The Chinese Alchemist Read Online Free PDF

for the family was well regarded by all, irrespective of the manner in which it was acquired. My father was addicted to the gaming tiles, and regularly gambled much of the family income away. We lived, I suppose, in a state of decaying gentility.
    No, my destiny had been decided long before I was born. My family, it seems, had a long tradition of service to the Imperial Court. I was to be adopted by Wu Peng, a very important personage in the court. Wu was a eunuch in the imperial household. I was to be a eunuch, too.
    I did not understand when I was sent to Wu Peng on my tenth birthday what a eunuch was. I was soon to find out. Number One Brother, who by now had a wife and two concubines, told me to take it like a man, which was, I suppose, his idea of humor. My mother and father told me to be brave, that it was a tremendous honor. Brave about what? An honor for what? I was told that the Son of Heaven’s closest advisor and confidant was a eunuch, someone so powerful that he walked the chambers of the Son of Heaven. I was told that the workings of the Imperial Palace depended upon the skill of eunuchs as much as on the ministrations of the most senior mandarins, a position to which Number One Brother aspired. I did not understand any of this. I did know that my mother cried herself to sleep for several nights before I left.
    Perhaps that is what they told Number One Sister, too, that it was an honor to serve the emperor. And it was.
    Dory suffered a massive heart attack and died on the spot, seated in her favorite armchair. She’d had a heart condition for a few years, something she’d neglected to mention to me. Her maid found her when she returned to the house with the groceries. Her husband was at his club at the time. Dory died alone. In fact, it didn’t matter that neither George nor the maid was on hand. The doctors said there was nothing that could have been done. It was a shock. Dory had looked younger than her years, but even so, she was taken way too soon. More than anything else I blamed the Cottingham, convinced Dory would still be alive if they’d let her work as long as she wanted to, or at least for a few more years until she turned sixty-five. Rob, Clive, Alex Stewart, and I all went to the funeral. I saw no one that I knew from the Cottingham, and certainly not Burton Haldimand.
    I also blamed whoever it was who had changed his or her mind about selling the T’ang box. The auction house wasn’t revealing any names, which would be standard procedure, so this person was both nameless and faceless. That didn’t stop me from being mad at them. Dory had been so excited about that box, the idea that she would have two of the three boxes her stepfather had, in her mind, stolen from China. Maybe if I’d been able to get it for her…
    It was at the funeral that I saw Dory’s husband, George Norfolk Matthews, for the first time. He looked to be older than Dory by maybe ten years, and he seemed to be a very sad man, not just because of Dory but because of life. I have no idea why I thought that. He had plenty of money, and Dory had always spoken of him with affection. She had many photos of the two of them in her former office at the Cottingham, and of course at her home. Their daughter Amy, a doctor, came from Florida. It was the first time I’d seen her in person, too. She looked like her father, not Dory, and I knew that she was divorced. With her was a young man whom I recognized from photos I’d seen at Dory’s as her much-loved grandson, George, named for his grandfather, but better known as Geordie. Geordie looked like Dory’s side of the family, which is to say more Asian. He was an extremely attractive young man, the sort who would have the girls swooning. There was also a half brother of Dory’s by the name of Martin Jones. I didn’t get a chance to talk to any of them.
    Several weeks later, long after Dory was buried, I was still playing at being Charlyn Krahn, to my displeasure. Taking care