China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

was not the danger he might be in. Indeed, he almost forgot to be afraid.

For to his surprise, the main sensation he felt was one of wonder. Wonder at the beauty of the place.

Most of China’s great cities were ancient. Nanjing was over two thousand years old. Cecil didn’t know exactly, but he was sure the walls of Nanjing must be nearly twenty miles in circuit and so thick that an entire army could have marched on top of them. The city’s position was excellent, at the center of China’s rich heartland in the Yangtze River valley. For the three hundred years before the Manchu invaded, the Ming dynasty had made it their capital.

But each great city also had its own particular feature, one that came into the imagination the moment the place was mentioned. And this was what he gazed at now.

The Purple Mountain.

One couldn’t miss the Purple Mountain. It began to rise outside the walls of the city’s northeastern quadrant, where the old Ming emperor’s palace lay. It continued northward for miles, in a sweeping slope to its final ridge, which seemed to be in close communion with the heavens. And for some reason—the atmosphere, the angle of the light filtering through the blue-grey clouds that formed over it, or other natural causes, whatever they might be—the great green hill was often bathed in a magical glow, tinged with violet and reds, that caused it to seem not green, but purple.

The Purple Mountain was a holy place. The tombs of the Ming emperors were still to be found upon it.

Yet as Cecil Whiteparish gazed at this Chinese hill, it seemed to him that although the landscape might be dotted with Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, Confucian temples and heathen graves, it would be hard, in such beauty, not to see the Creator’s hand. Could it be that the true God was indeed being worshipped here by these Taiping rebels? What a wonderful thing that would be.

He was about to find out—if they didn’t kill him.

As soon as his captors reported at the gates, he was delivered to a sergeant with a platoon of soldiers who conducted him up the main central street for about a thousand yards. Then they turned eastward, towards the old Ming palace, but hardly went more than a quarter mile when they entered a big complex of buildings, like a barracks.

Five minutes later he had discovered that it was a prison—and that he was locked inside it.

Not that he had been thrown into a vile cell. The room was a good size, and he was the only occupant. It contained a chair and a table. But the windows, which looked out onto a small blank courtyard, were heavily barred.

During the next few hours several people came in. One was a jailer who gave him water and a little rice before leaving in silence and locking the door. Three others came at intervals. Though with their long hair they looked to him like wild men, they were probably officers of some kind. Each of them asked him the same questions about who he was and why he had come there, before departing. Hours passed. He sat and read his Bible. Evening came. He wondered if they would give him a lamp. They did not. Darkness fell. He felt hungry. He found three grains of rice he had missed in the bowl he’d been given. He did not see them, but felt them with his fingers and ate them.

He had not been able to make out the face of the stout fob watch he carried, so he did not know what time it was when the door of his prison opened and two figures came in. One of them was evidently a jailer, who carried a lamp on a pole. The other was an officer, and Cecil had a feeling that this might be a man of some importance. He murmured to the jailer, who brought the lamp close to Cecil’s face so that the officer could inspect it. Another order followed, and the lamp was held high so that all three men were illumined.

The officer had long hair, but it was neatly combed and brushed. He wore a simple tunic, spotlessly clean, with a sash. He looked to be maybe thirty, but the lines on his face suggested that he had the experience of a man ten years older. He had a scar on his cheek. “You know me,” he said in Cantonese.

It was Nio.

“When they described this strange spy to me, I thought it might be you. So I came to see.”

“Not a spy, Nio. A British missionary, just as I was before. I came because I heard that the Taiping were Christian. I wanted to know. Is it true?”

“We follow the One True God.”

“Do you yourself?”

“Of course.”

“I wonder…” Cecil ventured. “Do you remember when I used to speak to you about Our Lord and our faith?”

“I remember it well. You are wondering if your words affected me.”

“I should be glad if perhaps—”

“Your words did not affect me.”

“Oh.”

“But I thought that you were a good man, and this may save your life. Nobody here knows what to do with you.”

“I see.” Cecil frowned. “Please tell me, for people say different things, what caused the Taiping to be Christian?”

“Years ago, our leader, the One True King, was given some Christian tracts. Perhaps they came from an American missionary on one of the opium smuggling boats. I do not know. But wherever they came from, our leader put them away and forgot about them. Sometime later, however, he chanced to read them and immediately received a divine revelation. He began to preach. People gathered around him, and the movement was born.”

“The Heavenly Kingdom.”

“Nanjing is about to become the Heavenly Capital.”

“Your One True King says he is the younger brother of Jesus?”

“That is so. We call Jesus Heavenly Elder Brother.”

“But Jesus lived a long time ago.”

“All things are possible to God.”

“Perhaps we can discuss that later. And you