The Keys of the Kingdom (22 page)

It was trackless, treeless plain: he began to despair of stumbling on the village. But early on the ninth day when he felt he must soon turn back, he sighted a shepherd’s hut, the first sign of habitation since he’d left the southern slopes. He hastened eagerly towards it. The door was sealed with mud, there was no one inside. But as he swung round, his eyes sharp with disappointment, he saw a boy approaching over the hill behind his flock.

The young shepherd was about seventeen, small and wiry, like his sheep, with a cheerful and intelligent face now caught between wonderment and laughter. He wore short sheepskin trousers and a woollen cape. Round his neck was a small bronze Yuan cross, wafer-thin with age and roughly scratched with the symbol of a dove. Father Chisholm gazed from the boy’s open face to the antique cross in silence. At last he found his voice and greeted him, asking if he were from the Liu village.

The lad smiled. ‘I am from the Christian village. I am Liu-Ta. My father is the village priest.’ He added, not to be thought boasting, ‘One of the village priests!’

Again, there was silence. Father Chisholm thought better of questioning the boy further. He said: ‘I have come a long distance, and I too am a priest. I should be grateful if you would take me to your home.’

The village lay in an undulating valley five li farther to the westward, a cluster of some thirty houses, tucked away in this fold of the uplands, surrounded by little stone-walled fields of grain. Prominent, upon a central hillock, behind a queer conical mound of stones shaded by a ginkgo tree, was a small stone church.

As he entered the village the entire community immediately surrounded him men, women, children and dogs, all crowding round in curiosity and excited welcome, pulling at his sleeves, touching his boots, examining his umbrella with cries of admiration, while Ta threw off a rapid explanation in a dialect he could not understand. There were perhaps sixty persons in the throng, primitive and healthy, with naive, friendly eyes and features that bore the imprint of their common family. Presently, with a proprietary smile, Ta brought forward his father Liu-Chi, a short and sturdy man of fifty with a small grey beard, simple and dignified in his manner.

Speaking slowly, to make himself understood, Liu-Chi said: ‘We welcome you with joy, Father. Come to my house and rest a little before prayer.’

He led the way to the largest house, built on a stone foundation next the church, and showed Father Chisholm, with courteous urbanity, into a low cool room. At the end of the room stood a mahogany spinet and a Portuguese wheel clock. Bewildered, lost in wonder, Francis stared at the clock. The brass dial was engraved:
Lisbon 1632.

He had no time for closer inspection, Liu-Chi was addressing him again, ‘Is it your wish to offer mass, Father? Or shall I?’

As in a dream Father Chisholm nodded his head towards the other. Something within him answered: ‘ You … please!’ He was groping in great confusion. He knew he could not rudely break this mystery with speech. He must penetrate it graciously, in patience, with his eyes.

Half an hour later they were all within the church. Though small it had been built with taste in a style that showed the Moorish influence on the Renaissance. There were three simple arcades, beautifully fluted. The doorway and the windows were supported by the flat pilasters. On the walls, partly incomplete, free mosaics had been traced.

He sat in the front row of an attentive congregation. Every one had ceremonially washed his hands before entering. Most of the men and a few of the women wore praying caps upon their heads. Suddenly a tongueless bell was struck and Liu-Chi approached the altar, wearing a faded yellow alb and supported by two young men. Turning, he bowed ceremoniously to Father Chisholm and the congregation. Then the service began.

Father Chisholm watched, kneeling erect, spellbound, like a man beholding the slow enactment of a dream. He saw now that the ceremony was a strange survival, a touching relic of the mass. Liu-Chi must know no Latin, for he prayed in Chinese. First came the confiteor, then the creed. When he ascended the altar and opened the parchment missal on its wooden rest, Francis clearly heard a portion of the gospel solemnly intoned in the native tongue. An original translation … He drew a quick breath of awe.

The whole congregation advanced to take communion. Even children at the breast were carried to the altar steps. Liu-Chi descended, bearing a chalice of rice wine. Moistening his forefinger he placed a drop upon the lips of each.

Before leaving the church, the congregation gathered at the Statue of the Saviour, placing lighted joss-sticks on the heavy candelabrum before the feet. Then each person made three prostrations and reverently withdrew.

Father Chisholm remained behind, his eyes moist, his heart wrung by the simple childish piety – the same piety, the same simplicity he had so often witnessed in peasant Spain. Of course this ceremony was not valid – he smiled faintly, visualizing Father Tarrant’s horror at the spectacle – but he had no doubt it was pleasing to God Almighty none the less.

Liu-Chi was waiting outside to conduct him to the house. There a meal awaited them. Famished, Father Chisholm did full justice to the stew of mountain mutton – little savoury balls floating in cabbage soup – and the strange dish of rice and wild honey which followed. He had never tasted such a delicious sweet in all his life.

When they had both finished, he began tactfully to question Liu-Chi. He would have bitten out his tongue rather than give offence. The gentle old man answered trustingly. His beliefs were Christian, quite childlike and curiously mingled with the traditions of
Tâo-tê.
Perhaps, thought Father Chisholm, with an inward smile, a touch of Nestorianism thrown in for value …

Chi explained that the faith had been handed down from father to son through many generations. The village was not dramatically isolated from the world. But it was sufficiently remote; and so small, so integrated in its family life, that strangers rarely troubled it. They were one great family. Existence was purely pastoral and self-supporting. They had grain and mutton in plenty even through the hardest times; cheese, which they sealed in the stomach of a sheep, and two kinds of butter, red and black, both made from beans, and named
chiang.
For clothing they had home-carded wool, sheepskins for extra warmth. They beat a special parchment from the skins that was much prized in Peking. There were many wild ponies on the uplands. Rarely, a member of the family went out with a ponyload of vellum.

In the little tribe were three Fathers, each chosen for this honoured position while still in infancy. For certain relegious offices a fee of rice was paid. They had a special devotion to the Three Precious Ones – the Trinity. Within living memory they had never seen an ordained priest.

Father Chisholm had listened with rapt attention and now he put the question uppermost in his mind.

‘You have not told me how it first began!’

Liu-Chi looked at his visitor with final appraisal. Then with a faint reassured smile he got up and went into the adjoining room. When he returned he bore under his arm a sheepskin-covered bundle. He handed it over silently, watched Father Chisholm open it, then, as the priest’s absorption became apparent, silently withdrew.

It was the journal of Father Ribiero, written in Portuguese, brown stained and tattered, but mostly legible. From his knowledge of Spanish, Francis was able slowly to decipher it. The fascinating interest of the document made the labour as nothing. It held him riveted. He remained motionless, except for the slow movement of his hand turning, at intervals a heavy page. Time flew back three hundred years: the old stopped clock took up its measured tick.

Manoel Ribiero was a missioner of Lisbon who came to Pekin in 1625. Francis saw the Portuguese vividly before him: a young man of twenty-nine, spare, olive-skinned, a little fiery, his swart eyes ardent yet humble. In Pekin the young missionary had been fortunate in his friendship with Father Adam Schall, the great German Jesuit, missionary, courtier, astronomer, trusted friend and canon founder extraordinary to the Emperor T choun-T chin. For several years Father Ribiero shared a little of the glory of this astounding man who moved untouched through the seething intrigues of the Courts of Heaven, advancing the Christian Faith, even in the celestrial harem, confounding virulent hatreds with his accurate predictions of comets and eclipses, compiling a new calendar, winning friendship and illustrious titles for himself and all his ancestors.

Then the Portuguese had pressed to be sent on a distant mission to the Royal Court of Tartary. Adam Schall had granted his request. A caravan was sumptuously equipped and formidably armed. It started from Pekin on the Feast of the Assumption, 1629.

But the caravan had failed to reach the Tartar Royal Courts. Ambushed by a horde of barbarians on the northern slopes of the Kwang Mountains the formidable defenders dropped their arms and fled. The valuable caravan was plundered. Father Ribiero escaped, desperately wounded by flint arrows, with only his personal belongings and the least of his ecclesiastical equipment. Benighted in the snow, he thought his last hour had come and offered himself, bleeding, to God. But the cold froze his wounds. He dragged himself next morning to a shepherd’s hut, where he lay for six months neither dead nor alive. Meanwhile an authentic report reached Pekin that Father Ribiero was massacred. No expedition was sent out to search for him.

When the Portuguese decided he might live, he made plans to return to Adam Schall. But time went on and he still remained. In these wide grasslands, he gained a new sense of values, a new habit of contemplation. Besides, he was three thousand li from Pekin, a forbidding distance, even to his intrepid spirit. Quietly he took his decision. He collected the handful of shepherds into one small settlement. He built a church. He became friend and pastor – not to the King of Tartary but to this humble little flock.

With a strange sigh Francis put down the journal. In the failing light he sat thinking, thinking and seeing many things. Then he rose and went out to the great mound of stones beside the church. Kneeling, he prayed at Father Ribiero’s tomb.

He remained at the Liu village for a week. Persuasively, in a manner to hurt no one, he suggested a ratification of all baptisms and marriages. He said mass. Gently he dropped a hint, now here, now there, suggesting an emendation of certain practices. It would take a long time to regularize the village to hidebound orthodoxy: months – no, years. What did that matter? He was content to go slowly. The little community was as clean and sound as a good apple.

He spoke to them of many things. In the evenings a fire would be lit outside Liu-Chi’s house, and when they had all seated themselves about it, he would rest himself on the doorstep and talk to the silent, flame-lit circle. Best of all they liked to hear of the presence of their own religion in the great outside world. He drew no captious differences. It enthralled them when he spoke of the churches of Europe, the great cathedrals, the thousands of worshippers flocking to St Peter’s, great kings and princes, statesmen and nobles, all prostrating themselves before the Lord of Heaven, that same Lord of Heaven whom they worshipped here, their master too, their friend. This sense of unity, hitherto but dimly surmised, gave them a joyful pride.

As the intent faces, flickering with light and shadow, gazed up at him in happy wonderment, he felt Father Ribiero at his elbow smiling a little, darkly, not displeased with him. At such moments he had a terrible impulse to throw up Pai-tan and devote himself entirely to these simple people. How happy he could be here! How lovingly he would tend and polish this jewel he had found so unexpectedly in the wilderness! But no, the village was too small, and too remote. He could never make it a centre for true missionary work. Resolutely, he put the temptation away from him.

The boy Ta had become his constant follower. Now he no longer called him Ta but Joseph, for that was the name the youngster had demanded at his conditional baptism. Fortified by the new name, he had begged permission to serve Father Chisholm’s mass; and though he naturally knew not a shred of Latin, the priest had smilingly consented. On the eve of his departure Father Chisholm was seated at the doorway of the house when Joseph appeared, his usually cheerful features set and woebegone, the first arrival for the final lecture. Studying the boy the priest had an intuition of his regret, followed by a sudden happy thought.

‘Joseph! Would it please you to come with me – if your father would permit it? There are many things you might do to help me.’

The boy jumped up with a cry of joy, fell before the priest and kissed his hand.

‘Master, I have waited for you to ask me. My father is willing. I will serve you with all my heart.’

‘There may be many rough roads, Joseph.’

‘We shall travel them together, Master.’

Father Chisholm raised the young man to his feet. He was moved and pleased. He knew he had done a wise thing.

Next morning the preparations for departure were completed.

Scrubbed and smiling; Joseph stood with the bundles beside the two shaggy mountain ponies he had rounded up at dawn. A small group of younger boys surrounded him, already he was aweing his companions with the wonders of the world. In the church Father Chisholm was finishing his thanksgiving. As he rose, Liu-Chi beckoned him to the crypt-like sanctuary. From a cedar chest he drew an embroidered cope, an exquisite thing stiff with gold. In parts the satin had rubbed paper-thin but the vestment was intact, usable and priceless. The old man smiled at the expression on Francis’ face.

‘This poor thing pleases you?’

‘It is beautiful.’

‘Take it. It is yours!’

No protestations could prevent Liu-Chi from making the superb gift. It was folded, wrapped in clean flax-cloth, and placed in Joseph’s pack.

At last Francis had to bid them all farewell. He blessed them, gave repeated assurances that he would return within six months. It would be easier next time, mounted, and with Joseph as his guide. Then the two departed, together, their ponies nodding neck-to-neck, climbing to the uplands. The eyes of the little village followed them with affection.