The Secret Mandarin Read online

  In the moonlight I crossed the deck and rapped on the captain’s door, not waiting for an invitation to enter. I had left him so lately that I still expected there to be company in the room. As it turned out there was. The cabin boy. As the startled child ran past me, a flash of bare flesh and rags, it struck me that he could not be more than twelve years of age. His breeches were not fastened properly and I could smell a grown man’s sweat—the smell of sex on his skin. My blood ran cold.

  Barraclough squared up with his shirt tails trailing. He ignored the boy’s flight entirely.

  ‘Ah, Miss Penney,’ he said. ‘Can I help you in some way?’

  I am no prude and no innocent either. I know of such things. Unlike Jane, I have moved in many circles and some are circles of the night, of gambling dens and seedy brothels, of smooth young boys and richer men. There were reasons Robert did not wish me to admit to my life in Shaftesbury Avenue, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Talent might not be thoroughly unrespectable but some of the places it can take you are. This child had been tampered with. I thought of the bruises I had seen on his arms and legs over the weeks, his treatment at the equator, the way he had fled from me when I offered to bind his wound and now this. Barraclough was despicable. Had he done this every night of the voyage? Had he dismissed the company he entertained at dinner in order to terrorise this child? And if I accused him openly what might he do? Buggery is no mild offence. At home they hang you. For the captain, the stakes could rise no higher. I did not want to corner him and make him fight. I only wanted to save the boy if I could.

  ‘It is nothing. It doesn’t matter,’ I said and left at once.

  The child was nowhere to be seen. I ducked inside my cabin with my mind racing. My only point of appeal for injustice was to the captain. On the water they are as kings. I thought of telling Robert. I almost did but the captain was the captain and Robert cared for no one.

  The next morning I approached the child on deck at his duties. He was afraid and lashed out at me.

  ‘Go away!’ he hissed.

  ‘What is your name?’ I tried.

  He regarded me plainly.

  ‘I am Mary,’ I said.

  He hunched his shoulders, clearly calculating whether talking to me could cause him any harm.

  ‘Simon,’ he said. ‘I am Simon Rose. Please leave me alone, Miss. They will beat me.’

  No child should have to endure such wickedness but on board there was little I could do. I resolved, however, to take whatever action I could think of. When the invitation came to join the captain’s table that night I declined. I declined every night from then on.

  Perhaps a week later, Barraclough passed me as I strolled on the deck. He tipped his hat. ‘We miss your company, madam,’ he said.

  ‘Manners maketh not the man,’ I replied, gliding on. ‘I have seen what you have done.’

  He did not answer and kept away from me then.

  ‘Lord, Mary,’ said Robert, some time later, when he realised finally that I was avoiding the captain. ‘You are never at ease. What fuss is it you are making now?’

  I almost rebutted him. I almost told him, but it would have done no good. He was not a person who cared for cabin boys and servants, actresses or illegitimate sons. I had no more power to help the child than my sister had had to help me. I offered what little I could but the child would not accept even a scrap of food from me (for I tried that) or the whispered offer that he might, if he wished, sleep outside my door for protection.

  When Robert later wrote the memoir of his travels he did not dwell on the voyage. He said, I think, that his passage of four months to Hong Kong was ‘uneventful’. After all, of more interest to his readers were his wanderings in China, the allure of the East and the plants he found there, along with some account of the people. The book sold well. It secured his children’s education and saw Gilston Road polished and repaired, hung with fine curtains hand-embroidered in Soo Chow and fitted out with intricate papers on the walls. I can see Jane pulling her cashmere stole around her, enjoying the spoils. Of course, I was not mentioned—his companion on the uneventful voyage. He did not tell of the storm at the Cape nor mention any of the crew. Those days are unrecorded. The late night games of rummy in my cabin. The night we ate spices off the coast of Alleppey. Or the day Simon Rose’s body was committed to the Indian Ocean, covered in bruises and swaddled in sackcloth, for the child did not even have a hammock to be buried in and had slept on the bare floor.

  After that I retired to my cabin for the rest of the voyage, tiresome though it was to be closeted and alone. I read and pondered, thinking often of my baby, wondering about his progress and hoping Nanny Charlotte was right and he was fine. The tiny porthole allowed me to daydream, my eyes on the cloudless sky and my heart in London still. It was a heavy burden. I decided to write to Jane when we got there.

  By Hong Kong I was the only person on board who had not been off the ship in eighteen weeks. The air in the bay was dripping with humidity. I put on my most fitted corset for the disembarking, aware that I would be noticed and commented upon. I piled up my hair and wore a hat. The atmosphere was so full of water I noticed every hot, heavy movement, my legs damp with sweat. Still, as the lush, green bay grew closer my heart pounded. I looked up at the Peak, making out one or two houses being built.

  ‘Bamboo scaffolds,’ Robert said delightedly. He had brought up his binoculars. ‘An excellent idea. Ingenious.’

  My notice, however, had fallen to the dock, which was coming steadily closer. It teemed with tiny figures despite the fact there were only five other ships in the bay. I took a deep breath or two, as if I were waiting in the wings, and decided that I would try my best. The island looked lush and green and not at all the unpleasant, arid rock I had expected. Perhaps my time in Hong Kong would pass well if only I could make myself amenable. By now I could make out individual faces in the mass of people going about their business. Wide-faced women were selling noodles and hot tea. Coolies with wooden chests balanced on their backs were scurrying from the docked vessels towards the town. And rows of Englishmen in red uniforms wearing pith helmets to protect their flushed faces from the sun were overseeing the activity, checking papers and directing traffic. Back from the main bustle young Chinese girls in brightly-coloured satin dresses lazily eyed the soldiers.

  I watched Barraclough disembark, the first to stride down the gangplank and towards the harbour master’s office with his lading papers in hand. I was glad to come down after him and stared icily as Robert shook his hand and we said goodbye. Perhaps Robert did have some notion of what had gone on, for Barraclough was in Hong Kong a week or more and Robert did not invite him to dine.

  As we watched our trunks unloaded and waited for the Ward’s cases to be unbolted and brought down, Robert breathed deeply with satisfaction. I crept off to one side, finding my land legs hard to come by. The ground seemed to sway and I felt quite in a haze, as if I had taken a swig of laudanum in the backroom at the theatre as was pleasant from time to time. Along the dock there was a wooden shrine with a cloud of incense around it and I decided to try out the solid ground and make for that. There were two old women there on their knees before it, praying, one whirling a wooden clacker and the other beating on a brass gong. The latter approached me and offered a handful of incense sticks, gesturing for payment. I scrabbled inside my purse for a small coin, which she inspected, shrugged her shoulders and then carefully stowed away. I suppose it is normal to use English coins around the world. The island was ours, after all.

  ‘Come, come,’ she gestured me forward and then put her hands together to indicate that I should pray at the shrine.

  As I came closer I saw there was a figure, roughly hewn from wood, and small pots with tropical flowers beneath gold and red Chinese script. There was so much incense already stuck into piles of sand, I was surprised that the whole thing had not ignited, but I decided that I would light my own anyway as a gesture, foolish perhaps, for my arrival. As the sticks s
tarted to smoke I made a wish, concentrating hard on it. Please let us be all right, I prayed, as the fragrant smoke wound like a spell around me. Henry and I. Jane and the children. Let us all do well. And it was only as I walked away from the little temple that I realised I had not included Robert in my thoughts. I had just spent months on end with him and now, two minutes apart, he was the last thing on my mind.

  ‘A place of adventure, Mary,’ Robert commented stiffly on my return, surveying the dock with obvious delight. ‘And full of adventurous men.’

  His plans for me had evidently not been changed in any respect other than location. However, I liked this little city. I bought a cup of green tea from a stall and sipped it. I had become accustomed to the island quickly, enjoying the feel of solid ground. And, as Barraclough strode back up the gangplank to give his directions, I was only vaguely uneasy that perhaps an adventurous man was not what I was truly looking for.

  Chapter Four

  Robert busied himself with his preparations. There were only three weeks before he was due to sail for the Chinese mainland and leave me behind. In that time he had to engage a guide, sell the plants he had brought with him and make plans for his journey. I was to settle. Given that I liked the island and was most diverted by its delights after the long confinement of the voyage, I found this surprisingly difficult. Banishment is an unpleasant sensation. I continued both angry and frustrated but hid my feelings from all around. The August weather was stifling and without the breeze of the moving ship the humidity sunk me. There had been a malaria outbreak at the barracks at Happy Valley and the town was greatly concerned—hundreds of soldiers had died and there seemed no containing the spread of the disease. Some of the ladies refused to go out at all.

  Robert was pragmatic. He had no time for such fancies. Major Vernon, the head of the battalion, visited our lodgings shortly after our arrival. The marshy ground at Happy Valley was conducive to the epidemic and Robert recommended vegetation to counteract its effects. Vernon commenced planting straight away. Thus introduced to the British community as an expert and a welcome addition to their ranks, Robert’s now-forsaken job at the Royal Society made him friends easily and he visited someone new every day. He brought plant cuttings for the enthusiasts and snippets of news about London—changes to familiar streets, accounts of mutual acquaintances and detailed descriptions of new planting in Kew Gardens, Hyde Park and Chelsea. It seemed such was the excitement of receiving fresh news that most people were prepared to disregard the danger of us contaminating them. Nor did Robert consider that our new acquaintances might contaminate us. The contact was too valuable.

  His new friends helped him plan his journey, poring over maps for hours, telling of the dangers in taking on the mandarins, who were the ruling class in the interior, and volunteering letters of recommendation to the few European missionaries living inside. China’s borders were closed to white men. Only five of her ports had any kind of British community and those had only become official since we won the war the year before. The ports supported British trade in the region, but the Chinese were hostile and resentful of our victory and the enforced terms we had imposed. We made them buy our Indian opium but the Emperor had banned his people from taking the drug as he considered it dangerous. I had seen what opium could do—there were dens in the West End, I knew, where some chased the dragon to the detriment of everything else. But then there were those who could not rise without their shot of brandy either. Some people will fall victim to anything for it is in their nature, but that is no reason, to my mind, to ban a drug outright. Such extremes are a far cry from the laudanum that I and my friends sometimes relied on for a touch of comfort. Why, even Jane used the tincture from time to time, when she had the cramp and the apothecary recommended a grain or two. The Emperor’s stance seemed some kind of hysterical reaction to me.

  Of greater threat to his empire, as far as I could see, was Robert’s mission. Tea was China’s greatest export and the Emperor’s men guarded the tea plants and the secrets of their production carefully. In this venture my brother-in-law was taking his life in his hands—the Chinese would kill him and his entourage if they knew what he was up to. In Hong Kong, however, everyone rallied to the pluck of Robert’s expedition and in the fine mansions on the slopes of the Peak all appeared to have one or two scraps of information about the interior that were invaluable in planning the trip. It would have been difficult to continue without such help and people were extremely generous.

  I was invited on all these visits. I expect Robert was keen to present me as much as he could to maximise my chances of finding employment and also to establish me so I was less likely to leave.

  ‘My wife’s sister has decided to settle here,’ he would say. ‘Might I ask you to keep an eye to her interests while I am gone? No, no she is Miss Penney. Quite unmarried. For the time being in any case.’

  Had my skin not been swollen pink and puffy with the heat I am sure it would have crawled with discomfort, but his words washed over me as if the opium that had won us the island was embedded in the hot, heavy air. Distracted by the activity that Robert generated in making his plans, it was as if I had simply disappeared.

  One afternoon Robert returned to the lodging house with a Chinaman he had engaged down at the bay. The man was underfed and fell upon the bread and tea sent up for him from the kitchen as Robert quizzed him in my presence. In a mixture of Cantonese, which Robert had studied for some months now, and the man’s patchy English, it became clear he was from Hwuy-chow, one of the tea countries Robert had determined to visit. His name was Sing Hoo.

  I admit I did not take to Sing Hoo. He had been poorly treated and unlucky in seeking his fortune, that much was clear. But he had a shifty look about him as if he was always sizing up the possibilities. When he finished his tea he tapped the side of the porcelain surreptitiously as if checking its quality. When he realised I had seen this he shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘The Chinese will not meet a woman’s eye,’ Robert commented sagely for he had not noticed Sing Hoo’s action—only seen my stare and the Chinaman turn his head away.

  I said nothing.

  Over the following day or two Robert listened to everything Sing Hoo had to say about tea. He had been brought up on a smallholding and had grown tea plants there since his childhood.

  ‘Can you take me there? Can you show me this?’ Robert asked each time a particular process was detailed.

  Interspersed with more general questions of horticultural interest, Robert took copious notes of everything, any detail about the soil, the weather or the farming of the tea plant. When Sing Hoo explained the process of drying the picked leaves, heat levels used or aromas added, Robert drew what he understood—a drying rack or a mixing bowl, and Sing Hoo hooted with laughter, grabbed the drawing paper and amended the sketch.

  After two or three days the man lost his hungry look, but my view was still that his eye was to the main chance. When Robert opened his maps and called Sing Hoo to help plan the expedition he became vague and uncooperative. Distrustful, I expect that if he told what he knew he might no longer be needed. Robert’s face showed his frustration as he tried to find details of jurisdictions and journey times, navigating the strange interior at a distance to foresee as much as he could. I knew he was finding ways to send home seeds and plants no matter what might happen to him once he crossed the forbidden boundary into China’s interior.

  I passed my time walking out. I felt an affinity with the island. The freedom to wander was most welcome after the confinement of the ship and Hong Kong felt like a vast and exciting half-discovered world—an alien dream that entranced me with its lush greenness. There was plenty to see. Splashes of vibrant colour burst from the foliage—an abundance of fascinating, angular pink, red and orange flowers I did not know the names for. I never asked. I did not want Robert to launch into an explanation that would diminish their exotic magic with details of pollination or water systems.

  I liked the calm water o
f the bay in contrast with the bustling dock. I liked the stacked baskets of chickens and the sheen of the brightly coloured satin displayed in its bales. The toothless ancients outside the little temples fascinated me, their bodies like stick insects, angular and dry as they sat in the shade and begged alms. Dusty-skinned Chinese children hovered nearby their fathers who had fought in the war. There were many missing an arm or a leg and others with scars on their faces where hand-to-hand combat had torn their skin to pieces. Still-eyed, bony and eager they watched me as I passed. Their children, fingers twitching, all set to cut my purse should the chance arise, the bolder ones circling at a safe distance like birds round a fishing boat, ready to swoop. With my heart racing at the thrill of my proximity to something so foreign and dangerous, I hovered only on the fringes of their territory, never entering the fetid shanty town itself. I peered down the narrow, hot streets that ran with stinking, steaming excrement over the beaten earth and came as close as I could. It was like holding an entrancing but venomous snake that might strike at any moment. I was fascinated, but I kept it at arm’s length.

  It was on one of my expeditions I encountered Wang. Abandoning my attraction to the shanty for the day, I had decided to hike up the hill to take in the view of the bay. It was a difficult climb with only a muddy pebble track but I was sure it would be worth the effort. The top of the Peak was very high and the outlook undoubtedly spectacular. Robert had gone to the other side of the island to sell some of his plants and had no need for or interest in my company. After lunch I set off with only a flask of boiled water to sustain me.

  I started fine. The road was not too steep but as I climbed higher the gradient increased dramatically. I was not a third of the way up when I decided that this was not an expedition for a solitary lady. My boots stung and I was perspiring furiously. I found a large rock to lean against and sipped the water.