Mandarin

  He had passed virtually unscathed through his greatest personal crisis—and emerged even more daring. In 1865, a cabal of jealous Mandarins had impeached him for corruption, which, they alleged, merited the death penalty. Fortunately, their indictment overreached itself, ridiculously charging that he had misappropriated forty million taels from the internal customs dues of Kiangsu Province. Since that sum almost equaled the entire revenues of the Empire, a detailed accounting of Kiangsu’s finances convinced the Censorate that the indictment should be dismissed. Besides, the Viceroy Tseng Kuo-fan had persuaded the Empress Dowager that his protégé’s talents were essential to the Dynasty. The malicious charge apparently raised hardly a ripple in the Mandarin’s career.

  But David knew that months of desperate maneuvering had been required to clear his chief’s name. Because the major charge was so ludicrous, his defenders had managed to divert attention from actual graft that greatly exceeded the generous limits the Court would normally tolerate. The Mandarin’s tax collectors had taken ruthless toll of every teahouse, gambling parlor, pastry stall, and barber shop, as well as exacting extortionate grain and land taxes. His appointees manipulated the revenues of Kiangsu, while he controlled the Shanghai Customs dues and monopolized both the purchase and the production of foreign weapons.

  David considered his chief’s self-aggrandizement necessary. Nor was his conscience troubled by the substantial benefits he and Saul Haleevie derived from their intimacy with the Mandarin. Since Li Hung-chang, Earl of Su Yi, was truly indispensable, it was fitting that he should make his personal position impregnable by building a wall of personal wealth around himself. Let satirists make rhymes asserting: The Earl’s rats glean, and the Empire grows lean! Let even the children repeat the canard: Every cock that crows for Li Hung-chang is sleek! Better calumny and riches than penury and impotence.

  “Have you considered exactly how Yehenala can rule us all so imperiously?” the Mandarin asked abruptly. “Do you really understand how the woman works?”

  “Her position, sir, is unchallengeable. It’s buttressed by Imperial power, by precedent, and by the reverence due her position.”

  “You needn’t play games with me, boy.” The Mandarin glanced at his subordinate under ostentatiously raised eyebrows. “If you don’t trust me, how can I trust you?”

  David smiled placatingly. For the second time that morning he felt like a clumsy schoolboy.

  “How can such a small woman exercise great power?” the Mandarin mused, and added tangentially: “You know, David, she’s much like your sister Fronah—on a grander stage. I’ve watched that other young woman grow and become powerful—in herself and toward others because she believes in herself and our cause so powerfully. Not only my Mandarins but the foreign taipans are overwhelmed by your sister. She was, from what you tell me, a scapegrace of a girl, but I swear, she’s become a formidable woman. Even I don’t relish challenging her. By Heaven, if she’s an example of what the West can produce, we must redouble our efforts to strengthen China. She reminds me so much of Yehenala. Both have triumphed in fields from which most women are, quite properly, excluded. The reason is, I think, the same. Both married weak and self-indulgent men who left them discontented … unfulfilled, as the foreigners say. So they’ve both found their fulfillment in deeds we normally think only men can perform. Deeds done better than most men.”

  “The Empress Dowager, sir?” David reminded his chief. “What of her? She rules not only by her strong character, but by other means.”

  “How can a small woman exercise such great power? I was asking when I diverted myself, wasn’t I? The foreigners, as you know, ascribe infinite cunning and implacable ruthlessness to our Imperial mistress. That’s true, but for the rest, it’s really quite simple. First, she unhesitatingly flouts any Dynastic Law that doesn’t suit her. There’s never before been a female autocrat of the Ching Dynasty. Her mere existence is a violation of Dynastic precedent.

  “Then there’s that bravo the Baronet Jung Lu. Everybody knows their relationship, but no one dares say a word, not even the Censors. If it came to it, even I’d champion him because he’s on our side in his thickheaded way, even if he only thinks of guns—and thinks those guns drop from Heaven. But his guns always support Yehenala, his guns and my guns.

  “Moreover, she terrifies the Imperial Princes by stringently enforcing Dynastic Law upon them. Even Prince Kung’s had his rough passages with her, especially after he connived in the execution of her eunuch An Hai-teh. But even Kung, though Presiding Justice of the Imperial Clan Court, cannot oppose the death sentences she imposes. Yehenala rules the Imperial family with terror.”

  “Clearly, sir!” David said forthrightly. “By punishing her known enemies savagely, she reduces her potential enemies to submission.”

  “Yehenala must also command the willing obedience of the Mandarinate, which is overwhelmingly Chinese. So she stresses the Confucian virtues—above all, the subject’s unalterable duty to obey the Throne. Filial piety requires the Emperor to obey her—and the Mandarins, too. Filial piety, I said.”

  “Your point is taken, sir. And I’ll hold you to your promise.”

  “Do that, David. Now, her biggest problem. Since the Manchus are degenerate, she must depend on Chinese viceroys and governors to administer the Empire. Men like the old Viceroy, the Marquess Tseng Kuo-fan, who is, sadly, not long for this world, and men like me. She needs us, and she’s forced to tolerate our power in the regions, power so great we could challenge the Throne if we wished. She suspects our motives and our connections with the foreigners, also our autonomous armies, our modern arsenals and factories. So she heaps us with honors and, mostly, gives us a free hand.

  “But she also incites the conservatives to attack us. Think of impeachment, of our constant battle to introduce new ways. She gives us power with one hand and checks us with the other. Her overwhelming imperative is not the good of the Dynasty, but retaining her own power. Perhaps she thinks she is the Ching Dynasty.”

  “What’s to be done, sir?”

  “The Emperor will be claiming his birthright soon. Probably this year, at the latest next year. Furious and hard-pressed, Heaven knows what she’ll do. Perhaps unleash the conservatives, undermine my position, turn her back on progress—anything to preserve her power.”

  “We can’t keep the Emperor from claiming his throne or keep him amenable to his mother’s orders,” David said.

  “I’ve been thinking. Remember, she’s a woman, a frivolous woman as well as a vindictive woman. The answer may be to divert her.”

  David poured tea into the celadon cups. The Mandarin extracted a long bamboo pipe with a brass mouthpiece from his felt boot, where he had learned to keep it during his campaigning days.

  “Divert her?” David asked when the pipe was glowing gray and smoke drifted before his chief’s slitted eyes. “She won’t retire. Why, she’s not even thirty-six yet. And Yehenala will never be content to play at being Empress Dowager like Niuhura. But even you can’t give her a realm of her own to rule.”

  The pinch of tobacco in the small brass bowl was already consumed. The Mandarin did not refill his pipe, but laid it on the lacquered tray. His movements were deliberate, as always when he was struck by a new idea; he would not allow his natural impulsiveness to lure him into hasty decisions.

  “You have learned,” he finally said. “I’m grateful for your suggestion.”

  “My suggestion, sir?”

  “We will give her a realm of her own. Prince Kung can presumably keep the Emperor from behaving too outrageously, and we’ll give Yehenala a new domain. She’s always mourned the Summer Palaces. Let her rebuild them and rule them as her private realm. It’s work enough for a lifetime. She’ll rise to that lure, as long as she still believes her word is still the last word in the Empire.”

  “A double lure!” David exclaimed. “Revenge on the barbarians and an everlasting monument to her own glory.”

  The Mandarin smiled complacent
ly.

  “But can it be done?” David was not employed to flatter but to question. “To outwit Yehenala at the game she knows best—power?”

  “Two years ago, when I took over this viceroyalty, war with the French looked inevitable. After the northern bumpkins sacked the Convent of the Sisters of Charity and slaughtered the nuns. Mind you, they had provocation. After that imbecilic French consul fired at them, they naturally tore him apart. All the wise men said our alternatives were stark: either surrender or war.”

  “It almost came to that.”

  “But we pulled that one off. For the first time, we used gunboat diplomacy against the foreigners. With Tientsin encircled by my Army of Huai, the French fleet offshore was powerless. So we compromised: neither surrender nor war, though the French thought they got what they demanded. The same strategy will work again. Yehenala’s position is threatened, and we must see that she retires gracefully like the French. But she must think she wants to throw all her energies into building her monument for eternity—even though she doesn’t yet know that’s what she wants.”

  “How, sir?”

  “Not so fast, my boy. Leave it to me for the moment. There’s no rush, though I am getting to be an old man.”

  “Hardly, sir. It’s not a month since your fiftieth birthday. The Sage said: At fifty I clearly knew the will of Heaven.”

  “Actually forty-nine by Western reckoning, which I, somehow, prefer.” A flicker of vanity animated the Mandarin’s smile. “But old enough to see clearly that our doings are sometimes rather sordid.”

  “Sordid?” David protested. “But they’re necessary!”

  “I didn’t say they weren’t necessary. You know, David, I don’t do these things for myself. I’d really prefer to retire to my estates in Anhwei and write verse.”

  “Retire?” David was alarmed at the conventional valetudinarian sentiments from his apparently tireless chief. “But you can’t.”

  “You’re quite right. I am necessary—perhaps, unfortunately, essential. I needn’t remind you that China now faces a crisis absolutely unprecedented in three thousand years. We thought we had seen everything, but our ancestors never saw anything like the implacable intrusion of these foreigners. Without Western guns and ships—and the will to use them—China will be swallowed up. Heaven, it appears, has chosen me to arm our countrymen. Even more important, to teach them they must abandon their arrogance and learn new ways if China is to survive. Self-strengthening is our only hope.”

  David had frequently discussed the Empire’s peril with his chief and colleagues. They were making progress under the Mandarin’s guidance, though, perhaps, not yet satisfactory progress. Not for three thousand years, which meant during all her recorded history, had China faced such overwhelming peril—and the lack of precedent made his compatriots nervous.

  “However, let’s not talk, but act. I want a detailed report on the building of the new fort at Taku. Never while I am Viceroy of Chihli will foreigners again force open the port of the capital.”

  “The Taku fort.” David made a note. “And, sir, the China Merchants’ Steamship Company. You told me to remind you.”

  “Yes, we must have approval immediately. Draft a letter to Prince Kung for me. Your parent Haleevie is ready to assemble the capital?”

  “Yes, sir. It will, as you require, appear to be only Chinese capital.”

  “Good. We must carry our own goods, not the foreigners. Only Haleevie would I trust to collaborate.”

  “The arsenals, sir?”

  “I’ve been neglecting them, haven’t I? Abstract the reports for me. Shanghai, I assume, runs reasonably well. There’s talent in Shanghai. But the arsenal in Nanking is a problem. Also the shipyards. I’ll never forget the two steamers that turned turtle.”

  “It goes better now, sir. However, I’ll have abstracts prepared. Incidentally, the apprentice shipwrights are ready to leave for France and Germany.”

  “And my long-term project? The youngsters I’m sending to America?”

  “Preparing to leave for Hong Kong. Mothers and fathers wept at parting with boys of twelve, but twenty boys have received their passports.”

  “They must attend secondary schools before entering that university. Ya-lu they call it?”

  “Yale, sir.”

  “Yale, of course. But those seeds can’t bear fruit for a decade or more. I must have my iron-clad ships for my navy now. What of that young American officer?”

  “Gabriel Hyde has been most helpful at Yale, sir. I’ve just written again inviting him to visit. I’ve sent the passage money and the honorarium, as you instructed.”

  “Good, David, good. I liked that young man. He’ll help me get my ironclads. But, David, we have so little time!”

  CHAPTER 64

  October 12, 1872

  SHANGHAI

  The insistent rhyme popped unbidden into the mind of Gabriel Hyde, Captain, U.S.N., retired, as the ocean liner Empress of China, two days out of Kobe, was driven by her single big propeller and the wind in her square sails toward the country he had not seen for almost a decade: June, too soon. July, stand by. August, it must. September, remember. October, all over. The catchy jingle warned sailors of typhoons.

  Since it was mid-October as the ship’s prow cleaved the green waters of the East China Sea beneath him, he need not fear that the tai-feng, the great wind, would swoop out of the clouded dawn sky.

  He had come to manhood in China. For more than eight years, from the time the callow lieutenant in the U. S. Navy, just past twenty-three, stepped ashore on the Bund until the embarkation of the seasoned thirty-one-year-old commander in the Imperial Water Force, he had fought in the civil war of the land that lay just over the horizon. He had seen and endured much between that departure in 1863 and this return late in 1872. But China had put her stamp upon his formative years. Whatever he had now become, his mind and his spirit had been shaped by those early years.

  He was today no longer as confident of his maturity and his powers as he had been when he left Shanghai more than nine years earlier to fight in his own country’s civil war. A little less certainty and a little more wisdom? Perhaps. Nonetheless, at forty Gabriel Hyde felt he was coming home.

  His seaman’s eye automatically noted that the choppy waves were subsiding and the steamer’s yawing giving way to a roll as the offshore swell lifted her hull. The green water was tinged with silt, and the foam curling from the prow no longer sparkled white. The pale-yellow bow wave reminded him of the golden spray spewing from the paddle wheels of the flotilla that had carried the army of the Mandarin Li Hung-chang past the Heavenly Capital a decade earlier.

  The Empress crossed a clearly delineated line, a visible frontier on the surface of the ocean. Green and white-capped on one side, the water was darker and less turbulent on the other. Heavy with alluvial soil, the sea was suddenly tawny. The land was reaching out to embrace the steamer and to claim him again.

  He had had a good war, as the British said. His lieutenant’s commission restored because the Union desperately required trained naval officers, he had fought with Farragut at Mobile Bay. Rising rapidly to commander because of his experience, he had commanded a fast cruiser hunting Confederate commerce raiders in the Pacific. But he had come no closer to the coast he was now approaching than the Sandwich Islands, which the natives called Hawaii. Promoted to captain, he had commanded one of the ironclad rams that were the pride of the U. S. Navy. In 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he was superintendent of a Navy shipyard in New England.

  Weary of bloodshed after more than a decade of battle, he had declined the Navy Department’s invitation to stay on. He had not had a good peace, though it had begun promisingly.

  Realizing that all he knew was war, he had enrolled at Yale University to study English literature and Chinese history. He had within a year found himself no longer a rather elderly student but a young professor teaching strategy and Chinese history, since the little he knew
was more than any of the instructors. Those first years in New Haven had been restful emotionally as well as physically, which was precisely what he wanted. Communing with America’s best minds had been stimulating, which was also what he wanted.

  His contentment was crowned by his marriage to Jane Bewley, the twenty-six-year-old daughter of his father’s law partner in Salem. After the first galvanic shock when their bodies and minds joined, their life together was serene. That idyllic repose, too, he had wanted.

  Yet he had become restless even before Jane’s death shattered the idyll. Though the great trees on College Green still delighted him when their leaves opened pale in the spring or flamed russet in the fall, the regular succession of the northern seasons was, somehow, enervating. The long New England winter was onerous, and the brief heat of summer was tantalizing. His colleagues’ passions were entirely intellectual. They were born spectators, happy to watch while others acted and they commented—sometimes profoundly but quite often vapidly.

  Jane’s death had ended whatever pleasure he still found in academia. She had been his sheet anchor. Still tormented by guilt after more than two years, he recoiled from remembering how she had died. In his loneliness he had briefly returned to the Navy, commanding a capital ship for six months before realizing that the dull routine of peace was stifling him. He had then traveled in the Far West, sending dispatches to the Hartford Courant, until he was revolted by the crude life of a wilderness stained by the blood of hundreds of thousands of hapless bearded bison and thousands of bewildered painted Indians.