My Splendid Concubine (28 page)

The Portuguese pirates left their ships and retreated into the city. They s
cattered in small groups and headed toward the foreign consulates looking for asylum. One group came toward the British consulate. When they started pounding on the gate, Robert climbed down from the roof, crossed the courtyard and reached for the bar to remove it and let them in.

“
Don’t open that gate, Hart,” Dr. Winchester said. He stood in the consulate’s doorway. “We don’t want to risk those Cantonese pirates breaking in here to get the Portuguese.” Robert, feeling helpless, stepped away from the gate.

The Portuguese continued to beat their fists raw while pleading for sanctuary.

“Sir, we can’t stand here and do nothing,” Robert protested. “We have weapons. We can fight.”

“
Why do you want to help these people, Hart? They are Portuguese pirates. They brought this on themselves, and there are only two of us to fight the Cantonese. There are hundreds of them, and the Cantonese pirates have cannons. They could blow the gate down. What would happen to us then? I have my wife to think of. Besides, they’re all pirates and should hang.”

Robert bit his tongue and kept silent. After all, he also
had Ayaou and Shao-mei to care for. What would happen to them if he were killed? The Portuguese were still on the other side of the gate begging to be let in.

“
In fact, it is probably better if the Cantonese didn’t know who’s inside these walls,” Dr. Winchester said. He went to the flagpole and brought down the British ensign. Robert returned to his concealed place on the roof and flattened himself on the tiles behind the chimney.

The Cantonese pirates hunted the Portuguese through the day and beheaded those they found. The survivors eventually surre
ndered. The Cantonese loaded their prisoners onto one of the lorchas, towed it into the middle of the river and set fire to it with the Portuguese on board. From where Robert was hidden, he witnessed everything. The screams of the Portuguese roasting inside that ship were hideous. When the wind shifted toward the city, it carried the stench of burning bodies with it. Sometimes in his dreams, Robert still heard the pounding on the gate and the desperate voices of the Portuguese.

Dr. Winchester
’s wife called for Robert to come in for supper. He left the roof.

“
Set one thief to get rid of another,” Dr. Winchester said, as they gathered around the table to eat. “It is only fitting.”

Guan-jiah came into the compound through a
small side gate that opened to an alley behind the consulate. He kowtowed to Dr. Winchester, and said, “Masters, the Cantonese pirates have come ashore and are hunting for other foreigners to behead or burn. I came to warn you, so you will keep the gates locked. Load all your weapons and be ready.”

Dr. Winchester hurried
to get his double-barreled shotgun. When Guan-jiah didn’t move, Robert urged him to leave and return to his family. “Surely, Guan-jiah, if they come in here to harm us, you will also suffer our fate.”

“
Master,” he said, “if you have an extra weapon, I will stand and fight beside you.”

“
No, you have to go. You have a family to consider.”

A stricken look filled Guan-jiah
’s face. He threw himself to the ground and kowtowed. “I am your slave, Master. I will not abandon you. Your fate is my fate.”

Blood rushed into Robert
’s head. “Get up, Guan-jiah!” He knelt, took his servant by the shoulders, and made him stand. He was so overwhelmed by the eunuch’s show of loyalty he couldn’t respond. Instead, he went for his pistol and came back with a sword for Guan-jiah. They gathered around the dining table and listened to the shooting and screams outside the walls.

Mrs. Winchester sat at the table with a loaded single shot blu
nderbuss. She kept a burning candle nearby to light the fuse. The blunderbuss was loaded with small iron balls. “It was my father’s,” she said, “and I know how to use it.”

“
If they break down the gate and get into the courtyard, I will use my shotgun first,” Dr. Winchester said. “My wife will shoot them with the blunderbuss when they reach the door to this room. Hart, while my wife and I reload, you use that pistol to hold them at bay. If they get inside, Guan-jiah, use that sword to hack at them. With any luck, we’ll kill more than a score before any set foot inside this room.” He turned to Robert. “If you are willing to go back up on that roof so we have a warning, that would be good of you.”

Robert returned to the roof and crawled across the tiles to his fo
rmer position behind the chimney. From his hiding place, he watched an American merchant crawl through a window across the street in an attempt to escape. Two Cantonese pirates saw him and gave chase. Robert wanted to shoot at them and give the American a chance. Then he realized he would be putting everyone in the consulate at risk if he did.

The sails of a larg
e ship appeared out at sea. Robert squinted to see better. It looked like a naval ship. He scrambled down. “Telescope,” he said, with excitement coursing through his veins. “There’s a big ship coming in. It has the look of a man-of-war.”

“
Good God, could it be British?” Dr. Winchester said. “Maybe they discovered we were in danger and came from Shanghai.” His hands were shaking as he pulled open a drawer in a cabinet and handed Robert a collapsing telescope. Dr. Winchester stood at the foot of the ladder as Robert climbed.

Once Robert trained the tel
escope on the ship, he saw it was a French warship. He started shouting in his best Mandarin that a foreign warship was arriving. “Run, run, return to our ships,” he shouted, hoping the pirates thought his voice belonged to one of them. “It is a French warship coming to sink us. If they catch us, we will hang.”

His ruse worked for the pirates rushed to the beach. Some of them pointed at the warship and looked frantic. They piled into their
boats, rowed out to the pirate ships, and fled up river. Robert searched the streets with the telescope and was relieved when he saw the American merchant had survived.

The French warship, the
Capricieuse,
hadn’t come to rescue them. It was ending a long voyage from South American, and Ningpo was its first port of call. Fate had been kind.

Dr. Winchester hurried back to the flagpole and ran the British e
nsign to the top. He called Robert over and pulled a crumpled letter from his pocket. He handed it to Robert. “This came the other day,” he said. “It is an unsigned letter accusing you of theft from the consulate.”

Robert was stunned.
He opened the letter and read that he was taking bribes and stealing money from the consulate cash box. It also revealed he was living with two Chinese women, and he was pimping them as whores. By the time he finished reading, his ears burned and the strength in his legs had leaked out. He handed the letter back. “I don’t know what to say.” He stammered. “It’s all lies. Why did you wait until now to show me this? Does this mean I’m going to lose my job? Am I to be sent to Australia and the penal colony for something I didn’t do?”

“
Rubbish,” Dr. Winchester replied. “Think nothing of it. Since that letter came, I watched you carefully, and I saw your compassion for your servant earlier. No thief acts that way. I’m sure you will understand that I had no choice. I have concluded that whoever wrote that letter is someone who holds ill will for you. Your actions today prove that you are an honorable, God-fearing man. You are not the type to do what that letter accuses you of. Take care, Robert. Someone wants to ruin you. That man is a coward or he would have stood as a witness against you. I want you to know that I haven’t shared this letter with my wife because rumors can damage a person’s reputation. We wouldn’t want that.”

“
Thank you for your trust, Dr. Winchester. You will not regret it.” Robert thought of Ward. Who else could it be? It couldn’t be Hollister. He had sailed to England long ago.

“
Can you think of anyone who would want to do you damage?” Dr. Winchester asked.

“
One man,” Robert replied, and he told about his close encounter with death at Sungkiang and the heated confrontation with Ward days later. He did not mention Ayaou.

Dr. Winchester looked irritated. He said,
“I’ve heard of this Ward, and none of it was good. If you have made an enemy of him because of his ineptness, you must be careful. Although I can’t blame you for confronting him out of anger because he almost got you killed, it would have been wiser to avoid him after escaping the Taipings. You should have returned to Ningpo straightaway. The odds are he would have never discovered what happened to you or taken the time to find out. Men like him have colossal egos. He cannot take the blame for his actions. When something goes wrong, it is always someone else who is at fault. It isn’t wise to make an enemy of a man like that.”

“
I agree,” Robert replied. He now realized he had made a mistake. It had never occurred to him he should have just slipped away with Ayaou. The chances were that Ward would never have found out. He had been a fool to confront the man as he had.

Dr. Winchester folded the letter and handed it to Robert.
“The letter is yours now. Maybe you will recognize the handwriting one-day and be able to put a name to the man who has accused you. If it is someone powerful like Ward, I suggest you forget it.”

Robert took the letter and put it in his top left, breast poc
ket. He decided to carry it with him as a reminder to stop and think first.

Before Guan-jiah left the consulate to return to his family, Ro
bert pulled him aside. “Guan-jiah, you are not my slave. You are my employee. We do not own slaves in Ireland.”

Guan-jiah stared at his feet and shuffled them.
“Master, an astrologer told me that we were tied together. Wherever you go, I will follow. In that way I am your slave even if you do not own me like an animal.”

What could Robert say? After all, this was China. He could not force his beliefs on these people. They had their culture.
“Guan-jiah, I’m going to raise your pay and give you a few days off a month to do as you please. What is your favorite leisure activity?”

“
Eating,” he replied.

“
That’s all you will do is eat?” Robert was surprised, because Guan-jiah was thin like a twig.

T
he eunuch eagerly nodded. “With money and time, I will eat more. I will eat crabs, drink tea, sing operas, fly kites, stew ginseng, hold conversations, take afternoon naps, have three meals in one, practice calligraphy, chew on duck-gizzards, eat carrots, walnuts, melon seeds, gamble for moon cakes, eat noodles, solve literary riddles, and sleep. It’s what any good Chinese man does when he has free time. If I become tired of that, I can always find a second job.”

Eventually the Taotai, the Chinese governor of Ningpo, hired another band of local pirates to control the Cantonese pirates.

In addition
, the foreign powers, Britain included, were continuing to force China to swallow more opium trade. This made for hard feelings against people like Robert, so he started to keep a wary eye out for threats—not that he wasn’t already alert because of the attack on him. Maybe such hard feelings for foreign devils was the reason for that assault in the fog. Maybe Ward had nothing to do with it. The thought that Robert could make some Chinese peasant rich by losing his head was something not to take lightly.

Robert didn
’t tell the girls about the unsigned letter or what had happened at the consulate with the Portuguese. He didn’t want to worry them.

In the afternoons, Robert went home dreading what mood the girls might greet him with. Tee Lee Ping arrived about the same time to spend the next four hours in instruction and discussion. Sometimes it was funny to Robert when he heard gibberish coming out of Master Ping’s mouth that made no sense to him. He put a serious look on his face and pretended to understand. Tee Lee Ping forgot that Robert wasn’t a native speaker and that he had to do a lot of guesswork. Nevertheless, Robert didn’t mind his teacher being difficult, which meant speaking and dropping idioms and slants like crazy. He felt the opposite. He appreciated it.

During break time, Ayaou hovered about the room. She
’d ask Master Ping questions. They often ended in hot debates. It was to Robert’s benefit as he practiced his listening comprehension along with his cultural education by seeing them negotiate and manipulate each other.

“
You should give my master a discount in his tuition, because your Mandarin is not as pure as the Mandarin spoken by Peking opera actors,” Ayaou said one night, and Robert was alarmed. He thought he was about to lose his teacher.

Ayaou believed
Robert should learn the Imperial accent instead of the Ningpo accent. She demonstrated Master Tee Lee Ping’s flaws. The look on his face said he was taking her criticism as an insult, but he did not say one word to her. The reason he swallowed Ayaou’s insults was because she was a Chinese woman. This was the woman’s role, to be the critic so one’s head did not swell. Tee Lee Ping yielded to Ayaou when it came to proper pronunciation.