Casca 18: The Cursed (4 page)

The consul glared at Casca in exasperation.
Dammit, the fellow was right
. The drunken lecher could have set off just the sort of explosion he was worried about.

Well
all right, maybe this chappie was entitled to some sort of fit reward for possibly saving China for the empire. A medal would hardly do. Perhaps a small exgratia payment to his widow, for he most certainly should be hanged anyway. Can't have bloody sergeants killing officers
. "Sergeant Longman, I understand that you speak Chinese, and the ambassador and the colonel have empowered me to temporarily release you from arrest, should you agree to put that capacity to work on behalf of the empire."

"I'
ll be glad to do what I can for the empire, sir."

"
Mmmm. You mentioned rebellion. Do you know any facts about such a thing? Ringleaders, meeting, stuff like that?"

"No sir, of course not."

"No? No, I suppose not. Well, we're pretty sure there's trouble brewing, and we want to know more. In brief, we want you to go out into the countryside as a political intelligence scout, undercover of course, and see what you can find out."

"I suppose I could do that, sir."
Not too bad
, Casca thought.
Maybe they'll pass me off as a businessman, or a 'missionary
. "What sort of cover do you have in mind?"

"Cover? No idea. That's up to you. Just keep out of sight and keep a good lookout and keep us informed up to the minute. That's all."

Casca looked down at his own bulk. "Stay out of sight, sir?"

"Well, dress like a Chinese. Surely you can manage something."

"There ain't many Chinese my size, sir. And there ain't none with blue eyes or fair hair."

"Then keep your damned eyes and hair out of sight."
The consul was exasperated again. This lower class cad was behaving exactly as one would expect a lower class cad to behave looking for some easy way to do the job, instead of just getting on with it.
Terrible, the low grade material we have to work with out here.
"One of those big cane hats should hide your hair and your eyes, shouldn't it?"

"Well, perhaps," Casca parried, "we can just put off this assignment until I grow me a pigtail?"

The consul's head snapped up. No, the swine wasn't laughing. Well, enough of this. "Sergeant Longman," he drawled, "we can put off the assignment forever if we choose to. But the bloody Chinks are not likely to put off their beastly uprising. And Braithwaite doesn't want to put off your hanging."

So, a few days later, Casca found himself on the steamer out of Hong Kong
harbor.

His satchel carried a small fortune in gold and gems, some local currency, some English pounds, and a sizable cake of opium.

The consul's instructions were for Casca to make his way around the borders of Kwangtung Province to the neighboring provinces of Fukien, Kiangsi, Hunan, and Kwangsi, to see if he could discern signs of trouble brewing for the British regime.

"Put in some time on the rivers too," the consul had added offhandedly.
"The Han and the Mei and the Tung and the Si. We'd like to know more about the traffic on them. And keep those reports flowing in. I want a message from you every time you get near contact with our communication network.

"Oh, and do keep an account of how you spend the funds. Must keep the books straight, you know. You might yet escape hanging for killing one of Her Majesty's subalterns, but, should you abscond with her funds,
I assure you nothing shall save you. There will be no mercy.

"And don't think of deserting. There's nowhere for you to go where we can't find you. Be assured we will catch you sooner or later, and when we do, you will surely hang."

Casca was pulled from his reverie by the return of Ju Liqun, Songzhen's worthless husband, to their store. The little man arrived in the wake of his scurrying offspring, rolling along with the aimless gait of the perpetual drunkard. His bow was deep and ingratiating, but Casca noticed that his eyes were searching the corners of the small room as if in search of some of the promised money that the children had undoubtedly reported to him.

"Welcome,
honorable barbarian, to my less than worthy abode and far from profitable business."

Casca bowed in reply. "Thank you, gracious host. I shall try to make myself worthy of your generous hospitality and your wife's excellent cooking, which I have already sampled with much pleasure."

"Ah, honorable one, you do us great honor. Please to make yourself at ease and to amuse yourself within these unworthy walls as if they are your own."

Casca bowed again and, thoroughly bored with the potentially endless exchange of courteous flatteries, he produced a handful of Chinese coins and paper money.

Ju Liqun's greedy little eyes lit up, then widened in unbelieving delight as Casca added one English pound to the pile.

Casca flicked his eyes over the far from inscrutable Chinese faces that were staring, goggle eyed with greed, at the money in his hand.
"Oh fuck," he muttered to himself. "I've screwed up again."

His mind raced as he sought a way to undo the damage done by producing such an extravagant display of his enormous wealth. Even in Hong Kong an English pound note represented great riches. Here in this remote village it seemed like more money than even a rich man might dream of.

He handed the Chinese money to Liqun. "Honorable host, please be so kind as to accept this payment in the valuable currency of your esteemed nation for the time of my stay in your respected residence.

"I also add this pound in English currency as an earnest of the urgency and delicacy of my mission. This pound also shall be yours when that mission is completed successfully."

It didn't work. All five Chinese heads swiveled toward Casca's pack where even greater wealth was obviously stored.

"Well," he said to himself, "so much for the carrot.
Back to the stick."

He locked eyes with
Ju Liqun and steeled his voice. "This enormous reward" and he plucked the pound from Liqun's hand, “is payment for the silence of you and your family, for which I most happy to pay, rather than have to threaten you with the agonizing deaths that will result for all of you if you so much as breathe one word of my presence here."

He allowed the pound to fall back into
Liqun's palm, and in turn fixed his eyes on each of the family's faces. "Should my presence here become known outside of these walls, all of you will die, and die slowly and horribly. If anything should happen to my person, he who comes after me will ensure that even the most hideous death that you can dream of will be a pleasant and most merciful release compared to the endless tortures that he will devise."

Ju
Liqun fell to his knees. The old man and his daughter threw themselves on their faces at Casca's feet, and the two children groveled on the floor behind them.

"Oh, merciful, just, and most esteemed barbarian, please spare this humble family from your wrath,"
Ju Liqun whined, placing the money on the floor before Casca. "To serve your eminent excellence in your mission is for us an inestimable honor, and we need no recompense. I beg you, take back this money and allow us to serve you. Your blessed presence in our unworthy abode will be for us the most excellent and desirable reward." Ju Liqun prostrated himself.

Casca pondered a moment and, as nothing else came to mind, he placed his foot on
Liqun's head.
Well,
he thought,
at least they're suitably terrified, and I really have no alternative but to trust them so long as I can see them.

He allowed some of his weight to rest on
Liqun's head, then removed his foot and stepped back to stand, arms folded, a severe frown on his face.

Tremulously
Ju Liqun looked up at him. Casca decided that he could afford to be gracious. "Get up," he said, carefully omitting any courtesies. "Take the money. When my mission is completed another like me will come riding on a high horse, and he will reward you with yet another English pound."

Not bad
, he said to himself. He was well pleased with this invention. Then he looked around and noticed that the rest of the family was still hunched over on the floor. He barked, "On your feet!"

Deng
Ziyang got to his feet with considerable dignity. "Honorable Cas Ca Sho, if, in our unworthiness, we have displeased you, we apologize. You need have no fears of the reliability and discretion of this humble family. My unworthy son in law and my humble daughter and her insignificant children may be relied upon to serve you just as I have done in bringing you from Tsungkow." He bowed deeply, and the rest of the family got to their feet and bowed, too.

Casca felt compelled to admire the way the old man had claimed his due credit for doing a good job in hauling Casca, for an extravagant fee, to his daughter's house where his family could not expect to profit further from him.
Practical man
, Casca mused.

He nodded his acceptance of these promises and reached for his sack. He took from it his clothes and some papers and books and a small rosewood box secured with a brass lock.
He handed the clothes to Songzhen. "Please wash these for me."

He gave the books and papers to
Liqun. "These are the materials of my mission, and I entrust them to you. Kindly keep them for me in a secure place."

Casca suppressed a grin as he saw
Liqun's eyes light up on the locked box, which, it so happened, contained nothing but writing materials. He handed the box to Liqun. "And this, you must guard with your life."

Ju
Liqun reached hungrily for the box, but as his hands closed on it Casca tightened his grip. His steely, blue gray eyes glared into Liqun's black ones. "Should anything –
anything
happen to this box, I assure you, you will live just long enough to wish that you had never been born."

The worst of Casca's fears were confirmed when he saw that
Ju Liqun lusted so intensely to possess the box that his fingers did not slacken their grip, although his mouth dropped open and his eyes widened in fear.

"
Honorable Cas Ca Sho, please do not imagine that I will allow any harm to come to this treasure. I shall guard it as I do my own children."

Casca concealed his contempt for the drunk, as he glanced briefly at the ragged, unkempt boy and girl.

`And this," he said as he produced a much larger, elaborately carved camphor wood chest, "is even more important. Do you dare to undertake its custody? You shall be rewarded well if it remains safe, or punished most atrociously should it come to harm."

This time Casca failed to suppress his grin as
Liqun grabbed for the chest. But his smile went unnoticed as ten greedy eyes focused on the box full of expensive silks and satins.

"Your trust in me will serve you well, I assure you, most
honorable Cas Ca Sho."

Casca reached again into the sack and brought out the leather pouch in which he carried his toothbrush and shaving gear. He lifted the right side of his shirt to tuck this pouch into his belt, noticing again the hungry gleam in
Liqun's eyes.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of allowing
Ju Liqun to see the Webley in the left side of his belt, but decided to keep both the gun and the short knife sheathed behind his back for another occasion.

He kicked the sack casually into the corner, and was relieved to see that
Liqun's eyes didn't follow it. For the moment his hoard of gold, gems, and drugs was unrevealed, if not quite safe. The promise of further reward, his dire threats, and the prospect of getting to the contents of the boxes and the leather pouch should keep Liqun and his family from betraying him for a while.

"The hell with it anyway, I need some rest," he muttered to himself, and asked
Liqun where he might sleep.

Songzhen
bowed deeply. "Honorable sir, please to just wait for one minute while I make ready our poor bedchamber for your exalted presence."

She left the room and Casca seated himself on the one small chair, stretching his legs so that his crossed heels happened to rest on the discarded sack. He closed his eyes and, ignoring the others in the room, commenced breathing deeply, willing his over
-tautened muscles to relax.

Casca dozed in the corner of Ju Liqun's store, but his heels didn't move off his satchel, and from time to time he opened one eye to glance around the small room and to listen to the sounds from the next room and from the street. Then he would drop back into a half sleep.

At least he was still alive, although the mission given him so casually by the consul appeared more and more suicidal by the moment.

Under the numerous treaties exacted from China by the colonial powers, any Christian's life was sacred, his safety a charge on the emperor, as stipulated by the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin: "The Christian religion inculcates the practice of virtue and teaches man to do as he would be done by." The treaty had brought to an end the British and French siege and eventual sacking of the city over the death of a French missionary who had been killed by bandits hundreds of miles away in the interior.

But for Casca to travel about in the style that might invoke the protection of the treaty would make his assignment impossible. The consul was well aware that his already existing intelligence gathering network of missionaries, soldiers, and traders was not ever going to detect the type of signs that he wanted Casca to look for.

As an undercover spy, Casca was quite outside the protection of the treaties. If captured he would certainly be executed after being suitably tortured for information. Any Chinese who assisted him in any way risked the same treatment.

As Casca dozed he confirmed in his mind the plan that he was already working toward. He could not hope to remain undiscovered in any one place for more than a few days. Just his physical bulk astounded even the largest Chinese and aroused widespread comment amongst people who generally only came up to his elbow and were so lightly built that he could carry one under each arm and another one, or even two, on his back.

And just the color of his eyes was sufficient to betray him. Not only were there no blue eyed Chinese, they did not even know of blue eyes, so that he was an object of wonder anywhere he was seen. And the wonder led to comment, discussion, and even alarm.

If he were to survive he had to carry out the assignment very quickly and make his way back to Hong Kong as fast as possible.

Casca had not been slow to provide the sort of evidence that the consul was looking for. He reasoned that the assignment would not be considered complete until the consul had in hand all the information he was seeking.

In each port and town that Casca had
traveled through he had sought out the contact for the British intelligence network and sent a dispatch to the consul. He reported widespread resentment toward foreign devils, and especially the British. He exaggerated every instance of obstruction or lack of cooperation that he observed, and reported casual anti British remarks as the rantings of agitators. He also reported widespread dissatisfaction with financial conditions, and assessed the general state of the society as unstable.

He had come to
Shou Chang in the hope of uncovering evidence of impending conflict. He had already decided that if the evidence happened to be insufficient, he would see to it that more evidence came to light, even if he himself had to foment a rebellion.

As it happened he need not have worried. Discontent was, indeed, everywhere and growing daily. China was a powder keg waiting only for a detonating spark.

When Ju Songzhen woke him to say that her own bedchamber was ready for its guest, Casca got up from the chair, put two fingers into his satchel strap, and casually lifted it just clear of the floor. He allowed it to swing there like a pendulum, and as he came to the doorway of the bedchamber he let it swing forward and released it so that it skated across the floor to come to rest in a corner.

The carefully wrapped gold and gems made no sound, and Casca thought he had adequately disguised the sack's real weight.

He turned in the doorway, effectively occupying the space beyond as his own private territory.

"Thank you my kind hosts. I am sure this chamber will be very satisfactory. Now I intend to rest."

He let the sack curtain fall in their faces.

He was moving to retrieve his satchel when an
embarrassed cough came from the curtain, and he turned to see Liqun's face nervously peeping into the room.

"What is it?" Casca asked.

"Honorable barbarian Cas Ca Sho," Ju Liqun said, coming into the room, "does not my humble wife Songzhen please you?"

"I find your wife and your house very pleasant and suited to my purpose, thank you."

Ju Liqun looked confused and worried. After a moment he plucked up the courage to speak again.

"
Honorable Cas Ca Sho, we are of the Hakka people, a people who travel much. We understand the needs of travelers, and it affords us the highest gratification to provide for the pleasant relaxation of strangers who have been wearied by long journeys. The hospitable reception of strangers is agreeable to our deities, and draws down the blessing of increase upon our families, and ensures augment to our wealth and safety from dangers."

He waited expectantly, but Casca didn't speak for want of understanding where this conversation was headed.

"We are a poor and humble family, and my wife is an insignificant woman, but I humbly beg that you will take her for your pleasure."

He drew aside the sack curtain and gestured to where his wife stood in the doorway.

Her work clothes had been replaced by a close fitting cheongsam that ended at her knees. Deep slits in the sides of the dress revealed shapely legs. Songzhen's almond eyes fluttered as she looked apprehensively at Casca, and he realized that she dreaded the possibility that he might reject her and so deprive her family of the much needed goodwill of the gods.

Well
, Casca thought,
one shouldn't be ungracious, and I would not wish to cause embarrassment
. He smiled and held out his hand to Songzhen and bowed to Liqun. "Thank you, generous host, for your kind hospitality. The gods will bless you for it."

Ju
smiled and bowed, then withdrew to the other room. There was a great deal of noise, as if something heavy were being dragged about, and Ju Liqun reappeared in the doorway, dragging an iron tub full of steaming water. The two children were helping him, pushing the tub from behind. They smiled and left the room.

Songzhen
indicated to Casca that he should undress and get into the tub, and he very readily did so. Songzhen squatted beside him and soaped and washed his body thoroughly.

"Where does this hot water come from?" Casca asked in some wonder.

"Why, the water comes from the village pump, and it is heated in our yard. Like everybody else we love to bathe each day in hot water."

"But is it not expensive to heat the water?"

Songzhen laughed lightly. "Not at all, honorable guest, we have much coal in our yard."

"But where do you buy this coal?"

"But we do not buy it. It is always there. We dig for it.''

Then Casca recalled that coal was, indeed, everywhere in this country and, in the main, only a few feet beneath the surface. Even the poorest people, he now remembered, we’re accustomed to bathing at least every few days. Those who were too poor to have their own tub went to public bathhouses where the water was heated at the expense of the community for the convenience of all.

He got out of the tub and Songzhen dried him carefully, then motioned for him to lie on the low, wide bed. She squatted beside him and anointed him all over with some sweetly scented oils, and then gently and thoroughly massaged his aching muscles. .

By the time she was through Casca felt pleasantly relaxed and at ease.

Songzhen stood up and unlatched the cheongsam at the neck, allowing the garment to fall to reveal her small breasted, slim hipped but shapely body.

Not bad
, Casca was thinking when she threw herself at him, grabbing him by the shoulders and biting him tenderly but hungrily on the neck while she rubbed the length of her body against his. Her little hands fluttered about like butterflies, now playing with his hair, now stroking his chest or fondling his testicles. All the while Songzhen continued to nibble at his body wherever her mouth happened to contact it.

Then she was astride him and he was inside her, her agile body pushing at him with a fierce energy that said clearly that it had been a long time since her drunken husband had satisfied her longings.

Casca readily devoted himself to the task, and in a little while Songzhen slept serenely beside him, a small smile of contentment on her face.

From the next room came the sound of the sleeping
Liqun's heavy breathing. Worn out, Casca surmised, with his fruitless study of how to secretly open his two boxes.

So far so good.
By tomorrow he will have given up on the boxes as impossible to open without obvious damage. He might then start thinking about Casca's other possessions, such as the leather pouch, full of diamonds perhaps, but in fact, of shaving gear. So he would continue to carry the pouch on his person and allow Liqun to see it from time to time, while using it to carry a portion of his valuables.

Which would leave only his satchel.
Time to do something about that. He crept out of the bed and explored the floor on his hands and knees, seeking a loose floorboard.

But, when he found one, the empty hollow beneath convinced him that he had found one of the
Ju family hoards, no doubt just recently emptied while Songzhen had prepared the room for him.

He continued his search by the faint moonlight, and at last found what he was looking for
– a gap between the wall and the first floorboard. He dug into the ground under the board, and soon produced a cache large enough for his valuables.

He put the opium, most of the English money, some gold, and some diamonds in the small pouch, and buried the rest.

He carefully scraped all of the earth back into the gap, compacting the loose soil over his hoard so that even exploring fingers would find nothing but dirt. Then he took off his jacket and trailed it back and forth and around in circles until all traces of fresh dirt had been distributed all about the room.

He guessed that any time now
Ju Liqun would awake and start thinking about his satchel, so he put his shaving gear in it and placed it where it could just be seen around the sack curtain. He had Liqun thinking it held nothing of value, so now he could find it so.

All the while he had kept one eye on
Songzhen, but her eyelids had not so much as fluttered, nor had the smile left her lips.

For his amusement, he noted his satchel's position. He knew that when he awakened he would no doubt find it slightly moved. Thus noting its place in the room, he fell into an untroubled sleep.