Magistrates of Hell

Russian females around the alleyways of Peking. ‘Ten cents.’

‘Ten cents, all-same.’ The gray-haired puller gestured from himself to the two younger men who’d ferried Lydia, doe-eyed young Signora Giannini – the other diplomatic wife of the party – and the Baroness’s two sturdy Russian bodyguards to the head of Silk Lane, which stretched away to their right. ‘Ten cents, ten cents.’

Meaning, Lydia assumed, that each of them wanted that modest sum to stay put while the three ladies investigated the Temple.

‘Ten cents, ten cents,’ agreed the Baroness affably. She spoke little English, but appeared to be conversant in the pidgin used by every servant and rickshaw-puller in the city. ‘Of course he’ll abscond the moment someone offers him eleven,’ she added, switching back to French as she straightened the veils on her flat, outdated little hat. ‘But there are always a dozen pullers just down Silk Lane, so we won’t have lost anything much.’

Over tea at the Legation yesterday morning, Sir John Jordan had promised to arrange for Lydia to see something of the city in the company of one of the doyennes of the small European community. Lady Eddington, the senior woman in the British quarter, who would ordinarily have taken the newcomer under her wing, was incapable of seeing anyone in her grief, but in St Petersburg eighteen months ago Lydia had become acquainted with a cousin of the Baroness, who in any case would tolerate no interference with her right to overwhelm any visitor who came her way. To Lydia’s inquiry if Sir John could perhaps find some way to include Signora Giannini in the invitation, he had given her his lazy, intelligent smile and replied, ‘Leave it to me, ma’am.’

Paola Giannini was the woman whose screams had brought everyone to Holly Eddington’s body in the garden Wednesday night. But having met the Baroness, Lydia realized that Sir John had assumed she’d been warned about her and sought to mitigate some of the impact of her company.

Guidebook in hand, the Baroness strode through the carved gateway of flaking green lacquer and into the courtyard beyond. ‘You’ll observe the post-and-lintel construction of the ceiling,’ she commanded. ‘The main building is called the cheng-fang and invariably faces south, and it contains the most auspicious apartments of the establishment.’

On the ship from Southampton, James had described Peking as a succession of mazes, like a series of puzzle boxes. Without her spectacles, which would have detracted fatally from her forest-green-and-lavender chic, Lydia found the city a sinister labyrinth of gray-walled lanes, brilliant and dirty shop-banners, brittle sunlight like white glass and the most astonishing cocktail of sounds and smells. Under the shadows of massive gateway towers, narrow cats’ cradles of the hutongs alternated with wide, arrow-straight processional avenues jammed with traffic, hopeless to keep track of or to orient oneself in.

The rickshaw-pullers all worked for the men who owned the vehicles themselves, Paola had explained as the three rickshaws dodged nimbly between carts, porters, candy vendors, night-soil collectors and old gentlemen carrying birdcages: rather like cab drivers in London. Often the pullers slept in the rickshaw barns, and frequently they were in a sort of indentured servitude to the owners for other favors as well, a form of livelihood that merged into the criminal underworld of moneylenders, brothel-keepers, and men who bought guns illegally from the Army and resold them to the Kuo Min-tang.

‘Thus the bodyguards, you understand,’ the Italian girl had added, with a wave at the third rickshaw behind them, which contained Korsikov and Menchikov, immense mustachioed Cossacks who seemed to have stepped straight out of The Ballad of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar. ‘In truth, I have never had the slightest trouble since I came here – the President of the Republic is most careful to keep friends with the powers of Europe. Even so, I should not wish to be set afoot in the city alone.’ Like the Baroness – and everyone else in the Legation Quarter except the Americans, who in Lydia’s opinion could barely cope with English – Paola spoke French.

Lydia had peered around her at the gray walls of the hutongs, the gates opening into courtyards full of children and laundry, trying to orient herself and failing. Now and then a particularly handsome roof would be seen over the walls, tiled in bright red or green and touched up with gold, but these were hidden almost at once by the next turning of whatever lane they were in. Both Paola and the Baroness had warned Lydia about the smell, but it wasn’t as bad as Constantinople.

As far as Lydia was concerned, nothing smelled as bad as Constantinople.

The Temple courtyard was cramped and tiny, cluttered with pigeon coops and stone fish-tanks. Yet there was a curious calm to it, as if it lay silent miles from the din of the street outside. A couple of very old elm trees grew there, and in front of one of its side buildings a hulking young priest in a brown robe swept the packed earth with a twig broom. Beneath the weed-grown mass of a double roof, the main building was dark and rather grimy- looking. A yellow dog slept on the shallow steps. Inside, a ferocious image glared from a niche on the far wall, resplendent among embroidered banners, paper lanterns, and plates of offerings: candy, fruit, sugared watermelon seeds, sesame balls, rice. ‘That’s Kuan Yu, the God of War,’ explained the Baroness. ‘According to Sir John, he was an actual person at one time – fancy making a real general a deity! Like building a temple to Napoleon and preaching sermons in his name. Not that there aren’t imbeciles who actually do that, over in the French Legation . . .’

‘He must have made quite an impression.’ Lydia considered the crimson-painted face, the huge eyes staring into hers under starkly black eyebrows. The smell of incense was suffocating.

‘This is Kuan Yin, goddess of Mercy.’ Paola gestured toward a niche on the eastern wall, where a tall lady in billowy draperies was depicted standing on what Lydia assumed was a lotus. Even at this distance, the sculpted lady’s features had a serene beauty, as if she saw far into the distance of time and knew that everything would work out all right. ‘They say she was a princess who achieved Nirvana through meditation and goodness, yet turned back from the Gates of Heaven when she heard a child crying in the darkness of the world behind her.’

Paola crossed herself. In the dim shadows of the Temple, the sable of her collar set off her creamy brunette complexion, her Madonna face. She was, Lydia guessed, a few years younger than herself, and quiet-spoken, though that might merely have been the effect of the Baroness’s company. ‘I like to think that through her, they honor the Blessed Virgin . . .’

‘Yes, and who else they honor shows you how they think.’ The Baroness returned to the two younger women, stout and frumpy in her seedy furs. She gestured toward the images ranged along the other wall, each in its niche: ‘Behold the King of Hell and the magistrates that govern each of its ten levels, keep records, assign punishments, maintain order, supervise the workers and direct traffic, I dare say. It sounds just like Russia – except, of course, in Russia it would be totally disorganized – and just like China,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Imagine a people who conceive of the afterlife as being divided into departments and operated by bureaucrats. They have separate administrative divisions in Heaven as well.’

She bustled off again, toward a small door that opened into the rear courtyard beyond; Paola had returned to her contemplation of the Kuan Yin. Quickly, Lydia sneaked her spectacles from their silver case and put them on, to consider the ten fearsome gentlemen ranged along the wall in the gloom: staring eyes, bared fangs, draperies that swirled and curled in the hot winds of the afterlife. The Magistrates of Hell. A couple of them were depicted with damned souls crouched around them, or crushed beneath their feet.

The rustle of crepe and the sweetness of Rigaud’s Un Air Embaume beside her made her whip the spectacles off as she turned. ‘Do they divide sinners up by sin, the way Dante did?’ she asked.

A trace of frown appeared between Paola’s delicate brows. ‘I don’t know. The Baroness would. She is fascinated by these awful things.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Impulsively, Lydia grasped the Italian girl’s hand. ‘When the Baroness suggested that she take me around, I asked Sir John if he might arrange for someone else to join us, because the Baroness is a little – a little overpowering sometimes . . .’

‘Sometimes?’ Paola’s Madonna face brightened with schoolgirl mischief. ‘Dio mio, she would seize away the scepter of her tsar and beat him over the head with it!’ Her voice was low, and she glanced toward the lighted courtyard door, to make sure there was no possibility of the lady hearing. ‘She is like my Aunt Aemilia: so good and kind, yet so bossy!’

‘Perhaps Sir John had his own motives in hinting to her to take me about today.’ Lydia also lowered her voice conspiratorially.

‘E verra! To spare poor Lady Eddington . . .’ Paola shook her head. ‘You and I perform the poor lady a great service, Madame Asher. A diversion, as the soldiers say. For whenever anyone is ill or out of sorts, the Baroness appears on their doorstep, with her own servants and her own soap and her own brooms, and a tub of boiling vinegar, and food in crocks – her cook should be shot, Madame! He is Georgian and truly one of