Heart of Iron (21 page)

The strangers were not English, as I had feared, but Chinese — there was no mistaking their facial features and soft voices that spoke in what I recognized as Cantonese. Yet, their hair was not braided into a long pigtail, but hung loosely around their faces, looking as if it had not been cut in some years. The clothing they wore under their furs was made of silk, but tattered and dirty, and I could not decide if they were Han robes. I was certain they were not Manchu.

One of them realized that I was staring. “Kuan Yu,” he introduced himself and bowed, withdrawing his hands into sleeves sporting an unintentional fringe.

“Poruchik Menshov,” I said brightly in English. “Any relation to Admiral Kuan Tien Pei?”

The man laughed then, showing small white teeth. “Not that I know of, but I do suspect the admiral honors Kuan Ti, the god of war, as do I.”

Jack listened to this exchange, visibly relaxing. It occurred to me that he did not lower his guard when he realized our new neighbors were Chinese, but only at the mention of some pagan deity I was sure Chiang Tse mentioned to me at some point. “You’re not a Christian then?” Jack interjected.

Our interlocutor and his companion traded a quick look. “No, of course not,” the one who had remained quiet so far said in fairly good English.

“You have long hair instead of shaved temples and queue,” Jack said.

“My father died,” said Kuan Yu.

“Mine too,” added his companion. “We are not Christian. You’re Christian, you’re an Englishman.”

Jack nodded.

“Funny,” said the second man. “There were other English at the station with us, and now I don’t know where they went.”

“There were?” Jack and I said in one voice.

“Yes,” the man said. “My name is Liu Zhi.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jack said, but already his gaze drifted toward the doors of the carriage.

We did not have to wait long — the door opened, and eight men, dressed in civilian clothing, tweed and fur collared-cloaks, filed in. In the narrow corridor of the couchette carriage, their numbers would be of no advantage, I thought, even if they noticed us. To prevent such recognition, I wrapped my shoulders in my pelisse and acted as if I were asleep sitting up, my head resting against the windowpane. Jack’s gray eyes flicked toward me, and he shot me a quick smile as he unrolled his Dick Turpin booklet.

The Englishmen looked at all the passengers as they passed; I could not see through the walls of the compartments, of course, but I could see their slow progress down the corridor, their heads swinging to the right and then left. I peeked out of the compartment, and wished we had chosen the sleeping carriage with closing doors; it was Jack who objected to those, on account of avoiding potential traps.

The first of the Englishmen reached us. I saw the back of his head as it swiveled to look at the Chinese. He had tiny black hairs on the back of his neck, fine as cat fur, bristling over the white scarf he wore over the ruddy pelt of his fur collar. When he turned toward us, my gaze drifted toward the letter in my lap. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Jack sink lower in his seat, slouching forward and hunching over.

The man did not move on; he remained where he was, staring at us. When the silence became uncomfortable and I looked up, reluctantly meeting the stare of his pale watery eyes. “May I help you, sir?” I said in my most masculine voice.

He smiled slowly and gave a half-turn half-nod to his accomplices. While his back was turned, Jack sprung. He lacked grace, but he made up this shortcoming in raw power. He barreled into the man and sent him stumbling backward, into the arms of his colleagues.

Someone in the front end of the carriage screamed, and there was a shuffling of steps as passengers fled the carriage. Soon, it would be just the two of us, eight Englishmen, and nowhere to run. Jack, however, was undeterred by the circumstance. He strained like a man trying to single-handedly move a heavy piano, pushing the knot of Englishmen back the way they had come in.

A shot rang out. I smelled smoke, and the acrid scent of burning sulfur and paper. I unsheathed my dead uncle’s saber and made my way into the narrow corridor.

I wanted to help Jack, but there was no getting around him to reach the struggling Englishmen. I was so intent on finding a way to circumvent him that I did not immediately notice both of the Chinese gentlemen had arisen as well, their fur cloaks donned anew.

“Stand aside,” one of them shouted. I obeyed on instinct, falling into one of the empty couchette compartments as they pushed past me. I expected them to be stopped by the obstacle of Jack as I had, but instead — I do not quite know how to describe it, since my eyes refused to believe the sight — they leapt into the air and sailed with the slow grace of birds riding air currents, over Jack and the Englishmen he was struggling with, and landed softly on the far side of Nightingale’s agents.

Confused shouting and thrashing of limbs filled the end of the corridor, and the fur of the Chinamen’s cloaks became quite animated — I saw it rise above the commotion flapping like mangy wings.

I glimpsed a sudden flail of an arm and the piercing shine of something metallic and sharp. Even Jack stopped pushing and his Englishmen scrambled to turn around. All I could see was a blur of motion and shadow. One of the Chinese gentlemen (I think it was Kuan Yu) jumped nearly to the rail car’s ceiling, and his foot, shod in a surprisingly refined-looking satin slipper, connected with the back of the head of one of the Englishmen, sending him spinning and tumbling into the clump of his countrymen, already exceedingly cramped by Jack’s effort at our end.

Even though it was difficult to make out who was hitting whom and with what, the Chinese gentlemen and their disturbing fur cloaks seemed to be gaining an upper hand. The English were defending themselves only half-heartedly, squeezed as they were between the Chinese and Jack who, by then, had stopped pushing and only administered an occasional and judicious slap or poke, keeping the agents tightly contained. He would make a good shepherd dog, I thought, as I managed to wedge in next to him and poke and prod the men with my now-sheathed saber. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I wanted a closer look at the strange balletic species of fisticuffs our new friends were employing, and I enjoyed feeling useful.

The Chinese had beaten the agents bloody, all of them slumped or staggering in the narrow corridor, blinded by their bruises and disoriented, a few split lips bleeding and a few eyes punched bruised and shut. Jack and I herded the Englishmen toward the carriage door. Kuan Yu pushed the door open; Jack smiled and nodded to him. “Jump,” he said to the English.

The ground sloped down from the tracks, coated with a crystalline blanket of snow, and yet my heart was uneasy as the English jumped, one by one by one, and rolled down the slope, raising brief, low flurries in their wake. I hoped they would find their way to safety.

“How close is the nearest town?” I asked Jack.

He smiled, shook his head. “They’ll be fine. Unfortunately.”

Kuan Yu laughed. “Indeed. Why not kill them?”

“Diplomatic nightmare,” I said.

We returned to our compartments, but after a quick unvoiced exchange, I went across the corridor to speak to the Chinese. Kuan Yu seemed a bit more talkative, and I sat down next to him, making sure my posture was both casual and masculine: I rested my elbows on my knees, letting my hands dangle.

“So,” I said. “What do you gentlemen do?”

Kuan Yu grinned. “How do you mean, poruchik?”

“Just in general. What brings you to Russia, business or pleasure?”

The men laughed, their bright teeth twinkling in their dark beards with great mirth. “We are traders,” Kuan Yu said.

Liu Zhi laughed again, throwing back his head, and gasped for breath, overcome by too much merriment. “Yes, traders,” he confirmed once he regained his ability to speak. “Business is bad in Siberia, had to go west to sell all the silk and tea we had. Now going back home, to Beijing. Will be selling fur.” He pointed at their cloaks that were now hanging placidly on the wall of the compartment, and I determined the unnatural mix was composed of mink, fox, ermine, and otter furs.

“Us too,” I said.

“Trading fur?”

“Going to Beijing,” I said.

They nodded, expressing no further curiosity. “Long trip,” Kuan Yu said. “Rest up, young man — who knows when you will be able to sleep in such security and comfort as now. We always rest while we travel by train. We know when there’s an opportunity for danger to arrive, and when it is safe. Sleep while the wheels rattle on and wake up when they stop.”

“Thank you,” I said and rose, realizing I was being politely encouraged to leave. “And thank you for your help.”

Liu Zhi nodded, smiling. “Our pleasure,” he said.

I did not doubt his veracity.

I woke up when the sun was high in the sky. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the air outside had a mature, late-morning quality rather than the slanted, insistent early morning light that prodded at one’s eyelids, forcing them open. I stretched before my eyes opened, and felt a warm breeze on my cheek — a barest whisper of air sliding against skin, tugging gently at the fine hairs of my carefully trimmed temples. I glanced between my eyelids, opening them just wide enough to sneak a peek. In a halo of distorted light, I saw Jack’s face, leaning so close to mine and peering so intently, it was as if he was trying to read his fortune in the veins of my eyelids, in the creases of my lips.

He sighed again, his breath like a slow caress at the ridge of my jawline; I opened my eyes, slowly, to give him time to move away.

He did not. “Good morning,” he whispered, his soft, gravelly voice rumbling with recent sleep and great fatigue.

“Morning,” I said. I had to pull myself back with my elbows, so that I could sit up without my forehead smashing his high arched nose. “You seem troubled with thought.”

“That I am.” He sat on the edge of my seat, leaning on both his arms, his palms planted on either side of my legs. He was too close, and his proximity was constraining enough that I had to fight a mild panic. If he were to try and kiss me, there would be little I could do to avoid it, save for a hearty slap in the face. “Can you talk?”

“Sure.” I pulled up my knees to my chest, circumventing the arch of his arms, and felt immediately better as soon as my feet touched the floor. “What do you want to talk about?”

“My past,” he said. “Remember what I was telling you about Canton?”

Jack stayed with the rest of the Englishmen in the English factory — or, as the Chinese called it,
hong
. From what he described, it seemed more a vast complex of apartments, stores and secondary buildings than a place where anything was manufactured; every western nation represented in Canton was in control of one such sprawling building, surrounded by shallow gardens and allocated to the outside of the city walls. They were not allowed to house women, and the merchants who made homes there kept their families at Macao, where the Portuguese opium addict Jack had befriended came from. The two of them often took long walks by the port and around the city perimeter, all the while arguing about religion.

Jack was bored, and he used his time to learn the local Chinese dialect in addition to the pidgin they all used to communicate with half-naked coolies at the docks and the shopkeepers who hung signs in Chinese and English, undeterred from trade by neither imperial edicts and threats of death nor apparently latent patriotism. They always had good advice on bribing the officials.

Jack’s knowledge of Chinese made him useful, and his Portuguese friend and mentor told him he was interested in leaving Canton and traveling up the Pearl River, to distribute some of the religious tract he had cobbled together and printed in Chinese courtesy of some Englishman working at the
Canton Herald
. The book was the usual mix of misunderstood mysticism, catechism, and drugged fancies, such as his assurance of human ability to fly.

Missionary work was nothing new. However, in light of the recent souring of the relations due to the opium impasse and the mulish stubbornness of Captain Charles Elliot, the man who tried to negotiate the conditions of trade on the English side, it had become even more thankless and dangerous than before. Paolo’s plan was to have Jack dress in Chinese garb and send him up the river to distribute the religious pamphlets. His Chinese would be passable enough to keep him out of trouble — at least they both hoped this would be the case.

Jack told me he did not know who the men who captured him were — they spoke a dialect of Chinese strange to his ears, and they had no knowledge of pidgin whatsoever. They were not Chinese officials. They took his books and his clothes and beat him with great vigor, but did not put him into jail. Instead, they lowered him into what seemed to be a dried up well and tied large stones onto his back, around his neck, and to his arms and feet, so that he could not move.

“This is where it gets interesting,” he said and smiled when I leaned closer, enthralled. “I started trying to move, so as not to be squashed by that weight, and I sang those little nonsense mantras Paolo had taught me. The more I moved, the easier it got. Soon, I stood up with the millstone still on my back.

“Then, I tried climbing the walls of the well. It was slow at first, but soon enough I could ascend twenty feet before having to climb back down. Not long after I began jumping in my well. It was a full year before I was strong enough to get out of the well, millstones and all.”

I held my breath. “And then… ”

He nodded. “Yes. I could run and jump and climb with these stones, easy as any man without them. But when I reached safety and had them taken off me… that first moment, I took one step and I thought I could fly! The barest movement made the world fall away from under me. It was like a dream, only for weeks I couldn’t take a step without soaring to the clouds. The war had started by then, and no one was paying much attention. As soon as I could walk, I went to Macao — I jumped from boat to boat, to tell you the truth, and when I couldn’t, I just jumped bouncing off water.”