My Splendid Concubine (81 page)

When he started to undo the buttons on his shirt, she slapped his hands away.
“I will do that,” she said, and he watched the hunger in her eyes explode as she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped her hands inside to explore his chest and back.

He groaned, and said,
“This is torture. I can’t hold myself much longer.”

Her laughter sounded like chimes.
“So much hair,” she said, as she ran her fingers through it. “It no longer feels strange like it did then.” She threw herself on top of him pushing him onto his back then pressed her lips against his.

His hands explored her muscular, naked legs and ended on her firm bottom. There wasn
’t much room, but he managed to pull off his shirt and crawl out of his pants and for an instant, their lips parted.

“
Touch me everywhere.” Her voice was husky and full of experienced lust. “I like the way it feels when you do that.”

They rolled over until she was on the bottom, and their naked bo
dies mingled. He kissed her breasts and ran his tongue around her nipples, and she tasted salty.

“
Now,” she said, “make me yours again.”

The sexual heat flooded through him. He thrust into her while grunting like a stallion. After she gasped and her body convulsed, he rolled her over and entered her from the rear. He took hold of her hips and pulled her into him. After several deep thrusts, it was over.

Sweaty and exhausted, they slept in each other’s arms. This time when he awoke, she was still there and there was a warm quilted blanket covering them against the chill.

The floor creaked above their heads and Robert heard a small voice say,
” Ba Ba.” It was Anna looking for him.

Before Horatio left China, he also came to see Robert. They met alone in the same study.

“
I thought I could trust you,” Horatio said. “That’s why I recommended that you fill my job while I was recovering from the knife wounds. Why did you turn the Dynasty against me?”

“
You will never understand,” Robert replied. “I didn’t sneak in and plot to replace you. Your arrogance did that. You speak excellent Mandarin but you do not understand the Chinese. If I were still in Canton in my old position, things would have turned out worse. Osborn would have lost his head and you might have been executed. There would have been another war more devastating than the two Opium Wars.”

Horatio reached in his jacket and pulled out a Bible.
“You are not only a traitor, but you are a fool.” He opened his Bible to a page marked with a red ribbon. “Paul said that part of our love of brethren includes restoring one who is overtaken in a trespass. You have done me wrong, Hart.” He looked at the Bible and read. “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

He closed the Bible.
“I’m returning to England. I will do so in a spirit of gentleness. I will pray for your soul, so you might walk with God instead of cavorting with these Chinese devils.” Horatio left.

Robert realized that Horatio
’s words and thoughts were examples of how the foreign powers thought and why they were raping China with opium and modern weapons. The people of China deserved better. He resolved to be the man to set things right or die trying. Thinking about the years ahead was exhausting. How many more challenges would there be?

Chapter 50

Now that he was inspector general he had to fix Horatio’s mess, and one challenge to overcome was the Yamen’s memories of Horatio’s bully tactics. Fortunately, Robert understood the virtue of patience.

His first task
was to write letters to his commissioners in China’s major ports.

“
We are all in China’s service. Information is important if we are to do our jobs efficiently, which means we must stay on top of national events and politics in every province. I’m directing you to keep an eye and an ear open in your regions. To do that, you must cultivate friendships among the Chinese people.”

He
remembered his first visit to a tea and bathhouse in Ningpo. At the time, he had only been with Shao-mei and Ayaou for a few months. Ayaou caught him in the kitchen one morning bathing with a small cloth in a large bucket that barely fit his feet.

“
I have watched you do this before, Robert,” she had said, as she stood in the kitchen doorway. “I kept my mouth shut, because I thought this is what you wanted. Why not go to the bathhouse? It costs the price of three eggs, and the water is clean and hot.”

That was the day he discovered China had bathhouses.

Ayaou had guided him there. Then he stood in a long line waiting to get in. The gatekeeper had been a burly, older woman with the arms of a wrestler and stumps for legs. She had demanded that he take off his clothes and hand them to her for cleaning.

It had been qui
te an experience. It hadn’t felt humorous at the time, but now he chuckled at the memories before dipping the pen into the puddle of ink to continue the letter.

“
To gather this vital information properly, I suggest you spend time cultivating friendships with the Chinese in local teahouses, which are fountains of information when one is a master in the art of conversation. I also expect that you will find the nearest bathhouse and take a public bath with the Chinese once a week.

“
We have all talked about how to do this, so I am confident you will succeed with this task without hesitation.

“
Discover what is going on and how people feel about current events and send a report to me once a month. Take care to send these reports with trusted couriers since we do not want this information falling into the wrong hands.”

Robert had learned the art of convers
ation while living with Ayaou and Shao-mei in Ningpo. While hiring his people, he had taught his men the same methods. Soon, he planned to launch a Chinese language school for his foreign employees.

During those long months when he had traveled extensively through China hiring and firing people while setting up offices in all
the major trading ports, he had taken each of his people to a teahouse. He had them observe and learn how to talk to the Chinese from the lowest peasant to the wealthiest merchant. The most important skill was to learn how to listen and interpret meaning. The challenge was to ask simple, short questions that resulted in long revealing answers.

It took several months before regular reports started to arrive from his men, and what he discovered was not good. The Dynasty was weak and the provinces troubled.

The problem was that the central government was limited. All of the high provincial officials, who could be removed at any time at the pleasure of the emperor, were appointed from Peking.

However, once appointed, the governors of provinces and cities had the power of kings, which meant that Peking had little control over anything, even taxation. Robert had learned how difficult that was when he had confronted Kuan-wen, the governor-general of Hankow.

Since then, he had learned that the best man wasn
’t always chosen for a high-ranking position. The Manchu distrusted the Han Chinese and many times when a Han was the best man for the job, he was passed-over for a Manchu, who was usually corrupt, incompetent or both.

Silence was the best advice for a Han to follow when a
Manchu official could have him beheaded or assassinated for protesting or criticizing too much. It was safer for a Han Chinese to keep his lips sealed even if his superior was heading blindly for disaster.

Robert, on the other hand, did not hold back. He was honest with Prince Kung and the other ministers at the
Tsungli Yamen.

“
Robert, you must take care,” Prince Kung said. “At times, your criticisms are too sharp. The Iron Hats may have been defeated and their leader Su Shun beheaded, but there are still conservative ministers. All it takes is one to think you speak too loudly. If he wants to silence you, I cannot protect you from a bribed servant and a vial of poison in your rice porridge.”

Kung
’s warning alarmed Robert. After that, he took more care in what he said. Thinking of death also reminded him that he didn’t like living alone. Since he was spending more time in Peking than Shanghai, he decided to bring Ayaou and the children to the capital.

He would keep the house in Shanghai and
return with his family as circumstances dictated. It was 1863 when Guan-jiah was told to move the family to Peking and Robert was twenty-eight, Guan-jiah twenty-seven and Ayaou twenty-four. Robert had been in China for almost a decade.

Within weeks, Ayaou, Anna, and his son Herbert arrived in Peking. He didn’t want to be separated from his Chinese family again.

On the other hand, he knew that his Irish family expected him
to find a wife in Ireland, which would make his father and mother happy.

However, no one in Ireland knew Ayaou existed, and h
e dreaded the day when he told his friends and family about her, which was a topic he had avoided for years.

The thought that they might learn about his private life from a stranger bothered him. When he had been in interpreter working for the Br
itish, he had been almost invisible. Now that he was working for the emperor of China in a powerful position, he was standing in the sunshine for everyone to see, and it felt as if he were being examined under a microscope.

If his family discovered that
he had offered money to buy Ayaou, his father might disown him. When he had fled Ireland for China to escape the scandal that took place while he was still attending the University of Belfast, he did not imagine that he might make things worse. Compared to Belfast where he had often been drunk and seduced too many women, buying one as if she were a brick to warm a bed would crush his father.

The truth was tha
t for the first time since arriving in China, he felt fulfilled. He knew that he should be the first to tell his father about Ayaou, but he was not ready.

“
Guan-jiah,” he said one morning before leaving for work, “I don’t want other foreign devils to know about Ayaou or the children. I want my family to be safe. They are no one else’s business. I’m counting on you to help make that happen.”

“
I understand, master,” the eunuch replied. “If the Longhaired Bandits discovered that you have two children, they could be used as pawns to reach you.”

Ayaou had never been to Peking. His boat girl looked as if she had been beached and didn’t know what to do. She walked around the house in a daze. Robert imagined she was stupefied, considering that she had lived most of her life with a large family on a small boat with no servants. Now she had two mansions with a different staff in each one.

Her first day in Peking was spent in bed with Robert. The se
cond day he spent some time with Anna and Herbert. Anna was four, and Herbert had taken his first steps and was tottering around the house getting into everything. Poor Fooyen was at her wit’s end keeping up with the children.

The house in Shanghai was visible from the street. The one in P
eking was in the Tartar City near the emperor’s palace and was hidden behind high walls, and there wasn’t just one building. He had a building for meeting people. A structure for storage. A main house for his family. Another for guests. Behind the buildings, there was a garden with a teahouse. It was small compared to Prince Kung’s estate but large by most standards.

Robert decided to teach Anna the violin. “Ayaou,” he said, “I want you to teach her Chinese songs and to play the Pee Pah. I’m also considering getting a piano for her. I want her to play the piano too.”

“
A piano?” she said. Robert described what a piano was. She’d never seen one.

“
I’m replacing our literature discussions that we once shared with Shao-mei with politics.”

“
Politics?” She looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

“
This is Peking, Ayaou, the capital of an empire, and you are going to be my spy.”

“
I’m no spy,” she said, and he could hardly hear her voice.

He took her by the hand and l
ed her out of their bedroom into the privacy of a garden. He stopped by a carp filled pond.

The first-time Robert had seen Prince Kung
’s pond he had been fascinated. “These fish bring the owner luck.” Kung said.

He had
watched as the prince trailed a hand in the water and a monster black and gold carp at least three feet long drifted from the shadowy depths to rub against his fingers.

“
This one knows me. If you feed them, Robert, some are smart enough to learn how to eat from your hand. I will send a work crew to your house to build a pond similar to mine, and a few of these carp will be a gift.”

Once Ayaou and Robert were seated on a boulder beside the pond, he took her face between his hands.
“Are you ready to listen?” he asked.