The Keys of the Kingdom (35 page)

There was a strained stillness when he concluded. Martha and Clotilde hung their heads, as though touched, against their will. But Maria-Veronica, with something of the arrogance that marked those early days of strife, faced him with a cold clear gaze, hardened by a glint of mockery.

‘That was most impressive, Father … worthy of these cathedrals you decry … But aren’t your words rather empty if you don’t live up to them … here in Pai-tan?’

The blood rushed to his brow, then quickly ebbed. He answered without anger.

‘I have solemnly forbidden every man in my congregation to fight in this wicked conflict which threatens us. I have made them swear to come with their families inside the mission gates, when trouble breaks. Whatever the consequences I shall be responsible.’

All three Sisters looked at him. A faint tremor passed over Maria-Veronica’s cold still face. Yet, as they filed from the room, he could see they were not reconciled. He suddenly felt a shiver of unnameable fear. He had the strange sensation that time swung suspended, balanced in fateful expectation of what might come to pass.

On a Sunday morning, he was awakened by a sound which he had dreaded for many days – the dull concussion of artillery in action. He jumped up and hurried to the window. On the western hills, a few miles distant, six light field-pieces had begun to shell the city. He dressed rapidly and went downstairs. At the same moment Joseph came running from the porch.

‘It has begun, Master. Last night General Naian marched into Pai-tan and the Wai forces are attacking him. Already our people are arriving at the gates.’

He glanced swiftly over Joseph’s shoulder. ‘Admit them at once.’

While his servant went back to unlock the gates he hastened over to the home. The children were collected at breakfast and amazingly undisturbed. One or two of the smaller girls whimpered at the sudden distant banging. He went round the long tables, forcing himself to smile. ‘It is only firecrackers, children. For a few days we are going to have big ones.’

The three Sisters stood apart at the head of the refectory. Maria-Veronica was calm as marble but he saw at once that Clotilde was upset. She seemed to hold herself in, and her hands were clenched in her long sleeves. Every time the guns went off she paled. Nodding towards the children, he joked expressly for her. ‘If only we could keep them eating all the time!’

Sister Martha cackled too quickly: ‘Yes, yes, then it would be easy.’ As Clotilde’s stiff face made the effort to smile the far-off guns rolled again.

After a moment he left the refectory and pressed on to the lodge where Joseph and Fu stood at the wide-open gates. His people were pouring in with their belongings, young and old, poor humble illiterate creatures, frightened, eager for safely, the very substance of suffering mortality. His heart swelled as he thought of the sanctuary he was giving them. The good brick walls would afford them sound protection. He blessed the vanity which had made him build them high. With a queer tenderness, he watched one aged ragged dame, whose withered face bespoke a patient resignation to a long life of privation, stumble in with her bundle, establish herself quietly in a corner of the crowded compound, and painstakingly begin to cook a handful of beans in an old condensed-milk can.

At his side, Fu was imperturbable but Joseph, the valiant, showed a slight variation of his normal colour. Marriage had altered him, he was no longer a careless youth, but a husband and a father, with all the responsibilities of a man of property.

‘They should hurry,’ he muttered restively. ‘ We must lock and barricade the gates.’

Father Chisholm put his hand on his servant’s shoulder. ‘ Only when they are all inside, Joseph.’

‘We are going to have trouble,’ Joseph answered with a shrug. ‘Some of our men who have come in were conscripted by Wai. He will not be pleased when he finds they prefer to be here rather than to fight.’

‘Nevertheless they will not fight,’ The priest answered firmly. ‘Come, now, don’t be despondent. Run up our flag, while I watch at the gate.’

Joseph departed, grumbling, and in a few minutes the mission flag, of pale blue silk with a deeper blue St Andrew’s cross, broke and fluttered on the flagstaff. Father Chisholm’s heart gave an added bound of pride, his breast was filled with a quick elation. That flag stood for peace and goodwill to all men, a neutral flag, the flag of universal love.

When the last straggler had entered they locked the gates provisionally. At that moment Fu drew the priest’s attention to the cedar grove, some three hundred yards to the left, on their own Jade hillside. In this clump of trees a long gun had unexpectedly appeared. Indistinctly, between the branches, he could see the quick movements of soldiers, in Wai green tunics, trenching and fortifying the positon. Though he knew little of such matters the gun seemed a far more powerful weapon than the ordinary field-pieces now in action. And even as he gazed there came a swift flash, followed instantly by a terrifying concussion and the wild scream of the shell overhead.

The change was devastating. As the new heavy gun deafeningly pounded the city, it was answered by a Naian battery of ineffectual range. Small shells, falling short of the cedar grove, rained about the mission. One plunged into the kitchen garden, erupting a shower of earth. Immediately a cry of terror rose in the crowded compound and Francis ran to shepherd his congregation from the open into the greater safety of the church.

The noise and confusion increased. In the classroom the children were in a milling stampede. It was Reverend Mother who stemmed the panic. Calm and smiling, but shouting above the bursting shells, she drew the children round her, made them close their ears with their fingers and sing at the pitch of their lungs. When they became calmer they were herded quickly across the courtyard into the cellars of the convent. Joseph’s wife and the two children were already there. It was strange to see all these small yellow faces, in the half-light, amongst stores of oil and candles and sweet potatoes, below the long shelves on which stood Sister Martha’s preserves. The screaming of the shells was less down below. But from time to time there was a heavy shock, the building shook to its foundations.

While Polly remained below with the children, Martha and Clotilde scurried to fetch them lunch. Clotilde, always highly strung, was now almost out of her wits. As she crossed the compound a spent piece of metal struck her lightly on her cheek.

‘Oh, God!’ she cried, sinking down. ‘I’m killed!’ Pale as death she began to make an act of contrition.

‘Don’t be a fool.’ Martha shook her fiercely by the shoulder. ‘Come and get these wretched brats some porridge.’

Father Chisholm had been called by Joseph to the dispensary. One of the women had been slightly wounded in the hand. When the bleeding was controlled and the wound bandaged, the priest sent both Joseph and the patient over to the church, then hurried to the window, anxiously gauging the effects of the bursts, damaging puffs of débris, as the shells from the Wai gun exploded in Pai-tan. Sworn to neutrality, he could not repress a terrible desire, surging and devastating, that Wai, the unspeakable, might be defeated.

Suddenly, as he stood there, he saw a detachment of Naian soldiers strike out from the Manchu Gate. They flowed out like a stream of grey ants, perhaps two hundred of them, and began in a ragged line to mount the hill.

He watched them with a dreadful fascination. They came quickly, at first, in little sudden rushes. He could see them vividly against the untroubled green of the hillside. Bent double, each man bolted forward, carrying his rifle, for a dozen yards, then flung himself, desperately, upon the earth.

The Wai gun continued firing into the city. The grey figures drew nearer. They were crawling now, flat on their stomachs, completing their toiling ascent in that blazing sun. At a distance of a hundred paces from the cypress grove they paused, hugging the slope, for a full three minutes. Then their leader gave a sign. With a shout they jumped erect and rushed on the emplacement.

They covered half the distance rapidly. A few seconds and they would have reached their objective. Then the harsh vibration of machine guns resounded in the brilliant air.

There were three, manned and waiting, in the cypress grove. At their jarring impact the rushing grey figures seemed to stop, to fall in sheer bewilderment. Some fell forwards, others on their backs, some for a moment upon their knees, as though in prayer. They fell all ways, comically, then lay still, in the sunshine. At that, the rattling of the Maxims ceased. All was stillness, warm and quiet, until the heavy concussion of the big gun boomed again, reawakening everything to life – all but those quiet little figures on the green hillside.

Father Chisholm stood rigid, consumed by the torment of his mind. This was war. This toylike pantomime of destruction, magnified a million times, was what was happening now on the fertile plains of France. He shuddered, and prayed passionately: O Lord, let me live and die for peace.

Suddenly his haggard eye picked up a sign of movement on the hill. One of the Naian soldiers was not dead. Slowly and painfully, he was dragging himself down the slope in the direction of the mission. It was possible to observe the ebbing of his strength in the gradual slowing of his progress. Finally he came to rest, utterly spent, lying on his side, some sixty yards from the upper gate.

Francis thought. He is dead … this is no time for mock-heroics, if I go out there I will get a bullet in my head … I must not do it. But he found himself leaving the dispensary and moving towards the upper gate. He had a shamed consciousness as he opened the gate: fortunately no one was watching from the mission. He walked out into the bright sunshine upon the hillside.

His short black figure and long black shadow were shockingly obvious. If the mission windows were blank he felt many eyes upon him from the cypress grove. He dared not hurry.

The wounded soldier was breathing in sobbing gasps. Both hands were pressed weakly against his lacerated belly. His human eyes gazed back at Francis with an anguished interrogation.

Francis lifted him on his back and carried him into the mission. He propped him up while he relocked the gate. Then he pulled him gently into shelter. When he had given him a drink of water he found Maria-Veronica and told her she must prepare a cot in the dispensary.

That afternoon another unsuccessful raid was made on the gun position. And when night fell Father Chisholm and Joseph brought in five more wounded men. The dispensary assumed the appearance of a hospital.

Next morning the shelling continued without interruption. The noise was interminable. The city took severe punishment, and it looked as if a breach were being driven in the western wall. Suddenly, at the angle of the Western Gate, about a mile away, Francis saw the main body of the Wai forces bearing in upon the broken parapet. He thought with a sinking heart, they are in the city. But he could not judge.

The remainder of the day passed in a state of sick uncertainty. In the late afternoon he liberated the children from a cellar and his congregation from the church to let them have a breath of air. At least they were unharmed. As he went among them, heartening them, he buoyed himself with this simple fact.

Then, as he finished his round, he found Joseph at his side, wearing for the first time a look of unmistakable fear.

‘Master, a messenger has come over from the Wai gun in the cedar grove.’

At the main gate three Wai soldiers were peering between the bars while an officer, whom Father Chisholm took to be the captain of the gun crew, stood by. Without hesitation Francis unlocked the gate and went outside.

‘What do you wish of me?’

The officer was short, thickset and middle-aged, with a heavy face and thick mulish lips. He breathed through his mouth, which hung open, showing his stained upper teeth. He wore the usual peaked cap and green uniform with a leather belt, bearing a green tassel. His puttees ended in a pair of broken canvas plimsols.

‘General Wai favours you with several requests. In the first place you are to cease sheltering the enemy wounded.’

Francis flushed sharply, nervously. ‘The wounded are doing no harm. They are beyond fighting.’

The other took no notice of this protest. ‘Secondly, General Wai affords you the privilege of contributing to his commissariat. Your first donation will be eight hundred pounds of rice and all American canned goods in your storerooms.’

‘We are already short of food.’ Despite his resolution, Francis felt his temper rise; he spoke heatedly. ‘You cannot rob us in this fashion.’

As before, the gun captain let the argument pass unheeded. He had a way of standing sideways, with his feet apart, delivering each word across his shoulder, like an insult.

‘Thirdly, it is essential that you clear your compound of all whom you are protecting there. General Wai believes you are harbouring deserters from his forces. If this is so they will be shot. All other able-bodied men must enlist immediately in the Wai army.’

This time Father Chisholm made no protest. He stood tense and pale, his hands clenched, his eyes blazing with indignation. The air before him vibrated in a red haze. ‘Suppose I refuse to comply with these most moderate solicitations?’

The obstinate face before him almost smiled. ‘That, I assure you, would be a mistake. I should then most reluctantly turn our gun upon you and in five minutes reduce your mission, and all within, to an inconsiderable powder.’

There was a silence. The three soldiers were grimacing, making signs to some of the younger women in the compound. Francis saw the situation as cold and clear-cut as a picture etched on steel. He must yield, under threat of annihilation, to these inhuman demands. And that yielding would be but the prelude to greater and still greater demands. A dreadful sweep of anger conquered him. His mouth went dry, he kept his burning eyes on the ground.

‘General Wai must realize that it will take some hours to make ready these stores for him … and to prepare my people … for their departure. How much time does he afford me?’