The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (95 page)

Anyway, he had determined what he had to do to save his family. They would depart, taking the horses, which he had instructed Lao Zhao, who had appeared outside as he was leaving the Mandarin's compartment, to saddle. He had determined that they would leave this train of death. Better to face the forest. Better anything than to stay here. And they had to be speedy, for Lin and his men would certainly be following them down the rail track, and would arrive shortly …

Nellie had asked after Manners, and he had lied to her for the first time in his life: he told her that Manners was dead. He told her that their safety depended on him now, and he judged that it was vital that they leave. Immediately.

Something in his wild expression brooked no argument. Silently, one after another, they climbed down on to the track, and waited until Lao Zhao brought the horses. Helen Frances was dazed and sluggish, and it took all of Nellie's and Mary's attention to look after her. Only when she was mounted on her horse did her old instincts seem to come back to her, and without questioning why or where they were going, she sat firmly in the saddle waiting patiently for the instruction to move. When they were all mounted, the doctor remembered his medical bag, and climbed back into the carriage, where he saw Fan Yimei standing by the door leading to the Mandarin's compartment.

‘Come on. You'd better get ready to leave,' he said brusquely.

‘You are not taking Ma Na Si Xiansheng.' She spoke quietly. It was a statement, not a question.

‘He's dead,' he said.

‘You know that he is not dead, Daifu,' she said.

‘Well, he's as good as dead,' snapped the doctor. ‘He couldn't survive a hard ride. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do for him.'

Fan Yimei looked at him coldly.

‘You don't think he would leave us behind if the circumstances were reversed?' cried the doctor.

Fan Yimei turned on her lotus foot and went into the Mandarin's compartment, closing the door behind her.

Airton stood for a moment, angered and bewildered. He was so tired that he could hardly think. He made a move to go after her, then thought better of it. She was Major Lin's concubine. For all he knew, Manners, Major Lin and she had been involved in their conspiracy together. The fact that Manners had fired a shot at Lin troubled him for a moment, but then he concluded that Manners had been attempting a double cross. Thieves falling out over gold. It was the oldest story in the book.

He jumped on to the track, stumbled, picked himself up and ran to the horse that was waiting for him.

‘Aren't you coming with us?' he said to Lao Zhao, who had been holding his reins.

‘No, Daifu. I must look after the remaining horses.' Lao Zhao's tone was expressionless.

‘God go with you, then,' said the doctor, and jerked his reins. Nellie called in some consternation. ‘What about Fan Yimei?' and the doctor told her that she had decided to wait for Major Lin. It was not a lie. He believed it. ‘Anyway, we can't delay, woman,' he snapped.

For a moment he was confused as to where he should lead them. The dank trees hung over them. Then he saw what looked like a path, which led up a gentle bank from the track. He kicked his horse and the others followed. Nellie kept a steady hand on Helen Frances's elbow. One by one, they disappeared into the forest gloom.

Part Three

Twenty

I will creep out of camp when it is dark. I do not care if they catch me. I want to go home.

 

It was hardly a stream, not even a pool, just a puddle in a patch of wet ground at the foot of a grassy slope—yet for Nellie, as she crawled towards it, it might have been the waters of the Jordan revealed to the Israelites after their wanderings in the wilderness.

She might have missed it entirely.

All afternoon she had staggered up and over the dry hills, using what will-power she had left in her to put one weary foot in front of another. She had no idea in which direction she was heading. Every step was an effort. The raw knob of her hipbone, what muscle remained in her matchstick legs, her swollen knees, burned with pain. Her bare feet were blistered and bloody, but a voice in her tired brain told her, ‘Go on. Go on.' Something deep and obstinate in her nature—perhaps it was the remnants of her pride—had fought with the overwhelming desire to lie down, refusing to accept that Providence, which had brought them so far, should betray them so finally. Yet the bare, rolling hills had stretched to the horizon in every direction, and each rise had revealed more of the same: desert, surrounded by desert, and all the more terrible because the hills were covered with grass. The green satin slopes, shimmering and changing shade as the clouds shifted, mocked her with promise: they were the colours of life, and the ground teemed and rustled with grasshoppers and wildlife; there were marmots and foxes in the hills, but there was no sign of the precious water that sustained life. She had staggered on, clutching to herself the last rags of hope, but after hours of fruitless searching, even that began to slip away. The empty goatskin, which she was pulling behind her, dragged like an anchor; her own brittle limbs became heavier to lift. She heard that other voice in her head, also her own, treasonably urging her to rest, to rest. At last she had fallen to her knees, sinking into the deceptive comfort of the grass. The deceitful breeze had wafted over her burning limbs, and she surrendered passively to its embrace. The Tempter would soon throw over her the blanket of sleep, and even though she knew that it would probably mean the end for them all, she could no longer resist.

And then the miracle had happened. A single ray of sunlight had broken through the great banks of cloud, and had shone like a torchbeam into the valley below. It shimmered only for a moment—the clouds rolled onward in their stately progress and the ray was withdrawn—but in that moment she saw them, the faint, reflected, sparkles of white, flashing like the diamonds on a girl's choker as she turned her head to laugh. Drawing on her last reserves of energy, she had begun slowly to crawl down the slope—she could no longer trust herself to stand. In her dazed state, she felt that the dry grass was parting before her of its own accord as grasshoppers and insects leaped away at her approach. The sun burned on her bare neck and her head throbbed. At last she felt moistness on her hands; the ground had become softer, muddier. She pulled herself onward, hardly daring to believe the evidence of her senses. Suddenly a face was looking up at her, that of a hideous old woman, with burning, red-rimmed eyes, gaunt cheeks, and yellow teeth that snarled out of desiccated gums. With horror she started away, then realised it must be her own reflection. She dropped her head into the brown pool; her cracked lips opened, and somehow the thick block of her tongue began to move again, and she drank.

She could not tell how long she had lain there, lapping in the life-sustaining liquid, feeling it flow through her body, restoring substance to her limbs, reviving her will to go on—but when, finally, she rolled over, lying on her back, gazing at the towering cumulus that floated in majestic unconcern in the blue sky above her, she knew that God in Heaven, for whatever reason, had spared them again, and they would live for another day.

She was summoning her reserves of strength for the long walk back to the dell where the others lay. Her heart ached, as she thought of her babes, their skeletal little arms and swollen bellies, their big, lustrous eyes in their prematurely aged faces, which somehow even now shone with confidence in her, and despite every new trial revealed a spirit that had not been entirely broken. She thought sadly of Edward and Helen Frances. Helen Frances moved like an automaton, these days: bravely she went through the motions, but her body was exhausted and her mind appeared to be elsewhere; the marionette's smile and the vacant eyes had something terrible about them, as if the soul inside was already on the point of departing. Nellie feared for her: the candle of life inside her seemed to be flickering towards its end. And Edward? Edward was physically fine—he had survived the hardships better than any of them—but he, too, had withdrawn into melancholy introspection. She no longer knew how to reach him through the barriers of his self-hatred and despair.

She wished that they could share the comfort which succoured her even on the worst of days. It was not just fancy, or wishful thinking, that there was a Guiding Hand leading them on. That they had survived through such terrible ordeals could not be mere chance. Every day they had evidence that Providence had not abandoned them. It had shown them roots when they were starving, revealed springs when they were parched, and so often surprised them with small kindnesses when every man's hand had been turned against them.

Only last week—or was it the week before? she had long ago lost track of time—they had been stoned out of one of the cave villages in the hills in which they had sought shelter. The village headman had called them devils, and he had been the first to pick up a rock to hurl at them. Yet on the outskirts of that same village, a little boy had run after them and given them food and a goatskin full of water—this very goatskin that lay beside her now. That had been a small miracle, one of many they had encountered on their odyssey. It had sustained them as they climbed the barren mountain that had ultimately led them to this region of desert grassland. They had replenished the skin several times since, once at a small waterfall, and again at a well by some deserted shepherds' huts, and they had rationed carefully the
mantou
and pickles the boy had given them. It was only during the last three days that they had been without any water or food at all.

And again Providence had favoured them, revealing this spring, which had revived her. Idly she tried to remember the words of the psalm, but all she could recall was the line ‘Thy rod and Thy staff will comfort me.' They would need that rod and staff if they were to survive many more days in an environment that was so hostile. She sighed when she thought of all the hardships that they had already endured during their weeks of wandering. Was it August now? Or September? She did not know.

It seemed like months ago that they had left the train, so well equipped, mounted on such fine horses—but they had wandered in the forest for days, lost among the endless trees. Several times they found that they had retraced their own tracks. One night there had been a thunderstorm. It had not occurred to them to hobble the horses, and the animals had bolted in the night, taking away all of their provisions in the saddlebags. They had spent a day searching fruitlessly for them, and another, before accepting the inevitable. Nellie now remembered the ensuing days—weeks—of wandering in the dark forest as a nightmare without end. They had no food, and Edward had forbidden them to eat the few tempting berries they occasionally came across, in case they were poisonous. In those days he had shown a manic leadership, pressing them on relentlessly and unsparingly, his jaw fixed rigidly as he strode ahead. Nellie had not dared to ask him if he knew where he was going, so fierce was his expression as he paused time and again to look at the sun's position through the branches above him. After a day of trackless wandering, he had told them they would move at night so he could judge their position by the stars. The children found that even more difficult—the noises of the forest, rustling animals and shrieking birds, alarmed them—and Helen Frances, facing withdrawal pangs, for the morphine had gone with the horses, was occasionally hysterical, although Nellie had to admit that, in the circumstances, she was doing remarkably well even to walk at all. They might have died in the forest if on the third day they had not stumbled upon a woodman's cottage. The man had at first been kind, and given them food and shelter, but when they were leaving he demanded payment, and lifted his axe threateningly. Edward had been forced to give him most of the little cash he had had in his pocket. Then the man had been all smiles and had directed them towards another woodman's hut a day away. Here had been a father and his son who had unceremoniously robbed them of the little they had remaining, even taking Nellie's necklace with its silver cross, and her husband's signet ring—but at least they had given them food.

When they had arrived at the next human habitation, they were greeted with suspicion as paupers, or worse. In the two huts in a clearing lived a family who were engaged in slash-and-burn farming; they had some pigs and a vegetable patch, but they were poor and had no intention of sharing what they had with mysterious foreigners. Reluctantly they allowed them to sleep in one of the animal pens belonging to the two brothers who lived in the second hut, but when they asked for food, the peasants shook their heads. It took them hours to get to sleep, unaccustomed as they were in those days to hunger pains, a condition that was now their constant reality. But Mary had woken them in the night. She had pointed to a cloth on the ground on which there were, unbelievably, a plate of hot green vegetables, a large bowl of rice, and half a breast of chicken. Edward had not been able to conceal his delight. ‘How did you persuade them, Mary?' he had asked jovially, as he cut himself a slice of chicken.

The girl had looked sullenly at the ground. Then, after a long pause, she had shrugged her shoulders. ‘I just asked the brothers for the food,' she muttered.

‘The Lord be praised, there is Christian charity yet among us,' Edward had continued, smiling. ‘You have hidden charms, young Mary, hidden charms, if you can melt the hearts of stony heathen like these.'

Nellie had realised even then what sort of payment the men must really have demanded from Mary for this charity, and she saw that Helen Frances too was looking miserably at her feet, avoiding any eye contact, but Nellie had remained silent, allowing Edward to enjoy his meal. What was the point in saying anything? Whatever Mary had done, she had done—and they had to eat.

A few days later, after more wandering and more hunger, they had received an even more than usually hostile reception from a woodcutter—he had threatened them with a fowling musket—and they had withdrawn to a glade close by to spend an uncomfortable night in the open. Mary had again woken them producing food, a dish of rabbit and cooked vegetables, but this time Edward had not been so obtuse. He had raged at Mary, calling her ungrateful, wicked, a whore, and dashed the plate out of her hands so it fell upended among the wet leaves on the ground. He had stamped his foot on it, breaking the plate, and ordered the shivering girl to fall down on her knees and repent her weakness. He had threatened her with God's wrath if she sinned again. Nellie and Helen Frances had waited in frozen silence, and George and Jenny had looked at their father with frightened, uncomprehending eyes. Only when Edward had exhausted himself, had Nellie calmly moved over to the weeping girl and put her arms around her. After a moment Helen Frances, avoiding the doctor's eyes, had knelt by the broken plate and begun carefully to retrieve the pieces of meat from among the leaves.