My Splendid Concubine (9 page)

Once the young girls were gone, Robert saw what looked like an adole
scent boy in baggy clothes holding a long stick with both hands. He stood with his legs straddling the figure of an old man. This boy stood with his back to Robert facing the Taipings. The remaining children, who hadn’t run, huddled at the feet of this defiant boy.

Three Taiping rebels rushed them with lowered spears. Thin
king that this stupid boy was going to get him killed, Robert fired his last shot. One of the Taipings stumbled but managed to regain his balance and kept coming. Robert refused to desert this bunch. He hurried to stand next to the boy and held the cutlass ready.

The boy
’s face was covered with dirt. He reached behind Robert and tugged at the dagger freeing it from its scabbard. The rebels arrived and with an effort, Robert held them at bay. He knocked aside a spear with the flat of his cutlass. Then he slashed across another man’s chest cutting him open to the bone. A third man jumped on him. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. Robert felt the man’s hands around his throat cutting off the air. Then he saw the boy stick the dagger through that rebel’s neck. Robert butted the man with his forehead. Blood sprayed in Hart’s face from the knife wound to the man’s neck.

H
e pushed the body away and scrambled to his feet to discover that for the moment no more Taipings were close enough to threaten them. The boy had killed the third Taiping. Robert’s face was covered with blood. He used a coat sleeve to clear it from his eyes.

“
Let’s move!” Robert said, and grabbed the boy. “We have to get out of here!”

“
No! Not without my father!” The boy tried to free himself from Robert.

The voice stunned him. It wasn
’t a boy as he’d thought. More Taipings gathered. They shouted. “Death to the foreign devils!”

Robert knelt beside the old man, lifted him and draped him over his shoulders. His legs stumbled with each step. Unwyn and the others fired at the Taipings entering the stockade. He glanced back and saw that the girl and the other ch
ildren were following him. He’d failed Brian. He was not going to fail this family.

Once he reached Unwyn and the others, he put the old man down. Unwyn turned to Robert in a fury and said,
“You are a fool, Hart! I’ve seen a lot of idiots like you die trying to be heroes.”

“
You’re a coward, Unwyn!” Robert shouted, as blood rushed into his head overwhelming reason. “If you had entered the stockade with me, we could’ve saved more lives.” Robert slapped Unwyn across the face. The officer reeled back and started to lift his pistol. In response, Robert lifted his cutlass to deliver a killing blow.

“
Save that for later!” One of the others yelled, as he stepped between them. “We have to save ourselves first.”

The breaking dawn sent blood-red cords of pale, washed-out light over the earth along the eastern horizon. Behind them, orange flames from the cannons still flashed from the smoke filled river. Robert saw bodies and parts of bodies everywhere but
there were still hundreds to fight.

The small group Robert was with ran toward Patridge and his men thirty yards away. Robert pick
ed up the old man and followed.

Patridge
’s merchant troops fired steadily into the Taipings, who were now gathering to attack. What Robert had done to save lives had nothing to do with wanting to be a hero. He still felt responsible for Brian’s death. After all, he told Brian he would look after him. He had failed.

When they reached Patridge, the boat people started to load opium into the boats that lined the shore. The first time the boats returned to the ships, they went with full loads of opium. There wasn
’t enough room to carry the children to safety. Robert thought such logic insane. He didn’t like it.

With the old man off his back beside the piles of opium, Robert stepped away and fumbled at his belt for his empty pistols. His fingers trembled and it took an effort
for him to load them one at a time. Once loaded, he fired rapidly into the gathering mass of Taipings then started to reload again. The girl in the baggy clothing came up beside him with his bloody dagger clutched in her hand.

“
Get to a safer place!” Robert yelled.

Her eyes begge
d for an opportunity to fight. She didn’t want to leave.

Robert watched a man, who
must have been the leader of the Taipings, wave a double bladed ax over his head. In his other hand, he held a spear. He pointed it at Patridge’s men and yelled something, which sent hundreds of howling, crazed Taipings toward them.

Robert knew
they were doomed. He firmly pointed a finger beyond the firing line. “Leave the opium and get your family in a boat. Do it now! If I am to die, I want to know that you and your family escaped. Do not let this end in vain.”

A
fire lit inside her eyes. She stared at him as if she were memorizing his features. She gently caressed the back of his hand with her fingertips. Then she nodded. She must have sensed that she couldn’t fight his will for she retreated.

Robert knew that he might not survi
ve long. He decided to save the last shot for himself. He’d stick the barrel of the pistol in his mouth and blow his head off. If the Taipings caught him, they would give him a
chi-lin
, which meant death from a thousand cuts. They’d work him over for days. It was a sure fate for any foreigner who fell into their hands. He’d cheat the crazy bastards of that pleasure, but first he would kill as many as possible.

He regretted the decision he
’d made to volunteer. Now he would never marry and have a family. He would miss all the laughter and pain of watching his children, who would never be born, grow. He heard himself try to laugh, but the sound he made was raspy. His throat was so dry it hurt. A glass of cool water would have been refreshing before death.

He hadn
’t realized how much he wanted children and to watch them grow. He had never given it a thought before. He shook his head. His body felt heavier. Something worse occurred to him. He would never get a chance to redeem himself in his family’s thoughts for the sins of lust committed in Ireland. His father and mother would go to their graves remembering the worst about him. His oldest sister, Mary, would forgive him. He was sure of that. He held that thought as if it were precious.

Robert loaded his pistols
and looked out over the battlefield. It appeared like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. The howling Taipings backlit by their fires were a dark forest of demons right out of hell and behind Robert was Dante’s infernal river, the Acheron. Could it be that, like Dante, this was another step in Robert’s journey toward redemption? If so, if he survived, what other tests would he have to face?

Then, without warning,
a solid body of men numbering in the hundreds poured across the shallow trenches at the south end of the camp. A short man with thick raven hair hanging to his shoulders urged these men along. He wore a Prince Albert frock coat and held a walking stick in one hand. Robert recognized him. It was the same man from Hong Kong that used the infant corpses in the water for target practice. It was Ward. His men were dressed in green turbines and knickerbockers. Robert beheld an impressive sight—every man was armed with a rifle or a Colt revolver. The firepower they put out was enormous.

The remaining Taipings retreated northeast out of the camp. The strength
went out of Robert’s legs. He sat on a bale of opium gasping for breath. He couldn’t believe he was going to live to see another day.

Ward
’s force quickly secured the place. Robert joined the line of boat people and sailors loading opium. Thick clouds of dark gunpowder drifted west with the sluggish breeze.

Ward came into their lines while his soldiers looted the camp and slit the throat
s of the dead and wounded. Robert shuddered when he watched one of Ward’s men pry a dead man’s mouth open and cut out the gold teeth.

“
Captain Patridge.” Ward boomed with a deep, resonant voice that sounded as if it belonged to the devil. He had a smooth, pale complexion with a crooked nose like the beak of an owl. There was a thick, shaggy mustache under his nose and a square patch of hair centered under his lower lip. His nose looked like it had been broken several times. “Where’s that promised opium?” he asked. A crooked smile creased his thin lips.

Captain Patridge bo
wed courteously and pointed at the pile remaining on the beach. “That’s the half I promised if you arrived in time to join the fight.”

Ward had been a hired gun in the California goldfields i
nvolved in the illegal coolie trade between China and Mexico. When he arrived in China, he first offered his services to the Taipings, but he somehow ended leading an army against them and working for the Ch’ing Dynasty.

Robert glanced at the boats that were
returning empty. Patridge had managed to move more than three-quarters of the opium onto his ships before Ward arrived. However, what remained was a respectable amount.

After Robert shoved his empty pistols under his belt, he
climbed into one of the boats that was already half full with the family of children, the old man and the girl he thought was a boy. Glancing up, Robert noticed Unwyn ordering people into the waiting boats. He regretted the words they had exchanged earlier. Unwyn’s eyes met Robert’s in a fleeting glance and in that moment Robert knew that Unwyn hated him. It was in his eyes. Robert glanced away first. He didn’t want anything more to do with that man.

Exhaustion overcame Robert but it didn
’t matter. He was alive and so was the family he’d helped save. His ears buzzed so every sound was muted. His throat was parched. The girl sat opposite him in the middle of the boat beside the sick looking old man. Somehow, she had washed the dirt from her face. She held one of the old man’s hands helping him drink water from a cup.

The cap she
’d been wearing when Robert first saw her inside the stockade was gone, and her black hair had fallen loose about her shoulders framing her face. She had a darker complexion than most Chinese women Robert had seen. Her high cheekbones showed off wide set, single lidded, almond shaped eyes and a voluptuous mouth with what the Chinese called
petal lips
. Surely, the angels from heaven looked like this girl. Robert was convinced she had saved his life when she’d thrust that dagger into the Taiping’s neck.

As they moved away from shore and
the sailors rowed toward the ships, the family with Robert relaxed. Everyone was waking from the same nightmare feeling fortunate to be alive.

The opposite shore was covered with green fields and rice pa
ddies. A cooling breeze ruffled the trees and bushes. A bird chirped in song. A sudden thrill rushed through Robert as if he had just stolen back his life. Everything became more beautiful. A drowsy weight crawled over him adding pounds to his limbs and eyelids and he briefly dozed.

A moment later, when he awoke, Robert saw the girl with the
petal lips
staring at him. She blushed and smiled. Her smile reminded Robert of a
hong-mian
, a leafless tree that grew in southern China in the spring. After a longer winter’s sleep, its large red flowers bloomed all in one night.

Her pure smile, unintentionally affectionate and out of place, b
elonged to this moment. “My name is Robert Hart,” he said in clumsy Mandarin and offered his hand in greeting.

She ignored the hand and pointed to the old man.
“My father, Chou Luk. These are my younger sisters and brothers.” She stopped and a moment of silence hung between them. Then she added, “I’m Ayaou, Precious Jade. I thank you for saving my family.”

Chapter 4

It was a mystery to Robert. He was a twenty-year-old nobody, and the last place he wanted to be was inside Ward’s house in Shanghai. The mercenary general had decided to hold a victory celebration and invited Captain Patridge, who brought Robert, who had no idea why Patridge was paying so much attention to him. Maybe it was part of the captain’s nature to be friendly, which probably explained why he loved telling bad stories to a captive audience.

Like the French and English, the Americans had added on to Shanghai, but the American concession was closer to the old walled city where the fighting had taken place between the Imperial army and the Taipings. Most of Shanghai outside the old walls was a foreign city, not Chinese, and each country had put its cultural stamp on the architecture.

Ward’s house differed from the buildings Robert had seen in the American concession. It was one story with a Cape Code style roof, but it had round-edged, thick concrete walls with deep windows and doors. The house looked odd.

“
Strange, isn’t it,” Patridge said. “Ward calls it his adobe Cape Cod hacienda. Because of the rainfall, a steep pitched roof was needed. The Pueblo Indians invented adobe houses, but it is supposed to have a flat roof. Ward says that adobe houses are made of mud and can be found in the American Southwest. Don’t engage him in a conversation on that topic. If you do, you will have to listen to his story about some American named William Walker, who invaded Mexico a few years back. Ward was an officer in this Walker’s army. From there Ward went to the Crimea to fight but resigned after a short time. The rumor is that he was insubordinate to a superior officer.”