Shadow Conspiracy

by Phyllis Irene

  “More,” the dragon muttered very softly, huffing steam between each syllable. “More. Feed me, slaves!” The sweating stokers leaped to the work again.

  Grace kept in mind Mr. Bucket’s earlier musings. “Then what is it for?”

  “Why, for this.” Imperious but girlish, Lady Mei flicked her fan around. “To attract many English people.” She snapped her fingers. “More paper dragons! I want every one of the foreigners to have one. And let some tea be brought, and my maid, to mend our guest’s garment.”

  Servants hurried out with more overflowing baskets. A wooden stool was set for Grace, and traditional handle-less porcelain tea cups were offered. A young maid with needle and thread knelt shyly by her seat to cobble together the hole in her flounce. It all seemed quite hospitable and innocuous; no English host could do better. Constitutionally inclined to believe the best of everybody, Grace took a careful sip of the hot tea.

  “I know what to do,” Lady Mei declared. “They have eyes but they don’t see. Tell this one the story—the one about the water.”

  The wizard stared at his mistress, pondering, and then nodded. To Grace he said, “Were you in Nanjing during the last war?”

  “The Opium War? No, I was at school here in Britain.”

  The wizard smiled at her with an unpleasant glint of teeth. “Perhaps you will be there for the next one. Or the one after that. The end of the 19th century in China will be full of incident.”

  “Don’t frighten her, wizard,” Lady Mei said. “Scaring British people makes them angry. These big scary magics, like Lung here, do not win wars.”

  “Better to be like water, seeping through the earth, penetrating everywhere but impossible to grasp.” The wizard glared at Grace as if it were her fault. “Some small simple magic. Perhaps like the one in the children’s story—it is in your books. The one about the spell that turns bullets aside.”

  “I have heard that fairy tale,” Grace said uneasily. “If it were true it would be destructive for all empires, everywhere.” Soldiers and armies kept the world in order; without the suasion of guns, how would governments stay in power, or kings on their thrones?

  “I don’t care.” Lady Mei shrugged a green silk shoulder. “Another Opium War will destroy us. In a hundred years there will be no more Chinese Empire. It would be only fair, if there were no British Empire either. Look, here the fat one comes back again.” To the stokers she added, “Give over!”

  “Mrs. S.!” Mr. Bucket came pushing through the throng, a short plump figure with a couple of tall bobbies in his wake. “Mrs. S., you’re safe now!”

  In justice Grace felt she had to say, “Inspector, nothing bad has happened to me.”

  “Tea,” the Chinese wizard said in tinny English, bowing to Mr. Bucket. “The maid, to mend accidental damage.”

  “Unauthorized magic use within a Royal Park,” Bucket retorted. “A dangerous magical animal on the rampage.”

  “Would it were so,” the wizard said with another bow. “Our dragon is difficult to maintain.”

  And indeed, with the stokers at rest, the bamboo dragon sagged. Joint by steamy wooden joint it drooped down to earth, groaning and creaking. Coolies with iron rods supported its descent to prevent breakage. The vapour from the wooden nostrils thinned and died out.

  The Exposition mob all around shouted in disappointment. “Get ‘im fixed!” “Pretty poor show, chinks!” It came to Grace that they were hugely outnumbered by commoners and the labouring class. The entire point of the Exposition was to entertain and distract a restive populace; poverty, stoked by petty disappointment and the hot August weather, could be as explosive as steam.

  “More paper dragons,” Lady Mei ordered in Chinese. She smiled at the mob, apparently feeling no fear.

  “False alarm,” one bobby said, inspecting the brass gears. “Sadly taken in!” And the larger one accepted a paper dragon as he murmured in reply, “Well, old Bucket is getting on in years.”

  Grace jumped to her feet, to distract Mr. Bucket from that last hurtful remark. “I am so glad you came back, Inspector. I long to tour the rest of the Pavilion! Great lady, thank you for your kindness and hospitality.”

  Their eyes were now nearly on a level. Lady Mei eyed her thoughtfully, while the little maid took her teacup. “The British are enemies,” she said, “but I do not believe missionaries are enemies.”

  “You went to a mission school,” Grace deduced. A minor Imperial scion could do that, and Lady Mei had quoted Jeremiah. In return she admitted, “Well—I do not feel that the last war was a Christian one.”

  “Indeed!” The two women stared, silently acknowledging that in some other time and place they might have been friends. “If ever you have a daughter,” Lady Mei said at last, “name her Pearl.”

  “A beautiful name,” Grace said. Hermanus had already declared that their first daughter was to be named Caroline, after his mother. “Farewell!”

  The bobbies went ahead, but Inspector Bucket tucked her arm through his. “You became mighty cosy, Mrs. S. What in thunder did they blab to you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Grace confessed. “I think we were talking about children’s stories.” She repeated as best she could the gist of everything. “They can’t be trying to warn us. Why warn someone you plan to fight another war with?”

  “And if it’s a warning, then why tell you? Why not deliver the threat through official diplomatic channels?” Mr. Bucket rubbed his chin with a fat finger. “Something cunning’s going on—those Chinese are always at it. The stories I could tell you! I’m sorry we can’t stay and see more of the Exhibition. There’s a quick way, right here in town, to find out about those children’s stories. We’ll go and consult the Steam Catalogue, that Lady Ada Lovelace invented. I’ll see you safe to the Presbyterian Mission after.” Under his guidance they made their way speedily to the cab stand at the edge of the park.

  As one of the bobbies opened the door of a hansom for her Grace said, “Inspector, I told her that Britain was wrong to fight the war in China. I hope that wasn’t treasonous.”

  A Chinese servant thrust yet another paper dragon at him, and Bucket stuffed it absently into his tweed pocket. “Right or wrong, the Opium War is over and done with, water under the bridge. Come along then, up you go.”

  Obediently she climbed up into the hansom. The larger bobby and Mr. Bucket followed, sitting across from her. He slammed the door shut and tapped on the roof. Immediately the vehicle lurched into motion.

  “Pardon me, ma’am.” The bobby, majestically broad in the shoulders, seemed to fill the hansom like a mountain. “Is this yours?”

  “Oh dear, I must have trodden on it.” She took the paper dragon from him and smoothed it flat. Perhaps it could be refolded into shape? Then she peered more closely at the crudely printed red and black pattern. That was not a design of scales—it was English letters, oddly drawn as if with a brush, but easily readable. “An Infallible Spell,” she read aloud slowly, “To Make Him That Work It Invulnerable to Weapons.”

  “Good lord!” Mr. Bucket’s round commonplace countenance suddenly seemed suety, slick with more than the summer heat. “You’re translating from the Chinese?” He took out his own dragon and flattened it.

  “No, look at yours—it’s all in English.” She turned the paper over. The spell was closely printed on the underside in black. “The Exhibition opened in May—”

  “And now it’s August.” They stared all three at each other in dawning horror. Thousands upon thousands of these paper dragons must have been distributed, water trickling unstoppably throughout England. No wonder there were rumours of perilous magic at Regents Park!

  “The wizard said we were slow,” Grace remembered. “They poured out the secret, and nobody noticed.”

  “For a little while.” On his plump fingers Mr. Bucket tallied up the enemies of the Empire. “Ireland, Wales, India, Burma. How many anarchists and revolutionaries have we already arrested? And every one of ‘em will know about this s
oon, if they don’t already.”

  “And that Marx chappie,” the mountainous bobby said. “The Yard is keeping an eye on him. Russian bloke, but he lives right here in Chelsea—spends his time writing about how the common Englishman should rise up and throw over the government.”

  “If the common man learns how to make bullets bounce, the Empire is in the soup and no pitch hot,” Mr. Bucket said flatly. “And that’s what they’ve been doing, those Chinese—giving the secret to the common man, here and in India and Lord knows where else. We’ve got to get to the Book View Café!” He put his head out the window and shouted at the driver to get a move on.

  In her mind’s eye Grace could see it: revolution and anarchy flaming across England and Europe, as the working poor, able to turn aside bullets, freed of the fear of armed enforcement, rose against their proper rulers. Britain would be like France under Robespierre; the Thames would run red with blood.

  The cab jolted to a halt, and the Inspector jumped down. Above a bow window the sign bore curly gold letters on a black ground: the Book View Café. The door was propped open and a pair of muscular men were carrying a bookcase with gears on its sides down the steps. “Whoa!” Mr. Bucket called. “What is this, lads? Is that the Catalogue?”

  “Talk to the lady, guv,” the navvy wheezed. “We got our job to do.”

  The Inspector ran up the steps and into the café. Grace passed the waiting wagon, already loaded with crates and pieces of machinery. Inside was a large comfortable coffee room. Wing chairs and side tables had been pushed aside to allow the workmen to disassemble bookcases and a large steam engine. A cadaverously thin young man in a narrow black clawhammer coat was ticking off items on a long list. “The Café is closed this week,” he said, not looking up.

  “But—the Catalogue! Where is Madame Magdala? And who the devil are you?”

  Still the clerk did not look up. “Gulpidge is the name. I represent Carboy, Carboy and Fleer, solicitors for the Lovelace family. We are charged with the safe removal of the Catalogue to Cambridge University.” He inspected the number on a book crate and ticked it off on his inventory before a workman carried it out.

  “Well, I am Inspector Bucket of Scotland Yard.” Mr. Bucket brandished a card. “And the Carboy firm, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, is not unknown to me. Old Mr. Kenge has passed, I take it.”

  “Indeed he has, Inspector, indeed he has—some years ago. Apoplexy—a belated casualty of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.” As Gulpidge read the card, the sheets of inventory wilted in his grip. His smile was tight and knowing, with no glimpse of teeth. “I yearn to oblige, Inspector, indeed I do! But help you I cannot. Lady Ada Lovelace is on her deathbed, and has given the Steam Catalogue to Cambridge. It should be reassembled and ready for consultation in a couple years, if you would care to wait.”

  “Oh, that’s not my business here. Mrs. Stulting is calling on Madame Magdala for a reading.” The Inspector’s cheerful adaptability to circumstance made Grace stare. And the lies that had to be told, for the sake of the nation!

  But obedient to the hint she agreed, adding, “Is Madame taking visitors?”

  “Yes, yes, do step on up! Her lounge is just above.”

  Grace stepped into the stairway out of sight and then hesitated. She knew that Hermanus would be furious if he heard of her consulting a Gypsy. Fortunetelling was specifically forbidden in the Old Testament! He’d sermonize for days, and make the voyage back to China a misery. Furthermore, she had no money. Perhaps it would be all right to just wait here quietly, out of sight?

  Besides, it was an education to listen to the Inspector at work out in the coffee room. “Have a cigar,” he offered. “No telling how long these Gypsy stunts may take.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Gulpidge said. The flare of a match, and then the sociable male smell of tobacco smoke.

  “So, Lady Ada is dying? A sad thing, that. She’s not so very old, is she?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. Not even forty. Cancer—ugly way to go.”

  “And Carboy, Carboy and Fleer have been representing the Lovelace interests for—?”

  “Since Queen Anne’s time, at least.”

  “So a sharp man like you, you know all the family stories.”

  “Could be,” Gulpidge allowed.

  “Including that Poet King business, eh?” There was no response, but Mr. Bucket’s tone became even more confiding. “Now, you know and I know—as men of the world—that it’s them as pays the piper calls the tune. All that magic, researching soul transfers, it must have cost a pretty penny. Lord Byron was pretty well juiced, but to that amount? I don’t believe it, and neither do you.”

  “Family business,” Gulpidge returned. “Private.”

  “But poor Lady Ada’s the last of the family,” Mr. Bucket noted. “And she’s dying, God help her. You could say, who’s left to be harmed?”

  “It’s a ripping story,” Gulpidge said. “Not that I believe it, entire. But we clerks, the story among us is that the project was paid for with treasure.”

  “You mean, Lord Byron’s treasure?”

  “Not his. Given to him. In a bag.”

  “You don’t say!”

  Flattered by this response, Glupidge further confided, “No harm in telling you I’ve seen the bag itself. They still have it, folded in a deed-box in the safe. Big as a gallon jug. Black silk.”

  “And the treasure?”

  “Pearls,” Gulpidge said in a low thrilling voice. “The size of your eye, a whole bag of ‘em. A king’s ransom.”

  “Chinese pearls.” Suddenly Mr. Bucket’s tone was hard. “A long-term investment that nearly paid off in a magical war between the Poet King and the Crown. Hey, Mrs. S.! We’re leaving!”

  “I’m here,” Grace said, hastily stepping around the corner again. Gulpidge goggled at her sudden reappearance.

  “They’re trying it again,” the Inspector said to her. “That spell to turn bullets. They don’t need to win the next Opium War in China, if they can beat us here. We’ve got to get to the Yard.”

  A female voice, low and vibrant, spoke from behind. “But you have not had your consultation.” Grace turned in surprise. An older lady in a very fashionable purple gown had just come down the stair behind her. Her substantial front was frosted with lace but supported by no hint of whalebone, and a huge Paisley shawl trailed from one arm, its elaborate knotted fringe dragging on the floor. This must be the café’s proprietress, the famous Madame Magdala. She had been crying, hiding a handkerchief balled up in one hand, but she was impressively calm now.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace admitted, “but I have no money for your fee.”

  Madame Magdala took her hand in her own free one, heavy with rings. “The Gypsy’s palm does not always need to be crossed with silver. Let me see...”

  “Sorry to hear about Lady Ada, Madame,” Mr. Bucket said. “But we’re pressed for time, so if you don’t mind—”

  Madame Magdala ignored him. She stared into Grace’s eyes with an intensity that made Grace nervous. “Name her Pearl, as you have been advised,” she said. “Your grand-daughter. She will be what you long for, a bridge between East and West.”

  “Mrs. S., we’ve got to get on!” The huge bobby had kept the cab waiting, and in his impatience the Inspector was blocking the doorway and annoying the movers.

  “I’m afraid I can’t quite believe in fortunes,” Grace said. “But thank you for your good wishes.”

  Quickly the bobby handed her up into the cab. Her little paper dragon was still lying on the seat. Grace picked it up, her hand still tingling from the Gypsy’s grasp, and looked at the spell again with a new thought. It was not right for the poor to be oppressed—Jesus had said so. For people to be forever hungry and without hope was wrong, an evil to be fought. Surely there was a way to achieve justice without bloodshed and revolution. They had been able to do it in America, hadn’t they? What were she and Hermanus going to do in Nanjing, but teach and empower and raise up the poor, and yes,
build a bridge between East and West? Neither the British Empire nor the Chinese had to explode like an overloaded steam boiler. The pressure could be relieved.

  “I can help,” Grace said to Mr. Bucket. She was not sure if she was doing an un-Christian thing, but she was certain it had to be done. The only hope for civilization now was if all nations had this terrifying knowledge at once, together. Then one and all could face rebellion and chaos, and defeat it. “I will translate it back into Mandarin. We can empower the Chinese peasantry. They hate their masters as much as—” As much as our poor hate theirs, she would have said, but one could not say such things aloud. “And—and if all the people on Earth are disarmed at once, maybe we can win through. We can agree to stop this madness, and share with our brothers and sisters in peace.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Bucket nodded. With a sinking heart, Grace saw from his plump grim face between the sidewhiskers that he had no hope of it. “Let’s all go down into the abyss together.”

  Author’s note: Pearl Stulting was born in 1892 and is better known by her married name, Pearl S. Buck.

  Brenda W. Clough is a meek mild-mannered reporter at a major metropolitan publication. She has published seven novels, many short stories, nonfiction, and innumerable book reviews that revolve around death, misery and grief. She has traveled around the world under the aegis of the US government, and now lives in a cottage at the edge of a forest, surrounded by animals.

  Her latest novel, Revise the World, is available at Book View Café . A version of it was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

  The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

  … by Judith Tarr

  “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’”