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

thought, and slowly shook her head. “It’s so…” She stopped. “I don’t want him to touch me…” she blurted out.

“You’ve had a shock,” said Mrs. Lomond calmly. “Just wait a few days, take time to get used to the idea, and I promise you it won’t seem so terrible after a little while. If you truly cannot get over it, then perhaps you shouldn’t marry. It’s not fair to him, apart from anything else. But I advise you to consider very carefully. You may not get a better offer. Or any offer.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“For a start,” said her mother frankly, “you might think about him, instead of yourself.”

“That’s easy to say.”

“My child, you’ve been brought up a Christian. If you were to talk to the vicar about this, I’m sure he’d tell you to pray, and he’d be right. So I suggest you think about what sort of wife you want to be, and then say your prayers.” She gave her daughter a look of admonishment. “I don’t want to hear anything more about this today.”

Agnes went into the house in great unhappiness. Before retiring to her bedroom, however, she passed the door of the library, where her father was writing a letter. And thinking she might get some support from that quarter, she knocked and entered. “Papa.”

“Yes?” He looked up.

“I know you’ve always had your doubts about Trader.”

“I’m getting used to him.” He gave her a shrewd look. “Why?”

“I’m not sure I want to marry him.”

“I see.” He laid down his pen. “Is it something he’s done?”

“No, Papa.”

“Might this have anything to do with his eye?”

“Yes. I can’t…”

“Can’t what?”

“I can’t bear the sight of it…I can’t…Oh, Papa…” She looked at him beseechingly.

But her father had had enough. “Am I to understand,” he began quietly, “that a daughter of mine…”—his voice began to rise—“wants to reject a very fair offer of marriage…”—he drew breath before continuing his crescendo—“just because her future husband happened to lose an eye? Do you suppose,” he fairly shouted, “if I’d been wounded in action when you were a little girl, lost a limb even, that your dear mother would have taken one look, upped sticks, and bolted? Well?” he roared. “Do you?” He banged his fist on the table so hard that the pen jumped up as though to stand at attention. And in a voice that might have been heard in the Himalayas along the horizon, he bellowed, “How dare you, miss? Who the devil do you think you are?”

And greatly frightened, Agnes fled; she threw herself on her bed and wept. And later, as her mother said she should, she tried to pray. And the nights following.

June 1840

Shi-Rong read his aunt’s letter again. There could be no mistaking its meaning.

Your father wishes me to tell you that he is well. Since he has an indisposition at present, he has asked me to write this letter for him. We are none of us getting any younger, of course. Please come to see us when Commissioner Lin can spare you. I am to say that it is your dutiful service to the emperor and the lord Lin that gives your father his greatest pride and joy.

His father was sinking. Perhaps not fast, but evidently he was too weak to write for himself. His aunt wanted him to come home to bid the old man farewell. His father wouldn’t hear of it. And the message the old man had sent was not to remind him of his duty. It was to absolve him. To tell him not to reproach himself if he could not come, for his father would rather he stayed where he was and served the emperor, as his father had always told him to do.

It was correct. But it was also kindly.

He was doubly glad that he’d sent his father a letter just a week ago, full of good news.

For Lin was more pleased with him than ever. His dragon boats had been notably successful. Just recently, they’d intercepted some British longboats on an illegal patrol, out in the gulf. The barbarians had been routed and their leader, an officer named Churchill, apparently from one of their noble families, had been killed.

Might he go to see his father now? He longed to do so. How would Lin take it if he asked? He was just pondering this question when a messenger arrived.

The fellow was trembling. He thrust a report into Shi-Rong’s hand. And a minute later Shi-Rong was hurrying to the lord Lin’s chamber.

The great man received the report with complete calm.

“You say a fleet of twenty-seven British warships has arrived at Macao? And you believe they have come to blockade us or to attack Guangzhou?”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“These pirate ships may be powerful on the open sea,” Lin remarked, “but they can’t come upriver. Between the sandbanks and the shore forts, they’d all be destroyed. As for blockading us, what would be the point? The reason the barbarians are here is to sell their accursed opium. We know this. Doesn’t it occur to you that these ships with guns may also be carrying opium?”

“They could be, I suppose.”

“It may be,” the commissioner continued imperturbably, “that they will try to smuggle opium in longboats from their ships. But your own dragon boats, my dear Jiang, have shown how easily we can deal with that sort of thing.”

All the same, having experienced the power of British naval gunnery, Shi-Rong wasn’t so optimistic. He’d seen what two British warships could do. What kind of havoc would be wreaked by twenty-seven?

“What shall we do then, Excellency?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Lin. “Wait.”

The next day the great man was proved correct.

It was midafternoon, the Hour of the Monkey, when the fellow from Macao appeared. He was one of the most reliable of the small network of spies Shi-Rong still had on that island. Having questioned the man carefully, Shi-Rong went straight to Lin.

“You were right, Excellency.