The Taiping artillery was firing with dismaying effectiveness. A shell exploded on the lip of the breastworks to shower the revetment with shrapnel. Rising from the sodden ground, Gabriel saw that two Chinese gunners had fallen. Through his telescope he watched his counter-battery fire and marveled at the skill of the enemy gunners. Normally, Taiping artillery was as ineptly handled as it was crudely cast. But the man giving the orders a mile and a half away obviously understood his trade.
The duel of the big guns continued for almost an hour. A direct hit hurled one of Gabriel’s guns from its carriage and crushed three gunners in a spray of crimson flesh. After tying his handkerchief around his arm, he forgot the fragment that had nicked his biceps. Yellow flashes in the silver paddy fields showed that the Holy Soldiers were moving up relentlessly, sheltering briefly behind the low dikes before dashing forward again.
“Hsia san tien …” he shouted. “Three points lower. Batteries—fire!”
The iron balls smashed into the earthen dike, throwing up fountains of mud. Half splashed harmlessly in the shallow paddies, and Gabriel longed again for his well-trained crew. The dike quivered and slipped, then stubbornly settled again. Abandoning its protection, the first wave of Holy Soldiers waded through the paddy field, while the second wave fired its blunderbusses behind the dike.
“Open sights!” Gabriel shouted. “Fire at will. Fire shrapnel over open sights.”
The four surly British gunners, Gabriel saw with astonishment, were standing fast. Determined that the Yank would not see them run, they swore at their Chinese mates in tones all men understood—and obeyed. The harsh tempo of the guns quickened, and shrapnel shredded the wave of yellow tunics. The charge faltered when wide gaps opened in the line, and yellow heaps splotched the muddy water like clumps of broken daffodils.
Straining to see through the smoke, Gabriel allowed himself to hope he could throw back this first assault. But afterward? How could he repel a second charge with his infantrymen fading away? He turned to order a runner to the regimental command post to plead for infantry reinforcements.
A torrent of yellow tunics poured over the sides of the revetment. By God, he was outflanked. He was drawing his revolver when a halberd crashed down on his head.
Aaron Lee dispassionately watched his corporal raise the halberd’s spear-tipped head to impale the fallen officer. An instant later, almost an instant too late, he knocked the halberd aside with his sword. The man was obviously a foreigner who was better kept alive—to ransom or to suborn. He grimaced in astonishment when he recognized the features beneath the grime and blood.
The American stirred some time later. The blow, which might have crushed his skull, had glanced off his temple as he turned his head. He winced and almost fainted when his hand touched the wound. Blood trickled from the clot on his temple. His eyelids closed again, and he saw a whirl of color before a gray haze descended.
“Leave him alone.” A tantalizingly familiar voice spoke in English. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
Trembling on the verge of consciousness, Gabriel heard his guns firing again. He saw when he opened his eyes gingerly that they were pointed toward Shanghai. Then he slipped again into blackness haunted by yellow demons brandishing spears.
He shuddered when a torrent of water poured over his head. His eyes opened slowly, and he shook his head. The red lightning of pain lanced his temples.
“Wake up, Gabriel!” The voice was insistent. “Wake up, man!”
Focusing his eyes with great effort, the American looked up. The lean face of Lionel Henriques swam amid gray circles. He closed his eyes wearily.
“Can you hear me, Gabriel?” the Englishman demanded. “You must listen.”
“Hello, Lionel.” The American forced his eyes open and smiled muzzily. “Funny place to meet.”
“Listen to me, Gabriel! Listen now!” Lionel insisted. “We’re pulling back …”
“Pulling back? Back where?” Gabriel said. “Pulling what?”
“You must listen, Gabriel. This is our high-water mark. We’re withdrawing and leaving you. Play dead and you’ll be all right till your people come up.”
“Thanks, Lionel. That’s … that’s decent of you, I’m sure.”
“Stop playing the fool, man. Tell me you’re listening.”
“I’m listening, Lionel.” Gabriel forced himself to concentrate despite his pain. “What’s … what’s so important?”
“Tell her … tell Fronah I love her. And I’ll come back to her.”
Gabriel Hyde let his eyes close again. In the comfortable darkness he felt warm and secure.
CHAPTER 52
June 23, 1862
SHANGHAI
For the courtesy call, David Lee wore his conical straw hat crowned with the gold finial of a Mandarin of the Seventh Grade. But he had left off his official robe for a light tunic of tan pongee because high summer stifled the Yangtze Delta like a vast, sodden fleece on June 23, 1862, four days after the battle of Soochow Creek. The young Mandarin casually fanned himself with his official hat, and its scarlet tassels whipped. Beside him, Gabriel Hyde plied a large circular bamboo fan.
The cubicle with the examination couch behind the screen was heavy with the cloying reek of chloroform and the powdery tang of idoform. But those medicinal odors could not overcome the pervasive stench of gangrene. Although the big doors and the small windows of the godown Saul Haleevie had lent Dr. William MacGregor for his emergency hospital were all open, no breeze could cleanse the charnel-house atmosphere.
More than two hundred wounded Imperial Braves and Holy Soldiers suffered on straw mats spread on the floor of the warehouse. They were attended by two foreign doctors, twenty Chinese orderlies, and six volunteer nurses, all foreign ladies. The heroic example of Miss Florence Nightingale in the Crimea had made it respectable for ladies to minister to the sick. Her example could, unfortunately, neither make them skillful in their ministrations nor inure them to the nauseating stench of rotting flesh, compounded by the fetid odor of unwashed bodies and the ammoniacal reek of slopping chamber pots.
“The Old Man ordered me to inspect the hospital.” David laughed deprecatingly. “What do I know about hospitals?”
“Precious little, I’m sure,” Hyde joked. “But maybe you know this is the first time any Chinese official—much less a Governor-to-be—has shown the slightest interest in Willie MacGregor’s efforts for Chinese patients.”
“Supported by fat contributions from Chinese merchants,” David interjected.
“But, Davy, no senior official has ever cared enough before to ask—much less send a dignitary of your standing to inspect a hospital.”
“My standing? He could hardly find anyone more junior. But the Old Man is different. He doesn’t hate foreigners. In some ways he even admires them.”
“I had a different impression the other day.”
“Oh well, he was upset, harassed by the Court’s irrational commands and worried about the reliability of the foreign forces. By the way, I suppose you know he’s been confirmed as Governor of Kiangsu.”
“Congratulate him for me—if he’s still speaking to me. Of course, after the victory, even Peking couldn’t do anything else.”
“The Edict was drafted before the battle. Anyway, the Old Man also told me to pass his compliments to you and find out if you’re feeling better.”
“As you see, Davy.” The American shrugged and winced when his left arm grated in its black sling; his head was enveloped by a turbanlike bandage, and his face was chalk-pale. “We’ll see what Willie MacGregor has to say. You know, I thought your boss would never speak to me again.”
“On the contrary, he’s very pleased with you. He says nobody else could’ve held the battery so long. If you hadn’t, our entire line would’ve collapsed.”
“Most generals would’ve had me shot for losing the guns.”
“He’s a great man, Gabe. He doesn’t care that the British regulars are withdrawing from
action. If a foreigner can fight like you, he says, the Ever Victorious Army will be quite enough to support his own troops. Shanghai’s safe, he says.”
“I’m not sure Shanghai’s so safe. There are an awful lot of Taipings out there.”
“Don’t worry. The campaign’s just begun, but he plans to make it the final campaign. The tide turned when the rebels pulled back from Shanghai.”
“Well, maybe the Loyal King’s crossed his Rubicon—the wrong way. We’ll see.”
“Another thing, Gabe. I’m supposed to do it formally: The Mandarin Li Hung-chang presents his compliments to Captain Gabriel Hyde and hopes the gallant officer is mending fast. The Governor further reiterates his invitation to Captain Hyde to serve as his English and military secretary.”
“It’s tempting, youngster. I’d really like to. But I can’t do it.”
“I hate to carry back a flat ‘No.’ Think about it, will you?”
“As you wish, but the answer will still have to be ‘No thanks!’”
The warped door groaned open, and Dr. William MacGregor entered his examining room. His sandy hair was disheveled, and gray semicircles emphasized his bloodshot blue eyes.
“The Mandarin Lee Dawei himself,” he said with mock formality. “We’ll go round the wards in a minute, David. First I want to look at our friend’s hard head. Sorry I had to ask you to come to me, Gabriel, but I couldn’t get away.”
“That’s all right, Willie. Just don’t scalp me when you take off the bandage.”
“Are you still vomiting?” the doctor asked. “Still having dizzy spells?”
“I didn’t lose my dinner last night, though I’m still a little shaky.”
“That’s fine, Gabriel. Now let’s have a look at your eyes.”
“My thick skull’s the trouble, Willie, not my eyes.”
“I must instruct you in navigation sometime, young Gabriel,” William MacGregor said, smiling.
“Damn it, Willie, that really hurt,” Gabriel protested.
“Well, young man, a slight fracture, perhaps, but you’ll heal. And thank God for your thick skull.”
“They say the Hydes are hardheaded as mules.”
“If he’d hit you square, your head would’ve been crushed like an egg.”
“When do you want to see me again?”
“Always delighted to see you, Gabriel. But not professionally unless vomiting recurs. Otherwise, I’ve got better things to do. Some of those poor Chinamen out there are badly hurt—and terrified I’m planning to kill them to grind up their internal organs for medicines.”
“You don’t really need to try to kill your patients, do you, Willie?”
“That’ll be all, Captain.” MacGregor tied the new bandage. “Take a turn around the wards with David and me. It might make you think of taking up another profession. God, you military men!”
Gabriel contritely followed William MacGregor and David Lee into the cavernous warehouse. Despite the light breeze blowing through the open doors, the stench was appalling. Half-inured to the reek of medicines and the sweat stench of corruption, he choked on the sour odor of rotting rice, which always surrounded indigent Chinese.
Drenched with sweat, the wounded lay rigid on their strawmats. Red fluid seeped through bandages encrusted with black clots, and yellow pus stained the cloths swaddling amputated stumps. The fear in their dark eyes was appalling. Though the haggard faces strove for impassivity, he saw that most were terrified.
How would he feel, Gabriel wondered, if he were one of these hapless soldiers? Flesh lacerated by weapons that spat lightning and thunder, they lay helpless in a terrifyingly alien world. As if he woke to find himself tended by Eskimos whose medicine, language, and customs were all utterly strange to him. Except, of course, the Chinese knew the barbarians were diabolical.
“They can’t understand why we bother with them,” William MacGregor remarked. “Don’t expect to get out alive.”
“No Chinese ever expects to get out of hospital alive,” David observed with uncharacteristic tartness. “Particularly a barbarian hospital.”
“Well, if they expect to die,” the doctor said cheerily, “a lot are going to be disappointed.”
“Nothing against you,” David added. “All hospitals are bad. Except for patients’ families, no Chinese ever enters a hospital voluntarily.”
Yet a Chinese woman was bending over a youth whose eyes were covered with a bandage. Her head inclined solicitously, she spooned fine-chopped meat into his mouth.
“You see what I mean?” David anticipated the question. “A mother or sister come to look after that boy.”
When the woman glanced up, Gabriel saw that she was Maylu, Aisek Lee’s concubine and David’s surrogate mother. She smiled and spoke in rapid Shanghainese.
“I was half wrong,” David confessed. “She says Fronah dragged her here to help.”
“Fronah?” Gabriel exclaimed. “I’m glad to hear she’s helping, not too exhausted. It’ll do her good, as well as these poor devils.”
“She’s in the loft, Maylu says.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a message for her. I’ve been wanting to see her since the battle.”
The American was appalled by his first glimpse of Fronah, who was leaning against the window frame at the end of the loft, which was lined with the straw mats of the wounded. She was markedly thinner than she had been at the reception for the Mandarin Li Hung-chang only three weeks earlier. Her skin was translucent, and her linen kaftan hung in folds. Lit by the afternoon sunlight through the grimy windowpanes, her face was otherworldly. Within a curtain of loose dark hair, her taut skin showed every contour of the bones beneath.
Fronah pushed herself away from the window frame with both hands. Her movements were unnaturally brisk, and Gabriel sensed that her will had to exert a great effort to command her enfeebled body. Unaware of him, she knelt on the grimy floor beside a pallet on which lay a Taiping soldier. Exhibiting no revulsion, she lifted his head and gently moved aside his matted hair to reveal the bandage covering his neck and shoulder. The Chinese orderly assisting her flinched when she sponged the blood-clotted cloth and lifted it to reveal a gaping red wound through which muscle tissue and tendons shone somberly.
Herself apparently unperturbed, Fronah sharply instructed the orderly to support the patient’s head. Working painstakingly with a pair of short-bladed scissors, she clipped away the dead gray tissue from the edges of the wound. When the Holy Soldier groaned, she soothed him with quick, soft words. Her deft hands dusted the wound with iodoform and secured a new bandage. She offered the Taiping a bowl of water and a dozen minute black opium pills before stretching wearily and glancing up.
“Oh, Gabriel, it’s you.” She dropped a bandage into a waste bin and rose. “Willie MacGregor said you might come by. How are you, my dear?”
“Worried about you.” She had never called him “dear” before, but her solicitude apparently embraced all the wounded. “And the better for seeing you.”
“I’ve been so worried. Willie MacGregor originally said you were too ill for visitors. Then I kept expecting to see you here. How are you really?”
“Willie says I’ll be fine.”
“I’m so happy, really happy.” Her smile was moonlight through a frosted pane. “It’s wonderful to see you, my dear.”
Her fingertips touched his forearm, and a spark leaped between them. He shifted his sling and laid his hand over hers. When she gently withdrew after almost a minute, he was stricken by intense deprivation. And why such joy at her anxiety for him? It would be brutal to break the mood. But he must pass on his message—and relieve her greater anxiety.
“I saw Lionel. He was looking tired, but well.”
“Lionel?” She spoke as if the name were strange to her. “Where did you see him?”
“On the battlefield. Before retreating, he gave me a message for you.”
“A message?” She appeared bemused, almost indifferent to his news. “What w
as it?”
“He said … he said.…” It was hard to carry a message from her husband to a wife whose light touch had just sent an electric shock through him.
“Yes, Gabriel?” she asked evenly. “What did he say?”
“He said he loved you.” The words tumbled out. “Loved you very much—and he’d be coming back to you.”
“Did he ask about Judah? Did he say when he was planning to come back?”
“He only had time for a few words, but he’s definitely coming back to you.”
“Well, you’ve delivered your message, though it’s not much of a message.”
“It doesn’t sound much, but it was. He loves you, and he’s coming back to you. I hope that cheers you. I see you’re trying, as you promised.”
“That nonsense is over, Gabriel. These poor men are so much worse off than I. But did you see Aaron? Can you tell me any more about Lionel?”
Gabriel Hyde strove to draw a verbal picture of the disheveled figure of the Englishman, who was Fronah’s husband, and the Chinese, who was her adopted brother, amid the smoke of the battlefield. She remained silent, and he could not sense what she thought or felt.
“Another thing, Fronah,” Gabriel finally added. “I’ve come to say goodby. I’m leaving Shanghai next week for the States.”
“Gabriel!” Her drawn face was suddenly bloodless. “Gabriel!”
“I have to, Fronah. I’m recalled to duty by the U.S. Navy. With the Civil War, they need every officer they can get.”
“And … and just when we …”
“God knows I’d stay if I could, Fronah. I think I …” Since they could make no promises to each other, it was better to close the miraculous interlude. “But I’m ordered home, and I can’t refuse. Besides, Fronah, it’s too late.”
“Too late?” she flared. “Too late? Everything seems too early or too late.”
Fronah turned toward the opalescent sunlight shining through the dusty windowpanes. Her fingertips touched her eyes and her head drooped. A moment later, she turned and looked at him again.
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