My Splendid Concubine

by Lofthouse, Lloyd

  “Ha,” she said. “You are paying them. I will be an orphan. I do not believe I will ever hear your voice or feel your touch again. I am destined to sleep alone on a bed of dry rice. I will become a virgin again. I will shrivel and blow away with the next monsoon.”

  “Stop, Ayaou! I can’t take this. No more complaints. I should take Guan-jiah’s advice and beat you.”

  She stared at him. With the backs of her hands, she wiped away her tears. “You will really beat me?” It was as if he had poured hope into her.

  “Yes, I will,” he replied, not sure where this was going.

  “Then you do love me.” She threw herself into his arms. “Only a man who is willing to beat his concubine will keep her. The man who does not care will ignore her like she was a shoe with a hole in it.” She pushed away and stepped out of reach. Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You just said that to give me hope. Guan-jiah instructed you to threaten me, so I would feel better.”

  “No—a thousand times no!” It was frustrating. He didn’t know what was coming next.

  “So, why are you not hitting me?” She put her hands on her hips. “You are lying.”

  Robert couldn’t believe it. She wanted him to hit her. He stepped forward and pushed her shoulder. She rocked back on her feet. Her face dissolved into misery. Tears flowed. “I knew you did not love me.” She wailed. “That was not a blow. That was a breath of dead air. Our love has drowned in the river.”

  Robert grabbed her and sat on the bed. He pulled her onto his lap and turned her so her back faced him. With an open palm, he spanked her as hard as he could. He kept at it until she cried from the pain.

  He shoved her off his lap. She hit the floor with a thud. She rolled over and stared at him. Her mouth was hanging open.

  “How much love does that add up to?” he said. “Tell me, was that enough to convince you I am going to send for you—that we will be together in Canton?”

  She rubbed her bottom. “I do not know if I will be able to sit for a week. It will hurt to walk. I am going to have to hobble around like someone with bound feet.”

  “It hurts doesn’t it?”

  She nodded. There were no more tears. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. She looked stunned.

  “Good, if you complain again about my going away and vanishing and not loving you, I’ll beat you until you are covered in black and blue bruises. If that’s what it takes to get you to see that I’m telling you the truth, I’ll do it.”

  “Robert, I do not speak Cantonese and most Cantonese do not speak Mandarin or any of the northern dialects. I am going to be nobody in Canton—a person no one will hear or see or talk to. I will be a lonely ghost.”

  “You have nothing to worry about. Our love is strong like the love between Niu Lang and Zhi Nu.” He was referring to a romantic allegory that had been in China for almost two thousand years since the Chin Dynasty. “You know what I’m talking about. We’ve read the Fairy of the Magpie Bridge and talked about it.”

  “Yes, I know that poem,” she said, and recited it. “In the middle of the lovely clouds above the heavenly river crosses the weaving maiden. A night of being together again crossing the sky of autumn exceeds joy on earth. Moments of tender love and dreams. So sad to leave the magpie bridge.”

  “Do you remember who wrote it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “Qin Guan during the Sung Dynasty.” Tears escaped from her eyes. Her chest heaved. “I do not have a magical cowhide that will carry me to you.” She stopped to catch her breath between sobs. “And even if I did, the Queen of Heaven would draw a line across the sky to keep us apart. We could only meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.”

  “We aren’t Niu Lang and Zhi Nu, Ayaou. We are both mortals. Zhi Nu was a fairy and you are not a fairy. You are human. The Queen of Heaven will not keep us apart. I only mentioned the poem because the love Niu Lang and Zhi Nu have for each other equals ours. It is eternal.”

  “I still cannot speak Cantonese. That will be the line separating us. You will forget your Mandarin.”

  “Not true, Ayaou. I will not forget Mandarin. We will speak it daily. I also taught you to read and write.”

  “But I cannot go shopping. No one will understand me.”

  “Guan-jiah assures me he can make himself understood in Cantonese and understands more than he can speak. When you shop, Guan-jiah will go with you. Besides, I don’t want you out of the house alone. Everything will be okay. You have family in Macao less than a hundred miles from Canton. I’m sure that Chou-luk will come to visit when the fighting subsides.”

  Robert was letting go of the Ningpo house. The furniture would go into storage. When he sent for Guan-jiah and Ayaou, the furniture would come with them. He felt that Ayaou would be safe living with Guan-jiah’s family. Guan-jiah understood Ayaou’s importance to Robert. He was the only one he trusted with Ayaou’s welfare and safety.

  If Ward had spies watching, he hoped they would follow him to Canton. That way, they wouldn’t notice where Ayaou went.

  Guan-jiah said, “I will die, Master, before anyone touches one hair on her head.” He threw himself to the ground and started knocking his head against the stones. Robert lifted him to his feet before he hurt himself but not before he’d bruised his forehead.

  “What have I told you about doing that, Guan-jiah? Never again.”

  “I am sorry, Master. I am an acorn, and China is the oak.”

  The voyage south from Ningpo to Hong Kong covered nine hundred miles. Robert sailed aboard the Prospero. He stayed in Hong Kong for a few days where he met a young, attractive American.

  “My name is Patricia,” she said. He could tell she was an American by her colonial accent. She’d surprised him by being the first to speak. Most proper British women would have waited for the man to start the conversation and then would have replied only under proper circumstances. That meant a chaperon had to be there along with her parent’s approval.

  A moment of silence stretched between them until he realized she was waiting for him to respond. “My name is Hart, Robert Hart,” he said.

  “Are you Irish?” she said. “I can tell by your accent. I’ve always loved the Irish. My grandfather came to America from Ireland.” She cocked her head at an angle and smiled. It was a cute gesture, and his body responded. This weakness embarrassed him. He hoped she wouldn’t notice.

  “How long have you been in China? What do you do? It’s exciting, isn’t it?” She had a smooth cream-colored complexion. Her lips were full and inviting. She had shiny, straw colored hair. Her eyes were sky blue. He was tempted to touch her hair to see if it was as soft as it looked.

  “I’ve been here four years,” he replied. “I work for the British consulate as an interpreter.” He felt his neck heating under the tight, white collar. Good god, he was turning red. He hated when that happened.

  Her eyes grew wide. “You speak Chinese,” she said. “How fantastic!” For an instant, he thought she was going to jump up and down like a child. “I hoped that you wouldn’t be another boring merchant who can think of only one thing—money.”

  He almost laughed. She had flashing eyes. He couldn’t help but notice that she also had an ample bosom. His desire was heating toward the boiling point. This was how it had always started in college.

  “I hate to be so forward, Robert,” she said, “but I’m on my way to Singapore in a few days to visit my father. He works there. I have no friends here and no one to dine with.” She touched his wrist with her fingertips. Her touch lingered too long. His breath became shorter, faster. He struggled to stay in control. “After we eat, you could go shopping with me. Your Chinese will come in handy.”

  She was attractive. He was taken by her. He was ready to accept her invitation to dine. Then he remembered Ayaou. Before falling in love with Ayaou, he would not have hesitated but his world had changed. He had not realized how much until this moment. A voice screamed inside his head telling him to accept and take
her to dinner and shopping. Afterwards, anything might happen. His imagination went exploring—his hands touching her naked body and her responding.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but as lovely and fetching as you are, I’m not free to dine with a single woman. You see, I have a wife, and I love her.”

  You are a liar. Ayaou is not your wife, the inner voice said. She is your concubine. The Chinese will not condemn you if you take this woman.

  If I did cheat, he replied, it would hurt Ayaou.

  That doesn’t matter, the voice replied. Ayaou is a piece of furniture that you own. How can property complain?

  The disappointment in the Patricia’s eyes didn’t help.

  He regretted not accepting her offer, and sleep eluded him that night. While he had been attending college in Belfast, his goal had been to get the girls in bed as quickly as possible. That eventually got him in trouble with his father and was the reason he was in China. Not only had he embarrassed his family, but he had caught syphilis too.

  Since he’d had intercourse with so many young women in Belfast, he wasn’t sure who gave it to him. After arriving in China, the same weakness drove him to have sex with Me-ta-tae. That resulted in Payne Hollister becoming his enemy. He didn’t know what was worse—having syphilis or another man hating him.

  He should have been glad he had rejected the American girl. Instead, he was confused. The only way to evict the image of Patricia and shut off the voice inside his head was to masturbate. Then he slept.

  Soon he would be in Canton and have other problems to deal with like staying alive.

  Chapter 30

  On his third day in Hong Kong, an ensign came to Robert’s room in the consulate with a summons from the captain of the Forrester, a British gunboat.

  “We’re sailing immediately, sir,” the ensign said. “The captain sent me to fetch you. We must hurry.”

  He hadn’t expected to leave on such short notice and didn’t have time to wait for his luggage. It had to be left behind to be shipped by chop, a licensed cargo boat for transporting goods between local ports.

  Fog rolled in and it rained destroying his chance to see the countryside along the river during the trip. Canton was eighty miles inland along the Pearl River, the third longest in China after the Yangtze and the Yellow.

  Arriving off Canton, the Forrester drifted to its anchorage passing one of the floating villages dotting the wide river. The different sized sampans had been tied together to form a dingy, ramshackle village of houseboats with rounded, turtle like tops. Small children were fastened to ropes to keep them from falling into the river. A rooster preened its rusty colored feathers. Chickens walked about the decks pecking at whatever was edible.

  Ayaou and Shao-mei had come from this culture, which is why he asked Tee Lee Ping about the boat people.

  “A myth explains it,” Ping had replied. “Several thousand years ago, a clan of Chinese boat people wronged an emperor. Because of this, they were banned forever from owning land or living on it. Many boat people are born and die on their boats without walking on land.”

  He was overwhelmed with emotion and missed Ayaou horribly as if a vital part of his body had been left behind. They had been together three years without a separation.

  He soon learned that Canton was an armed camp filled with British and French troops. James Bruce, the Eighth Earl of Elgin and the Twelfth Earl of Kincardine, was the British High Commissioner. At one time, Bruce had been the Governor General of Canada and the viceroy of India.

  But the man responsible for Canton, with a population of a million, was Harry Parkes, who was part of the three man allied commission appointed to govern the city due to hostilities with local rebels and an element of the imperial government led by Chinese Commissioner Yeh.

  The Chinese Commissioner had put a thirty-dollar bounty on the head of each Englishmen. Robert had heard that Yeh was a stubborn man, loyal to Peking.

  He was quartered with army officers in a large building converted into a military barracks. The building was in a part of the city taken over by British and French forces.

  The small room was on the second floor. It was the size of a closet with a narrow bunk and dresser. The one window had a glass pane missing. There was no closet. After washing his face and hands, he left for his first meeting with Commissioner Parkes.

  It didn’t take long to reach the headquarters building. When he entered Parkes’s office, the commissioner was seated behind a massive teak desk. Parkes came around the desk and shook Robert’s hand. “Great to meet you, Hart,” Parkes said with a voice that promised unlimited energy. Parkes was a man of middle height, olive fair complexion, light-yellow hair and soft, sandy whiskers.

  Robert handed Parkes a letter. “From your wife, sir,” he said.

  Parkes put the letter on his desk without opening it. “I miss her. It is unfortunate that she must live in Hong Kong, but it’s too dangerous here.”

  Hearing this caused Robert to question if it were wise to have Ayaou join him. But she was not foreign and she wasn’t his wife.

  “I’ve heard you can read their minds,” Parkes said, “and know what a Chinese man is thinking before he opens his mouth. I speak Chinese, but I seem to put my foot in my mouth every time I deal with these buggers. I’m counting on you to do the talking and help get this mess straightened out.”

  “I’m flattered, commissioner, but it isn’t true. I don’t read minds. I learned how the Chinese think.”

  “Capital,” Parkes said. “It’s a rare man that knows when to shut up and listen. I’m not one. Have you heard the rumor that I am not an easy man to work for? I’m sure you have.”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to hear anything, and I don’t take rumors seriously. I never have. I let actions speak for themselves—not words.”

  “Well, I don’t agree with that rumor,” Parkes said. “I demand that my people do their jobs. That sometimes means going without sleep and working long hours. It also means taking risks.”

  Parkes slapped Robert on the back and guided him toward the door. “Before you settle into your quarters, I have a job for you. I need an interpreter who knows how to change my words so the Chinese aren’t insulted. I will also get a chance to see if what they say about you is true. Since I speak Chinese, I may learn something.”

  A mounted squad of military police waited outside the building. Parkes swung into his saddle and indicated another horse. “Mount up, Hart.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, not wanting to rush into something he knew nothing about.

  Everyone was mounted and the column started to move.

  “I can see you are the cautious type,” Parkes replied. His horse tossed its head and pranced about. “We’ll talk on the move.” Parkes left.

  Robert mounted and had to hurry to catch the squad. The clatter of the horses warned the Chinese to move out of the way, and the streets emptied as if by magic.

  “A new Chinese viceroy, Huang Tsung-han, is expected in Canton soon,” Parkes said. “The problem is that the current viceroy wants to leave the city to greet him before he gets here and that won’t do. What do you suggest?”

  Robert thought fast. “Commissioner, if he doesn’t go, the Imperials in Peking will accuse him of a lack of courtesy. The emperor is considered the same as a god. If he commands, the Chinese obey. The first of Confucius’s Five Great Relationships is between ruler and subject and the emperor is the viceroy’s master.”

  “Stupid cultural habits,” Parkes said. Robert didn’t know how to respond. “Well, that can’t be all you have to say. Spit it out.”

  “The viceroy will lose face if he doesn’t do what he’s told. The emperor will see it as an insult. Violating the first relationship demonstrates a lack of loyalty. He might have to kill himself or lose his head to make up for it.”

  “And how are you going to get around that obstacle?” Parkes asked.

  “Allow me to use this time while we are on our way to the vi
ceroy to think of what to say.” He was frantic to be understood by the viceroy and had to think of a way to resolve this problem. He hated the thought that a man might die because of Parkes’s ignorance.

  Parkes stared at Robert under lowered eyebrows that looked more like storm clouds, before he said, “Yes, I understand. Good. In addition, my dear chap, you should know he isn’t expecting us. This is a surprise visit. I was afraid if he knew we were coming, he’d leave earlier than planned.”

  Robert was about to say the Chinese didn’t like surprises. Then the squad made a sharp turn in to a wider avenue with more people crowding it. Before he could say a word, the squad of armed military police increased the pace to a gallop. Parkes’s mount shot forward in a burst of speed leaving Robert behind. The Chinese people scattered like chickens chased by a fox. It was a challenge to keep up since he didn’t ride horses often.

  When the column reached the viceroy’s house, Parkes gave orders. The military police spread out setting up a cordon around the building.

  “Come on, Hart. I need you. Remember, you do not have to say exactly what I tell you. Just get what I mean across in a way that will not insult the man. I don’t want another crisis.”

  Two flustered servants ushered Parkes and Robert into the viceroy’s presence as he was slipping into his ceremonial robes. “Hello, dear chap,” Parkes said.

  Robert interpreted it into something more honorable than ‘dear chap’.

  “Tell him we’ve heard he’s anxious to go meet the new viceroy that’s replacing him. I understand it is his duty, but we don’t want him to leave Canton. If he leaves, there are those who sympathize with the Taipings that want to cause riots. If he stays, there won’t be riots.”

  Parkes not only spoke fast, but he gestured with his arms and hands to emphasize his words. He looked like a windmill. “We also understand that he’ll lose face if he doesn’t meet the new viceroy. We are going to solve that by keeping him here under guard. That way he can blame everything on me and tell his superiors I prevented him from fulfilling his duty.”