The Secret Mandarin

by Sara Sheridan

  Wang meantime was sent ahead to agree the chop on our new boat. There would be no need this time for special bribes as we would arrive Chinese and respectable—no one would know us.

  In the sedan I found some glances coming my way, much as ill-bred eyes might raise to see the occupants of a smart carriage at home. We passed no more for notice than that, however—our disguises were thoroughly accepted. This set me to wondering what I might try next. Could I stop and buy some of the bean curd dumplings that were being fried on the roadside? Would an inn serve me refreshment if I entered alone? How would they address me if I did? Among the bright market displays and the wafting aromas what did Chinese gentlemen do?

  I admit it thrilled me that we were the only white people in two hundred miles or more. That we bore no notice excited me further. That three fine Chinese ladies passed us and bowed coyly to Robert’s superior rank when, had they known themselves to be within a yard of a barbarian Hong-jou-min, they would have flung up their hands and run screaming, left me in wonder.

  Casting my mind back to grey London with all its restrictions I smiled to think of my new-found freedom. Gilston Road was no more than a prison. The tight-laced corsets to which I had once been accustomed were coffin-like in their restriction. By contrast, the loose Chinese trousers let me sit easily in the rickshaw and, if I wanted to descend, I could slip seamlessly through the crowd without having to account for the width of a European skirt. It was like being invisible. Truly I had not realised how much we women are penalised day to day, without even thinking of it. I had never considered these things a kind of punishment inflicted on all my sex. Our customs. Our clothes. Our manners. Women the world over suffer restrictions, I suppose, for think of Ling. Now, free of it all, I was high on the adventure and no matter what the dangers, I pitied my sister for being in London still and smiled that I was a man and in Hang Chow Foo.

  The new boat was far larger than our last and had a dozen other passengers. When we arrived at the dock Wang was shouting at the boatman and seemed to be appealing to those around him to agree that the chop suggested was too high. Still, it transpired this was the only barge to leave directly for Hwuy Chow Foo in the next week and, short of changing again part of the way at Wae Ping or Che Kieng (where we knew there was a fortified border crossing), we had little choice. The cabins allotted to us were cramped and the hold was so full that our excess luggage had to be stored in the living quarters.

  The boatman, seeing Robert’s finery, had some second thoughts about the space he had allotted for our use. He bowed very low and, as is respectful, spoke to Robert through me. He apologised and hoped his humble cabin was not too lowly. He did not reduce his tariff. Robert nodded gracefully. The money was fine. Later though, from a safe distance, I heard the man boasting to another boatman what rich travellers he had aboard and of the large sum of money he had secured for the passage. I thought to remonstrate with him but Robert pre-empted me.

  ‘Take things coolly and never lose your temper,’ he advised. ‘We will pick our fights, Mary, and none of them over a small sum of money.’

  He was right. We had more to lose than a few cash.

  At last, we checked our affairs were in order before we set off. Robert’s trays of plants lined part of the deck, providing a colourful display. The boxes of seeds and bulbs were stowed below. We drank five grain spirit in our cabin, each downing one parting shot from a rough flask that we procured from a public house at the dockside. It made my eyes water.

  ‘Here we are.’ Robert toasted. ‘A long way to go.’

  But in Hang Chow Foo, it transpired, you could count on nothing and we had no sooner set down our cups than Wang burst into the room, with news of a potentially deadly development in our fortunes.

  ‘Master,’ he reported, his eyes to the ground. ‘There is a mandarin aboard. He has taken the front cabin.’

  This stopped us in our tracks—we had not considered such a thing. To be held in close quarters with a mandarin held a real danger of being unmasked. We had anticipated our fellow travellers to be boathands or small merchants—those with business between the two towns—easily cowed by the status of Robert’s disguise.

  ‘How long will the man be on board?’ Robert questioned Wang who disappeared to find out.

  It occurred to me that a party of mandarins at an afternoon tea party at Dr Chang’s house in Ning-po was one thing and a party of soldiers for ten minutes quite another, but to travel for days disguised and in the close company of an undoubted enemy was far more serious. How closely our disguises would pass inspection I could not be sure—and then there were our habits. Small details could so easily arouse suspicion in someone truly at ease with the trappings of privilege. Our cover was not designed to withstand such scrutiny and the trip would be horribly risky.

  ‘He will journey with us nine or ten days,’ Wang reported back. ‘I told his servant you had received a letter and might be called home unexpectedly.’

  ‘Well, that settles it. We will have to disembark,’ Robert sighed. ‘There is nothing for it. The quarters are too close. It is rotten luck. Even Bertie would not attempt it.’

  I agreed. The risk was far greater than any difficulty we might have securing cabins on another vessel. It was a shame for we were all set and ready.

  ‘It will take some time to find another passage,’ Robert resigned himself. ‘We best find lodgings as far as we can from the garrison. There will be another boat soon enough, I suppose.’

  He reached for his notebook and I turned to pack the few items I had taken out on our arrival. Then we left the cabin with Wang ahead of us.

  You never can tell, though, when good fortune will give a sudden surge in your direction. As we were about to turn and climb the stairs we all halted at once in the thin hallway, stopped in our tracks by the pungent aroma emanating from the front suite of rooms.

  ‘Opium,’ Robert whispered, an idea dawning. ‘Are these his quarters, Wang?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you smell it before?’

  ‘No.’

  If the man had only just lit his pipe, he must be puffing away like billy-o. The sweet smell was very strong and immediately it was clear that the mandarin was an ‘opium drinker’—an addict—the kind who had taken the drug too far. I had known one or two actors who had gone that way and more than one or two aristocrats at home—weak-willed, I’d judged them. A grin broke out on my face for this trait in our travelling companion was wonderful news.

  Robert motioned us back towards our abandoned cabin and sized up our options as the information dawned on us. The Emperor had decreed that the smoking of opium must cease. It had been made law that addicts in the mandarin class would not only lose their own appointments, but also any appointments or privileges held by their family. This meant that the mandarin at the front of the boat was a renegade the minute he struck a light. He had almost as much to lose as we did. We sent Wang to find out whatever he could.

  ‘All right. Perhaps we can stay,’ Robert said slowly. ‘I never thought I’d turn blackmailer, but if it comes to that, it comes to it. Besides, if he’s an opium addict he will hardly be compos mentis in his duties.’

  I nodded. Taken too far, the drug had its devotees cast everything aside, however dear to them.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘at the very least, if he has smoked enough in ten minutes to make the hall stink like that, I warrant that the man will be less dangerous than dodging the garrison at Hang Chow Foo for another week.’

  Robert nodded.

  ‘What do you say then, Mary? Shall we stay?’

  I said yes.

  We found later that the mandarin had almost disembarked when he heard of our passage on board—a high-ranking official such as Sing Wa, after all, would surely uphold the Emperor’s decree. Wang, however, managed things admirably, falling into conversation with the man’s servants and advancing Sing Wa a reputation of good-natured liberalism in the matter of opium. The situation was, in fact, to ou
r advantage.

  With us settled on journeying with this renegade, and him, it would seem, settled on journeying with us, we set off finally, despite all the misgivings, only an hour over time. As the barge pulled away from the city limits Robert received an unexpected invitation to the man’s cabin.

  ‘His judgement is clearly out!’ Robert swore. ‘What is he doing?’

  But it seemed the mandarin had ordered a sumptuous dinner to be delivered before we left the city and he simply wanted to share it. Given that our standard rations were rice congee, which we could supplement with meat, vegetables and tea from our own supplies, Robert jumped at the chance of more luxurious fare. And besides, he said, it might seem odd to refuse. Our fellow traveller, evidently an epicure in all respects, had chosen a roasted duck and other sumptuous, speciality dishes—pork dumplings with plums and fried vegetables in bean sauce.

  ‘What will you discuss?’ I asked Robert as he readied himself.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The man has been smoking since he came aboard,’ he said simply. ‘I can only guess the standard of his dinner conversation. The Chinese do not talk personally, in any case. It will be fine. Between his servants and Wang we will manage to translate.’

  As it grew dark I ate alone, spooning in my rice congee with little enthusiasm, knowing Robert was faring far better further along the boat. After I had eaten I sat up reading an extract translated from the Ch’a Ching: The Book of Tea. It was a history of tea in China, full of tall tales and excitement. I was tired though. The lamp flickered and my eyes strained but I vowed to stay awake until Robert returned. When he did it was late and he was merry.

  ‘We need not jump ship then?’ I checked.

  ‘I could scarcely breathe in there,’ he chortled. ‘It is a miasma! If that man rises before we reach Che Kieng it will be a miracle.’

  It seemed we were set.

  Our journey took us through the thoroughfares of uneventful towns: Seh Mun Yien, Yen Chow Foo and Wae Ping. At each settlement beggars appeared alongside the boat, soliciting alms. The boatman always gave them rice after which they would continue to walk beside us for some miles until it became apparent that no further sustenance would be forthcoming. I judged the boatman kind to give alms at all.

  On our way Robert collected pine seeds. ‘Cryptomeria japonica,’ he proclaimed them. We also found varieties of weeping cypresses, palms, flowers and mosses at the waterside, and a beautiful, old funereal cypress in the garden of an inn. We purloined seeds daily, which I cleaned and dried and sealed up in little bags, for now it was I who did the work with the seeds and Robert who helped with the twine. As an honoured passenger, the boatman was patient with Sing Wa, indulging his obvious eccentricities and waiting until he had collected his fill. I enjoyed helping and found myself more and more interested in the species we encountered. It was easier physically too. I could carry more now as I was dressed in easy clothing and could walk far further afield. Without the whalebone corset to inhibit me, I climbed trees and scrambled up rock faces, often finding at the end of the day that my limbs were sore—I was using muscles I had never had the chance to stretch since I was a child.

  ‘Good man,’ Robert said one day when I retrieved a cutting from an out of the way branch by pulling myself up towards it and slipping easily along on all fours like a cat.

  ‘Good man!’ I laughed, wide eyed, and he looked sheepish.

  But it was easy to let the fact I was a woman slip the mind. It slipped my own mind often.

  Further westwards Robert found several varieties of evergreen holly, which caused vicious scratches as we cut them down for the herbarium.

  ‘It is the wrong time of year for berries,’ I noted.

  Robert nodded. The boughs we had taken were spiky and green, some edged with a lime or a yellow leaf. There was not one splash of red.

  ‘Where do you think we will be at Christmas?’ I mused as I carefully placed the cuttings into the basket. It was a long way off.

  ‘St Bartholomew’s, Kensington,’ Robert teased.

  That was the Church we usually attended for the carol service. The choir was quite famous at home and Jane was fond of anything festive, so we always went there in addition to the services at St Mary’s, which was nearer to the house. This year, like last, we would miss the graceful harmonies in the freezing transept. It looked as if when the time came we might have holly though.

  Robert swore as he grazed himself. He did not excuse his language and I did not pull him up on it. The bushes were treacherous and I had several red, flecked scratches of my own. We treated our skin with lavender oil to help it heal and for days the heady fragrance fought the smell of the mandarin’s smoke as the holly wounds healed.

  Along the way we stopped for refreshment at inns, in lieu of which I expect the boatman received some recompense from the landlords. Robert’s assessment of our mandarin friend proved correct and at each of the stops we made he did not rise but ordered his dinner brought to him on the barge. The dishes arrived laden high with exotic-looking vegetables and some pork or duck, which it seemed, were his favourites. I drew him in my notebook, resplendent like some pasha, on a silk-lined couch, his opium pipe in his hand. Robert found this hilarious.

  ‘His cabin is like our own,’ he scoffed, ‘there are no satin pillows in there. And the man himself is very thin.’

  But I liked the idea of the luxuriating mandarin, plump and hidden, puffing away on his kong see pak. If his culinary tastes were anything to go by he had an eye for the best in everything.

  In the evenings I tutored Robert in Cantonese, helping him with his vowel sounds.

  ‘Place your tongue here on the roof of your mouth,’ I instructed, showing him what to do by holding my own mouth open wide.

  Robert peered vaguely towards my epiglottis.

  ‘No, no, further forward,’ I corrected him as he tried to copy me, ‘and keep the lips still.’

  The man was in the terrible habit of moving his lips too much and it was this, I felt, that was at the heart of his struggle to make his Cantonese more fluent.

  It struck me as ironic, I must say, that Robert was the person I was probably closest to in the world. I had despised him in London and truly loathed him as far as Hong Kong. Now, two fellows facing the world together with a single mission, we had become all but inseparable and I could not imagine my days without him. My life in London felt like a curiosity or a vague memory—like a disturbing dream that was thankfully very, very far away. I dreamt of home still, often surprised in the morning to wake alone in my cabin instead of in the four-poster bed I had in Soho, with the arms of a lover around me. Or scrabbling ever after the cloudy memories of my childhood, as if I could not quite grasp hold of the meaning of what had happened—sure that Jane knew something I didn’t of the winter my mother died or how the house had been when our father drank and there was shouting and I could not remember why.

  I did not discuss these matters with Robert. Most of the time our society was fraternal and based around our common interest in the trip. Sometimes, though, he branched out and we had a conversation or two that he would not, I’m sure have generally had with a lady, but then the boundaries were blurring and we had crossed and recrossed many lines.

  ‘What did you think of the Chartists?’ he asked one evening.

  ‘William’s father backed them,’ I replied, without a shadow of the old bad feeling at the utterance of my lover’s name, ‘and I think he had good reason.’

  ‘Here,’ said Robert, as if we were in the club room at the Carlton ‘let me top up your glass. Tell me, Mary, why did you embark on an affair with that man? I have never understood.’

  ‘It is difficult for me to remember,’ I admitted with a smile. ‘Though ‘tis no terrible thing to be a mistress. No one decried Emma Hamilton for her love of Lord Nelson.’

  ‘But to be scorned,’ Robert said. ‘Like Byron’s woman. You take a risk. You take a risk with something very precious.’

  ‘P
erhaps in London,’ I admitted, ‘I did not realise its value. I judged William badly—I truly believed he would keep me. I thought we were in love. Though here, Robert, I feel that I have changed. You were right about me. I was both vain and spoilt,’ I laughed. ‘I expect I am vain still.’

  Robert chuckled. ‘Well, vanity is a lady’s prerogative, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘And how many would shave their hair, I ask, as you have done?’

  I thought of Miss Pottinger in Hong Kong, of Jane, and of Mrs Hunter, no doubt now ensconced in a mansion in Calcutta with her hateful husband. I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘They are the ones who have missed out,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world than here.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  I considered a moment. London. With its delicate pastries, smooth burgundy, crisp, lavender-scented linen and hot baths. London with my beautiful baby and even the society of my sister and, for that matter, the acclaim of the critics. I had fought leaving the city for months. Now would I trade it for this adventure?

  ‘Never,’ I told him. A whole new world had opened up to me. ‘I have changed my mind.’

  ‘You are quite remarkable,’ he commented, and that made me ape him.

  ‘Quite remarkable, Miss Penney,’ I teased, ‘Jolly, jolly, jolly remarkable, in fact.’

  Eyes ablaze, he bid me goodnight.

  At length we reached Che Kieng. Robert checked his notes and declared that by all accounts the place was very heavily fortified.

  ‘It is a stronghold,’ he pronounced.’there is a huge garrison. I’d like to get a look at it if I can.’

  He paced the cabin, checking and re-checking his outfit and glancing out of the window restlessly. The dangers were always on his mind.

  As the canal was the main thoroughfare for all goods, most settlements were nearby and on our way into the city we passed what was clearly the main military site for the area. Perched on an embankment to one side, with its own small canal off the main waterway, it was a town in itself. Robert stood on the deck and surveyed the barracks in the distance. They were a good half mile off and were larger, I think, than he had anticipated. He put upon the boatman to draw up under the excuse that he had seen some plants that interested him, and the man, as ever, complied. Like many people we met, the money blinded him, and he was eager to keep in Sing Wa’s favour.