by Will Thomas
“Why do you think,” Fu Ying asked, “that men cannot see the subtleties of life when they happen right in front of them?”
“I’ve wondered that, myself,” Rebecca answered. “My late husband was no better than most in that regard. I believe my father had to speak to him before he asked for my hand.”
“I live in Limehouse, in a most respectable residence, not far from here. Perhaps you might consider visiting sometime.”
“Dear girl, I should love that.”
The maid arrived with a cart. I noticed in deference to Fu Ying, we both took our tea black.
“So, how came you to be Mr. Barker’s ward?”
“I was a present to Sir from the Empress Dowager of China. He solved a mystery for her and in return she gave him an imperial dog. Every palace dog must have someone assigned to look after him, so I was chosen out of one of the orphanages in Peking.”
“Did you lose your parents?” Rebecca asked.
“They abandoned me on a mountaintop. I was a girl, you see, and they could not afford to feed me.”
“So you were some kind of servant.”
“A slave, madame. I am owned by Mr. Barker’s dog, according to my papers.”
For once, Rebecca lost her composure. “Surely Mr. Barker has given you your freedom.”
“Alas, Xixi still rules, and her word is law. But as Sir says, she is half a world away. How is she to know? I visit the dog, Bodhiddharma, every other day or so. The rest of my time I spend helping my husband.”
“He’s very prominent among the merchants of Poplar,” I said, still trying to dig myself out of a hole.
Fu Ying picked up a morsel of shortbread and ate it daintily. Then she changed tactics.
“Actually, madame, I am here on the behalf of several friends of Thomas. He has been keeping you to himself and we wanted to be certain he is making a wise choice.”
“Oh, ho,” Rebecca said, not batting an eye. “Is that how it is?”
“In particular, I am an emissary for Mrs. Ashleigh, a close friend of Mr. Barker’s. She hopes to meet you soon, either here or at her estate in Sussex. I have stayed with her often and it is a lovely home, not far from the ocean.”
“I would love to meet her,” Rebecca said. “Please tell her to forgive Thomas for not introducing me sooner, and I hope to become better acquainted with her.”
I was looking down at the carpet, trying to work out how to get myself out of this social blunder, when something caught my eye.
“I say—” I began.
“She understands,” Fu Ying said. “What can one do?”
“I think … I believe that your bag just moved,” I said.
Fu Ying was carrying a brown leather bag with her, like a small Gladstone. She now picked it up and opened it. There was a small puffball in it, pure white with bright black eyes like marbles.
“This is Butterfly. She is a descendent of Harm. She goes with me wherever I go.”
“What a beauty!” Rebecca exclaimed. “May I hold her?”
She lifted the little dog to her face, and when their eyes were at a level, the dog licked her nose with the smallest tongue I’ve ever seen. She hugged the dog and set her in her lap.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist,” she said. “You may continue the cross-examination. I am being examined, am I not?”
“You like Thomas. You like dogs. What else is there?”
“I do like Thomas. He is important to me.”
“You realize he is necessary to Sir’s work. If you were to convince Thomas to find different work, it might mean death to Mr. Barker.”
“Is that it?” Rebecca asked. “You fear I might make Thomas quit? I met him because Mr. Barker sent him to our home. One might almost say he introduced us. I would support Thomas in whatever he does.”
I turned to Rebecca.
“I suspect Mrs. Ashleigh is concerned about the safety of Mr. Barker. She would like to get him to the altar someday.”
“One certainly cannot blame a girl for that.”
Butterfly yipped. She had not been adored in nearly a minute. Both women converged upon her and cooed. I made a face, the result of which was the dog being placed in my lap.
“Hello,” I said.
The dog looked up at me. She was a white ball, more head than body, with two black eyes separated by a black nose. She yipped at me again. I picked her up, and she nuzzled against my neck. For some reason the women found this satisfactory. I could barely believe that this puffball had come from the loins of a seasoned warrior like Harm. He was small, but he was mighty.
Rebecca poured some more tea for us all.
“Mrs. Ashleigh said if he has any bad habits which trouble you, you are to let her know.”
“Here now!” I said, as the pup’s fur tickled my neck.
“You needn’t worry on that score,” Rebecca said. “I have experience getting husbands to heel. Tell her if he starts pinching constables’ helmets she will be the first to know.”
“Husbands can be difficult,” Fu Ying said. She had been teasing, but had gone serious for a moment.
“They can be,” Rebecca said. “But you mustn’t knuckle under to them. You must be fearless.”
“And you know,” I said, “that we are your friends here. If you are ever in need of anything.”
Bok Fu Ying suddenly looked down, struggling to keep her composure. I think it surprised her most of all. Butterfly was watching her mistress.
Rebecca stood and turned to me. Then she gave me the first command of our lives.
“Thomas,” she said. “Take the dog for a walk.”
I obeyed her at once. There was a tiny leash of pink leather in the purse. Apparently there was a collar underneath all that fur. I found the ring and clasp and took the ridiculous little toy outside.
One could take a dog, a real dog, around an entire park. To this one a single street was like a mile. When I reached the second corner I stopped. Somehow I had picked up two dozen children along the way. They began cooing over Butterfly and taking turns playing with her.
After half an hour, I scooped up Butterfly amid the children’s protests, and carried her back on my shoulder. She was asleep and snuffling within half a minute. Perhaps she wasn’t so bad, I thought. She was from Harm’s brood after all.
I stepped back inside. Fu Ying was actually laughing, though her face was a trifle red.
“Thomas, you must see Fu Ying home.”
They both stood and Rebecca took her hands. Both wore the most delicate of gloves. Rebecca’s were a sort of black lace, while Fu Ying’s were gray kid leather. She could break boards with those little hands.
“I’m so glad you came,” Rebecca said. “Have you a telephone set?”
“I do. Sir might need me.”
“I’ll give you my exchange number, then. We must have lunch soon.”
“I would like that. But I must look a fright. May I powder my nose?”
“My room is at the top of the stairs on the right.”
Bok Fu Ying bowed and climbed the stair. Meanwhile, Rebecca turned and looked at me. There was an adorable dimple by one side of her mouth. Back then, I hadn’t worked out that two dimples are safe, but one is dangerous.
“Very pretty, Miss Bok Fu Ying,” she said. “It’s a wonder you didn’t marry her yourself.”
“Think, Thomas, think,” I said to myself. I was skating on thin ice.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “She’s my elder sister.”
“Of course,” she said. Her dimple broadened into two. “You haven’t worked it out, have you?”
“Worked what out?”
“Mrs. Ashleigh didn’t send Fu Ying here. Mr. Barker did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“The Japanese delegation are eating lunch here regularly,” Ho said to us from a cushion in front of his legless desk. Barker had sent word to me and I had met him here.
Barker bit into a leprous-looking thousand-year-old egg. The white was tea st
ained and the yolk a bilious green. They aren’t actually a thousand years old but they are buried in the ground for a hundred days, and I have a hard-and-fast rule about consuming anything which has been, in fact, embalmed. The Guv likes them, but then, he also likes snail dumplings, so his tastes are rather suspect.
“Have you been preparing food for them especially?” he asked.
Ho was drinking plum wine from a bottle, using a cup the size of a thimble. He tossed back another one.
“A little sukiyaki, some yanagi, and tempura.”
“You have enticed them here!” Barker said. “Very good.”
“All travelers are the same,” Ho said. “In a strange country they will try the food for two days, then they want the old, familiar things.”
“Do all your waiters speak Japanese?”
“A few of them do, but the Japanese are suspicious. They stop speaking whenever we get near.”
“Does General Mononobe come?”
“He does. He has a preference for soba noodles.”
“You’ve got a plan?” Barker said.
“Let the sake flow and prepare fugu.”
“Fugu?” Barker asked. “Do you know how to prepare it?”
“It cannot be difficult if a xiao riben can do it.”
Barker smiled. Whatever Ho had called the Japanese, I’m sure it was derogatory.
“What is fugu?” I asked.
“Puffer fish,” my employer explained. “They throw it away here. No Englishman will eat it.”
“Well, no wonder,” I said. “It sounds dreadful.”
“A pig is ugly, but pork is delicious.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Is fugu delicious?”
“No, it is nearly tasteless,” Barker answered. “But it has other attractions for the Japanese. It is poisonous.”
“Poisonous!” I cried.
“Only if served incorrectly,” Ho said, holding up a finger. “The liver is poisonous. If the meat has not touched the liver, it is fine to eat. If it has, you are dead almost instantly.”
“Dozens die every year,” Barker added.
“But it’s tasteless,” I argued.
“Yes,” Ho said, “and cut so thin one could read through the flesh.”
“Death and beauty,” Barker murmured. “They are a unique people.”
“They are xiao riben,” Ho grumbled. He spat on the floor.
I looked at Barker.
“Ghost devils,” he supplied.
“K’ing is up to something,” Ho went on. “He flatters them too much. That man does not do anything that is not for his own benefit.”
“Perhaps you misconstrue,” I said. “Some would call serving food to the Japanese a form of patronage.”
Ho looked ready to strike me. I was merely Barker’s satellite and had no right to an opinion. Barker seemed not to notice the exchange. Or perhaps he was deflecting a response.
“You plan to get them drunk in hopes that someone will blurt out their strategy?” he asked.
“I don’t see you proposing a better plan,” Ho snapped.
“I was not criticizing, merely trying to understand your plan. If there is one weakness, it is that one of the people you hope to catch is Asian and will assume your waiters understand what he is saying. You cannot rely on the anonymity of your waiters.”
“My men walk softly and they hear very well. I trust them to do the work I ask.”
“Have you gathered anything so far?” the Guv asked.
“Of course. There are five bodyguards, are there not? One of them, the one with the big mustache—”
“Kito,” Barker supplied.
“He has a liking for low women, and tries to convince the others to go with him. One of them is a fop, interested only in purchasing Western suits. The big one has a prodigious appetite, and does not like English food. The one who died trained all day and they suspect he preferred young men to women. The fifth is completely taciturn, and does nothing but scowl. He doesn’t like being here.”
“They all come in as a group?” I asked.
“No, never. Only ones and twos. Once, three of them came in together. They are beginning to relax here. I believe one of them will say something worth listening to sooner or later.”
“What of Mononobe?”
“He has been here three times. He likes my dim sum, especially rice balls in tea leaves. Once he came in with K’ing, but they conversed very quietly. Another time he came with the Foreign Office man, the one with the yellow hair and pale mustache.”
“Campbell-Ffinch.”
“He picks at my food as if I were serving rat.”
“What can you do about something like that?” I asked.
“I serve them rat.”
I shuddered. “Did you ever hear anything of worth from their conversation?”
“K’ing spent his time trying to humor the general. Anything the delegation needed, he would be glad to oblige.”
“Did you hear anything clandestine at all?”
“K’ing mentioned the Blue Funnel Line.”
I had heard K’ing mention it before, myself.
“That’s the line running between here and China, is it not?” I asked. “The officers are European, but the sailors are Asian. Most of the sailors belong to the Blue Dragon.”
The final phrase I had whispered. The Blue Dragon Triad was a secret organization to which many Chinese sailors belonged. The triad, run by K’ing himself, looked after aging sailors and the Chinese population as a whole, a benevolent society. It also existed on another level, gathering weapons and passing information to overthrow the Qing government. They were revolutionaries, part of the Heaven and Earth Society. On a third level they ran criminal enterprises, helping their members to flee one country or another, changing money and counterfeiting. K’ing’s gambling house and opium den were part of that concern. So which was the mask, and which the true face? Somehow, they were all true. Criminal and benevolent. Rebellious, and money-seeking. He was everything at once.
“Interesting,” Barker remarked. We had finished eating and were drinking tea, except for Ho, who was still taking wine tiny cup by tiny cup.
“Interesting?” Ho repeated acidly. “This is the man you married your ward to.”
“It was whom she chose,” Barker replied, with an air of patience.
“She shouldn’t have been given a choice! She was too young. It was your duty to find a proper husband for her,” he chided.
Barker finished his tea and poured another cup. He wasn’t about to be drawn into the argument Ho was spoiling for. The decision was already made. Ho just could not accept it.
“Blue Funnel,” he mumbled to himself.
“There was money to be made. Anything brought from Japan—tea, silk, jade—would have to be carried on Blue Funnel ships if K’ing could force a contract. That’s hundreds if not thousands of pounds,” I said. “And it would provide work for sailors right here in Limehouse. Then there are docking fees, and storage in nearby warehouses. Oh, yes, that could be worth a lot of money.”
“Enough to make K’ing work with the Japanese?” I asked.
“As far as I can tell, he is a pragmatist. A businessman. He has lived here most of his life and has left prejudices behind in the Old Country.”
“Or he’s a traitor,” Ho said. “Trying to impress the general. A merchant. A lickspittle!”
“You’re a merchant. You’ve opened your doors to them.”
“You know opening my doors to those cursed ghost devils was to gain information about their plans!”
Barker got out his pipe, filled it with tobacco from his sealskin pouch, and lit it with a Bryant May match, made nearby in Poplar. He had that thoughtful look on his face, if I was reading it correctly.
“You should invite K’ing to your little party here.”
“Never!” Ho bellowed.
“You are trying to get information, are you not? In order to do so you must bring all of the conspirators together.�
��
That set both of us thinking. That is, if Ho was not too drunk to think.
“Conspirators,” I repeated.
“Aye.”
“Implying that there is, in fact, a conspiracy.”
“Correct.”
“What kind of conspiracy? Conspiracy to do what, exactly?”
“I don’t believe it is to corner the market in silk.”
“They’re opening an embassy,” I said. “It sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“What is the purpose of an embassy?”
I shrugged my shoulders and took a sip of tea. My little cup had gone cold, but I was tired of tea.
“To form a bond between two countries, and establish commerce.”
“Idiot,” Ho said to me.
“I liked it better when we weren’t speaking.”
“Ha!” Ho threw back his head and laughed, then smote me on the back.
“The purpose of an embassy is to say, ‘You have to deal with us now. You cannot afford to ignore us anymore. We are equals. Make peace with us, or make war. We are ready for either.’”
“Is he right?” I asked Barker.
“He’s not wrong.”
“They didn’t merely happen to send an admiral and a general along,” Ho added.
“But Ambassador Toda was a pacifist.”
“Correct. He wasn’t here a full day before he was shot.”
“Something is very definitely occurring,” Barker said. “And I don’t like it one bit, Thomas.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the Foreign Office, in the person of Trelawney Campbell-Ffinch, has been too friendly. It is something else, other than a war.”
“What, then?”
“I don’t know,” the Guv admitted. “Perhaps the Japanese want to buy Hong Kong.”
Ho’s eyes grew big. The wine appeared to not be affecting him at all.
“That would leave your beloved Canton unprotected,” he said.
“But if the British were forewarned, they could get out in time.”
“Suppose,” Ho continued, “that they signed an alliance with England, in order to fight someone else.”
“Such as?”
“The Japanese want Formosa very much. I suppose they would not mind owning Korea, either.”