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

home and your little girl. She has your beauty. And with bound feet, she could find a rich husband.”

“We hope she will find a good husband,” she said quietly.

“You should also teach her embroidery and so forth, and some of the other arts that belong to a young lady. She should learn to recite a few poems. That sort of thing.”

Why was he telling her this? She had no idea. But in order to say something and because it was so much in her mind, she heard herself respond: “You have to spend money to get a rich husband. I’ve learned that much already.”

“Ah.” He placed his hands on the rail of the bridge and stared at them. “I may be able to help you there.” He turned to her. “If you like.” He saw her look suspicious. “I shall be in Guilin Prefecture for a year, maybe a year and a half,” he went on quickly. “I want you to accompany me.”

“Accompany?” She frowned. “You mean as a concubine?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you get a concubine there?”

“You have haunted me ever since we met that night with Nio. I have thought of you ever since. I came two hundred and fifty miles out of the way to find you.”

“Have you a wife?”

“She will not be there. You can bring your little girl, if you want. She would learn much that way, about how a man like me lives. It could be useful to her.”

Have her child living in this man’s house where she was a concubine? It was not what she wanted.

But she couldn’t deny that what he’d said was true. She knew almost nothing about the sophisticated lifestyle of a rich man or a mandarin. The habits, the conversation, the social rituals. Nor did anyone in her family or in the hamlet, if truth were told. If Bright Moon wanted to find a rich husband, a year or two in a mandarin’s house would be the perfect education for her.

A year or two—or until he gets tired of me, she thought, and kicks me out. She didn’t want her little girl to see that.

“My daughter stays here at home,” she said.

“As you wish. Does that mean that you might consider my proposition?”

“I would be free to leave in a year and a half?”

“Yes.”

Mei-Ling thought. Buy the land, she’d told her sons. The money for Bright Moon would turn up. She’d believed it was the right thing to do. But the truth was she had no idea where that extra money would come from. And now, suddenly, here was an opportunity for her to earn the money herself. However little she liked it, her duty was clear. As long as the money was enough and she was sure of getting it.

There were risks, of course. This mandarin might mistreat her. She supposed she could endure a beating or two. If it got worse, she could always run away. Or maybe kill him, she thought, and then kill myself. So long as the money was secure.

“You’d have to pay me in advance,” she said. “You’d have to pay me now.”

“And trust you?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you might say that.”

He took out a small bag full of coins, put it in her hands, and opened it. She looked inside. She could see the silver coins by the moonlight. She didn’t take them out to count them, but it was quite a lot of money.

“I need two bags like this,” she said.

He looked impressed. And to her surprise, pulled out another bag. She looked inside that one, too.

“The same,” he said. “You have my word.”

Mei-Ling calculated quickly. If she gave the bags of silver to Mother at once, the older woman could hide them where no one would find them, not even her own two sons.

She looked at this man she hardly knew. What would Second Son say? That she was doing what she had to, she supposed, since he was not there to help her. Yes, she told herself, he’d say something like that. And just for a moment, the first time since she’d heard of his death, it seemed to Mei-Ling that she felt her husband’s presence.

“We shall have to ask the head of the family,” she said.

◦

Mei-Ling liked Guilin. Shi-Rong could see she did. It had been a long journey, some three hundred miles north of the hamlet, but when they got there, they both agreed: The place was quite remarkable. Millennia of rains and flowing waters had sculpted the soft karst stone of the region into a landscape of miniature mountains, steep as anthills, hundreds of feet high and covered with green trees, except for the grey cliffs on their sides, here and there, where even mountain trees couldn’t find their footing. A pleasant river, called the Li, flowed beside the town.

On sunny days the hills gathered around the intimate plateaus of pastures and rice fields, like giant green dolmens protecting a sanctuary. But when the mists filled the river valleys, then the onlooker seemed to be witnessing an army of hooded gods moving slowly through a world of clouds. Shi-Rong had seen such landscapes in paintings and supposed they must be imaginary. Now he discovered that this paradise was real.

She liked the subtropical climate, rather hot and humid for his own taste, and she liked the people, too.

Some of the local tribes had lived around Guilin since before China was a state. Each tribe seemed to have its own language or dialect—often as not incomprehensible to its neighbors. The servants in Shi-Rong’s official residence were all from the Zhuang tribe, which was the largest. And somehow, within a month, Mei-Ling was freely conversing with them, and even enjoying their sour pickled cabbage and the tea leaves fried in oil that they seemed to eat with rice every day. “You can eat it for me,” Shi-Rong told her with a laugh.

But he couldn’t help being impressed by how adaptable this peasant woman from her little hamlet showed herself to be. “How