold and empty.’

Barbara, chilled and touched, couldn’t help looking round as well, to better empathise with this story. She regretted it immediately, because the table, chairs, ornaments and platters of food would have been so enticing if they had been there even a moment ago.

Now the smell of a large, spicy repast filled a room bright with the light of many candles, and Vicki was knocking over a chair as she ran for the door. Fei-Hung was chanting something, and keeping his guard up, as he physically shoved Barbara outside.

Fei-Hung cursed himself, and the
gwailo
women. He had known the house would be haunted; known it in his heart and his bones, and he should never have let them shelter there.

‘Run!’ he told them, pushing Barbara ahead. Neither she nor Vicki needed to be told twice, and Fei-Hung hoped the ghosts would not pursue them.

They burst out on to the Baiyun road and headed for the old temple, pursued only by the soulful notes of the lament that had drawn them to the house in the first place.

The rain had stopped, thankfully, and it didn’t take long to reach the temple. Fei-Hung didn’t feel entirely confident that it would be any more spiritually unpopulated than the house, but he had nowhere else to go. The
gwailos
had said this box of theirs was a place of safety, so even if the temple was haunted, at least there was some sanctuary to be had.

He recognised the fallen stones and overgrown pathway from the previous night, and hesitated. Then he continued towards the box that his father had said must belong to the
gwailos
on Xamian Island, and the Doctor had said belonged to him. Sure enough, Barbara was heading straight for it, a key glittering in her hand.

Barbara turned this way and that, dizzy from fear and the pungency of rotting undergrowth. Then she saw the windows of the TARDIS doors gazing affably at her from the archway, and felt the weight lift from her shoulders.

She tried the key in the lock. At first she thought it was going to stick and reject her, but then the door opened. She entered, embraced by the Ship.

Inside, she could finally relax. The TARDIS was too clinical and technological to feel like a home, or even a refuge, but it was welcoming and protective all the same. It would defend those who travelled with it, and keep them safe while they were in its care.

Barbara felt the urge to pat the nearest panel of the central console, and did so a little self-consciously. Maybe it was her imagination, but the ever-present buzz of the Ship’s mechanisms seemed to change for a moment, the way a cat’s purr does when you stroke it. If so, she couldn’t help but wonder whether the maybe-imaginary change in tone was for the same reason.

Having caught her breath, she went through into the antechamber where the food machine loomed. It took her a moment to realise that the one indented roundel that didn’t glow was the cupboard door she was looking for. The first-aid kit and vaguely paintbrush-like object the Doctor had described were indeed there, along with various other devices and knick-knacks.

Vicki was torn between following Barbara into the blessed sanctity of the TARDIS, and staying to reassure the increasingly jittery Fei-Hung. She paused on the threshold of the Ship and turned back to him. Barbara would be out in a moment anyway.

She thought back to what had happened in the house. The woman appearing from nowhere was bad enough, but the whole place had suddenly changed. It was like being in a museum when the holographic exhibits were switched on, but no such thing had been invented yet.

It must have been a ghost after all.

Xamian Island was vaguely cigar-shaped, and nestled in a bay against the southwest corner of the city where the great Pearl River split in two. The main river continued southwards, but another one turned eastwards for a while.

The sun rose, casting light and heat across the roof tops, and across the parks and courtyards, and across the parade ground at Xamian, and finally across the faces and skin of the people who were up and about at that hour.

Sergeant Major Anderson was only 5 foot 4 inches, but nobody could have mistaken him for anything less than hard as nails. Perhaps it was the Glasgow accent, or the flattened nose cultivated by years as a bare-knuckle bantam. Maybe it was just because no-one in the regiment had ever seen him smile.

Captain Richard Logan knew better than that. Anderson was a tough nut, but in Logan’s eyes this was simply because he was insane. Not in the devil-may-care, courageous way that the major was insane, but in a sour and sadistic way that thrived on taking out his troubles on whichever poor bugger caught his glance the wrong way.

Logan envied the major his extra lie-in in bed. He would much rather get up at a more leisurely pace than be out here with the Scottish devil, watching the men form up at reveille.

The company stood in lines and Logan walked along them, adjusting a button here, ordering a polish there. The sergeant major, who had already been up for ages and seemed to have an inhuman lack of need for sleep, marched in step with him, glowering at the men.

‘Everything seems in order, Sarn’t Major. Have them fall out for breakfast.’

‘Aye, sir.’ As Logan headed for his own office, where his batman would already be waiting with his breakfast, he heard Anderson bellow at the men to fall out and report to the mess.

Anderson stayed where he was as the men fell out, silently counting the seconds in his head, seeing how long he could glare at nothing in particular without blinking. There were plenty of men around to watch him from the corners of their fluttering eyes, fearing his wrath, wondering at his motives.

Thinking he was insane, which he knew Logan did. He liked that, because it kept them on their toes.

After two and a half minutes his eyelids rebelled, forcing a blink on to his features. He turned on his heel and marched towards his billet, satisfied that the men’s fear and wonder had been properly reinforced.

The major felt that another, equally hot and burning, sun was rising from the nape of his neck to the centre of his skull. Far from waking him, it baked the inside of his head and battered the back of his eyeballs with waves of heat. He reached up to touch the side of his head, behind his ear. The whole area was hot to the touch under his fingertips, and the light pressure of his fingers sent a bolt of agony through his brain that almost had him dropping to his knees with a scream.

A batman had delivered a tray of devilled eggs, ham, toast and marmalade to his quarters. The major didn’t have any appetite, but forced down about half of each thing as he knew that not eating anything would lead him to feel a great deal sicker later on in the day.

Then he put on his uniform, and walked around the parade ground to his office. It was small and cluttered, as company staff offices usually were in his experience, but a little more homely than most, thanks to a few souvenirs on the walls. A picture of the major with his fellow officers at a billet hung next to the portrait of Queen Victoria. He wondered idly how he knew who she was. A curved, broad-bladed sword hung on another wall and, of course, the major’s helmet - currently resting on a spare chair - had a
pagri
wrapped round it and no plume.

He sat down in his chair and turned to look up at the photographic print next to the portrait. It had a caption identifying the men as members of a Hussar company at Jaipur, in 1860. Everyone wore full dress uniform and, after a moment, the major recognised a face on the far left of the picture as the same one he had seen in the mirror that morning. The face in the picture had a full beard rather than just its present handlebar moustache, but he recognised it all the same.

‘So, I’ve been to India...’ He looked at the sword on the other wall. It looked Indian to him, though he wasn’t sure what gave him this idea. He just felt it.

Before he could explore his office further, there was a knock at the door.

‘Enter,’ he said.

Logan went into the major’s office with all its souvenirs of India. The major looked drawn and haggard, which Logan took to be the result of a painful and sleepless night. Though he didn’t say a word, the major gave him a mirthless smile and a nod.

‘That bad, am I?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

‘I’ve had worse. I think.’

‘It was a pretty bad fall, sir. Are you sure you don’t want the MO to look at it?’

‘I’m sure.’ The major turned his head, pointing to an area behind and above his ear. ‘It’s just a bump, you see?’

Logan looked at the bump. Even through the hair he could see that the scalp was swollen and darkening like smoke from a funeral pyre. When the major turned back, Logan could see the tension in his jaw and the spectre of pain that haunted his eyes. At that moment, if he had had the power to take the injury himself and in the process liberate the major from it, he would have. Better that than to see the look in the major’s eyes.

‘I see, sir,’ he said at last.

Much as he would rather the major saw a doctor, Logan decided he ought to honour the man’s desire to carry on as normal despite the bump. ‘There are more reports from Peking,’ he said, ‘and from the Kwantung militia commandant.’

The major was relieved that Logan was getting straight to business. He didn’t think he was up to thinking too hard about things today, but making the effort was better than letting some quack take the company away from him, even for a few days.

‘More bandit attacks?’

‘I don’t think we can call it that for much longer, sir. The brigadier general in Peking is of the opinion that these attacks on towns have already reached the level of outright armed insurrection against the emperor. He thinks what we’re seeing are the first engagements in a civil war.’

The major shook his head, and immediately regretted it as the pain washed like a tide, breaking against first one side and then the other. He waited a moment for the waves to subside, then said, ‘And who does his nibs blame for this?’

‘The Black Flag, of course,’ Logan answered in a surprised tone. ‘Much Black Flag activity centres on this province, and he suggests we co-operate with the Kwantung militia to stamp it out.’

‘I see,’ the major said, rather than admit that he had no idea who the Black Flag were. Clearly Logan thought he did, which suggested he was more injured than he thought after that fall.

The major tried to remember where he had been going when he had the fall, and felt the blood drain from his face when he realised he had no idea. He could remember his agonising impact with the ground, and he knew who he was, but everything before the fall was a blank.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Logan looked slightly panicked. ‘I’ll fetch a doctor

‘No!’ The major forced himself to appear calm, so as not to upset Logan any further. ‘No, that’s all right. What do you think of the brigadier general’s theory?’

‘I think nobody has pointed out to him that the Kwantung militia are largely Black Flag themselves,’ Logan said. ‘The Black Flag are a nuisance, but they’re more concerned with getting their own people into government positions, and getting the Manchus out. I can’t really see them being responsible for wholesale slaughter of Chinese citizens. It’s not really their kind of thing, sir.’

‘Then that would suggest someone else is responsible, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The major thought for a moment. The present and future were more important than his own forgotten past. ‘We’ll go along with the idea of co-operating with the Kwantung militia, but I don’t think we need to make it an operation against the Black Flag specifically. Whoever is doing this must be making them pretty angry too, I should think. With any luck they’ll want to put a stop to it as much as we do.’

Logan smiled brightly and warmly. ‘I think so, too. I’ll get on with it right away.’

‘Good. Carry on.’

The major returned Logan’s parting salute, and was then alone in his office. Alone except for an identity that was a stranger to him, and a past that was as hidden from his memory as the future.

A quick root through the desk drawers told him what he needed to know about his current duties, and who the major figures and factions in Kwantung were. The logbooks and reports in question were all in his own handwriting. The major decided he agreed with Logan’s assessment of the Black Flag, and that it was unlikely they’d be behind these attacks on towns.