The Keys of the Kingdom (40 page)

‘I cannot bring myself to contemplate the fate of this unlucky infant, with no one to look after it but the woman who attended Judy – she who has now sent me the news. It is easy to fit her to the pattern of events: one of those handywives who take in expectant mothers, in straitened, slightly dubious circumstances. I must reply to her at once … send some money, what little I have. When we bind ourselves to holy poverty we are strangely selfish, forgetful of the awful obligations which life may place upon us. Poor Nora … poor Judy … poor unnamed little child …

‘
June 19th, 1930.
A grand day of early summer sunshine and my heart is lighter for the letter received this afternoon. The child is baptised Andrew, after this same infamous mission, and the news makes me chuckle with senile vanity, as though I, myself, were the little wretch’s grandfather. Perhaps, whether I wish it or not, this relationship will devolve on me. The father has vanished and we shall make no attempt to trace him. But if I send a certain sum each month, this woman, Mrs Stevens, who seems a worthy creature, will care for Andrew. Again I can’t help smiling … my priestly career has been a hotchpotch of peculiarities … to rear an infant at a distance of eight thousand miles will be its crowning oddity!

‘Wait a moment! I’ve flicked myself on the raw with that phrase: “my priestly career”. The other day during one of our friendly riffs, on Purgatory I think it was, Fiske declared – heatedly, for I was getting the better of him: “You argue like a mixed Convention of Holy Rollers and High Anglicans!”

‘That brought me up short. I daresay my upbringing, and that early bit of the uncalculable influence of dear old Daniel Glennie, shaped me towards undue liberality. I love my religion, into which I was born, which I have taught, as best I could, for over thirty years, and which has led me unfailingly to the source of all joy, of everlasting sweetness. Yet in my isolation here my outlook has simplified, clarified with my advancing years. I’ve tied up, and neatly tucked away, all the complex pettifogging little quirks of doctrine. Frankly, I can’t believe that any of God’s creatures will grill for all Eternity because of eating a mutton chop on Friday. If we have the fundamentals – love for God and our neighbour – surely we’re all right? And isn’t it time for the churches of the world to cease hating one another … and unite? The world is one living, breathing body, dependent for its health on the billions of cells which comprise it … and each tiny cell is the heart of man …

‘
December 15th, 1932.
Today the new patron saint of this mission was three years old. I hope he had a pleasant birthday and didn’t eat too much of the toffee I wrote Burley’s, in Tweedside, to send him.

‘
September 1st, 1935.
Oh Lord, don’t let me be a silly old man … this journal is becoming more and more the fatuous record of a child I have not seen and shall never see. I cannot return and he cannot come here. Even my obstinacy balks at that absurdity … though I did in fact inquire of Dr Fiske, who told me that the climate would be deadly for an English child of such tender years.

‘Yet I must confess I’m troubled. Reading between her letters it would seem as though Mrs Stevens had lately come down a little in her luck. She has moved to Kirkbridge, which, as I remember it, is a cotton town, not prepossessing, near Manchester. Her tone has altered, too, and I am beginning to wonder if she is more interested in the money she receives than in Andrew. Yet her parish priest gave her an excellent character. And hitherto she has been admirable.

‘Of course, it’s all my own fault. I could have secured Andrew’s future, after a fashion, by turning him over to one of our excellent Catholic institutions. But somehow … he’s my one “blood relation,” a living memento of my dear lost Nora … I can’t and I won’t be so impersonal … it’s my inveterate crankiness, I suppose, which makes me fight against officialdom. Well … if that is so … I … and Andrew … must take the consequence … we are in God’s hands and he will …’

Here, as Father Chisholm turned another page, his concentration was disturbed by the sound of ponies stamping in the compound. He hesitated, listening, half unwilling to relinquish his mood of precious reverie. But the sound increased, mingled with brisk voices. His lips drew together in acceptance. He turned to the last entry in the journal and, taking his pen, added a paragraph.

‘
April 30th, 1936.
I am on the point of leaving for the Liu settlement with Father Chou and the Fiskes. Yesterday Father Chou came in, anxious for my advice about a young herdsman he had isolated at the settlement, fearing he might have the smallpox. I decided to go back with him myself – with our good ponies and the new trail, it is only two days’ journey. Then I amplified the idea. Since I have repeatedly promised to show Dr and Mrs Fiske our model village, I decided we might all four take the trip. It will be my last opportunity to fulfil my long-outstanding pledge to the doctor and his wife. They are returning home to America at the end of this month. I hear them calling now. They are looking forward to the excursion … I’ll tackle Fiske en route on his confounded impudence … Holy Roller, indeed! …’

The sun was already dropping towards the bare rim of the hills which enclosed the narrow valley. Riding ahead of the returning party, occupied by thoughts of Liu, where they had left Father Chou with medicine for the sick herdsman, Father Chisholm had resigned himself to another night encampment before reaching the mission when, at a bend of the road, he met three men in dirty cotton uniforms slouching head-down with rifles on their hips.

It was a familiar sight: the province was swarming with irregulars, disbanded soldiers with smuggled weapons who had formed themselves into roving gangs. He passed them with a muttered, ‘peace be with you,’ and slowed down till the others of the party made up to him. But as he turned he was surprised to see terror on the faces of the two porters from the Methodist mission and a sudden anxiety in his own servant’s eyes.

‘These look like followers of Wai.’ Joshua made a gesture towards the road ahead. ‘And there are others.’

The priest swung round stiffly. About twenty of the grey-green figures were approaching down the path kicking up a cloud of slow white dust. On the shadowed hill, straggling in a winding line, were at least another score. He exchanged a glance with Fiske.

‘Let’s push on.’

The two parties met a moment later. Father Chisholm, smiling, with his usual greeting, kept his beast moving steadily down the middle of the path. The soldiers, gaping stupidly, gave way automatically. The only mounted man, a youngster with a broken peaked cap and some air of authority, enhanced by a corporal’s stripe misplaced upon his cuff, halted his shaggy pony indecisively.

‘Who are you? And whither are you going?’

‘We are missionaries, returning to Pai-tan.’ Father Chisholm gave the answer calmly across his shoulder, still leading the others forward. They were now almost through the dirty, puzzled, staring mob: Mrs Fiske and the doctor behind him, followed by Joshua and the two bearers.

The corporal was uncertain but partly satisfied. The encounter was robbed of danger, reduced to commonplace, when suddenly the elder of the two porters lost his head. Prodded by a rifle butt in his passage between the men, he dropped his bundle with a screech of panic and bolted for the cover of the brushwood on the hill.

Father Chisholm suppressed a bitter exclamation. In the gathering twilight, there was a second’s dubious immobility. Then a shot rang out, another, and another. The echoes went volleying down the hills. As the blue figure of the bearer, bent double, vanished into the bushes, a loud defrauded, outcry broke amongst the soldiers. No longer dumbly wondering, they crowded around the missionaries, in furious chattering resentment.

‘You must come with us.’ As Father Chisholm had foreseen, the corporal’s reaction was immediate.

‘We are only missionaries,’ Dr Fiske protested heatedly. ‘ We have no possessions. We are honest people.’

‘Honest people do not run away. You must come to our leader, Wai.’

‘I assure you –’

‘Wilbur!’ Mrs Fiske interposed quietly. ‘ You’ll only make it worse. Save your breath.’

Bundled about, surrounded by the soldiers, they were roughly pushed along the path which they had recently traversed. About five li back, the young officer turned west into a dry watercourse which took a tortuous and stony course into the hills. At the head of the gully the company halted.

Here perhaps a hundred ill-conditioned soldiers were scattered about in postures of ease – smoking, chewing betel nut, scraping lice from their armpits and caked mud from between their bare toes. On a flat stone, cross-legged, eating his evening meal before a small dung fire, with his back against the wall of the ravine, was Wai-Chu.

Wai was now about fifty-five, gross but full-bellied, with a greater and more evil immobility. His ghee-oiled hair, worn long and parted in the middle, fell over a forehead so drawn down by a perpetual frown as to narrow the oblique eyes to slits. Three years before, a bullet had sheared away his front teeth and upper lip. The scar was horrible. Despite it, Francis plainly recognised the horseman who had spat into his face at the mission gate that night of the retreat. Hitherto he had sustained their detention with composure. But now, under that hidden, subhuman gaze, charged beneath its blankness with an answering recognition, the priest was conscious of a sharp constriction of his heart.

While the corporal volubly related the circumstances of the capture, Wai continued unfathomably to eat, the twin sticks sending a stream of liquid rice and pork lumps into his gullet from the bowl pressed beneath his chin. Suddenly two soldiers broke up the ravine at the double, dragging the fugitive bearer between them. With a final heave they threw him into the circle of fire-glow. The unhappy man fell on his knees close to Wai, his arms skewered behind him, panting and gibbering, in an ecstasy of fear.

Wai continued to eat. Then, casually, he pulled his revolver from his belt and fired it. Caught in the act of supplication, the porter fell forward, his body still jerking against the ground. A creamy pinkish pulp oozed from his blasted skull. Before the stunning reverberations of the report had died Wai had resumed his meal.

Mrs Fiske had screamed faintly. But beyond a momentary lifting of their heads, the resting soldiers took no notice of the incident. The two who had brought in the bearer now pulled his corpse away and systematically dispossessed it of boots, clothing, and a string of copper cash. Numb and sick, the priest muttered to Dr Fiske, who stood, very pale, beside him.

‘Keep calm … show nothing … or it is hopeless for all of us.’

They waited. The cold and senseless murder had charged the air with horror. At a sign from Wai the second bearer was driven forward and flung upon his knees. The priest felt his stomach turn with a dreadful premonition. But Wai merely said, addressing them all, impersonally:

‘This man, your servant, will leave immediately for Pai-tan and inform your friends that you are temporarily in my care. For such hospitality a voluntary gift is customary. At noon on the day following tomorrow two of my men will await him, half a li outside the Manchu Gate. He will advance, quite alone.’ Wai paused blankly. ‘It is to be hoped he will bring the voluntary gift.’

‘There is little profit in making us your guests.’ Dr Fiske spoke with a throb of indignation. ‘I have already indicated that we are without worldly goods.’

‘For each person five thousand dollars is requested. No more.’

Fiske breathed more easily. The sum, though large, was not impossible to a mission as wealthy as his own.

‘Then permit my wife to return with the messenger. She will ensure that the money is paid.’

Wai gave no sign of having heard. For one apprehensive moment the priest thought his overwrought companion was about to make a scene. But Fiske stumbled back to his wife’s side. The messenger was dispatched, sent bounding down the ravine with a last forceful injunction from the corporal. Wai then rose and, while his men made preparations for departure, walked forward to his tethered pony, so casually that the dead man’s bare upturned feet, protruding from an arbutus bush, struck the eye like a hallucination.

The missionaries’ ponies were now brought up, the four prisoners forced to mount, then roped together by long hemp cords. The cavalcade moved off into the gathering night.

Conversation was impossible at this bumping gallop. Father Chisholm was left to the mercy of his thoughts, which centred on the man now holding them for ransom.

Lately Wai’s waning power had driven him to many excesses. From a traditional war lord, dominating the Chek-kow district of the province with his army of three thousand men, bought off by the various townships, levying taxes and imposts, living in feudal luxury in his walled fortress at Tou-en-lai, he had slowly fallen to ruinous days. At the height of his notoriety he had paid fifty thousand taels for a concubine from Peking. Now he lived from hand to mouth by petty forays. Beaten decisively in two pitched battles with neighbouring mercenaries, he had thrown in his lot first with the
Min-tuan
, then, in a fit of malice, with the opposing faction, the
Yu-chi-tui.
The truth was that neither desired his doubtful aid. Degenerate, vicious, he fought solely for his own hand. His men were steadily deserting. As the scale of his operations dwindled his ferocity intensified. When he reached the humiliation of a bare two hundred followers, his round of pillage and burnings stood as a dreadful theme of terror. A fallen Lucifer, his hatreds fed on the glories he had lost, he was at enmity with mankind.

The night was interminable. They crossed a low range of hills, forded two rivulets, spattered for an hour through low-lying swamplands. Beyond that, and his conjecture from the pole star that they were travelling due west, Father Chisholm had no knowledge of the terrain they traversed. At his age, used to the quiet amble of his beast, the rapid jolting shook his bones until they rattled. But he reflected, with commiseration, that the Fiskes, too, were enduring the bone-shaking, for the good God’s sake. And Joshua, poor lad though supple enough, was so young he must be sadly frightened. The priest told himself that on the return to the mission he would assuredly give the boy the roan pony he had coveted, silently, these past six months. Closing his eyes, he said a short prayer for the safety of their little party.