Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 4: Flashman and the Dragon, Flashman on the March, Flashman and the Tiger. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ but in ignorance, lost to the world. He might as well be in the Athenaeum.

      I saw most of it, later – the Palace of Earthly Repose, for the Emperor’s consort; the Temple of Imperial Ancestors, for sacrifices; the Gate of Extensive Peace, a hundred and ten feet high, for kowtowing; the Hall of Intense Mental Exercise, for studying Confucius; the Temple of the Civic Deity – don’t know what that’s for, paying rates, I dare say – and the library, the portrait hall, and even the office of the local rag, the Imperial Gazette, which circulates every day to all the nobles and officials in China. That’s the unreality of the country – they nail thieves’ hands together, and have a daily paper.

      For the moment all I saw was the great gilt copper tower in which incense is kept perpetually burning, filling the city with its sweet, musky odour; and beyond it the holy of holies, the Palace of Heavenly Tranquillity (which it ain’t). I was dragged in through a round doorway, and flung into a great room utterly bare of furniture, where I lay for several hours on a cold marble floor, too sick and sore and parched even to move, or to do anything except groan. I must have slept, for suddenly I was aware of tramping feet, and a door crashing open, and the glare of torches, and the revolting face of Sang-kol-in-sen glaring down at me.

      He was still in full martial fig, brazen breastplate, mailed gloves, spurred greaves, and all, but with a fur-lined robe of green silk over his shoulders. He was bare-headed, so I had the benefit of his bald Mongol skull as well as the obscene little beard on the brutal moon-features. He fetched me a shattering kick and shouted:

      “Get on your knees, louse!”

      I tried to obey, but my limbs were so painful that I pitched over, and received several more kicks before I managed to kneel, croaking for a drink of water. “Silence!” he bawled, and cuffed me left and right, cracking the skin with his brass fingers. I crouched, sobbing, and he laughed at me spitefully. “A soldier, you!” He kicked me again. He didn’t seem to remember me from Tang-ku Fort, not that that was any comfort.

      There were two Manchoo Bannermen flanking the door, and now came two others, bearing an open sedan in which sat Prince I, the skull-faced monster who had raved and shrieked at Parkes at Tang-chao. He looked even more of a spectre in the glare of torchlight, sitting lean and motionless in his shimmering yellow robe, hands on knees – the silver cases on his nails came half-way down his shins. Only his eyes moved, gleaming balefully on me. To complete the comedy trio there was a burly, thick-lipped Manchoo in dragon robes, his fingers heavy with rings, a ruby button in his hat. This, I was to learn, was Sushun, the Assistant Grand Secretary of the Imperial Government, a vulture for corruption and the Emperor’s tutor in vice and debauchery, on which, to judge by his pupil’s condition, he must have been the greatest authority since Caligula. To me, for the moment, he was only another very nasty-looking Manchoo.

      “Is this the creature?” growls Sang, and Prince I nodded imperceptibly, and piped in his thin voice: “He was with Pa-hsia-li when that lying dog deceived us at Tang-chao.”

      “Then he may go the way of Pa-hsia-li,” snarls Sang. “It is enough for the moment that he is what the barbarian scum call an officer. An officer!” He stooped to scream in my face:

      “Who is your commander, pig-dung?”

      “General Sir Hope –” I was beginning, and he knocked me flying with his boot.

      “You lie! You have no generals! Who commands your ships?”

      “Admiral Ho –”

      He screamed and stamped on my arm, agonisingly. “Another lie! You have no admirals! You are barbarian swine – you have no nobles, no officers, no generals or colonels or admirals! You have animals who grunt louder than the rest, you offal! That is all!” He was bent over me, raving, spraying me with his spittle, glaring like a maniac. Then he straightened up, snarling, and snapped an order to the Bannermen.

      I was huddled, babbling to be let alone, terrified as much by the brute’s frenzied ranting as by what he might do to me. And what happened now reduced me to the final depth of fear.

      The Bannermen were carrying in a stool, on which was seated a naked Chinese, a white, shuddering figure who seemed to have no arms – until I realised that they were clamped tight against his body by a horrible coat of meshed wire, bound so tight that his flesh protruded through the spaces in obscene lumps about the size of finger-tips. It covered him from neck to knee, and I’ve seen nothing more disgusting than that trembling, rippled skin in its hideous wire casing.

      They plumped the stool down in front of me, the poor wretch slobbering with terror.

      “The wire jacket,” says Sang, grinning. “Even a benighted worm of a fan-qui must have heard of it.” Without taking his eyes from me he beckoned, and one of the Bannermen came forward, carrying an open razor. He laid the shining blade on the victim’s shoulder, and the fellow jerked and squealed at the touch of the steel. Sang watched me, and then nodded, the Bannerman flicked his wrist, the trembling mouth before me gaped in a dreadful scream, and one of the flesh-lumps had vanished, replaced by a tiny disc of blood which coursed down the naked arm.

      Sang bellowed with laughter, absolutely slapping his sides, and the burly Sushun came forward, chuckling, to peer at the wound. I turned my head aside, gagging, and received a stinging slap across the face.

      “Watch, coward!” roars Sang, and slapped me again. “Now,” says he, “a wearer of the wire jacket has been known to receive as many as ten thousand cuts … and still live. Indeed, he may live for months, if the executioner is patient, and eventually he will have no skin at all.” He laughed again, enjoying my terror. “But if a quicker despatch is desired …” He nodded again, and the Bannerman’s razor streaked down the full length of the victim’s arm.

      I didn’t faint. I could wish I had, for I’d have been spared the tortured screaming, and the diabolical laughter, if not the bloody pool which remained on the marble after they’d carried that babbling wretch out of the room. I wonder I didn’t go crazy; I fairly grovelled to these fiends, begging them to let me be, not to cut me, anything so they spared me that unthinkable cruelty. Oh, I’ve faced some horrors in my time – Narreeman and her knife, Mimbreno squaws out for an evening’s amusement, Malagassy inquisitors, and Ignatieff with his knout, but nothing more ghastly than the gloating enjoyment of those two devils, Sang and Sushun. Prince I sat in the background, immobile, his face expressionless.

      “You have seen, dog-dirt,” snarls Sang. “Now hear. You will wear the wire jacket, I swear, and when your foul carcase has been flayed, an inch at a time, it will be thrown to the maggots – and still you will be living. Unless you obey to the uttermost the orders we give you. Do you hear me, kite?”

      I’d do anything, I whined, anything he asked, and he seemed satisfied and kicked me again for luck. He thrust his face into mine, dropping his voice to a mere rasp:

      “You are to be honoured beyond your bestial imagining. You are going into the Divine Presence, and you will go like the crawling animal you are, on your knees, and you will speak. This is what you will say.” He gestured to Sushun, and the burly brute swaggered forward, towering over me, and shouted:

      “I am a Banner chief in the Red-haired Army, a trusted creature of the Big Barbarian. See, I lay at your Divine Feet the unworthy sword which, misbegotten foreign slave that I am, I dared to raise in revolt against the authority of the Complete Abundance. I was misled by evil counsellors, my master the Big Barbarian and the arch-liar Pa-hsia-li, who tempted me from my allegiance to the glorious Kwa-Kuin, the Tien-tze, the Son of Heaven. I marched in their army, which prevailed by lies and treachery against the trusting and unwary generals of the Divine СКАЧАТЬ