‘My place is with the Congregation too.’
‘Your father gave the order. He had little time, but he was very certain. Listen! Someone on the path! Hurry, before men come from the bridge along this cliff! God guard you!’
Fu T’iao’s voice had none of the slow confidence with which the adult members of the Congregation usually spoke. He pushed the blanket-roll into Theodore’s arms, turned and leaped for the first stepping-stone. Theodore began to climb as quickly as he could, listening through the gasping of his own breath and the thud of his heart for any sound of movement at the top. The trees, he knew, grew thickly along this cliff and the path wound away from the ravine to reach the road further along. But his alertness was only on the surface, for all his inner mind was taken up with what Fu T’iao had said. If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Members of the Congregation knew their New Testament almost by heart, and often used its words when they were making a serious decision. Now, stumbling and panting up the cliff path, Theodore worked out what Fu T’iao had meant. The Settlement was being attacked and burnt because the people in it were Christians, and just as Saint Paul had been made to face the lions in one of the Roman circuses, so he was returning to confront these attackers. To do otherwise would be to deny his faith.
But Theodore was running away. Father’s order, Fu T’iao had said. Father had ordered him to deny his faith, to hide in the wood and then look for Doctor Goertler. Had Father really given the order? Or had Fu T’iao, driven by loyalty to save his master’s child, acted on his own?
The sudden pang of doubt stopped Theodore in his tracks, and as his panting eased he heard voices on the far path. Fu T’iao, climbing, must have met somebody coming down, so others were running away – on Father’s orders? Because their faith had failed? There was yelling now at the bridge; along the edge of the ravine, silhouetted against the glare from the Settlement, people were streaming towards the old path, some cowering as they ran, others pursuing. They were like devils, sharp against the blaze of hell – one had a hoe raised to strike. The cypress was a warning pillar, the hard-pruned trees of the orchard were gestures of pain, all black against orange. The enemies on the bridge would see that there was an escape route here and send men to block it. Theodore scurried up the last few yards of cliff and ran between the trees. No special shouts rose, as if someone near at hand had spotted escaping prey. Instead a new noise started, the unmistakable tock of an axe. Another joined it.
Theodore ran on. Where the path forked he chose the arm that led away from the road. About fifty yards along it he stopped and looked back. A few streaks of orange showed between the smooth trunks, and the voices and the uproar were softened by the nearer leaf-noise. The axes were striking now with a steady rhythm. There were voices in the wood. I must hide, he thought, climb a tree, find a hole or a thick bush. He knew from many games that it was not a good wood for that, the trunks too straight to climb, the leaf-cover too thick for undergrowth to flourish. Even so he was about to turn off the path when a fresh idea struck him – there was one place where no heathen Chinese would come till daylight, at least. He walked on, calmer now, until he came to the clearing.
The glow reflected from the clouds gave just enough light for him to see the double row of mounds, all close-mown and kept clear of coarse weeds, but otherwise unmarked. Clearly, even in the dark, to anybody of any faith, this was a burial place; to the heathen Chinese it would be a haunt of ghosts, unappeased by ancestral rites, roaming for prey. To Theodore it was almost as familiar and comfortable as home. As he stepped from under the trees he whispered the customary words, just as if Father had been there beside him.
‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain.’
Deliberately he chose the gap between the fifth and sixth mounds of the nearer rank. When he had spread his blanket out, lain down and rolled it round him he became just another mound in the dimness. He sighed, and the sigh set up a shudder he was unable to stop. The nights in South West China are warm at that time of year, but Theodore felt as though a heavy, chill liquid was flowing through all his veins, which the shuddering did nothing to warm. At the same time his mind was filled with nightmare imaginings about the Settlement, though as soon as he tried to think coherently about what had happened, or might have happened, his brain refused to function. He found his lips moving, repeating over and over the last words he had spoken: ‘To live is Christ, and to die is gain.’ They didn’t seem to mean anything. Twice he tried to rise and make his way back across the ravine, but his muscles wouldn’t stop shuddering long enough to obey him. He was still in this state when he slid suddenly into the pit of sleep.
A slow, warm rain began before dawn. In his sleep Theodore imagined that he was awake, dozing on the floor of his own room, from which somebody had stolen the roof. It seemed to him that nothing could be done about this till Father came back. It was a miserable sort of dream with no centre or focus to the misery to turn it into a proper nightmare. His sleeping body tried to huddle further into the roll of blanket, whose coarse, oily, close-packed wool took a long time to let the wet through. He was properly woken at last by a little river that had formed where the rain runnelled off the mound on either side of him and flowed along the hollow in which he lay; at first the fold of blanket under his head had dammed its path, but when he groaned and shifted, the tiny torrent rushed through.
He sat up violently, trying to shake the rain out of his hair. The memory of last night swept through him like a storm-gust, making him huddle back instantly into his soggy hiding-place and then twist, taut-muscled and slow, until he lay on his stomach and could inch his head up to peer around. The low gravestone of the right-hand mound confronted him. ‘Constance Halliday Tewker. Born in darkness. Died in Grace. April 17 1891, aged 32.’ Theodore could barely remember his mother, except as a vague and silent presence, far back. She was more real to him dead than alive, a grave-mound to be mown and weeded, a source of warmth and cheerfulness in Father’s voice, a saint known to be at the side of Christ in heaven. The message on the stone struck him with no new force; he was aware of it, but more aware of the stone itself as some cover for his raised head as he peered through the veils of dawn-grey rain into the dripping shadows under the trees.
Nothing but rain moved. No hunting cry told that he had been seen. No far voices called. A low roll of thunder trundled its way among the clouds, emphasizing the absence of man-made noises. He wriggled out of his squelching blanket, picked it up, and his food-bag, and walked steadily towards the nearest trees. There, after a little searching, he found a drip-free area and knelt down on the soft leaf-litter to pray.
It was impossible to concentrate. As soon as he closed his eyes the wood was full of creeping presences, their movements muffled by the rattling streamlets shed from the leafage far above; but when he opened them and looked round he saw nothing but the smooth, reddish trunks and the glistening thin threads of falling water. He would start again, but inside his mind the memories of last night nudged and jostled for attention: Father’s voice, the shouts, the flames, the dwindling hymn, Fu T’iao in the ravine, the demon-figures running along the cliff-top. ‘When you speak to God you may be sure that He will hear, but you must not assume that He will answer.’ That was one of Father’s favourite sayings, but now Theodore felt for the first time in his life that his attempts to speak were being cut short, were not going out of him towards any hearer, but instead were scurrying round in his skull like mice in a box.