The Blue Rose Read online

  David’s first thought was of Viviane. Was her husband not one of the king’s courtiers? What would the king’s execution mean for her?

  Oh, please, God, let her be safe, he prayed.

  He hurried to find Sir George, wanting his own letters. The secretary was in his room, a great pile of correspondence at his elbow. He looked tired.

  ‘You’ve come for your mail, Stronach?’ he asked, scattering sand over the letter he had just finished writing. ‘Give me just a moment.’

  ‘I’ve heard we are at war with France, sir!’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. The situation there is rather awful, I believe. I have a letter here from Sir Joseph Banks. Take a look while I find your package.’

  He tossed David an open letter. It was dated February. A whole ten months earlier!

  We are tolerably well here, though situation is somewhat tremendous. The French nation are certainly in a state of canine madness, very desirous of biting all mankind, and by that means infecting them of the disease they themselves are vexed with. I conceive them like a pack of mad foxhounds who cannot be confined to their kennel and feel sometimes a kind of horror lest they should infect too many of the quiet animals who are feeding around them …

  ‘Have they really executed the king? What of his court? Is there news of them?’

  Sir George looked up at him shrewdly. ‘You were in France a few years ago, weren’t you, Stronach? Working at the Jardin du Roi? I suppose you must have made friends there. I’m afraid that is all I know.’

  He passed David a slim package, and dismissed him with a weary smile.

  David instinctively sought the peace and silence of one of the hidden courtyards. He sat on a stone bench, his letters unopened in his lap, and tried not to be afraid for Viviane.

  There was a plum tree in the centre of the courtyard, buds bursting into life on its bare twigs. Bamboo cast delicate shadows against the white wall. The water in the pond shivered under a catspaw of wind. David shivered too, and the papers in his hand rustled. He used his penknife to cut the cord.

  The first letter was from his grandmother, full of news from home, enclosed with lighthearted notes from his sisters. His grandfather had appended just a shaky postscript, saying simply, Bless you, my boy. David’s heart smote him. He opened the next letter.

  Your grandfather is not well, his grandmother wrote. We hope his health will improve with the warmer weather. He sends you his love. Angharad has started teaching music to the Morgan girls, and says they sing as sweet as songbirds. We are glad indeed of the extra coin, for the doctor’s bills mount up. But don’t you worry your head over it, Ceridwen and I have been taking in sewing and we live in hope the church will relent and give your grandfather his living back.

  More letters, all determinedly cheerful, all hiding the hardships they were clearly suffering. David set his jaw, and wished that he had some way of helping them. But his salary was already their main support. He would need to find a way to earn extra.

  He came to the last letter, written in his grandfather’s tremulous hand.

  My dear boy

  I do hope all is well with you and God is watching over you. I was sorry to find you so blue-devilled when last we saw you. It was clear to me that you had suffered some great blow to your spirit during your sojourn in France. I hope you will forgive me, but I asked Mr Morgan to make some enquiries on my behalf, for he has business acquaintances in Paris. He was able to ascertain that the Duc de Savageaux was murdered in July 1789. His young widow was then arrested in August 1792, and incarcerated within La Force prison. It seems that as many as three thousand persons, chiefly of the nobility and wealthier classes, were arrested at that time. At least two thousand of those imprisoned were put most cruelly to death, among them many priests, women and children. It is not known what happened to the Dowager Duchesse de Savageaux. I am sorry that I cannot give you any better news. It was clear to me that you had developed an affection for the marquis’s daughter and had been downhearted at her marriage. I pray that she was spared, and is safe. If any further news of her is discovered, I will advise you at once.

  Wishing your business a profitable end and you a safe and speedy return to us.

  Warm regards

  your loving Grandpère

  Darkness was falling, and David was cold to the bone.

  He should never have left her. He had been afraid, and had run for his life, leaving Viviane at the mercy of her father. He should have stayed and fought, preferring to die than to leave her. His cowardice meant Viviane had been forced into a loveless marriage with a cruel man, and had suffered through all the turmoil of revolution and war, her brief sweet life ending at the hands of an enraged mob.

  He was to blame for her death.

  Light kindled behind him. David dashed his hand across his eyes and shoved his letters into his pocket. Rising and turning, he saw the old white-bearded man carrying a red Chinese lantern into the courtyard.

  ‘Is all well? Are you not cold?’ the old man said in heavily accented English.

  David gazed at him in surprise. Although he had heard some of the mandarins and merchants in Canton speak in a strange English-Chinese compound they called pidgin, this was the first Chinese person he had met who spoke a single word of his own language. He remembered the rudeness of his compatriots, thinking no-one could understand them, and was embarrassed and ashamed.

  ‘I’m so sorry, sir, I did not realise you could speak our language,’ he said clumsily.

  The old man smiled, his skin creasing into hundreds of fine lines. ‘I merchant in Canton long time. It good to speak some words of customers, no?’

  David nodded in agreement.

  The old man laid his hand on his arm. ‘But you sad. Bad news, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ David agreed. Suddenly his throat closed over. He could not speak or breathe. His eyes and chest burned, his legs felt weak, his vision swam with black dots.

  ‘Sit,’ the old man said. ‘Put head down. Breathe deep.’

  David obeyed. The old man knelt by the pool and scooped up some water in his hands. He brought the water to David and told him to drink. ‘Rain water, not dirty.’

  David drank from his cupped palms, and the water was icy cold and refreshing.

  ‘Breathe deep,’ the old man told him again. ‘In through your nose and down into your belly. Let all the bad air out. Now breathe again, as deep as you can.’

  Gradually David’s breath steadied and his vision cleared. He went to stand up but the old man pressed a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘No get up too soon.’

  The lantern cast warm light across the courtyard, creating intricate plum blossom shadows on the wall and gilding the rippling water.

  ‘It is very beautiful here,’ David said.

  The old man smiled, showing broken yellowed teeth. ‘Most white devils not think so. Most think Chinese garden ugly.’

  ‘Gardens here are very different to what we are used to,’ David admitted.

  ‘Chinese garden a poem.’ The old man waved one gnarled brown hand. ‘Chinese garden a deep story.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ David said. ‘Please explain it to me.’

  ‘Made by hand of man, it must look as if made by hand of God. Yet we are only men. We can only make small.’

  ‘So the little trees, the rocks arranged in piles, the ponds, all mimic forests and mountains and lakes?’ David said.

  ‘Yes but no,’ the old man said. ‘Not mimic. Not playacting. It is big made more powerful by being small.’ He made a gesture of frustration at the limits of his English. ‘Like flower boiled down to medicine.’

  ‘Like a distillation … it concentrates the essence of the thing.’

  ‘Yes. The essence. The world’s vital spirit. All concentrated and made more potent. You white devils, you plant a garden for the eye, with flowers you think lovely. But we yellow devils, we build a garden not for how it looks, but for what it means.’

  The old man gestured around
the garden. ‘Bamboo is deep rooted and so means strength. Its stem is strong and straight and so means honour. It has one root and many stems, and so it means all things are connected together. Plum tree blossoms in winter. It tells us winter shall go and spring come. So it means hope.’

  He pointed to the pond of water. ‘Water is cool, dark, mysterious, like woman. It is mirror that reflects the moon.’ He indicated the rock set at the far end of the pool. ‘Rock is water’s opposite. Warm, strong, forceful. Like man. Together, water and rock make a whole. Together, water and rock and tree and bamboo make a poem.’

  The old man gave a heavy sigh, and sat down beside David. ‘Too hard to explain.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ David said. ‘A Chinese garden is like a poem because it shows the hidden meaning of things, in a secret language of symbols and metaphor. Its meaning needs to be pondered, wondered at, thought deeply about if one is to understand.’

  The old man smiled at him. ‘You are a poet.’

  David remembered how Viviane’s father had called him a gardener with the tongue of a poet, and was pierced once more with grief and remorse.

  The old man saw the change in his face and said simply, ‘You sad. Stay here a while. Garden good place for grief. But remember the plum blossom’s deep story. Its flower tells us that sorrow will pass and joy come again.’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ David said. ‘It can’t ever. Not for me.’

  The old man pressed his hand and went silently away, leaving the lantern to shine its rosy light into the wintry garden.

  29

  The Blue Rose

  21–25 December 1793

  Numb with grief, David felt like one of Dr Dinwiddie’s sing-songs, a brass automaton that walked and talked at the turn of a brass key. On Christmas Eve, Lord Macartney and Sir George were engaged once more in a formal banquet, and the younger men were restless and bored. One of the more agreeable of the mandarins offered, in a low voice and with many sidelong glances, to take them to the Garden of Perfumed Lotus Flowers. It was difficult to understand his pidgin English and he was most insistent that they did not call for Father Li to translate. It was this reluctance that helped make his intention clear. He proposed to take the men to a courtesan house.

  Such a thing was strictly forbidden, of course, but a combination of curiosity and long-frustrated desire tempted them to go.

  ‘After all, we leave China soon and have hardly clapped eyes on a girl,’ John Haxton said. ‘What shall I tell all the fellows back home?’

  ‘And it is most likely they will have bound feet,’ Scotty said. ‘I would very much like to see one, and ascertain what damage such binding does to the skeletal structure of the foot.’

  ‘I’ve heard that a fairy foot is a powerful provocation for many men,’ John Barrow said. ‘I must admit I would like to know why.’

  ‘I am sure the girls at the courtesan house must be very beautiful,’ William Alexander said. ‘Do you think they will let me draw them?’

  ‘I won’t be wasting my time drawing them,’ John Barrow said with a laugh.

  David just shrugged, and said, ‘I’ll come. Nothing better to do.’

  Christmas Eve was difficult. He thought constantly of the night five years earlier, when he had given Viviane the ring with its secret message hidden behind enamelled roses. Nothing is impossible for a valiant heart, it had read. The fool that he was, he had believed it.

  Home in Wales, his grandfather would be playing his harp, and his sisters would be singing, and his grandmother cooking taffy over the fire. Evergreen branches would decorate the mantelpiece, scenting the air with pine, and a fresh-made wreath would hang on the door. Neighbours would come by, stamping snow from their boots, and his grandmother would pass around slices of hot plum cake and cups of spiced wassail punch. At three o’clock in the morning, they’d wrap themselves up warm and light their lanterns, and go through the frosty, star-hung night to the church, and sing till dawn.

  The bees would hum in their hives, and the cows would bend their knees in adoration.

  Thinking of home, thinking of Viviane, David was as blue-devilled as he had ever been.

  The Garden of Perfumed Lotus Flowers was not a house, as they had expected, but a gaudily painted junk with red furled sails moored in the middle of the river. Chinese music floated over the water. They descended a short ladder into a cabin and found their mandarin friends reclining on fat silken cushions, while a bevy of onyx-eyed young women played instruments and sang, or carried trays of food and drink around, or sat, drawing deeply on long opium pipes.

  The women were all gorgeously dressed in slim-cut embroidered silk dresses with high collars, their black hair pinned up with jewels, their mouths painted into a red bud. They spoke no English, but between their funny coquettish pidgin and the Englishmen’s few stumbling words of Mandarin, some communication was established.

  Each of them had doll-sized feet, clad in red silk slippers. At first, Scotty’s request to see their feet bare caused much consternation. They shook their heads and refused. When he asked them why their feet had been bound, one answered, ‘Only servants have big feet.’

  Another said, ‘A beautiful face is given by heaven but beautiful feet must be earned.’

  ‘Big feet are a sign of weakness,’ another explained.

  ‘But why? Surely you’ve been weakened greatly by such a thing being done to you. You can hardly walk, let alone run or dance.’

  Some of the girls began to demonstrate how well they could dance, unfurling silk fans and swaying their slim bodies. Their hobbled feet moved in small, precise steps; all the motion was in their upper bodies and graceful arms.

  It made David sad. ‘Why? Why do they do it to you?’

  The young women exchanged glances. One shrugged. ‘Love,’ she answered in English, and crossed her hands over her heart.

  David could not bear it. He got up and went outside.

  Canton spread out before his eyes, hung with red lanterns, ringing with gongs and strange music. Even the air smelt wrong. It smelt of sewage and incense, spices and vinegar, firework smoke and brackish water.

  The ferryman was startled to see him so soon, but agreed to take him back to the palace. David clambered down and the boat was just casting off when Scotty came racing out. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  He jumped down into the boat and sat down beside David. ‘It is a cruel practice,’ he said after a long moment.

  David grunted.

  ‘She let me take a peek,’ Scotty said. ‘As far as I can tell, the metatarsal bones have been bent down and the calcancus – the heel bone – pushed forward to form a deep cleft. The smaller toes are all folded and atrophied under the sole of the foot. It must hurt like hell, and done when they are still little more than babies!’

  Worse than the binding of their feet was the binding of their souls, David thought. It was impossible not to think of Viviane, and the narrow furrow of her life. He had thought her weak-willed. Why would she not run away with me? he had thought. Does she not love me enough to leave behind her château and her fine silks?

  He had not thought of how a songbird, confined all its life in a tiny cage, its wings clipped, might hesitate at a latch suddenly swinging open.

  ‘Davy, boy, what is it?’ Scotty asked hesitantly. ‘Bad news from home?’

  David nodded. It was hard to speak. ‘There was a girl … we were in love … but it was impossible … and now … I am afraid she may be dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Scotty said with the same difficulty. ‘Hard luck.’

  They got drunk on gin, and David told him how beautiful, how gallant, how bewitching Viviane had been.

  That night, David dreamed he ran through a midnight forest. Hounds bayed behind him. Horses’ hooves pounded. Horns blew. Snow like whirling stars. He strapped on his skates and skimmed away across the frozen river. Each stroke of his blade was a score into the ice. A scratch, a slit. Black water seeped up. The ice crack
ed. Faster and faster he skated, but it was no use. His skates cut the ice open. The gleaming river broke and splintered and struck him down. Deep he plunged, into black freezing water. Air fizzed from his lungs like globules of light.

  Then slim arms reached for him, strong hands caught him. Dragged upwards. Gasping. Shivering. Water pouring away. He was in her arms, her mouth on his.

  ‘Viviane,’ he cried. He saw her dark tumbling hair, her black eyes, her smiling mouth. Joy springing.

  And then he woke.

  It was cold and bright. Light pierced through the glass, all fogged with frost flowers.

  David brought his arm over his eyes. Head pounding. Mouth parched.

  His grandfather had always called gin ‘blue ruin’. David now understood why.

  At last he got up and dressed, and went out in search of water. He found the courtyard with the plum tree and the pool of fresh rainwater. It tasted wonderful, and he gulped down handfuls of it and splashed it over his face. The shock of it was invigorating. He thought of the old man he had met here, and how kind he had been, and how wise. He thought of his dream. Viviane alive and laughing. It had seemed so real.

  David wanted to speak to the old man again.

  He ruffled his hair dry, pulled his cocked hat low over his eyes to shield them from the sun, and went out to the courtyard that lay before the main pavilion with its great bronze lions. He looked down to the pond with its willows and hump-backed bridge, but the old man was not there, dancing alone in the dawn.

  He heard music and singing, and then the faint sound of one person clapping. He looked towards the main pavilion, and saw that a small theatrical group was performing on the front porch again. A row of low stools had been set up before the steps, but only one person sat there.

  The old man in his plain indigo-blue suit, a round black cap on his head, his thin white plait hanging down to his waist.

  David went to greet him, but he put his gnarled finger against his mouth in a shushing gesture. ‘Play just begun.’