The Secret Mandarin (24 page)

‘We cannot bury the body,’ Robert said. ‘The ground is far too hard. But we must get rid of him.’

I looked back down the hill. Sing Hoo was hysterical enough as it was.

I cast my eyes about, remembering passing this way earlier. We had had to steer the mules carefully for there was a frozen pool further along.

‘Come,’ I said. ‘I know what to do. We will lift him together.’

We dragged the body a hundred yards and stripped it. The man was still warm beneath his padded coat and sheepskin boots. He was neither stiff nor heavy and easy to manoeuvre into position. Robert was staring at me. The shock of what he had done was setting in.

‘Give me your knife,’ I said, and from the edge of the pool I hacked a hole through the ice.

It was not frozen too deeply and the ice came away easily from the surface of the water below. Without question the hole would freeze again, covering our handiwork overnight.

‘You had to, Robert,’ I comforted him.

He nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘This is a good idea.’

And together we slipped the man’s body into the water.

Up the hill, returning to the place we had found him, Robert bundled the clothes together to take back down with us and piled snow on top of the blood while I covered the traces of fire on the bushes as best I could. We were careful, almost businesslike—working as a team. I could find no tracks and surmised that, experienced in the hills, the man had covered his way. We were safe enough now.

‘They will follow our tracks eastwards if they come to look for him but that is a mile from here.’ Robert was thinking out loud.

His face looked pinched. I wondered if mine was similar.

‘If they fan out they may find this, but they will not know where we have gone on to and we will have the whole night or more of a lead. We must cover our tracks back to the others and then go as fast as we can. Will you be all right, Mary?’

‘I am alive,’ I said, ‘and I hope to stay that way.’

Together we checked for any last traces of the spy’s trail and then made our way back to the company, who were waiting ahead to see if we would return. We were silent. There was no need for words anyway—we knew what had happened and we knew we agreed.

Wang looked relieved as we emerged out of the darkness, but I saw hatred in the eyes of the bearers. The pieces of the story were fitting together slowly and they were
furious. What would they do if they knew there was a Chinese man murdered, hidden behind us, under the ice?

‘Hold your nerve, man,’ Robert admonished Sing Hoo as we passed for he looked terrified. ‘There are no ghosts in the hills and no one living that I can find either. We are not being followed. Stay firm.’

And Wang was sent to sweep our trail the rest of the night.

We continued to alter our route, and, rather than travelling directly south, we zigzagged through the snow. Although exhausted, we made a good pace but the men muttered angrily, feeling betrayed. Now they knew we were not mandarins from the north they had to be compensated for our secret. Robert promised them a bonus on the journey’s end. We walked through the dawn and the weather hardened. I felt horribly lonely. Only greed, and fear of having helped us now bound the men to the party. I shuddered to see the previously friendly faces regarding me plainly with disgust and fury.

At nightfall we stopped. My mind raced. Robert sent Sing Hoo to scout the area and, stiff as statues, we ate only for fuel, while Robert kept his eyes about him, grasping his gun and watching over the men as they huddled round the fire and, after a night and a day on the road, slept, exhausted.

‘I will keep the vigil, Mary. You sleep if you can.’

I was surprised that I wanted to, but my mind was settling down. These were vicious times and they had brought out the animal in me. I would eat and sleep and kill if I had to. Anything to stay alive. I had discovered more about myself in the last few hours than I had the whole of the rest of the trip. With a sudden clarity, I realised that this determination had always been inside me and my past fears and dependencies had been unfounded. I was always set to survive.

Three hours in and I had dozed. The sound of Robert shouting woke me and I stumbled to my feet, running to his side, ready even half-asleep to do whatever I must. He was a few yards from the campfire.

‘What is it?’

Robert pointed. One of the men had tried to leave the camp. He had stolen supplies and clearly intended to return to his home village. I shook my head. I knew what this required and so did Robert. In front of the others, he beat the deserter and then hauled the man back to the campfire in a fury, while the poor soul crouched, bruised and fearful. Robert needed to impose his will. He struck the deserter on the mouth so that for the second time in as many nights blood fell on the snowy ground. I was not sure if he might go further. Robert had never killed before he had had to, and I hoped the experience would not make him blood-hungry. His face was stony and he fiercely brandished his gun. I told myself I was behind him whatever he chose to do though it was with a tense kind of relief that he stopped well short of really harming the man.

‘You cannot desert,’ he told the huddled crew, like a general marshalling his army. ‘You have no choice, but this: see us to Bohea and there will be rice wine aplenty and a fat bonus for every one of you. Think how you will spend that money. Your wives and your families back in Hwuy Chow Foo will appreciate your wages. But if you flee now, if you break our agreement, you get nothing. If you go to the authorities they will torture you. You have to stay and see it through. This man I will forgive. But I swear, the next man who leaves, I will shoot him dead and if the mandarins find him before I do, they will do worse.’

For the merest second I thought that they might pounce. Six strong men together might gain the upper hand. But Robert was formidable and they only sat on the ground
dejected. Soon, one by one, with us watching over them, they settled to sleep. They might have been afraid of what they had discovered but Robert’s ferocity had made them tame. They were, after all, only tea farmers—not warriors—and all had families to return to. Before dawn Wang returned from his watch with the news that we were not being followed. Robert woke the group and we set off once more.

From that evening on, Robert took to checking the rear in the afternoon before we camped and then sending either Wang or Sing Hoo to check again at night. No one could survive easily in the freezing hills without setting a campfire and we never saw one behind us. It seemed that the mandarin had given up the trail and we could only hope that his missing scout delayed matters enough to make him quit entirely. Each day that passed was good news.

All this time, Robert was like stone, his conversation terse. I knew that in this state of mind there was no margin in trying to comfort him and mostly I kept my silence. The man he had beaten bore the marks for many days but what Robert had said was true—if any of our party returned they could be captured and tortured both for what they knew and in punishment for the help they had given us. We applied ourselves to getting on. Robert had several books on military strategy. We consulted them by candlelight each evening. These gave good information about the length of time it was possible to track men in snowy conditions, and how to plan a route that was difficult to follow. After ten days we concluded that this and Robert’s basic good sense had borne us away quickly enough to avoid capture in the first instance and keep us safe on the longer term.

‘It seems we have got off lightly, Mary,’ he said.

‘We got off, that’s the main thing,’ I replied.

It did not seem so lightly to me. Still, now we were sure
we were not being followed, the men relaxed. It had been a close call. Our escape had not been certain but our route was so erratic, they would have some job to find us now if they had not sent a party to tail us already. Still Robert continued to check our rear and we never rested for more than five hours—all of us pushed to the limit.

The days felt long, though I suppose it was really only a fortnight more of biting cold until the temperature rose and the altitude dropped and we found ourselves, quite miraculously, in the grounds of a Buddhist monastery. Here it was still winter, but the site was sheltered and, when we came across the place miles from everywhere, it was like a gift. To find civilisation in such a remote corner lifted my spirits after what had been a frightening ordeal.

‘Can we stop here?’ I asked Robert.

‘Yes. We need the supplies,’ he said simply.

Bertie had told us of the kindness and acceptance of the monks who ruled themselves separately from the mandarins and were independent of mind. I was glad to be somewhere spiritual, in any case, and from the first the monastery certainly felt that way—a retreat from the world.

‘They will consider you a gift from the heavens. If you are in the interior and in a fix, the monks are a good bet. They will tell no one,’ Bertie had promised.

Trusting this was true, Robert and I climbed towards the building like pilgrims, on foot. After months of rough inns, buildings with floors of trampled dirt, poor lodgings when we were lucky and camping rough in freezing conditions when we weren’t, the temple seemed miraculous, set, we realised, at the head of a valley of clear streams.

‘Good monks,’ Wang smiled. ‘Make all better.’

At the top of the steps our party was greeted by a boy swathed in orange cloth. He caught sight of us, hesitated
nervously and then fell to his knees and bowed very low. We were later to learn this was the custom with new recruits, who were enjoined to learn humility by bowing to everyone they came into contact with. Robert and I bowed in return and asked if we might avail ourselves of the monastery’s hospitality.

In the courtyard our men stood in awe. The square was peopled with gilded statues of wood and clay. They shone golden in the sunlight, almost glowing as they held the light, towering over us thirty or forty feet in the air.

‘This is beautiful,’ I whispered.

We could hear men’s voices raised in prayer and were led past an open courtyard where the monks were chanting, meditating on beads, like rosaries such as the Catholics use. A bell chimed a slow rhythm. It had a peculiar, clear tone that struck me as restorative and as we walked through the myriad courtyards I came to anticipate it. Each successive yard we passed through was littered with shrines around the walls, one for each of the priests, we later discovered. The stones were inlaid with incense, which burned constantly, sometimes billowing skywards, other times smouldering, the tiny puffs disappearing immediately. The whole place smelt of sandalwood, but here it was not a lonely scent.

At last, the boy bid us wait before two huge, wooden doors and disappeared for a few minutes.

‘Deluded,’ Robert commented, shrugging towards the shrines.

‘I think they are lovely,’ I said, still listening for the chime of the bell far off on the other side of several walls.

I do believe in kindness, if not in God, and this was the closest I was likely to come in a holy place to not being a blasphemer. I breathed in deeply and wondered if my soul might ever recover from what Robert and I had done in the mountains.

At length another monk appeared. He bowed low.

‘We offer all travellers rest,’ he said. ‘You are welcome here. You are safe.’

These were just the words I wanted to hear. After almost four weeks fleeing through the hills I felt my body involuntarily weaken and my arms flop by my side.

We were allotted quarters—simple rooms that were clean. The monk who welcomed us had a stillness about him that reminded me of Bertie when he was listening. He spoke clearly with an air of reverence and was enormously kind to our injured bearer, helping him to the hospital. He invited us to dine at sunset, saying we would be collected from our rooms when the time was right. I lay for a while but I was curious and felt drawn to wander the courtyards. The chimes of the bell had ceased and prayer time was over. I surveyed the enormous statues, exotic Buddhas towering over the height of the walls. Hardly anyone was about: most I expect seeing to their business, for in monasteries such as this, each devotee has his chores. The beaten earth beneath my feet was a bright orange, darker than the novice’s robes. This earth in China is called Dragon’s Blood and is believed lucky.

After a while Robert came to join me. He surveyed the large, golden Buddha and then kicked at the dusty ground.

‘We can stay here some days,’ he said. ‘I think it will do no harm, Mary. I imagine it is Christmas by now, you know. I should have counted the days more carefully and then we would be sure. But by my reckoning it is very close.’

I had forgotten. Our world had come to be regulated by the natural rhythms. Harvest time, planting time and the time for snow were more our measure than any specific day. All that was more than a thousand miles away. I thought now that in London there would be a stocking at the end
of Henry’s bed for this year he was old enough. Jane must have had the hallway decked with boughs and the children were surely singing carols. It struck me as strange.

‘Henry will enjoy it,’ I said.

Robert eyed me. He never mentioned his own children.

‘Yes, Henry will be almost two, Mary. He will be walking. Talking perhaps.’

A tear trickled down my cheek. Robert reached out and touched me gently on the shoulder.

‘We could have died,’ I said. ‘That’s why we had to kill him.’

‘We have been very lucky. I am sorry, Mary. The last days I have been thinking I should never have brought you.’

I shook my head.

‘I chose it, remember? You let me choose.’

‘Then we must put it behind us. Can you do that?’

‘I will try,’ I said.

Among the many plants they cultivated, the monks farmed bamboo and at dinner that evening they confessed that they had great difficulty with packs of wild boars that from time to time devastated the crop.

‘We have sound alarms rigged in the fields,’ one monk explained, using hand movements to illustrate his point.