“Sometimes I ask groundless questions to see how a woman reacts. I swear to you, neither I nor Mr. Wu believe your father to be anything less than a most honest and loyal man of great capability.” He glanced at the inquisitor. “Is that not true Mr. Wu?”
The man nodded, his eyes huge. Bo Tao made a mental note to step into a few more interrogations and ask ridiculous questions just to cover his tracks. He straightened and smiled genially at Ji Yue. “The questioning is done. Thank you, Mr. Wu,” he said to the inquisitor. “I am sure you would like a break now. Go to the kitchen and ask for some tea. I believe they are making fresh pork bao this morning.”
The man’s eyes lightened, and he rose quickly. Mr. Wu was known to be a great lover of pork bao. Ji Yue rose as well, bowing to them both as she started to withdraw. Then Bo Tao snapped his finger.
“One moment please, Chen Ji Yue. The Head Eunuch wished something from you. What was it?” Then he made ashow of trying to remember while the interrogator grabbed his coat and departed, his long queue whipping behind him in his haste.
The moment the door shut behind him, Bo Tao’s expression turned harder. “The truth now, Ji Yue. I swear I will not harm your father in any way, but I must know the truth. You and your mother help him, do you not?”
Ji Yue flushed. “No!”
“Do not lie to me!” He did not shout the words, but released them as a low hiss. He had found that to be much more effective than bellowing, and it worked on Ji Yue. Her eyes widened and she bit her lip.
“My father is a brilliant man!”
“Of course, he is,” Bo Tao soothed. “But no man can do the volume of work that he accomplishes. Someone must help him.”
Ji Yue squirmed. “Sometimes my father’s hand cramps. I write as he dictates.”
“And your mother?”
She bit her lip. “The same.”
Just as he suspected. “How many of the Confucian texts have you read?”
She blinked. “It is helpful to understand the context of what he dictates.”
“How many?”
“All.”
He began listing off all the texts required in a man’s education. She had read half and was familiar with all. Then he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing in thought. “If you were a man...” He let his voice trail away suggestively.
“But I’m not,” she said with some bitterness. “I am a woman.” She raised her eyes to meet his directly. “I am a woman who can help a man who lives and breathes politics. I am a woman who understands his frustrations even as shesoothes his weary body. I will bear his sons and listen to his problems.” She straightened to her full height. “I will make an excellent Empress.”
He swallowed down a surge of fury at her words. It wasn’t rational, and so he suppressed it, but it made his voice hard. “The Emperor could not acknowledge your words last night. No woman should dare to question his rule.”
“I was trying to make an impression,” she snapped.
“You succeeded.” Then he folded his arms. “You said he must look to the underlying cause of the rebellion. The Dragon Throne needs to know: what did you mean by that? What cause to do see beneath the Taiping?”
Her eyes turned pensive, and but when she spoke, he heard conviction in every word. “My father is honest and so we are poor. Even for a lowly lawyer, bribes are rampant. Surely as Master of these festivities, you know of what I speak.”
He grimaced. Of course, he knew. As China grew, so did the layers of bureaucracy. And where there were bureaucrats, there was the tendency toward graft.
“My father values his integrity more than his wealth, but others are not so wholesome.” She shifted, then abruptly stepped forward in her earnestness. “The peasants follow two things: food and hope. Rebel leader Hong Xiu Quan offers both. Why doesn’t the government offer its people something so simple? Why do the outlying governors give so little to the people they are sworn to protect?”
He felt his eyebrows rise in surprise. She obviously understood China’s problems. “Does your father share your views?”
She snorted. “My father is a scholar. He buries himself in texts that are hundreds of years old. It has not prepared him for a country threatened by rebellions and foreign countries.”
“There have always been threats to China’s sovereignty.”
She nodded. “Did those threats have guns such as the white people carry?”
He shook his head, and his eyes grew pensive. “I saw a drawing once of an English gun boat. I do not know if the picture was real, but if it was...” He sighed. “I fear what will happen to China if the English become greedy.”
She reached out and touched his hand, hope shining in her eyes. “You do understand. You agree with me!”
