Free The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure by Adam Williams Page B

executions of the Emperor’s servants and advisers had followed and the Legations, knowing the reputation of the Empress Dowager, expected the worst for her nephew. The diplomats’ fears seemed confirmed when the palace issued a bulletin announcing that the Emperor was ill and that ‘all medical treatments had proved ineffective’. It had been then that Sir Claude had delivered a note to the Tsungli Yamen urging the palace that it had better find a cure, for the Emperor’s death at this juncture would have an effect on the western powers that would be disastrous for China. The result was that the Emperor achieved a remarkable recovery, albeit in continued confinement in the Summer Palace. Sir Claude had been gratified, however, to see him produced at a reception that the Empress Dowager had organised in December, her way of showing the foreign community that on this occasion she had taken their advice, at least as far as the prevention of murder was concerned.
    The occasion itself had been unprecedented in other ways since, for the first time ever, the old lady had requested to meet the wives of the ministers from each Legation. He did not know which had more astonished him: the sedate tea party between the mythical Dragon Empress and the respectable corseted matrons of the diplomatic community, or the repeated murmur from the old tyrant’s lips, ‘One family. One family.’ There were different interpretations of this enigmatic remark. He personally was encouraged, believing that the Dowager, while throttling reforms, was at least convinced of the need for engagement with the powers. He tended therefore to dismiss the rumours of antiforeign martial-arts societies gathering in the countryside, and the excitable beliefs of some of his colleagues that a xenophobic movement was being brewed by the palace. He had yet to hear an authenticated account of this ‘Boxer Movement’, as it was beginning to be called, which would convince him that it reflected anything more than the usual local dissatisfaction among the peasantry that anyone who had lived in China for more than a few years had come to expect. Without being complacent about the problems the country faced, Sir Claude felt justified in having said in the report he had recently sent back to the Foreign Office that there was ground for cautious optimism that Great Britain’s influence and trading stake would be uncompromised in the years to come.
    The dust of the cavalcade was visible at the bottom of the hill. It would take them another twenty minutes to negotiate the winding path that led to his villa. Savouring a last puff of his cheroot, Sir Claude made his way to the gate, ready to receive the select and fashionable of Peking’s foreign community.
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    Helen Frances cautiously sipped her champagne and looked with wide eyes at her fellow guests. She had never been to a gathering where so many languages were being spoken at once and by such an imposing array of people. When Tom had told her that they had been invited to a picnic she had thought it would be something along the lines of the outings she had had with her aunt to Ashdown Forest. She had imagined a small, casual group of friends gathered round a rug on the grass, chicken drumsticks, hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches, with perhaps a canter after lunch or a tour round one of the temples that Tom had told her could be found in the Western Hills. She had not conceived that the setting itself would be a temple, transformed into a luxurious mansion filled with exotic furniture. Nor that there would be a full meal in a manicured garden, with grander placings than in the dining room of the Hôtel de Pekin or the captain’s table on the liner that had brought them here. And she certainly had not expected that everyone would be in such splendid dress.
    It was true that some of the men in the party, including their host, were wearing comfortable