The Dragon and the Pearl E-Book

Barbara Cartland

• Herausgeber: Barbara Cartland Ebooks Ltd
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: The Eternal Collection
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

An astonishing tale of grand passion, intrigue and espionage in the heart of turn-of-20thcentury China – a simmering cauldron of hatred and resentment of foreigners that rises to the boil as the notorious Boxer rebels burn Christians and their Churches. Intrepid adventurer and acknowledged expert in Far Eastern affairs Major Stanton Ware puts his life on the line in a perilous undercover mission for his Prime Minister. But it is not fear that takes his breath away and steals his heart, it is his very first glimpse of Zivana, the young part-English, part-Russian, part-Manchu stunning beauty who is to be his mission partner!

Leseprobe

Author’s Note

All the events and the majority of the characters in this novel are factual.

The Allied troops entered Peking on the night of April the thirteenth 1901 and the British Legation after a fifty-five day siege was relieved the following day.

Those imprisoned in the Legation were able to survive owing to the foresight of Herbert Squiers, the First Secretary at the American Legation who had bought large quantities of food before the siege began.

At daybreak the Dowager Empress, dressed as a peasant, left the Forbidden City in a cart with the Emperor and the ferrety Prince Tuan in another. And only a handful of eunuchs went with them.

Peking was looted by the troops and Chinese soldiers. What they could not carry away they burnt. The Powers behaved with magnanimity and agreed diplomatically with Li Hung-Chang that what had happened was a Boxer Rebellion against the authority of the Throne.

On this basis the Dowager Empress’s part in the events could be overlooked. Somewhat grudgingly she agreed and handed over Prince Tuan, together with some other Boxer leaders for punishment. He was exiled.

Reparation had to be made in the sum of sixty-seven million pounds for two hundred dead Missionaries and thirty thousand Chinese converts.

After Li Hung-Chang had sealed the last of the agreements with the foreign Powers, he then collapsed and died.

The Dowager Empress ordered that a Shrine should be built in Peking in his honour.

On November fourteenth, 1908, the weak and ineffectual Emperor passed into the Hall of his Ancestors and the next day, as the astrologers had prophesied, the Dowager Empress followed him.

Chapter One ~ 1900

“I cannot think why you are so apprehensive, Major Ware,” Sir Claude Macdonald said.

“The Prime Minister has heard many rumours that there is a great deal of unrest in the Provinces.”

“There is always unrest in China and I can readily assure you that, as British Minister, I am perfectly able to cope with any situation that may arise from it.”

Sir Claude Macdonald spoke almost sharply as if he fancied that his authority was being questioned.

Stanton Ware, looking at him, thought that the Prime Minister was surely correct to have insinuated that he was not the right man in the right place.

The Marquis of Salisbury had been too tactful to say very much, but then his advisors in the Foreign Office had been blunt and the Press more so.

The Correspondent of The Times had written,

“Everyone denounced the appointment. Sir Claude was attacked as imperfectly educated, weak, flippant and garrulous, the type of Military Officer rolled out a mile at a time and then lopped off in six-foot lengths!”

Stanton Ware had laughed when he read it, but now he looked at Sir Claude Macdonald speculatively, feeling that he would be quite unable to cope if things got out of hand, as was to be expected in China.

It was in point of fact a tragedy that at this moment the British should be represented by a Minister who had no previous experience of China except as a gunnery instructor in Hong Kong.

Sir Claude was, as one of his critics had described him, ‘a stringy, bleary-eyed beanpole with a exaggeratedly waxed moustache.’

There was no doubt about the moustache and Sir Claude twirled it conceitedly as he said,

“You can most certainly inform the Prime Minister, Major Ware, that everything is under control and that the few incidents that have occurred are really of little consequence.”

Stanton Ware paused before he replied,

“I think that the murder of Brooks might be considered important, particularly to him.”

“Brooks was a Missionary,” Sir Claude answered, “and the Missionaries have indeed been a cause of trouble in China ever since they were allowed into the country in 1860. The Chinese resent it that they undermine their traditional ancestor-worship, which to them is of the deepest importance.”

“I am well aware of that,” Stanton Ware replied, “but then unfortunately the Chinese Christians ignore local feelings in a number of different ways.”

He was thinking how the Missionaries had requisitioned Chinese Temples by declaring that they were formerly Church property and, having been given permission to build, chose conspicuous and hallowed sites on purpose.

The Franciscans even tried to collect arrears of rent for the last three hundred years!

“Again may I say that I think such things are of very little significance,” Sir Claude said. “What really concerns us is the Balance of Power, which was upset four years ago when the Russian warships sailed into Port Arthur on the coast of China.”

This, Stanton Ware knew, was certainly true.

The five great Powers were jostling for position in China and were, in the words of one of the caricaturists, ‘carving her up like a melon’.

It was only jealousy amongst the Westerners themselves and their incessant rivalry that prevented more of China being annexed than had been already.

Yet Stanton Ware indeed knew that in Peking, the great Northern Capital of the Celestial Empire, the Manchus fooled themselves into believing that they were strong and that Chinese ways could overcome foreign ways.

In fact, as one man in the Foreign Office had said,

“The Manchus are arrogant and weak, the Europeans are arrogant and strong. The result will be war!”

As if he knew that Stanton Ware was not convinced that there was no crisis, Sir Claude said,

“I am certain that we can trust the Dowager Empress to deal successfully with internal difficulties.”

“Trust the Dowager Empress?” Stanton Ware repeated in astonishment. “You cannot be serious! The reports arriving in London make it quite clear that the Empress is, although she does not admit it, violently anti-foreign.”

Sir Claude laughed and again twirled his moustache.

“My dear Major, the Dowager Empress invited my wife and other ladies of the Legation to tea in the Forbidden City to celebrate her birthday and to cement good relations between East and West.”

He smiled, assuming that Stanton Ware was unaware of this and then went on,

“The Empress, or ‘the Old Buddha’, for that is how we usually refer to her, presented each of her guests with a huge pearl ring set in gold and offered them a jade cup of tea with both hands.”

“Very generous,” Stanton Ware muttered ironically.

“It was a symbolic gesture,” Sir Claude explained. “The Empress drank from it first, then passed it on, murmuring, ‘one family, all one family’.”

“And you believe her?”

Sir Claude shrugged his shoulders.

“I can see no reason to do otherwise.”

“Despite the fact that the Boxers are growing in size every day?’

Sir Claude laughed.

“The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, who we call for short ‘the Boxers’, is made up of youths none that much older than nineteen. They are centred in the Northern Provinces, particularly on the borders of Shantung and Chilihi.”

“They are, I hear, on the move.”

“To where?” Sir Claude asked with a gesture of his large hand. “Because they pretend to have magic powers, the ignorant Chinese follow them, but to anyone of intelligence they can be little but a joke.”

“I think it is a joke that we shall not find at all funny,” Stanton Ware said sternly. “To get down to brass tacks, do you, Minister, require extra troops to be sent out here to protect, if nothing else, the British Legation?”

Sir Claude laughed.

“Extra troops? The ones we have have little enough to do. All I can say, Major Ware, is that you are making mountains out of molehills or seeing real Dragons when they are nothing but paper ones.”

He laughed heartily at his own joke.

Stanton Ware then rose to his feet.

“Thank you for giving me so much of your time, Minister. I shall report what you have said to the Prime Minister. I am very sure he will be interested.”

“You are returning home?” Sir Claude asked.

“Not immediately,” he replied vaguely. “I have some friends who I wish to see and then I might go to Tientsin and take a ship from there to Hong Kong.”

“Then bon voyage,” Sir Claude said. “It is very nice to have met you, Major Ware. I hope you enjoy your visit to Peking.”

Stanton Ware bowed and left the Legation.

He had expected to find the British Minister obtuse, obstinate and pig-headed, but he had not imagined him to be quite such a fool as he had proved himself to be in their conversation.

That same evening a telegram in strict code was sent to the Foreign Office requesting the urgent despatch of ‘new parts for the machine’.

Stanton Ware went back to where he was staying and sat down for a short while to think over what he had just heard together with what he already knew about the situation in China before he had arrived.

He was very experienced in the affairs of the East and so when the Prime Minister, the Marquis of Salisbury, had become perturbed at what he had learnt from other sources, it was inevitable that someone would say,

“Send for Major Stanton Ware!”

It had not been convenient for Stanton Ware and he had obeyed the summons somewhat grudgingly.

But when the Prime Minister had spoken frankly and Stanton Ware saw the reports from British Agents all over China, he then realised that this was exactly the sort of assignment that really interested him.

Also he saw that he could not have been paid a bigger compliment than being asked to undertake it.

At thirty-three he had made himself an expert on the affairs of the Far East and spoke fluently almost every major language and dialect that might be required of him.

He had made many expeditions into unknown and dangerous places and had emerged successful and alive from so many situations that would have undoubtedly defeated or killed another man that his luck had already become a legend amongst his contemporaries.

“We are all extremely grateful to you, Major Ware, for all that you have achieved in Afghanistan,” the Prime Minister had said on parting. “I will perhaps be forgiven for letting you into the secret when I tell you that your name has been put forward in the New Year’s Honours List for a K.C.M.G. from Queen Victoria.”

He could not tell by the expression on Stanton Ware’s face whether he was pleased or not by the information that he was to be a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George, an ancient Order of Chivalry.

He merely bowed, murmured some words of thanks, then left before the Prime Minister could say anything more.

‘Strange chap!’ the Marquis of Salisbury had said to himself when he was alone. ‘But undoubtedly an extremely efficient one.’

It was typical of Stanton Ware that, faced with a problem of which only he realised the magnitude, he should sit relaxed so that he could think before he took any form of action.

Only a few people were aware that he had spent two years of his life studying Yoga and being taught the secrets of Oriental Meditation by a Lama in one of the great Lamaseries in the East.

It was this training which not only kept him physically in the peak of condition, but also gave him an acute perception and a mind which the Chinese described as ‘seeing the world behind the world’.

Stanton Ware did not pretend to magic or even clairvoyant powers, but he undoubtedly used what the Tibetans called ‘The Third Eye’.

It was a sense which all human beings used to have until they lost it by grasping after materialistic things and putting the physical before the spiritual.

Like a man considering one of the Chinese puzzles carved in ivory that might take a lifetime to solve, Stanton Ware sat now thinking over what he knew and what he sensed. He found it far more disturbing than he had even imagined because the Officials on the spot, like the British Minister, were blind to the potential dangers ahead.

*

In the growing darkness a sedan chair was being carried through the streets of the City. Peking rose amongst groves of white pines on a level plain less than one hundred miles South of the Great Wall where it runs from West to East in Northern China.

It was built against grassy banks of hills that climbed in waves to the North and to the West and in the fertile and misty hollows nestled Temples and Palaces.

When travellers first entered Peking through the South gate of the outer or Chinese City, they found it very different from the beauty of the exterior.

All along the broad street that led to the Imperial City there were mat-shed booths and shops huddled three rows deep. Flags announcing their wares streamed out in the breeze and beggars in organised gangs accosted passers-by.

Looking from behind the curtains that veiled the window of his chair, Stanton Ware saw the rope-dancers twirling and spinning as the pickpockets worked among the gaping crowds.

There were clairvoyants selling almanacs of lucky days and the peddlers carrying yoked panniers of sweets, needles, toys, tea, rice cakes and fans.

There were craftsmen mending porcelain with rivets, chiropodists and barbers, scribes, quacks and, inevitably as the Chinese crowd so loved them, acrobats and jugglers sometimes accompanied by bears and monkeys.

To Stanton Ware it was all very familiar and had an attraction all of its own.

He had almost forgotten, he thought, the smell of roasting meat and game, of ginseng, soy, garlic and tobacco, which seemed to hang over the streets in clouds.

The sedan chair wove in and out of all the traffic of Peking carts, wheelbarrows, donkeys struggling under mountainous loads and camels from Mongolia.

It was China as the majority of Chinese saw it, complete with barefoot ragged beggars and the watchmen with their lanterns and clappers.

Soon Stanton Ware was carried away from the crowded roadway into a part of the City where the houses looked much more prosperous and finally the chair was set down outside the ‘House of a Thousand Joys’.

As always in China there was no ostentatious indication of what the house contained.

In fact the exterior was dull and almost dingy and only when Stanton Ware stepped out of the sedan chair, paid its attendant well and the door opened for him did he find the interior very different.

Within the outer door there was another of scarlet, decorated with rows of knobs in fives.

Inside there was, Stanton Ware knew, a regular Chinese house consisting of nine or ten courtyards spread over a large area each with three or four one-storey pavilions around them.

The ‘House of a Thousand Joys’ was unique in that each small pavilion with its exquisite white latticework, its tiny courtyard with a gold-fish pool, was allotted to a beautiful woman.

The servant who admitted him stared curiously at Stanton Ware for he was enveloped in a long cloak, which covered not only his body but had also a hood that concealed most of his face.

“I would see Diverse Delight,” he began.

“Honoured sir, if you will come this way I will see if Diverse Delight is free to receive you.”

The servant led Stanton Ware into a room exquisitely furnished in the Chinese manner with low tables, cushions on the floor and paintings on the walls that he knew were of great antiquity and value.

There was one that he had always liked particularly of mountains in the mist painted in ink on silk by Hung Hsien in the seventeenth century.

He knew that every stroke had a special inner meaning and would not only be esoteric to the painter but would evoke a response that was different in each person who beheld it

He had been taught long ago that in a picture small objects like a bird, a flower or a fish were all painted to stress their growing and moving life and their involvement with all living things.

He was puzzling out for himself what Hung Hsien’s picture meant to him now when the servant returned.

“Diverse Delight will see you, Honoured Sir,” he said, bowing.

He led Stanton Ware through complicated passages, past pavilions where lovely women with intriguing names sat surrounded by beauty.

There was one he remembered, called ‘Happy Hours’, another ‘Celestial Flower’ and a third ‘Sweet Submission’.

He was led almost through the whole length of the house before he was shown into a room furnished with rare specimens of the craftsman’s art in wood and priceless lacquer.

The hangings were of rich silk embroidered with many flying phoenixes and Dragons and against them there were porcelain urns in which dwarf trees were growing.

But Stanton Ware had eyes only for the woman who was waiting for him and, as she entered, he could see a look of enquiry on her face, which was instantly replaced by the light of recognition.

She bowed very low, then there was a smile on her red lips as she said,

“I had hoped, but I could not be sure even from the servant’s description, that it was you, Noble One, whom I have missed for so many moons.”

Stanton Ware threw back the hood of his cloak and unclasped it at the neck.

The servant took it from him, moving so quietly that it seemed as if he was attended by invisible hands.

Then he was sitting down on one of the low cushioned seats with a glass of Samshu wine in front of him.

“You have been away a long time?” Diverse Delight asked.

It was not an accusation but a regret.

“I have come back because I understand there is trouble.”

“I guessed that was why you came to see me.”

“I should have come anyway,” he said truthfully, “but you know that I need your help.”

“What do you wish to know?”

“Need you ask? What is happening in China? What are all these rumours that grow more ominous month by month?”

“You are right. They are indeed ominous and I might have guessed that sooner or later you would come and see what you could do about them.”

“And what can I do?”

Diverse Delight made a gesture that was explicit without words.

Then she said in a low voice,

“We all know that the year 1900 has been marked for misfortune.”

“That is what I want you to tell me about.”

“There are evil astrological omens,” she said, “and those who look in the crystal ball speak not only of blood but of disaster for China.”

“What sort of disaster?” Stanton Ware asked her.

He seemed relaxed and he sipped his Samshu with pleasure because the wine was to his liking.

At the same time his mind was alert, aware that Diverse Delight could tell him much that he wished to know and no one was in a better position to do so.

The ‘House of a Thousand Joys’ was the most exclusive, most expensive and important ‘House of Flowers’ in the whole of China.

There had been whispers that the Emperor himself, before he was made a prisoner by his aunt in the Ying T’ai or ‘Ocean Palace’, had very often in disguise visited the ‘House of a Thousand Joys.’

It was certainly patronised by all the most important Court Officials and Mandarins of Peking besides those who came to the Capital from the country.

They had heard stories of the joys that they would find if they sampled the hospitality of Diverse Delight.

When a man had drunk a lot he could be tempted to discuss affairs of State with girls who were trained to be sympathetic and understanding in a way that few other women could be.

Stanton Ware had often been asked by those who were curious about Chinese customs why any Mandarin or Court Official should bother to be interested in women such as could be found in the ‘House of a Thousand Joys’.

“After all they do have any number of concubines at their disposal,” was an inevitable remark.

But the concubines either in the Forbidden City or those who belonged to rich Mandarins and merchants had no contact with the outside world.

Their whole life and their whole interest, was centred round their Master and, apart from the beauty of their bodies, they could be extremely dull.

But the girls in the ‘House of a Thousand Joys’ were chosen not only for their attractions but also for their intelligence.

As a result Diverse Delight was without exception one of the best-informed women in the whole of Northern China.

“Tell me the position if you will,” Stanton Ware requested now.

There was a note in his voice and a smile on his lips that many women all over the world had found irresistible.

“You are incorrigible, Noble One,” Diverse Delight said with a laugh. “You come and go as you please, you leave me wondering whether you are alive or dead, then you return and squeeze me dry like a pomegranate!”

Stanton Ware took her hand and raised it to his lips.

“You have never failed me in all the years we have known each other,” he said, “and I cannot believe you will do so now.”

She gave a little sigh.

“I suppose it would be impossible to say ‘no’, even if I wished to do so. What do you wish to hear?”

“Everything,” he answered. “As you know I have been away from China for over two years now and things have changed.”

“They have indeed – and for the worse.”

“That is what I heard before I left England.”

“You know that all progress in China has been suspended? The Dowager Empress has informed the Powers that no more railroads are to be built and it would therefore be useless for foreign representatives to submit any such proposals.”

“I heard that too,” Stanton Ware murmured.

“No railroads – no progress.”

“Naturally!”

“There was only one way in which Her Majesty was prepared to deal with the West – by the arms of war!”

Again Stanton Ware nodded.

“She has told the Generals to adopt Western techniques and buy Western armaments. Do you know why?” Diverse Delight asked.

“You tell me,” he answered, “I am here to listen.”

“To rid China of foreigners!”

“I doubt if China has the strength to do so,” Stanton Ware said slowly.

“But you have not enough arms or enough troops here now,” Diverse Delight replied, “to stem the flood tide when it engulfs you.”

It is what Stanton Ware had thought himself, but he was surprised that Diverse Delight should be aware of it.

“The Dowager Empress throws up dust into the eyes of the foreigner,” she went on in a low voice, “but the Boxers are rousing the crowds to follow them and everywhere they go they shout, ‘burn, burn! Kill, kill’!”

“How strong are they?” Stanton Ware enquired.

“Men fight very well when they have faith,” Diverse Delight answered, “and their magic convinces those who are stupid enough to be deceived by blank cartridges and arrows which pierce but do not hurt people in a trance.”

Stanton Ware did not speak and she added,

“They also spread rumours, which the Chinese are always ready to believe.”

“What sort of rumours?”

“That the iron roads and the iron carriages of the railways are disturbing the terrestrial Dragon and destroying the earth’s beneficial influences.”

Stanton Ware smiled, knowing that primitive peoples are always afraid of trains the first time they see them.

“They say that the red liquid dripping from the ‘iron snake’, which is the rust water from the oxidated telegraph wire, is the blood of the spirits of the outraged air.”

“Can anyone really believe such nonsense?” Stanton Ware asked.

“They teach that the Missionaries extract the eyes, the marrow and the hearts of the dead in order to make medicaments and whoever drinks a glass of tea at a Parsonage is stricken by death, his brain bursts out of his skull!”

She looked away from him as she continued in a low voice,

“The Boxers also say that the children received into the orphanages are killed and their intestines are used to change lead into silver and make precious remedies.”

“The people who believe such things must be very stupid,” Stanton Ware commented.

At the same time he had not forgotten the trouble the Missionaries had caused in the past.

“You say that the Boxers are gaining strength,” he said after a short pause. “Surely the Empress does not support such riff-raff?”

“Officially she says they must be constrained and not allowed to increase.”

“But unofficially?” Stanton Ware questioned.

“When some Officials treated the Boxers as rebels and attempted to disperse them, the Governor of the Province flew into a rage and claimed they were the patriotic Militia that ‘the Old Buddha’ had asked for a month or so ago.”

“Who can make the Empress see the danger in such a policy?” Stanton Ware asked her.

 Diverse Delight made a helpless gesture with her small soft hands before she replied,

“That is not for me to say, but something will have to be done and done quickly if the prophecies of disaster to China are to be disproved.”

She spoke earnestly and Stanton Ware knew that she genuinely loved her country apart from the fact that riots and fighting in Peking itself would be extremely bad for business.

“Is there no Official brave enough to be frank with the Empress and show her that she must make a stand against these young hooligans before it is too late?”

“The Emperor wanted to make changes, but he lost his struggle to promote progress and those who followed him were put to death or exiled, and the rest have become afraid.”

“All of them?” Stanton Ware asked.

“There is Li Hung-Chang!”

Stanton Ware nodded.

He knew that Li Hung-Chang had been among the Emperor’s trusted Officials and was China’s most progressive leader.

He had encouraged the building of arsenals, dockyards and warships and five years ago in 1895 he had gone to Japan to negotiate the Treaty that ended the Sino-Japanese War.

He admired what he saw in Japan for that country had been modernising her ways for many years.

Stanton Ware had been told by Japan’s Prince Ito how Li Hung-Chang had summed up the problems of China.

“My country is hampered by traditions and customs,” he had said, “and now there are too many Provinces with strong sectionalism.”

He had been too loyal to mention the terrible power struggle within the Imperial family.

But even after the Emperor was rendered powerless, Li Hung-Chang had gone on trying to bring forward new ideas and trying to persuade the obstinate Dowager not to keep China still living in the Dark Ages.

He was too important to China for the Empress to dispense with him altogether.

But she appointed him Viceroy of Kwang Tung and Kwangi in the South of the country, which was as good a way as any of keeping him out of the Council Chambers in Peking.

Nevertheless, at seventy-seven years of age, he was still a power in the land and still held the respect of a great number of thinking Chinese.

“How can I see him?” Stanton Ware now asked.

Diverse Delight made a little gesture that was more expressive than the shrug beloved of the French people and had a grace that was peculiarly Chinese.

Then she exclaimed,

“Wait, I have an idea! A very close friend of Li Hung-Chang is Tseng-Wen, a Mandarin living here in Peking who is a man of great power in many spheres. When Li Hung-Chang comes to visit the Dowager Empress, he always calls on his friend.”

“I would very much like to meet him,” Stanton Ware proposed.

“You shall do so for he is a friend of mine and what could be happier than that I should be the link between two such dear people – you and he?”

“And how shall I thank you?” Stanton Ware asked in his deep voice.

“What can I ask?” she replied.

He thought that, like a flower that comes into bloom, she was even more attractive now than when he had known her first when she was a very young girl.

He threw out his hands eloquently and gave the traditional Eastern reply,

“All that I have is yours!”

She took one of his hands in both of hers, turned it upwards and, bending her dark head, touched his palm with her forehead.

*

The house of Tseng-Wen was very impressive and it was quite obvious from the moment that the sedan chair set him down outside that it belonged to a man of wealth and importance.