The front door splintered, its panels rasping, grating, and, finally, groaning like men in agony. When they reached the first-floor landing, Fronah heard the mob storming into the house. Despite David’s loud objections, she pushed past him to confront the mob, which was already pawing at the plush chairs and mahogany tables. A hard-faced farm woman and her husband, who was disfigured by a purple scar curving from his eye to his jaw, were in the forefront. Neither turned when vases splintered on the teak floor. Clutching three small children, the couple moved toward the stairwell. Behind them, the tumult of destruction mounted.
“Good people!” Fronah shouted. “Hear me! Let me speak!”
Though her words were unintelligible, they heard her cry. The farmer advanced menacingly, and David pushed past her to shield her from the mob’s anger. The farmer paused momentarily when he saw the gold button on the Mandarin’s official hat. An instant later he advanced again, his thick lips gaping in a scream.
David heard the obscenities above the crash of breaking furniture. Simple men under strain were not notable for imagination. The profanity he had learned from the servants as a boy assailed him, and he remembered to be afraid. Gesturing again for silence, he wondered why the fanner should curse him.
“Shit-faced running dog of the Manchus!” the farmer shouted. “Out of my way. We’ll bum this pesthouse, you son of a turtle bitch. Then we’ll take care of you and the barbarian whore.”
The scarred man thrust his son at his wife and moved on David with his hands clawed. Letting the child find his own feet, the woman grasped her husband’s shoulder.
“First talk to the barbarian lady,” she directed. “First talk, fool!”
“You dog turd,” the farmer screamed at David. “We’ll burn everything if we can’t speak to the barbarian whore!”
“She’ll talk to you!” David shouted. “She’ll talk when you stop breaking up her house.”
“Don’t tell us what to do, shit-head.” The farmer’s scar writhed. “A Mandarin, are you? A scabby dog who can’t look after the people. A fat pig who hides behind the barbarians.”
“Fronah, get out of here!” David spoke over his shoulder. “Get up the stairs and out. Nobody can reason with them.”
Though she felt he was right, Fronah stubbornly stood her ground. She was weary of running away, ashamed of fleeing from responsibility. Maylu screamed imprecations behind her, and she regretted the loyalty that had compelled the concubine to return.
Pushed forward by the crowd, the farmer stood a few inches from the young Mandarin. David looked into pig-small eyes reddened by anger. He recoiled from the stench of rotting teeth and glanced warily at the menacingly raised hand. By courageously standing fast Fronah and Maylu had cut off his retreat.
The young Mandarin chopped his hand down on his opponent’s collar bone. The farmer staggered, then, screaming, lurched forward again. As David grappled with the assailant, he wondered fleetingly what masters of the martial arts did when cunning blows failed. Their locked bodies would temporarily block the narrow staircase, protecting the women. But the mob’s numbers would soon overwhelm him.
As David side-stepped the charge, the farmer’s hands closed on his left arm. He saw a flash of white light and felt agonizing pain in his shoulder. Knowing he could resist only a few seconds longer, he drove his fist into the fanner’s stomach.
The farmer doubled over. Painfully pulling himself erect, he shuffled forward. Abruptly irresolute, he halted—and the refugees’ shouts were suddenly muted. From the stairs the young Mandarin saw a royal-blue wedge driving into the jammed room. A police corporal brought his truncheon down on the farmer’s head. The man dropped to the debris-littered floor, blood oozing from his head.
“Your Honor!” The corporal saluted. “I’ll have this rubbish removed.”
“Thanks, old fellow,” David replied weakly. “Glad you turned up.”
“Jail for this lot,” the corporal continued. “It’s a pity the barbarians are so soft-hearted they won’t get the caning they deserve.”
“Let them stay!” Fronah commanded.
The policeman looked around in perplexity. He believed he had seen the tawny-haired barbarian lady speak, but she couldn’t be talking colloquial Shanghainese. Yet the Chinese lady beside her had not opened her mouth. A refugee woman must be playing tricks on him. He looked around the battered room, suspicion warring with incredulity on his features.
“If the lady won’t press charges, you’d be wasting your time taking them in.” David smiled. “But I’d appreciate your staying around to keep order.”
“Surely, Your Honor,” the policeman replied. “But it’s bad policy.”
“I’ll speak with any six of you you wish in a few minutes.” Fronah’s voice carried over the refugees’ frightened murmurs. “Just give me time to clear up and find some food for you.”
The constables prodded the refugees out of the tenement. Knowing their unpredictable barbarian superiors, they were only mildly surprised by Fronah’s eccentricity. The astonished refugees thanked Heaven the reports they had heard were correct. Instead of ordering them flogged for their vandalism, the lady was going to feed them. All barbarians were obviously mad.
David winced as pain gripped his shoulder, but he shrugged off Fronah’s concern. He was fascinated by her new vigor. She rattled off instructions to the amahs, who were sheepishly returning with their infants. Galvanized by her decisiveness, they scurried to clear the debris and bring in a table on which to serve their own evening meal to the refugees. Watching with delight, David did not interfere.
The scarred fanner and his hard-faced wife returned at the head of an impromptu delegation of six refugees fifteen minutes later. A wispy older man, perhaps a village teacher by his manner, bowed and offered abject apologies. Since it would have been discourteous to interrupt, Fronah heard him out before replying: “There’s nothing to apologize for, gentlemen and ladies. You were naturally a little agitated. It is my fault for not receiving you properly.”
The six were astounded by her forbearance, but, above all, by being addressed as “gentlemen and ladies.” They forgot both their surprise and their shame when the amahs brought them food. They were soon making small talk with the barbarian lady, who understood that eating came before business, however urgent.
“You will pardon my speaking before you’ve finished,” Fronah said, still chewing a steamed bun stuffed with honey-roasted pork. “I should be honored if you would confide in me why you came here. What tale brought you to my door?”
“They said …” the farmer’s wife began. “They said that … that is that …”
“Be quiet, woman, and let the teacher speak,” the scarred man instructed. “He’s educated, you know.”
The old teacher spoke haltingly of the rumors that had swept the refugees’ shantytown that morning. Of course he now realized they were nonsense. How could the gracious lady undertake to care for so many children? But, if the gracious lady pleased, there were a few particularly deserving orphans.
“Not all, I regret to say,” Fronah answered. “I am ashamed that I cannot offer a home to all the children. But not just a few, either. If you’ll come back in four days, a hundred certainly, perhaps more. Will you, Master Teacher, bring me a list of names, original homes, and ages—as well as the parents’ circumstances.”
“Fronah, do you know what you’re saying?” David interrupted in English. “How can you promise? You can’t possibly take so many?”
“Yes, David,” she answered equably. “That is, yes and no. I do know what I’m promising. But I don’t know how I’ll cope.”
“Then shouldn’t you talk a little smaller? It’s quite impossible!”
“I can’t allow it to be impossible. Somehow I’ll manage.”
She bowed and renewed her promise: “Four days from now I’ll see you again.”
“At least give yourself a little more time,” David urged as the refugees filed out. “This is crazy.”
>
“Even four days is too long,” she replied decisively, taking another pork-stuffed bun. “How many will die if I wait longer?”
“You know you’re eating?” David acknowledged defeat. “Eating rather well.”
“Am I?” Fronah glanced at the bun. “So I am. I didn’t have time to think about not eating.”
CHAPTER 56
December 14, 1862
SOOCHOW
The yellow gleam flickered with Lionel Henriques’s breath. The flame flared at each deep inhalation, and light played on the green brocade hangings of the narrow cellar beneath the silk looms. The flame sank at each shallow exhalation, and the hidden room was suffused with artificial dusk. The sunlight trickling through the barred window high in the wall was growing pale as true dusk approached.
Though the Phoenix Silk Works on Flower Bridge Lane were only half a mile from the Loyal King’s headquarters in the Garden of the Humble Administrator, hard-pressed Taiping officials made only infrequent calls. They were happy to leave the running of the works to the diligent foremen, who pursued their exacting craft exactly as they had before the Holy Soldiers came to Soochow. The officials were equally happy to follow the Loyal King’s instructions to leave the conduct of trade with the Foreign Settlement to the Englishman. The Taipings were preoccupied with the new counteroffensive the Holy King was planning to divert Imperial pressure from the Heavenly Capital—and to block the movement of the army of the Mandarin Li Hungchang toward Soochow itself. Lionel was therefore doubly secure in his secret refuge from the puritanical rigor of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace.
Warm, though naked between the quilted-silk coverlets that cushioned the teak opium bed and warded off the cold of the early evening of December 14, 1862, he felt pleasantly drowsy. He was quite content to be alone. When the light flared, it shone on the altar table bearing the exquisite gilt Buddha and the pair of Ming-yellow double-gourd vases he had rescued from the Holy Soldiers’ destructive mania. He was, he mused, almost content to be alone. It would be good to chat in English with A. F. Lindley, the idealistic sea captain who was a fanatical adherent of the Taiping cause. However, a few more pipes would quell that desire. The pipe ultimately quelled all desire.
The Englishman clapped his hands softly, and a small figure in a violet-satin gown pushed aside the brocade hangings over the door. He extended the bamboo tube with the minuscule porcelain bowl, and the girl took the pipe on her outstretched palms. She did not turn immediately to the low table where the jar of opium stood, but sat on the side of the bed and polished the pipe’s silver mouthpiece with the front panel of her long gown, which was slit to the waist.
Her golden legs, just beginning to assume the curves of womanhood, were completely exposed. Lionel languorously stroked her petal-soft thigh, and she smiled down at him. His fingers crept up her narrow hip to the barely perceptible curve of her waist, and her lips parted. When his hand slipped across her flat abdomen to rest on the hairless delta between her thighs, she leaned forward. Her rosebud breasts peeped through her scooped neckline, and her dew dampened his questing fingers.
“Pu-hsing! … No, it won’t do!” he said regretfully in Chinese, but continued in English, since she would not understand even if he could express the thought in her language. “Moderation in all things, my little gem. Mustn’t overdo it. At any rate, I’m not sure I could. Just another pipe now.”
Although her breathing was rapid, the girl submissively knelt before the low table. She twisted a bamboo skewer in the opium paste and then twirled the dark-brown blob over the miniature hurricane lamp. With indolent pleasure the Englishman watched the opium melt into a black pellet. The girl inserted the pellet into the pipe’s minute bowl, leaving an air channel when she withdrew the skewer. Unlike tobacco, opium would not burn of itself, but had to be consumed by an open flame.
Lionel propped himself on his elbow. Holding the bowl inverted over the gourd-shaped glass shade, he inhaled for some thirty seconds. The sweet and acrid smoke suffused his lungs. After a single slow expulsion of breath, he inhaled profoundly again. Nails tapping rhythmically against the frame of the bed, he lay back while the girl prepared another pipe.
He refused another pipe, for that twelfth and last made just the right number today. He closed his eyes and felt his mind detach itself from his body. All things were possible, he mused, if one knew how. The Taipings believed they had purged all the “devil’s goods” from Soochow, the city of pleasure. But small quantities of gold still procured the pleasures essential to his well-being.
Should they surprise him, the Taiping lictors would punish him severely. They would charge that he had corrupted the girl, who was just twelve, as well as her eleven-year-old sister. But truth refuted such moralizing. He had actually introduced the two girls to ecstasies they would never otherwise have experienced—not only the benign raptures of the pipe, but the pure sensual joy they could know only before their bodies were bloated by maturity. A conscientious guide through the realm of pleasure, he always made sure they smoked just the right number of pipes. Never too many, and never too few for perfect joy.
A man cut off from all civilized society was entitled to his harmless diversions. Ironically, his pleasures were peccadilloes in Shanghai but capital crimes in the Heavenly Kingdom. Yet some Taiping Kings, he felt certain, indulged themselves covertly in opium, as well as overtly in their harems—though the solace of even one pipe or one female was forbidden to all commoners.
The last tension left Lionel’s body, and his mouth curved in the content bestowed by superior knowledge. His senses were preternaturally acute and his mind preternaturally alert. It was simple to distinguish the essence from the dross when one’s perception was so elevated.
Footsteps clattered and voices buzzed in the distance. He was not alarmed, since the few lictors who visited the silk works rarely inspected the cellars where the bolts were stored. Besides, they could never discover his secret chamber. The entrance was cleverly concealed, while the fumes drifted through the window set high in the wall but low in the embankment of the canal that flowed beneath Flower Bridge. He had no cause for uneasiness, much less alarm.
Lionel Henriques blinked mildly and smiled in welcome when Aaron Lee wrenched aside the hangings over the door. The failed Mandarin’s features were contorted with urgency, and his high-bridged nose jutted in his lean face. But Aaron was often devoured by urgency, for he could not shake off his demons and surrender himself to enjoyment.
“Hello, Aaron,” Lionel said.
“Lionel,” Aaron broke in, “listen to me.”
“Your greatest fault,” the Englishman said placidly, “is that you can’t let go. You must learn to relax or you’ll kill yourself.”
“You’ll kill yourself if you don’t listen.” Aaron shook Lionel’s shoulder. “The lictors are taking inventory. You’ve got five minutes at most.”
“Don’t fuss. They’ll never find my little room.”
“Get up, man, get up!” Aaron shouted. “If you’re too sodden to worry about your neck, I’m fond of mine.”
The girl had already scurried off. Finally alarmed, Lionel dressed frantically while Aaron pried the window open with a pole. Together they bundled the opium paraphernalia, the quilts, the Buddha, and the Ming vases into the hollow concealed by six loose bricks, which Aaron had insisted they prepare against such an emergency.
Opening a ledger and taking up a steel-nibbed pen, Lionel seated himself at the altar table where the gilt Buddha had stood. Would a lictor look too closely at his pinpoint pupils? Could those young fanatics still recognize the distinctive odor like burned sugar and clay that hung in the room?
“The barbarian is working on his accounts.” Aaron’s Officials’ Language was quite intelligible, though Lionel understood others with difficulty. “Not the inventory. Just the trading accounts. There’s no need to disturb him.”
“Why hide himself underground like a mole?” The rustic patois was barely intelligible. “Are ba
rbarians afraid of light? We’d better have a look, anyway.”
“As you wish,” Aaron replied. “But who can say why barbarians behave strangely? Anyway, he can gabble only a few words in a civilized language.”
Three lictors clutching the short swords that were their badge of office entered the room. Looking down from the heights to which the great smoke had borne him, Lionel was indignant at his sanctuary’s profanation by their squat bodies in green tunics and their lumpy features peering between long, greasy hair. Wisely suppressing his anger, he remained silent.
“You see, not a single bolt in here.” Aaron was conciliatory—and condescending.
“Ask him,” demanded the senior lictor, “why he hides himself like a bear in a cave?”
“He says the sun irritates his skin. Besides, commercial transactions are unbelievably complex. He needs absolute quiet.”
“They’re dim-witted, these barbarians,” the lictor laughed. “Phew, there’s a funny smell in here.”
“Some ointment for his skin, I believe. The barbarians use all sorts of strange medicines.”
“What a stench!” the lictor exclaimed. “Just for form’s sake, though, we’d better look around.”
Lionel’s pen creaked in his tense finger. His makeshift hiding place could not withstand a determined search. The manic vigor that was as much the drug’s gift as tranquillity possessed him, and he braced himself to dash for the door.
“As you wish,” Aaron said patronizingly. “By the way, the Chief Lictor said he might call. I know you’ll be glad to see him.”
The lictors glanced at each other through their matted hair. The senior nodded, and they turned to leave. As their footsteps receded, Lionel trembled with relief and heard snatches of Aaron’s elaborately casual remarks.
“Just two bolts, you see. Damaged goods, though one would hardly notice. We’d destroy them otherwise.”
Lionel clasped his hands on the table and rested his head on them. Repeated spasms convulsed his body. When Aaron returned ten minutes later, he raised his head wearily.
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