China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

popular by the day. Food was still scarce; silver money was in short supply. But he’d given us peace and some order. Things were slowly getting better. The mandarins knew he was trying his best, and the ordinary people knew it, too. And he was here in Beijing, sharing our hardships, not skulking north of the Great Wall. “At least he behaves like a king,” people said.

—

But I learned other qualities of kingship from the prince also. One day an old scholar visited him. I came in just after the old man had left and found the prince looking thoughtful. “I’ve learned something new today, Lacquer Nail,” he said to me. “You have heard of the old Silk Road across the desert and steppes to the west?”

“Your slave has heard the caravans still come,” I said.

“In the days of the Ming, they came all the time. The barbarians of the West were not so strange to us then. The old man also told me that we had a great fleet of ships that sailed to other western lands far to the south, where men have dark skins. All kinds of treasures and spices came from there. But those fleets were broken up and even the records of them were destroyed or lost. I had never heard of this until today.”

“It is very strange, Highness,” I agreed.

“We have been wrong to cut ourselves off from the world. It has made us ignorant.”

A few days later I brought in refreshments to him when he had granted an audience to a young British barbarian whom he employed to organize the customs collections in the ports.

Now I was always pleased that the prince encouraged the employment of skilled barbarians in matters of finance and trade. For together with the use of men like Gordon in our army, it let all the people see that the barbarians of the West were being tamed and becoming obedient servants of the empire. So I had expected the barbarian to be kneeling respectfully before him. But to my surprise I found the two men sitting at a table side by side.

Seeing my astonishment, the prince laughed. “This fellow has been teaching me the arithmetics of trade,” he said. “It’s quite shocking how little I know. I’m like a child. I was educated in all the things a mandarin should know,” he went on. “Confucius, the classics, how to write an elegant essay. Yet I was never taught anything of these practical affairs. Our system of education is clearly deficient.”

At the time I was unhappy that he should say such a thing in front of a barbarian. But now I realize that the prince was showing his kingly nature in the highest degree. For a great king must constantly desire to improve his kingdom by learning new things. And to learn, he must be curious and also humble. For a proud man never learns anything.

I heard only one person speak against Prince Gong. And that was my father. “Prince Gong has one great weakness,” he told me.

“Oh,” I said. “What’s that?”

“He should kill the emperor,” he replied, “and rule in his place.” He wasn’t joking.

“Don’t say such a thing,” I begged him. “You could get us all in trouble.”

“Who was the greatest of all the emperors of the mighty Tang dynasty?” he asked.

“The Emperor Taizong,” I replied, “called by history the Emperor Wen.” Though twelve hundred years had passed, he was still a legend.

“And how did he come to power? By killing his two brothers and persuading the emperor his father to step down. That’s breaking every Confucian principle. Yet he did it, and it was the right thing to do.”

“I don’t know about right,” I said. “Anyway, the emperor has a son, by the Noble Consort Yi, who should succeed him.”

“We need a strong ruler, not a boy who’ll be just as useless as his father.”

“Prince Gong will behave correctly,” I said stiffly.

“That’s what’s wrong with him,” my father replied.

—

“If you want the emperor dead,” I said next time I saw him, “you may not have long to wait.”

It was absurd. The man was only approaching his thirtieth birthday. He’d looked terrible before he’d skulked off to the north, but by spring we heard from the Hunting Palace that he was falling apart. They were bringing girls in to him for orgies, they said. He was drinking and taking opium; his legs were so swollen he couldn’t stand. Was he deliberately trying to debauch himself to death?

Summer came. A great comet appeared in the sky. Some people said that the comet was a sign of hope, but most thought it meant the emperor was about to depart.

“The Mandate of Heaven is being withdrawn,” my father said. “End of the dynasty.”

I remember the moment I knew the emperor had died. It was a sweltering day in August. I’d been to see my family, and I was walking back to Prince Gong’s mansion. A heavy downpour of rain had just ended. The dust in the streets was still sodden.

A wedding procession came by. There had been a lot of weddings that summer, because the rule was that when an emperor died, the nation had to go into mourning, and nobody in the capital could marry for a hundred days. So anyone who wanted to get married just then was in a hurry.

There was the bride, a pretty girl all dressed in red for her wedding and carried in a gilded litter. Her brightly dressed escorts were looking full of themselves. People were smiling and applauding as they passed. And then suddenly I saw a man come hurrying towards them and say something to the escorts. Next thing, the little procession was running down the street with the bride as fast as they could, with the poor girl clinging on to the sides of the chair for dear life. I looked quickly up at the sky to see if there was a cloudburst coming, but the sky was clear