Robert took a room for Father Edward at the inn. The man had little money and had been sleeping rough.
‘But what are you doing here?’ he enquired as we toasted each other with the final bottle of port that Robert had concealed among his things.
‘Collecting plants,’ Robert gesticulated. The entire inn was packed with specimens.
‘What about you? Where are you going, Father?’
‘Back to Ning-po. It will take a while, but that is what I have decided. I have done all the good I can in the interior. I was north of here and there were five of us, but the nuns died of typhoid and I am limited as to what I can do alone.’
‘We were in Ning-po only a few months ago. I am sure Bertie will be delighted to see you. I can give you some money if you like. It will speed your journey,’ Robert said generously.
Father Edward shook his head. ‘I am fine,’ he said simply. ‘I have enough to buy food and that is all I need. A bed for the night is a luxury though. Thank you.’
We spent the evening discussing what we had seen of China. Father Edward told us of the farms where he had come from, about the mission he had set up and the work they had embarked on, helping the old and sick.
‘It is so poor,’ he said, ‘China.’
‘Not here,’ I countered.
‘No. Here there is industry, though the people are taxed too heavily. And the troops are vicious. I saw awful things before the war, when I was nearer the coast. They punished their own people for reporting the white man’s incursions. In England a man turning in information is rewarded, but in China, if there is any question of helping a foreigner, even in error, it lays a death sentence on the unfortunate man’s head. People giving directions of any kind were killed on the spot.’
‘Yes,’ said Robert, not saying that this probably worked in our favour. ‘What they do to their own people is terrible. And the sickness. I have seen some dreadful things in the villages.’
Sing Hoo cooked a sumptuous dinner and we lingered at the table. I told Father Edward about the Women’s Mission in Ning-po and about Bertie’s impersonation of a humble priest and how we had been duped. Father Edward was a serious man and he did not laugh when I told the story, only regarded me carefully.
‘It made no difference to Mary,’ Robert told him, ‘though I admit it made me think twice about what I had confessed in Bertie’s presence.’
Father Edward sighed.
‘You are tired, Father,’ I said. ‘We are being selfish, wanting to keep you up too long.’
‘I am sorry,’ he replied. ‘It has been quite a time since I have spoken English. You two have each other and it is not strange to you.’
The next day the priest accompanied Robert to a tea farm and it was there, I think, he realised Robert’s true mission. When the men returned there was a strained atmosphere and Father Edward said that he was leaving.
‘Oh, please,’ I begged him. ‘Will you take a letter to Bertie for me? Don’t leave yet. Stay another night. It will take me a while to write.’
‘Does the Bishop know why you have come here?’ Father Edward asked coldly.
‘Yes. Of course. Bertie is a great friend. What is the matter?’
He snorted as if my question was foolish.
‘The treaty is unequal enough as it is, don’t you think? Do you know how poor these people are? Do you know what your actions here will mean? First we make them trade with us so that the mandarin population is slave to our opium and then we steal the only commodity they have to pay for it!’
‘I find it difficult to believe you are on their side,’ Robert said, incredulous.
It was clear they had started this conversation out on the land and were now merely continuing it.
‘I am only on the side of fairness,’ Father Edward countered. ‘You have been kind to me but I cannot in good conscience stay here. If what you are doing succeeds, these people will lose their livelihood. It is not moral. You are stealing from them, Mr Fortune.’
I hung my head.
‘How dare you?’ Robert snarled. ‘You think they are keeping the treaty? With their secret tariffs and the level of their troops? This is nonsense. You have lost your senses. Every nation must look to its own business and do the best for its people. How long have you been here, Edward? How long did it take for you to forget you are British and a subject of the Queen?’
Father Edward cast his eyes to his feet.
‘It is my conscience and I will not lie about it. My duty first is to God’s law and not man’s accommodation of politics.’
‘God!’ Robert declared.
Thankfully he did not launch into a discourse on spirituality. Father Edward turned away from Robert at this blasphemous outburst and it was clear he had no more to say on the matter.
‘Write your letter, Miss Penney, and I will wait.’
‘Do not fret, Father Edward, I will not ask you to carry anything for me,’ Robert snapped.
That evening the priest walked out of the town. I had sent Sing Hoo with a parcel of food, but Edward did not take it with him. I watched him leave all but empty-handed from the window of my room.
‘He will not report us,’ Robert said. ‘He may have some strange convictions but he wouldn’t dare!’
It had not even occurred to me that there was a danger.
For two days I felt both guilty and disappointed as I debated the storm Father Edward had started in my mind. We were stealing perhaps in one sense, but then, why should any plant belong to one nation? The seeds could as easily blow on the wind out of bounds. Why was it worse to take a tea plant than a yellow camellia? Was it a more serious offence to remove a cutting rather than a seed? Besides, Robert had paid his way amply. I wished Father Edward had stayed so I could reason with him. I wished the original promise of excitement had paid off. Who would have ever thought a white man would come strolling across our path the first time in months and that if he did that we might quarrel? Talking to Robert about it was pointless. We had become too cosy, perhaps, and the shock of Father Edward’s intrusion took a good week to subside.
I do not know what happened to the priest. His journey on foot back to Ning-po should have taken two months, maybe three. Perhaps he fell foul of troops stationed on the way. One way or another, my letter never reached Bertie and Father Edward, God rest his soul, never returned to British soil.
Ten days after Edward left, Robert and I made an excursion to the fields and we misjudged our distances. When the sun set it was as if the land simply disappeared and we realised we had left it too late to get back to our lodgings if we were not on the main road already. There was nothing for it, we were caught up in the hills with acres of tea around us, a stream to one side and nothing else for miles. It was next to impossible to travel at night. The tracks were dangerously uneven, there were few landmarks and not one single signpost. That night, in addition, the moon was not out and we were as good as blind men. Luckily there seemed to be few wild animals—the odd fox, perhaps, but little else, so it was not dangerous. Robert had some fruit and bread, which we shared. Then we sat for a while on a large, flat rock, which protruded from a gully. After a while Robert rose. He walked to the running water and bathed his feet.
‘Hot,’ he explained.
‘Well,’ I said, settling down, ‘if an odd fish like Father Edward can manage this, so can we.’
A bed on the ground is more comfortable than the berth on a barge, I discovered and, having checked for stones and found leaves on which to lay my head, I was comfortable. Even in summertime the night could be chilly and we were on high ground.
‘Aren’t the stars an astonishment?’ Robert breathed, and I could feel his chest rise and fall.
He was right—they were like gemstones scattered across the velvet sky, for it was not cloudy. The hills were so silent that I could hear the movement of the branches off into the distance. To feel so tiny in the face of the wide sky was as marvellous as the anonymity of being unjudged and unnoticed.
‘It has become,’ Robert commented as we lay on the dark hill, ‘most companionable with you, Mary. I could not hope to have such a variety of drawings without your help.’
I smiled in the darkness and realised then that I was committed to this mission. Despite what Father Edward said, I admired my brother-in-law and what he wanted to achieve. Edward had lost himself. He had become confused. A man has to know where he comes from and stick to that. The kind of confusion to which Edward was subject would never happen to Robert and, in that silent moment, I realised that despite my empathy for the Chinese it would never happen to me either. I might think in their language and find myself entirely comfortable in this land, but my loyalty was to the Queen, not the Emperor. I knew my place in the scheme of things.
‘I am on your side, you know,’ I whispered to Robert.
He did not answer. It was pitch black but I thought I saw the gleam of his teeth as he smiled.
A moment or two passed and I decided to change the subject.
‘So, what are we to do with all my drawings, then?’ I asked.
‘Shanghae would be the best port, I think,’ he ventured. ‘The Helen Stuart makes regular voyages. We shall send them west when we leave for the south. They will return to England. The catalogue will be part of the record of what we have done.’
And I found myself wondering with a tinge of sadness if everything I cared about in China was destined to go home in the end. I certainly did not want to.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘I will never go on the stage again after this.’
I could hear Robert turn. ‘Why? What is it that you do wish to do?’
‘Be here.’
‘Mary Penney! And your boxes of baubles and feather ornaments?’ Robert teased. ‘Your streams of admirers and fine French lace? All the claret? The slices of lamb and pale Cheshire cheese, my lady? What are you here for, if not to be able to show off in London about it!’
‘Better to be a well-kept secret by far. Can you bear to go back and lecture at the Society? To have them think well of you despite your low birth, when here you are free to be whoever you please?’
Robert fell silent for a moment.
‘I long to,’ he said. ‘Both to have their respect and merit their attention.’
‘We are opposite in that,’ I replied as I stared at the inky sky, my limbs so relaxed that I almost floated. I had never been so satisfied, so happy, in all my life.
Late that night I half wakened and, with my eyes accustomed to the darkness, I noticed Robert had moved off to the side and was sitting against a tree, his knees to his chest, unable to sleep it seemed. I wondered what had disturbed him. It seemed to me that he had been pacing up and down, although now he was still, his back against the bark.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Why did you move away?’
‘Shhhh,’ he soothed, and averted his eyes.
‘What is the matter?’
‘You sleep, Mary.’
I did as he asked and turned over.
In the morning I woke in the half-light. The dew had come down and the ground was damp. We hiked along the path a mile or so and feasted on wild cherries from a tree by the track. The juice ran down Robert’s chin.
‘I am torn,’ Robert said meditatively, ‘between the freedom of this adventure, and the benefits of civilisation despite its constraints. I don’t know how yet, but I hope that perhaps I can share my time between both.’
I was glad that he cared for freedom enough to think of it so. For my part, though I was still British, and for all that I had Henry there, and Jane too, London could go hang.
One day, after several weeks in the province, it was finally time for Sing Hoo to visit his family. We had seen the tea harvest in the North and soon we would progress to the black tea countries to do the same, travelling south and then waiting for the spring and the early harvest in April. I knew that Robert had been reviewing his notes, making plans as ever. If Sing Hoo didn’t go now it would be too late.
It was difficult to extract information as to the exact location of the man’s village as Sing Hoo refused to read any of our maps. This Robert put down to a mixture of stupidity, stubbornness and a vague intention to escape our service if he could by simply disappearing.
‘He will want to stay at home when he returns to his village,’ Robert grumbled. ‘And besides, he may expose us. Had you thought, Mary?’
‘It seems to me unlikely he would tell them who we are,’ I ventured. ‘He has never told anyone before. After all, better servant to a grand mandarin than a criminal in the service of foreigners. He is not reliable, it’s true. But he will want to impress his family.’
Nonetheless, Robert insisted that we accompany Sing Hoo, and we finally established the village was at some three days’ distance.
‘Perhaps we shall find some interesting plants on the way,’ Robert said, trying to make the best of things.
I chose a small carving, a miniature copy of the great stone ship at the Summer Palace, as a gift. Sing Hoo puffed out his chest and grinned openly when he realised that his family were to receive presents. His stock would no doubt rise and he was nothing if not a show-off. In the end we also took some sesame oil, bags of rice, half a dozen phials of my perfumes and some of the dwarf conifers, which we had no use for in our retinue.
‘Sing Wa honours my family,’ Sing Hoo beamed.
Robert nodded sagely, making his point. ‘It is you we are honouring,’ he said. ‘Your family will be proud of you.’
Despite all his failings we needed to keep Sing Hoo with us. It was far easier that way.
Wang was distraught at all the attention that was being showered on his rival. He served a supper the evening before we set off that belied the meagre cooking facilities of the inn.
‘We can visit your family in Bohea,’ I comforted him. ‘We will bring them gifts too, Wang. Bohea will be our home in only a few months.’
But the man was inconsolable. He hung his head and that evening I saw him sitting on the low wall of the courtyard throwing stones into the inky blackness beyond. Robert gave him a few cash with which to amuse himself while we were gone, and a list of strict instructions about the care of the nursery.
When we set off early the next morning, Wang had given himself up entirely to despair. He was already drunk and had a flagon of five grain spirit hanging from his belt. I expect the poor man had been up all night emptying it.
‘He doesn’t have a family,’ Sing Hoo jibed cheerfully. ‘Everyone dead.’
I looked back up the road, making out the lonely figure of Wang staring after us from the gates of the inn.
‘Poor chap,’ I murmured.
‘Come along now,’ Robert urged. ‘I doubt that is true. And besides, we must make our time.’
In the end we did better than planned and our journey was only two days. Sing Hoo became more excited at every turn of the road and spoke so quickly it was difficult to pick up what he was saying. As the hills became less steep and we came to a gentle valley he ran ahead, shouting, and it was clear we had almost arrived.
‘Imagine going home after so many years,’ Robert smiled.
Sing Hoo had not seen his people in ten years at least. How long might it be for us, I wondered.
The village was tiny, perhaps six or eight houses. Sing Hoo’s family lived in the first we came to, which comprised two storeys. They flooded out into the street to his cries and I saw immediately that Sing Hoo looked like his relations, with their small eyes and wide, misshapen mouths. I recognised his expression of delight on their faces as they flung their arms around him and then, the suspicious glances cast as they realised that their relative had arrived with a fine mandarin and his secretary. Sing Hoo wasted no time in showering his relations with the gifts we had supplied and we were duly welcomed. The brother’s wives smelt the flacons of perfumed oil and laughed, delighted. The brothers set the carving of the boat beside the door of the dwelling. Sing Hoo, I realised, had sav
ed some weeks’ wages and presented them ceremonially to the family. It would be the same with Jane, I realised. We might give her presents, tell some tales, but would she ever be able to really understand what the journey had been like for us?
That evening we ate rice and chicken cooked over an open fire and sat on rough pillows laid on the floor as we listened to the family’s babble. Sing Hoo mourned his mother briefly, who had died some years before. He had not known that she was dead. But as the younger children squabbled he was drawn away from any grief and seemed happy again to simply be at home. I watched carefully as Sing Hoo’s sister-in-law, with fingers roughened in the fields, served tea of her own picking. It was not long, after years away, to have only one night, but at least for Sing Hoo it was a jolly one. As he babbled his adventures, augmenting the tales to enlarge his role in them, my mind drifted away. My thoughts were already directed to our onward journey.
‘Do you think we could leave him here?’ I whispered to Robert. ‘It seems safe enough and he is a terrible troublemaker.’
Robert considered a moment and shook his head.
‘No. We need him, Mary. Who could replace Sing Hoo now? He knows.’
I expect Robert was right.
The next morning I woke to the sound of crying. Sing Hoo brought me some tea and congee and said that his brothers were giving a gift to Robert, who was in the main living room, and that I should not mind the crying—it was only one of the women, an aunt who did not wish him to leave.
It seemed to take forever until we could go. The family fussed around Sing Hoo, clinging to him and wailing as if they were never to be consoled. Eventually Robert, losing patience, practically prised the man from their arms and insisted we set off at once. Sing Hoo was quiet for most of the journey back to Hwuy Chow Foo. He walked behind us at a slow, steady pace.
We slept in the open that night as if we were old hands at it, and rushed the next day to make it as far as the inn, taking the risk of travelling the last mile or so of familiar road in the dark for we were determined to sleep that night in our own beds. Upon our arrival Wang skulked around, making tea and eyeing Sing Hoo jealously as if in his time alone with us he had been up to something underhand. The fires were lit, for it was cold that evening, and I settled under my cover in the glow of it, eating a slice of melon with green skin and rosy, sweet flesh. In the hallway I could hear the muted tones of Wang and Sing Hoo squabbling with each other over nothing, as usual.
The Secret Mandarin Page 20
