href="#litres_trial_promo">36 and when they approached in good faith we fired on them treacherously and so overcame them for the moment. Thus we continued, in stealth and trickery, lying shamelessly to the Imperial ambassadors when they besought us gently to repent our rebellion and return to our duty to you, the Son of Heaven who rules All Under the Skies. Pa-hsia-li lied, the Big Barbarian lied, we all lied, but now we see our error; we tremble under the just wrath of your servant, Prince Sang, who has chastised us; dismay and fear spread through our ranks, our soldiers run crying away, our evil leaders cannot control them. The Big Barbarian bites his nails and weeps in his tent; all our soldiers and sailors weep. We beg your Divine Forgiveness, kneeling, and acknowledge your supremacy, oh Son of Heaven. Be merciful, accept our homage, for we were misled by evil people.”
Well, I’ve talked greater rubbish in my time; he could have it signed and witnessed if he wanted. But even in my abject terror, kneeling almost in the blood of the wire jacket victim, with those madmen screaming at me, I couldn’t help wondering what mortal use they thought it would be. Within a week their precious Son of Heaven was going to be brought face to face with the Big Barbarian, who’d make him eat crow and like it; the despised Red-headed soldiers would march the sacred streets of the Forbidden City, and get drunk, and piss against his temple walls, and accost his women, and kick his mandarins’ backsides if they didn’t stir themselves. And since nothing in Heaven or earth could prevent that – and Sang and Sushun and Prince I knew it – what was the point of stuffing the Emperor’s ears with nonsense at the eleventh hour, when he’d learn the dreadful truth at the twelfth?
I still didn’t understand, you see, the blind arrogant stupidity of the Manchoo mind – that even if Elgin stood in the Emperor’s presence, his ministers would still pretend he wasn’t there at all; that they’d be whispering him just to wait, this foreign pig would be brought to book presently, and his army thrashed; that none of it was happening, because it couldn’t happen, Q.E.D. And in the meantime, here was a high-ranking British Officer to tell him the same tale, what more proof could His Majesty want?
They had me rehearsing it now, and you may be sure I howled it with a will, even throwing in corroborative detail of my own about how my family (including little golden-headed Amelia, of blessed memory) were held hostage by Elgin’s villains, to coerce me into rebellion against my better judgment. D’you know, they were delighted – I ain’t sure they didn’t believe it. Sang bellowed and kicked me with enthusiasm, and Prince I said coldly they had chosen well. Sushun spat on me to show his approval. Then:
“Strip the swine!” cried Sang, and the Bannermen cut my cords, tore off my clothes, gave me a rag of loin-cloth such as coolies wear, and replaced my bonds with ponderous steel fetters whose links must have been two inches thick. I now looked abject enough to satisfy them, but they kept my lancer tunic, belt, boots and spurs, to show their lord and master, and produced a ridiculous Oriental sword which would be laid at his Divine Feet during my speech to the throne. Then they left me for about an hour, half-dead with pain and fear and icy cold, mumbling over the farrago of drivel that I knew I would be repeating for my very life. But after that …
Suddenly it was on-stage with a vengeance, with the Bannermen hauling me out and along passages and up stairways, beating me with their spear-shafts while I laboured with the dead-weight of my chains. We passed through chambers where Chinese officials stared curiously, and uniformed Bannermen guarded the round crimson doorways; I remember a carpeted gallery crammed with porcelain statues of grotesque figures with enormous teeth and staring eyes; then they were driving me out across a polished marble floor like a frozen lake, reflecting a great hall as long and high as a church, with a bass gong booming hollowly in its emptiness. Huge vases, three times the height of a man, stood on either side of that cavernous apartment, which was lit by great lanterns with candles of perfumed wax; three-quarters of its length was only dimly-lighted, but at the far end, above three tiers of broad marble steps, was a dais on which was seated a golden figure, shining in the flames of the great candlebranches flanking his throne, a massive ebony contraption inlaid all over with mother-of-pearl. Robed figures, about a dozen of them, stood on the steps, to either side; there was Sang, and Prince I, and Sushun, but I had little chance to take ’em in, for my Bannermen flung me headlong, and I had to crawl the whole damned way, dragging those beastly irons, and staring at the reflection of the naked, bearded wretch in the glassy floor beneath me. Hollo, Flashy, old son, I thought, bellows to mend again, my boy, but you keep going and speak civil to the gentleman and you’ll get a sugar-plum at tea.
The gong had stopped, and the only sounds in that joss-laden silence were clanks and laboured breathing; I reached the steps, and under the Bannermen’s proddings dragged my way upwards, kow-towing all the way; thirty-three of them were there, and then I stopped, sprawled stark, with a pair of yellow velvet boots just ahead, and the hem of a robe that seemed to be made of solid gold inlaid with emeralds.
“He doesn’t look like a soldier,” said a drowsy voice. “Where is his armour? Why is he not wearing it?”
“Your slave, kneeling, begs Your Imperial Majesty to look on these rags of garments which the Red-headed savages wear.” This was Sang, and it was the first time I’d heard him speak at anything but the top of his voice. “They have no armour.”
“No armour?” says the other. “They must be very brave.”
That’s foxed you, you bastard, thinks I, but after a minute Sushun explained that we were so bloody backward we hadn’t thought of armour yet, and Sang cried aye, that was it.
“No armour,” says the drowsy voice, “yet they have great guns. That is not consistent. You – how is it that you have guns, but no armour?”
“Address the Son of Heaven, pig!” yells Sang, and the Bannermen bashed me with their spear-shafts. I scrambled to my knees, looked up – and blinked. For if the fellow on the throne wasn’t Basset, my orderly from the 11th Hussars, he was dooced like him, except that he was Chinese, you understand. It was just one of those odd resemblances – the same puffy, pasty, weak young face and little mouth, with a pathetic scrap of hair on the upper lip; but where Basset’s eyes had been weasel-sharp, this fellow’s were watery and dull. He looked as though he’d spent the last ten years in a brothel – which wasn’t far wrong.37 All this I took in at a glance, and then hastened to answer his question.
“Our guns, majesty,” says I, “were stolen from your imperial army.” At least that ought to please Sang, but with a face like his you couldn’t be sure.
“And your ships?” says the drowsy voice. “Your iron ships. How do you make such things?”
By George, this wasn’t going according to Sushun’s scenario at all. Here was I, all ready with a prepared statement, and this inquisitive oaf of an Emperor asking questions which I daren’t answer truthfully, or Sang would have my innards all over the yard.
“I know of no iron ships, majesty,” says I earnestly. “I think they are a lie. I have never seen them.”
“I have seen pictures,” says he sulkily, and thought for a moment, an unhappy frown on his soft yellow face. “You must have come to the Middle Kingdom in a ship – was it not of iron?” He looked ready to cry.
“It was a very old wooden ship, majesty,” says I. “Full of rats and leaked like a sieve. I didn’t want to come,” I cried on a sudden inspiration, “but I was seduced from my allegiance to your Divine Person by evil people like Pa-hsia-li and the Big Barbarian, you see, and they made me a Banner chief in the Red-headed Army and a trusted creature of the Big Barbarian himself, and …”
It was the only way I could get into Sushun’s speech and forestall further embarrassment; I poured it out, keeping my eyes lowered
