Keeper of the Swords

[full version with photos can be read here]

I mounted the Chinese swords on the kitchen wall. They rest, high up, above the threshold of the hall. Two brackets—jutting from the plaster like black hands—support each bone-sheathed sword. In their stillness, they wait and observe, antique blades stained by century-old blood. To reach my home, these swords have survived a battle involving nine nations, four generations of my family, and narrowly escaped a voyage on the Titanic.

Why did I choose this spot? Perhaps they would not fit anywhere else in my modest abode, an 800-square-foot coach house above my parents’ garage. I call it The Loft. The swords reside amongst Tibetan prayer flags, Asian elephants, and Kenyan batiks showing gazelle and giraffes living in harmony with long-legged Masai. Peculiar housemates for these instruments of war. Yet perhaps my placement is not mere chance. Swords are symbols of protection, in my case guardians of the place I work and rest. I am comforted by their presence, the way a child is reassured at night by a familiar stuffed animal.

As a boy, my eyes always felt drawn to the swords’ hand-carved sheaths. Chinese figures painstakingly etched along the entire length of slightly-curved bone added an air of mystique to the already exotic blades. Taking them off the wall was forbidden, so I felt a need for stealth and gentleness when handling these sacred heirlooms. The smoothed, yellowed bone—elephant? Horse? Deer? Human?—felt at once fragile and firm. I always paused before pulling a sword free: I relished the moment I allowed the blade a brief glimpse of the light. At one time, this edge tasted flesh, perhaps separated more than one body from its soul. With that knowledge, I saw myself on the battlefield, both hands wielding a sword, a noble warrior fighting for the cause of good.

But they do not belong to me. Neither do they belong to my mom, who inherited them from her mother and father, who in turn inherited the swords from my great grandmother, Harriet Isabelle Lee. Harriet herself, nicknamed Pips (short for “pipsqueak”, for she was a tiny woman, called a “wee bit of a thing” by her husband) could not claim to be the original discoverer either. Her brother, Thomas Tuggey, came upon them during his service with the British navy. In 1900 he went to China as part of the eight treaty powers to quell the uprising called the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers wanted to rid China of the foreigners they felt were draining their country’s power and wealth. It was near Beijing that Thomas found the swords in the theatre of war. How or why I can not say. Did he kill the original owner in honourable combat? Did he know anything about this man, this silent stranger whose only ancestral clue lay within the men carved into the sheaths? Or did my great-great uncle simply stumble across a corpse and claim his prize?

When Thomas brought these blades into our family the legend of their creation was lost. In the changing of hands, only the physical was transferred; any spirit and story imbued in the swords became a mystery best explained by myth.

Who is the rightful owner of these blades?

A solitary, thorny question often manages to multiply into many elusive forms. Did these matched swords belong to the same soldier? They are certainly light enough to be held in one hand, yet the hilt has room for two sets of fingers. What was he fighting for? In the time of the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists fought against foreign influence in their country. Are these swords ceremonial rather than battle-ready? Perhaps the darks stains are actually rust, yet the nicks in the blade suggest they were used in combat. Was it he (or his ancestor) who forged them so lovingly, meticulous in whittled storytelling? I want to think this is true. His family history is carved right into the bone.

I take the swords down from the kitchen wall to study their extraordinary craftsmanship. The hilt and scabbard are both decorated bone; when sheathed, they become one complete unit. Along one edge are two small holes where the swords may have attached to a belt. By ink and groove sixteen men can be discerned. Women are absent—not surprising, given China’s patriarchal Confucian society at the time. The illustrations are the same on both swords, with only minute discrepancies; a few men are facing the opposite direction, and a couple have alternate headgear. But their faces are undeniably the same. Each stoic figure is robed, wearing a near-smile. Three near the handle are bald, resembling Buddhist monks, except their clothing is far too elaborate. The sculptor differentiated among the sixteen long, flowing, hanging-sleeved Hanfu robes in several ways: drawing cross-hatching, X’s, stars, or two concentric ovals that look like open eyes. The ornate patterns suggest noble heritage.

Hanfu is traditional Chinese clothing, dating back thousands of years to Huángtì, the Yellow Emperor. Wearing these silk robes has been carried to present from 2400 BCE. Huángtì is said to be the ancestor of all Han Chinese, the largest individual ethnic group in the world. Both the Japanese kimono and Korean hanbok were derived from Hanfu. On the sword sheaths, the Hanfu is by far the most prominent feature. All the figures have their hands folded over one another beneath the sleeves. This gives them an air of contentment, a quiet and humble satisfaction only the enlightened achieve.

The swords actually consist of seven bone segments, individually carved and glued together. The division separating each segment is carefully hidden within the design. Between each set of figures—dividing one generation from the next—is a layer of water, earth and sky. Directly below the knee level of most figures is a wavy line; within the space underneath is a series of dashes, clearly representing a current in water. Under these few centimetres on the sword is an equal-sized band of rocky earth, portrayed with jagged hexagonal lines; an observer can see one layer of stone stacked upon a second. Next, a clear band represents the sky, and finally another wavy line—filled with longer diagonal stripes in contrast to the short horizontal ones in the first water layer—shows clouds inundated with rain. This completes the hydrological cycle. The rain will fall back into the sea at the feet of the figure below.

This pattern of water, earth and air is broken only near the end of the sheath, where four men have been carved overlapping one another—three men on the reverse side. Perhaps the sculptor ran out of space? Or did these four and three belong to the same family, being brothers of the sword-bearer himself?

Still more detail exists. Besides the intermittent thin sliver of sun seen beneath the horizon of cloud, fire is also symbolized at the sheath’s top and bottom in the form of a hibiscus flower. The China rose. Thus all four elements are embodied in the bone. One full petal and two half petals are elegantly inscribed, showing half the overall flower, their edges joined to resemble a rising sun. Creeping inconspicuously from behind are two leaves with netted veins. Not only are the paired hibiscus found at either end of the 60-centimeter scabbard—removing the blade reveals flowers at the top and bottom of the 25-centimeter hilt. So even when unsheathed, both scabbard and hilt retain their radiant symmetry. The repeating images of robed men and the four elements are sandwiched between these open flowers.

In the plant world, the China rose is a curiosity. Hibiscus is polyploid, meaning it possesses multiple pairs of chromosomes, so that its offspring could resemble an ancient ancestor just as likely as a parent, or grandparent. In a way, I am the heir of these swords, a pseudo-descendant of the men drawn on the sheaths. But my DNA is only distantly related. Like the hibiscus, my sword ancestors look little like me.

Do I deserve the right to have these blades on my wall? For all I know, they could be ill-gotten. If my great-great uncle was a corpse robber, that pilfering gene has been passed on to me through these swords. Furthermore, I will never know the people carved on the sheaths—strangers that belong to a culture and country toward which I have never shown interest.

Should I not be seeking the rightful owner? The practical side of such a journey is near impossible. Over and above the geographical gap is an extraordinary distance between the customs and language of China and Canada. But at the very least, I can attempt understanding.

Why did the swords fall into my hands? For the first part of that answer, I look to my siblings. I have three brothers. Why was I granted this early inheritance? The swords are, after all, valued at over $700—or so a man at an antique show told my mom in 2004. When I moved from home, my mom offered me the swords. My two elder brothers never expressed an interest. Dan, the youngest son, has yet to leave.

Next I look to my mother. She is the one who christened me Lee. Lee is a sheltered or protected place. As Keeper of the Swords, she has entrusted me to shelter and protect them. In grade five, I remember finding a “meaning of names” book in the school library. My entry read, in full:

Lee; Chinese, plump.

Being skinny and Caucasian, this left me perplexed. In my case, Lee’s origin is English. The surname Lee supplanted Tuggey in 1898, when my great grandmother Pips married John Robert Lee on New Year’s Day, in Portsmouth, England.

My mom lost the Lee family name the day of her first wedding. It was her second marriage to my dad, Nelson, where Lee returned. Admittedly, I arrived a few months before the vows. Within my name—Lee Michael Beavington—is carried the ancestry of my father and mother. By granting me her maiden name, my mom ensured its survival at least one more generation. The middle Michael is after my godfather, Michael Wineberg. My mom has often said Michael tried to convince Nelson not to marry her, the night before the wedding, no less. (My dad tells a different story.) So Michael literally came between Beavington and Lee; to this day, that is where he resides, caught between two families merged by my conception.

Of course, I am the only son with any interest in Lee family history. This surely did not escape mom’s attention.

Then again, maybe the swords chose me. They have undergone a long, arduous journey to reach my hands. In fact, they almost ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic in the bowels of the Titanic.

Pips was responsible for bringing the swords from England to Canada. Plagued by illness as a child, she was short, slim, and courageous, with luminous eyes and flowing brown curls. John Robert Lee, a burly, bushy-browed and moustached Englishman, fell in love with her. Walking down the aisle, Pips overheard John’s aunt mutter to another aunt, “Look at that poor sickly thing. She won’t last a year!” Pips recounted this many times to her children and grandchildren (including my mom), unable to hide her delight in outliving the very prophesier of her doom. It’s a good thing too, for she needed time to birth my grandfather; by 1907, they had four children, the youngest being Kit.

John, a building contractor, immigrated to Canada in 1911. He found work in Calgary. The pay was terrible, and the hostile winter chilled his spirits. To save money, John lived in a tent with other men. He wrote to Pips, “Come in April when the weather is more agreeable.” She booked herself and the children one-way on the historic April 10th, 1912 sailing. The Titanic tickets said “third class”. They could afford only steerage.

John faced more misfortune. He lost his job. He wrote to Pips, despondent over signs stating “Englishmen need not apply.” With the arrival of Christmas, his heart grew fragile. He could not bear to be parted any longer from his Pips. His telegram read:

Miss you. Sail sooner. Love, John.

So my grandmother cancelled her passage on the Titanic. In doing so, she saved the swords—and me. When the Titanic sank, the men, women and children in steerage were locked below deck. My five-year-old grandfather, Kit, surely would have drowned. Tragically, such a terrible event struck thirty-three years later, when Kit and his nephew Johnnie drowned in a sailing accident at Chestermere Lake, just outside Calgary. My mom was six; her family life was thrown into turmoil. Thirty-eight years later, when I myself was six, I nearly drowned while swimming in a hotel pool.

In August of 1983, my family was vacationing in California. My dad’s sister—Aunt Jenny—brought two of her boys along. I frequented the hotel pool as often as I could. I have always loved water, drawn to Mother Ocean’s power and the spirit of the river. My two cousins and I were playing pool tag; they could swim, I could not. In the deep end, I pulled myself through the water by grabbing the ledge, hand over hand. I did not like getting tagged. Yet my finless feet could not help me. In order to elude my aquatic cousins, I started skipping corners. I bridged the right angle of a pool’s corner like a transient hypotenuse, leaping from one edge to another in order to save time. Each time I left more space, more distance for the hypotenuse to cover. One time, it was too far.

I leapt, pushing off with my hands, and fell into water three times my height. My world collapsed. I still remember the terror, the complete panic and helplessness, arms flailing for something solid as my lungs burned. I had lost control of my life, and it filled me with the fear of a thousand deaths. My cousin Sam, a year my senior, managed to pull me to the side of the pool.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

But I was in no condition to answer, my mind frozen by that image of eternal darkness. My Aunt, the first adult on the scene, made me promise never to tell my mom. That would strike too close to heart, what with her father’s drowning. Also, at the time, my mom was facing the cancer spreading inside her mother and older sister—they would soon die a week apart. I kept my mouth shut.

Like my grandfather, I avoided an early underwater fate. If Kit had sailed on the Titanic and subsequently drowned in steerage, I would be without experience—near-death or otherwise. I would also not feel such strong empathy for his later drowning. Over the last ten years, I have relayed my hotel pool story to my mom at least half a dozen times; not once has she remembered. Yet she can recall the time and place Pips left for Canada.

With the Titanic trip cancelled, my great grandmother booked for a ship sailing in February, 1912, from Southampton to the east coast of Canada. To the best of my knowledge, she brought the swords with her, perhaps a parting gift from her brother Tom.

After weeks on the ship, Pips and the kids took a transcontinental train. Accompanied by many immigrants following the promise of cheap land, they arrived in Calgary, utterly spent. The Canadian government wanted homesteads set up in the prairies, so the Minister of the Interior forbade copy writers from referring to “snow” and “cold” in official publications. Yet snow and cold are exactly what Pips found.

A blizzard raged through the city. John was still struggling to save money. After the happy reunion, the five of them shared a tent with other families for a few days until the tiny house my great grandfather had managed to rent was available. From that meagre foundation, he eventually started his own contracting business. Among the dozens of houses he built in Calgary were four along what is now called Fifth Avenue NW. These were homes for the Lee family; the Chinese swords were kept in the nicest house, where John and Pips lived.

Pips died in 1958, outliving her husband and nearly every relative of her generation. She bestowed the swords to Kit, my grandfather. Why he got them instead of his older brother, Bob, I do not know. Kit’s wife, Bessie, kept them safe after his tragic drowning at age 37. Thirty-eight years later, when cancer claimed Bessie on Remembrance Day, 1983, the swords moved to my mom’s house in Surrey, British Columbia. Like Pips, my mom has four children. Now the third of that line—Lee Michael Beavington—sits in The Loft, holding the centenarian swords in reverence. It feels like I’m holding the prehistory of my life. As I pull out a blade, I notice the nicks along the edge, the dents where steel met steel. My mom used to take the swords out from under her parents’ bed, despite strict orders not to touch them. She and her sisters would unfold the blanket they were wrapped in, remove the blades from their sheaths, and shiver in delight at the dark blood stains. They made up stories about who owned the swords, how he died bravely on the battlefield defending his country, how Uncle Thomas found the swords and brought them back with him to England.

These blades still hold the blood of ancient enemies. Those enemies could very well have been my ancestors. Yet the irony goes further.

When Thomas Tuggey arrived in China in the early 1900s as a British naval officer, he was part of the forces sent to stamp out the Boxer Movement. The treaty troops—from eight nations—were able to occupy Beijing and end the uprising. Plunder, looting and rape ensued.

Somewhere during this campaign, my great-great uncle discovered the two swords. I can almost feel that first touch, his hand grasping the bloodied weapons. From his hands they have passed to mine. Thus—a foreigner owns the heirlooms that would have stayed in China had not the Boxers rebelled.

For two weeks, the swords have sat with me at my desk. My thumb occasionally runs along the grooves in the bone, pondering character and meaning. They were forged over a hundred years ago, infused with story and ancestry that have since changed shape and form. Yet the legend of their journey endures. As the swords move in and out of lives, one set of stories overlays another.

I do not want to put them back on the wall. In doing so, I fear their history will be forgotten. I cannot claim ownership. In keeping the swords, am I defiling their heritage? Is my very touch sacrilegious? My ancestry brought them to me. But the ancestry of the swords belongs to a country, culture, and century to which I hold no claim. If any dignity remains, if I can offer any tribute, it is to keep telling the story of the swords. In remembrance, there is honour.