years, and I’m damned if I want to see it made now, in haste.’
I said nothing; I was too busy recalling, with my innards dissolving, that at the last great battle for Nanking, when the Taipings took it in ’53, the carnage had been frightful beyond contemplation. Every Manchoo in the garrison had been massacred, 20,000 dead in a single day, all the women burned alive – and it would be infinitely worse now, with both Taipings and Imp fugitives joining in an orgy of slaughter and pillage, raping, burning, and butchering everything in sight. Just the place to send poor Flashy, with his little white flag, crying: ‘Please, sir – may I have a word …?’
‘We can only maintain a de facto neutrality by keeping ’em at a distance,’ Bruce was saying. ‘If they advance on Shanghai, we’re bound either to fight – and God help us – or come to terms with them, which the Manchoos would regard as a flagrant betrayal – and God help our Pekin expedition. So it is our task to see that the Taipings don’t come to Shanghai.’
‘How the deuce d’you do that?’ I demanded. ‘If they beat the Imps at Nanking, and have blood in their eye, they won’t stand still!’
‘You don’t know the Taipings, Sir Harry,’ says he. ‘None of us does – except to know that with them anything is possible. I think they’ll come to Shanghai – but this crazy king of theirs is capable of declaring a Seven Year Tranquillity, or some such stuff! Or launching his armies west to Yunnan. It is possible they may do nothing at all. That’s why you must go to Nanking.’
‘What can I hope to accomplish?’ I protested, and he took a turn round the room, fingered a few papers, sat down, and stared at the floor. Devising some novel means of plunging me into the soup, no doubt.
‘I don’t know, Sir Harry,’ says he at last. ‘You must persuade ’em not to march on Shanghai – at least for a few months – but how you’re to do it …’ He lifted his head and looked me in the eye. ‘The devil of it is, I can’t send you with any authority. I’ve not replied to Lee’s letter, but I’m having a verbal hint discreetly conveyed to him that he may expect a … an English visitor. No one official, of course; simply a gentleman from the London Missionary Society who wishes to visit the Heavenly Kingdom and present his compliments. Lee will understand … just as he will understand what is meant when the gentleman expresses the opinion – merely the opinion, mind you – that while a Taiping attack on Shanghai would destroy any hope of British co-operation, restraint now would certainly not incline us to a less favourable view of their overtures in the future.’
‘I can see myself putting that in fluent Mandarin!’ says I, and he had the grace to shrug helplessly.
‘It is the most I can authorise you to convey. This is the most damned ticklish business. We have to let them see where we stand – but without provoking ’em into action, or offending ’em mortally (dammit, they may be the next government of China!), or, above all, being seen to treat with them in any official way whatsoever. That’s why your presence is a gift from God – you’ve done this kind of business in India, with considerable success, as I recall.’ Well, that was so much rot; my diplomatic excursions had invariably ended in battle and beastliness on the grand scale, with my perspiring self barely a length ahead of the field. He got up and glowered at the map, chewing his lip.
‘You see how difficult it is for me to give you guidance,’ says he. ‘We do not even know what kind of folk they truly are. The Heavenly King himself has hardly been seen for years – he keeps himself secluded in a great palace, surrounded by a thousand female attendants, thinking wonderful thoughts!’ I was willing to bet he didn’t spend all his time thinking. ‘If he could be persuaded to inaction … to hold Lee in check …’ He shrugged. ‘But who is to say if he is even rational, or if you will be allowed near him? If not, you must do what you can with Loyal Prince Lee.’
A splendid choice, you’ll agree, between a recluse who thought he was Christ’s brother, and a warlord who’d done more murder than Genghiz Khan.
‘The only other who may be open to reason is the Prime Minister, Hung Jen-kan. He’s the wisest – or at least the sanest – of the Taiping Wangs. Mission educated and speaks English. The rest are ignorant, superstitious zealots, drunk on blood and power, and entirely under the sway of the Heavenly King.’ He shook his head. ‘You must use such tactful persuasions as seem best; you will know, better than I could tell you, how to speak when you are face to face with them.’
In a high-pitched shriek, probably. Of all the hopeless, dangerous fool’s errands … supposing I even got there.
‘How do I reach Nanking? Aren’t the Imps blockading the river?’
‘A passage has been booked on Dent’s steamer Yangtse. She got through to Nanking last week – the Imps give our vessels passage, and the river will be clear as far as Kiangyin still. If she’s stopped there you must go on as seems best; one of our people, a missionary called Prosser, will be looking out for you – you’ll have papers from the London Missionary Society, in the name of Mr Fleming, but the Taipings will know precisely who and what you really are, although neither they nor you will acknowledge it.’
So it was settled; I was for the high jump again, and not a damned thing to be done about it. He went over it all a second time, impressing on me the delicacy of the task, how H.M.G. must be in no way compromised, that every week of delay would be a godsend – but the main thing was to convince this crew of homicidal madmen that, whoever they killed next, it shouldn’t be done at Shanghai.
‘Well, sir,’ says I, all noble and put-upon, ‘I’ll be honest; I’ll try, but I don’t think there’s a hope of success.’
‘Another man might say that out of reluctance to go, for his safety’s sake,’ says he solemnly. ‘I know that with you, the thought of danger has not crossed your mind.’ He was right there; it had stayed rooted. ‘God bless you, Sir Harry.’ And with the angels choiring above us, we shook hands, and I marched out, and bolted for the lavatory.
I had my Adams in my armpit, a Colt in my valise, a hundred rounds, a knife in my boot, and a bulky notebook containing every known fact about the Taipings, courtesy of Messrs Fat and Lin, when I boarded the Yangtse on the following evening. It was a good two-day run to Nanking, in ideal conditions; at present, it might take a week. I was too sick and scared and furious to pay much heed to my surroundings, and as I remember the Yangtse was like any other river steamboat – half a dozen cabins aft for the Quality, of whom I was one, a couple of saloons below for those who couldn’t afford a bunk, and forward a great open steerage for the coolies and the like. Her skipper was one Witherspoon, of Greenock, a lean pessimist with a cast in his eye and a voice like coals being delivered. I’ve no doubt I spent the time before we cast off brooding fearfully, but I don’t recall, because as I leaned on the rail looking down on the quay and the oily water, I saw about the only thing that could have provided any distraction just then.
The steerage gangway was swarming with coolies, and poorer Chinese, and a few white riff-raff – Shanghai was well stocked with poor whites and shabby-genteel half-castes and scourings from half the countries on earth, even in those days. There was Lascars, of course, and Dagoes of various descriptions, Filipinos, Greeks, Malay Arabs, and every variety of slant-eye. Some of ’em were half-naked; others carried valises and bundles; the half-dozen Sikh riflemen who acted as boat-guards shepherded ’em aboard none too gently under the great flickering slush-lamps which cast weird shadows on the dockside and the steerage deck.
I was watching with half my mind when I noticed a figure stepping from quay to gangway – and even in that motley assembly it was a figure to take the eye – not only for the outlandish cut of attire, but for style and carriage and … animal quality’s the only phrase.
I like tall women, of course. Susie Willinck comes to mind, and Cleonie of the willowy height, and the superb Mrs Lade by name and nature, and Cassy, and that German wench in the Haymarket, and even such Gorgons as Narreeman and Queen Ranavalona. Mind you, there’s much to be said for the little ’uns, too – such as the Silk One, Ko Dali’s daughter, and the little blonde Valla, and Mrs Mandeville