The men shrugged and looked away. One muttered something inaudible. The young man turned back to the woman.
‘No way cross,’ he said in English as bad as his Miao. ‘Mission place very far.’
‘Come off it,’ said the woman. ‘That bloke don’t know nothing and what’s more he didn’t tell you nothing. Ask that kid there.’
The young man turned to Theodore.
‘Do you speak Mandarin?’ he asked despairingly.
Theodore nodded.
‘Why is there no bridge?’ said the young man. ‘This foreign princess is hideously dishonoured by the inadequacy of these roads. Can this appalling chasm be crossed elsewhere? How far is it to the Christian village? Is the missionary rich and charitable?’
‘Mission is burnt,’ said Theodore, wary now with human contact and trying to speak as though Mandarin didn’t come naturally to him and also as though the news meant nothing to him. ‘Men came in night. Break bridge. Burn mission. Is another path cross river.’
‘Men burnt the mission?’ said Lung, disappointment shading into alarm. He took a couple of paces to the woman’s side and began to whisper to her in English, voluble and frightened. Theodore, as he had turned to point the way to the path, had noticed some of the porters listening and had guessed that they spoke more Mandarin than they’d admitted. Now they drew back behind the horses in a close group, the Mandarin-speakers clearly explaining to the others what had happened.
‘It is begun,’ said one of them in Miao.
Lung and the woman were at the edge of the ravine now, peering across the gorge and no doubt seeing for the first time the wisps of smoke that still drifted above the blossoming orchard. The group of porters opened out and came forward in a stealthy line, one with a stubby knife in his hand and two others with clubs.
‘Miss! Watch out! Behind you!’ shouted Theodore.
His yell made the men hesitate, but the woman moved with extraordinary speed, dropping her umbrella, kicking her horse round and reining him back as he half-reared, and at the same time snatching a stocky-barrelled rifle from the holster by her saddle. She dropped the reins but remained steady in the saddle as the horse fidgeted back into stillness, and the gun swung along the line of porters, who fell back a pace, glancing at each other out of the corner of their eyes, waiting for someone else to start the attack.
‘Slimy bunch of bastards,’ she said. ‘Knew it the minute we hired them. Where’ve you skived off to, Lung, you yellow bleeder?’
There was no answer. The young man had vanished.
‘Show your face or I’ll leave you here,’ she said calmly. ‘And you won’t get no wages, neither.’
Lung emerged creepingly from behind a tree on the other side of the road.
‘Jesus, what a cock-up!’ said the woman. ‘Have we hired a bunch of bleeding Boxers, then?’
‘Not honourable Boxers, Missy. This men robbers, pirates. Think rob Missy, kill Missy, say they honourable Boxers.’
‘’Spect you’re right,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t make no odds. Tell ’em this gun here’s a twelve-shot repeater – that’s one bullet each and a few to spare. Tell ’em to drop their knives and turn round. I’ll count three and then I’ll shoot – I’ll start with that beggar with the club.’
Tremblingly Lung managed to put the sentences together. Nobody moved. The woman raised the gun to her shoulder, aiming at a squat, angry-looking man near the centre of the line.
‘One,’ she said. ‘Two.’
The club fell and the man turned. She swung the gun along the line, pivoting the others by force of will. Three knives and another club fell.
‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Now tell ’em to put their hands over their heads. Right. Now, Lung, pick up a knife and slit the back of each man’s trousers, from his belt to arse. Ah, get on with it, you yellow bleeder. I want ’em so they can walk, but not without holding their breeches up, see? Keep yourself bent low, so as I got a good sight of the bloke you’re doing.’
Still Lung stood twitching by his tree. The woman began to swear, without raising her voice but somehow flooding it with energy. Theodore had heard people swearing before – donkey-drivers and such, using the Settlement road because of the new bridge – but never in English. Some of the words he knew from the Bible, others were strange; but he knew that only a soul, man or woman, hopelessly lost to Christ could have spoken them in this manner.
Lung’s nerve broke. He darted forward, grabbed up a knife and bent behind the right-hand man, then moved down the line like a gardener performing some rapid piece of pruning on a row of fruit-trees. As he left each man a dramatic change took place, the shabby but serviceable pantaloons tumbling down to ankle-level, leaving some with bare buttocks and some with a twist of loin-cloth.
‘Fair enough,’ said the woman. ‘Now tell the bleeders to grab their trousies and march. Straight along the road, see? First feller to stop, I’ll shoot him dead, right? Same if he tries to scarper for the woods.’
Lung, strutting now with a sort of confidence, strung the order into his smattered Miao. The men clutched their trousers by the waist-bands and shambled off down the road. One or two glanced over their shoulders and saw the gun levelled steady as ever. The woman clicked her tongue and her horse, with no further command, walked forward behind the retreating porters. Half-hypnotized Theodore followed the procession to the first bend in the road, where she stopped the horse with another muttered order. Beyond the bend the road lay straight for more than a hundred yards, so when the men began to glance over their shoulders again they saw her still sitting there, motionless and ready. Slowly the group lost cohesion. Heads turned in argument, free hands gesticulated; another few seconds and they would break for the cover of the trees. Sensing that instant, the woman raised her gun to her shoulder and fired two shots above their heads. Yelling like parakeets they broke into a run, straight on down the road. Two of them tripped – over their trousers, perhaps, or each other – but picked themselves out of the mud and raced on round the further bend. Theodore heard the woman chuckle and turned to see the gun now pointing at him.
‘’Scuse the liberty, young man,’ she said. ‘Just I can’t afford to lose you. You speak English?’
‘Velly little English,’ said Theodore.
‘Fair enough. I shan’t hurt you. I want you to show me this here path. You’re from the mission, I expect? Poor little bleeder. What’s your name?’
Theodore hesitated. Father despised all liars, godly or pagan. ‘Christian name Theodore,’ he said.
Her face was a shadowed vagueness behind her veil, but from the way she cocked her head he had the impression that she was looking at him with sudden sharpness.
‘That’ll have to do,’ she said. ‘Hullo, Theo. I’m Mrs Jones. This here’s Lung. Hi! Grab that pony, one of you!’
She had slid the gun into its holster while she was speaking and was turning back towards the bridge when one of the pack-ponies came round the bend at a nervous tittup, almost knocking Theodore over. More by luck than skill he caught its halter and led it back to where Mrs Jones and Lung were gazing at the baskets which the porters had left behind. She slid from her horse and handed its reins to Lung while she went to catch another of the ponies which was wandering off between the trees. Her skirt was so long that she had to hold it clear of the ground with her left hand, but she seemed to find this no impediment and cornered and caught the pony with no fuss at all. The third pony, a grey, was grazing placidly by the edge of the ravine, so Theodore handed his halter to Lung and caught it and led it back.
‘There’s a young man what’s got his head screwed on,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Tie her to that there branch, and we’ll see what we can chuck out. Heave my bath off Rollo for a start, Lung, and all that lot of empty specimen boxes – that’s the ticket . . .’