by Kane, Clare
Lillian stood in the doorway, cradling her kitten as she watched the great carousing parade pass. Hugo Lovell, limping still but guffawing like a madman, broke away from a group of student interpreters and stopped to kiss Lillian with shameless exuberance. He left her without a word, dancing down the street with one stiff leg, and while Lillian shook her head and wagged a finger after him, she appeared radiant in the afterglow of the kiss.
“Hello, Mr Scott,” she said warmly as I stepped into the house, where I found the servants wiping tears from one another’s cheeks. They patted my back, called out to me as I passed down the corridor to the drawing room, where Nicholas stood alone in still, unlit environs, observing the raucous celebrations from the window.
“Not dancing yet?” I greeted him.
“You know me, Alistair,” he said, his voice slow, constant as ever. “I don’t like to believe anything until I see some empirical evidence.”
“They have stopped firing. Is that not evidence enough?”
He chuckled.
“I jolly well hope so. What wouldn’t I give to go home tomorrow?”
“Where’s Nina?” I asked.
“Haven’t seen her,” he said. “She must be out there.”
“Come, let us find her.”
I took his arm as we stepped amidst the jubilant crowd that thronged the streets, and felt him suddenly frail as we attempted progress through their chants and songs, their smiles and cheers. I held him closer, increased my grip, and he did not protest, but stayed close by my side.
Champagne and wine were brought from the cellars; a number of food committee members noted that the quantities produced for the purposes of celebration appeared rather greater than those recorded in official tallies. I offered to ferry some of the supplies to the deserving Japanese soldiers at the Su mansion. The old palace, its residents long ailing, lethargic, their will almost crushed, erupted in immediate exultation in those first hours of liberation. It gave me great pleasure to see the young girls there unfurl their tired limbs to join the merrymaking, and it was in the central courtyard of the palace that we finally found Nina, her hands linked with her former students’ in an elated, dancing circle under a vast dark sky of unblinking stars, their faces turned upwards with no fear of hostile fire. I recognized the familiar lilt of Molihua, a popular folk song: “Beautiful jasmine flower, beautiful jasmine flower, sweet, beautiful and blooming!” I raised a glass in Nina’s direction, caught her eye and saw that she wept as she sang, coruscating tears of unknown nature. Did she cry with relief, like many of the embattled souls in Prince Su’s palace that night, did she weep for happiness, for the hope of returning home, or were those tears bitter and sour, did she cry of regret for the affair she must now leave behind, for the future that lay unseen, unshaped before her?
At dawn the schoolgirls settled for a few hours of shallow sleep. Many of the women and children in the Legation Quarter did the same; gentle mothering hands led tiny bodies back to bed. Nina left her charges to sleep and returned home with her father and Phoebe Franklin. Most of the men, however, felt unable to sleep. Though we had wrung out our spirits in festivity and leadened our eyelids with wine, we believed it our duty to stay awake for the arrival of our liberators, whom we could only assume were drawing ever closer. I moved between the various groups of diplomats (who even in celebration divided themselves along national lines) trying to glean as much information as I could from each. I knew that our rescue had the potential to become the greatest story of my career, a defining moment that would make my name familiar not just to the best editors of Britain and the world, but also to housewives and bank tellers. This was, I felt, more my story than anyone’s, and I would be damned if I let another writer in some comfortable office in London or New York profit from our hardship.
Naturally my attempts at information gathering were entirely unsuccessful. Nobody within the walls of the Legation Quarter could so much as conjecture as to what might be taking place outside, but proud men of every nation tried their best to appear better informed than their peers.
“This is quite what we were expecting.”
“I should say they are around three hours away.”
“Did we not say that they should arrive on the fourteenth?”
Unconvinced, I repaired to my room where I wrote a series of opening lines to the article I hoped to report later that day, preparing for what I hoped might be the most brilliant, most eminent, dispatch of my career. On the fourteenth of August, another hot, cloudless day in the heart of China… Long-awaited soldiers today liberated the foreign population… But with the future still concealed from my impatience, I had no choice but to leave events to fate, and fortifying myself with two fingers of whisky, made for the Tartar Wall. Hilde joined me, gun bumping against her hip, and we settled ourselves at an excellent vantage point, our eyes trained on the horizon beyond the capital.
“Do you suppose my house is still standing?” I asked Hilde.
I scanned the streets, trying to locate my modest home, only a mile or so from where we sat.
“Still standing, I’m sure,” she said. “You might find, however, that it is home to a Boxer or two.”
“Not after today.”
We remained in amiable silence. I instructed myself to memorize the details, the few trailing wisps of white cloud across the blazing blue sky, the smell of death, still pervasive but almost sweet after weeks of acclimatization, the rubble of the Imperial capital strewn on both sides of the wall, so I might reproduce them later in my reporting. But my mind rebelled at these minor details, and I desired events grand and significant, actions swift and conclusive.
“I can’t stand it,” I said finally. “I’m going into the city.”
“Alistair.” Hilde fixed impassive eyes on me and I doubted for a moment, thought she might disapprove. “Why am I not surprised? I shall join you.”
We walked together to Su’s palace. Outside we found Lijun, who traced English vocabulary with her fingers in the dust. She waved to me.
“Are the soldiers here yet?”
“We’re just going to see about that,” I called.
It seemed another era when I had demanded Prince Su abandon his palace to the refugees. Then they were destitute, their feet raw and bloody, their cheeks sunken and hungry. But now they were mere shadows, hovering somewhere between life and death. Seeing Lijun’s gnarled fingers as she practiced her words, observing her little frame hunched and sharp as she knelt in the dust, her spine a clear, visible arc through her thin clothes, I felt shame at the fate of the Chinese Christians. Ostensibly these were the lucky ones, those who had escaped the wrath of the vicious Boxers, but I doubted they looked or felt better than those fending for their lives beyond the Legation Quarter.
Hilde and I moved cautiously around the barricades and into the Chinese city. Her knuckles grew white around her gun, though her face betrayed no fear. We found the Qing defenses unmanned.
“They’ve gone,” Hilde said in a coarse whisper.
“Be careful,” I replied, steadying myself against a wall as we turned into a main street. Here we would once have been open targets, but as we stepped carefully over the remnants of the past weeks’ destruction no gun was trained in our direction, no soldier shouted our presence. The ground was uneven and treacherous, littered with scattered bullets, blunted swords, stained rags. A dog chewed ferociously on a scrap of human flesh. Its coat was matted and wiry, but its stomach swelled: a feast after weeks of famine. Beyond we happened upon a still-burning fire, bowls of uneaten rice dotted its periphery.
“They’ve gone,” Hilde said again. “They’ve gone.” She slackened her grip on her gun.
“I think you may be right,” I said cautiously. I looked in amazement at the untouched rice, reaching out to lift a bowl that felt warm in my hand.
“The troops are really coming,” Hilde said. “Finally.�
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She embraced me and we stood together in that ghastly street, the repulsive dog circling our ankles.
“I suppose we ought to return. Liberation awaits,” I said.
Lijun waited for us outside the Su mansion. She wrote no longer, only drew swooping lines in the dust with impatient toes.
“Well?” she greeted us.
“The Imperial soldiers have gone,” I said, hearing my voice distant and unreal. The Legation Quarter around me had taken on an otherworldly quality; I struggled to focus on the buildings, the people, the smell of horse meat cooking for lunch. It was true, I told myself, we were to be rescued.
“Really?” Lijun frowned, narrowed her eyes.
“Of course,” Hilde said.
The girl ran suddenly towards us, jumped into my arms and wrapped her bony legs around my waist. Hilde held the girl’s hands; both wept joyously, sobs giving way to laughter, tears setting upon smiles. I lowered Lijun to the ground.
“Go and tell your friends,” I suggested, but already she yelled the good news from the entrance of the palace.
“Back to the wall,” I suggested to Hilde. “We might watch from there and see the troops’ advance.”
“I would like to be with Edward,” she said shyly.
“Naturally.”
And so I walked alone to the Fairchild household. Nicholas and Nina were in the drawing room, their agitation palpable. They paced the perimeter of the room in interweaving circles, while a placid Phoebe Franklin read sedately in a chair, her face freshly scrubbed, hair pulled back from her weather-lined face.
“Mr Scott.” Nina moved swiftly towards me, the hem of her lilac dress rustled against the floor. “They have come for Mr Fairchild. The troops shall arrive shortly.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “I came to tell you that the Imperial soldiers have abandoned their defenses.”
“And how do you know that?” Nina asked.
“I went out with Hilde. They left their lunch uneaten. A dog enjoys their rice.”
“How interesting,” Nicholas said, coming to a halt opposite me. “The Empress Dowager would never allow them to abandon their posts unless defeat was considered inevitable.”
“Precisely,” I said. “We are free.”
“Shall we go outside?” Nicholas suggested. “The officials indicated to Fairchild that the troops would arrive imminently. This is a very good story for you, my boy. You shouldn’t like to miss the arrival of our liberators.”
“And Miss Price?” I asked.
“She is preparing her bath,” Nina replied, following her father to the door.
“A bath at a time like this?”
“Oh, let her be, Mr Scott,” Nina said. “She wishes to look her best for the liberation.”
The Legation Quarter shook with mirthful cries as we crossed its streets: “The British are coming! The British are coming!” The Water Gate below the Tartar Wall, so long our ultimate shield from the Boxers, lay wide open. A general stood under its arch; a line of officials waited to shake his hand. He was surrounded by a fantastical collection of Sikhs and Rajputs, Indian men majestic and regal on horseback, who spilled into the Legation Quarter, curved swords balanced over their shoulders, turbans splendid and high on their heads. They led their horses across the lawns to the tennis courts, where they were overwhelmed by the delight of the besieged. “Thank you! Thank you!” cried the newly-liberated, hands reaching for the soldiers’ horses, gripping at their manes, patting their flanks. “Thank you!”
“How strange.” Lillian Price appeared to have abandoned plans for bathing, and now stood close behind us, although I did note that she had tied a neat pink ribbon in her hair. “How very odd to be rescued by men of such heathen appearance.”
Nina did not respond, but pressed against the bodies that surrounded her, attempted to carve a path through them. I watched as her progress was soon impeded by General Gaselee himself; the man who had led the British troops jumped down from his horse to take Nina by the hand.
“Thank God, men, here are women alive,” he declared and placed an extended kiss on Nina’s forehead. The crowd roared. A few feet behind the general stood Oscar Fairchild. He watched the exchange carefully, but with an expression unreadable to my eye.
One rule of my trade is that stories wither in the presence of crowds. Conglomerations appear newsworthy, and any event that draws the multitude from their usual activities does warrant some investigation, but in my experience, when all attention is focused on one place, when a story is written in numbers rather than nuance, you can be sure that the real story, the strange, course-altering development of history, is being written elsewhere. And so I slipped away from the overjoyed crowds, stepping out of the gates and once more into the city. Troops still surged towards the Legation Quarter, mostly Americans by the looks of them. They moved jauntily, guns suspended above their heads, and sounded sporadic, celebratory bullets as they progressed towards the Tartar wall. The Chinese on the streets ran in all directions, like rolling marbles they bumped into one another, repelling each another at opposing angles with the force of their contact. I attempted to root myself still amongst the movement, my eyes darted from soldier to civilian, bullets rang loud in my ears. I witnessed a Chinese man stumble as he ran, his knees sank to the grime and dust that caked the streets. An American soldier stopped, aimed his gun at the man’s head.
“Hey!” I called. “What do you think you are you doing?”
“Liberating you,” he said with a smile.
He pulled the trigger and the man creased helplessly at the waist, sank further into the ground.
“Why?” I grabbed the soldier by the arm. “He was never a Boxer!”
“I’ve seen enough Chinese these months,” the soldier said, “to tell you that you never know.”
He raised his gun, set free a directionless bullet, and with arrogant sweep rejoined his peers and continued towards the Legation Quarter. Bullets echoed, ricocheting from the narrow walls of old Peking, unheard within the ebullient atmosphere of the Legation Quarter. To the Chinese beyond the Tartar wall, a new terror had arrived. To appease the Boxers they had lit red lanterns, burned incense and affixed auspicious symbols to their doors and windows, but they did not know what these new invaders required of them, and so they ran, sprinted from their saviors.
I followed the American soldiers at a distance, watched as they shot careless bullets to the ground, jostled one another and joked, their skin whipped and beaten by the unforgiving sun of the north China plains, their faces etched with the grooves of much older men. As they passed through the sluice gate they broke into a run, cheering as they disappeared headlong into the open mouth of the crowd. The atmosphere of the Legation Quarter was that of absolute enjoyment, voices trilled in the manner of garden party gossip, bottles popped and glasses clinked just as they had just three months earlier when we had gathered to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. Away from the melée, I saw Nina sitting alone in a shaded section of the tennis courts. Her face was pale, and she chewed nervously at faded lips.
“Are you all right?” I asked, taking a seat on the ground next to her. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Even worse,” she muttered.
“Sorry?”
“I’m quite fine, Mr Scott,” she said, not lifting her head to look at me. “A little overwhelmed, perhaps.”
“I do not blame you,” I said. “It is rather strange, however long we might have expected this day to come.”
Finally she regarded me, a hand shielding her eyes from the sun.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“I cannot say, Nina,” I said honestly. “Although my experience tells me that liberation shall be neither expedient nor simple. There will be a party, I suppose, and then the negotiations shall begin. The indemnity. The accusations. The diplomacy.”
“Not you,” I said. “Women and children, they send you away to the sounds of trumpets. The men then take care of signing papers and assigning blame.”
“Well, I have no intention of going anywhere but home. Do you suppose they will allow us to return today?”
“Not today,” I said, thinking of the scenes I had witnessed beyond the Tartar wall, the fleeing residents, the ravenous, flea-ravaged dogs, the blood painted fresh over old stains.
“I just want to see it,” she said. “Do you think I might go accompanied by a soldier?”
“If Her Majesty’s soldiers do not grant your wish, I take it upon myself to return you to your rightful hutung,” I said, trying for lightness. “Once, and only once, all the bottles in the Legation Quarter have been emptied and you are tired of celebrating.”
Nina laughed, and her pallor faded a little.
“Why don’t you rest before the merriment that awaits us this evening?” I suggested. “We shall drink champagne with our horse suppers tonight.”
Nina assented, rising with me.
“You will come to us tonight, won’t you?” she asked, taking my arm in hers. “I would so hate for you not to be there.”
“Of course,” I said. “Hilde is always glad to have one less stomach to fill.”
“And tomorrow…do you think we might go home?”
“Let’s see.”
I left her in the care of two British soldiers who appeared rather delighted to escort her back to the Fairchild residence.
“I am quite fine by myself,” she insisted. “We have walked this way many times over the past weeks with bullets flying over our heads.”
“We would hate to see any casualties after the liberation,” one of the soldiers solemnly returned, and the pair guided her back to the house.