The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure Read online

  A heavy bead of sweat fell from his forehead onto the manuscript, spidering the wet ink. Carefully he placed blotting paper over the page. He leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. He was tired, extremely tired … Just a moment’s sleep would … He jerked awake and lurched to his feet. His hand reached along one of the shelves, retrieved a half-empty bottle of brandy, which he put to his lips. There was a thump. It seemed to come from the landing. He froze. Then he went to the door. This time he stood there for a full five minutes before returning to his despatch.

  It is time to consider alternative strategies. I am aware of your lordship’s reluctance to commit further money or resources into a region that is not perceived to be directly an English sphere of interest. You asked me to sound out Japanese intentions, and I am pleased to report that their suspicion of Russian activities has been intensifying. There is a ‘forward’ party within the Imperial Army that is even now advocating aggressive steps to counter the Russians in Manchuria. Our agent with the Imperial High Command in Hokkaido—your lordship knows to whom I refer—reports that mock assaults on Port Arthur have been a regular feature of their army and navy field exercises, and he tells me that officers in the mess quite openly toast that day in the future when the Rising Sun will fly over the port of Dairen. Many believe that there will be war between the two powers within a few years, and that the victor will annex the Manchurian provinces in their entirety. In such a case it would be in our interest that the victor should be Japan and not Russia.

  It was a scratch at the door that startled him, followed by a sound he could not identify: a wail that seemed to rise above the banging of the storm outside and the broken shutter downstairs. It was a thin, human sound, which could have been a moan or a cry of ecstasy. The young man reached up wildly, knocking back his chair, and grabbed, for want of anything better, a cricket bat. This he brandished above his head in striking position as he pulled open the door. ‘Who’s there?’ he called. His voice came out in a squeak. ‘Who’s there?’ he repeated, in a more manly tone. Dark, empty corridors stretched in either direction. The small light from the candle flickered on the polished wood. ‘Come on out, if you’re there,’ he called. ‘I’m not afraid.’ He called again, this time in Chinese: ‘Ni shi shei? Ni shi shei? Chulaiba! Wo bu pa.’ There was no reply, only the banging of the shutters downstairs. ‘I’m not afraid,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not.’ He giggled light-headedly: ‘Come on, then,’ he called again. ‘Come out, you secret, black and midnight hags. Do you really think an Englishman’s afraid of a fox fairy?’ His bat dropped to his side, and with the other hand he rubbed his forehead. ‘You’re mad,’ he whispered. ‘Mad. Quite, quite mad. God, what I would give for some sleep…’ He shut the door quietly and moved back to his desk, but it was some time and another glass of brandy before he picked up his pen again.

  Between northern Manchuria and Harbin there still exists a large territory where Chinese government—albeit weak—prevails. We know that the Russians are trying by whatever means they can to win influence for themselves among local officials and army commanders, and sometimes even among powerful bandits. We suspect that weapons from the eastern Siberian supply depot at Lake Baikal are finding their way into the hands of local officials (for cash). It would be in Japan’s interest to take over this ‘trade in influence’. I believe that we are in a position discreetly to assist.

  I have examined where best we might focus our efforts, and I favour Shishan. Your lordship will note when you glance at the map that it is strategically positioned in the border area between the Russian and Chinese centres of railway-building activity. Nestled in a bowl of hills, it is one of the few readily defensible areas in the otherwise flat plain. I am told that a well-armed force in the Black Hills could hold off an army, which is probably why, historically, Shishan was a garrison town and a safe stopover point for caravans.

  He described Shishan briefly, its population, its market economy. He added a biography (as far as he knew it) of the Mandarin. He described the foreigners living in the city: the railway engineers at the camp, the chemical merchant from Babbit and Brenner, and the eccentric medical missionary, Dr Airton, in whom he had such high hopes. Was he right to place such confidence? He recalled the strange dinner that the head of Chancellery had given Airton on one of his trips to Peking. Sir Claude made it a matter of principle never to dine with missionaries so the chore had been delegated and he had been asked along to make up numbers. He had been surprised by how much he liked the man. The common sense and dry humour. The strange obsession with penny dreadfuls and cowboy stories. An unmissionarylike missionary. Should he recommend him? Well, for the moment there was nobody else. He took the plunge: ‘Airton’s friendship with the Mandarin, with whom he meets regularly to discuss philosophy and politics, could be the introduction we need.’

  And then he was finished, or nearly so. He could hardly keep his eyes from closing. At least the noise outside was abating a little and there had been no more strange sounds from the corridor. What on earth had he been thinking? Fox fairies! He had been warned of the danger before he left London. ‘For all their apparent cultivation,’ he had been told, ‘these are primitive types like anybody else we have to deal with in the empire. They’ve lots of weird and generally nasty beliefs behind their pretty tea ceremonies. You are to investigate the cults and the black societies along with your political work because we think they’re dangerous, but you’re not to go native, do you hear?’ And there had been much laughter over the port while he had smiled politely, thinking he knew better than his masters because of his doctorate in Oriental languages.

  I hope that your lordship will agree with what I have proposed. I am becoming more and more convinced that the Mandarin of Shishan could become the power broker of this region and our agent to stave off Russian influence. He has many qualities to recommend him: a distinguished military past, a record as a strong, independent administrator; he is ruthless and cruel, and very corrupt. And he is ambitious. He has made attempts recently to train his small garrison in modern methods of warfare. With your lordship’s approval, and with the assistance of the Imperial Japanese Army and their guns, I believe that we may easily bolster his position. In which case we may discover that in His Excellency the Mandarin Liu Daguang we have the makings of our very own warlord …

  His head dropped onto his arms and soon he was asleep. Before he lost consciousness he had an image of flowing robes, soft hair and beautiful brown eyes, red lips opening, sharp little teeth, the slow sinuous curl of a tail, and claws, fangs …

  But a ray of sunshine was already reddening the wooden walls. The sandstorm had died with the dawn. Lady MacDonald’s courtyards recovered their tranquillity. The creatures of the night—if they had ever existed—returned to the realm of the imagination from which they had been conjured. The interpreter stirred in his sleep, and the long letter—which in its way was equally fantastical, a conjuring of schemes and conspiracies from that other imagined world of the Great Game and Realpolitik—dropped, page by page, to the floor.

  Part One

  One

  Bandits came in the night and stole our mule.

  How will we transport the crops at harvest?

  Dr Airton was describing the exploits of the Hole in the Wall Gang to the Mandarin. ‘Outlaw he may be, but Mr Butch Cassidy is not an uneducated man,’ said the doctor, fumbling in his waistcoat for a match and his briar pipe. The Mandarin, reclining on the kang (he had already smoked two opium pipes and was comfortably replete after a light luncheon and an hour with his third, and favourite, concubine) gazed complacently at the frock-coated foreigner sitting on a stool beside him. With a rustle of silk and a tinkle of ornament, a maid leaned over his shoulder and carefully poured tea into porcelain cups. In a fluid motion she replaced the pot in a wickerwork warmer, and bowed her way out of the study.

  ‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Dr Airton, nodding after her graceful figure. Smoke rings drifted round his head. ‘You may be
surprised to hear that Butch Cassidy comes of a good English family,’ he continued. ‘His father, though a Mormon, was born in Accrington in Lancashire. Young Butch might not have had the fortune to be sent to good schools on the East Coast, but clearly he was educated. It takes aptitude of mind, after all, to plan and execute such successful train robberies.’

  His last words were drowned in an altercation that erupted from the courtyard outside the Mandarin’s study, angry voices barking and screaming through the sunlit windowpanes. It was the cook and the maidservant, thought the doctor, quarrelling again. It amazed him that the minions of a magisterial household could feel free to argue quite so loudly in front of their master; he could not imagine such going-ons in the home of an English judge. The Mandarin showed no rancour, but waited patiently for the noise to subside.

  ‘It is difficult, then, to rob a train?’ he murmured.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the doctor. ‘Takes lots of planning beforehand—knowledge of timetables, spies in the station, a convincing obstacle on the track, dynamite, skill with the lariat and a good getaway plan. And a certain amount of discipline in your gang. Unruly ruffians, cowboys.’

  ‘I must teach my soldiers to beware of such robbers when the railway track is completed,’ said the Mandarin.

  Dr Airton chuckled. The idea of pigtailed Chinese wearing masks and sombreros, wielding six-guns and galloping to catch a moving train appealed to his sense of whimsy. ‘I don’t think you’ll really ever have a problem on that score, Da Ren.’ He used the courtesy title for a mandarin, literally ‘Great One’. Although they were now friends, the doctor was punctilious in using the correct term of address for local officials. In return he expected to be addressed as Yisheng, ‘Physician’ or Daifu, ‘Doctor’. He knew that he was described in a less flattering way in the town but no one had yet called him Chi Laoshu, or ‘the Rat-eater’ to his face. He was, however, proud of this nickname, which he had earned four years previously during the bubonic-plague epidemic that had first brought him to Shishan. Shortly after his arrival he had sent criers round the streets announcing that he would pay the princely sum of ten cash for every rat brought to him, dead or alive. This had earned him an eccentric reputation and convinced all those who did not already know it that foreigners were touched in the head; but the subsequent hunt for rodents had decimated the population of disease-bearing Rattus rattus, and materially assisted the elimination of plague. The Mandarin’s memorial in his praise and the rumoured award of a medal from the Great Ch’ing Emperor for his work as a wondrous healer had somewhat restored his character, but the nickname had stuck, and even today he was often waylaid by peasants bearing baskets of dead mice, hoping to appeal to his gourmet tastes.

  The Mandarin leaned forward and delicately sipped his tea. Relaxed in his study he was in a state of undress, his grey pigtail coiled round his neck, his loose white pyjamas rolled to the knees. His blue robe of office and jade-buttoned cap hung neatly on a wooden frame to the side. Above the kang were his bookshelves, stretching to the carved and painted ceiling, each shelf covered by yellow silk curtains, behind which were stacked wooden-leafed copies of the Chinese classics, as well as more popular works and an assortment of scrolls. Dr Airton knew that these included a prized collection of pornographic prints. The Mandarin had once shown him the crude pictures, laughing boisterously at the doctor’s embarrassment.

  A blue and white Tientsin carpet covered the stone floor below the kang, half lit by the sunlight, which tentatively penetrated the room. In the gloom beyond were tables and chairs in the plain Ming style, and a desk, untidily strewn with paper, ink stone and brushes in their porcelain jars. Several scrolls of calligraphy were hanging in the shadows of the back wall—gifts from teachers, painters and other officials. A grandfather clock ticked loudly in a corner. The thin rays of light by the doors and windows caught the coils of blue smoke as they twisted like dragons from the doctor’s pipe, weaving through the motes of hanging dust, a thin layer of which covered every surface. The smell of the tobacco mingled with the vague scent of incense and old perfume, must and dirt. It was a small room, reminding Airton of a clipper’s cabin, but he enjoyed the snug, fuggy atmosphere. It was a sign of the intimacy which had grown up between the two men that the Mandarin would invite him to drink tea with him in this private part of the mansion.

  The Mandarin himself was short and inclined to fat, but his broad face and muscular physique gave him a presence that belied his size. ‘Rugger-player’s shoulders,’ the doctor had once described to his wife, ‘and butcher’s hands. You can imagine him in his robe of office at the yamen, with a black frown on his face and his executioner with his snickersnee behind, and the poor felons in their cangues licking the dust in front of him, wondering if it’s going to be a hundred lashes with the rod or off-with-your-head. Oh, he’s a Tartar all right, my dear, quite the Tartar, with a cold, dead eye and a heart of blood. As fearsome a rogue as you’ll ever meet, albeit he’s amiable to me.’

  ‘But you told me he’s an old man, Edward, did you not?’ Nellie had asked him nervously.

  ‘Aye, he is. He may be sixty or eighty, for all I know, but he’s remarkably preserved, and fit as a sailor for all his floppy belly and fleshy chin. A powerful man in every way. Still rides to hunt, and practises archery, and once I came early to his courtyard and saw him doing exercises with a sword. Great big cleaver, which he swung around his head as if it was a feather, moving his feet and body like an acrobat in slow motion. I suppose it was the t’ai chi—you’ve seen the people doing their exercises by the river, but never have I seen anyone wield a monster piece of iron like that before. Showed it to me afterwards. I could hardly lift it. Told me it was the sword of a Taiping general whom he slew as a boy, beautiful jade-encrusted handle and the cutting edge of a razor. Wonder how many heads that’s lopped in its time.’

  ‘I think you should be cautious,’ his wife had said. ‘I know you like to amuse yourself by saying things to frighten me and the bairns. It’s your humour, which I don’t pretend to understand. But this sounds like a terrible man, Edward, and it can’t be good that you—’

  ‘He’s my friend, Nellie,’ the doctor had told her.

  He seriously believed that. Both men were of a philosophical frame of mind, men of ideas and culture. Added to that, the Mandarin seemed to have an inexhaustible interest in everything to do with the outside world, and he, the doctor, was in a position to inform him about England, the empire and Europe, the balance of the powers, the developments of science and technology, and even about armaments. Surely these exchanges were to the benefit of a greater understanding and cooperation, good for China, good for Great Britain, good for all. Not to mention for the success of the hospital. And the railway too. Now he had become the appointed medical officer to the railway, he had a duty to curry the support of the local officials who could do so much to help, and also to harm, the progress of this useful project.

  Dr Airton sighed. He was conscious that he had allowed his mind to wander. This often happened during the long, meditative pauses of the Mandarin’s conversation. What were they discussing? The railway, of course, and he had been telling the Mandarin about the Hole in the Wall Gang, which had been the subject of one of the western shockers to which he subscribed, and which came with the monthly packet from the mission’s headquarters in Edinburgh, along with his medical supplies, journals, English newspapers, Blackwood’s magazine and domestic articles for his wife. He was pleased that the Mandarin had asked about the big continental railway schemes that were being completed in America. It gave him a lead in to the subject of bandits, which at the moment was one of his chief concerns. He felt the Mandarin’s hooded eyes surveying him contemplatively.

  ‘I am surprised that a scholar such as yourself, my dear Daifu, can speak in admiring terms of a bandit and call such a one educated. The path of learning leads towards virtue. I see no virtue in the pillaging of a train, however skilful the task might be. I cannot think much of a country
that ascribes merit to its criminals, even if, as you tell me, this America is only a new country.’

  ‘But surely in China you have legends of famous bandits and outlaws? Pirate kings? Why, last week in the marketplace I was watching with pleasure a travelling troupe putting on scenes from your great classic The Water Margin. Terrific costumes and stunning acrobatics, but the story was Robin Hood. Exiled heroes standing up for the common people against injustice and tyranny. Isn’t that the stuff of great romance?’

  ‘I behead bandits and pirates,’ said the Mandarin, ‘and it is I who protect the common people.’

  ‘Of course, of course, we’re not talking about the run of thieves and criminals,’ said the doctor. ‘But the ordinary man likes a bit of colour in his life and so often it is these heroes without the law who provide it. I don’t suppose you’ve ever had the opportunity to read any of the novels by Sir Walter Scott?’

  The Mandarin politely demurred.

  ‘How I would like to translate Rob Roy for you.’

  ‘It would be an exotic experience, dear Daifu—but if it is anything like The Water Margin I would be cautious in allowing a translation. You are correct when you say that the common man finds sensation in the exploits of heroes—this is harmless if it provides merely tales for children and vivid scenes for the opera—but it is the administrator’s duty to ensure that the admiration of the common people is channelled to worthier causes. Never should anyone be encouraged to emulate a breaker of the law. I expect that the mandarins even in America are concerned about the undue praise given this herdsman who you tell me robs trains.’