The Keys of the Kingdom (26 page)

‘Who has gone?’ The words came, with a dreadful effort, from Maria-Veronica’s stiff lips.

‘The Wangs, of course … the low, dirty thieves. I always knew they were a pair of rogues and hypocrites.’

Francis did not dare to look at the Mother Superior. She stood there, motionless. He felt a strange pity for her. He made his way clumsily from the room.

As Father Chisholm returned to his own house he became aware, through the strained preoccupation of his mind, of Mr Chia and his son, standing by the fish pond, watching the carp, with a quiet air of waiting. Both figures were warmly padded against the chill, – it was a ‘six-coat cold day,’ – the boy’s hand was in his father’s, and the slow dusk, stealing from the shadows of the banyan tree, seemed reluctant to envelop them, and to efface a charming picture.

The two were frequent visitors to the mission and perfectly at home there; they smiled, as Father Chisholm hurried over, greeted him with courteous formality. But Mr Chia, for once, gently turned aside the priest’s invitation to enter his house.

‘We come instead to bid you to our house. Yes, tonight, we are leaving for our mountain retreat. It would afford me the greatest happiness if you would accompany us.’

Francis stood amazed. ‘ But we are entering upon winter!’

‘It is true, my friend, that I and my unworthy family have hitherto ventured to our secluded villa in the Kwangs only during the inclement heat of summer.’ Mr Chia paused blandly. ‘Now we make an innovation which may be even more agreeable. We have many cords of wood and much store of food. Do you not think, Father, it would be edifying to meditate, a little, amongst these snowy peaks?’

Searching the maze of circumlocution with a puzzled frown, Father Chisholm shot a swift glance of interrogation at the merchant.

‘Is Wai-Chu about to loot the town?’

Mr Chia shoulders mildly deprecated the directness of the query but his expression did not falter. ‘ On the contrary, I myself have paid Wai considerable tribute and billeted him comfortably. I trust he will remain in Pai-tan for many days.’

A silence. Father Chisholm’s brows were drawn in complete perplexity.

‘However, my dear friend, there are other matters which occasionally make the wise man seek the solitudes. I beg of you to come.’

The priest shook his head slowly. ‘I am sorry, Mr Chia – I am too busy in the mission … How could I leave this noble place which you have so generously given me?’

Mr Chia smiled amiably. ‘ It is most salubrious here at present. If you change your mind do not fail to inform me. Come, Yu … the wagons will be loaded now. Give your hand to the holy Father in the English fashion.’

Father Chisholm shook hands with the little wrapped-up boy. Then he blessed them both. The air of restrained regret in Mr Chia’s manner disturbed him. His heart was strangely heavy as he watched them go.

The next two days passed in a queer atmosphere of stress. He saw little of the Sisters. The weather turned worse. Great flocks of birds were seen flying to the South. The sky darkened and lay like lead upon all living things. But except for a few flurries no snow came. Even the cheerful Joseph showed unusual signs of grievance, coming to the priest and expressing his desire to go home.

‘It is a long time since I have seen my parents. It is fitting for me to visit them.’

When questioned, he waved his hand around vaguely, grumbling that there were rumours in Pai-tan of evil things travelling from the North, the East, the West.

‘Wait till the evil spirits come, Joseph, before you run away.’ Father Chisholm tried to rally his servant’s spirits. And his own.

Next morning, after early mass, he went down to the town, alone, in determined quest of news. The streets were teeming, life apparently pulsed undisturbed, but a hush hung about the larger dwellings and many of the shops were closed. In the Street of the Netmakers, he found Hung boarding up his windows with unobtrusive urgency.

‘There is no denying it, Shang-Foo!’ The old shopkeeper paused to give the Father a calamitous glance over his small pebble spectacles. ‘It is sickness … the great coughing sickness which they name the Black Death. Already six provinces are stricken. People are fleeing with the wind. The first came last night to Pai-tan. And one of the women fell dead inside the Manchu Gate. A wise man knows what that portends. Ay, ay, when there is famine we march and when there is pestilence we march again. Life is not easy when the gods show their wrath.’

Father Chisholm climbed the hill to the mission with a shadow upon his face. He seemed already to smell the sickness in the air.

Suddenly he drew up. Outside the mission wall, and directly in his path, lay three dead rats. Judging by the priest’s expression there was, in this stiff trinity, a dire foreboding. He shivered unexpectedly, thinking of his children. He went himself for kerosene, and poured it on the corpses of the rats, ignited the oil, and watched their slow cremation. Hurriedly, he took up the remains with tongs and buried them.

He stood thinking deeply. He was five hundred miles from the nearest telegraph terminal. To send a messenger to Sen-siang by sampan, even by the fastest pony, might take at least six days. And yet he must at all costs establish some contact with the outer world.

Suddenly his expression lifted. He found Joseph and led him quickly by the arm to his room. His face was set with gravity as he addressed the boy.

‘Joseph! I am sending you on an errand of the first importance. You will take Mr Chia’s new launch. Tell the kapong you have Mr Chia’s permission and mine. I even command you to steal the launch if it is necessary. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, Father.’ Joseph’s eyes flashed. ‘It will not be a sin.’

‘When you have the boat, proceed with all speed to Sen-siang. There you will go to Father Thibodeau at the mission. If he is away go to the offices of the American oil company. Find someone in authority. Tell him the plague is upon us, that we need immediately medicine, supplies, and doctors. Then go to the telegraph company, send these two messages I have written for you. See … take the papers … the first to the Vicariate at Peking, the second to the Union General Hospital at Nankin. Here is money. Do not fail me, Joseph. Now go … go. And the good God go with you!’

He felt better an hour later as the lad went padding down the hill, his blue bundle bobbing on his back, his intelligent features screwed to a staunch tenacity. The better to view the departure of the launch, the priest hastened to the belfry tower. But here, as he perched himself against the pediment, his eye darkened. On the vast plain before him he saw two thinly moving streams of beasts and straggling humans, reduced, alike, by the distance to the size of little ants – two moving streams, the one approaching, the other departing from the city.

He could not wait; but, descending, crossed immediately to the school. In the wooden corridor Sister Martha was on her knees scrubbing the boards. He stopped.

‘Where is Reverend Mother?’

She raised a damp hand to straighten her wimple. ‘In the classroom.’ She added, in a sibilant, confederate’s whisper: ‘And lately much disarranged.’

He went into the classroom, which, at his entry, fell immediately to silence. The rows of bright childish faces gave him suddenly, a gripping pang. Quickly, quickly, he fought back that unbearable fear.

Maria-Veronica had turned towards him with a pale, unreadable brow. He approached and addressed her in an undertone.

‘There are signs of an epidemic in the city. I am afraid it may be plague. If so, it is important for us to be prepared.’ He paused, under her silence, then went on. ‘At all costs we must try to keep the sickness from the children. That means isolating the school and the Sisters’ house. I shall arrange at once for some kind of barrier to be put up. The children and all three Sisters should remain inside with one Sister always on duty at the entrance.’ He paused again, forcing himself to be calm. ‘Don’t you think that wise?’

She faced him, cold and undismayed. ‘Profoundly wise.’

‘Are there any details we might discuss?’

She answered bitterly: ‘You have already familiarized us with the principle of segregation.’

He took no notice. ‘You know how the contagion is spread?’

‘Yes.’

There was a silence. He turned towards the door, sombre from her fixed refusal to make peace. ‘If God sends this great trouble upon us, we must work hard together. Let us try to forget our personal relations.’

‘They are best forgotten.’ She spoke in her most frigid tone, submissive upon the surface, yet charged, beneath, with high disdainful breeding.

He left the classroom. He could not but admire her courage. The news he had conveyed to her would have terrified most women. He reflected tensely that they might need all their spirit before the month was past.

Convinced of the need of haste, he recrossed the compound and despatched the gardener for Mr Chia’s foreman and six of the men who had worked on the church. Immediately, when these arrived, he set them to build a thick fence of kaolin on the boundary he had marked off. The dried stalks of maize made an excellent barricade. While it rose under his anxious eyes, girding the school and convent house, he trenched a narrow ditch around the bases. This could be flooded with disinfectant if the need arose.

The work went on all day and was not completed until late at night. Even after the men had gone he could not rest, a mounting tide of dread was in his blood. He took most of his stores into the enclosure, carrying sacks of potatoes and flour on his shoulders, butter, bacon, condensed milk, and all the tinned goods of the mission. His small stock of medicines he likewise transferred. Only then did he feel some degree of relief. He looked at his watch: three o’clock in the morning. It was not worth while to go to bed. He went into the church and spent the hours remaining until dawn in prayer.

When it was light, before the mission was astir he set out for the yamen of the Chief Magistrate. At the Manchu Gate fugitives from the stricken provinces were still crowding unhindered into the city. Scores had taken up their lodging beneath the stars, in the lee of the Great Wall. As he passed the silent figures, huddled under sacking, half-frozen by the bitter wind, he heard the racking sound of coughing. His heart flowed out towards these poor exhausted creatures, many already stricken, enduring humbly, suffering without hope; and a burning impetuous desire to help them suffused his soul. One old man lay dead and naked, stripped of the garments he no longer needed. His wrinkled toothless face was upturned towards the sky.

Spurred by the pity in his breast, Francis reached the yamen of justice. But here a blow awaited him. Mr Pao’s cousin was gone. All the Paos had departed, the closed shutters of their house stared back at him like sightless eyes.

He took a swift and painful breath and turned, chafing, into the courts. The passages were deserted, the main chamber a vault of echoing emptiness. He could see no one, except a few clerks scurrying with a furtive air. From one of these he learned that the Chief Magistrate had been called away to the obsequies of a distant relative in T chientin, eight hundred li due south. It was plain to the harrassed priest that all but the lowest court officials had been ‘summoned’ from Pai-tan. The civil administration of the city had ceased to exist.

The furrow between Francis’ eyes was deeply cut, a haggard wound. Only one course lay open to him now. And he knew that it was futile. Nevertheless, he turned and made his way rapidly to the cantonment.

With the bandit Wai-Chu complete overlord of the province, ferociously exacting voluntary gifts, the position of the regular military forces was academic. They dissolved or seceded as a matter of routine on the bandit’s periodic visits to the town. Now, as Francis reached the barracks, a bare dozen soldiers hung about, conspicuously without arms, in dirty grey-cotton tunics.

They stopped him at the gate. But nothing could withstand the fire which now consumed him. He forced his way to an inner chamber, where a young lieutenant in a clean and elegant uniform lounged by the paper-latticed window, reflectively polishing his white teeth with a willow twig.

Lieutenant Shon and the priest inspected one another, the young dandy with polite guardedness, his visitor with all the dark and hopeless ardour of his purpose.

‘The city is threatened by a great sickness.’ Francis fought to inject his tone with deliberate restraint. ‘ I am seeking for someone with courage and authority, to combat the grave danger.’

Shon continued dispassionately to consider the priest. ‘ General Wai-Chu has the monopoly of authority. And he is leaving for Tou-en-lai tomorrow.’

‘That will make it easier for those who remain. I beg of you to help me.’

Shon shrugged his shoulders virtuously. ‘Nothing would afford me greater satisfaction than to work with the Shang-Foo entirely without prospect of reward, for the supreme benefit of suffering mankind. But I have no more than fifty soldiers. And no supplies.’

‘I have sent to Sen-siang for supplies.’ Francis spoke more rapidly. ‘They will arrive soon. But meanwhile we must do all in our command to quarantine the refugees and prevent the pestilence from starting in the city.’

‘It has already started.’ Shon answered coolly. ‘In the Street of the Basket-makers there are more than sixty cases. Many dead. The rest dying.’

A terrible urgency tautened the priest’s nerves, a surge of protest, a burning refusal to accept defeat. He took a quick step forward.

‘I am going to aid these people. If you do not come I shall go alone. But I am perfectly assured that you are coming.’

For the first time the Lieutenant looked uncomfortable. He was a bold youngster, despite his foppish air, with ideas of his own advancement and a sense of personal integrity which had caused him to reject the price offered him by Wai-Chu, as dishonourably inadequate. Without the slightest interest in the fate of his fellow citizens, he had been, on the priest’s arrival, idly debating the advisability of joining his few remaining men in the Street of the Stolen Hours. Now, he was disagreeably embarrassed and reluctantly impressed. Like a man moving against his own will, he rose, threw away his twig and slowly buckled on his revolver.