The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [242]
“A small, inadequate gift and my feeble attempt to repay you in kind.”
The craftsman fell to his knees and begged forgiveness of the mandarin as he knew it was forbidden for an artisan to accept gifts from a foreigner. The mandarin raised the frightened blue figure from the ground, explaining to his countryman that the empress herself had sanctioned the minister’s request. A smile of joy came over the face of the craftsman, and he slowly walked up to the doorway of the beautiful little house unable to resist running his hand over the carved lion dogs. The three travelers then spent over an hour admiring the little house before returning in silent mutual happiness back to the workshop in Ha Li Chuan. The two men thus parted, honor satisfied, and Sir Alexander rode to his embassy that night content that his actions had met with the approval of the mandarin as well as Lady Heathcote.
The minister completed his tour of duty in Peking, and the empress awarded him the Silver Star of China and a grateful queen added the KCVO to his already long list of decorations. After a few weeks back at the Foreign Office clearing the China desk, Sir Alexander retired to his native Yorkshire, the only English county whose inhabitants still hope to be born and die in the same place—not unlike the Chinese.
Sir Alexander spent his final years in the home of his late father with his wife and the little Ming emperor. The statue occupied the center of the mantelpiece in the living room for all to see and admire.
Being an exact man, Sir Alexander wrote a long and detailed will in which he left precise instructions for the disposal of his estate, including what was to happen to the little statue after his death. He bequeathed the Emperor Kung to his first son, requesting that he do the same, in order that the statue might always pass to the first son, or a daughter if the direct male line faltered. He also made a provision that the statue was never to be disposed of unless the family’s honor was at stake. Sir Alexander Heathcote died at the stroke of midnight in his seventieth year.
His firstborn, Maj. James Heathcote, was serving his queen in the Boer War at the time he came into possession of the Ming emperor. The major was a fighting man, commissioned with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and although he had little interest in culture even he could see the family heirloom was no ordinary treasure, so he loaned the statue to the regimental mess at Halifax in order that the emperor could be displayed in the dining room for his brother officers to appreciate.
When James Heathcote became colonel of the Dukes, the emperor stood proudly on the table alongside the trophies won at Waterloo and Sebastopol in the Crimea and Madrid. And there the Ming Statue remained until the colonel’s retirement to his father’s house in Yorkshire, when the Emperor returned once again to the living room mantelpiece. The colonel was not a man to disobey his late father, even in death, and he left clear instructions that the heirloom must always be passed on to the firstborn of the Heathcotes unless the family honor was in jeopardy. Col. James Heathcote, MC, did not die a soldier’s death; he simply fell asleep one night by the fire, the Yorkshire Post on his lap.
The colonel’s firstborn, the Reverend Alexander Heathcote, was at the time presiding over a small flock in the parish of Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. After burying his father with military honors, he placed the little Ming emperor on the mantelpiece of the vicarage. Few members of the Mothers’ Union appreciated the masterpiece, but one or two old ladies were heard to remark on its delicate carving. And it was not until the reverend became the right reverend, and the little statue found its way into the bishop’s palace, that the emperor