Heart of Iron (22 page)

“Nonsense.”

He put his long-fingered hand over his chest. “I swear to you, it is all true. I sailed for home on the first boat taking English families back.”

“This… ” I gulped one breath after another, my heart pounding. “But you make it sound as if it was natural. However, I am certain that no other person would succeed the way you did — they would’ve died in that well.”

He inclined his head, agreeing. “It allowed me to discover that I had such an ability — a confluence of an inborn talent and circumstance had brought it forth, do you understand? And either of them is nothing without the other — this is what is so extraordinary about it. Don’t you agree?”

“I do,” I said, and only then noticed a small burnt hole in his jacket, just below his right shoulder. The hole was almost invisible as it was obscured by a crust of dried blood. “My God, you’re injured.”

He followed my gaze, and probed the hole with his fingers, thoughtful and flinching. “Must have been that shot we heard. Who would be mad enough to shoot in such narrow confines? A ricochet is almost a certainty.”

“They did get you,” I pointed out. “Let me get my scissors and some thread — I can at least try to dig out the bullet and close the wound.”

“There’s no need.”

I stared at his visage, just a shade paler than usual. “Of course there is. You’re still mortal. Aren’t you?”

He grinned. “I assume so. Very well, you’ve made your case.”

I suspected he enjoyed being ministered to, as he took off his jacket and undid the collar of his shirt. His skin looked sallow, smeared with thick dry blood. The bullet entry stared at me like a solitary black eye, and I wished I had a more suitable tool than a pair of scissors. I probed the wound carefully, and felt a subtle scratch of metal under metal almost immediately. Some bone must’ve stopped it. I sighed with relief.

Jack closed his eyes and looked paler, but made no sound as I dipped the scissor tips into the wound, pushing them next to the bullet. I pivoted the scissors — easy as turning a key — and a stained black metal cylinder slipped out into my hand. One end was flattened where it had encountered Jack’s bone.

“That’s it,” I said. “You want stitches?”

He shook his head as he touched the wound and the single drop of blood that had squeezed out of it. “It seems pretty well cauterized, and I do heal well on my own. Thank you, and I promise to ask for the stitches if they are at any point necessary.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I did not feel particularly useful, or helpful; I suddenly worried about Jack. The more I thought about how close he had come to being seriously wounded, the more I panicked. What if he were to be killed or gravely injured? As selfish as I felt when I thought that way, a part of me keened in a high, childlike voice,
What would happen to me then?

Jack seemed pensive all day, quiet, and I did not think it was due to his injury. Rather it seemed as if he regretted opening up to me so much. I worked on my never-ending letter, which had acquired a worrisome similarity to a diary, especially once I realized I was unlikely to mail it from anywhere, be it Nizhniy Novgorod or Omsk or Beijing.

Jack read his booklets, only looking up at me when he thought I was not watching him. The fur traders played a game of cards, happy and angry exclamations alternated in an almost constant stream from their compartment. Ever since we had dispatched the English, in what I hoped would be a summarization of any future untoward encounters, the carriage belonged to us, as if the other passengers somehow got a wind of the events and worried of being thrown off the train as well. Even the conductor appeared infrequently, usually after dark, and only to offer woolen blankets or clean linens.

I folded my letter that had grown to seven pages in length, and went to refresh myself. The reverse corset was comfortable enough, but its weight and mere proximity to my skin induced almost fearful fits of sweating. The washroom in the end of the carriage was small, and boasted only a washbasin and a bucket of cold water the conductor refilled at every stop.

I wet a towel and loosened the collar of my jacket. Even though I shivered at the touch of cold water, I sighed with relief as it removed a layer of grime from my face and neck and chest. I was looking forward to the day when I would be able to take a proper bath. I hoped it would come before we reached Beijing. This cleaning myself with a rag soaked in cold water was starting to feel lacking.

After I felt sufficiently refreshed — or, at the very least, cold and shivering — I took the opportunity to affix a fresh mustache to my lip. I returned to my seat, to find Jack asleep with his head propped against the window. The fur traders, on the other hand, were wide awake — they had finished their card game and drank tea, talking loudly in their language. That made me sigh and think back to the social at the Crane Club. Poor, defiled Crane Club. I couldn’t help but glare at Jack a little, even though it wasn’t really his fault.

“Join us for tea, young hussar,” Kuan Yu called to me from across the aisle. “You sleep so soundly, you missed the last night’s stop. We bought fresh tea and local bread. It surely is better than stale sandwiches and cheese you get from the restaurant carriage.”

“Thank you,” I said, and crossed the aisle.

The compartment across from ours was thoroughly inhabited by the traders — it even smelled different from ours, of tea and sandalwood and some unfamiliar spices, of tanned leather and slightly wet dog. Ours smelled mostly of Jack’s cigars and pulpy reading material with a whiff of my ink and stationery. I relished the difference.

The three of us crowded on one bench, while the opposite one served as a sideboard: there was hot tea and round bread specked with poppy seeds, butter and raspberry preserves. Kuan Yu and Liu Zhi did not seem discouraged by the unfamiliar food — or, I supposed, they had traveled back and forth enough that food made no difference whatsoever. I hoped I wouldn’t look too provincial in the foreign land, where I would probably have to eat things that would be slightly confusing.

We drank our tea and ate in silence. “Do you live in Beijing?” I finally asked after my hunger had subsided and I did not have to converse with my mouth full.

Kuan Yu shrugged. “Sometimes. Here and there we go. I am originally from Hua County, in Guangdon Province.”

“He’s a Hakka,” Liu Zhi explained. “It is close to Canton.”

“I have heard of Canton and Hong Kong,” I said. “And Macao.”

“Hua is like that but different,” Kuan Yu said.

The word sounded familiar, and after turning it in my mind a little, I remembered I first heard it from Lee Bo, when he explained Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace to me. “Isn’t Hong Xiuquan also from there?” I asked. “The man who started the Heavenly Kingdom?”

The men traded a quick look. “Indeed,” Liu Zhi said. “How did you know?”

“I have friends who were in the university with me,” I said, momentarily forgetting my disguise and my story. In any case, there was no reason why a man couldn’t be a student before becoming a hussar. “A few of them talked about what was happening in China… before they left. St. Petersburg was not safe for them anymore.”

“So we heard,” said Kuan Yu. “Well, you’ll be happy to know the Heavenly Kingdom is doing quite well. If your friend is a Hakka, he might even be in great power.” He lowered his voice, looking furtively at the compartment Jack and I shared. “Hong Xiuquan, the Son of God, has taken Nanjing, and it is only a matter of time before Beijing and the devil Qing fall.”

I decided not to draw Kuan Yu’s attention to the fact that he had lied to us before when he assured us he was not Christian but worshipped old gods. Not that, from what I’d heard, Hong’s Christianity was the one I was familiar with. “You sympathize with the Taiping then.”

Kuan Yu shrugged. “I am just a fur trader,” he said. “All the ins and outs and great men and children of gods — all that escapes me, or doesn’t concern me. I do want the Manchu gone, and I want the Chinese to be in charge of China.”

“I want my daughter to grow up with her feet unbound,” Liu Zhi said. “Hakkas don’t bind their women’s feet — this is why Hakka women cannot find non-Hakka husbands, their feet are too big. But if no woman walked with lotus gait… ” He shrugged, without finishing the thought.

I nodded mutely. At first, I wanted to argue against such terrible mutilation as foot binding — I had seen depictions of folded over, disfigured feet that did not look human — and yet I did not want to sound like Ipatiev, who always tried to make everyone think that he was the final arbiter and judge of what was barbarous. So I drank some more tea and changed the subject. “I hear that in Taiping Tianguo they let women take examinations to become state officials. I wonder if women would ever be allowed to hold administrative posts in China.”

Kuan Yu shrugged. “Either way, I do not care. As long as the Manchu are gone.”

Liu Zhi nodded. “I could not agree more. Let us hope the English will not get involved.”

I held my breath, my mind racing with what I knew and what was advisable to mention. Ever since I met Jack, most conversations felt like trying to navigate an unfamiliar carriage drawn by wild horses through a strange city in a moonless night. Sometimes it seemed best to let the reins drop, and to count only on luck rather than trying to guess the intentions and motives and political alliances of every person I spoke to. “If the English got involved,” I said slowly, “wouldn’t they support the Taipings? You know, Taipings being Christian and all.”

Both men laughed heartily, and I felt very young and very foolish.

“Of course not. They won the war with the Manchu, they signed treaties with the Qing emperor letting them trade opium. The Taipings punish opium smoking and selling by death.”

“So they would put profit before religion?”

They nodded in unison. “And besides, what foreigner would ever admit that their God Yasoo might have a Chinese brother?”

I considered the question. “It seems only right,” I said. “The Bible recounts these people being chosen or that. Priests and kings and emperors always act as if they have God on their side. I heard that during war with Napoleon, everyone thought it was God’s will that the French took Moscow, and then it was God’s will it burned and then it was God’s will the French lost. He always seems to be taking different sides. I think He only cares that we put an entertaining spectacle, not who’s right or who’s wrong.”

“Gods like spectacles,” Kuan Yu agreed. “And sacrifices, although they tell me that Yasoo does not like sacrifices?”

“His Father used to,” I said. “I think in the days of the Old Testament you were supposed to burn cows for Him.”

“Terrible,” Liu Zhi said without much conviction. “In any case, we honor our ancestors and old gods, and hope that Manchu are gone.”

I finished my tea. My thoughts were racing with the possibilities I had not previously considered, and as soon as it was polite to do so, I fled back to my compartment. I kicked Jack’s shin until he woke up.

“What is it?” he mumbled.

“Shhh,” I hissed. “I was thinking… the letter from Wong Jun is addressed to the Manchu officials, and to the Qing emperor himself.”

“Yes.” Jack stretched and yawned. “Is this why you woke me?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I woke you because maybe we shouldn’t be talking to the Manchu. Maybe instead we need to make alliance with the Taipings — looks like they just might win this. They’ve taken Nanjing, and looks like it’s only a matter of time before they advance further north.”

“They are barbarians,” Jack said. “At least, the Manchu are civilized.”

“They are a hated foreign government. I am just not sure that Emperor Constantine should make an alliance with such a tenuous power.”

Jack laughed. “The Qing have been in control for centuries. My dear, empires are all about hated foreign governments.”

I laughed too, stretched, and looked at the fir forest whizzing by the window, so close to the train tracks that I could’ve touched the branches if I had opened to window. “I do see your point.”

“Make no mistake about it,” he said softly. “When we visit Turkestan, you’ll see. Emperor Constantine, of whom you seem so fond of for some reason, is as hated there as the Manchus are in Canton.”

“Emperor Constantine is a good man,” I said. “He is being misled by his brother and his advisors, but I think—”

Jack threw his hands into the air. “What is it with you people! Even you, Sasha, and I thought you were smarter than most. The entire country seems to believe in some imaginary good tsar, as if nothing is ever his fault. From the sixteenth century to today, you all mumble about how your ruler doesn’t mean to do anything bad, he or she is just being lied to by corrupt boyars. Do you realize how silly it sounds?”

I did, but was not yet ready to admit to it, so I just turned beet red and stared out of the window, seething, and imagining suitable insults for Queen Victoria, even though I suspected that they would never wound Jack as deeply as his words had wounded me.

It was three days before we reached Yekaterinburg, and by then I had moved beyond vague dissatisfaction and into a ravenous lust for a hot bath and a meal that was not bought on a platform from portly peasant women bundled up in shawls and kerchiefs all the way up to her eyes. They sold sauerkraut and boiled eggs and hand-sized minced meat pies of dubious freshness but nevertheless a welcome relief from the monotonous bread, butter, and two-days-old soup from the restaurant carriage. But even those treats were starting to grate, and I would kill for a pancake or a plate of pelmeni.

The conductor informed us we were to stop for a few hours in Yekaterinburg, and recommended a tavern where we could take a room and, I fervently hoped, find some hot water. And pelmeni.

“Perhaps it would be better to stay on board,” Jack said when I expressed my plans excitedly. “It may be wise to avoid being seen.”