Grace let out a slight gasp at the sight of the skeletal little creature clutching at the fur hide around her husband. The top of the man's bald head did not come up to the Reverend's chest, and his brown arms in their torn shirt could not reach around him, but the Reverend did not appear repulsed. Instead, he placed a large hand across the man's back and held him close.
The man pulled out a set of keys, which he rattled in the lock. He pushed open the flimsy door, and they followed him in as the innkeeper lit a lantern and held it aloft. In the flickering golden light Grace noticed the resemblance between the two Chinese men and wanted to ask the Reverend if they were father and son.
She glanced about, and although the recesses of the open room were shadowed, she could tell there was no grain for the winter stored here, no curing meat hanging from the rafters, nothing to see them through the lean months ahead. The pinched grandfather who owned the empty barn kept nodding joyfully, though, as he struck up a second lamp. He rattled his absurd set of oversized keys, which seemed quite unnecessary to Grace since surely there was nothing inside the empty barn to steal.
But then they stepped into a smaller room, and the older gentleman made a pleased sound and pointed. Before them on a table sat the most surprising antique porcelain bowls, vases, and cups that Grace had ever seen.
The Reverend bowed his head respectfully before the table and listened as the older man jabbered on about the ceramic vessels, his voice rising and falling with remarkable vigor. Grace was able to catch only a few phrases.
She touched her husband's sleeve and whispered up to him, "Do they know that these are quite old? I believe I saw pieces like them at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in the days before my ship departed for the Orient. The simplicity of design, lack of decoration, and thinness of the porcelain all suggest they date all the way back to the Han period. Does he understand what he has here?"
The Reverend smiled down at her, his face softened by the glow of lamplight. "Indeed, he does."
Grace squeezed her husband's arm more forcefully and whispered again, "We should help him sell these pieces so he can make enough to see his family through the drought. He could move away from this terrible place. Does he want us to carry them to Peking for him and find buyers? I'm sure I could do that without too much trouble."
The Reverend held his finger to his lips to silence her and said, "No, my dear, this is their inheritance. They intend to hold on to it."
Grace looked at the foolish ancient man and his foolish old son and
spoke slowly to them in her best approximation of their dialect. "You will sell these and eat?" She rubbed her fingers together to suggest money and then brought them up to her lips to show eating. They had to understand.
The grandfather shook his head firmly, and the son looked quizzically at the Reverend.
The Reverend addressed the men. "Forgive my wife, she doesn't understand just yet." Then he spoke to Grace with exaggerated patience, as if to a child. "This treasure means everything to them. If they sold it, they would no longer want to live."
"Why, that's absurd," Grace sputtered in English. "They will starve next winter. Selling one or two of these vases could save their entire hamlet."
The Reverend stood erect, the fur on his back broadening his presence as his voice changed unexpectedly. "Disrespect these people at your peril," he snarled. "I have seen the errors of our arrogant ways and the punishment we rightfully deserve. Have you learned nothing since our son was stolen from us? Must we repeat our hubris again and again?"
The Reverend's enormous shadow rose up the wall in the lamplight, and Grace could not help the shiver that overtook her spine as she stared into her husband's eyes, now as yellow as those of the animal on his back. She felt shaken and betrayed. Her mind raced as she tried to grasp the meaning of his outburst, but all she wanted to ask in that frightening moment was what had become of her husband?
The Reverend had lost his senses. Mildred Martin was right that he had gone native. She had heard the other ministers whispering that he