The Hidden Blade (22 page)

And of course it wasn’t advisable—or she wouldn’t have run away the first time Master Kuo-tung greeted her. But she didn’t want to get into an argument with Amah about him, so she said, “I will remember that, Master. And since Master has been out and about, has she discovered the identity of the martial-arts expert yet?”

If Amah noticed that she had changed the subject, she did not remark on it. “All I know is that it can’t be the man who teaches self-defense to Da-ren’s sons—he has no lightness skills at all. Bao-shun is the only other person said to be good at martial arts, but he was at our courtyard that night, and not here.”

“Maybe that man is no longer here.”

“Maybe, if I’m so lucky.”

But Amah did not sound convinced.

Ying-ying ran into Little Dragon on the way. He carried a carafe of spirits and a small cup on a tray. She looked at him quizzically—what business did he have in this part of the residence?

“Bai Gu-niang,” he greeted her coldly as they passed each other.

She gave a small nod.

Then, behind her, she heard him say softly, “The wind is strong today. Would Master Keeper Chang care for some heated spirits?”

She looked over her shoulder. He was speaking to a middle-aged manservant, rail-thin and stooped, who was sweeping the snow that had fallen onto the walking path.

She would never have pegged Little Dragon as the kind-hearted type, but he treated the older servant as if the latter were his father.

The garden where she had first seen Master Kuo-tung was empty; she kept walking. When weather turned cold he had invited her to his rooms, where they could be nice and warm inside. That was when she learned that he lived in the Court of the Contemplative Bamboo, which also housed Da-ren’s study, in a row of east-facing rooms.

It is so his sons would take their lessons with me seriously
, Master Kuo-tung had explained as to why he had been given such a place of honor.

Do they
? she had asked.

He had smiled and shaken his head slightly.
The younger one takes everything seriously. The older one, well, I’m afraid the older one doesn’t take anything seriously—or at least not his studies.

Which had not surprised Ying-ying at all.

She stopped just outside the moon gate to peer into the Court of the Contemplative Bamboo—she didn’t want to run into Da-ren and then have to explain what she was doing there. Once she was sure she was safe from that possibility, she skirted around the bamboo grove and slipped past Master Kuo-tung’s door—he had told her there was no need for her to knock, and she had immediately taken him up on his offer, happy to not make any noises that might attract Da-ren’s attention.

If Da-ren was home, that was. He was still a busy man and left the residence almost daily for business at court and elsewhere.

The arrangements of Master Kuo-tung’s rooms was a familiar sequence to her: the first room for receiving and dining, the second as a study, and then an inner bedchamber—Mother’s rooms had been laid out exactly that way.

He was not in the receiving room. She called him and received no response. She poked her head into his study—and nearly stumbled a step backward: He had in his hands the jade tablet Amah had stolen from Da-ren!

She must have made some noise. He glanced up and smiled. “Ah, Bai Gu-niang, when did you come in? I didn’t hear you at all.”

Her mouth opened and closed several times before she could ask, “If you don’t mind my curiosity, Master Kuo-tung, how did you come by your artifact?”

“This? From my father. He purchased two such tablets in Nanking many years ago, after the First Opium War.”

He made it sound so ordinary. Perhaps Da-ren—and consequently Amah—had been wrong about the value of the tablet. Perhaps it was one of those oft-copied pieces that had no particular significance at all.

“When I was growing up,” Master Kuo-tung continued, “one of the tablets was always on my father’s nightstand, and the other always on my mother’s. After they passed away, I inherited the jade tablets. Then…”

His voice trailed off. He gazed down at the small tablet as if he could see through it to another place, another time. “Remember the house I told you about, the beautiful house where it is always summer in my memories? I gave one jade tablet to the master of that house, and this one I kept for myself.”

For a moment Ying-ying forgot her alarm: There was only the intensity of his longing and the sweetness of the past forever torn from him. “It must have made for a beautiful present.”

He smiled faintly. “It was very kindly received and very much cherished.” He held out the tablet toward her. “Would you like to see it more closely?”

She almost took it in her hand before she remembered. “Master Kuo-tung, I must tell you something: You should hide this tablet and never let anyone see you with it. Da-ren had one just like it and he treasured it, but it was stolen several years ago.”

“Oh,” said Master Kuo-tung, looking astounded. “Exactly like this one? You have seen it?”

She hesitated. “No, I have not seen it myself, only heard it described. And the theft happened before you came to China, of course. But you understand what I mean, do you not, Master Kuo-tung?”

It would not look good if Da-ren were to come to know. What were the chances that a foreigner would have in his possession a nearly identical object as that which had been taken from him?”

“Yes, I understand. And don’t worry,” he reassured her. “This is the first time I have taken it out to look at since I arrived in Peking. No one else knows I have such an item.”

“You should put it away right now.”

He looked down at the tablet a long moment. “I believe someday I will donate this to the British Museum. Perhaps I had better do it sooner, rather than later.”

He excused himself to go into the inner room; she shrugged out of her cape. When he came back, he offered her a cup of Darjeeling tea, the scent and taste of which she had come to love, and they spent a few minutes talking about what a museum was, a concept entirely novel to her.

It wasn’t until he was refilling her cup that she remembered the piece of paper she had brought. She waffled again, wondering whether she ought to say nothing of it.

“Bai Gu-niang.”

“Yes?”

He smiled. “Bai Gu-niang hasn’t heard anything I said. Is there something on her mind?”

She bit the inside of her cheek, extracted the piece of paper from where it was stowed up her sleeve, and handed it to him. “I was hoping Master Kuo-tung might be able to read this for me.”

“Certainly.”

He scanned the lines of text. His brows rose. Then he looked back at her. “This letter was addressed to an unmarried lady who has the same family name as Bai Gu-niang. But it dates from a while ago—1864.”

“And what year is that?” She was unfamiliar with the Western calendar.

“I apologize. I mean the third year of Tung-chih Emperor’s reign.”

Her pulse quickened. “That’s the year I was born.”

“And I remember reading something about a crash in Shanghai that year having to do with a huge influx of refugees that was expected but never materialized.” He read the letter again. “How did this come to you?”

“I found it among my mother’s things. So it was addressed to her?”

Master Kuo-tung glanced at her again. “It seems that way. It is a letter of condolence concerning the death of a man named Blade.”

“Buh…lay…de,” she repeated slowly.

“Mr. Blade perished in an accident. It would seem that the recipient of the letter was then with child—Mr. Blade’s child. And the writer informed her that Mr. Blade had been looking forward to the birth of the baby and that he would have named it Charles, if it turned out to be a boy. And if a girl, Catherine.”

The foreign devil in Mother’s photograph had a name—a surname, at least. And Ying-ying, unbeknownst to herself, had always had an English name.

“It is a beautiful name, Catherine—a queenly name,” said Master Kuo-tung, as he handed the letter back to her.

She didn’t know what to say. She wondered whether the letter made it clear that she was illegitimate.

“The moment I met Bai Gu-niang, I wondered whether she wasn’t of mixed heritage,” Master Kuo-tung said quietly. “And when I saw Bai Gu-niang’s eyes up close, I became fairly certain.”

She lowered her face, ashamed of her eyes, which so easily gave away her secret to one who knew what to look for.

“Has Bai Gu-niang ever thought of visiting England and perhaps meeting members of her father’s family?”

The suggestion flabbergasted her. “Did the letter mention any such family? And the English, they do not mind children born outside of wedlock?”

He looked pained. “No, the letter didn’t mention any family. And I’m afraid the English do mind—very much.”

She shook her head. She could just imagine the horror on the part of her father’s family, to have this wild seed arrive on their doorstep from the far ends of the earth. She would not put herself through such humiliation—and rejection.

“But you should still visit England someday,” said Master Kuo-tung. “The English countryside is beyond compare. And of course there is London, one of the greatest cities in the entire world. There are magnificent parks and tremendous museums. There is the Thames River, flowing through the middle of the city. And from April to July, there are endless, endless fun things to do for a young lady.”

He grew more enthused. “You see, the English gentlewoman isn’t quite as restricted as her Chinese counterpart. Here the ladies never seem to step outside their front door. But in England, going out and about is an essential part of life. Young ladies walk in public parks with their friends, attend garden parties and dinners, and then they dance all night long at grand balls.”

The life of an Englishwoman sounded completely uninhibited. Almost debauched. “When you say they dance, you mean they perform?”

“No, no, ladies don’t perform. They dance for their own pleasure—and to mingle with young men.” He left his seat and a moment later came back with a book, opened to an illustration of a man and a woman standing close together, practically in an embrace. “This is one of the most popular dances.”

Ying-ying’s jaw fell—it
was
debauched: The woman was practically naked on top. “This is allowed?”

He smiled. “I suppose people would think it shocking here. But I assure you, at home it is considered perfectly respectable. Besides, how else would young men and women find someone to marry if they do not mingle together?”

Another shock. Young people picked their own spouses? And their parents let them?

She shook her head again. She could not imagine herself wearing that kind of foreign clothes or taking part in any of those very foreign diversions. And she just might break the fingers of any man who dared to touch her.

He closed the book and set it aside. “That’s quite all right. You don’t ever need to do anything you do not wish to. But think of all the places you would discover if you were to journey to England. You could stop in India and visit Darjeeling, for example, and see entire hillsides covered in rows upon rows of tea bushes. Stand upon the bank of the Ganges, the holy river. Visit the Taj Mahal, which is an astonishingly beautiful white marble edifice built by a king in memory of the one woman he loved above all others. And if at all possible, you should include a tour of Kashmir—the mountains will take your breath away.”

His words invoked a fierce yearning inside her for the entire world outside the walls of Da-ren’s residence. “Do you really think I could?”

“Of course,” he said, his eyes shining with sincerity. “Perhaps not now—you are still very young. But yes, someday. I can see you traveling the whole world and experience it with great zest and pleasure.”

No one had ever spoken like this to her. No one had ever looked at her and seen wonderful things to come. “Thank you,” she said, her voice thick with gratitude.

She didn’t know whether she dared believe him, but she would always treasure this moment: when she heard the strength of his hope—and the echo of all the possibilities she could never have imagined for herself.

He smiled at her, a smile of great affection and infinite goodwill. “I have been meaning to ask you, Bai Gu-niang, would you like to learn English? Even if you never visit England itself, it is still quite a useful language to know.”

She had been wondering the same thing herself. She didn’t know whether she wished to visit England—or whether she could ever venture as far as India. But she could not help but respond to the enthusiasm in his voice. Could not help but feel some of his optimism.

The future, which had always loomed like a wall to be crashed into, a wall as tall and thick as that surrounding the Tartar city, now revealed itself to have gates. Gates that were tightly locked for the moment, but gates nevertheless. And who knew? Perhaps in studying English, she might manage to give herself the key to one of those gates.

She smiled back at him. “If Master Kuo-tung does not consider me too poor material to instruct, I would be honored beyond words.”

Chapter 15