China Edward Rutherfurd (essential reading .txt) 📖

after I had performed the kowtow, “look what has happened to us both. I have heard all about your adventures from Prince Gong. He and the princess speak very highly of you.”

“Your slave is honored,” I said.

“I was very sad when you deserted me before we went north of the Wall,” she said.

“Highness,” I cried in agony, “that was not of my doing…” But then I saw that she was laughing.

“Mr. Liu was very naughty,” she said.

It was more than that. He’d deliberately countermanded her orders by giving me the wrong instructions. He should have been demoted and punished, at least. But of course, with Mr. Liu, that was never going to happen.

“Yes, Highness,” I said.

“The problem is,” she went on, “that now I have no one I trust to look after my nails. Do you think you could do it?”

And she smiled at me.

“Oh yes, Highness,” I cried. And I performed the kowtow again, so close this time that I could almost have kissed her dainty feet.

1865

Would she ever see her husband again? Mei-Ling did not know. But she had an instinct—she could not say why—that he had gone forever. Perhaps it was just her fear.

They had spoken about America so many times down the years. As a possibility. No more than that. But when the handsome son of the big, bluff American who had come before—when the son came again and offered a generous payment in advance—how could they turn it down, things being as they were?

There’d been no good news in the hamlet for so long, or anywhere else. If the Taiping’s Heavenly Kingdom had ruined the great Yangtze valley for a decade, the barbarians’ destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing had humiliated the entire empire. Now the emperor who’d run away was dead, a child was upon the throne, and in essence the kingdom was being ruled by a pair of unschooled women.

Was this the whimpering end of an age? Was the Mandate of Heaven being withdrawn?

Along the coast, from Shanghai to Hong Kong, the barbarians had their ports, ruled like separate kingdoms under their own laws. Up in Manchuria, the Russians had taken a huge territory. As for the Taiping rebels and their Heavenly Kingdom, they’d been kicked out of Nanjing only a year ago, and not even by an imperial army, but by Chinese troops equipped and trained by Gordon and his British officers.

The message was clear enough: The barbarians had decided to keep the imperial court in power because Beijing would give them whatever they wanted. Everybody knew.

The empire was humiliated and its treasury exhausted.

Mei-Ling hadn’t any money, either. The last silver she’d held in her hands had come from Nio, when he’d been on his way to take Shanghai, and that had been spent long since.

What had become of Nio? She had never heard from him again. The Shanghai campaign had been a disaster. By the time that Nanjing had fallen, she feared he must be dead. But she couldn’t be certain. He’d turned up after huge absences before. Sometimes she’d be down at the pond, and if the breeze made a rustle in the trees by the path, she’d start and glance quickly towards the sound, half expecting that Nio would appear. But he never did. Time passed and her rational mind told her he must be dead and that she must accept it.

If only she knew for sure, she could weep and mourn him properly. But without that certainty, she felt she would be giving up on him, deserting him instead of keeping the flame of hope alive.

Her husband understood. At times he used to wish that someone would arrive with news of Nio’s death, if only to release Mei-Ling from the endless pain of not knowing.

Finally, as they were walking one morning, he suddenly said to her: “Nio’s dead. You must accept it.” And she nodded and said: “I know.” Then she clung to him and wept.

At least her family wasn’t starving. But that was almost all that could be said.

Elder Son of course was still nominally head of the family. But if he’d been weak before, he was little more than a walking shadow now. He seldom smoked opium, but only because he hadn’t the money to buy it. And alas, it hardly seemed to improve his health.

Three years ago, to everyone’s surprise, his skinny daughter had been found a husband, quite an old man from a neighboring village, who just wanted her as a housekeeper. But he was a husband. So she was gone. And perhaps Elder Son might have found strength to be a man for the sake of his one remaining child, poor Willow’s little boy. But three years ago, in one of those plagues that swept through the countryside every few years, the child had succumbed.

For Elder Son, that had been the end. From then on, he roused himself only enough to declare from time to time that he was the head of the family and must make the decisions, but never to do anything about it.

A sort of lethargy had descended upon the house. The bridge over the pond needed repairing. Second Son was ready to do the work, but his brother always insisted that he’d attend to it, although he never did. “It’s not worth quarreling about it,” Second Son told Mei-Ling, which was probably true. So nobody stepped onto the bridge anymore, because it wasn’t safe. When Mei-Ling went out to look at the full moon, she gazed at it from the bank.

Even Mother was affected. Instead of ruling the household and the kitchen nowadays, she let Mei-Ling make all the arrangements and sat in the courtyard. When Elder Son stopped collecting the rents, she did it herself, but with surprisingly little success. Sometimes she’d come back with nothing.

So effectively, Mei-Ling and Second Son kept the place going. He and their two grown boys worked the land. The family