My Splendid Concubine (87 page)

How had the Taipings taken a third of China? Were the imperial armies that bad? If so, he knew another reason why China couldn
’t defend itself against foreign invasions. It meant that the corruption among the Manchu generals was worse than Robert had thought. They must have bribed their way to be put in charge of armies.

While riding north, there was a skirmish with a group of Taipings guarding a roadblock. His troop fired the Colt revolvers as they charged. Once again, surprise and superioirity in weapons won the moment but that could last only as long as they had ammunition.

As they rode past the roadblock and up the dirt road, he didn’t see any muskets with the sprawled bodies of the dead Taipings, but there were crossbows.

Robert stopped h
is troop and listened to the sounds of men chanting and the tramp of many feet. “We’re being followed,” he said. “Push the horses harder. We have to put distance between us and whoever that is. Hopefully, when we reach the mountains, we will lose them.”

“
Sounds like there’s a thousand of them,” Leopold said with his thick German accent.

As the miles slipped beneath the horses
’ hooves, the sounds of pursuit diminshed.

By midnight, Robert and his troop dismounted and walked the horses. They might have hundreds of miles to go before they would be safe. Without the horses, Robert doub
ted they would survive.

Once they were away from the rich, agricultural, flatlands around Ningpo, they would be entering hills then mountains. He thought the best chance to escape was to head to Shanghai. The trouble was, there were Taiping armies between Ningpo and Shanghai. If those armies were alerted, they would be ready and waiting.

Chapter 54

Concerned faces gathered around the map Robert
spread on the ground. “We can’t go north,” he said. “The Taipings will be watching for us to try for Hangzhou Bay, and we cannot go west either, since the Taipings have occupied the city of Hangzhou.”

“
What are we going to do?” Anwar asked.

“
We go southwest until we have bypassed Hangzhou then turn northwest and make for the Yangtze River.”

“
That’s more than two hundred miles,” Anwar said. “After we are north of Hangzhou, why not turn east and ride to Shanghai?”

“
The Taipings have an army between us and Shanghai. The last report I read before leaving Peking said they were less than fifty miles from the city.”

“
My god, what are we going to do?” Leopold said. “It doesn’t matter what direction we go, there is always a Taiping army in the way.” It took Robert a moment to figure out what the German said owing to his accent.

“
Calm down, Leo,” Anwar said. “Pointing out the obvious isn’t going to help.” Leopold looked sheepish.

“
We move toward Nanking,” Robert said.

Everyone looked shocked. Even Guan-jaih.
“Sir,” Anwar said, “Nanking is the Taiping capital. We would be walking into a viper’s nest.”

“
We have to do the unexpected,” Robert said. “Two Ch’ing armies are operating east of Nanking along the Yangtze and Generals Li Hung-chang and Charles Gordon command them.”

“
What about Lake Tai?” one of the Shanghai men asked. “It’s closer than the Yangtze. If we reach the lake, we can take a boat to Shanghai.”

“
That’s another option,” Robert replied, “and the Grand Canal meets the lake.”

What he did not say was that Li Hung-chang was a friend and when Robert had reached Shanghai, he
’d sent a message to Li about the raid on Ningpo to save Ayaou and the children. He had written that if he couldn’t escape Ningpo by boat, he would ride overland toward Li’s army.

Li Hung-chang was no
fool. He was Han Chinese and was an intelligent, capable but ruthless general. If Li expected Robert to come overland, he would move troops south to close the gap.

“
It’s a gamble,” Anwar said.

“
I see it as our only choice,” Robert said.

“
We could head toward Hong Kong,” another man said.

“
Too far,” Robert said. “More than twice the distance. We’d run into bandits, pirates, brigands and rebels. Apak’s pirate fleet works the waters between Ningpo and Hong Kong. He has spies along the coast. No, we will make for the Yangtze. Mount. We have to get moving.”

They rode through the night. Reaching the top of a hill as dawn arrived, Robert saw a large force of Tai
pings blocking the road ahead and haulted his troop. Waist high grass grew on both sides of the dirt track they had been following. “Hobble the horses and let them feed,” he said, dismounting.

Anwar rummaged in his pack and brought out a tube that was a collapsing telescope. His wild hair looked like a bush that had lost its foliage.
“Got it in India,” he said, and handed the scope to Robert.

What he saw was depressing. The Taipings blocking the road were armed with muskets. He also saw a man dressed
in Western clothing, who seemed to be giving commands. Could that be my phantom Englishman? Robert thought.

He adjusted the telescope attempting to increa
se the magnification to see the man’s face but couldn’t. His hands tightened on the tube, and he gritted his teeth in frustration. That man is like a nightmare, he thought.

He
was tempted to charge downhill and fight. With the repeating rifles and the Colt revolvers, some of his people might break through and escape.

“
What is it, Robert?” Ayaou asked. She had walked up behind him.

Frustrated, he shook his head
. “Taipings are blocking the road,” he said. “It looks like a foreign devil is leading them.”

“
Ba Ba,” Anna said. Robert glanced at his little girl, who was holding one of Ayaou’s hands, and her eyes were swimming in tears. “
Ta men dai
,” she said, meaning, ‘They bad?’ She pointed at the distant Taipings as a tear slipped from one eye. Robert picked her up, and her little arms went around his neck. He swallowed as a lump appeared in his throat. “I will protect you,” he said.

Her arms tightened, and she buried her face against his shoulder. She smelled like warm hay.
No, he was not going to charge down there and trust capricious fate. Imagining Ayaou and his children bloody and dead was more than he could deal with. Then he thought of the families of the loyal men who had risked their lives to help save his family. There was no way he was going to fight a pitched battle if it could be avoided.

“
Let me look,” Ayaou said.

He handed her the scope. Guan-jiah came, and Robert gave Anna to the eunuch. The child accepted the servant immediately. Guan-jiah started to sing to her while he carried her back to where her infant brother was sleeping. Herbert was curled on the ground on a bed of thick grass the eunuch had picked. The infant
’s knees were tucked tight against his chest. The sun was beating on him, and his hair glowed from the light. A thumb was tucked into one corner of his mouth. He looked fragile, like a snail without a shell.

Robert turned from this vision of innocence and put an arm around Ayaou. He couldn
’t stop thinking that Herbert might not get a chance to grow up and discover a woman to love.

Ayaou looked through the telescope for a long time before she handed it to Anwar.

“That could be the man who was leading the Longhaired Bandits that kidnapped us in the Peking market,” she said. “They were dressed like bannermen, but he was dressed like you and your men. He spoke Mandarin with a bad accent. He was not nice. When Anna cried, he slapped her and told her he would throw her in a fire if she did not stop. He was at the Ningpo temple three days ago. How did he get here so fast?”

“
My god, I should have thought of that,” Robert said. “That demon guessed right that we would go southwest, so he marched inland through the night to cut us off. He must have driven his men like cattle and taken an easier route. The path we have been following curves around like a snake doubling the distance.”

Anwar was staring through the scope.
“What I’m looking at is a traitor,” he said. “I would love to get my hands on that man.”

“
You aren’t the only one who wants that,” Robert said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury. He has at least two hundred men, and they are armed with muskets, which takes away our advantage.”

“
What now?” Anwar asked.

“
Backtrack down this hill and turn north at the first path we find then head for the Grand Canal where we will find boats. The Grand Canal goes to the Yangtze and from there to Peking. Even if we don’t run into the Grand Canal, we will eventually find the Yangtze, which we can’t miss. Once on the river, we may be able to reach Shangahi. We aren’t out of options yet.”

Anwar was silent for a moment, then said,
“He has a field glass, and he’s looking in our direction.”

Robert fe
lt a shock race through him then shouted. “Off the hill!” Startled faces turned toward him, then the troop scrambled to get off the hilltop.

While they were riding, Anwar folded his telescope and stored it in his pack.
“That rat has several hundred miles to catch us,” he said. “I don’t like the odds.”

“
I don’t either,” Robert replied. “However, unless something better materializes, it’s what we’re going to do—try to reach the Yangtze and hope we find Li Hung-chang or Charles Gorden. At times, we will have to walk the horses. If we push them, they will start dying on us. Without the horses, we are lost for sure. With the horses, we can cover seventy-five to a hundred miles a day. Without them, only a third of that distance at best.

“
That group,” he gestured toward the Taipings on the other side of the hill, “is at least two hours from us, and the Taipings from Ningpo may be three or four hours behind us. I don’t think they have been stopping to rest as often as we have.”

Leopold, the German, joined them.
“It sounds like we are in a vise,” he said. Anwar glared at him. Leopold squirmed. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“
Then don’t talk about how bad our situation is.”

Leopold swallowed then turned to Robert.
“This Charles Gordon,” he said, “was he once an engineering officer in the British army?”

“
Yes,” Robert replied.

“
Then I know of him. He also fought in the Second Opium War against the Ch’ing Dynasty. I find it strange that he is working for them now. He was in charge of blowing up most of the Summer Palace. They say Gordon hated that job but had no choice.”

Sixteen hours later, as another night loomed, the horses looked as if they were the walking dead. They had slowed to a crawl hours ago and were dragging their hooves through the dust.

A running man could have caught them at that pace. The hor
ses’ heads and tails drooped and the muscles in their legs quivered with each step. Robert’s body ached, and he wanted to sleep for a week. It was easy to see by the slumped figures that everyone else was in the same exhausted state.

Anna had
gone to sleep in Robert’s arms, and Ayaou was struggling to stay on her saddle. Her eyelids looked heavy.

Not far from Robert, Guan-jiah, who carried Herbert, was also struggling to stay awake. His head nodded, fell forward until his chin touched his chest, then he jerked erect and
smacked his face several times until his cheeks glowed red from the blows.

The dirt track they followed ran northwest and was climbing higher. For the moment, the Taipings were out of sight, yet Robert knew if he stopped, they would quickly close the gap.

Several times, he’d ridden alone to a hill they had recently crossed and waited. He’d seen the two groups, the one following them from Ningpo and the one with the foreign devil, join forces hours ago. Then he would ride his horse hard to catch up with his troop.

The Taipings numbered at least six hundred. Robert suspected that his men didn
’t have much ammunition left. Even if every shot killed a Taiping, hundreds would survive.

When they reached the top of another hill, the troop rode into a valley with a small, walled town in the center surrounded by farms. The sun was already slipping below the horizon as another night arrived.

Robert twisted in the saddle to study the road behind them. It was empty as far as he could see. However, there was the hint of a dust cloud in the distance marking where the Taipngs were marching.

It was too dangerous to stop, but they needed rest.

An evening fog was forming in the valley. “Let’s ride to that town and get behind a wall,” he said. “Dismount and walk the horses. They need a break and walking will do us good.”

“
What are you thinking, Inspector General?” Anwar asked.

“
That we can’t go much further without stopping to eat and sleep. The Taipings have to rest too. After all, despite what they believe about their leader being sent to them by God, they are still human.”