Dragons in Shallow Waters

by Kane, Clare

  “Nina,” I called. “Nina.”

  She stopped abruptly and her eyes found mine. I stepped forward, she turned so her back faced me, a neat set of buttons from nape to waist.

  “Nina.” I reached for her hand, pulled her towards me. “What are you doing here?”

  Slowly she craned her neck, turned her face to mine.

  “Alistair,” she said softly. “I am glad to see you.”

  The young woman who looked pitifully towards me was not Nina, but some hazy etching of her form. The features were arranged in the same manner; this person too possessed a pair of green eyes framed by bristling lashes of dark tone, lips that tapered to neat and careful bud, hair waved and dense that threatened to disobey its chignon, and yet all color was washed from this impression from Nina, as though her former self had dried out below a severe and unrepentant sun.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Mrs Franklin thought it best I stay away from the house today,” she said, offering a wan smile. “She said my Mandarin might be of use here.”

  “You might fall ill,” I said.

  She nodded. Neither of us spoke a moment, but observed the hubbub of the courtyard; the children playing hopscotch, the elders resting with eyes closed, lips alternating between muttered curses and prayers, the mothers soothing weeping babies, pressing their offspring to dry and bitter breast.

  “And so might you,” she said. “Good morning, Mr Scott.”

  She disappeared from me then and weaved through the crowd with renewed purpose, stopping by a circle of young girls.

  “Nimen shi cong nar lai de?”

  She asked where they were from, knelt beside them, spoke with softly feigned animation. I watched her, thought her lost to me. Across her face was written ruin, in her thoughtless tread was printed devastation, and yet her words, mere hollow pleasantries, revealed nothing. And so with diminished spirit I made to leave. Phoebe Franklin stood by the palace’s elaborate gates in earnest conversation with Hilde.

  “Miss Ward is here,” I observed.

  “Yes,” the missionary said briskly. “Miss Ward has been reading rather often of late. I do not believe it wholly salutary for a young woman to read as often as does Miss Ward.”

  The day promised to proceed with the same dull anguish that had colored the past weeks, but I felt a fresh, intense despair as I walked through the Legation Quarter, the mystery of Nina’s strange appearance a persistent vex upon my mind. I left the Su palace wishing to rid myself of the tragedy of that forsaken place, but the streets, daubed as they were with the blood of several nations, offered no respite. The story of the siege unfolded around me, the city furnished me with unending grisly details: a child’s body slumped lifeless against the Tartar wall, an abandoned, blunted sword of a Boxer, a smell so foul, so tenacious that it seemed to have permanently lodged itself inside my nostrils. Still, the wider context, the actions of ministers and nations and peoples, those prime ingredients of any history, remained indistinct, unknown. The little information we received leaked through the walls only thanks to foolhardy messengers and the occasional, bewildering missive from the Qing. We were ignorant, and today wretchedly so.

  The residents of the Legation Quarter had suffered a dramatic fall from the heights of relief offered by the temporary ceasefire. Talk of war was increasingly fevered, and a sometimes glib humor edged its way into our speech. With no news of the approaching troops and every sign of true war, men were set to the dig shelters around the borders of our suffocating quarter; I heard one remark that he had never imagined digging his own grave.

  “Nobody’s told Queen Victoria,” another said ruefully, wiping damp heat from his brow and smearing his temples with grime. “She would never allow us to suffer this.”

  Indeed, our abandonment had become almost shameful, particularly for those of us sheltered under the supposed auspices of Britannia. How might our nation call herself great when she abandoned her citizens to ruthless slaughter abroad? As I rounded the Legation Quarter’s newly-established makeshift hospital, I tried to tell myself that anger towards the soldiers themselves would not advance their approach: their absence suggested some calamity had befallen them and I supposed they had lived worse moments than we within the relative security of the Legation Quarter’s walls. Still I bitterly resented their absence as I sympathized with the newly-interned hospital patients, noting their names and injuries, coaxing from them stories of unforeseen Boxers attacks, of glinting knives in alleyways, of frantic, flying kicks and tussles over dusty streets. Those were the romantic tales, the narratives of menacing, Oriental hue, the scenes that would provoke ire and outrage in the dining rooms and railway carriages of the old country. They were, I thought, as I took scant note of those more common occurrences of imperial army bullets and legs broken in hasty retreat from enemies uniformed and regimented, the very stories that might inspire our rescue.

  I witnessed young men decaying, disintegrating, giving up their lives upon blood-soaked sheets. I saw protruding bones, angry gashes, weeping cuts, these injuries incongruously wrapped in gaudy silks of joyous colors, donations from extensive, unneeded wardrobes. I heard men gabble nonsense in five languages, saw their hands clasp invisible mothers and lovers, I watched with admiration as experienced doctors and amateur nurses sewed flesh together, knowing that even as the wounds of the skin healed there would be no medicine for the ills of these men’s minds. I was surprised to find Beatrice Moore there, changing sheets, cooling fevers. She tapped my shoulder, smiled coolly.

  “Mr Scott, I would like to introduce you to someone.” She led me to a cot tucked away in a corner of the ward. “Behold, the first child born since we have been under siege.”

  I looked down at the red, wrinkled face of a newborn swaddled in white. Its lips wobbled, its tiny mouth threatened screams, but it kept its silence in that room of wailing men.

  “Well, hello, little chap,” I said, stretching out my finger; the baby seized it with a fierce grip.

  “His name is Siege,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Yes, the mother has named him Siege,” she said plainly. “We only hope he will live to answer the question of how he came to be given such an unusual name.”

  The baby held my finger still, looked towards me with the joyous, unconcealed wonder of those newly initiated to the world.

  “And you are helping here?” I asked Beatrice.

  Benjamin Moore’s wife was a habitually condescending and precious woman, she did not possess, to my knowledge, an ounce of character suited to either the practical or consolatory practices of the nurse. Reveling in her husband’s position in trade, Beatrice usually spent her days judging and dismissing the choices of others over endless rounds of tea and luncheon, launching damning attacks upon social rivals, taking care always to deliver her rebuffs neatly wrapped and slathered with saccharine gloss. She was immensely tiresome, and I had succeeded in mostly avoiding her in my time in Peking, although my duties occasionally required I seek out her husband for some story regarding chests of tea or shipments of porcelain.

  “We must all play our part, Mr Scott,” she said officiously, leaning over to loosen the baby’s hold of me. The fledgling looked again as if he might cry, his round eyes rolled from me to Beatrice, his tiny nostrils quivered. “Besides, I simply couldn’t face another day in the house. I do so enjoy the company of Miss Price, but I rather tire of the gossip under Fairchild’s roof. Ladies sitting around all day with nothing to do but chatter amongst themselves, you understand.”

  “I am not sure that I do.”

  We watched the baby as his trembling eyelids fell, curtained him from us. An apprehension built in me as I listened to Mrs Moore’s brisk speech and I recalled Nina, wraithlike and shadowy in the wretched purgatory of the Su palace, feared her implication in Beatrice’s words.

  “Have you been to Mr Fairchild’
s home today, Mr Scott?”

  I shook my head.

  “You really ought to visit your friends the Wards.” Sharply she turned from the cot and crossed the room. I followed, and over her shoulder she awarded me a spurious smile. “Miss Ward seems quite changed by the siege, and I am sure she would appreciate a token of your friendship.”

  Hurriedly I crossed the short distance to the Fairchild residence, momentarily blind to the tapestry of ghastly conflict spread before me. I stopped outside the house, admired the solidity of its grey structure and the uniform rows of windows that regarded me, appreciated the decorative verandah that curled the perimeter of the building, its awnings of curved wrought iron. How smooth the outward exterior of the building, how imperious and certain, and yet what obscure riddles characterized its inner workings.

  Impatiently I knocked on the door, and with laudable restraint relayed my request to the slow-moving servant who greeted me, desirous as I was to push past him, to call Nicholas’ name, to run to my old friend, to shake him by the shoulders, to demand he explain these uncanny events, that he reassure me circumstances were not as disquieting as they appeared. The servant offered to show me to Nicholas’ room, but I declined, taking the stairs two at a time and announcing my presence with a thunder of knocks upon my friend’s door.

  “Alistair,” he said warmly. “Do come in. I have been organizing the collection.” He gestured towards the volumes rescued from the Hanlin, arranged now in neat towers across the floor. “I’m afraid I do find myself becoming rather distracted in my task. How might one resist the lure of books unread?”

  “How indeed,” I said drily. My acerbity was unheeded.

  “Please, sit.” Nicholas pointed to the only chair in the room, tucked neatly behind the desk.

  “I’d rather stand.”

  “Very well.” Nicholas settled himself in the chair, looked expectantly towards me. “You seem a trifle agitated, Alistair.”

  “Nina is at Su’s palace,” I started. Curling and uncurling my fists, I felt rage simmer, gently but irrefutably, in my gut.

  Nicholas moved his spectacles to the end of his nose, looked towards me with quizzical expression. Anger reared more assuredly within me now. How might Nicholas continue his introspective, intellectual existence at this time? I wondered. How might he catalogue books and read ancient philosophy while the Legation Quarter filled with the displaced and the despairing, as disease and disorder claimed young lives, as enemies deadly and determined conspired to destroy our existence? How might he remain here in learned ignorance as those around us whispered Nina’s undoing?

  “So Miss Price tells me,” he said calmly. “The missionary thought Nina might be of use there. I cannot imagine her sewing shall be missed.”

  “There is talk,” I said. “About Nina. What has happened, Nicholas?”

  “Talk?” He frowned. “Well, nothing.” He paused, waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, I suppose they refer to last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes. You know Nina has had terrible trouble sleeping since we came here. She likes to read in the evenings, and when the firing began again, Miss Price went downstairs and found Nina reading in the drawing room. There was some terrible commotion about that; I suppose Miss Price does not like to read.”

  “Nina was reading?” I pressed. “Alone?”

  “Yes. Well, I presume so.”

  “I cannot see how reading might provoke any such commotion,” I argued. “We have spoken of this before, Nicholas, and I do not wish to irk you. I only ask, do you think Mr Fairchild might have been with Nina?” I hesitated. “Reading?”

  Nicholas stood and with one finger returned his spectacles to rest upon the bridge of his nose.

  “Alistair, do you not know Nina?” Squarely he stepped towards me. “How might you continue to make such accusations?”

  “And how might you remain so resolutely ignorant of what is happening before you, Nicholas? She is your only daughter and yet you do nothing to protect her. She has no experience of men, her only suitor has been Barnaby George, his proposal was a mere month ago. How might she resist a man like Fairchild, admired, of status, knowledgeable of the world in a way she is not?”

  “Alistair, please. Nina was only reading.”

  Reading, I thought. How zealously Nicholas read, how staunchly he encouraged the habit in his own daughter, allowing her to sample any literature, high or low, English or Chinese, how detachedly he permitted her to create her own proclivities and develop her own opinions, how innocently he had led Nina into a trap of rhymes and metaphors, towards a downfall unravelled amidst printed pages and by candlelight, a ruin unforeseen by Ts’ao Hsüeh-ch’in and Thomas Hardy when they pressed their respective pens to virgin pages.

  “Nicholas,” I pleaded, but he silenced me with an assertive arm around my shoulders, and guided me to the doorway.

  “I would hate for us to disagree over this matter,” he said. “I have asked you kindly to desist from making wild denouncements, and your frantic desire to speak with me this morning can only have created suspicion where there ought to be none.”

  I conceded him that; in my precipitateness and preoccupation I had not considered the impression my visit might leave on an observer such as Lillian Price, who doubtlessly waited downstairs, sewing worthless sandbags as scandal brewed and frothed around her, impatient for some further revelation.

  “I care very much for my daughter, and I will not allow any harm to come to her.” Nicholas reached for the doorknob. “I very much appreciate your concern, Alistair, but I believe it is misplaced.”

  “Nina might fall ill at the Su palace,” I tried. “She did not look well.”

  He opened the door, regarded me with finality.

  “Good day, Mr Scott.”

  Frustration ought to be the newspaper’s man friend. Injustice, ignorance, indifference, these are the beasts we seek to slay each time we sit to compose a story. Resentment, pique and discontent, bitter as they are to the spirit, are master crafters of words, and letters turn pliant, soft under their hammer blow. And yet, returned to my censorious desk, I found no impetus to write. Motivation failed me in part because of the terrible dispiritedness inherent in knowing that even if I were to write the most brilliant, the most bloody prose, I would have no method through which to share it with the world beyond our walls. And besides, I thought, what use were my words now? Naturally I could recount those gruesome injuries I had witnessed at the hospital, of course I might retell those lurid Boxer tales the sufferers had imparted, in a moment of meagre inspiration I could even justify a paragraph dedicated to the birth of a child named Siege. Yet those were no longer the events of the day, not one of those anguished, bleeding men occupied my thoughts. It was only Nina, Nina and her ruin, Nina and the secrets she wore as a dim halo, an aura of disgrace around her form, as she crossed the Su palace, vacant and without purpose. I wished to record her story, to understand it, to correct it somehow, set it right in neat, printed lines. Tortuously I recalled my inaction, excruciatingly I wondered what more I might do for her.

  La Contessa saved me from my moroseness. I am not a man usually given to despair, but in those hours following the cessation of ceasefire I did allow myself to consider some ghoulish thoughts, to wonder if I might indeed end my days in Peking’s Legation Quarter. It might only have been an hour since I had returned to the Grand, I do not remember exactly; the afternoon was already lost, wordless, dulled by the familiar salve of whisky. Her knock was knowing, possessive, and I anticipated her appearance on the other side of the door, magnificent, glorious in one of her habitual costumes of silken aplomb. La Contessa did not disappoint, crossing the threshold of my room with her lips already upon my unspeaking mouth, her exuberant figure draped in layers of royal blue, her hands, soft and wonted, close around me. Her touch was a balm, a vital potion of forgetfulness that soothed as might
whisky, but equally invigorated as no manmade product could. Consoled, my insistent thoughts folded themselves away, quietened, and my mind stilled. Empty of head but full of heart, I kissed her tenderly when the deed was done, when we lay together, skin slick and spirit satiated.

  “It is not so bad,” she said slowly, “that the attacks have started again. At least we may have these moments a little longer.”

  Her voice, melodious and mellow as it was, broke the spell. My preoccupations, enlivened once more, broke to the surface of my mind. I could not stop myself from asking her about the events of the previous night. She severed our embrace, rose from the bed, began dressing herself with her back to me.

  “I wondered,” she said softly. “I wondered how long until you would ask for Miss Ward.”

  “I am concerned,” I said, and she nodded slowly, wrapped her corset tightly around her waist. “Let me help you.”

  “I am very capable,” she said, turning to face me. “I have lived many years with a husband who aids his wife in nothing.”

  Deftly she pulled the strings tight, and I watched her waist, already tapered and slender, shrink to impossible proportions. She smiled at this magic, and stepped into her dress, her back once more to me. I watched her reflection in the small, flat mirror as she told me of the night’s events.

  The Fairchild household, drowsed by celebratory champagne, had drifted into its first peaceful night of sleep not long after I had left for the hotel, only to be abruptly awoken in the most profound hours by the resumption of firing from enemy lines. Immediately footsteps and voices sounded as every guest in the house sprang, dismayed and unsettled by this sudden turn of events, from their respective beds. Lillian Price was the first to the drawing room, and her voice echoed along the hallway to La Contessa’s room.

  “Miss Ward!”

  It was an exclamation, an admonishment, it was, La Contessa supposed, no act of intended malice on the part of Lillian Price but rather a genuine expression of surprise. Lillian was joined shortly by Phoebe Franklin; La Contessa could decipher the missionary’s commanding, unflustered tone although her words were unclear. La Contessa hurried then too to the drawing room and found Phoebe arranging Nina’s hair, which fell loose and untamed around her shoulders. One sleeve of Nina dress was askew, exposing the delicate ivory flesh of the upper arm. Nina’s skin was flushed a tender shade of rose, her lips, La Contessa noted, looked swollen with kisses.