by Peter Watt
‘I understand your need to go in search of your daughter, Mr Wong,’ Robert said. ‘But this so-called truce is as shaky as anything could be. They have already indicated the truce is all but over.’
John sucked on a cigar as both men stood behind a loopholed barricade with a view of the golden-topped Forbidden City, seemingly rising out of a sea of green.
‘Surely you could convince your superiors to launch a raid into the city to collect intelligence,’ John replied. ‘I have seen the Japanese buying rifles and ammo from Chinese soldiers and bartering for eggs.’
‘It is not that simple,’ Robert sighed. ‘That happens only from the safety of our defences and we have a good idea that the enemy is still in great strength in the city. You know that I care for Naomi very much and if it were up to me I would not hesitate to go out alone in search of her. But we know that she is safe for the moment and I advise that we wait until a relief force arrives.’
‘I have looked around the legation area and can see that by night the canal is a way to get out of here,’ John said.
‘We need every gun we can muster to man the defences, Mr Wong,’ Robert said. ‘I cannot order you to remain, but would beg you consider what I have advised.’
John took another puff on the cigar and watched the blue smoke curl away over the top of the sandbags. Swayed by the British officer’s logic, he would give the relief force another week and if by then they had not arrived, it was most likely the rapidly reinforced Chinese army would overwhelm them. That would put the Chinese in a position to bargain with the Western powers allied against them.
John might have had information concerning his daughter but he had heard nothing about Andrew and it was this absence of news that worried him most. He gazed around and could see the pitiful state of the defenders living on meagre rations of rice and horse meat. Starvation might beat the Chinese to a victory, he thought. Despite the rumours of a relief force, the reality was that the Chinese were mustering for an all-out attack. Maybe the British officer was right. Every man toting a gun was needed on the lines. Besides his son and daughter, John now had one other to consider protecting – Liza.
Tung had provided Naomi with new quarters adjoining the palaces of the Empress and even a young servant girl to look after her needs. Fresh food arrived at her spacious rooms with their marbled floors and walls decorated with bright murals. Water was available and Naomi had a chance to bathe and change into clean clothes, albeit still the simple coolie outfit of trousers and long-sleeved flowing shirt. Despite her seeming freedom she was aware that she was still a prisoner and did not doubt Tung would have her executed, should she dare attempt an escape.
Her imprisonment took a turn when Meili found her way to an utterly surprised and overjoyed Naomi.
‘I was able to slip away from Han and his men,’ she said, as the two women sat in a shady garden by a water fountain holding hands. ‘He has been in a terrible rage, swearing to kill Commander Tung. His rage has been so fierce that he was not aware of my existence, so I slipped away one night to go to Commander Tung and plead with him to be allowed to join you.’
‘Why is it that Han wishes to kill Commander Tung?’ Naomi asked.
‘He is jealous of Commander Tung, but with a man like Han I think a demon worm crawls through his head. He does not have to have a reason to want to kill anyone,’ Meili answered. ‘Commander Tung must be very aware that Han will not rest until he has his head before his feet.’
Naomi thought about the threat to Tung. She surprised herself with her thoughts of concern, as the man was also her captor, promising her death should she attempt to escape. But despite this threat she had many opportunities to be in his company and share his conversation.
In the evenings Tung would retreat to her quarters and share his evening meal with her while his men stood guard outside. Never once had the Boxer leader attempted to force his attentions on her. Naomi was aware, as only a woman can be, that this mysterious man was interested in her as a woman of beauty and intellect.
Their conversations – shared over good wine and cool watermelon in the evenings – ranged from Tung’s vision of a new China – where the people lived under a benign leader with rights before the law – to his reflections on the life he had experienced in his past as a Shaolin priest.
Sometimes he laughed at a joke, and Naomi was aware of how his normally serious expression lit up with a warmth that he could not conceal. Sometimes she had to remind herself that there was a man waiting for her on the other side of the barricades – a young British officer who had been on the verge of openly declaring his lifelong love for her. One thing Naomi had to concede was that the former Shaolin priest was a very attractive and desirable man.
Her unspoken reflections concerning Tung and Robert were suddenly interrupted when she paled and buckled to vomit. The sickness had started a week earlier and Meili cast her a worried look. ‘You are with child,’ she said bluntly.
‘I cannot be,’ Naomi gasped, wiping her mouth with cool, clear water from the fountain.
‘It is something I have seen before,’ Meili said. ‘Have you missed your time?’
Naomi looked at Meili with an expression of fear and nodded.
‘Then you are carrying a child,’ Meili said.
Naomi had attempted to deny to herself something she had suspected for a week. The signs were there and if she were pregnant then the chances were that she was carrying the baby of the man she hated most in the world – Han.
‘Oh please, God, no,’ Naomi whispered in English, causing Meili to question her with a look. ‘It is nothing,’ Naomi replied in Chinese and bent over to be sick again, the retching this time brought on by the terrible realisation that she might one day give birth to a child conceived by a monster.
That evening Tung brought Andrew to meet with his sister. Andrew and Naomi fell into each other’s arms, weeping and hugging as Tung discreetly left the room to leave brother and sister together for the night, as they had much to discuss.
For hours until the morning’s first light they exchanged all they knew, catching up on events to the present moment. The only matter Naomi did not mention was that she thought she might be pregnant.
‘I have not had a chance to speak with Tung,’ Andrew said. ‘He has been very distant with me. I guess he cannot be seen to be friendly with a man considered the enemy of the Boxer movement.’
‘I worry about Father,’ Naomi said. ‘What will happen to him if the Imperial troops and the Boxers overrun the legation?’
Andrew did not have an answer, and at first light a guard came to take him away.
Tung brooded over the map of the city. The former governor of Shantung province, Li Peng-heng, had arrived to take command of the northern armies. Tung knew of the man’s extreme hatred of foreigners; already high-ranking officials in the Empress’s court who had advised a more moderate approach to dealing with the Europeans had been executed. As a favourite of the Empress, Li Peng-heng had promised that he would escalate the attacks on the legation and the warriors of the Boxer movement had been heartened by his arrival and rallied strongly behind him.
Tung already knew from his intelligence sources that the European forces slowly advancing on Pekin would defeat them with sheer force of arms and it had only been his clever organisation of intelligence that had helped save Andrew Wong’s life. Tung had even recruited a favoured bodyguard of his uncle, without the general’s knowledge, to pass on any information from the Imperial army headquarters. It had been through that source that Tung had learned of Andrew’s capture and Han’s treachery, and with his loyal contingent of warriors, Tung had been able to rescue Andrew from a terrible death.
The most disturbing matter to arise was that Tung had learned that Han was the favoured man of the new commander, and would already be currying favour with him to Tung’s mortal danger. It was not just himself that he had to protect, but also the lives of Andrew and Naomi. Would it be wise to assist Naomi and Andrew to
rejoin their father in the legation? He agonised. Considering the new commander it was very possible for the legation to fall, despite the advance of relief forces, and then all within the legation would be slaughtered.
Tung walked away from the map on his table and gazed out the open door of his office, surveying the sea of colourfully uniformed warriors and soldiers mustering. They were still a formidable force, as the advancing troops from the allied European armies had discovered to their woe, suffering heavy casualties in the process. Tung’s intelligence had informed him that naval brigades from the colonies of Australia were among the advancing troops. This was to be expected when he considered the colonies as lackeys of the British lion. As Tung was not a gambling man, he could not throw a dice to choose which option was best. He drew a deep breath and sighed. Was it that he wanted to keep Naomi close because he was drawn to her? For the moment he thought it would be best to see what the new army commander would do. After that, he would be in a better position to decide their fates.
The Chinese soldier, armed with a rifle, moved cautiously between the piles of rubble. John lifted his rifle and rested the stock on the loophole made of bricks. Fifty yards, he calculated, as the enemy rifleman disappeared behind a scrap heap of masonry.
‘You reckon you can pick him off, Mr Wong?’ Private Larry Gilles whispered.
John nodded, waited and calculated where the Chinese sharpshooter would take a shot at them from. He and the US marine occupied a forward position to give early warning to the barricades behind them. It had once been a Chinese position but now lay in no-man’s-land between the lines. Lieutenant Simpson had recognised that his soldier and the Australian civilian made a good team and had already accounted for many rebels. Both had crept in under the cover of darkness to take up their positions and would remain until night came again for their retreat from the improvised hide. By then it would have been identified by the Chinese sharpshooters, whose accuracy was to be respected.
John took a deep breath and then breathed out slowly, allowing the foresight to settle on a section of the masonry from where he suspected the Chinese marksman would emerge to observe the barricades. He winced at a sharp, stabbing pain as his chest still hurt but the wound was healing remarkably well. His guess was correct; he could see the top of the soldier’s head appearing slowly above the rubble.
The rifle bucked in John’s hands, at the same time as he saw a tiny red film rise above the rubble. The Chinese marksman had disappeared with a short-lived scream.
‘Got him!’ Larry exclaimed, observing the fall of shot.
John settled back, sliding the bolt on his rifle to eject the spent cartridge and chamber a fresh round. He took no satisfaction from his skill but, at the same time, felt nothing for the man he had just killed. ‘You take the next one,’ he said softly to the marine beside him.
Larry lifted his rifle to seek out any other foolish Chinese soldier seeking a position to snipe at them. A shower of incoming bullets plucked the dirt and stones around their position, showering them with dust and rock chips. It had not taken the enemy long to identify where their man had been shot from and John doubted that Larry would find another target. More importantly, they would have to be alert to a possible sudden charge against them by the numerous enemy troops on the other side of the improvised wall of bricks they had constructed to edge closer to the legation defences.
John had time to reflect on his life while he waited for the darkness to come, and for them to pull out. His thoughts drifted from his children to Liza and back to whether he would live long enough to embrace any of them again. He was experiencing that terrible darkness that comes to men constantly in combat, the sense that he had used up his life already and it was only a matter of time before a rifle round found him. It had only been the existence of the little stone dragon that had saved his life earlier and now that was buried in Robert’s quarters. Superstition was something John normally dismissed as the prerogative of the ignorant. But in this place and time he wondered why he had ever thought that. The siege seemed to have no end.
Andrew clamped his hands down on the Chinese soldier’s leg to stem the blood spouting into the air in time to the beat of the man’s heart. The Chinese soldier did not scream but moaned his despair. So many, Andrew thought, amid the wounded brought to him from the Chinese barricades. He had been able to obtain a few rudimentary medical instruments and a small amount of medicine to treat the men he once considered the enemy. Tung had helped set him up in a section of the buildings that had been crudely improvised as a hospital.
By Andrew’s side kneeled the Chinese girl, Meili, who now was rapidly learning the business of nursing battle-wounded men.
‘Here, hold down with both hands,’ he said, turning to Meili with a blood-soaked face. She obeyed and Andrew sought for metal clamps among the surgical instruments but when he turned back he could see Meili squatting on her ankles with her bloody hands in her lap. Their patient no longer moaned and blood no longer pulsed from the leg where the vital artery had been severed. ‘He is dead,’ she said bluntly.
Andrew reached over her to feel for a pulse. ‘He is dead,’ he concurred. ‘How did you know?’ he asked the girl.
‘I could not feel his blood moving and he was not breathing,’ she replied, wiping her hands on her trousers.
‘Impressive,’ Andrew said in English, respecting the girl’s commonsense.
Without wasting time, Andrew stood and moved to examine the next soldier lying on the stone paved floor. The young Chinese soldier stared up at Andrew. The man was clutching his ripped stomach and Andrew gently moved his hands away. ‘Scissors,’ he said, reaching behind him and feeling the implement placed in his hand. He cut the shirt to see the soldier’s stomach had been torn open, exposing his intestines. Andrew passed the scissors back to Meili and searched among the medical supplies for a needle and cotton.
‘This is going to hurt,’ he said as gently as he could to the young soldier, whose face was pale with shock.
Andrew carefully stuffed the protruding intestines back into the man’s stomach cavity and began to sew the skin together, sealing in the internal organs. There was a slight chance that he might save this one, Andrew thought, and felt like laughing at himself. He was not a qualified doctor and under any other circumstances such treatment might have had him before a legal court for malpractice. But his training had been advanced enough for him to know what he was doing, and in the situation he found himself he was the nearest thing to a doctor they would ever have, and Meili the closest thing to a nurse.
He was not aware that Tung had entered the room and stood watching as Andrew focused on his work of saving lives.
‘You are doing good work with our wounded,’ Tung said.
Andrew turned to look up at the Boxer commander. ‘I wish I could do more,’ he said, finishing the last stitch. ‘But I am not really a doctor.’
‘That soldier you are sewing up will probably live,’ Tung countered. ‘Is that not what a doctor does?’
Andrew rose to his feet and faced Tung. ‘You have not given me the opportunity to thank you for saving my life,’ Andrew said. ‘And for the kindness you have shown to my sister.’
‘We are not all like Commander Han,’ Tung replied. ‘I do not apologise for trying to kill those in the legation, as they are the occupiers of my country. But I do not condone the methods used by men like Han.’
‘I saw you burning the library,’ Andrew said. ‘Is not that a barbaric act by a man such as yourself?’
A pained expression clouded Tung’s face. ‘I did not want to carry out that order, but if I did not I would have been seen as disloyal to the cause. As it is I am aware that my life may be measured in hours or days, now that I have lost the patronage of my uncle. Han has a powerful friend in our new commander and I have no doubt that even now he is plotting my demise.’
‘What will you do?’ Andrew asked, knowing the answer also had to include the fate of himself and his sister.
‘I do not know,’ Tung sighed. ‘If I thought that it would be safe for you and your sister to return to your father in the legation I would arrange for you to do so. But I fear with the zeal of the new commander the legation will be overrun and all within slaughtered.’
Andrew understood the dilemma Tung faced and could feel no animosity to him. The memories of their many conversations before arriving in Pekin returned to him. Ironically, Andrew mused, he was now fighting to save the lives of men wounded in the cause to free China and his loyalty was now being tested. He found that he had a deep sympathy for what Tung was attempting to do.
‘Even if you choose to return us to the legation,’ Andrew said, ‘I will choose to remain here to tend the wounded. My sister may have other ideas.’
Tung was startled. ‘To choose to remain with us would make you an enemy of your people,’ he cautioned.
‘My people,’ Andrew replied. ‘I had no choice in where I was born, but I can choose where I die. My people are here,’ he said, indicating the room of wounded with a sweeping gesture. ‘I am Chinese. The woman that I loved and lost was a poor peasant girl who would not have died if the European community behind the legation walls really cared about us. No matter what I might achieve in a European society I will always remain a Chink, as they call us. Here, I can be of value to a people who deserve some kind of peace in their lives after centuries of suffering at the hands of war lords and invaders. I have come to believe that we can be a strong and great nation in this century and by swearing my allegiance to your cause I can remain to carry out the work I was destined to do.’
At first Tung frowned, then he stepped forward to clasp Andrew by the elbow. ‘You are welcome and I will call you brother but you will lose much in choosing to join our cause. You may even lose your life.’
Andrew shook his head. ‘At first I blamed you and all those who stood with you for the death of Liling, but I have come to see that if she had been European then she would have been granted the best treatment possible. I tried to get help but was turned down by the Europeans. They will call me a traitor, I know that, but I do not feel like a traitor.’