Chapter 20
Lisan shivered as she passed through the gates of Lennox Manor, but her need to know the truth about her past was so overwhelming
it overcame the compulsion to turn back. She walked to Jessfield Station and from there took a rickshaw to Master Liu’s home.
To her home. The pull of the house, the urge to go back, lessened the farther away the rickshaw took her from Brenan Road
and Lennox Manor.
She had never felt such relief as when the rickshaw turned into Rue Molière, the street she knew so well. Her fists unclenched
at the familiar sights: the newspaper stand on the corner, rickshaw drivers clustered at the intersection, and the vendor
making deep-fried tofu puffs regardless of the season. She walked up the brick-paved driveway to the house, taking in every
shrub and tree, each one an old companion. She asked Master Liu’s house servant to let him know she was home and would go
see him as soon as she had put away her things.
In her room, she washed her face and for the umpteenth time rehearsed the words she would say to ask Master Liu for assurances
that Masako Kyo’s claims had no merit. Then she could continue her days as before.
The door to the penjing room was slightly ajar. She entered, but the words she’d been preparing to say evaporated when she saw the person standing
beside Master Liu.
It was Yao.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted, unable to take her eyes off the young man. But it was Master Liu who answered.
“Yao is here because of Masako Kyo,” Master Liu said, his voice mild. “Close the door, Lisan. Then sit down.”
She managed to lower herself into a chair beside the door, too confused to ask anything. All she could do was stare at Yao,
whose sympathetic gaze only served to aggravate her confusion.
“Yao came to me because Masako Kyo confronted you at a party,” Master Liu said, “and then she visited you this afternoon.
She went to Lennox Manor because of you. What did she say?”
His voice prompted the habitual obedience of years. “She claimed to know my parents,” Lisan said. “According to her, they
were Prince and Princess Tsai. I’ve never even heard of them.”
Master Liu nodded for her to continue and she repeated everything she could remember of that disturbing conversation. When
she finished, there was only silence. His expression gave nothing away. She had salvaged her composure while recounting Kyo’s
claims, and now she dredged up the words she had rehearsed.
“She’s wrong, isn’t she?” Lisan said. “It’s all just coincidence, isn’t it? That you found me on the streets just a few weeks
after the Forbidden City fell? That you and Prince Tsai were classmates in France? I mean, if my father were Prince Tsai,
if I were really the missing fourth princess, you would’ve told me.”
She looked from Master Liu to Yao and back again. One of them was a millionaire many times over, the other merely a gardener.
Yet looking at them today, she realized for the first time that even though Yao only came to Shanghai on occasion, the two
knew each other quite well. Not only that, both of them knew about her past. It took everything she had not to scream, not
to demand answers.
Master Liu sat back in his chair, looked at Yao, and sighed. “We didn’t tell you because it was better for you not to remember. It was better and safer for all of us.”
Hardly believing his words, she gripped the arms of the chair. “Tell me the truth,” she said, “I deserve to know it. All of
it.” She had never spoken with such ferocity to her guardian.
Master Liu cleared his throat. “Lisan, I didn’t find you in the streets of Shanghai. Your father brought you here to me. And
yes, your father is Prince Tsai.”
She pressed herself against the back of the chair as he spoke, but she heard his words as though from far away, almost drowned
out by the pounding of her heart.
Everything Masako Kyo had told her was true, and Master Liu was able to fill in the details.
Before going to France, Prince Tsai could tell that the Boxer Rebellion was going to escalate. He instructed his wife to abandon
Peking and take the family to their summer estate in the hills outside Peking at the first sign of trouble. The route there
was familiar to the entire household.
When news came of the attack on Peking, Prince Tsai returned home immediately. But partway through his journey, he realized
how dangerous the situation had become and changed course from Peking to his summer home northwest of the city. Dressed in
ordinary clothes and carrying only a small bag of belongings, the prince had to travel by foot before reaching the estate.
But the summer house stood quiet. His wife and children weren’t there. Nor was anyone else from the Peking household. Or so
he thought until a servant boy emerged from hiding. He told the prince what had befallen the rest of his family.
The youngest princess had been running a fever, so his wife was reluctant to leave home.
Princess Tsai had dithered and hoped for the best, trusted reports coming from the Palace claiming that all was well, that the fighting would cease very soon, that the Chinese Army was winning and foreign soldiers would never enter Peking.
When it was no longer possible to deny the evidence of her own eyes and ears, it was already too late to gather the household for an orderly evacuation.
There was no hope of getting their carts, carriages, or motorcars through streets choked with panicked citizens.
Princess Tsai had the gardeners take out a section of railing along the veranda on the third floor of her quarters. Accustomed
to following orders absolutely, the gardeners never questioned why. While they carried out this task, the princess ordered
her servants to run away and hide.
Down in the courtyard, a young gardener’s assistant set down the section of railing he’d carried from the third-floor veranda
and chanced to look up. He realized what Princess Tsai was planning. She had blindfolded her daughters and was pulling nooses
over their heads. He ran up the staircase as Princess Tsai lined up the three girls, hand in hand, along the edge of the veranda.
He grabbed the girl closest to him, tearing her from her sister’s grasp just as their mother jumped, taking the two older
girls with her.
The boy carried the youngest princess down to the courtyard. Inside the walls of the small palace, sounds from outside reverberated,
the sharp retorts of rifles punctuated shouts of pain, and the booms of cannon fire seemed to ricochet between buildings.
Everywhere, desperate cries for help. What servants still remained were too intent on escaping to pay attention to the boy
and his burden. Some were running out with valuables from the palace. The youngest princess began screaming, and he realized
too late that she had pulled off her blindfold. She had seen her mother and sisters swinging by their necks. Then she fainted.
Carrying the unconscious child on his back, he hurried through the embattled city, ducking into side streets and avoiding crowds, walking until paved city streets turned into dirt roads and the houses he passed were roofed with thatch instead of tiles, until the sounds of gunfire no longer battered his ears.
He walked for hours, stopping only to drink some water, eat one of the steamed buns taken from the palace kitchens.
By now it was bandits he feared more than soldiers and he didn’t stop to rest. He walked and walked until finally the prince’s summer home appeared on the mountain path, its whitewashed walls glazed by moonlight.
He did his best to take care of the youngest princess, hoping the prince would return before their food ran out. The child
was uncommunicative, stunned into muteness by all she had witnessed. She sat stone-still and silent. She refused to eat. When
the prince arrived, she didn’t recognize her father and clung to the young gardener. It was days before she let Prince Tsai
hold her.
“Prince Tsai wanted to disappear, for people to believe him dead,” Master Liu said, “and to do that, he couldn’t return to
Peking, not even to see his wife and daughters buried. He wanted no more to do with the Imperial government. He blamed their
ignorance for policies that had weakened China, for their arrogance that gave rise to the rebellion that ended with the storming
of the Foreign Legation.”
The most plausible way Prince Tsai could disappear was for people to assume he’d come to harm on the road. He took advantage
of the turmoil and left on a train filled with refugees bound for Shanghai, taking his daughter and the young gardener with
him. After they arrived in Shanghai, he contacted his friend Liu. Master Liu readily agreed to shelter the prince and keep
his identity a secret until they had come up with a plan.
Lisan looked at Yao. He was the boy who had rescued her. She didn’t remember everything, not yet, but now she understood her
nightmares. And she understood why she trusted Yao instinctively.
“Where is Prince Tsai?” she said. She couldn’t say my father; those words were suddenly more alien than when she believed herself an orphan. “Is he still alive?”
“He’s alive and does not live in China,” Master Liu said. “He’s in America right now. We correspond only as necessary. He’s
taken the identity of an employee, as my agent for the automobile import business.”
“Mr. Zheng,” she said, “your agent Mr. Zheng.” A man who traveled to automobile manufacturers in America and Europe.
“It’s a role that allows him to travel and make contact with Chinese living abroad,” Master Liu said. “Many are impatient
for political change. He’s raising money from overseas Chinese communities to support Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists. He
supports the overthrow of the Imperial government.”
“But if he returned to China now and his identity came to light,” Yao said, speaking for the first time, “he would be in danger.