Shanghai (77 page)

When dawn finally broke,
Fan Kuei
corpses were hoisted on poles and the news spread. Canton erupted in rage at the
Fan Kuei
overlords, and then Beijing exploded, aided by the Dowager Empress, who publicly pronounced that it was time to rid the Middle Kingdom, her Celestial Kingdom, of every Foreign Devil—now!

—

Father Pierre had been an old man for a very long time. He had outlived his madam sister and pulled the appropriate Jesuitical strings to have her body buried in hallowed ground. He had returned to Paris twice in his sixty years at the Bend in the River. And both his cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Ignatius, and diocese had continued to grow, even after he lost his sight sometime in the late 1880s. He didn't remember exactly when. Many of his memories were mixed up now. He'd been having a lot of conversations lately with the red-haired Jew who died fighting for the Taipingers. Yes, many long talks lately—communions. He'd begun to look forward to those times. In fact, he was pretty sure it was that Maxi character who had just opened the door to the east transept of his cathedral. That door squeaked differently than the other doors. And naturally the Jew would use that door; after all, the east transept door led to La Rue des Juifs. Although this Jew was certainly a warrior, not a moneylender.

Father Pierre turned his sightless eyes toward the opening east transept door.

—

The Revolutionary saw him first. There on his damned knees, like the other Black Robes he and his men had just finished murdering. But he wasn't mumbling ridiculous verses like the other fools, he was smiling and signalling him to come—to approach—to take his hand.

—

Father Pierre sensed his old friend's approach and waggled his fingers in Maxi's direction. Of late he'd liked having his hands held. He was cold, always cold now. “Take my hand, old friend,” he said.

—

The Revolutionary heard the man call out in his direction in some foreign language. He assumed it was French. He didn't care which foul
Fan Kuei
language it was. He just wanted it to stop. Wanted the foreigners gone from his home. He screamed at the kneeling fool, “Shut up, old man!”

—

“Maxi, you're very loud today. I'm blind, not deaf.” Father Pierre laughed at his own joke. “Come take my hand, old friend.” He held his hand out farther but didn't still feel Maxi's hand. Finally he said, “Okay, don't, if that pleases you.”

—

The man's hand stopped waving in his direction and it made a gesture that the Revolutionary understood to
mean “okay.” So the Revolutionary drew his sword and cut the hand cleanly from the wrist.

A shock of pain raced through Father Pierre's arm and he vaulted to his feet and then threw himself backward, away from the pain.

The Revolutionary was surprised by the man's reaction. Before the man's severed hand hit the floor, the man's body landed in the midst of a large floral display.

—

“Easy there, old fellow, you'll hurt yourself,” Maxi said as he gently put Father Pierre back on his feet. “And you'll be needing this where you're going,” he added as he gave the old priest back his severed hand.

“Where am I going?” Father Pierre asked.

—

The Revolutionary was shocked to see the old priest get up from the floral display, cross the aisle, and pick up his severed hand.

—

“Come now,” Maxi said.

“No. Where am I going?”

“You know the answer to that,” Maxi said with a smile. “You're the priest, after all, aren't you?”

“I am. Yes, friend, I am.”

—

The Revolutionary watched in horror as Father Pierre Colombe of Paris, France, lately of Shanghai, took twenty-six steps and then laid his head on the high altar, and once there moved his head a single time as if to hear some final words—from his God.

—

“Good, very good.” Maxi's voice was very near to Father Pierre's ear. “You work and work and when you cannot work any more—you rest. Come, old friend. You've worked enough.”

—

The Revolutionary heard a sigh come from the old priest. Then his eyes opened wide, and the Revolutionary knew the blind man had, in the last moment of his life, seen … something that he would never see, no matter how long he lived or how keen his sight grew.

* * *

THE KILLING OF FATHER PIERRE and the subsequent torching of the Cathedral of St. Ignatius emboldened still more Chinese with grievances against the
Fan Kuei,
and what could have been a controlled moment of racial viciousness became the beginning of an all-out race war that history would eventually call the Boxer Rebellion.

Rickshaw drivers stopped pulling in deserted alleys and murdered their riders. Cooks who had worked their entire lives in great
Fan Kuei
kitchens poisoned their
finest dishes. Writers assassinated their publishers. Chambermaids attacked their mistresses while they slept. Even the wealthy Hong merchants and compradors, scenting a change in the air, supplied food, arms, and succor to the Boxer rebels.

The city at the Bend in the River—the sixth-largest trading port in the world, the place where White men made fortunes—shook at its centre and seemed about to throw those who lived at its very peak into the depths.

The Dowager Empress, ignoring the protests of her nephew, the Emperor, pressed her advantage, opening Manchu armories to the rebels and offering a cash payment for every
Fan Kuei
head. At the same time she kept increasing the pressure on Gangster Tu. She was certain that he had the relic, and that he was either going to try to start a dynasty of his own with it, or at the very least extort huge sums of money from her for the prophetic Tusk. She did not for a moment believe the note she received from the gangster claiming that the Tusk had not been where he had been told it was.

She ordered the troops she had surrounding Shanghai into the city to aid the rebels and called on them to “Bring me the head of the big-eared gangster!”

—

For the first time in his life Tu Yueh-sen felt fear. He knew that someone had betrayed him, and although at first he thought it was the carver's angry son, he changed his mind when the disgraced Red Pole's body was found crushed behind the ancient statue in the Warrens.

And then there was the price put on his head by the Manchus—and Manchu bannermen entering his city.

First things first,
he thought.
Find the betrayer, then get him to reveal the Tusk's hiding place, then present the Tusk to the Empress, and that solves that problem
.

But who was the betrayer in their midst? The disgraced Red Pole and the carver's angry son were dead. The only other people who had known enough to betray him were his Incense Master, his head sycophant, and his first lieutenant, Loa Wei Fen.

As the war raged on the streets he did what the head of any large business concern would do. He called a meeting.

* * *

THE WARRENS WERE NO LONGER a safe place to meet, and the streets were dangerous both day and night, but the Chosen Three had to meet to decide the Tusk's future.

“In plain sight,” the Confucian's note to the others suggested. They considered the Temple of the City God after morning prayers, but eventually settled on the ancient Long Hua Temple at the end of the Buddhist festival scheduled, despite the violence, for the following day.

—

Mai Bao was surprised to get the summons from her mother and hoped that nothing was wrong. She gave Silas an excuse that she knew he didn't completely believe, then left the wall-encircled gardens she'd begun to love and the houses she now thought of as home. Before leaving, she tiptoed into the girls' sleeping
quarters and pressed her beautiful lips to the foreheads of the two youngest girls in their tiny beds.

“Take the carriage,” Silas said. “MacMillan will drive you.”

“I would prefer not,” she said, then added, “I need you to trust me on this. I'll be safe. I have many people looking out for my well-being.”

Silas looked at the tall, handsome woman who now shared both his bed and his life, and he first silently thanked the gods for her, then wondered at how little of her he really knew. She was attentive to his needs and wants and always at his side when he wished, but there were dark shadows in her that he, in his late middle age, knew he would never understand, and was perhaps not entitled to understand. Did she love another? Had there been a great love in her life before him that she couldn't forget? He didn't know, and he knew he would never know.

—

Mai Bao spotted her mother on her knees, four lit incense sticks perfuming the fetid air as she rolled them slowly between her palms in solemn prayer. On the far side of the narrow hall, before the towering gold-plated Buddha, was the man she recognized as her mother's strange confidant, the Confucian. Beside him was a man with an arm in a sling and a bloody poultice wrapped around his head over his left ear.

“You're late,” Jiang snapped.

“The streets are full of madness.”

“True, daughter, but for meetings of the Ivory Compact you are never again to be late.” Then, right there on their knees, with incense sticks rolling in
rhythm between their palms, mother told daughter of the history of the ancient Ivory Compact—of the obligation to bring on the darkness of the Age of White Birds on Water, then to find the Man with a Book who would lead them to the revival of the Age of the Seventy Pagodas.

Mai Bao, like most Shanghainese, had heard stories of an old prophetic whale bone or some such, but had noted, then ignored them as superstitious hocus-pocus, probably generated by the Taoist priests to frighten the populace.

“So it is true, Mother?”

“It is the truest thing in my life. Even truer than you and your sisters. And to you I pass on this truth, this obligation in the Ivory Compact, all my worldly possessions, and my name, Jiang. But only if you accept the obligation of the Ivory Compact by getting the First Emperor's Narwhal Tusk to safety.”

“But how can I better manage that than you or anyone else?”

“Because your husband has the wherewithal to manage this task. All you need do is use what you learned as a courtesan and ask this favour of him.”

Mai Bao starred at her mother. So many pieces of her own life fell into place at that moment. Little mysteries were resolved. Suddenly she wondered if it had been an accident that she had come upon her mother crying in her private rooms over the removal of her friend's body from the Flower World's cemetery. Had her mother set all that in motion once she had given birth to her daughters, so that she would meet and marry Silas Hordoon? Her husband was certainly a Man with a Book—Richard Hordoon's opium dream diary—and someone who would have the wherewithal to move the First Emperor's Tusk to safety.

Then, as quickly as her suspicions came up, Mai Bao dismissed them. She was honoured to represent her family in the Ivory Compact and, after a quick introduction to the Confucian and the Assassin, promised to provide safe sanctuary for the most powerful relic beneath the heavens.

“Where is the Tusk now, Mother?”

“Nearby, easily accessible. Provide me with your plan and I will show you the Tusk's location.”

“Do you not trust me, Mother?”

“I trust you, or I would not have revealed my greatest secret, bestowed my greatest gift. But should you fail to develop a plan to my liking I will have you removed by Loa Wei Fen and offer your place to your younger sister. This is not a beauty contest or a singing competition. The Tusk's safety is crucial to the future of the Black-Haired people. We will, as the First Emperor said, ‘Either rise as a great nation or be picked apart by carrion birds.' My obligation to the Ivory Compact far supersedes my obligation to any of my daughters. Do you understand that, Mai Bao?”

“I do, Mother. As my obligation to the Compact will supersede my obligation to my two daughters.”

Jiang smiled and touched Mai Bao's strong features in what, in a Christian country, would have been called a mother's blessing. Finally she withdrew her hand and said, “How are my granddaughters?”

“They prosper. One looks exactly like you, Mother.”

“And are they happy inside your racetrack garden walls?”

“They are, Mother.”

“I would like to see them before I die.”

“I will arrange it. I promise. But since I managed to include them both as two of our ten street children, you
will have to come and visit all the children, not just them.”

“Fine. I'm sure I can pick out which two are my grandchildren.”

“I have no doubt.”

“And when will you tell them, Mai Bao, who they really are?”

“On the day you pass on from this world, leaving us all behind, Mother.”

Jiang nodded. Suddenly she was so tired that she could hardly stand. “Good. Yes. Very good, Mai Bao. Shortly thereafter you'll have to begin to test them.”

“As you did me, Mother.”

“Yes, as I did you. For only one daughter can succeed you in the Ivory Compact.”

Mai Bao nodded and touched her fingers to her mother's beautiful lips, and for the first time in her life she saw her mother cry and had absolutely no doubt that the tears were real.

* * *

AS GANGSTER TU'S MEETING BEGAN, Loa Wei Fen, for the hundredth time, considered killing Tu, as he was sure that the man's search for the betrayer was narrowing quickly to him. But he reminded himself that under his obligation to the Ivory Compact he could not, since it was possible that Tu Yueh-sen was the Man with a Book, and even in these desperate times Tu's power was considerable, although reduced by the Manchu price on his head.

As was usual in Big-Eared Tu's meetings, he and his sycophant, the Straw Sandal, did most of the talking. In this meeting the Incense Master punctuated many of
the Straw Sandal's remarks with harsh throat clearings and the odd well-timed spit.