reigned, and when I stole a glance up at the Imperial Throne, damned if he hadn’t gone to sleep! Bored stiff, no doubt, but highly disconcerting when you’ve been pleading for your life, and Sang and Sushun glaring like Baptists at a Mass. None of ’em seemed to know what to do; the Son of Heaven smacked his lips, broke wind gently, and began to snore. There were whispered consultations, and finally one of them went off and returned with a stout little pug in a plain robe, who approached the throne, knocked head, and began to tickle the royal ankle.
The Emperor grunted, woke, stared around, and asked sleepily which tortoiseshell was turned over tonight.
“The Fragrant Almond Leopardess, oh Kwa-Kuin Ruling the World,” squeaks the stout party, and the Emperor pulled a face.
“No!” says he petulantly. “She is large and clumsy and without culture. She sings like a crow.” He sniggered, and Sang and the others, who’d been mirroring his disapproval, chuckled heartily. “Let it be the Orchid,” says the Emperor, sighing happily, and everyone beamed; I may even have nodded approbation myself, for he looked at me again, and frowned.
“I saw a picture of an iron ship with three great chimneys,” says he sadly, and then he got up unsteadily, and everyone dropped to their knees, crying: “There cannot be two suns in the heaven!” and knocked head vigorously. I watched him shuffle off, attended by the stout fellow; he walked like an old, sick man, for all he couldn’t have been thirty. The Solitary Prince, Son of Heaven, the most absolute monarch on earth, yearning for a trip on a steamship.
The fact remained that he hadn’t told ’em to give Flashy a pound from the till and a ticket to Tooting; I doubted if Sang would either, for while I’d done my damnedest to carry out his orders, I knew I hadn’t made much of a hit, and if he was displeased … my fears were realised as I was abruptly jerked to my feet, and that hateful voice was snarling at the Bannermen:
“Put him below! Tomorrow he can join the other barbarian curs in the Board of Punishments.”
My blood froze at the words, and as they seized my fetters I was foolish enough to protest. “But you swore to let me off! I said what you wanted, didn’t I? You said you’d spare me, you lying beast!”
He was on me like a tiger, striking viciously at my face while I cowered and yammered. “I said I would spare you the wire jacket!” he shouted, and fetched me a final clip that knocked me down. “So, I will spare you … the wire jacket! You may yet come to beg for it as a blessed release! Away with him!”
They hauled me off, and since I was in such fear that I woke the echoes with my roaring, they gagged me brutally before rushing me down a spiral stairway. It wasn’t the way we’d come, and I was expecting stone cells and dripping walls, but evidently they didn’t have such amenities in the Emperor’s private apartments, for the room they thrust me into seemed to be a furniture store, dry and musty, but clean enough, with chairs and tables piled against the walls. The swine made me as comfortable as possible, though, throwing me back down on a narrow wooden bench and shackling my wrists so tightly beneath it that I couldn’t budge an inch and must lie there supine with my legs trailing on the floor either side. Then they left me, a prey to the most horrid imaginings, and unable even to whine and curse by reason of my gag.
The Board of Punishments … I’d heard of it, and horrid rumours of what happened there – if I’d known what Parkes and Loch and the others were already suffering, I’d have gone off my head. Mercifully, I didn’t know, and strove to drive the awful fears out of my mind, telling myself that the army was only a few miles away, that even mad monsters like Sang must realise the vengeance that Elgin would take if we were ill-treated, and hold his hand … and then I remembered Moyes and Nolan, and the vicious, mindless spite with which they’d been murdered, and I knew that my only hope was that rescue would get here in time. They were so close! Grant and the Frogs and Probyn and Nuxban Khan and Wolseley and Temple, those splendid Sikhs and Afghans and Royals; I could weep to think of them in their safe, strong, familiar world, loafing under the canvas, sitting about on Payne & Co’s boxes, reading the Daily Press, chewing the rag about … what had it been, that evening a century ago, before we rode to Tang-chao … oh, aye, the military steeplechase at Northampton, won by a Dragoon over twenty fences and three ploughs, and spectators riding alongside had spoiled sport … “Goin’ to ride next year, Flash?” “Garn, he’s top-heavy!” “They say the Navy are enterin’ in ’61 – sailors on horseback, haw-haw!” That’s how they’d be gassing and boozing and idling away precious time, the selfish bastards, while I was bound shivering and naked and near-demented with fear of what lay ahead …
I must have dozed, for I came awake freezing cold, racked by pain where the sharp edges of the bench were cutting into the back of my shoulders and thighs. It was still night, for the window was dark, but through the lattice door light was streaming, light that moved – someone was quietly descending the stairway to my prison. There was a murmur of Chinese voices just outside: one a falsetto squeak that I seemed to have heard before, and the other … even to my battered senses it was one of the loveliest human sounds I’d ever listened to, soft and tinkling as a silver bell, the kind of voice a happy angel might have had – a slightly excited, tipsy angel.
“Is this the room, Little An?” it was whispering. “You’re sure? Well, take me in, then! Hurry, I want to see!”
“But, Orchid Lady, it is madness!” whimpers Squeaker. “If we were seen! Please, let us go back – I’m frightened!”
“Stop trembling or you’ll drop me! Oh, come on, fat, foolish, frightened Little An – be a man!”
“How can I? I’m a eunuch! And it’s cruel and mean and unworthy to taunt me – aiee! Oh! You pinched me! Oh, vicious, when you know I bruise at the least nip –”
“Yes, so think how you’ll bruise when the Mongols take their flails to you, little jelly …”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I would. I will, unless you take me in and let me see – now.”
“Oh, this is wilful! It’s wicked! And dangerous! Please, dear Imperial Concubine Yi, why can’t we just go upstairs and –”
“Because I’ve never seen a barbarian. And I’m going to, dear Little An.” The lovely voice chuckled, and began to sing softly: “Oh, I’m going to see a barbarian, I’m going to see a barbarian …”
“Oh, please, please, Orchid Lady, quietly! Oh, very well –”
The door opened, and light flooded into the room.
Dazzled, all I could make out at first was a short, stout figure carrying someone – a child, by the look of it. Then the lantern was placed on a cupboard, so that it shone down on me, and as they advanced into the room I saw that the bearer was the portly cove who’d scratched the Emperor’s foot in the Hall of Audience; his burden was wrapped in a scarlet silk cloak with a hood keeping the face in shadow.
“Well!” hisses the eunuch. “There it is – I hope you’re satisfied! Risking our lives just to gape at that monster – to say nothing of the scandal if it were known that the Empress of the Western Palace was sneaking about –”
“Oh, shut up, pudding,” says she in that silvery chuckle. “And put me down.”
“No! We’re
