The Secret Mandarin

by Sara Sheridan

  To make things worse, the journey itself was in stark contrast to what had gone before. Until this part of our trip, we had docked only at large ports accustomed to accommodating travellers’ needs. Hong Kong had been enough of China to be exotic and enough of England to be familiar. Now we were travelling northwards and close to the coast everywhere was truly alien and the settlements impoverished. We passed cottages open to the weather and Chinese nomads with scores of half-starved children camping in makeshift tents and fishing from the rocks. I saw one tiny boy eating his catch raw and still alive. There were rivulets of blood dribbling down his chin.

  When we reached Amoy it was the filthiest place I have ever seen. From the opium warehouses with their sackcloth bales stacked behind slatted gates to the grubby shanty that stretched acres away from the port, the whole place stank so badly that my stomach turned. Robert showed no sign of notice and his attention was drawn instead to the strange rocks on an island in the bay called Koo Lung Soo. Misshapen trees hung like fronds from the angular rocks, their trunks growing straight out over the ocean. I spotted one entirely upside down. Amoy harbour was stowed out and there was hardly space to lay another anchor. Most of the ships were ferrying opium and, armed as usual with news of London, Robert found himself easily in demand with the merchants and captains alike.

  There was nowhere suitable to stay on land so we arranged to keep our berths until we found our onward passage, for here we must change ships. While Robert called on the more promising-looking vessels I remained in my cabin. My soul was swamped with regret. I do not think of myself as unduly maternal—clearly I am not—but there was a bond between my baby and me that pulled him continually into my thoughts the further I travelled away.

  In my cabin I went over and over the details of Henry’s birth and then imagined his future marriage. William’s money could procure my son a gentleman’s match, but I wondered if he would want one. I willed with all my might that Henry should have spirit—the manly bravery that William so clearly lacked. I hoped that quality, more than anything, might come from my side of things. Strange, really, to long for someone you do not know—to plot and plan for them. I tried to comfort myself that at least Henry’s fortunes were safe now. He was no doubt set to attend Eton and then Cambridge as his father had. William would provide. It was fine. Fine. And yet still I wondered if our features might be similar. If my son had inherited his father’s sly smile and his aristocratic bearing. His taste for forest green, roast lamb and malt whisky? Or if perhaps there might be a trace in him, a whisper, of my love of cherries, steaming bowls of hot chocolate and the very English scent of lilac.

  In Hong Kong I had bought a book on the subject of Chinese mythology and to distract myself I read my way through the tales of fabulous creatures—phoenixes, unicorns, dragons, fox spirits, earth gods, the Buddha and the Monkey King. I began to understand more of the elaborate shrines set up on the dock by resident merchants with their display of gold and red ribbons, figurines and incense holders. I picked out the amulets worn by the sailors, offerings to Tien Hou, goddess of navigators at sea.

  After a few days we picked up a passage with a British ship journeying as far as Chusan. Though the vessel was smaller than those to which we had become accustomed, the berths were comfortable and half the crew European. The captain, Landers, was from Northumberland. A cheerful, red-faced giant of a man, he towered over Robert. He had been at sea for fifteen years and claimed he had never slept a night on shore since he was twelve.

  ‘Unusual for a lady to travel here,’ he commented. ‘Amoy is no place to linger.’

  Robert bristled, but Landers continued uninhibited.

  ‘Are you missionaries?’ he asked.

  I adopted my most pious expression. ‘No, Captain Landers,’ I said. ‘I am merely accompanying my brother-in-law in his research.’

  Robert attempted to change the subject.

  ‘The conditions these poor heathens live under!’ he exclaimed. ‘As bad as Scotch cottages!’

  I restrained myself from pointing out that living in a Scottish cottage appeared to have done Robert little harm. Though I expect a wry expression played on my face.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Poor things.’

  Landers restored my faith in the honour of captaincy. He did not possess the polished manners of Barraclough and was not turned out at all well, but he proved a hearty and genuine soul and both Robert and I became fond of him. We moved our berths onto his ship, the Dundas, had the Ward’s cases bolted into the deck, and little by little my spirits rose.

  It was at Amoy that Robert collected his first plants. Thus far he had always bought his specimens but now he decided to travel away from the dock to the hills behind and see what he could find for himself. The Dundas would sail the following day so we were at our leisure. He took Sing Hoo and Wang and they set off just after dawn.

  I admit I had little to occupy my time. Perhaps, I thought, the next occasion Robert hiked to the hills I would beg to come. Certainly, if Amoy was anything to judge by, it was so unpleasant to be at dock that it would be a relief to get away. I passed my time as usual, reading and taking a turn along the deck. Despite the rank air and the stench that rose from the waters, to watch the teeming crowds about their business was great diversion. It was easy to pick out the few Europeans from the throng even at a distance. The mass of Chinese somehow moved differently. I walked the boards, my handkerchief to my nose, trying to emulate the Cantonese women I could spot here and there, with their tiny steps and high shoulders, the beautiful stillness of their thin eyes and their wide, high-boned faces. I wondered what mistakes they might have made, as they moved smoothly through the crowd. Adultery. Dishonour. They could have done anything. Were any as wicked as I?

  When Robert returned he was laden. The hillsides had been fruitful and the plants he brought aboard were fragrant in the thick, evening air. Wang stumbled under two small fig trees and there were vivid gold and bronze chrysanthemums in canvas bags strapped around his shoulders. Sing Hoo carried various Chinese roses of a delicate pink so pale it was almost white, while Robert was laden with jasmine. The metal vasculum boxes they had taken were brimming with cuttings and tightly strapped over Robert and Sing Hoo’s shoulders.

  I was delighted. Who would believe so close to the squalor of Amoy such beautiful flowers bloomed? I helped Robert bed down the plants in the cases. My hands were filthy with mud but the scent was heavenly redemption. We worked by lamplight while Robert explained where he had found his treasures, and complained of Wang and Sing Hoo’s incompetence when extracting the plants from the soil.

  ‘They pulled them,’ he shuddered. ‘I have shown them now but both are so lazy that I will not be able to trust them unsupervised.’

  ‘I can help,’ I offered.

  ‘Wang pulled an olea. The only one I could find. He has quite ruined it though I have kept it to dry for the herbarium.’

  ‘And in the herbarium,’ I ventured, taking an interest, ‘the plants are all dead?’

  Robert looked as if I had slandered the memory of some dearly-loved relation.

  ‘Dried,’ he said acidly. ‘We have herbarium specimens more than a hundred and fifty years old at Kew.’

  That evening Robert set up his plant press and opened the drying racks. He carefully labelled each leafy specimen, laid it between thick papers and left the air to do its work. Then he turned his attention to the seeds. He cleaned them minutely with a small brush and put some into tagged canvas bags. The others he laid out to dry. From this I took it that some required airing while others did not. I watched this process carefully, holding open the cloth bags for him and tying the twine tightly. His concentration was intense though he looked very tired. It seemed he never stopped planning. His mission consumed him entirely. I tried to take in everything he was doing. After all, I might as well learn to help. As he piled the last of the bags into a wooden box he looked up, realising that I had watched all the while. A smile broke out on his face and h
e reached for the lamp to escort me back to my cabin by way of saying goodnight.

  Really, I think Robert was stronger than the servants. He kept longer hours and often worked twice as hard. I could see the muscles in his arms as he reached for the lamplight.

  ‘I can send these back from Chusan,’ he said, indicating the drying racks of specimens. ‘They will be ready then.’

  The Formosa Channel was stormy. The boat rocked badly in the choppy swell and Sing Hoo became sick. Wang cooked food as close to him as possible and made it highly spiced. The poor man kept down scarcely anything and vomited over the side half a dozen times each day. The men were berthed with two other Chinese travelling, as I understood it, only to Chimoo Bay. Occasionally at night, above the breaking of the waves, I could hear Sing Hoo wailing in the distance. We were in no danger whatsoever, of course. The water was high and uneven but we could hardly have called it a storm. Sing Hoo, however, was inconsolable.

  For several days Robert watched over his specimens as they aired. A knock or a bump could dent them easily so he held them in place with a crisscrossed twine secured to the drying frame with nails. He changed the pressing papers daily, kept his eye on the plants in glass cases and made meticulous notes in his journal. I was eager to help and here and there an extra pair of hands made a difference. Robert often explained the process as he went along. Mostly I simply enjoyed the flowers, but I noticed as my competence increased I could tie knots easily and prepare different seeds for storage without needing instruction. It was pleasant to have something to do.

  One evening I was helping with the drying racks when Sing Hoo started to moan very loudly in a cabin along the passage.

  ‘Do you think we ought to go to him?’ I suggested.

  Robert shook his head. ‘No.’

  The truth of it was, of course, that Robert would not leave his specimens.

  ‘It might hearten him to see us,’ I persisted.

  Robert shot me an angry look. ‘He has his own people,’ he growled.

  I was about to point out that it could not have escaped even Robert’s notice that in no measure could Wang and Sing Hoo be said to be kinsmen, when the ship keeled very suddenly and I was thrown to the floor. Robert fell likewise on top of me and in his attempts to hold the rack upright he snapped off one of the legs. The whole thing tumbled. I was dazed and struggled to my feet. Robert was on his knees with the papers in his hands.

  ‘We are lucky these are not fully dried and still have some pliancy,’ he said. ‘Only two are crushed.’

  As if time had distorted, I got to my feet and helped him stack those we could salvage in a pile of papers. We bound it with twine. I was still reeling, realising slowly that he had less concern for me than for the specimens.

  ‘Damn this weather,’ Robert exclaimed. ‘I suppose they are safer this way.’ He patted the parcel. As the ship keeled again and we both almost tumbled once more we could hear Sing Hoo’s voice raised in terror.

  ‘He is not much of a sailor,’ I said.

  Robert laughed. Now the specimens were safe he relaxed and, I suppose, realised there would be no harm in indulging me. ‘I expect he will be better when we are travelling overland. I suppose we can go to him now, if you still wish it.’

  We made our way along the dark, wooden passage clinging to the rail and entered the Chinamen’s cabin without knocking. Inside Sing Hoo was huddled in a corner. He was shaking and wild eyed, and sprung to his feet, shouting in a babble that neither Robert nor I could understand. His cabin mates regarded him with plain disgust.

  ‘Sit down,’ Robert ordered and reached out to take Sing Hoo’s arm. Like a cornered dog, Sing Hoo lashed out wildly, flaying with his arms and baring his teeth. Robert moved more swiftly than I would have expected. In a mere second Sing Hoo was floored and Robert held him there, his foot on the man’s back, his arms held tightly behind. My brother-in-law was competent in hand-to-hand combat—I knew that for myself already, ever since our spats at Portsmouth.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked Wang, who looked delighted at Robert’s assault on his rival and inclined his head eagerly.

  Robert removed his foot and let Sing Hoo’s arms go but the man did not rise. He remained silent on the bare boards.

  ‘It must break soon,’ Robert observed in the direction of the others who had stationed themselves edgily in the opposite corner to the fracas.

  There was nothing more to be said so I bowed as I had seen the Chinese do, my hands clasped before me, my eyes lowered, and I wished them all a peaceful goodnight.

  Robert was a brute but, I suppose, sometimes he needed to be. That night I dreamt myself as a warrior and I attacked him. I wrestled Robert to the floor. I bound his hands and made him watch as I shredded his stupid specimens right in his face. Then, scissors in hand, Jane materialised beside me.

  ‘Shush, Mary,’ she said.

  And suddenly I wasn’t a warrior any more. I was in a garden, on my knees. I still had the scissors but I used them to prune a rose bush. Coolies were watering the other plants around me. Everyone was Chinese. When I woke again I sighed deeply.

  ‘That man is driving me crazy,’ I whispered to myself.

  What infuriated me was that, despite his hateful behaviour, so often he was right.

  It was the habit of the smaller ships in these straits to feed the crew with fish foraged during the sailing but the sea was so unsettled that the nets could not be cast. After days of biscuits and grog the crew became surly. I saw Wang selling small portions of his cooked rice to some of the deckhands—rice that Robert had bought to supply him and Sing Hoo. Robert and I ate with Landers. The captain’s table was stocked with preserved food and after a while even these supplies began to dwindle to a spare diet of salted beef and tasteless crackers over which we discussed the Chinese coastline and, upon occasion, the recent war. Landers had fought, of course.

  ‘Sorted them out and no mistake,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Imagine refusing to trade! Cheeky beggars!’

  As the days progressed I tried to encourage Sing Hoo to eat something to sustain himself, but it was hopeless.

  ‘Many days more?’ he kept asking earnestly.

  All I could do was assure him that the weather would change.

  To divert myself from these troubles, I took to visiting Landers on the poop deck. Like all the naval officers I have met, he was fascinated by the stars and he offered to guide me round the night sky once the sun had fallen below the horizon. I never knew that stars rose and set. Landers instructed me good naturedly. To be so competent in making your way in the world as to need only the sky for guidance was intriguing and the man’s relaxed company was pleasant. With Robert I never knew what he might do next whereas Landers was easy—the kind of chap you could rely on.

  ‘The stars here are amazing,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Landers replied enthusiastically, ‘the sky is a huge map. You can tell the time by the orbits, you know—just like guessing the time of day when the sun is up.’

  I enjoyed learning about Orion and Gemini, seeing the moon move across the sky and learning what time of year one might expect a meteor shower or catch sight of a particular planet.

  One such evening I was on deck, staring at the sky with him when we hit a squall. These straits were infamous for poor weather but even counting that we had a bad run of it. We moved to the shelter of the poop where Landers gave orders to guide us through the swell and the men set to it. The waves were rising higher and higher. Then, all at once, there was a crash directly over our heads. I screamed as the timber roof shattered and the splintered wood rained down. Was it happening again? I crouched instinctively as a huge, grey mass quivered beside me out of nowhere. The fish was enormous and it seemed to have been stunned by its fall. The rest of the ship was clearly intact. We were not wrecked.

  Landers leant over to examine the trawl. He was admirably unruffled.

  ‘What have we here?’ he said.

  ‘Is it a shark?’ I asked, ris
ing slowly to my feet again.

  ‘No,’ Landers laughed. ‘“Is it a shark?” Don’t know the name of it to tell the truth, Miss Penney. Look at the ugly thing. But she’ll cook up delicious.’

  He called the bosun who reckoned the catch at thirty pounds, netted it and had it dispatched to the galley immediately to feed all hands.

  That evening the captain’s table was fine—the fish was fried and the cook had found a lemon to juice on it. We were ravenous, our appetites piqued by monotony.

  ‘This is why I love to journey,’ Landers said. ‘Delicious! A fish from the skies, who would have thought it?’

  By the time we reached Chimoo Bay and the Chinese travellers had disembarked, the herbarium specimens had dried. Robert packed them in fresh papers, labelled each carefully, put the lot in a large tin and sealed the lid with wax. He pasted the instructions to the front along with the address of the Royal Society. On the dock he commissioned parcel passage back to Hong Kong on an opium vessel at anchor. The box’s onward journey was to be made from there with the first Royal Navy ship returning to London. The seeds were given a similar treatment and dispatched to a nursery in Wiltshire with which Robert had an arrangement.

  We were to be at port for two days. The next stage of our journey as far as Chusan Island would take over a week. In the meantime Robert declared his intention to collect more specimens. After some enquiries it became clear that there was no plant nursery nearby, which was most disappointing. It was far easier, Robert said, to talk to someone who knew the local planting.

  ‘A good hour or two in a nursery can yield more than a week on the hillsides,’ he swore.

  ‘Robert,’ I asked. ‘Might I come with you?’

  Robert regarded me plainly and I could not tell what he was thinking. Then it seemed as if he had made some kind of calculation and he nodded.

  ‘You must do as I ask,’ he said.

  I was excited. This was to be my first expedition on the mainland. The next morning we caused quite a commotion at the dockside, the two of us side by side with Wang and Sing Hoo in our wake. Already we were in a place where Europeans were a rarity and European women practically unknown. For the first mile a curious crowd moved in the same general direction as Robert and I, observing us from a distance. Children gaped and pointed. I felt uncomfortable in my skirt. Not that it was fancy, or indeed, particularly wide. However, it irked me to see one boy explaining to his younger sister that white women were all shaped like bells and that my legs fitted snugly under its frame. With elaborate hand gestures he made it clear the extent of my limbs and the apparently hilarious size of my feet. Robert gripped my arm tightly and guided me onwards. I was not in any position to remonstrate with the child and would not have lifted my skirts to prove myself, of course, but the turn of my ankle had been commented upon in more than one review and I felt outraged. Robert, sensing this, moved me on firmly.