Despite now knowing my own invitation to China had come mainly as an afterthought I completed my assignment by adding a short chapter on modern pistols to the Field Book. I borrowed Yuán’s Colt and described its internal layout, function, field stripping and the evolution of the design.
Once aboard our coach I tapped a finger on my pocket. My notebook was safely tucked on my person, the jottings for use as aides-memoire. Out of fear of mislaying it I had telegraphed much of the content to Mycroft Holmes. In the wrong hands, the material would be of considerable strategic value. If a German or Russian force wanted to attack and capture the Summer Palace my notes on the lake and the canal linking it to the city contained precise detail on the width and depth of the waters and how best to manoeuvre in them, even how to employ the Shishaquita and the Yong-he in military terms.
Particular memories of Peking would stay with me to the end of my days - the comforting roll of the Imperial palanquin taking me back and forth to visit the wounded Emperor, screened from prying eyes by the heavily embroidered silk hangings, listening to the grunts of the bearers picking their way through the maze of blue- and yellow-tiled palaces and pavilions. The Peony Terraces at the Summer Palace, the colours graduated up the hillside from deeper to the lighter hues at the top as though the landscape itself was fading away into the far distance.
Had John Bunyan ever visited China I would have sworn Peking was the model for the town of Vanity in Pilgrim’s Progress whose fair was filled with ‘whores, bauds, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearly, precious stones and whatnot’.
Wang was waiting at the Gate to wish us a safe journey at the same spot among the row of young Pittosporum trees where I had first met him. He gave a deep bow, saying lyrically, ‘May there be no violent wind or excessive rain in the skies on your journey, and no waves rising from the sea.’
We thanked him for the companionable days spent together.
‘When we are back home Sir Sherlock and I will raise a glass to your esteemed ancestor Fang Bao,’ I told him.
‘One day I hope to come to see you in Ying-ji-li,’ he replied. ‘I have already learnt a lot from your way of life which will be of great benefit to my country.’
‘What are your immediate plans?’ I asked.
‘In the light of what Sir Sherlock and you have taught me I am composing a zhāngbiao, a secret Palace memorial, for the imperial courier to deliver direct to Her Majesty,’ came the reply. ‘Under lock and key to ensure it comes into her hands. I’ve things to say I wish the Empress Dowager alone to hear.’
Precisely on the auspicious hour our carriage moved on through the great Ch’ien-Men Gate into ‘the Great Without’ for the last time. Briefly, like Alice, we had been strangers in an extraordinary land, as though we had fallen through a rabbit hole into the England of the Tudors, in the reign of the autocratic and capricious Faerie Queene. I looked forward to the friendly streets of London, the cheerfully-lit store windows, the men showing off their black astrakhan collars imported from Ballaarat, the multitudes of companionable strangers moving unceasingly down Regent Street. I especially yearned for England’s countryside, a place of steady and placid work where bells rang out for church. Goldcrests and swallows above the fields. Primroses, pyramid orchids, bluebells and dog’s mercury giving way to goldilocks buttercups. Hay-making.
Peking’s high walls fell back. The paranoia seeping through the miasma of the Forbidden City, the crowded street-life, the parade of camels laden with coal from the mountains, all so recently stark, even oppressive, dropped away with the passing minute.
We heard no more the cries of vendors, the harsh discordant sounds of dancers, scribes, wine sellers, jugglers, tumbling dwarfs. The charcoal sellers’ drums. The clack-clack-clack of hollow bamboo announcing the passage of a Chinese street doctor. All would fall silent. To the right of us lay temple-crowned hills, the upturned roofs nestling on the slopes. Only the watch-towers and the green tiles of the triple-domed Temple of Heaven remained visible from afar.
I would not forget glancing back at the Great Ancestress after we had been dismissed from our final audience only that morning, the solitary, diminutive figure seated on a little yellow satin stool at the apex of the white marble Jade Girdle Bridge. She wore her favourite stork hairpin of coral, silver and pearls. The protective collar behind her neck drooped bright yellow bejewelled ribbons. The front of her dress was covered with similar beautiful large pearls, some disposed in the seal-character for long life. She sipped tea as she gazed out across the lake at the palaces and the pavilions, the setting which had been her life.
At a respectful distance a large retinue of eunuchs stood silent and watchful, around them ladies-in-waiting and Palace maids bearing her shoes, handkerchiefs, combs, brushes, powder-boxes, looking glasses of various sizes, pins, perfumes, black and red ink, yellow paper, cigarettes, and water pipes. A further eunuch looked on, empty-handed, waiting to carry the yellow, satin-covered stool. Another eunuch who was a great expert on birds stood by his Mistress. At his high-pitched trill specially trained birds were released from bamboo cages nearby. They flew to a long, wand-like stick held out by the Empress Dowager, waiting to be fed with caterpillars, grasshoppers or grain brought for that purpose. I stared back at the impassive bird-trainer. It may have been he who took a young corvid from the nest and over months, a year even, taught it to fly to the shoulder of someone in a plain yellow beizi embroidered in the middle of the back with jewel-beetle wing-cases, the man who released the war-crow on that fateful day.
To say our goodbyes, Holmes and I had been led to the Jade Girdle Bridge by the Chief Eunuch Li to be presented with parting honours and gifts. The Empress stood up as she heard our approach. She gave her slight, watchful smile. The honours and baubles were taken one by one from two heavily-laden eunuchs at her side and then passed back to them to be carried to our transport. Holmes received the High Order of the Double Dragon and the Manchu Flaming Pear, plus the Ancestral Rank of the First Class of the First Order for Three Generations, the latter bestowed on Holmes and his ancestors. It was the first time the Order had been conferred on a foreigner.
‘I’m certain past generations of my Celtic squires in the orbis alius will appreciate it greatly,’ Holmes remarked, tongue in cheek.
The First Red Button Grade of the Mandarin was bestowed on me, with the ennobling of my descendants for three generations to equal rank, coral thumb-rings, the gold and pearl Imperial Order of the Double Dragon, the Double-Petalled Flower Feather, and the Purple Whip, plus the right to ride a horse around the Forbidden City. Tears flooded my eyes, startling the Empress Dowager. If only my darling Mary were alive. But for her untimely death we may have had descendants to entertain with the Red Button story.
In turn, with an irony my comrade Holmes insisted upon, we presented the Dowager Empress with the Aeroscope camera. The Empress lifted her closed hands under her chin and made a series of little bows. The disarming and graceful gesture of the closed hands from an autocrat who for a moment in Holmes’s and my life had wielded - but not exercised - the power of death over us took us by surprise.