Nexus Deep

Chapter 31

The master of the ship was a Mister George Parry, and when Elena and her small company finally located him in the harbor at Gibraltar, their brief meeting went very well.

“I expect your associates here will get on well enough,” said Parry, particularly since you say they are all more than willing to take on ship’s duties. But I’m afraid we haven’t much in the way of accommodations for a woman such as yourself, m’lady. However, it is a rare event that we would have a lady of stature aboard a poor ship like this. House of Fairchild, is it? It would seem that the only chivalrous thing a gentleman might do is offer my cabin for your comfort. You are more than welcome.”

“I cannot thank you enough,” said Elena, fawning a bit, and even giving the man a flirtatious glance, which Captain MacRae could not fail to notice. He smiled, giving Mack Morgan a conspiratorial glance.

The Lady Shaw Stewart was a Brig, with two masts (fore and main), and square-rigged sails. It was larger than a schooner, but smaller than a frigate, or any ship of the line, and often used for fast naval duties, or as a merchant transport, which was the case here. Britain was already extending her influence heavily into the Med, the twin poles of Gibraltar and Malta being essential outposts that would endure through the centuries. Lord Nelson shipped all his fleet supplies from Gibraltar to Malta, and from there, the transports would call on other ports and anchorages, or simply rendezvous with Royal Navy ships at sea.

As cargos were valuable, even if a ship was only carrying foodstuffs, fresh water, or other simple necessities, it was common to escort a transport to give the impression of some strength that might discourage piracy. In this case, the escort ship was a smaller schooner, the Renard, formerly a French ship by that same name, captured in November of 1803 off the small port of Calvi on the Island of Corsica. Two ships in Nelson’s squadron HMS Cameleon, and HMS Stately, were credited with the capture. A fast ship, Renard had a crew of 60 men, with twelve 4-pounder guns (six on each side), and four more “swivel guns,” which could rotate to port or starboard. Nelson immediately put it to good use as a merchant escort and messenger ship. Normally, a ship would be renamed under these circumstances, and the new name “Crafty ” was already floating about in Nelson’s mind, though it had not yet been formalized.

At this time Renard was captained by Lieutenant Richard Spencer, who had once served on the very ship that first took Renard as a prize, the Cameleon. Spencer had been serving aboard Lord Nelson’s ship, HMS Victory, at the time he was appointed to take command of the Renard. He served well, except for one incident where Nelson had to reprimand him for temporarily leaving four merchant vessels to investigate rumors of a privateer off Syracuse.

The two ships would depart under favorable winds and head out into the Alboran Sea. It would be a journey of a thousand nautical miles to Malta, about five days sailing time if the wind could keep them moving at a speed between eight and ten knots. Few records remain to chronicle the voyages of Lady Shaw Stewart. At one point, she was intercepted by the Americans and taken as a prize, but at present, her duties were of a hum drum naval transport. The logs of the Renard record no incidents during the journey to Malta and on to Cerigo (Kythros).

No one aboard knew that this sailing would be the most significant mission ever undertaken by the ship. Elena could not believe their luck in finding it at just this time.

“You see, Mack,” she said by way of vindicating herself. “All this talk about us running afoul of pirates and changing history here by simply chartering a ship has now become a moot point. We will have a nice quiet journey. Finding this ship was a major windfall for our mission.”

“What makes you so sure?” said Morgan, still a bit wary.

“The history,” said Elena. “This ship reached Malta without incident. It also went on to Cerigo without incident, and was safely there until the coming February of 1805, when the marbles were finally loaded.”

“I wonder what took them so long,” said Morgan, hinting at something. “I mean, if we get there in the next few weeks, what happens in the five months between this day and 16 February, when the Marbles were loaded. You might ask this ship’s master when he expects to arrive at Kythros.”

“Call it Cerigo,” said Elena. “That’s what they called it at this time. And I can’t broach the subject with Master Parry just yet, because he doesn’t even know he’s going there.”

“What?”

“Think, Mack. We have the record of Lord Nelson’s letter ordering this ship to Cerigo, and it’s dated September 2, 1804. So Mister Parry hasn’t even received his orders yet. In fact, he probably won’t hear of this until we reach Malta, so hush up about Cerigo until we get there. Then we’ll take stock of the situation, and sort things out. I suggest you make yourself useful here, and help out with the ship. Otherwise, let’s enjoy the experience. It’s certainly going to be unique.”

“Aye,” said Morgan. “Very much so.”

As Elena had predicted, they would reach Valletta Harbor at Malta without incident. The weather remained fair, the winds favorable, and the ship made good time. Gordon was an old sailor, and had much experience on yachts and other sailing vessels. So he took to the situation with eager energy, and was soon much endeared by the local crew. It was as if they could perceive he was a man of some authority, for MacRae acted as though he was used to giving orders, and to the locals, it was clear that he was the man in charge of this little troop of visitors.

Elena spent a good deal of time in the Master’s cabin, finding that her presence on deck became a distraction for the crew, who kept looking her way, and speaking to one another in low whispers. They saw few ships in the transit, and the sight of Valletta was a thrilling moment, particularly for Captain MacRae.

“Look at the place,” he said, eyes alight. The city had a golden hue, from the yellowish stone that made up many of the buildings. “It’s like we were inside a movie. Do you realize we are the only humans to see the harbor this way in the last couple hundred years? Look there, see that star shaped fort? That’s Fort Saint Elmo, first built by the Knights of the Order of Saint John in 1551. It protected this place from the Ottoman Turks until the Knight left in 1798, and Napoleon thought to take the place two years later in 1800. The locals rebelled and, with our help, showed the French the door. Since then, Malta has been a British colony. The Maltese were only too happy to sign on with us, particularly since they knew Bonaparte was out to take the place.”

“We’ll want to see Alexander Ball,” said Elena. “Our contract here is safely concluded, but this is the very ship that sails for Cerigo, and we need to make sure we can stay on board when that happens. Ball was much liked by the Maltese, and instrumental in bringing the place under British rule. He’s the one with the authority to see that we get safely to Cerigo. I’ve taken some time to question our ship’s Master. He tells me they will normally be the better part of a week off loading supplies here.”

“Who will we find at Cerigo?” asked MacRae.

“Any number of associates to Lord Elgin’s famous mission. We might find Mister William Richard Hamilton, Lord Elgin’s personal Secretary, or a Mister Giovanni Battista Lusieri, a man hired to create illustrations of the Marbles. Feodor Ivanovich was a Russian from Astrakhan that was taken on to make casts of the Marbles. The Reverend Philip Hunt was Lord Elgin’s Chaplain. He’s the man who drafted the so called ‘firman,’ a letter granting permission for the excavations to proceed at the Acropolis, and he interpreted his permission to view and document those artifacts quite loosely. I suppose we’re here now because of his… ingenuity.”

“Strange that none of them had any idea of what they were doing,” said Morgan. “No one knew anything about this hidden key.”

“Apparently not,” said Elena. “Frankly, I’m not sure we know what we’re doing either, other than to seize this chance as the only way we might possibly retrieve that key.”

“Which is yet another mystery,” said Morgan. “Oh, we know what they can do—secure the entrances to these time rifts. Yet I have to note that this rift was hidden in plain sight. There was no mysterious door to be opened, and nothing for a key to unlock. Yet here I’ve been told that the very key we’re after had geographic coordinates engraved upon it that pointed directly to St. Michael’s Cave. So what are we missing here?”

“A good point,” said Gordon. “I’m willing to speculate it has something to do with that box we left on the ship.”

“That’s my thinking as well,” said Elena. “The box was capable of moving the entire ship! That action was engaged by the simple insertion of the key I had, a key that did open a mysterious door beneath Delphi.”

“It did two things,” said MacRae. “It led us to Delphi, and then fit into that box, hand in glove, and brought us to the 1940s. You said you came to believe it was simply to find this other key, but how would we have possibly known about it? It was pure happenstance that we even learned it existed.”

“Not entirely,” said Elena. “The apertures in that box were clearly engineered to hold keys. They were clear evidence that other keys existed—seven, to be precise.”

“For what purpose?” asked Morgan.

“That’s part of the quest we’re on,” said Elena. “Once we get our hands on this key, perhaps we’ll know more.”

“What would we possibly learn?” said Morgan again. “This other fellow, Professor Dorland, he knew of this key—even claimed he once had it in his possession. Now, the man seemed clever enough. Yet he didn’t seem to learn anything more about this business.”

“Well here’s what we do know, said Elena. “We’ve a box that does something pretty damn amazing when I insert the key I was bequeathed. I was led to the site where we recovered that box by specific orders I received from the Watch. That was a secret group within the Royal Navy established by Admiral Tovey, and within that box, I find a note from him as well.”

“Well then why didn’t you ask him about it and be done with all this mystery?”

“Of course I asked him,” said Elena, giving Morgan those wide eyes. “He knew nothing about it—at least at this time. Perhaps Tovey doesn’t come into knowledge of the box for years. We can’t think about this in a linear fashion. We found the box in 2021, and it brought us to the 1940s. Whether we were meant to or not, we happened to learn of this key associated with Saint Michael’s Cave, and found ourselves in a perfect position to retrieve it—until the Germans complicated things by sinking the Rodney.”

“I still don’t see the connections,” said Morgan, shaking his head.

“I can’t say I do either,” said Elena, trying to be sympathetic. “Let me put it this way. It’s a puzzle, to be sure, but if we are to solve it, first we have to collect all the pieces. There are seven apertures, and I’m betting there are seven keys. We have two in hand, and this one will be the third.”

“The Box,” said MacRae quietly. “The first key moved us to the 1940s. I’m willing to bet that the second and third will move us somewhere else….”

The other two looked at him. It made perfect sense. Elena had once thought the very same thing, that the box was capable of moving anything in its immediate vicinity through time, and that each key would lead to a different point on the continuum. But why? This was what she voiced now.

“Yes,” she said. “Use a different key in that box, and we might end up somewhere else. I could have tested the proposition with the Key I received from Tovey—the one Fedorov gave to Admiral Volsky to deliver.”

“Fedorov? That young Russian Captain?” Morgan raised an eyebrow. “How did he come by it?”

“I was told it was given to him, by that older gentleman he introduced to us at the Alexandria conference—Kamenski. No, that isn’t correct. Fedorov told me he simply found it on the nightstand, in the quarters the Director occupied onboard that ship—Kirov.”

“I was wondering how the Russians might figure in all of this. Could it be that ship came here to look for this key, just as we did?”

“To be honest, we had no idea we were coming here to look for anything at all,” said Elena. “No, I don’t think the Russians sent Kirov here deliberately. Fedorov said it was started by an accident in the Norwegian Sea, and I believe him.”

“Yet you say he found the key in the Director’s quarters aboard ship?”

“Correct, and this Kamenski fellow simply vanished.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” said MacRae.

“Nor I,” said Morgan. “Do you know who Kamenski was, Miss Fairchild? Well I do, because the two of us were in the same business—intelligence. Kamenski was a former Deputy Director of the KGB. If he had this key, then the Russians know more than you might believe. I’m still suspicious. Where did he find it? How long did he have it in his possession? Why would he leave something of such importance simply lying about on a nightstand?”

“Well,” said Elena, “when we get back, we’ll look up this Fedorov and you can run that by him. All I can tell you is what I’ve learned. How Tovey figures in, and the Watch I served, remains one little mystery here, and the Russian connection is another. The whole thing will likely end up being seven mysteries in an equally mysterious box, but we can only solve them by walking this path. For now, look out there at that harbor, gentlemen. That’s Valletta in 1804, and here we are. It’s damn amazing! I think we’ve more than enough on our hands now without trying to put everything together and see the big picture. We’ve got to simply focus on this mission, get our hands on that key, and then get ourselves safely back to St. Michael’s Cave.”

“Aye,” said Morgan. “Agreed. But I’ll take your advice when we do get back. I want to see this Captain Fedorov and learn what he knows. And I want to know why a highly placed former officer in the KGB, from our time, was cruising aboard that phantom Russian battlecruiser, and with one of the bloody keys in his pocket. And I want to know where he’s gotten himself to, and what he meant by leaving the damn key on that nightstand. These keys go places you say? I wonder where that would take us if we give it a twist in that box?”

“Something tells me we may find that out before this is resolved,” said Elena. “So let’s do the job here first, and see where that leads us.”

Chapter 32

It would be a long month before they would ever get passage to Cerigo. The Lady Shaw Stewart was waiting for other ships to arrive at Malta to form a convoy bound for the Levant. Ship’s Master Parry finally received his orders, to sail for Cerigo with Renard as escort, but the initial leg of the voyage saw them sailing with three other ships. Eventually, the transport veered off, making for the site of the wreck of the Mentor, which was very near the small port of Avlemonas. But Mack Morgan seemed restless, pacing at times as they neared the Greek islands.

“What’s eating at you?” Elena asked him one morning.

“Just fidgeting,” he said. “Been thinking on this whole matter again, and I can’t see how we can get our hands on this key. I mean, that business about us getting to the Selene Horse while it was still submerged has gone out the window now. They’ve already retrieved all the boxes, so our men can’t do the dirty work concealed by water. So we’re back to my old argument about us mucking about with a hammer and chisel.”

“Then we’ll have to try a different approach,” said Elena.

“You know those artifacts will be guarded.”

“Probably, but who will you put your money on, Mack, a few sleepy guards, who have been standing a dull watch on old wooden cases hidden on the beach, or my three Argonauts?”

“Alright, our men can force the issue, but what then? Do we just ransack the cases until we find the one holding the Selene Horse, break into it, and have at the thing with a hammer?”

“I’d like to try a little something different,” said Elena. “I can be quite persuasive, and I think I could convince one of the men in charge of the recovery to let me have a look.”

“You’re going to tell them you’ve come all this way from the British Museum?”

“That would be a good line,” said Elena. “I could say that word came of the mishap, and I was curious to inspect the artifacts and assess their value and quality.”

“But there’s one thing still bothering me,” said Morgan. “This Dorland fellow. He claims he was aboard the Rodney, god only knows how or why. He says he had occasion to get down into the hold where the Marbles were stowed away, along with a good portion of the King’s bullion. He says he found the cases strewn about, one broken open, the base of the Selene Horse chipped, and there was this key. So…. How could we be getting our hands on it here?”

“It has to be here,” said Elena. “This date precedes any other date where the key could have been tampered with or found.”

“You misunderstand me,” said Morgan. “Aye, I grant you that the key may be here, but how do we get it if this Dorland fellow says he found it in 1941? If that’s true, then we fail here. Follow me?”

That was something that Elena had contemplated for some time. The key survived within the Selene Horse into modern times. It had been sitting there in the British Museum all along, and the custodians knew that the key existed. That had been a mystery for some time, though it was known only to a very few. It was thought to be an oddity, and never explained, she thought, until we started receiving those messages from the future, years later…. The keys were very important, they were essential, critical, and they must all be found and accounted for…

Shortly after they arrived she had come to think this whole quest for the key was her real mission here. It was out there, with the Elgin Marbles, aboard Rodney, and she was supposed to recover it. The key was right there, in the base of the Selene Horse…. She was already aware of two versions of that history, and both rang true. The first was the history of the hunt for the Bismarck that she knew from her own time. The second was a similar engagement with that ship, as she and Tovey, Kirov as well, tried to save the Rodney. They had failed, Rodney went down, with the King’s bullion, the Elgin Marbles, and the key in her belly. That was the reason she was here at this very moment, to get to a place in time where they could retrieve the key before it ever saw the inside of HMS Rodney. Yet in both those histories, it clearly was loaded aboard that ship. The British museum even sent the Grey Friars over to sift through the remains of Rodney after the war when the ship was scrapped. Why would they do that, unless they knew the key had been loaded aboard Rodney in 1941? That jogged a memory of a conversation she had with Admiral Tovey…

“Most irregular,” said Tovey. “The Grey Friars sifting through the bones of old Rodney to look for this key… Well, they certainly had to know something of what they were looking for. You say the Watch learned of these keys in those strange signals you received in your time. If that is so, then how would anyone in the 1940’s know about that key, or attribute any significance to it, particularly the Franciscans!”

“Very good questions,” said Elena. “Yet this only remains perplexing when you assume that everyone alive in the here and now is native to this time. As you can see, you are presently sitting here with three people who were born long after your own death.”

“Of course!” It was Fedorov speaking now, exclaiming his surprise in English. Then he spoke quickly, and Nikolin translated. “Other time travelers! … Others may have used those holes in time.”

“Well this is quite a fine mess,” said Tovey. “People coming and going, just as they please, and fiddling with history! I knew this world was something quite different after I learned the truth about you and your ship, Mister Fedorov, but now it seems we have others involved in this whole affair, in these rift zones you speak of, coming and going like servants in and out of the back door.”

Just like this little foray, thought Elena. Yes, the Grey Friars never found the key in the remains of old Rodney, and I was told why by this professor Dorland. He claimed he found it, and Mack thinks that means we will fail to recover it here.

“Dorland found the key, but only in one version of these events,” she explained. “Then he claimed it vanished! He had it on a chain about his neck, and it disappeared.”

“You mean he lost the damn thing?”

“No, this was something a little more mysterious. He claims it simply vanished. That is clear evidence that some variation in time occurred prior to his initial discovery of the key. It’s the only explanation. He was trying to find a way to recover it himself, talking about visiting the Tubes in London where the Marbles were stored at one time, and then even suggested it might be found here. That’s where I got the idea for this mission when we learned the rift under Saint Michaels Cave led to the 1800’s.”

“Visiting the Tubes won’t work,” said Morgan, “because we know—in both these Bismarck engagements—that the key was loaded aboard Rodney. So no one got to it in the Tubes, or any time before that. See my point? We’ve no reason to be here unless the key does get loaded aboard Rodney, and lost with her sinking. Yet if that is true, then there’s no way we could find the key here. That would prevent it from ever getting to Rodney. This whole thing goes ‘round and round in a circle!”

“Yet Dorland claims he had the key and it vanished. He went back to try and get aboard Rodney to fetch it again, but that mission failed too—perhaps because we find it here.” She smiled.

Each one seized upon the same reason to justify their arguments. Morgan asserted that if Dorland found the key, then they could not get to it here. Elena believed that the fact that Dorland’s key vanished meant that they did get to it here. Yet there was still the tinge of Paradox in the heart of their argument. Morgan did have one good point. If they did recover the key here, then it would never get to Rodney, nor would Dorland ever find it, or lose it. They would have no reason to ever come here, because the sinking of Rodney would not matter. The key would never be there….

She realized now that if they were successful, the first of Morgan’s objections to this mission would come into play—they would change things. She had taken great care to walk softly here. The talk of seizing a ship in Gibraltar’s harbor ended early on. Instead They had simply talked their way aboard the Lady Shaw Stewart, and here they were. No one had been harmed, and as far as she could see, no life line of anyone local to this time had been affected.

Yet the instant any of them set their hand upon this mysterious key, they would change things. This year antedated every other alteration made to the time continuum. It was 1804! This was all playing out well before Kirov ever made its first appearance and started knifing its way through the history of WWII.

We were told about that ship, she knew—Kirov —and that warning came from the future. Yet here I am about to do something that will introduce a major variation in time. I’m out to find and take this key, which means everything I did in my quest to find and save Rodney simply cannot happen. All those long conversations I had with Fedorov, and Admiral Tovey… They cannot occur. There will be no reason for those words to ever be spoken.

Then it struck her like a thunderclap. If I take this key, then we’ll never get back to the time line we left. We’ll be resetting it to an entirely new meridian, one where the urgency of our quest to find the key aboard Rodney never happens… and yet… it must happen. Otherwise, I could not be sitting here on this ship, in the year 1804.

Which one was correct? Was the sinking of Rodney and the loss of the key a mandatory event underpinning her mission here? If so, then Morgan was correct—they would never find the key here. This was all a fanciful jaunt through time, and a dangerous one as well. They were going to fail.

“Damn it, Mack,” she swore. “Now you’ve gone and spoiled my day.” Yet at soon as she said that, her mind was already trying to find another reason that would permit their success here. She didn’t want these thorny wrinkles in time to dampen her ardor for the mission, determined as ever to find this key, and by so doing, get one step closer to solving the mystery they presented.

We could find the key, she thought, but then we might become the means it finds its way aboard Rodney. It was thin. She could not see that as happening, because she thought they would return to 1943, well after Rodney was sunk. I’m playing with fire here. I’m tiptoeing around the edges of Paradox, and by god, that’s dangerous…. Oh, Lord Elgin, you’ve no idea what your plunder may bring home to the Kingdom. But then again, neither do I.

As fate would have it, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, would have his hand deep in the jar of time, and grasp more than he could fathom. Perhaps it was family lineage, heritage, or some arcane quality of the blood that would also make that strangely true of his son, James Bruce, the 8th Earl of Elgin, who would become both the Viceroy of India and High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China and the Far East. In that capacity, the 8th Earl would take part in yet another desecration of the arts, this time the so called ‘Summer Palace’ of the Qing Emperor of China, in the year 1860.

While the 7th Earl might rightly claim that his acquisition of the Parthenon Marbles was an act of conservation, the same cannot be claimed by the son. For it was James Bruce who delivered the final blow to the sprawling grounds and buildings of the Qing Palace in Peking. After three days of maniacal looting by French troops, and some British as well, the 8th Earl of Elgin ordered the entire place put to the torch, seeing hundreds of cedar buildings, reception halls, galleries, residences, museums, the whole lot go up in a pall of smoke that would hang over Peking for days.

It is a story that has its origins in British Imperialism, and the inevitable clash of cultures that often rose from it. The Western Powers had been attempting to further their interests in the Far East, which led to demands for freer trade with China, the opening of ports, and more rights and privileges for British citizens engaged in those activities. Some of that trade, however, was the exchange of British cultivated opium for Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, and taels of silver, and as the opium addictions began to spread like a dark weed through Chinese society, conflict resulted that became known as the “Opium Wars.”

One such war had already been fought, concluded by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, an agreement the Qing Dynasty believed was “unequal.” It had been enforced by “gunboat diplomacy,” and so in 1856, when Britain began to clamor for a complete opening of China to free trade, a full legalization of the opium trade as well, conflict blossomed again from those weeds.

As always, big things have small beginnings, and it was a very small cargo ship, the Arrow, that would threaten to destroy the famous ‘Arrow of Time’ in a way no one then alive might fathom. The Arrow was a Lorcha, which was a small ship rigged out with sails like a Chinese Junk, but having a European built hull. She had been registered to fly the British flag, and was anchored in the harbor at Canton, on October 8, 1856.

It was a fine morning, and the ship’s Master, young Thomas Kennedy, had taken a boat to row over to another Lorcha, the Dart, where he was having breakfast with her Master. As they sat there, finishing up a cup of well brewed Tieguanyin, a tea known as “The Iron Goddess,” Kennedy noticed a couple of Mandarin boats rowing in towards his ship, the oars manned by rows of uniformed men.

“Now what are they up to?” he said aloud.

“Have you got passengers aboard?” asked the other Master. “They may be here to ferry them over to Hong Kong.”

“I’ve no passengers who expressed any such interest,” said Kennedy…. He stopped, staring, and watching as many of the oarsmen boarded his ship. Then his blood ran cold.

“By God in his heaven,” he exclaimed. “They’re hauling down the ensign! I’ve got to get over there!”

By the time he arrived, sweating with the exertion of his haste, he saw the situation was far more serious than it first seemed. Twelve members of his crew, all Chinese sailors, had been apprehended, their hands bound, and they were being led off his ship into the Chinese longboats. He was quick to come along side, his anger apparent in his tone.

“What in bloody hell are you doing? What’s the meaning of this?”

Much of what he got back was in Mandarin, and he could not understand it. So his only recourse was to get himself to the British Consul and lodge a formal complaint with Sir Harry Parkes. Attempting to intervene by contacting the Imperial High Commissioner, Yeh Mingchen, Parkes would learn that the crew had been seized on suspicion of piracy.

“Is that so?” said Parkes, his feathers ruffled. (Adept at Mandarin, he was speaking in Chinese, though I paraphrase his remarks here for the English speaker’s ear.) “Well, you’ve come aboard a British flagged ship, and without getting leave to do so from the ship’s Master. You seized that ship’s lawful crew, and I want them returned, publicly. Then I will cooperate fully with you to investigate any crimes they may be accused of.”

His initial effort saw the release of nine men, but he refused to receive them, demanding the entire crew should be released before any charges were brought. If grounds were found for piracy, then he would turn them over to Chinese authorities himself.

“Send this to your High Commissioner,” he said to the messenger. “Tell him he has 48 hours to comply with this request, or I will escalate this matter for action by our Naval Board. I don’t know what these men may have done, and I’m fully prepared to get to the bottom of this, but by God, I’ll teach you to respect the British flag when you see one.” He folded his arms, adamant. “Do you hear me? Forty-eight hours!”

A day later a message was sent indicating that no British flag had been seen, and that the Lorcha was therefore not even a British registered ship!

“That’s an outrage,” said Master Kennedy. “I might be slack with me papers, but there’s no question that the ensign was flying clear and high on the mainmast that morning. I saw the ruddy buggers haul it down myself! I thought we taught them a lesson back in ‘42.”

“They’re crafty,” said Parkes. “We had Canton open as a single port for trade, and gained four others with the Treaty of Nanking, but we still can’t set foot off the docks and quays and even enter the goddamned city here. It’s as if they see us as a contamination. The Emperor sits up there in Peking, in his bloody palaces, and thinks he runs the whole bloody world! I’ll take this right on up to Sir John Bowring, Superintendent of Trade.”

He did exactly that, but found the High Commissioner Yeh to be very evasive, delaying at every turn, refusing to consult Peking on the matter. He would finally simply drop off the remaining crew at night near the warehouses at the harbor, but Parkes and Bowring would not stand for that. They demanded that the crew be publicly reinstated, and a formal apology made. The High Commissioner was stubbornly silent, and the matter was then referred to Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, the Commander of all British squadrons in the Far East.

A dozen crewmen and a flag…. That was how it started, and it would end four years later, in a way that neither side could foresee, with bloodshed, war, fire and destruction. Before it ended, France, Russia and the United States would be drawn into the spinning gyre of the conflict, and the Russians would end up gaining their prized deep water port on the Pacific, Vladivostok.

The British would secure trade rights, open more Chinese ports, legalize the commerce of their opium, and demand and receive indemnity payments in silver. Yet these were the least important things they would acquire in that little spat. Though it was not anticipated or looked for, the 8th Earl of Elgin would find a treasure in the heart of Peking far greater than any he could imagine.

Chapter 33

The war, like all wars, started with a small dispute, its nascent fire being fanned by the pride of the men leading either side. Admiral Seymour would seize a few barrier forts on the rivers that flowed near Canton, and Marines would be landed to protect the Western controlled factories near the harbor. The Chinese High Commissioner would harass them day and night, attempt to poison Sir John Bowring and his family where they lived at Hong Kong, all while slowly assembling a small army to oppose the upstart Europeans, collecting war junks to challenge them on the rivers.

The Chinese, however, were not as adept at the art of war as their European opponents. The matter would escalate, until Canton itself was shelled and occupied, an amazing feat considering that this city of nearly a million people had been “taken” by a force of no more than 6000 troops from various nations, including Britain, Russia, France and the United States. High Commissioner Yeh himself would eventually be captured and sent off to a British prison in India, where he died of starvation, adamant to the last, as he refused to take any food from his captors.

The “incident” led to more demands upon the Chinese to open additional ports and loosen trade restrictions, and to force these concessions, an expedition would be mounted to the port of Tianjin in the north, the gateway port to the Emperor’s Capitol at Peking.

It must be said that of all the things the Emperor was contending with in those years, this little annoyance by the “barbarians” that had been infesting his coastline in recent years was not high on the list. There had been an internal rebellion underway for some time, and literally millions had died in that civil conflict. So the Xianfeng Emperor (Yizhu), and his Imperial Court, would make concessions, to the “foreign devils,” agreeing to a new treaty, thinking to dispense with the matter. But they would be very slow to sign and formalize any such arrangements, further trying the patience of the British and their allies.

It would be years after the initial “Arrow ” incident before the situation would escalate to a more serious conflict. In that time, Parkes, Bowring and Seymour would collect allies, ships, and men in Hong Kong, awaiting the arrival of Lord Elgin, who had been named High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China and the Far East. The French had sent one Baron Gros to represent their interests. Though they outwardly agreed to negotiate, the Chinese would secretly summon one of their Mongolian Generals, Sengge Rinchen, to deal with the Europeans.

The British had taken the forts protecting the river once before, and rather easily, so on the 25th of June, 1859, they had every reason to think they would do the same thing. But things had changed. In the long year since the last time there had been trouble here, the Chinese had placed large heavy metal spikes in the riverbed, but claimed that they had been put there to prevent pirates from entering. The local authorities promised to remove them to allow a small British flotilla to pass, but instead, they began to strengthen the barriers, adding in boulders and smaller rocks. It was soon found that many other impediments had been built. First, piles were driven into the riverbed astride the main channel. Then iron chains studded with floating timber were stretched across the entire width of the river, and lastly, heavy rafts, many feet thick, were floated into blocking positions where the waterway narrowed.

“Typical of them,” said Admiral James Hope, the commander of the British Fleet for this adventure. “They speak out of both sides of their mouth, say one thing, but do another. This is intolerable. We shall have no recourse other than to run up the gunboats and silence those forts. Then we can clear these obstacles and proceed up river.”

That would prove to be more easily said than done. The river was now guarded by a series of forts named after a town at its mouth, Taku. These so called “Taku Forts” were stony outposts, each one with a crenulated wall where the barrels of rudimentary cannons would jut forth to threaten any ships attempting to pass on the river. It was here that the bluster and arrogance of the Westerners would meet its first test, at what became known as the 2nd Battle of the Taku Forts.

The British had the bulk of the naval units at hand, and so Admiral Hope, now succeeding Seymour, organized his flotillas. He had 11 gunboats at his disposal, small craft of 230 to 270 tons, and most having only two guns, one boat, the Cormorant, had four guns, and the best of the flotilla was the Nimrod, a six-gun sloop.

The ensuing engagement would give the Chinese every reason to think they could carry on with their game of delay, bluff, and subterfuge with the British. It was ill managed from the first, when Hope attempted to advance up river at low tide, and could only get four gunboats over the sandbars, Plover, Opossum, Lee, and Haughty.

On the left bank of the river mouth, the “Great South Fort” was a long entrenchment, with three stone parapets and 58 guns of all sorts. Just beyond its southern end was another squarish fort with 10 guns. The matter at hand was to first find a way to silence the enemy guns, so as to permit the bluecoat Marines aboard the gunboats to land and have at them.

Using the word ‘land’ was a bit of a misnomer on two counts. Firstly, the approach to the forts, through the shallows of the river, would quickly become a slog through mud flats. So there was no place to “land,” and the act of attempting to do so would better be described as a wallow, and not a landing. If Hope were to get men over those wetlands to dryer land beyond, he would then be faced with rows of barbed wood piles and other entanglements as a barrier, and beyond this was a series of trenches or moats, the last of which was a deep flooded ditch. Only then could the troops attempt to scale the walls of the fort, and if they did get up, there would be hundreds of Chinese troops waiting for them there.

Against this defense, Hope would fling his leading four gunboats, with two guns each. The British howitzers were newer, more accurate, more powerful, but being outnumbered 58 to 8 was a rather severe handicap. The result was a foregone conclusion.

The day was fine and hot, the Chinese gunfire hotter, and very well ranged. They knew where the enemy boats would have to go, and had plenty of time to practice shooting right into the navigable channel.

Plover was one of the first to take hits, her commander, William Hector Rason, killed by shot from a cannon early on. The poor man was literally cut in two by a round, and died instantly. Admiral Hope’s Flag Lieutenant, George Douglas, took command of the gunboat, where the Admiral himself had been bold enough to plant his flag. It wasn’t long before he was also wounded by a splinter, and that wound, with the fact that Plover was being badly pounded, forced Hope to transfer his flag to the Cormorant, further back in the muddle of the other eight gunboats that had not managed to get over the bar.

Admiral Hope, weakened from loss of blood, turned command over to Captain Shadwell, who was wise enough to see the attack was folly, and ordered the gunboats to withdraw. The Chinese were firing at everything, and had already sunk the Kestrel. Then Lee had to be grounded to avoid going down, and Shadwell could see that the naval engagement had been a disaster. So the little flotilla decided to turn the affair over to the Marines. In addition to their crews, there were 30 to 35 Marines on each gunboat, and so a force of 350 men was wallowed ashore on the left bank, beneath the parapet that had taken the most damage from the ill-fated gunboat sortie.

Of those 350 men, only about 50 would get through all the obstacles, over the flooded ditch, and actually make the attempt to scale the walls. Captain Shadwell would not make it, being wounded himself in the attempt. The Chinese had muskets, and would also rain down stones, hot pitch, and stinkpots on the exposed Marines below. It was soon clear that those 50 men were not going to take this fort, and so now the action became nothing more than an effort to get them safely back, and gather up as many of the wounded and fallen as possible.

The Barbarians had been stopped cold.

Two gunboats were sunk, another burned. 89 officers and men were killed, with 345 wounded. When the news reached Lord Elgin, he was incensed.

“How in the world? For us to be so roundly beaten by these Coolies and bearded Mandarins is an absolute insult! If this matter is to ever be resolved as it should, the Kingdom will have to get serious in the making of war there. I intend to go to Hong Kong Directly, and will wait until adequate forces are dispatched before taking any further action. British prestige is at stake here! This insult must be redressed.”

He might have used the word “avenged,” but would have even more cause to do so later. Lord Elgin’s demand for serious military muscle would be met. 12,600 troops would arrive from British India under command of Lieutenant General Sir Hope Grant. They were tough professional soldiers, the 44th Foot and 67th South Hampshires. To these, the French would add a fresh contingent of 8000 men under General Cousin de Montauban. The military would construct flat bottomed boats to get men over the shallows of the river, and rafts with landing planks. Soon Lord Elgin would lead that force into a maelstrom of wanton, rapacious violence.

It would begin on the 1st of August, 1860, and the action this time would mainly involve the landing of troops near the forts to then make an overland march and attack. General Grant was quite meticulous, a tall thin man, well-schooled, artistic, and an excellent musician as well. The men said he looked like a scrawny old lady, and often called him that, but he was a professional officer, through and through, and he would make short work of the “3rd Battle of the Taku Forts.”

The Chinese, mostly commanded by the Chinese local Governor Hengfu now, had mustered a small army of 5000 infantry and 2000 horsemen to confront the Western Barbarians. This force was not able to stop the allied advance, and Grant then ordered fascines to be built to house and protect his artillery. They would bring six field pieces, three 8-inch mortars, four more 8-in guns (two being howitzers), a pair of 32 pounders, and six more of the newer “Armstrong Guns.” They would pound the forts into submission in a four-hour barrage on the 18th of August, 1860.

With the fall of those forts, Tianjin would fall soon after, and the considerable force that Lord Elgin had assembled would begin its march inland, towards Peking. Only then did the Chinese send ministers proposing peace talks. The Imperial Emissary first encountered Harry Parkes, the man who had first heard the grievances of the hapless master of the Arrow. Parkes had been complaining about the French.

“They dawdled about in that action,” he said, “unless it came to them planting a flag on some bastion or another. Then our own men went all out to see that we got there first. The French…” he shook his head. “Not one of them could tell you what they have come here to fight for. The result is that they have done nothing but hamper and delay us. Their commander grandstands, and his men do the same—full of pride it seems, but this is really nothing more than a lack of proper military restraint. Mark my words, if we take them inland with us, we’ll have more of the same.”

When the Chinese emissaries finally arrived, Parkes was immediately suspicious. Having a keen understanding of the Mandarins, it did not seem to him that the ministers were sufficiently empowered to conduct any agreement. In fact, he began to suspect that they were only sent to delay, buy time for the enemy to gather another army, or for the Emperor himself to leave his palaces in Peking and flee to other quarters.

Lord Elgin therefore resumed his advance on Peking, and reaching Tongzhou, 12 miles southeast of the Capitol, new Chinese ministers appeared and pleaded for talks to be held there in that city. Parkes was in the delegation sent to see to the preliminaries, with 25 other British men, and 13 French. The talks became a squabble over protocols, and the Chinese claimed the manner and deportment of the English was insulting. As the Allied delegation withdrew, it was set upon by Chinese soldiers, and all were taken prisoner. Word soon came to Lord Elgin that they would only be released if the Europeans withdrew, and the following day, an army of 30,000 Chinese soldiers suddenly appeared. Parkes’ suspicions had been completely correct.

Over the next week, it was war again, with two large battles fought. Once again, the Armstrong Guns and the martial prowess of the British and French prevailed over the Mongol infantry and horsemen, and by the 21st of September, the road to Peking lay open and undefended, and Lord Elgin advanced. Emperor Xianfeng fled to the north, beyond the Great Wall to palaces at Chengde. The Chinese had only one chip left on the table—the hostages they had seized, among them a correspondent for the London Times, and a personal friend of Lord Elgin, Thomas Bowlby.

The prisoners were tortured, an all too common occurrence where Westerners fell into the hands of “Barbarians.” Lord Elgin’s reaction was pure template—revenge, particularly since the methods of torture used were quite cruel. The bodies of many were found so badly mutilated that they were unrecognizable. Parkes had been one of the very few that were released unharmed, and ever resentful of the Chinese authorities, he urged Lord Elgin to make reprisal.

Indeed, Lord Elgin would pen his report on the matter to the British government, writing that he was about to “mark by a solemn act of retribution, the horror and indignation with which we were inspired by the perpetration of a great crime.” He would take his indignation to the famous Yuanmingyuan, the sprawling garden estates of the Emperor in Peking. The Europeans thought they were the Emperor’s “Summer Palaces,” but that was not true. The palaces in Peking were his primary residence, and the center of his government, and those in Chengde where he had fled were his real summer retreat.

Yuanmingyuan was rumored to be a place of legendary splendor, miles of gardens, where pathways meandered along the shores of serene, tree shaded lakes, through flowerbeds, past splendid fountains and sculpture. Then there were gilded halls, ornate reception rooms, elegant residences, opulent museums, libraries, amazing galleries adorned with paintings, and fine examples of artwork in the tens of thousands. There was gold, silver, precious stones of every sort, and delicate porcelain. It was the collective artistry of an entire people and culture, all concentrated in that one place. Lord Elgin knew that he had to make some demonstration here, an act so audacious that it would forever intimidate and humble the Chinese, and shock them so deeply that they would never again give challenge to the mighty British Empire.

There was the Yuanmingyuan, and he had a secret interest in the place. So it was with some misgiving that he learned what had happened when the French troops scaled the 15 foot walls and entered the palaces. Looting had long been a common practice for victorious armies, and if ever there could be found anything that so completely defined the essence of available “loot,” the Yuanmingyuan was the epitome of that. There were hundreds of enchanted places there, with exotic names like the Pavilion of Blessed Shade, Pavilion of Forgotten Desires, the Halls of Virtue, Longevity, Serenity, Magnanimity, and the Pagoda of a Thousand Treasures. That one word described it all to the European soldiers when they first looked upon it—treasures. They would soon become other words—loot, swag, plunder, booty.

It began as a simple way of rewarding a few chosen officers. The French General Montauban was properly awed by the palaces, and he placed guards at key buildings to prevent what was now about to happen. Yet he made one mistake, allowing his senior officers to find and take one object as a reward and memento of their campaign, and that was the match that lit the fire. When the rank and file saw what these officers had, they passed a sleepless night outside the walls, and then many began to slip away to find treasures of their own.

This treasure hunt soon escalated to wholesale looting, where even the guards posted to protect the artwork began to take part. The soldiers rampaged through the galleries, some finding and donning the silk robes of the Emperor himself. They paraded about in mad dances, tore down tapestries, curtains, silkscreens and paintings. They took the precious Ming porcelain vases and simply threw them to the ground, smashing sculptured jade ornaments and other art to pieces. It was an insane orgy of destruction; a madness, a furious rampage, utter mayhem that went on for three days. Even the Emperor’s Pekinese dog was seized, later presented to Queen Victoria and appropriately named “Looty.”

When Lord Elgin finally arrived to see what they had done on the afternoon of October 7th, 1860, he was aghast, immediately giving orders that the remaining artwork should be rounded up and collected in a secure place.

It’s here, he thought, somewhere, but how in the world will I ever find the place now after all this pillaging? Father was quite specific. I must get to the area near the European styled palaces. Having failed in Egypt, I simply cannot let this moment pass without finding it. But the place is a disaster! This is criminal! No wonder the Chinese think of us as barbarians.

There before him, was “everything in the way of sculpture, medals and curious marbles” that he could possibly imagine. And none of it had to be found by first suffering the labors of “assiduous and indefatigable excavation.”

What in the world was he thinking? What had his father, the fabled 7th Earl of Elgin and procurer of the “curious marbles” of the Acropolis confided to him? Indeed, before he arrived at Hong Kong, the 8th Earl of Elgin had made a particular point to stop off in Cairo, where he insisted on touring the Great Pyramids. Then, at night, he made a secret visit to the Sphinx, standing between its massive paws, where a stele had once been erected—the “Dream Stele” of the ancient Pharaoh, Thutmose IV.

He stood there, not knowing what those hieroglyphs meant, for they would not be translated for another 20 years. It was, in part, an appeal by the father for his son to restore the sad condition of that monument, as if the original writer had hoped to make his son the caretaker of that ancient stone sculpture.

Lord Elgin would later write of that moment: “The mystical light and deep shadows cast by the moon, gave to it an intensity which I cannot attempt to describe. To me it seemed to look, earnest, searching, but unsatisfied. For a long time, I remained transfixed, endeavoring to read the meaning conveyed by this wonderful eye of the Sphinx…”

Strangely, Lord Elgin was there in Egypt only because of a similar charge delivered to him by his own father. That was why the Earl was so keen to survey these ancient ruins, as if searching for something hidden there long ago, but frustrated when he could not find it. Now, standing amid the smashed and littered artwork of the Old “Summer Palace” in Peking, he was equally intent upon fulfilling his quest. “We have the one,” his father had told him. “We must now find the others.”

Like father, like son…. James Bruce eventually found his way to one place within those sprawling estates, through the “Temple of Heaven,” past the “Hall of Eternal Ages,” into a small garden in the “House of Endless Consciousness,” and there it was, just where his Father had told him it would be, one small object that had been overlooked by the hordes of looting soldiers.

“I would like a great many things that the palace contains,” Elgin had said to General Montauban, “but I am not a thief.” No, he was not a thief. He was a collector, and he had come here, riding the currents of political conflict and discontent, to find a thing that needed to be collected.

He sighed, closing his eyes, and tucked it away in the pocket of his greatcoat. With this in hand, he thought, the entire campaign is a complete success. Now then… The Chinese… Yes, this was all quite regrettable, the destruction and looting. It will reflect very badly on us, and yet, it may not be enough of an example of our retribution. It may take something more.

He looked around, seeing hundreds of buildings, mostly constructed with cedar, and came to a decision he had been deliberating for several days. A few days later, the Old “Summer Palace” would be burned. No one else would ever be able to retrace his footsteps and find this place again, he thought. Now that I have what I came for, nothing else matters, so let it burn….