Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions) by Vincent Cronin

Author:Vincent Cronin [Cronin, Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

chapter nine

Within the Forbidden City

The year turned and with it their fortune. In mid-January a letter was dispatched to Ma T’ang, the contents of which Ricci learned a few days later. “Having considered the memorial submitted by Ma T’ang, Collector of Taxes, concerning the gifts which the distant barbarian Li Ma-tou desires to offer, His Majesty orders the said Li Ma-tou to present his gifts at Peking. At the same time the Ministry of Rites is commanded to examine the matter and submit a further memorial.”

Six months had passed since they had fallen into Ma T’ang’s hands. For eight weeks they had been in imminent danger of their lives: everyone, mandarins, eunuchs, even their guards believed they would die. And now deliverance. It seemed certain to Ricci that Providence had intervened. All that he could ever learn about the reprieve was that one day, when the second memorial had been dismissed to an obscure palace limbo, the Emperor suddenly remembered that “certain foreigners wanted to present His Majesty with a striking clock.” Petulantly he asked, “Why don’t they give me that striking clock?” The Emperor’s private secretary, a eunuch, replied, “The foreigners cannot enter Peking without a licence, and your Majesty has not yet replied to Ma T’ang’s second memorial.” The Emperor called for the memorial and at once issued a rescript.

Ma T’ang was displeased because his charges against the foreigners had been ignored, and because the Ministry of Rites, a hated mandarin body, had been ordered to take the matter out of his hands. But with an imperial rescript he could only comply. Reluctantly he commanded the gifts to be removed from the strong-room and given back to the foreigners, who were to be provided with horses and porters at public expense for the journey to Peking. When the gifts were restored, for safety’s sake Ricci opened both the reliquaries and removed the pieces of the true Cross. He left only minor relics such as pieces of saints’ clothing and soil from the Holy Land, carefully altering the inscriptions in case they ever fell into Christian hands. The pieces of the true Cross he concealed in his own personal baggage.

On January the twentieth Ricci and his party set out with eight horses and more than thirty porters, in charge of a mandarin who informed them that this was the usual way of escorting ambassadors from tributary kingdoms. As foreigners wishing to present gifts, they had been provisionally placed in that category. They changed horses at every town and spent each night in the Governor’s house as guests of honour. After shivering all winter, it was luxury to sleep on brick kangs kept warm by an interior charcoal fire. As men “summoned by the Emperor” they travelled at a slow pace conformable to their new dignity, taking four days to reach Peking, where they were lodged outside the walls in a house belonging to the court eunuchs.

Ricci had hoped to be able to offer the presents himself, but now he

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