when she was juggling to catch a crown; sometimes I didn’t see her for two days on end – early in my captivity, for instance, she went with the Emperor to Jehol, forty miles away, where she tucked him up to die out of harm’s way before returning to Pekin for the showdown with Sang and the barbarians. She was plotting and politicking for dear life then, and I was her Wednesday afternoon football match and brandy-and-cigar in the evening, so to speak – and her week-end picnic. A humiliating position which I was mortal glad of after what I’d been through, and I just prayed she wouldn’t lose interest in her new toy before Elgin closed his grip on Pekin. For, incredibly, our army was holding off at the last, fearful that a hostile advance might spell the end of us hostages, yet fearing, too, that delay might be equally fatal.
