Party in Peking

by Margaret Pemberton

  Olivia grasped the door, turning to look at her aunt. ‘I can!’ she said, her eyes feral.

  ‘Olivia, wait!’ Her uncle was crossing the room towards her. ‘Letitia is right. What you are intending to do is madness. It’s nothing short of suicide.’

  ‘Does Mrs Sinclair know that Rory is still in the Peitang?’ she asked, already determining her quickest route.

  Her uncle looked at her blankly and then recollection filled his eyes. ‘Mrs Sinclair is dead,’ he said heavily. ‘It happened some months ago in a Boxer attack on the village they were living in.’

  The floor seemed to shelve up to meet her. She clung tightly to the doorknob.

  ‘And we didn’t know,’ her aunt was saying, her words spilling over one another in her eagerness to impart the news. ‘Sir Claude knew and everyone else seemed to know, but we didn’t, not until after Doctor Sinclair came here and…and…’ She faltered, seeing too late where her chatter was leading her.

  ‘Why, did he come to the house?’ Olivia asked, her voice beating against her ears, high and brittle.

  Letitia looked helplessly at her husband and then, as he remained silent, said nervously, ‘He wished to speak to you Olivia. He wished to ask for your hand in marriage.’

  Olivia gave a small cry that sounded as if it had been torn from her heart and her uncle said awkwardly, ‘Your aunt told him that you were soon to marry Phillippe. She did it for the best. She thought that Doctor Sinclair’s wife was alive and…’

  Olivia did not wait to hear any more. She had heard all that she needed. At last she understood. Everything was clear. Only one more thing was necessary. To rescue Rory and bring him back to the safety of the Legation.

  Chapter Ten

  The corridor was crammed with nervous, hysterical ladies searching for suitable material with which to make sandbags. Doors opened on to rooms where sewing machines whirred frantically. She caught a glimpse of Lady MacDonald, her best curtains clutched against her bosom as she hurried with them into one of the hastily converted sewing-rooms. Other ladies were scurrying back and forth with monogrammed pillowcases and silk pyjamas and bales and bales of exquisite Chinese brocade.

  She darted between them, running feverishly towards the head of the stairs. A score of Chinese schoolgirls, their meagre belongings clasped in their arms, were struggling upwards against a tide of coolies pushing their way down to retrieve more of the diplomatic ladies’ possessions. It was nearly impossible to move and Olivia had to push and squeeze her way between the throng, her heart pounding.

  There were only four hours before the ultimatum expired. When it did so, not only Boxers would descend in full force. They would be augmented by the Empress’s troops. By Manchu Bannermen with modern weapons. By General Tung Fu-hsiang’s Kansu warriors. As she struggled through the crowds massing the entrance hall she knew that if she found herself on the streets at four o’clock she would have to remain there. The walls surrounding the Legation compound would be barricaded, the gates so heavily defended that no one would be able to pass through.

  Even now, as she hurried out into the gardens, she knew with a flare of panic that leaving the Legation would not be easy. The lawn was crowded with soldiers and civilians. The hectic activity that had been taking place when she had entered had now been stepped up to a pitch of frantic turmoil. Sandbags were being hauled up on to walls; trenches were being dug; fire buckets replenished. And the gates were under heavy guard.

  She hovered twenty or thirty yards away, knowing full well that she would be refused permission to pass. From the west side of the city came the noise of firecrackers and a cacophony of horns and bugles. She wondered if it were the Boxers celebrating their destruction of the missions and shops and homes of the Christian Chinese and dug her nails into her palms.

  She had to leave the compound. There were no soldiers to help defend the Peitang. Rory could not be left to die, while his father, believing him to be in the legation, saved the lives of others.

  She moved forward determinedly and then caught her breath. The soldiers were hastily unbarring the gate. She saw an overloaded cart approach creakily, heard the firing from beyond, and did not hesitate. Her heart pounding, she raced to the gate and as the soldiers struggled with the heavy wooden bars defending it, squeezed past the cart and out into the street.

  She could hear them shouting furiously after her, but she did not pause. Her heart hammering crazily, she ran furiously in the direction of Legation Street. The heat was no longer heavy and still; a north wind from the Gobi Desert was blowing sand down into the city and she longed for a scarf to cover her nose and mouth. More fiercely still, as she battled her way through the crowds, she longed for Lewis’s pistol.

  The smell of fear was everywhere. Chinese, fleeing from the destruction in the west of the city, could find no shelter in the east. No one knew where the roaming bands of Boxers were. Where they would strike next. Olivia pushed onwards down Legation Street, her aunt’s words singing in her ears. Lewis loved her! He had come to the house to ask for her hand in marriage! She had only to see him again for all the misunderstandings to be over. The future stretched before her, clear and shining. She would be Lewis’s wife, a mother to Rory. They would be a family and would never be separated again. Never.

  In the great wide thoroughfare bisecting the city she halted abruptly. The Chien Men, the huge, one-hundred-feet high, triple-tiered central gate was nothing but a smoking, blackened husk. The whole city was being destroyed, not just the Christian quarter and she wondered if the Empress Dowager, immured in the heart of her Summer Palace, either knew or cared.

  The Peitang was over two miles away and unlike the other cathedrals and missions, was not in the Tartar City but within the blind, purple-stained walls of the Imperial City. Peking carts veered wildly past, their dark blue hoods flapping, their drivers exhorting the horses to even greater speeds.

  She stepped hastily out of the way, forging relentlessly through the crush towards the massive, castellated Tien An Men Gate. Tien An Men meant the Gate of Heavenly Peace, but there was nothing heavenly or peaceful about the ragged, squalid and diseased crowds surging beneath its ornate wooden eaves.

  The sound of horns and bugles that she had heard earlier now became louder and the Chinese scrambled frantically out of the way as a squadron of cavalry burst into the street. For a second Olivia’s heart leapt and she almost expected to see Lewis‘ s black stallion at their head, but then she, too, pressed herself into the throng so that she should not be noticed.

  The cavalry were not Europeans. They were white-turbanned, their waving banners scarlet and black and the weapons that they flaunted were modern Mausers. Olivia saw their weather-beaten, hardened faces as they rode past and guessed that they were General Tung Fu-hsiang’s famous Kansu warriors.

  Were they riding out towards the legations? Were they going to attack before the stated hour of four o’clock? Determination hardened within her. There could be no going back now. She could only go onward, to the Peitang and to Rory.

  Mat-shed booths clustered three deep in the shadow of the high and purple walls and she ran past them, gasping for breath. She was nearly there. Already she could see the soaring stone façade of the Cathedral as it dwarfed the low, surrounding buildings. She wondered how effectively Bishop Favier and his priests had barricaded themselves and just how difficult it would be to gain entry, refusing to even think that she might not be able to do so.

  The hot, dry wind carried with it the smell of smoke and her thoughts turned to the Anglican Mission and Sister Angelique, and then there were cries of terror and the crowd in front of her began to surge backwards, stampeding in terror.

  She caught a glimpse of scarlet. Of lethal swords brandished high; orgiastic howls of ‘Sha! Sha!’ thundered in her ears and then she was knocked to the ground as the fleeing peasants sought to escape the wave after wave of Boxers, leaping and charging down on them.

  Her hands were splayed on the dustbeaten earth. She wa
s trodden on, kicked. Vainly she tried to struggle to her feet and was knocked once more to the ground.

  A Chinese ran past her, blood streaming copiously from a cut on his head. A sob rose in her throat. She didn’t want to die in the street. To die before she had been able to tell Lewis that she loved him. She clenched her fists, her eyes bright. She would not do so! The matshed booths and shops were only yards away. She scrambled to her hands and knees and then ran determinedly for the nearest cavernous door.

  Seconds later she was imprisoned in stinking, claustrophobic darkness. The pounding, running feet outside shook the makeshift walls and roof. She was aware of other people in close proximity, their breathing harsh and heavy. She closed her eyes as the sounds from outside became more hideous and the smell of blood fouled the air.

  It would take only one lighted brand to be tossed on the roof and she would be burned alive with people she could not even see. She pressed her hands on the rough wood behind her, praying for the horror to be over. The door rattled and the dark, heavy shape of a body slid sickeningly down against it. After what seemed an eternity the shouts and cries grew fainter until at last there was silence.

  She looked around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. An old man was crouched in one corner, a woman at his side. They were gazing at her with wide-eyed horror, as if she were responsible for the massacre on their doorstep.

  ‘I think they’ve gone,’ she said at last, unsteadily.

  The old man muttered unintelligibly, showing no desire to leave his corner. The woman stood up nervously.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ Olivia asked, wondering how she was going to open the door with the weight of the body against it. Her question was met by a look of blankness. She sighed. ‘The door,’ she said, tapping the wood behind her. ‘Please help me to open it.’

  She had to get outside. She could not stay like a cornered rat, hiding in the gloom until the roof above her head was ignited by cinders. For a little while only the dead and the dying would be in the streets outside. It would take her ten minutes, perhaps less, to reach the Cathedral. If she did not go now, she might not have another chance.

  She put her shoulder to the door and pushed. It opened a little way and more light penetrated the darkness, but the body slumped across it prevented it from opening enough to allow her to step outside.

  ‘The door,’ she repeated impatiently to the watching peasant woman. Hesitantly the dark-clad figure stepped forward. Olivia leaned her shoulder against the wood. ‘I need you to push,’ she said, ‘like this.’

  The woman nodded and as the old man continued to mutter incoherently, she leaned her weight against the door.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Olivia gratefully. ‘Now push!’ This time the door opened wider. The disturbed body toppled sideways and with a shiver of distaste Olivia lifted up her skirt and stepped over it and into the street.

  At the sight that met her eyes she pressed her hands against her mouth. The dead lay with the dying, the parched earth saturated with blood. Survivors were edging from darkened doorways, searching for friends and relatives and a low keening noise filled the air, so terrible that she knew she would never be able to forget it. Despairingly she began to stumble once more in the direction of the Cathedral, filled with terror at the thought of what she might find there.

  More horsemen galloped into the street, this time not General Tung Fu-hsiang’s warriors but barbarically splendid Manchu Bannermen. They rode uncaringly over the dead and injured, banners waving high. They were ready for war, loaded with rifles and carbines, and heading towards the Legation Quarter. Hardly daring to breathe, she watched them as they clattered by. The Boxers were now the least of their troubles. The Empress Dowager had come out in open support of the rebels, as Lewis had said she would, and now it was not only swords and lances they had to fight, but trained soldiers and modern weapons as well.

  Wave after wave of them surged down the street, the vivid colours of their jackets and the emblems depicted on them searing the eye. Their trousers were scarlet, embroidered with huge black dragons. The banners they carried were gold and crimson, blue and yellow, triangular and square, a blazing jumble of colours and shapes. In their wake ran foot soldiers, their swords contrasting sharply with the modern carbines slung across the backs of the cavalry. There were hundreds of them. A whole army riding out to attack a compound three-quarters of a mile square, defended only by pyjama silk and damask-curtained sandbags.

  The minutes ticked by and still they came and Olivia knew with dreadful certainty that she would not be able to enter the Legation Quarter again. It would be completely circled by General Tung Fu-hsiang’s warriors and Manchu Bannermen. If the Peitang doors were closed against her, there would be nowhere she could go. Nowhere she could hide.

  The last of the soldiery rode by and she was grateful for the concealing clouds of dusk gouged up by the horses’ hooves. As the crowd surged once more into the street she merged with them but for every inch of headway she made, she was knocked back a yard. The Peitang’s ornate Gothic façade soared before her but she could not reach the walls surrounding it, much less its doors.

  The air was now thick with smoke as fresh fires broke out and ash rained down on her hair and shoulders. Again and again she tried to push her way forward, only to be jostled further and further back. Panic began to well up in her. There was only an hour or so before the ultimatum ran out. Before not only the Boxers, but the troops began a full-scale attack. The milling peasants in the streets and squares around the Peitang would be replaced by Manchu Bannermen and she would either be killed in the crush or shot by a Chinese bullet. If only she could see another European face! But the Peitang’s doors and gates were closed as the crowd surrounding it became increasingly hostile, blaming its occupants for the carnage they were suffering.

  The pressure of bodies on all sides was stifling. She tried with fresh determination to force her way through the eddying mass and a pig-tailed Chinese turned on her savagely.

  ‘Kuie-tzu!’ he hissed, ‘Foreign devil!’ From all around her the cry was taken up and suddenly she was no longer part of the crowd but a creature apart. An object for their hatred.

  ‘Kuie-tzu! Kuie-tzu!’ A sea of ferocious faces chanted, and then her hair was seized and a nightmare forest of hands grabbed her. Her hair tumbled from its pins; pearl buttons were torn from her blouse, and she screamed loud and high.

  She didn’t see the Peking cart being driven savagely through the crowds towards the Cathedral. Didn’t see its driver rein in sharply as the cries of ‘Foreign devil!’ filled the air. She was fighting for her life—kicking, scratching, biting, as the hate-crazed crowd tried to tear her limb from limb.

  She could no longer see clearly. Everything was a blood-red haze. She could feel herself being pressed down, down, and then, as she lashed out vainly with her small booted feet, she was aware that the baying yells of those attacking her had changed into cries of pain and outrage. A human whirlwind had descended on them, parting them like a scythe in a sea of corn. She could see the black tumble of his hair, the raging blaze in his eyes, his white-hot fury as he hurled first one pig-tailed Chinese over the heads of the crowd, and then another.

  ‘Lewis!’ She could barely breathe, scarcely stand. His arm was around her waist, she could hear the slam of his heart, feel the heat of his body.

  ‘What the devil,’ he asked savagely as he forced a way through the still frantically shouting Chinese, ‘ do you think you are doing?’

  She half fell against the Peking cart. ‘Rory isn’t in the British Legation. He’s still in the Peitang,’ she gasped as he picked her up in his uninjured arm and threw her bodily into the rear of the blue cloth-covered cart.

  ‘I know,’ he hurled back at her. ‘Hold tight.’

  The cart lurched into movement. The shouts intensified and she could smell the hatred and sweat of the Chinese hemming them in on all sides. She gripped the low wooden sides as Lewis drove roughshod through their midst.
She could hear him shouting in English. Hear a heavily accented, European voice bellowing in reply and then they were hurtling into the Cathedral’s compound and Lewis was swinging her down from the cart. As they raced towards the Cathedral’s great doors they were flung open by a young French naval officer. ‘ Hurry!’ he yelled at them. ‘Vite! Vite!’ and then bullets whizzed over their heads, ploughing into the ground and ricocheting off the Cathedral’s stone-grey façade.

  With a savage expletive Lewis seized hold of her, his arm so tight around her waist that she was almost lifted off her feet. Bullets spat around them, cannon fire thundered deafeningly and then the Cathedral’s massive door slammed shut behind them and as Olivia half fell against him, gasping for breath, Lewis said tersely to the Frenchman.

  ‘How many men have you?’

  ‘Two officers and forty-one French and Italian sailors.’

  ‘And refugees?’

  ‘Somewhere between three and four thousand. Less than a hundred are European. There are twenty-two Sisters of Charity, a handful of priests… and ourselves.’

  Lewis swore softly beneath his breath. She wanted to take him in her arms. To tell him then and there that she loved him. That she had no intention of marrying Phillippe Casanaeve. That it was him that she wanted to marry. His jaw was granite-hard, his eyes narrow, and she remained silent, knowing that now was not the time nor the place to speak to him.

  There was another volley of gunfire, loud and sustained and he turned to her, his face grim.

  ‘Tell Bishop Favier that I am here. And Rory,’ and then he spun on his heel, running to a vantage point, his pistol in his hand, the young Frenchman in his wake.

  Rory. She had to find him. Had to reassure him that his father was safe. And she had to discover what food and medical supplies there were. How long they could survive under siege.

  ‘Not very long,’ Bishop Favier said to her gravely. ‘I laid in a substantial store of supplies, fearing that this was what would happen, but I did not foresee the very great number of refugees who would seek shelter here. We have rice, beans and millet, but little else.’