My Splendid Concubine

by Lofthouse, Lloyd

  “That is why it is a good idea to offer them something truly Chinese.”

  “You don’t understand. Westerners are judgmental. They wouldn’t appreciate—”

  She cut him off. “I am sure they would like my dancing. You enjoyed it. Remember? It was what made you fall in love with me. It is why you were willing to pay a fortune for me to be your concubine.”

  He didn’t want to tell her that at Ward’s the intent had been for her to look like a high-class, desirable whore to drive the price higher. She had been meat for sale.

  Her expression soured telling him that she had guessed his thoughts. Backing away, she held a hand out to ward him off. She looked devastated. Her lips trembled. “You are ashamed of me.”

  “No,” he said. What she said was true but also not true. He was ashamed of the woman she had been raised to be, but he wasn’t ashamed of her. Not counting Guan-jiah, she was one of the most sensible people he knew. The truth was that he needed time to think.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe he had been attracted by her dancing and the scanty outfit. Maybe it was also her lack of sophistication. While growing up in Ireland, his family had smothered him with proper behavior. Yes, that was it. The wild streak he’d seen in her had attracted him. On the other hand, maybe it was her courage in battle when they had fought the Taipings side by side. He’d never known a woman with so much courage.

  She said, “I thought you loved me—that I did not have to pretend to be someone I am not. I thought I was blessed with a master like no other master in China.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Give me time to explain, Ayaou.” He fumbled for words. “Don’t you understand that none of the people at this party would approve if I allowed you to show yourself like this? That is why we bought that silk gown, so you’d look imperial.”

  “What do I look like dressed like this?”

  “I won’t say it, Ayaou.” He was losing control. That wasn’t what he had wanted to say. He hated letting those words escape.

  The color in her face drained away and the warmth fled from her voice. “So, I am only a whore to you.”

  “Ayaou, don’t.”

  “I always suspected. There is no doubt about it now.” Her arms wrapped around her shoulders as if she were cold. Her features collapsed into agony.

  “I love you.” He felt helpless, and a void opened inside his guts. He put his hands on her bare shoulders knowing that what she’d said was partly true. Touching her excited him. He realized that he’d wanted a woman who acted more like a whore, but he wanted her to be a virgin too.

  His member stirred inside his pants. He was tempted to throw her down and take her.

  She pushed him away and started to take off her costume. “I have been a fool. When it comes to the heart, you are no different than Captain Patridge.”

  “That isn’t fair, Ayaou. I would never treat you like he would.” He couldn’t help but stare as she stripped nude.

  Then he knew the truth. Out of selfishness, he’d wanted someone who wouldn’t hold back when it came to passion. What he didn’t want was a stiff, upper crust British woman, the kind that would be like a tub of ice in bed. Ayaou was exactly right for him.

  She opened a drawer, took out her boat rags, put them on and then went to a corner of the room, squatted on her heels and stared at the floor.

  This was frustrating. He bit his lower lip and wished he could sweep all the words he’d said back into his mouth and start over again. The trouble was, even if he could, he still didn’t know how to deal with this situation.

  Ayaou started to cry.

  This increased his sense of helplessness and his guts twisted into knots followed by a headache. How could he tell her that he loved the wild abandon that was the sluttish part of her—the girl that tossed and turned during orgasms as if she were having an out of body experience?

  “Ayaou, please listen.” He knelt in front of her and took her cold hands in his. She yanked her hands back and hid them under her armpits.

  “I will not listen to your lies,” she said. “You say you love me but part of you always rejected me. I can tell sometimes that you are in a battle with yourself. The bags of your culture are heavier than Cousin Weed’s junk. I understand that now, because I have experienced the same thing.”

  He rocked back on his heels as if she had slapped him. “How so?” he asked, afraid of the answer. He had hoped she had recovered from the trauma of Shao-mei’s death. He should have listened more carefully to Uncle Bark’s warning.

  “Some of my relatives warned me that your hair is yellow because you are evil natured and unhealthy. They even asked if I ever saw puss oozing from under your armpits. Their views did not influence me, and I am not ashamed of you.”

  “I know that, Ayaou. I want to be the same, but—”

  “You have been trying. I can see that. I also know that you are afraid of what your family and Irish friends will say and think. You believe that your future depends on their tongues. It was okay when you were an interpreter. Now, you are too big to risk slander. Your reputation is your ladder to China’s top. That is why you came to China—to become rich and powerful like Patridge and General Ward?”

  “That is not true, Ayaou.” His words sounded hollow as if they were lies. He felt as if he were on shaky ground. Part of what she was saying was correct, but he had also come to China to run away from a culture that condemned him for his nature, something she’d never done—until now. He avoided her eyes.

  “Go ahead and keep lying,” she said.

  “I am not lying. We will always be together. What happened to that sweet, innocent girl I fell in love with, the one willing to die beside me?” He reached out to touch her face. She jerked out of reach. His fingers tingled and the pain inside his head increased. His eyes started to ache.

  “Do not touch me,” she said. “My father was right. It was wrong for me to learn to read. That is why I can see who you really are. I have learned from the books I have been reading. I know why people act the way they do.”

  “What you are thinking is wrong,” he said.

  “The truth is that you do not want anybody to know that I am the mother of your child, or that you have a bastard. Am I wrong?”

  The shock of her words caused his heart to race. His hands went behind his back where he twisted his fingers together. He stared at her in horror and didn’t want to answer.

  “You hope that no one will ask you about me,” she said. Her words felt like hammer blows. “You expect me to walk around your party like a ghost. At night, you sneak me into your bed and we steal love like thieves, and bang, one day you will tell me that you have found yourself a proper wife from your people, and here, Ayaou, is some money, and I am discarded.”

  She broke down sobbing. “Mr. Sua-min read it in my palm and consulted Ba-Gua, the evidence of my fate. He said that I would not be able to fight it.”

  “That’s preposterous. I promise I will never marry anyone else but you.” He wiped at her streaming tears with a handkerchief. “You will be the only woman in my life. I am asking you to give me time to work things out. My friends, who are coming to this party, have certain expectations of me. I can’t force my views on them overnight, can I?”

  “Create as many excuses as you want. Do not expect me to believe them.” She pushed past him and left the corner to sit on the bed. She wouldn’t look at him.

  Someone in the room’s doorway cleared his throat. Robert looked and discovered it was Guan-jiah. “What is it?” he asked in a sharp tone that he regretted immediately. He hated losing control.

  “Master, the guests are arriving.”

  “I’ll be right down.” His voice sounded calm now, but his thoughts were in turmoil. His insides were going crazy flopping around like a fish out of water. He didn’t hear Guan-jiah say ‘Yes, Master’, so he looked and saw the man making odd eye-gestures and pointing his chin toward the hallway as if he had something private to say.

  Feeling n
umb, he went into the hallway with the eunuch. “What is it?”

  “The mistress is getting rebellious.” Guan-jiah whispered into his ear. “It is the Chinese way to beat such a woman into submission. Master, you must crush her rebel spirit to get her to listen to you.”

  “I know what you are telling him, Guan-jiah.” Ayaou’s voice was high, screeching. “I will make you pay.”

  Robert glanced over his shoulder at her. Her face had twisted into a mask of anger. He looked back. “No, Guan-jiah, I cannot do that. She and I have shared too much together.”

  “I see.” Guan-jiah paused, stared at the floor and fingered his chin. Then his eyes lit up. “Why don’t you let me beat her for you, Master?”

  “You can’t be serious.” He studied Guan-jiah’s face and saw that the eunuch meant it. Robert shook his head. “No one touches her!”

  “Yes, Master.” Guan-jiah face emptied of emotion. He nodded. “Master, I caution—”

  Robert held up a hand. “No, I don’t want to hear anymore nonsense. I’ve had enough.”

  They both looked toward the room to make sure Ayaou hadn’t heard. She wasn’t watching. She had rolled over and buried her face in the pillow.

  “What should I tell the mistress?” Guan-jiah asked.

  “Tell her to refresh herself; help her dress in the proper gown and send her down to join me. Don’t let her leave the room if she won’t do as she’s told.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  He hurried to greet his guests. Everyone came with gifts as a way to congratulate him for his move up.

  The band was loud and cheerful. The food and wine fabulously presented. The guests enjoyed the opera performance. The exotic costumes, makeup, acrobats and marshal-artists fascinated everyone.

  However, Robert kept glancing at the doorway Ayaou had to use to enter the room. He pretended that he was happy, but inside he was in turmoil. He wanted her to be there beside him, but at the same time was afraid that she would show up.

  Laughing along with the guests, he emptied several glasses of hard liquor. He ate some bear paw and deer meat but didn’t pay attention to the taste. He knew he was guilty of some of what Ayaou had accused him of, but he truly loved her.

  Half-drunk, he switched from whisky to wine and started to tell stories about himself to his new friends. With his tongue loosened from the alcohol, he started to boast. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop. At one point, Guan-jiah whispered in his ear. “Master, you should stop drinking so much.”

  “Leave me alone, Guan-jiah. Go back to Ayaou and keep her locked in the bedroom where she belongs.” His words were slurred. He didn’t care how they sounded. He walked away from his house manager and joined three men smoking cigars.

  “What was on your mind when you first arrived in China?” a colonel asked. He was from one of the British regiments stationed in Canton. During the rebel activity, Robert had played several games of chess with this colonel, but he couldn’t remember the man’s name.

  The colonel studied him with wise eyes as if he were reading Robert’s mind.

  “In 1854, when I first arrived in Hong Kong,” Robert replied, “I was a nineteen-year-old, wide-eyed and adventurous youngster. I had dreams of castles, titles and wealth.” He stopped and struggled to focus on the colonel’s face. The man had a thick, waxed mustache that stuck out on either side of his nose. The ends turned upward in a twist. His sideburns were thick and shaggy and came down to his jaw line. He was in his dress uniform and there were many medals pinned to it.

  Robert shook his head trying to clear it. “Colonel, did you come here thinking of such things too?”

  The colonel took the glass of wine from Robert’s hand. “Tea would be better,” he said. The officer signaled a servant and spoke to him in Mandarin. A pot of tea materialized. The colonel guided Robert away from the others and sat beside him on a couch. Another couple approached. The colonel looked sternly at them. Then Guan-jiah appeared and talked to them. They walked away.

  “Tell me about yourself, colonel. I’m tired of talking about me. I sound like a fool.”

  “Nonsense,” the colonel replied. “When the pressure gets to be too much, a man has to let go. You have accepted a position with great authority and responsibility, and you are only twenty-four. It takes time to learn. With age comes wisdom.”

  The colonel nodded. “Drink your tea. Now that your life has become like a serious game of chess, you must pick the right time and place to let go. This is not that time and place. The way you were talking reminds me of men back from battle trying to drown in liquor.” They both sipped tea, and there was a moment of silence.

  “I’ve been away from home for two decades,” the colonel said. “I spent most of that time in India and came to China recently. I must admit that I thought of such things like you mentioned.” He waved a hand toward the cigar smokers. “But I was barely a lieutenant when I arrived in India. Now I’m a colonel and unless I accomplish something incredible, I’ll probably retire as a brigadier general in another ten to fifteen years.”

  “I understand how you feel,” Robert replied. He took a moment to empty the cup of tea and hold it out for a servant to refill. The second cup was bitter, stronger. He saw Guan-jiah across the room watching.

  “Good,” the colonel said, “keep drinking. That tea will clear your head and allow you to regain control. It isn’t wise to lose control in front of the troops, and some of the men here with their wives work for you.”

  “You are a wise man, colonel. At first, when I was struggling to learn Mandarin, I doubted myself. Now, here I am on the threshold of achieving even bigger goals, and I still doubt myself. I thought I would grow out of that.”

  “Men never escape doubt,” the colonel said. “With time and age, one learns how to deal with it.”

  “When I first arrived,” Robert said. “I didn’t plan to stay long. Now, it looks like I must. England will never offer me what China has offered and will continue to offer.” He stopped to drink more tea and focus his eyes. The room was still blurry around the edges.

  “What about you, colonel. If the Chinese offered you one of their armies, would you take it?”

  “I wouldn’t consider it. My regiment is my family, and I go where my orders send me.”

  “I’m envious. You have an entire regiment for a family.”

  “What about you, Hart? Is your family in Britain?”

  “I have two families,” he replied. “One is near Belfast. The other is invisible and my heart aches because of them.” He glanced one last time at the empty doorway Ayaou had not walked through and realized how much he missed her.

  After all, Ayaou, Anna and Guan-jiah were his Chinese family. He now thought of his house manager as more than just a servant. He wondered what his life would have been like in China without them.

  Chapter 39

  The situation between China and the foreign powers worsened. Emperor Hsien Feng took his family and the imperial court and fled beyond the Great Wall abandoning Peking and the Summer Palace.

  Robert’s knowledge of the history behind the current political crises was limited. He had learned much in Ningpo from his teacher, Tee Lee Ping, but not enough. Determined to discover what was going on, he started asking his Chinese friends questions. What he heard shocked him.

  British merchants had bullied the Chinese for decades over opium smuggling and some British merchants had served as British counselor officers.

  Since many of these merchants were smuggling opium into China, that was a conflict of interest. Some had manipulated the situation causing the current Allied invasion of Northern China. Their goal, to remove all restrictions on the opium trade and increase profits.

  “Guan-jiah,” he asked, “why can’t the British merchants be satisfied with what they were earning from the opium trade the way it was?” It was early morning and still dark. They were alone in the kitchen sipping tea before he left for work. Even the cook wasn’t up.

  �
��Master, the answer is simple, the Ch’ing Dynasty levied taxes that were so high that the drug was restricted to a few wealthy Chinese. It was impossible for the foreign merchants to make fortunes from such a small number.”

  “They should have been satisfied with what they had.”

  “Greed holds great power over men,” Guan-jiah replied. “The merchants saw a huge, potential market among the poor. They want to sell opium at a lower price to reach more people, so they bypass the imperial taxes by smuggling the drug into China. That’s why Ayaou’s family is involved in the opium trade. The foreign merchants hire poor people to carry the drugs upriver to reach more peasants.

  “It has become so bad that even eunuchs in the emperor’s household are addicted. Did you know that when Emperor Tao Kuang closed China to the opium trade, a letter was sent to Britain’s Queen Victoria seeking her help to save the Chinese people?”

  “No, I didn’t.” He’d learned from Tee Lee Ping that Tao Kuang had been the current emperor’s father. He died in 1850, shortly before the Taiping Rebellion.

  “Queen Victoria did not respond,” Guan-jiah said. “Her answer arrived when the French and British declared war on China.”

  Robert had trouble sleeping that night and thought of his father, a Wesleyan minister, who had raised his children to act morally. Now that Robert worked for China, he felt it was his duty to help end the opium trade. There had to be a way, so he could atone for what he had done for Patridge.

  For some reason he could not fathom, he thought of Horatio Lay, who had also been paid to help smuggle opium into China when he worked for the British consulate. However, thinking of Horatio and his arrogance made Robert feel worse.

  “The Emperor appointed Lin Zexu to end the opium problem,” Guan-jiah said, during tea the next morning. “Lin demanded that British subjects in China turn over all opium to him. He destroyed three million pounds of it, which led to Britain invading with a large army from India in 1840. The Opium War ended with a treaty in 1843, which opened China to limited opium trade.”