by John Wilcox
‘On your back and keep quiet,’ he hissed into his ear. Simon slipped behind the Welshman, thrust both hands under his armpits and began kicking to take them to the riverbank. He realised that Chang was at his side, helping to hold up Jenkins, but that the tree trunk, with their bundles of clothing caught in the thrusting branches, was floating away downstream.
At the same moment, there was a babble of voices from up above them on the bank and, looking up, Simon saw half a dozen rifles thrust towards them and as many faces – Chinese faces, of course – gazing down at them in consternation.
‘Chang,’ called Simon. ‘Tell them not to shoot.’
They scrambled ashore under the threatening rifles and Chang shouted, ‘I think they shoot us now as spies.’
Fonthill’s brain raced. ‘Tell them that we are not spies,’ he said, ‘but that we are English and come from Peking with an important message for General … damn … what’s his name … from Sir Claude MacDonald. We came by boat but it overturned in the shoals and we have been forced to swim. Make it sound good, cousin, for God’s sake.’
Chang burbled away urgently while the three stood in their underpants, water dripping from them. A shamefaced Jenkins stood, clenching and unclenching his fists, his great moustache looking as though his nose had caught a water rat. ‘Sorry, bach,’ he murmured, ‘all my fault. I’ll take this lot on while you dive back into the river and get away. That’s best.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. That way we will all be shot. And, anyway, it was my fault for falling asleep. We will just have to see if we can talk our way out of this.’
It seemed that Chang was not having much success, for a rifle butt was suddenly swung into his face, knocking him to the ground.
Fonthill strode forward. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said, with the confident and reprimanding air of a British colonel. ‘You do not hit that man again.’ And he wagged his finger in the face of the antagonist. ‘We are British soldiers and …’ The muzzle of the man’s rifle was suddenly thrust sharply into his stomach, winding him and causing him to bend over and drop onto one knee.
Jenkins sprang forward and delivered a perfect left hook onto the jaw of the soldier, sending him staggering, before the Welshman was felled with a rifle butt from behind.
Grimacing, Fonthill looked up at the hostile faces all around him. They were, he realised, all Kansus. Their eyes, set in Mongolian faces, regarded him quite expressionlessly. These were the toughest, most vicious soldiers in the Empress’s army, little more than bandits, rapists and killers, led by the biggest brigand and foreigner-hating man in all China. As he watched, he saw the man Jenkins had struck walk forward and aim his rifle at the dazed Welshman’s head and pull back the bolt.
Then the name came to him. He stood erect. ‘General Tung Fu-hsiang,’ he said firmly. ‘Take us to him.’ Then he repeated the name. ‘General Tung Fu-hsiang.’ He embraced the three of them with a whirl of his arm. Then gestured from his breast and then vaguely to the south. ‘General Tung Fu-hsiang.’
Chang pulled himself to his feet, his eye half closed, and began speaking in Chinese again.
Whatever he said, that and Simon’s firmness had an effect, for they were pushed forward with rifle muzzles. Fonthill became aware of the sound of artillery fire, much closer now, and they were being marched towards it. After five minutes they saw campfires and all three were forced to their knees by blows from rifle butts into their backs and left under a guard of two men on the edge of the camp.
‘Are you all right, the two of you?’ asked Fonthill.
‘Me ’ead is singin’ but it’s me pride that’s wounded mostly,’ grunted Jenkins. ‘Sorry, bach sir, for sleepin’ at me post and fallin’ off into the water. It looks as though I’ve got us into a fine mess.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish.’
Chang squinted across at Simon with his good eye. ‘I think, cousin, that they now believe you that you have message for general and they go to fetch officer. But I think they will be jolly angry when they find you have no message.’
Fonthill shrugged. ‘I’ll think of something. I had to stop them shooting us out of hand. They’re Kansus, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. Not very nice people.’
‘By the sound of the guns, we are very near the settlements, if only we can get out of here.’
Jenkins looked down at his nakedness. ‘If we get through the lines, we’ll probably be arrested for indecency. Or catch cold and die of flu.’
Eventually, an order was barked from out of the semi-darkness and they were bundled forward, rifles at their backs, until they reached a large tent. Inside, a Kansu was seated at a trestle table. He was dressed and looked exactly the same as the soldiers but he was obviously an officer, for he was treated with great deference by the escorts. He spoke rapidly to Chang.
‘He want our names and where we come from and why we go downstream on log,’ he explained.
Fonthill nodded. ‘Give our names and ranks – captain and sergeant. You are our interpreter. Do not say that you are the son of a missionary. Explain that we escaped from Peking with a personal message for the general from Sir Claude MacDonald, the senior minister in the legations. We made for the river, where we hired a small boat. Upriver it hit an obstruction during the night and overturned, throwing us into the water. We were all asleep on deck in just our undergarments because of the heat. We found this log floating and hung onto it, because we were all poor swimmers.’
‘Blimey,’ muttered Jenkins. ‘There’s ingenious for you, isn’t it?’
Chang gave his translation, while Simon watched the officer closely to gauge his reactions. The man’s face was impassive. Then he spoke curtly.
‘He say, give him message and he will relay it to general.’
‘No. The message is confidential and is not written. I have orders to deliver it to the general personally. Ask him to take us to him immediately.’
‘He say, how you know general is here and not in Peking?’
‘Word came through to Sir Claude that the general had given up his command of the troops attacking the Wang Fu to direct operations against the Tientsin settlements.’
Fonthill sucked in his breath and hoped to God that Seymour’s information about the whereabouts of Tung Fu-hsiang was correct. If his gamble had failed then the odds on being shot straight away were short. But the officer’s face gave no indication either way.
The Kansu fixed his gaze on Fonthill, who returned it without blinking. The two stared at each other in silence for a full thirty seconds before the officer turned and barked a command.
Chang let out an audible sigh of relief. ‘We are to be taken to general,’ he whispered. ‘He gives orders that coats are to be found for us, for it would be insult to commander for us to appear before him naked.’
‘Quite right,’ muttered Jenkins. ‘Well, bach sir, first round to you. But you’d better think of a good message to deliver. The general wouldn’t be Sir Claude’s illegitimate son, by any chance, would he?’
Fonthill frowned. ‘Do be quiet, 352. I’m trying to think.’
Three dun-coloured coats were thrown around their shoulders, their hands were bound roughly behind their backs and they were pushed out of the tent. The first signs of dawn were streaking the sky to the east and they were marched away, following the officer and surrounded by a guard of Kansus. The gunfire was louder than ever and Fonthill realised that they must be near to the line surrounding the settlements, although little could be seen in the darkness.
This was confirmed as they climbed a hill and saw ahead, just out of rifle shot, a dark outline of buildings, linked by a low and indistinct line of what must be barricades. Troops were now all around them, crawling from their bedrolls and congregating around small open fires over which cooking pots were hung. To their right and behind them, cannon were firing desultorily and the sour smell of cordite hung on the air. At the top of the hill, tucked away among stunted trees, a large, low tent had be
en pitched, lit from within by a dim light.
‘Let’s ’ope that the general ’as slept well,’ muttered Jenkins.
They were forced to wait for ten minutes while the officer spoke with guards outside the tent and then disappeared inside it. Then they were pushed through an opening in the canvas.
The tent seemed even larger from within and three vertical poles supported the roof. To one side, sleeping mats had been spread and three women, dressed in traditional Chinese style but looking a little dishevelled, as if they had dressed hurriedly, were folding blankets. In the centre of the room stood a table on which a large map had been spread and, at the far end of the tent, a fourth woman was ladling rice into a wooden bowl set on a smaller table, behind which sat one of the largest men Fonthill had ever seen.
Although he was sitting, it was clear that he was not tall, perhaps Jenkins’s height. But he was wide – wider than the Welshman by far – and immensely fat. He was half-wearing a green tunic that had been buttoned up only to the midriff, revealing rolls of flesh. The head was either completely bald or shaven, although a long moustache adorned the upper lip, the ends of which hung down on either side of his mouth like rat’s tails. The man was eating rice and meat with chopsticks, displaying a delicacy of movement that denied the grossness of his appearance.
He looked up as the trio were ushered in and gestured briefly with his chopsticks. Immediately, rifles were crashed onto the shoulders of the three, forcing them to kneel before him.
Fonthill looked with interest at the general. He knew that the man enjoyed the confidence of the Empress, because of his diligence in stamping out isolated examples of insurgency in the north of China and his oft-declared hatred of the foreign barbarians whose presence in the country was humiliating its people and the Dragon Lady herself. He was a warlord in his own right in the north but he gave devoted allegiance to the Empress and had been one of the early supporters of the Boxers. His competence as a military leader had been reflected in the fact that the Peking sector that he commanded, the Wang Fu, had posed the greatest threat to the legations, causing the diligent Japanese who defended it to concede ground regularly, if stoically. Now he regarded the three prisoners with tiny eyes, set in a round, jowled face.
Fonthill decided to take the initiative.
‘Are you General Tung Fu-hsiang?’ he demanded, looking directly at the general, rather than Chang, who interpreted in a diffident voice.
There was an intake of breath from the dozen or so Kansus in the tent. It was, clearly, lèse-majesté for a prisoner to address the general without being spoken to first and a rifle butt crashed into his back, sending him sprawling.
Chang hurriedly answered, although no one had replied to the question. ‘Yes, cousin,’ he said, ‘this is the general. Please be careful.’
‘Then tell him I have a message for him from Sir Claude MacDonald.’
The general acknowledged the statement with a wave of his chopsticks. ‘Tell me the message,’ translated Chang.
‘No,’ said Fonthill. ‘I speak to no man while kneeling before him.’
There was another intake of breath, not least from Chang and Jenkins, and the general looked up, a flicker of interest momentarily lighting up his face. ‘Then you will be beheaded as you kneel,’ he replied, indicating for one of the guards to step forward and draw his long, curved sword.
‘Then you will not hear the message,’ answered Simon, still fixing his gaze on that of the general.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ muttered Jenkins. ‘Steady on, bach sir.’
A slow smile began to spread across the general’s face but he lowered his head and continued eating for a moment before looking up and growling a command to the officer. Immediately, Simon was levered to his feet.
‘Very well,’ said Simon. ‘I wish my companions to stand also.’
Another signal was given and Jenkins and Chang were brought to their feet, rifle barrels thrust under their armpits.
‘Now,’ said Fonthill. ‘Sir Claude MacDonald is the leader of the eleven foreign ministers who, with their staffs and families, are being kept under siege in Peking.’
‘He knows that,’ interpreted Chang, ‘and he says that the man is a fool.’
‘If he is a fool, he represents the British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world, which is three times the size of the Chinese Empire. He is also the elected leader of the ten other European powers who, with the British, have navies and armies thirty times the size of the Chinese. Sir Claude is imprisoned within the Legation Quarter but, even so, he sends his greetings to the general.’
At this, the Chinaman put down his chopsticks and leant back in his chair. Encouraged, Fonthill continued.
‘He respects the general, because he knows of his prowess as a fighting man and he respects his Kansu troops, who have a similar reputation. But he is afraid for the general’s life.’
Tung Fu-hsiang lifted his eyebrows and gestured for Simon to continue. ‘Yes,’ said Simon, ‘at this moment twenty thousand Russian troops are on their way to Taku from the Russian provinces in Asia and the British are also sending troops from India. The British Admiral Seymour has captured the great Chinese arsenal of Hsiku near here and has at his disposal great quantities of field guns, machine guns, rifles, and seven million rounds of small-arms ammunition.’ At this point, Chang held up his hand for Simon to slow down while he translated.
The general looked unimpressed. ‘You lie,’ he said. ‘We have both Peking and the Tientsin settlements surrounded and there are no reports of foreign reinforcements in Taku. Even if this were so, these are matters for the Empress, not me. Why should your minister fear for my life?’
There was a muted murmur of acquiescence from the soldiers in the room.
Fonthill drew in his breath. He had no knowledge of reinforcements being imminent. They would come, he had no doubt about that. But they would probably be too late. Nevertheless, he continued.
‘Because, General, the Foreign Powers, when they land and have defeated your outnumbered and outgunned army, will advance on Peking and storm the Forbidden City and the Manchu Palace. The Empress, of course, will not be harmed. She will be needed to reunite the country after the dreadful revenge that the powers will take on your people. But the generals who have supported the Boxers and led the attack on the capital and on the settlements will be killed – all of them.’
A silence fell on the room as Fonthill’s words were translated by Chang, who was now speaking in a loud and firm voice, as though taking heart from the words he was conveying.
A glance from Chang showed that he had finished and Simon hurried on. ‘However, because he admires your fighting spirit, Sir Claude is prepared to guarantee that you will live after punitive actions have been taken. But you must withdraw your men from the settlements immediately.’
‘Good try, bach sir,’ whispered Jenkins. ‘Good try.’
A slow smile spread across the round face of the general. He nodded his head slowly, as if in admiration of Simon’s audacity. Then he spoke slowly, giving time for Chang to translate, which he did with increasing glumness.
‘He say you speak with the honesty of a snake and the wisdom of a cow,’ he said. ‘The whole of China is rising against the foreign pigs who have defiled our country with their religion and allowed their missionaries to murder our babies.’ The general’s tone rose and his words became a rant. ‘None of your so-called armies will stand against the power of the Divine Empress. Just as we destroyed your pathetic attempt to relieve Peking so we will crush any further troops that land here.’
He paused. Then went on, ‘As for you three, you will die the death of a thousand lashes. Tie them to the posts.’
With a yell, the Kansus ran forward and seized the trio, untying their hands and then retying the wrists of each of them behind each of the three posts. Fonthill turned his head to issue a further threat in an attempt to save them. He saw a messenger come through the opening and say something in the gener
al’s ear, then, more ominously, six long whips being produced as six of the Kansus stripped off their shirts and took post, two to each of the intruders. It was clear that the men would take it in turns to deliver each stroke, giving the flogged no respite. The coats of the three were torn from their backs in preparation for the beginning of the torture.
Jenkins groaned and, half-turning to Simon, said, ‘Oh bloody ’ell. Not again.’
Fonthill, who was pinioned to the furthest of the poles on the left, turned his head. ‘I am sorry, lads,’ he said. ‘The gamble failed. Thank you both for—’
But he was interrupted by a cry from Tung Fu-hsiang. Immediately the whips were lowered and Simon felt a finger prod the middle of his naked back. He also felt the general’s breath on his cheek. It reeked of cinnamon and other spices. The Chinaman prodded his back once more and turned and shouted to Chang.
‘He says, what are those marks?’
Puzzled, Simon replied, ‘They are the marks of the flogging we received from the Mahdi at Khartoum, in the Sudan. My comrade next to me was also whipped. What does it matter?’ The punishment had been administered more than fifteen years before but the tan which they had both received on the slow plod on the ship across the Pacific a few months ago had not concealed the scars, which now stood out like white wheals.
‘He say, how many lashes you receive?’
What was this about? Fonthill sighed. Perhaps the bastard would double the dose for them – but he had already promised a thousand, which was the death penalty, so it didn’t matter. ‘I had fifty lashes and Jenkins twenty-five.’
‘Ah!’ The ejaculation came from Tung Fu-hsiang, who immediately jumped in front of Simon and Jenkins, removed his jacket and turned his back. A gasp came from the soldiers now crowded into the tent to witness the entertainment, for the general’s back also bore the signature of the lash, criss-crossed and standing out whitely, like those of Fonthill and Jenkins.
‘He say,’ said Chang, his voice a little louder now, ‘he say he got forty lashes as young man from Empress’s nephew, the deposed Emperor, a cowardly man. He salutes you two as similar brave warriors. These are marks of courage. Many men die as result.’