Casca 18: The Cursed

by Barry Sadler

  But the baron sat unmoving. From time to time his forehead would knit in a puzzled frown, or he would stare out of the window at the distant hills.

  Of a sudden he leaped to his feet, startling the girl. "Peace, little one," he calmed her. "Tell me, have you studied the thinking of the sage Lao Tze?"

  "But of course, lord."

  "And in his writings, Liang Yongming, do you remember something of a white barbarian whom he met in the far realms of Rome and who became his disciple?"

  "Ah yes" Liang smiled "the myth of the mortal who slew the Christian demigod and became himself some sort of immortal. It is one of Lao Tze's few flights of fantasy. No doubt he invented the legend as some sort of moral lesson."

  So I have always thought, the baron mused, until now. He gestured for the girl to pour his tea and sat down again.

  His secretary entered and bowed respectfully. "Baron Ying," the young man said, "Dr. Hollington Teng has arrived in Tsungkow. His messenger has just arrived, and he says that Dr. Teng is even now approaching this palace."

  "Ah ha, the very best of news. Make ready to welcome our esteemed visitor. And send our own doctor to the barbarian prisoner. Tell Poon Fong I would have Hollington Teng talk with this prisoner if there is enough of his mentality left intact to make it worthwhile."

  The door to the doctor's room opened and the old nun jerked her hand away from Casca's leg. The old doctor stood in the doorway. She spoke to him in Chinese that made Casca's teeth grate.

  "Good afternoon, Poon Fong, I have been giving your prisoner some spiritual guidance at the bidding of Father Mulcahy. I will go now and tell him of his condition."

  She quickly left the room. The old man approached the bench. Casca saw his eyes widen as he took in the dozens of raised red welts that crisscrossed Casca's body like highlights on the network of old wound scars.

  "I see that Sister Martina has been using the same form of spiritual stimulant she exercises on the boys at the Catholic school. She has great faith in the efficacy of her feather duster to inculcate spirituality." He laughed heartily. "Fortunately she is not very strong."

  Poon Fong stood staring at the red welts. "They should still be worsening, but they are fading as I watch." He ran a finger along the great scar where Casca's chest had once been opened on an Aztec pyramid. "Baron Ying has told me that under the water treatment you told him much of mystery. I see much mystery here in these scars. This cut alone should have killed you, and I see others as bad."

  "I don't know what I told them."

  "The truth, of course."

  "But I have withstood much greater torture."

  "Perhaps. But the objective of the water treatment is not to injure the prisoner, but only to learn what he knows. It is in the nature of man to tell what he knows, and the water treatment merely removes the restraints of self-interest, loyalty, duty, and frees the tongue to relieve the mind." He stopped undoing the straps and stooped to stare into Casca's eyes.

  "Unfortunately, when there is much resistance the eventual effect is very powerful, and the mind is left exhausted. Can you remember anything?"

  "A little. But it doesn't seem to fit together too well."

  "Perhaps we can do something with a little help from the gods." He went to the small altar that stood in the corner of the room, bowed to the brass idol, and lit two joss sticks. "Perhaps Pao Sheng Ta Ti, the god of healing, will assist our efforts."

  He opened a wooden box and selected a very long gold needle. He pushed it deep into Casca's abdomen. Casca looked down to see the needle penetrating deeper and deeper as the doctor twirled it. He began to feel very much at ease.

  "That feels good, Doctor, but may I remind you that the problem is in my head."

  "Ah yes, I have heard of this quaint Western superstition that memory resides in the brain." Unconcernedly he went on twirling the long needle. The crazy jumble of memories started once more to flash through Casca's mind.

  The romping, giggling, cavorting women gave way to one woman lying asleep, a small smile on her lips as he kissed her and slipped out of their bed.

  Neda the first woman he had really loved, and he had left her because he loved her. There were others whose faces he saw that he felt similarly for, but not too many. Mostly he saw asses and tits and felt vague stirrings of lust.

  And all the men he had killed. And here and there a woman, too. There seemed to be no end to the dead. And his own deaths. He shuddered as he relived each one. Mercifully they mostly ran together like different versions of the same experience.

  He recalled enlisting in the Seventh Legion under the Emperor Augustus, then serving in the Tenth. And then he recalled that day on Golgotha when Jesus cursed him to live until he came again.

  He recalled the fight with his sergeant over his whore that same night. They had killed each other, but Casca had survived. And since then he had survived countless deaths.

  He had flashes of when he was a gladiator, a slave in a copper mine, a galley slave, a great chief, a warlord, a god.

  He slipped into a tranquil sleep and the doctor withdrew the needle. He had done all that he could to restore the vanished memory. Sometimes it worked. Perhaps the curse that kept this strange one's body alive would also restore his mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Casca was awakened by Liang Yongming gently massaging his temples. She motioned to him to follow her and led him across a courtyard garden to a bathhouse where she handed him over to two elegant girls who conducted him to a blue stone recess in the broad white marble floor.

  As Casca lowered himself into the steaming water, he ran his hands over the highly polished stone, so comfortable against his skin.

  "Lapis lazuli," he wondered. "I have never seen such large pieces of this beautiful stone must be worth a king's ransom."

  After a moment the thought struck him: "And this is only a baron's guest bathroom."

  The two girls washed him thoroughly, using soft cloths and a sandalwood scented soap. Then they carefully anointed him from top to toe, deftly massaging finely perfumed oils into his every pore. All the while two pairs of lovely almond eyes watched their hands exploring this huge, white body, exchanging wondering glances as their fingers traced the patterns of the network of scars that covered the whole of Casca's body; some faded to hairlines, others still showed freshly pink.

  Liang Yongming reappeared and gave Casca a richly embroidered yellow silk robe. She conducted him to a broad chamber overlooking a courtyard, where Baron Ying sat with the recently arrived Dr. Hollington Teng.

  The baron had changed his armor for a robe similar to that worn by Casca, but in the green that signified an imperial noble. Dr. Hollington Teng was dressed in the white linen suit worn by Englishmen in the tropics.

  Casca bowed deeply as he entered the room, and the two Chinese bowed in acknowledgment.

  "Come here, honorable barbarian," Ying said, "and sit by me. This is my esteemed friend and ally, Dr. Hollington Teng."

  "How do you do?" Teng said in perfectly accented English.

  "Very well, thank you," Casca replied, "and yourself?"

  "I am in excellent health, thank you."

  "I have told Hollington something of your history. I make no apology for the manner in which you insisted I learn it, nor for telling of it, but your secret is safe with us.”

  Casca bowed in acknowledgment, and the two Chinese bowed an affirmation.

  "The baron and I," said Hollington Teng, "are the oldest of friends. We grew up together, and we went to England together, he to Harrow and Cambridge, myself to Eton and Oxford. I know him to be a wise and prudent man, and therefore I accept without reservation what he has told me of your history. I hope, though, that you will excuse me if I tell you that I still find it hard to believe."

  "Me too." Casca laughed easily.

  "Excuse me," said Ying. "Poon Fong told me that he did his best to repair your damaged mind, but that he was not sure of success as you had resisted the water treatment so m
ightily. Yet you seem to be in excellent spirits."

  "I don't think I ever felt better," Casca smiled.

  "Is that perhaps the effect of the curse you carry?"

  "Perhaps, along with whatever magic Poon Fong worked with his needles."

  "And your memory?"

  "It seems to have returned intact.”

  "Good. Very good. I am pleased for you. And for us. I feel sure that you can be of service to us. We have great problems."

  "Could I perhaps ask you," said Hollington Teng, "what impressions of China you have gathered on your mission?"

  "The British consul's brief was that I should look for signs of unrest, and I have found it everywhere. We foreign devils are hated and feared, and not a little despised. But not more so than the Manchu emperor and especially the empress. I have heard much talk of the heroes of the Tsin Dynasty Revolution. Those revolutionaries are extolled as martyrs and as models."

  "Exactly so," said the baron. "In the Tsin period the peasants were joined by the nobles to put an end to an unsatisfactory regime."

  "Aha!" Casca exclaimed. "I think perhaps I see where you are headed."

  "As you might guess from my name," said Hollington, "my family have long been involved with the British. My father went to Oxford before me. I am named for one of his masters whom he much admired and who became my godfather."

  "You are a Christian then?"

  "Yes and no. I was baptized a Catholic, but I no longer follow the Church. Her ambitions for China and mine are not compatible."

  "And the Raj?"

  "Similarly. For a long time we cooperated with the British as we believed that we could learn much and to our mutual advantage. But in the event the advantage has been all one sided. You are, of course, too young to know of the Opium War – oh, excuse me..."

  Casca laughed easily. "Please do not concern yourself. I am not at all offended: You do me a great service in treating me as my apparent age, although you know my secret. Like anybody else, I only live one life at a time."

  "I have only had the time to tell you a little of what Cas Ca Sho has told me," said the baron. "But I can assure you that he is familiar with the opium trade."

  "Indeed," Casca said frankly. "I carry some opium with me, along with silks and satins and money and other valuables for the purpose of corrupting your people in the execution of my mission."

  "So has this wonderful healing agent been debased," said the doctor. "At first it was not so. China has grown and used opium for countless thousands of years. It has always been grown extensively here, and especially in Bangala and Mien, dependent states whose kings have been invested by the Chinese emperor since the time of Kublai Khan. In these territories, which you call Bengal and Burma, the climatic conditions are ideal for its cultivation.

  "It was used extensively as a medicine and restorative, and also as a euphoric by those who could afford the money to buy it and the time to indulge in it. As a consequence it was so used almost exclusively by the rich and elderly, and the drug did no damage to our society.

  "Portuguese traders from Goa started shipping opium, and by the early years of the eighteenth century China was importing twenty five thousand pounds, about ten tons, a year. The Portuguese ships brought the drug to our ports as they might have carried any other cargo for which there was a demand.

  "The British were growing stronger and stronger. Their small trading station on the west coast of India had grown until they held all of India, were threatening Afghanistan, and had pushed China out of Tibet.

  "Every day there were many, many British ships leaving Kowloon laden with our silks and spices, exotic woods, ivory and jade carvings, porcelain and soaps and perfumes, and especially tea. The English taste for tea had become an obsession.

  "These many ships arrived here empty, as we Chinese were not interested in buying cheap iron pots from Birmingham or gaudy printed cottons from Manchester or steel fibbed pens, or any of the other products of England.

  "The shipowners were unhappy about sailing so far in ballast, and the English banks were unhappy about the outflow from their stocks of precious metal for we would only accept payment for our valuable goods in ingots of silver and gold.

  "Opium provided the answer to both their problems. The British Empire expanded into Bengal and Burma, acquiring at no cost both the opium crop and the labor to exploit it. Within a hundred years the opium trade multiplied a hundred times, to four million pounds, about a thousand tons, a year. Soon whole shiploads of the drug were arriving in Kowloon every day.

  "Still there would have been little problem, but the British went about selling this drug with an intensity that we had never experienced. Very soon it was being used by young people, and by people who could not afford it, but who would commit crimes in order to be able to buy it.

  "For the first time in the history of China an emperor found it necessary to intervene in the personal life of his subjects and banned the use of the drug except as a medicine. And a ban was placed on its import, as China itself produced more than what was required for strictly medicinal purposes.

  "But the British were reluctant to abandon a profitable business and continued to import the drug, smuggling it into the country. They used the small offshore island Hong Kong, at that time a bleak, windswept rock, as their staging warehouse, and delivered it from there to the mainland in small boats.

  "Special ships were designed and built. They carried enormous areas of sail and were tremendously fast. They brought opium from Burma to Hong Kong, and made the return voyage laden with tea for London. They were called opium clippers, then China clippers, and eventually the name was sanitized to tea clipper.

  "Many fortunes were made. Tea companies and shipping companies were founded whose names are today household words. Only China was suffering.

  "Then, as is in the nature of all things, the drug traffic began to flow in the other direction, too. There were British ships picking up opium in Burma and delivering it to Hong Kong where other British ships would pick it up and convey it to England, to Europe and to the United States, and in these countries the addiction began to produce the same problems as we had experienced.

  "The fortunes of those involved in the trade grew to fantastic size. Then the English parliament passed a law prohibiting the inhalation of opium, and, as we had done, restricted its use to medicines.

  "Now the British plantation owners in Burma, the tea companies, and the shipping companies had lost a major market. The British legation here in China informed the emperor that our legislation was offensive to Britain, and demanded that we repeal our law.

  "The emperor refused, and appointed a very able imperial commissioner, Lin Tse Hsii, to suppress the traffic. Lin wrote to Queen Victoria and asked her, as her own people were not permitted to inhale the drug, how could selling it be reconciled with the decrees of heaven? She did not do him the courtesy of a reply, and in 1839 Lin fired the British warehouses, burning the entire stock of opium.

  "But more, many more ships arrived laden with the drug. The tea crop was waiting on our wharves, and in London people were waiting to buy it. Every day the tea's flavor diminished and deteriorated a little and so was worth less on the London market. The British ships endeavored to land their opium cargoes.

  "Lin summoned all the coastal warlords, and they joined forces and blockaded the port with their junks. The British threatened force to break the blockade. The British parliament was divided."

  The baron got to his feet and went to a bookcase. He returned with a red leather bound volume and showed Casca the gold lettering on the spine of the book: House of Commons, Debates, 1839. He opened the book. "The prime minister, the leader of the government, opposed the war. Let me read what Mr. Gladstone said to Lord Palmerston, who supported war:

  "I will ask the noble lord a question: Does he not know that the opium smuggled into China comes exclusively from British ports? The great principles of justice are involved in this matter. You will be called upon to
show cause for your present intention of making war upon the Chinese.

  "They gave us notice to abandon the contraband traffic. When they found that we did not, they had the right to drive us from their coasts.

  "I am not competent to say how long this war may last, but this I can say, that a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know." Ying replaced the book on its shelf.

  "The matter came to a head, and the British used cannon and troops to enforce our aquiescence to their demand."

  "As it happened," said Hollington, "Gladstone was wrong. The British forced us to accept the opium, and seized Kowloon and Hong Kong from us into the bargain. And there was no disgrace."

  "There never is for the victors," Casca said flatly.

  "I wish," said Hollington, "that my father had sent me to your school where I might have learned realism, rather than to Eton where my head was filled with absurdities."

  "But, perhaps," said the baron, laughing, "you may not have had the time to spare that Cas Ca Sho has invested in his education."

  All three men laughed.

  "So we lost Kowloon and Hong Kong. Then, about fifteen years ago, for similar reasons, the French annexed the territory they call Cochin China and we call Vietnam. Then, claiming they disapproved of what they termed our hostile attitude to French missionaries, they declared Kampuchea what they called a protectorate. Both of these territories are Chinese dependent states."

  "And opium producers." Casca smiled.

  "Of course. If the British had assisted us we could have expelled the French, but it suited Britain to have other colonial powers take part of our nation so long as it did not interfere with British interests.

  "Then, just five years ago, the Japanese, with the connivance of the British, occupied Taiwan, which has been Chinese for centuries. And now the Japanese are building Chen-nei, a great walled city as a commercial center for Taipei City to facilitate their exploitation of the tea crop – our tea crop. British merchants can now buy this tea very cheaply – for it has cost the Japanese nothing.