‘Robin.’ Professor Lovell was at his side, gripping his shoulder so tightly it hurt. ‘Translate, please.’
This all hinged on him, Robin realized. The choice was his. Only he could determine the truth, because only he could communicate it to all parties.
But what could he possibly say? He saw the crewman’s blistering irritation. He saw the rustling impatience of the other passengers in the queue. They were tired, they were cold, they couldn’t understand why they hadn’t boarded yet. He felt Professor Lovell’s thumb digging a groove into his collarbone, and a thought struck him – a thought so frightening that it made his knees tremble – which was that should he pose too much of a problem, should he stir up trouble, then the Countess of Harcourt might simply leave him behind onshore as well.
‘Your contract’s no good here,’ he murmured to the labourer. ‘Try the next ship.’
The labourer gaped in disbelief. ‘Did you read it? It says London, it says the East India Company, it says this ship, the Countess—’
Robin shook his head. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, then repeated this line, as if doing so might make it true. ‘It’s no good, you’ll have to try the next ship.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ demanded the labourer.
Robin could hardly force his words out. ‘It’s just no good.’
The labourer gaped at him. A thousand emotions worked through that weathered face – indignation, frustration, and finally, resignation. Robin had been afraid the labourer might argue, might fight, but quickly it became clear that for this man, such treatment was nothing new. This had happened before. The labourer turned and made his way down the gangplank, shoving passengers aside as he did. In a few moments he was gone from sight.
Robin felt very dizzy. He escaped back down the gangplank to Mrs Piper’s side. ‘I’m cold.’
‘Oh, you’re shaking, poor thing.’ She was immediately on him like a mother hen, enveloping him within her shawl. She spoke a sharp word to Professor Lovell. He sighed, nodded; then they bustled through to the front of the line, from which they were whisked straight to their cabins while a porter collected their luggage and carried it behind them.
An hour later, the Countess of Harcourt left the port.
Robin was settled on his bunk with a thick blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and he would have happily stayed there all day, but Mrs Piper urged him back above deck to watch the receding shoreline. He felt a sharp ache in his chest as Canton disappeared over the horizon, and then a raw emptiness, as if a grappling hook had yanked his heart out of his body. It had not registered until now that he would not step foot on his native shore again for many years, if ever. He wasn’t sure what to make of this fact. The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.
He watched the ocean for a long time, indifferent to the wind, staring until even his imagined vision of the shore faded away.
He spent the first few days of the voyage sleeping. He was still recuperating; Mrs Piper insisted he take daily walks above deck for his health, but initially he could manage only a few minutes at a time before he had to lie down. He was fortunate to be spared the nausea of seasickness; a childhood along docks and rivers had habituated his senses to the roiling instability. When he felt strong enough to spend whole afternoons above deck, he loved sitting by the railings, watching the ceaseless waves changing colour with the sky, feeling the ocean spray on his face.
Occasionally Professor Lovell would chat with him as they paced the deck together. Robin learned quickly that the professor was a precise and reticent man. He offered up information when he thought Robin needed it, but otherwise, he was happy to let questions lie.
He told Robin they would reside in his estate in Hampstead when they reached England. He did not say whether he had family at that estate. He confirmed that he had paid Miss Betty all those years, but did not explain why. He intimated that he’d known Robin’s mother, which was how he’d known Robin’s address, but he did not elaborate on the nature of their relationship or how they’d met. The only time he acknowledged their prior acquaintance was when he asked Robin how his family came to live in that riverside shack.
‘They were a well-off merchant family when I knew them,’ he said. ‘Had an estate in Peking before they moved south. What was it, gambling? I suppose it was the brother, wasn’t it?’
Months ago Robin would have spat at anyone for speaking so cruelly about his family. But here, alone in the middle of the ocean with no relatives and nothing to his name, he could not summon the ire. He had no fire left in him. He was only scared, and so very tired.
In any case, all this accorded with what Robin had been told of his family’s previous wealth, which had been squandered completely in the years after his birth. His mother had complained about it bitterly and often. Robin was fuzzy on the details, but the story involved what so many tales of decline in Qing dynasty China did: an aging patriarch, a profligate son, malicious and manipulative friends, and a helpless daughter whom, for some mysterious reason, no one would marry. Once, he’d been told, he’d slept in a lacquered crib. Once, they’d enjoyed a dozen servants and a chef who cooked rare delicacies imported from northern markets. Once, they’d lived in an estate that could have housed five families, with peacocks roaming about the yard. But all Robin had ever known was the little house on the river.
‘My mother said that my uncle lost all their money at the opium houses,’ Robin told him. ‘Debtors seized their estate, and we had to move. Then my uncle went missing when I was three, and it was just us and my aunts and grandparents. And Miss Betty.’
Professor Lovell made a noncommittal hum of sympathy. ‘That’s too bad.’
Apart from these talks, the professor spent most of the day holed up in his cabin. They saw him only semi-regularly in the mess for dinners; more often Mrs Piper had to fill a plate with hardtack and dried pork and take it to his room.
‘He’s working on his translations,’ Mrs Piper told Robin. ‘He’s always picking up scrolls and old books on these trips, you see, and he likes to get a head start on rendering them into English before he gets back to London. They keep him so busy there – he’s a very important man, a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, you know – and he says sea voyages are the only time he gets any peace and quiet. Isn’t that funny. He bought some nice rhyming dictionaries in Macau – lovely things, though he won’t let me touch them, the pages are so fragile.’
Robin was startled to hear that they’d been to Macau. He had not been aware of any Macau trip; naively, he’d imagined he was the only reason why Professor Lovell had come to China at all. ‘How long were you there? In Macau, I mean.’
‘Oh, two weeks and some change. It would have been just two, but we were held up at customs. They don’t like letting foreign women onto the mainland – I had to dress up and pretend to be the professor’s uncle, can you imagine!’
Two weeks.
Two weeks ago, Robin’s mother was still alive.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Mrs Piper ruffled his hair. ‘You look pale.’
Robin nodded, and swallowed down the words he knew he could not say.
He had no right to be resentful. Professor Lovell had promised him everything, and owed him nothing. Robin did not yet fully understand the rules of this world he was about to enter, but he understood the necessity of gratitude. Of deference. One did not spite one’s saviours.
‘Do you want me to take this plate down to the professor?’ he asked.
‘Thank you, dear. That’s very sweet of you. Come and meet me above deck afterwards and we’ll watch the sun go down.’