The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (100 page)

As they wound through the valleys, they saw, for a long time, a horseman keeping pace with them on the brow of the hills that sloped up from the riverbank they were following. Above them, great black clouds were rolling through the pale winter sky. On the horizon they could see approaching grey curtains of snow. The horseman reared his horse and appeared to wave his hat, then the cloud cover descended and he disappeared. Within moments, wet, silent snowflakes had begun to fall.

Twenty-one

Mother is dead. I have no home. The foreign soldiers hunt and kill us. Uncle says I must hide with Lao Tian and his bandits in the forest.

 

The Legation was a ruin. After nearly two months of siege its outlying buildings were burned-out shells. Only the residence of Sir Claude and Lady MacDonald at the centre of the compound retained anything of its former appearance. At least it still possessed its walls and roof, though nobody looking at it now would have guessed that this had once been the palace of Manchu nobility.

Its elegant veranda and filigreed windows were hidden under sandbags. The now-deserted machine-gun emplacement above the curling eaves was a reminder that, for fifty-five days, this had been the command post for the defenders of the Legations. The Chancellery on the other side of the courtyard still bore scars of shellfire, revealing through a gaping hole in the wall not a neat array of desks but beds and mattresses from when it had been used as a barracks, dormitory and hospital.

The courtyard was littered with mementoes of the strange days when the diplomatic community, their wives and dependants, had huddled there for safety at the height of battle. They had sweltered in the heat, stinking like animals, revolted by the dwindling diet of mule, and often frightened when the firing from the walls intensified; yet for all that—except on days when the gunfire had been exceptionally heavy—they had conducted themselves as if they had gathered for a picnic, gossiping maliciously over their games of picquet, nibbling luxuries from the embassy larder, organising concert recitals, and jealously guarding their respective status and dignity, ready to snub, if necessary, any second secretary's wife who sported a prettier sun hat or parasol. It had been that sort of siege. The detritus in the courtyard told the story; on one side, by the remains of the ginkgo tree, were piled ammunition boxes, and a commissary cart leaning on one wheel; on the other side the redoubt was made of the minister's stacked library books. Empty champagne bottles rolled in the sand among bully-beef tins; the ribbon of a lady's abandoned bonnet fluttered in the breeze, tangled with a stack of Lee Enfield rifles. On a small stool by the big embassy bell, which had rallied the defenders every morning for roll call, and where Sir Claude MacDonald had made the direst public announcements when it looked as though all was lost, there rested an ancient gramophone and a pile of records, whose labels recalled the world of music hall and opera.

It had been nearly a month now since that glorious mid-August day when an advance guard of Sikhs had penetrated the Water Gate of the old city walls thus signalling the end of the siege, but the Legation had remained as it was. It was as if those rescued were resisting a return to normality, basking still in reflections of their own heroism, relishing the
élan
and insouciance that they were sure they had each displayed when pitted against the might and terror of the imperial armies. Tidying the courtyard would have been tantamount to sweeping away their now glorious memories, cheapening their new image of themselves as warriors and survivors. Even those diplomats who had put on their old work suits wore them with a swagger these days, retaining pistols in their holsters and covering their heads with enormous bush hats as they chewed rough cheroots. It would be some time to come before Lady MacDonald would be entertaining the representatives of the powers again to a
Mikado
-esque ball in her once elegant garden.

For all that, the Legation was functioning. First and second secretaries moved purposefully between the tents they had converted to makeshift offices, carrying telegrams and memoranda for the minister to sign. From the direction of the small lawn behind the minister's residence could occasionally be heard the comforting click of croquet mallets or the murmur of ladies' conversation. Not even the aftermath of battle could quite take away the overlay of English calm.

The city outside the walls simmered with tension. Any visitor used to the noisy turbulence of a Chinese community would have been startled, first, by the unusual silence, and then by the singular absence of Chinese. The cowed population remained indoors. The few who ventured out scurried about their business with bowed heads and downcast eyes, as if seeking invisibility. They had reason to fear. Few homes had escaped the looting that had followed the lifting of the siege, and the occupying army, having tasted the spoils of victory, was by no means replete. Particularly to be feared were the spike-helmeted Germans and the fur-capped Russians, who had been known to stop and strip a man of his silk gown, leaving him like a naked coolie to crawl his way home. That is, if they did not press-gang him first into a work party, to rebuild a wall or to carry back to their lines the booty they had collected on their patrols. Not a woman dared venture into the street. Daughters and favourite concubines, those who had escaped molestation in the first house searches, hid in cellars or among the rafters.

The streets were left to the conquering armies. The tinny noise of their bands as they marched in their dress uniforms, hung hollowly in the air before it was swallowed again by the overwhelming silence. Each nation vied to outdo the others in martial pomp, as if by doing so they could lay claim to their own glorious role in the lifting of the siege; as usual, when Europeans contend together, they became caricatures of themselves. The superior British marched in spruce khaki to the growling bark of sergeant majors' unnecessary commands; the French
matelots
and Italian
bersaglieri
promenaded briskly, their elegant show somehow failing to disguise their underlying indiscipline, or to quench the humour that animated their faces; the Russians glowered; the Americans slouched; the Austrians paraded. The Germans—who had failed to arrive before the cessation of hostilities—were the most warlike of all: their caped
uhlans
clattered purposefully through the
hutongs;
their grenadiers growled with fixed bayonets at the slope, their heavy boots smashed down in unison as if beating the timing for a Wagnerian aria of revenge. Only the Japanese avoided these displays. Knots of their soldiers would observe these triumphant march-pasts with enigmatic passivity on their watchful faces, as they efficiently went about their tasks.

And in the heart of the Forbidden City where the generals had established their headquarters (the Empress Dowager had fled with all her court, pausing only to drown one of her nephew's concubines in a convenient well), Allied officers from every nation strolled among the looted palaces, smoking their pipes and wondering at the empty magnificence and the sterile symmetry of a heaven from which the godhead had departed.

It was a relief for the few British diplomats who still possessed any sensitivity or who believed in the essentially benevolent effect of the civilisation they thought they represented to return to their Legation and absorb themselves again in the comforting tedium of their work. For all that their Chancellery was now a tent, in the rattle of the telegraph they could hear the distant order of an
imperium
that they believed was above the tawdry triumphalism that hid the underlying reality of rapine, exemplary executions and greed which had consumed the city they had come to love, dishonouring the victors as much as it brought degradation to their victims. In their objective replies to the solemn queries from Westminster or Whitehall they could, for a while, sublimate their own sense of shame and failure as their fountain pens moved carefully through the measured phrases and Olympian platitudes of international diplomacy.

No amount of sensitivity or high ideals could protect Douglas Pritchett, however, from the darker reality. As the Legation's spymaster his business was to exploit the foibles of humanity. Sadly, he might have argued with himself that he was only compromising his ideals for the betterment of a noble cause, but his natural squeamishness had never prevented him doing his duty. He was, in any case, no longer the callow and bashful youth who had once sat next to Helen Frances Delamere at a garden party. The weeks with a rifle on the walls had hardened him. He had killed to avoid being killed, and not only in the heat of combat. More than one traitor had been discovered among the loyal Chinese staff who had remained behind in the Legation, and he had organised their despatch with quiet efficiency, after conducting the necessary interrogations first, again with a quiet efficiency. The memory of this sometimes disturbed his dreams, for no decent man, and Douglas Pritchett was a decent man, can ever entirely justify to his conscience all the demands of necessity. The puffiness round his eyes in the morning might have indicated to the observant the extent to which he was seeking oblivion in the bottle, but his work was not affected and there was no longer any trace of hesitancy in his manner. His kind smile and gentle demeanour he retained out of habit, but the cold, calculating eyes betokened nothing but ruthlessness. The Customs boys, who once had made him the butt of their teasing, had learned long ago to avoid him.

He was now seated at a table in the tent in the corner of the compound that served as his office, observing patiently while a man, whom he had once admired for being more ruthless than he, leaned back in a canvas chair, his plastered leg stretched out on a stool in front of him, absentmindedly smoking a cheroot as he contemplated a document Douglas Pritchett had laid before him. He could observe the progress of the man's reading from the darkly ringed eyes that flickered sardonically over the page. Pritchett knew the contents of the document by heart: he had written it himself.

Your lordship will have received the Consul's report from Newchwang with the minister's comments. We see as encouraging the steps taken to restore commerce in the region. Representatives of our major trading houses with operations in the coastal cities have by now largely returned from their enforced exile in Japan and we expect that it will shortly be considered safe for their operations in the hinterland to reopen …

‘Do I really have to read all this stuff about tradesmen?' drawled the man, looking up at him.

‘You shouldn't be reading any of it,' murmured Pritchett. ‘As you can see it is marked “Secret”. It's going to Salisbury.'

‘The PM himself. I'm that important, am I?' The man smiled, revealing a glint of white teeth in his sunburned face. He continued to read.

As to the general political situation, there is little of comfort to add to the memorandum which I sent to your lordship at the end of August. The three provinces that constitute the area known as Manchuria are now firmly in Russian hands. A military commission has established itself in the old palace in Mukden. General Saboitisch theoretically liaises with the Chinese civil powers—but Governor General Tseng Chi, though formally reinstated in the city
yamen,
has no effective authority. Construction of the Russian railway between Harbin and Port Arthur has resumed, and the Chinese railway linking Tientsin and Mukden, with its branch lines beyond, is now under Russian control. This effectual annexation is justified by the continuing ‘state of emergency'. Russian troops have occupied all the key cities in the provinces, and their patrols have even been reported over the border in Mongolia.

Our reports indicate that the suppression of the ‘Boxers'—really any local power group that stands in their way—has been effected with ruthless brutality. Exemplary executions of ‘rebels' or ‘bandits' (there seems to be little distinction) are the norm. We have heard of mass decapitations and hangings, and there have been incidents where so-called rebels have been tied to the mouths of field guns. These punishments have been accompanied by looting on a major scale, particularly when Cossack regiments have been involved. The local inhabitants are miserable and cowed. Any initial relief at the eradication of the Boxer menace has long been replaced by a sullen resentment of the depredations they continue to suffer at the hands of their ‘liberators'. We have heard that many look back to the short occupation by the Japanese at the end of the 1895 war as a civilised period in comparison.

‘I would be interested to know your definition of “civilised”,' said the man. ‘Mind you, the Nips have behaved well enough in the recent show. It's about time we treated them as grown-ups.'

‘I believe I go on to make just that point in the next passage,' murmured Pritchett.

From my conversations with counterparts in the Japanese Legation it appears that they are for the moment taking ‘the long-term view'. It is unlikely that they will wish to do anything overtly to break the alliance formed between the powers at the beginning of the Boxer crisis, or to raise any form of diplomatic protest. The bravery displayed by the Japanese marines during the embassy siege and the efficient conduct of their contingents among the relieving forces has earned them a deserved respect internationally. As long as restraint will win them points on the negotiating table

‘Ah, yes, reparations,' said the man. ‘We all have our hands in that particular pot, don't we?'

they are unlikely to do anything to jeopardise their new reputation as a mature power. While the alliance persists, the Russians have not been able to prevent the dispatch of a Japanese military liaison mission to Mukden. These officers will no doubt be apprising their government of the situation in Manchuria, and forming their own relations with the Chinese authorities. The Japanese troops who were mobilised on the Korean border during the crisis have not stood down after the relief of the Legations. Clearly at some time in the future they will seek to challenge Russian supremacy in this vital sphere of their interest. For the moment they are watching, and waiting, as are we.