Even after changing the baby, powdering her behind, feeding her, and softly lilting through the adrenaline comedown, Amy could not get the baby to stop crying. The sound pierced her on an animal level, a constant wail that rose high enough for Amy to feel in her teeth, which dropped down to a series of ragged sobs and shot back into its former volume. Amy didn't blame the kid one bit; the knowledge that Boxers could be lurking in the shadows, even here in the Quarter, disturbed her the more she thought about it. The closest she'd come to feeling as she did now, was three years ago, during the second week of the voyage that brought her, Sally, and Vanilla to China.
She'd been at the stern of the steamship, leaning on the deck railing as she played "Dixie's Land" on her harmonica. Sally had been dancing, trying to keep up as Amy kept increasing the tempo of the song, when a pelican clipped a rigging line and crashed into the water behind her. She'd watched the bird flail about in the calm blue water for a few moments. Then a pair of tall fins, gleaming wet bronze with white tips, had broken the surface a few yards away from the bird, and rushed it from opposite directions.
At first, she'd thought the fins had belonged to dolphins. Just before the fins reached the bird, the sleek, bronze heads of their owners had emerged from the water: sharks. One shark grabbed the pelican by the throat, the other by the wing, and they'd both pulled the screeching bird under. Below the water, an inky purple blotch had appeared. "Don't look," Sally had said as she gently guided Amy from the railing, though she herself stared. They'd both kept at least three feet from the railing for the rest of the voyage.
Somehow, the baby found the breath to increase her volume. Amy wasn't used to this at all: the few newborns she'd known largely woke up, screamed when hungry or soiled, and when their needs were met, they promptly went back to sleep in their mothers' arms. By contrast, Vanilla's daughter wakened and slept almost at random, hungry or not, soiled or not.
Amy wondered if the kid-She still needs a name, she thought-somehow knew that Amy wasn't her mother, that she wanted Vanilla to hold her. Maybe she somehow knew Vanilla was dead, and now she mourned. Maybe she knows I didn't find what killed her, and she hates me for it. Amy shook her head. Her ears are probably still ringing. Between last night's unexplained explosions and the riot, her own ears still felt a little stuffed and muted, and the German officer's pistol had definitely prolonged that sensation.
The baby continued to wail. Maybe that's it: I can't hear myself so much, so I'm just out of tune and she doesn't like it. Amy was in the middle of "The Trooper and the Maid" when she stopped lilting. The wail descended into ragged sobs, and then a monotonous, thin whine. Amy smiled wryly. "Well aren't you a little music critic?" The whine's volume decreased. Amy held her up to look her in the face. "Who's a little critic?" The baby fell silent, fixing her with an unreadable stare. Painfully, Amy was reminded of the look Vanilla had worn while engrossed in a book or writing a letter.
She heard Neubach mutter something through the door behind her. Though she couldn't understand his strange language, Amy understood his tone well enough: Thank God, she's stopped screaming. A cool, dry breeze passed through the colonel's office. She could hear shouts outside, the gate to the German Legation creaking open, and the thumping of hooves on dry earth. Curious, she went to the window and looked down into the courtyard.
Sonic dragged the old boar off the back of his horse like a sack of potatoes, and roughly sent him to the ground. A pair of Austrians dragged two young otters-whose faces were bloody and bruised, their hands bound behind them- through the gate behind him as it shut, and shoved them to the ground beside the boar.
Sonic turned to the Austrians and said: "They give you any trouble?" The Austrians shook their heads. "Good." He turned to a pair of German soldiers who'd come running to greet him. "Hessel, Koch! Help me get these bastards to lockup." He turned back to the gate, and pointed at one of the men who'd closed it. "Koschorreck! Tell Ketteler we have prisoners, he'll want to talk to them!" Koschorreck ran off to fulfill his orders.
Sonic looked down on the captives. The otters looked to be thirteen or fourteen years old, about the ages of his brother and sister. Their childlike faces had been distorted somewhat by the beating the Austrians had given them. He shook his head in disgust: back in Cameroon, the local tribesmen had deemed boys their age as men, fit for battle. Sonic did not consider himself a cruel man; but he was in no mood to offer sympathy to the comrades of last night's arsonists.
The boar stared at them in horror, and said something in his native tongue. Sonic kicked him in the ribs and barked: "Save it for Ketteler." He cut the binds from the boar's legs and pulled him upright, just as Hessel and Koch did to the otters. Jamming the barrel of his broomhandle into the boar's lower back, Sonic steered his prisoner across the courtyard.
Amy jumped at the sound of the office door opening behind her. In stepped Amadeus, who only spoke after shutting the door. "Miss Rose," he said coolly, "please, have a seat. Before you meet my son, there is something I must tell you."
Amy glanced back out the window before she obeyed. "How do you know my name?"
"Vanilla liked to write about you." Amadeus opened the drawer containing Vanilla's letters. He selected one from last October, when the Boxers had switched from attacking small patrols of Qing soldiers and the homes of Qing-friendly governors, to attacking missionaries. He briefly scanned its contents to make sure it wasn't one of the racier entries of their two-year correspondence. He wondered whether to save those or burn them, and decided that the issue would have to wait. Satisfied, he placed the smooth, creamy paper on his desk and slid it to Amy.
Amy was quite taken aback. "Vanilla, about...what?" She recognized Vanilla's clean, elegant handwriting. The letter read:
Beloved,
Yes, I have heard of those strange and awful doings in Shangdong, and they wound my heart and prevent me from rest. Christ Himself says that we should not be surprised by such persecution; indeed, the Apostles were all given equally horrific punishments by the Romans. That knowledge does not comfort me: in fact, it increases my sorrow, for it allows Satan to transpose their fates onto the people around me. Upon the block Paul was beheaded, Satan shows me Miss Acorn; where Peter hung upside down from his cross, I am shown myself; and of Miss Rose, and of you, he shows me worse, of which I will not relate here.
Amy shut her eyes. She remembered Vanilla telling everyone that awful news, of had happened to their fellow Christians in Shangdong; Boxers had stormed a Baptist mission during a service, and rather than throw them out, the Boxers had cut their throats. Vanilla had related the news gravely, yet calmly, betraying none of the fear Amy saw in this letter. She read on.
But such are the tactics of The Enemy. I will not abandon Peking to him. This city is no Sodom; there are so many here who hunger and thirst for the Gospel, that I cannot leave in good conscience. Just last week, a local drunk heard us singing and praising our Father, and stayed with us for supper. Though inebriated and coarse in his manner, the swiftness of how he responded to Christ amazes me even now.
She's talking about Knuckles, she realized, astonished. It was true: though the resultant shakes had nearly killed him, Knuckles had embraced the Quaker call to temperance wholeheartedly. Though she would never admit it, it was one of the reasons Amy herself had not taken Vanilla's faith. She kept reading.
All of that said, I understand your concerns, and l will submit to your wish. I have been allowing Miss Acorn to lead worship on Sundays, and I will steadily acclimate her to the rigors of teaching. The only thing that I would ask of you, is time: a year and a half, and she will be ready to take the reins. Give me that much time, and wherever you may go, I will happily follow.
Diene Zückersahne,
W.
Amy hadn't realized that she'd put a hand to her mouth as she read. She looked up from the letter. "Where did you...how?"
Amadeus was gentle. His talk with Miles had depressurized some of his own grief, which allowed him to simply tell Amy: "Vanilla was my wife."
Amy's eyes widened. "Your wife?"
"Yes."
Amy's brow furrowed. During the past seven months, as Vanilla's belly had grown heavier and heavier, rumors had abounded among Vanilla's congregation; some-including Amy-had thought she'd been raped by a Boxer or some other lowlife, couldn't identify the man, and was trying to put on a brave face for her people; many others thought that she'd fornicated, and the primary suspect in their eyes was Knuckles.
When that particular rumor had reached Vanilla's ears, she'd called everyone together and said: "I want you all to understand one thing: no sin has been committed. Not for my part, nor for Knuckles, nor for anyone else among you. I have only ever lain with my husband."
"You remarried Hazel?" Falun had asked, incredulous, "After what he did to you?"
Vanilla had frozen for a few seconds. "No," she'd said. "Hazel is not my husband."
"So who's this new man of yours?" Amy had asked.
Hesitating, Vanilla had said slowly: "I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you."
"Why not?" an old cat had asked.
"I cannot tell any of you. But he is my husband, and that is all you need to know."
Now Vanilla's reluctance made sense: though many Chinese accepted Christ, even enjoying the company of people like Vanilla, Amy well knew how most of them felt about foreign soldiers. Amy looked down at the baby, who had become drowsy, then met Amadeus's eye.
Amadeus answered the unspoken question on her lips. "Yes, she is our daughter."
The heat in Amy's eyes intensified, tears falling as she tried to blink them away. A quivering smile touched her lips. Too much, she thought. Too much had changed in the past forty-eight hours. She couldn't make sense of any of it. Too much had changed, far, far too fucking much.
Amadeus came around his desk, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. It was a gesture he'd often used with Rosemary, whenever a fit of grief assailed her while she was tending her garden. As he had done for Rosemary, he softly recited Goethe:
Wo die Rose hier blüht, wo Reben um Lorbeer sich schlingen,
Wo das Turtelchen lockt, wo sich das Grillchen ergötzt,
Welch ein Grab ist hier, das alle Götter mit Leben
Schön bepflanzt und geziert? Es ist Anakreons Ruh.
Frühling, Sommer, und Herbst genoß der glückliche Dichter,
Vor dem Winter hat ihn endlich der Hügel geschützt.
(Where the rose here blooms, where vine laces with laurel,
Where turtle-dove calls, where cricket rejoices,
Whose grave is this that the gods have decked with life
And wond'rous plants? It is Anacreon's grave.
He loved the spring, the summer, the autumn.
And winter shall he never know, for he lies now snug in a cozier home.)
Amy had no idea what the colonel was saying, but his practiced cadence and tone comforted her. "Did you have a name for her?" she asked quietly.
"Yes," Amadeus said, "Her name is Sahne."
Sah-nah. Amy tasted the exotic word and discovered that she liked it. "Does it mean anything?"
Amadeus nodded. "It means 'cream'."
In Amy's arms, the baby had finally fallen asleep. "Sahne."