Shanghai (81 page)

Hundreds of them died on the first day, and thousands on the second. The guards were instructed to stop “any Chink bastard trying to get onto our property!”

Without shelter and food, thousands more lost their lives, but still the European powers that ran Hong Kong refused to lift a finger to help the destitute Chinese.

It was only when Mai Bao came to her husband and told him of the catastrophe—“And they shot them like snakes. Thousands died in the storm. Tens of thousands died of starvation waiting for the
Fan Kuei
to help them. Our people beg for what is ours in our own country!” —that any heed was taken.

She had never challenged her husband this way before. But Silas was not upset. Rather, he called in MacMillan, his chief aide, and ordered, “I want the head of every major trading house in Shanghai that has a branch office in Hong Kong to be here, in the Garden, at this time tomorrow—no exceptions.”

Silas Hordoon knew very well that the only major trading house in Shanghai without a branch office in Hong Kong was his own company. He also knew that the response of the Hong Kong
Fan Kuei
to the typhoon could endanger the
Fan Kuei
throughout the Middle Kingdom. He was only too aware that Chinese anger toward the Foreign Devils had not diminished, only gone dormant. He looked at his strong Chinese wife and nodded to her. “I will do my best to deal with this, Mai Bao.”

“Thank you, husband.”

“No need to thank me. An unattended fire in an outbuilding can easily burn down the entire mansion.”

She smiled. Her husband's Shanghainese was perfect, but his use of the ancient idiom was not quite correct. The bit of Taoist knowledge he was trying to quote was more accurately stated as “A rot in a building's foundation, if not treated, can bring down the entire structure.” Fire connoted an act of nature or an accident. Since all things under the heavens, even stones, eventually rotted, rot suggested something more profound—a neglect of the inevitable, an act of stupidity and hubris.

Most of the traders had never been inside the walls of the Garden, and although they were men used to luxury and all the trappings of great wealth, they were openly impressed by the magnificence of the ten homes, two schools, the once fabulous stables, elegant Buddhist temple, the simple Jewish synagogue, and the various gardens and outbuildings of Silas's famous walled-in
world. As well, they were impressed by the appearance and courteous behaviour of the twenty street children who greeted them by name upon their arrival.

Although it was against Silas's better judgment, Mai Bao insisted that she not make an appearance before the traders. “We want to enlist the support of these men for the Chinese of Hong Kong, husband, not to enrage them because you married a Celestial.”

Silas disagreed but, as in so many important decisions in the Garden, he gave way to his wife's finely tuned practical approach to the world beyond the Garden's high walls.

The meeting started as all powerful business meetings did in the Middle Kingdom, with fine oolong tea and delicately prepared dumplings of various sorts. The traders ate, and some drank from the well-stocked bar. Most smoked cigars, which Silas found distasteful, although he made himself smile as he fanned away the dense smoke.

Finally he indicated the large, oval table and the men took their places. As they did, Silas signalled his serving people that they were to leave the room. This was to be as private a meeting as could be had in the spy-rich world at the Bend in the River.

Silas took a final sip of his tea, replaced the lid on his porcelain cup, and pushed it to one side. The green baize lamps on the table gave an odd funereal air to the room. He briefly repeated a thanks for the attendance of his guests, then, looking at the heads of Jardine Matheson, Dent, and Oliphant, launched right in.

“I believe that your offices and people in Hong Kong have made a serious mistake—a mistake that will have an impact upon our lives and livelihoods here in Shanghai.”

Zachariah Oliphant, the new leader of the House of Zion, asked simply, “And what mistake would that be?”

Silas quickly reviewed, not that any of the traders at the table didn't already know, the facts of the typhoon and its aftermath on Hong Kong. Then, surprising even himself, he banged a heavy fist on the table and said, “Foolishness. Dangerous foolishness.”

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Hordoon, since you have no business interests on that rocky little island,” William Dent said.

Before Silas could reply that Dent's statement missed the point, Zachariah Oliphant added, “There are times when the Almighty insists upon teaching these heathens a lesson, Mr. Hordoon. Read your Bible, Mr. Hordoon. God's revenge often comes from the sea.”

Naturally, Silas thought, it would be the Oliphant man who would play the religious card! He resisted telling the fellow what he thought of his specious statement and turned instead to Heyward Matheson, the head of Jardine Matheson, the old-line Scottish trading firm first established in the Middle Kingdom by Hercules MacCallum. “Do you share Mr. Oliphant's opinion, sir?”

Heyward Matheson did not, but Silas Hordoon was a competitor, not an ally, and until he heard more from those around the table he was unwilling to pick a side in the dispute. His firm had major offices on Hong Kong, rivalling their Shanghai operations. But unlike the Shanghai operations, where employees actually moved their whole families to the city at the Bend in the River, in Hong Kong, corporate officers were rotated in and out on a three-year schedule. The head of operations there was about the only employee who called the craggy island his home. Heyward Matheson took a sip of the excellent sherry that Silas had supplied and said, “There are tangled webs here, Mr. Hordoon, that need to be further unwound and discussed.”

That brought other traders into the discussion.

Silas resisted speaking again until after lunch had been served. Then, over their port, he said, “Gentlemen, not meaning to be abrupt, but I think that the last two hours have been a serious waste of everyone's time. The facts here are simple. They are the same facts my father dealt with when he first arrived here in 1842. We are foreigners in a foreign land. There are few of us and many of them. If we do not find an accommodation with the people of the Middle Kingdom, then we will not be permitted to live here amongst them.”

“I don't want to live amongst them,” interrupted a new trader from Boston. “I want to trade with them, that's all.”

“Fine, sir,” said Silas, rising to the challenge, “but they need not allow you to do even that.”

“There's always opium. They need our opium.”

“Do they?” Silas challenged. “They have begun to grow their own poppy crops upriver. It is only the fact that the Manchu officials make so much more money from the sale of your opium that it is still permitted. You all have them on your payroll. But the Manchus are in decline. It's obvious. You can see the signs everywhere. And whoever takes over from the Manchus may not view us
Fan Kuei
with the same benign neglect that the Manchus have. There have already been two major revolts.”

“Oh, not that business about the Taiping again,” shouted one of the other new traders, this one from Bristol.

Silas took a breath to control his temper. “I think, for those of us who live amongst the Han Chinese, it is not hard to understand that the forces that pushed the Taiping Revolt and the Boxer Rebellion were the same.”

“I thought the Taiping was run by some guy who said he was Jesus Christ himself—God, these people!”

“He claimed to be the brother of Christ, not Christ. And it was not that claim that gained him followers. It was his promise to redistribute land from the wealthy to the landless. To provide care for the poor. To stop the suffering caused by the opium trade. In fact, I think it obvious that the only thing that kept the Taipingers from total victory was their foolish religious dictums, which eventually punished their own followers so much that they caused the movement to weaken.”

“Even if your interpretation of the Taiping Revolt is true, which I don't totally grant, how do you see the Boxers as an outgrowth of that?” challenged Zachariah Oliphant.

Silas took a look at these men. On the whole, bright men. Not all educated, but all worldly. “How long can the few—us—keep power and wealth from the many—them? The Boxers tapped into the ever-festering anger of the Chinese. It is a deep well of hate that we must not tempt by foolishness like the response on Hong Kong. It would have cost so little to show compassion to the dispossessed there. And we would have gained so much. Think, gentlemen. I am not asking for charity. I am not asking for generosity. I am asking you to make an investment in your businesses and all of our futures.”

It took several more hours, and Silas offering to match each and every offer, dollar for dollar, to convince the traders to ante up the money that Silas quickly moved, through Mai Bao, to the destitute on Hong Kong.

The delay in the arrival of the money was noted by the Chinese. Although they were grateful for the assistance, they also understood that it was really given only to pacify them—and they were only momentarily pacified.

1908

Chesu Hoi thought that he had heard every conceivable kind of cruel request from the Dowager Empress, but this new and perhaps final request of her long, evil life shocked even him. He read it a second time to be sure that he had not been mistaken. But there it was, in her unmistakable hand: “
Kill the Emperor. I won't have him outlive me. I won't have it!
”

Chesu Hoi held the silken parchment over the candle on his desk and watched it curl as flame took it. As the Forbidden City's Head Eunuch, he was fully aware of much of the happenings within the ancient complex. He had arranged the arrival of the famous beauty Tzu Hsi while she was just a pretty country girl. He had
watched her connive to produce a son for her Emperor and thus rise to the role of Emperor Consort above the forty other women in the Emperor's stable trying to produce male children for their ruler.

He had been at the gate when the boy child was handed over in exchange for the girl Tzu Hsi had delivered. It was their first meeting, and one that neither would forget.

He had been listening to the report from the midwife who oversaw Tzu Hsi's delivery and was astonished to hear that the woman didn't know the baby's sex, since Tzu Hsi had grabbed the baby the moment it had appeared and pulled it to her breast under the blankets. “She almost wouldn't let us cut the cord. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen in a birthing room. She just grabbed the thing and got to her feet. I was amazed she was able to stand. She'd just expelled the afterbirth and …”

But Chesu Hoi didn't listen to any more details. He knew more about the birth of babies than almost any male alive. It was the job assigned to him by the Head Eunuch of those days—to ensure that royal children were birthed and registered properly. So far he had registered seven girls. The Emperor was furious. He needed a son to secure his dynasty. Now this—Tzu, still weak and bloody between her legs, lurching on her tiny bound feet down the corridor.

He left the midwife and followed Tzu Hsi. Despite her bleeding, and what Chesu Hoi assumed was her exhaustion from having just given birth, she was trying to run. She turned into a side room, and he quickly followed. For a moment after entering the room, he thought that he had lost her. The room was empty. Then he noticed a slight trail of blood on the
polished hardwood floor. It led directly to a fine country scene painting of the Hua Shan, the Holy Mountain. He walked slowly toward the painting, then looked down at the floor. His feet were in blood—her blood. He pulled the wall hanging aside and there, to his shock, was a beautifully concealed door whose frame lines matched exactly the design on the wall. If he hadn't been sure that there was an exit he would never have seen the door, so well did it blend into the masonry of the wall. He reached forward and the door swung outward in a silent, graceful motion, revealing a dark circular staircase. He quickly followed it, down three flights, until his feet touched cold stone. To his right he saw a figure moving quickly toward a slender opening in the solid rock. He followed.

Out the portal was a view that took his breath from him. The pure mountain across the way was unexpected. The beauty flooded him, and for a moment he couldn't breathe in its presence.

Then he saw Tzu Hsi take her baby from its royal blanket and hand it to a peasant woman who somehow was waiting for her. The peasant gave her a baby that she quickly wrapped in the royal cloth.

The peasant turned and ran away as Tzu Hsi turned back toward the staircase—only to see Chesu Hoi standing there. He canted his head slightly in an effort to avoid the hate in Tzu Hsi's eyes.

“Are you following me, you despicable creature?” she shouted.

“Only doing my duty, madam,” he said. She was not royalty yet, so deserved no further title.

“Away!” she commanded.

Her voice was so compelling that he almost obeyed. Then he thought better and held out his arms. “Shall I
carry the Emperor's first son back to the safety of the inner world, Majesty?” He saw the effect of calling her that. “You may lean on my arm, Majesty, as you must be tired from your labours.”

For a moment Tzu Hsi didn't move. She glanced back over her shoulder.

Chesu Hoi thought,
If she has a knife, now's the time she'll use it on me
.

But she had no knife. Only guile—and ambition.

So they made their first of many deals that day. He would keep her secret. She would secure his position at court for the remainder of his years.

And it was a good deal for both of them. He watched her back and she his. In her youth he brought her enough young, handsome men to satisfy her gargantuan sexual appetites. He also supplied the infected towels necessary to remove lovers who were no longer of interest to Tzu Hsi. He helped her through the death of the first Emperor and the subsequent placing of her son on the throne while Tzu Hsi ruled as regent. Of course he had assisted her in undermining her ridiculous nephew Kwang Hsu's Hundred Days of Reform, and there had even been a time when his elegant fingers had proved adequate for her needs.