The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure

by Adam Williams

  ‘Lao Zhao, you’ve got to go back again. Tell the Major we have to leave immediately. Tell him to get his men on the train. Hurry.’

  Lao Zhao did not even pause to spit, but leaped off the engine and sprinted towards the soldiers.

  ‘Dammit,’ cried Henry. ‘I didn’t tell him about the gate.’ Sod it, he thought. He would ram the gate, and hope for the best. ‘You,’ he shouted at the remaining soldier, ‘be ready to shovel coal as if your life depended on it. Wait till I tell you—’ 125 pounds per square inch. ‘Come on. Come on,’ he whispered, though clenched teeth.

  He heard a volley of rifle fire. Encouraged by the arrival of their artillery pieces the Boxers had made another rush through the alleys. Henry peered anxiously through the drifting smoke. Yes, the retreat had begun. The soldiers on the roof were climbing down. They were joining the ranks of their comrades and kneeling to fire at the Boxers.

  Henry ran through a last mental checklist of what he had to do. Couple the engine. Done. Release the handbrake of the tender. Done. Oh, God, he realised, with horror. He had forgotten the handbrake in the guard’s car. That would also have to be released before they could move. There was no way round it. ‘Listen,’ he said to the soldier, ‘look at this gauge here. When that needle points to 128, start shovelling in coal. Understand? Five full spadeloads. Don’t close the box. Leave it as it is. Half open. Remember: when the dial reads 128 you shovel. Got it?’

  He jumped on to the platform and began to run. The whole train shook as an explosion burst in the yard. He saw the orange black coils of smoke rising behind the carriages. They were getting the range. He glanced to his left and saw that Major Lin was attempting a fighting retreat—the men in square, firing, retreating a few steps at a time, and firing again. He passed the Mandarin’s carriage and saw the sardonic face observing him from the window. He did not stop. He bounded up the guard’s van steps and threw himself at the heavy red-painted wheel, turning until he felt that the pressure on the brakes was fully eased. He turned to leave, and his heart momentarily stopped. A Boxer was in the van.

  It was a wiry, middle-aged man with a thin moustache. He wore a red tunic and carried a small axe and shield. The eyes in the wrinkled face were wary as he approached the foreign devil. Henry stepped backwards. The Boxer rushed at him, swiping with his axe. Henry managed to twist away. He kicked, and missed. The Boxer advanced again, and Henry retreated slowly. He could go no further because his back was against the brake wheel. His hands scrabbled against the wooden side of the van, and yes, there was the handspike on its rack. The axe came down again and clanged against the spike, which Henry had held up with his two hands, just in time. Henry kicked again and this time his foot contacted the man’s groin. The Boxer moved back in surprise. Henry brought the handspike down on his head. Two more Boxers were pushing through the door from the guards’ van balcony, and were staring at him, half startled, half afraid, their swords wavering hesitantly in their hands. Henry yelled and ran like a berserker towards them, slashing left and right with the handspike. He only stopped battering when he realised that he was beating air. Stepping over the bodies, he cautiously approached the door to the platform. He heard running feet and shots. Some of Lin’s men had spotted the incursion and were dealing with it. Quickly opening the door, he leaped on to the platform and ran, ignoring the sound of steel on steel behind him.

  As he ran, he noticed that Major Lin’s fighting retreat had almost reached the platform. Bodies of Boxers lay in clumps over the ground that the troopers had so ably defended, yet more screaming battalions were massing in the gaps between the buildings. These were now in the hands of the enemy. He could see turbaned figures scrambling on to the vacated roofs. Soon they would be firing down at them. He heard Lin scream the command, ‘Fire!’ and a crash of shots went off just by his ear. He ran on. He was passing the doctor’s carriage, and ahead could see Lao Zhao leaning from the engine cab waving him forward. As he looked, he heard the whine of a shell. The watertower exploded and the engine disappeared under a white wall of water and hissing steam. ‘Bugger me!’ he cried, stumbling to a halt. He was aware of Nellie Airton standing on the steps of her carriage looking down at him. There was an expression of alarm on her face. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ he muttered. ‘Disgraceful language.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Nellie. ‘What’s happened to your arm?’ It was only then that he noticed that his left forearm had been slashed by one of the Boxers’ swords.

  He looked up, confused, and saw over Nellie’s shoulder Helen Frances’s white, anxious face also looking down at him, her mouth open, her eyes shining with concern. ‘Come on, you’d better get up here and have that bandaged,’ said Nellie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, gazing at Helen Frances. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t time.’ And he ran on.

  The engine and the footplates had been drenched, but thankfully the fire in the box was still burning and clouds of grey smoke were still issuing from the stack. The pressure gauge read 129 pounds per square inch. ‘Right,’ he shouted. ‘Are we ready?’ He pressed the pedal to eject any excess water in the pistons. With a whoosh, steam billowed out through the cylinder cocks on either side of the engine. He leaned out of the cab. Major Lin’s men were now fighting on the platform, firing volley after volley to keep the Boxers at bay. The Boxers were now massed in a dense line in front of the buildings. They were ranked in impossible numbers. Banners waved over their heads. If they charged together no amount of bullets could keep them back. ‘Come on, come on,’ he breathed, pulling the cord to let out a long whistle, as if that signal could somehow miraculously hurry Lin’s beleaguered soldiers on board. He remembered the wires leading to the buildings that he had seen earlier. Why didn’t Lin blow the charges?

  As he thought it, he observed the sergeant with the plunger. Major Lin, standing beside him, looked calmly at the massed Boxers as if they were parade-ground soldiers standing in line for his inspection. Almost dismissively, he waved his gloved hand. The sergeant leaned his whole weight on the plunger, and the three buildings disintegrated in flame. He could feel the shock of the explosion in the cab. The lines of Boxers were blown down like chaff before a scythe. Major Lin blew the whistle hanging from his neck and, in as orderly a manner as was possible in the circumstances, his men ran to the carriages assigned to them and clambered on board. Selected detachments mounted the ladders to the carriage roofs where they lay down ready to give a covering fire when the Boxers had recovered. It took three minutes to load them all. Major Lin waited until the last man was aboard, then unhurriedly climbed the steps. Leaning outwards he waved his sword at the engine.

  Without further ado, Henry pulled back the reverser, and pushed the heavy throttle that regulated steam to the pistons. Agonisingly slowly the heavy wheels began to turn. Thump-thump, thump-thump. The engine was wheezing like a tired blacksmith. Henry heaved the regulator, careful not to let out too much steam in case the driving wheels slipped. One mile per hour, two miles per hour. ‘Come on, come on.’ But they were moving—moving towards a locked gate. A knot of Boxers, who had climbed over the wall, was standing there, waiting for them.

  Meanwhile the Boxers by the houses had recovered from the blast. With a scream of ‘Shaa-aa-aa!’ they charged. Lin’s soldiers on the roof fired, as did those in the carriages out of the windows, but the firing had no effect on such numbers—and the train might as well have been motionless for all the speed it was going. ‘Well, Lao Zhao, we tried,’ muttered Henry, pulling his revolver out of his pocket. Lao Zhao grimly picked up the fireman’s axe.

  Had it not been for Iron Man Wang’s artillery men’s erratic marksmanship the train might well have been overrun then, but the next two rounds from these ancient guns could not have been been better directed if Major Lin had given the orders. The first exploded among the front ranks of the charging Boxers, disconcerting them and delaying momentarily the whole attack. The second burst on the gate, tearing one door off its hinges, smashing the chai
n and killing the waiting Boxers. Sedately, at three miles per hour, the engine steamed through the gap.

  * * *

  Fate, however, was not entirely on the side of Major Lin. The gunners on the hill reloaded quickly. Perhaps it was their annoyance after their earlier mistake, but this time they seemed to be taking more care with their aim. One shell exploded harmlessly between the coal heap and the ruined watertower. This was in line with their earlier haphazard marksmanship. The other shot, however, exploded under the coupling separating the last two carriages and the guards-van from the rest of the train. The connection was completely severed. The rest of the train, its load suddenly lightened, picked up speed and, ignoring the Boxers running along beside it, steamed off at a quickened pace down the valley. The three end carriages, with sixty of Lin’s troopers on board, rolled to a gentle stop just outside the gate.

  Major Lin, standing on the small balcony of what was now the last carriage, watched grimly through his binoculars as his soldiers—remarkably quickly, considering their tenacity in the earlier battle—were overwhelmed. The horde of Boxers surrounding the stationary cars resembled a speckled snake tightening its coils, or a dragon with red, yellow, green and black scales, slithering towards the coaches it intended to consume. At first Lin could hear scattered shots and he saw the white puffs of smoke as his men vainly tried to resist its encroachment—but soon the Boxer coils had enveloped the carriages. Their champions stood on the carriage roofs, which now fluttered triumphantly with Boxer flags. The writhing mass seemed to be sprouting limbs, like a giant upended caterpillar waving its legs. A closer look through the binoculars identified these as poles and spears, each one topped with the head of one of his brave men.

  * * *

  The train was steaming along the plain at a good twenty miles per hour. Rich farmland stretched on either side. A thin white stream of water flowed a slow course in the centre of the wide, otherwise dry riverbed. Looking down the long black barrel of the engine, appearing and disappearing through the grey smoke swirling from the stack and the white clouds issuing from the steam dome, they could see the bluish shape of the Black Hills lining the horizon ahead of them. They would reach the approaches within an hour and the tunnel about an hour and a half after that. Henry had passed a message back via Lao Zhao to Major Lin that he intended to stop the train at the entrance to the tunnel to rewater, taking advantage of the tower at the small construction workers’ depot that he knew was located there. The engine was almost driving itself now, though Henry kept a careful hand on the regulator in case of unforeseen gradients. The three who remained of the original footplate party had settled into a simple routine.

  The young soldier proudly relished his role as fireman, spading in the coal when Henry demanded, with ceremony and care. At first the boy had bitterly felt the loss of his friend—his girlish-looking companion who had died delivering the message to Major Lin—but he had now cheered up somewhat and was sitting on the tender, his rifle on his knees, singing a snatch of opera. Not for the first time Henry wondered at the hard-headed resilience of these northern Chinese peasants. Lao Zhao was with him on the footplate.

  ‘Have you decided what you are going to do, Xiansheng?’ Lao Zhao asked quietly, after his usual long-winded build-up to a serious question. He was idly whittling a wood splinter with his knife.

  The wheels clattered below them.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Henry.

  ‘Some people might have driven off this animal without waiting for Major Lin and his soldiers to get on board,’ said Lao Zhao.

  ‘Some people might have,’ said Henry, ‘if they could get a train going at a suitable speed to prevent Major Lin and his soldiers merely climbing aboard as soon as the wheels started turning, and if it didn’t involve leaving them to the mercies of the Boxers.’

  ‘Most of Lin’s men were left behind,’ said Lao Zhao. ‘He has barely fifteen to twenty remaining who are not severely wounded.’

  ‘It wasn’t my doing that they were left behind,’ said Henry. ‘Poor devils.’

  ‘No, it was Fate,’ said Lao Zhao, ‘but it was not inconvenient Fate. You have fewer soldiers to deal with now.’

  ‘Now what could you possibly mean by that?’ He could not disguise his grin.

  ‘Ah,’ smiled Lao Zhao, ‘so you do have a plan! I would have been sorry if you had just allowed Major Lin and that Chamberlain Jin to kill you like a dog. I would have been sorry, too, if you allowed them to kill the Mandarin, for he is kind to poor muleteers such as me. And I would have been upset if the fox lady was killed, although perhaps Major Lin would have taken her for his concubine, as the old chamberlain will certainly make a catamite of that little boy, if he can get his hands on him … No.’ He spat. ‘I would not have enjoyed working for such people afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards? How do you know they wouldn’t just kill you too?’

  ‘They wouldn’t kill me,’ said Lao Zhao comfortably. ‘Nobody has a quarrel with a poor muleteer like me. Somebody has to look after the horses, after all, whoever kills who. But I prefer working for you because you are foolish as all foreigners are and always pay me double the wages I am owed. And maybe you will also give me a little of that gold, which the Mandarin will exchange with you for your guns.’

  ‘You paid very close attention to what Lin and Jin were saying, didn’t you?’

  ‘I told you, I have excellent hearing, Xiansheng. A hunter needs to have good hearing to track his prey.’

  ‘Well, if I did happen to have a plan, would you help me?’

  ‘Of course, Ma Na Si Xiansheng.’ Lao Zhao laughed. ‘Would you give me any gold if I didn’t? Anyway, what can you do on your own with your bandaged arm in a sling? But please make your instructions simple. Remember, I am only an old muleteer, and I have no understanding of how this train of yours works beyond feeding its belly with great nosebags of coal.’

  Quietly Henry explained what he had in mind. Lao Zhao closed his eyes in concentration, occasionally nodding, a wide grin cracking his lined face.

  ‘The first thing you might do,’ said Henry, thoughtfully, ‘is to make your way back along the wagons—it’s not difficult to climb along their sides. If Major Lin asks you what you are doing you can say you were looking for him because you need his instructions about watering the horses. What I need to know is where he has positioned his men. Are they all in the final compartment, as I think, or has he scattered them throughout the train? Do you think you could find that out for me?’

  ‘I could do so very easily,’ said Lao Zhao. He rose to his feet, opened the firebox a fraction and threw the whittled piece of wood into the flames. Then he climbed on to the tender, patting the young soldier playfully on the shoulder as he passed.

  * * *

  Helen Frances was sitting on the bed. She was weeping. The doctor was squatting on a stool in front of her, holding her hands in his and talking to her urgently.

  There was a semblance of order in the Airtons’ compartment now, after its sudden transformation during the height of battle into a surgical ward. The walking wounded had all been transferred to the last compartment with their comrades. Only two wounded soldiers remained, and they were lying on mattresses fashioned out of the sofa cushions, with red silk tablecloths as makeshift sheets. One was their first patient, the man who had received the sword thrust in the belly, and he was dying. Fan Yimei knelt beside him, holding his hand, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead and talking to him gently about his village, and his childhood. The other, whom the doctor had trepanned to remove a bullet from his skull, would also probably die, but mercifully he had been unconscious since the doctor had injected him with morphine. Nellie, exhausted by her exertions, was dozing in an armchair. The children were playing stones, paper, scissors with Mary. Their giggles from the other end of the compartment occasionally distracted the doctor from his chain of thought. Despite his tiredness—he could not calculate when he last slept—he knew he had to concentrate if this poor girl w
ere to understand what he had to tell her.

  At first, she hardly seemed to be paying any attention. Reaction had set in after Helen Frances’s remarkable recovery from her sickbed, when she had taken up the heavy chores of field nursing like a professional. The doctor could hardly hold back his admiration for her. Now that there was nothing useful left for her to do, it was not surprising that her energy had drained away, and she had begun to tremble as she succumbed to the shock and horror of this most recent experience, on top of all the other ghastly events, and the struggle against her addiction. Nothing in the mission hospital had prepared her for the violent reality of bodies torn by battle—the smashed limbs, the sword slashes that revealed the insides of a man in anatomical detail, the surreal nightmare of having to remove an arrow from an arm, the amputated legs, the deaths of those they could not save. All this against the crash of battle outside, with the knowledge that, at any moment, their carriage might be overrun, in which case they themselves would face certain death, or worse. Well, the doctor thought, Helen Frances already knew what that worse could be, poor thing. Her recent actions had shown the wells of courage and strength that lay within her. He owed her his thanks, and much more than that. He owed her his protection, and that was why it was imperative that he should warn her now of the new danger she faced.

  For there had been one other shock, not long after the train had left the butcher’s yard of the railway camp behind. Major Lin had walked through their carriage on his way to report to the Mandarin. When he entered, the doctor had been involved with his trepanning, with Fan Yimei helping him, handing him his saw and his probes when he needed them, gazing as she did so in fascinated dread at the open brain in front of her. Nellie and Helen Frances had been bandaging the leg of another wounded soldier from which a bullet had been removed. Major Lin strode down the carriage, oblivious to the suffering of his men, his usual calm, sardonic expression on his face. He had paused when he came to Helen Frances, however, and his lip had curled into a cold grin. Helen Frances stiffened when he came near her, but with difficulty she had retained a calm expression, although the doctor noted that the colour drained from her cheeks. Major Lin smiled and touched her chin with his gloved hand. Her shoulders shook fractionally but she maintained eye contact, her grey-green irises widening and her mouth tightening.