“So I am afraid I can offer you not much hope of escape,” Laurence told Hammond on shore, supervising the packing of his sea-chest: Gerry was not particularly handy, and Laurence was having to refold every item before it entered the flimsy wooden crate which should have to serve him for the purpose, “unless you should persuade some other person to inveigle her away from you; I may assure you that given your blessing there are several officers among our company who would gladly take your place in her affections.”
“I give it with all my heart,” Hammond said, “and have not the least hope of its answering. If she meant to be fickle, she might have remained in her own country; and I dare say she will be perfectly ready, in the Incan style, to accept any number of suitors, and consider them all her own without letting me off: I will count myself fortunate if I can only persuade her to remain in covert, instead of romping down the Strand behind me, as I suppose she would be glad to do. Unless you could contrive to poison her?” he inquired in a bitter spirit of Gong Su, who had ducked into the tent.
“Did you require me about the provisions?” Laurence asked.
“No, Captain,” Gong Su said, “and Mr. Hammond, I cannot satisfy you; but if I may propose an alternative, you would find Churki no source of difficulty if she should accompany you to China.”
“Ha; I shall not be posted back to China,” Hammond said. “I will be pushed off into the countryside with vague promises of some other occasions in future, which will never come—unless Dom da Camara decides to try and induce their Lordships to bring me under charges, which I cannot discount—”
“Pardon me,” Gong Su said, gently breaking into this morose ramble, which trailed away low but showed no sign of immediately concluding, “but you need not return to England first: the ship may carry you to China, instead.”
“What?” Hammond said, staring.
“And you, of course, Captain,” Gong Su said, bowing, “and Lung Tien Xiang; that is what I wish to humbly suggest.”
Laurence was rather taken aback himself at what could only be called the effrontery of the suggestion they might virtually commandeer the Potentate, particularly when that suggestion came from a source so ordinarily self-effacing: although that Gong Su might desire to return to his own country was no surprise if one considered it; Laurence made it five years since they had left China. “We are very likely to stop a merchantman on its way to Canton, at Madeira if not before,” Laurence said, “and I would of course book your passage if you wished—” But Gong Su was shaking his head.
“My own insignificant presence cannot make a difference in these matters,” Gong Su said. “But I am of the opinion that my master would, when the fullness of events in this distant part of the world have been laid before him, welcome the chance to consult with you more intimately: and that noble lord, your most honored elder brother and the heir of the dread lord who commands the Celestial Throne, has lately granted me the honor to invite you to visit him, if circumstances should seem to make that desirable: such is his foresight and wisdom.”
He concluded this by bringing out a packet of oilcloth, which he unrolled to reveal a narrow and folded letter—the same letter, Laurence realized after a moment, which Lung Shen Li had brought him in Australia, before their departure, and which Laurence had assumed a message from his family: sealed magnificently with red and enclosed in a wrapper labeled all over with Chinese characters. Gong Su placed it across both hands and presented it to Laurence.
“My elder—my what?” Laurence said, baffled, and then said, “Do you mean Prince Mianning? Your master? What—” He stopped, and pressed his lips shut against betraying himself into an undignified yammer: having been under the impression, until the present moment, that Gong Su had been his cook, he could only regard with outrage both the shockingly brazen mode and the act itself, the self-acknowledgment of a—
“He is not a spy,” Hammond hissed at him urgently, having dragged Laurence nearly bodily to the far corner of the tent, “not a spy, at all, Captain; you must not consider him so. He is—” Hammond groped for some excuse. “He has been delegated to your service—”
“Delegated to my service?” Laurence glared at Hammond. “Mr. Hammond, if you will instruct me what else, but a spy, I am to consider a man who has assuredly reported every minute detail of my affairs—he was a guest in my father’s house!—and those of the service to a foreign power—”
“To your relations, who surely had some right to an interest,” Hammond said, as brazen as Gong Su himself, but hastily altered his course, seeing that Laurence was by no means to be persuaded along these lines, “—to his own government, to whom he surely offers his first allegiance; and in any case,” he dashed on, “in any case, you must see the utmost significance—if Prince Mianning invites us to China officially—”
“Prince Mianning has issued no invitation but one hypothetical,” Laurence said, “and left the power of making it in the hands of this—”