Zheng looked amused. 'It won't make any difference. But I'll help you for old times' sake, and wish you luck.'

He shook his head as he wrote a memorial, his brush wielded like a little hand broom. What happened to him afterwards is well known: grounded by the Emperor, given a land locked military command, spending his days constructing the nine storeyed porcelain pagoda honouring Tianfei; we imagine he missed his voyages over the distant seas of the world, but cannot say for sure. But we do know what happened to Bold and Kyu, and we will tell you in the next chapter.

Beijing was raw in every sense, the wind frigid and damp, the wood of the buildings still white and dripping with sap, the smell of pitch and turned earth and wet cement everywhere. It was crowded, too, though not like Hangzhou or Nanjing, so that Bold and Kyu felt cosmopolitan and sophisticated, as if this huge construction site were beneath them somehow. A lot of people here had that attitude.

They made their way to the eunuch clinic named in Zheng He's memorial, located just south of the Meridian Gate, the southern entrance to the Forbidden City. Kyu presented his introduction, and he and Bold were whisked inside to see the clinic's head eunuch. 'A reference from Zheng He will take you far in the palace,' this eunuch told them, 'even if Zheng himself is having troubles with the imperial officials. I know the palace's Director of Ceremonies, Wu Han, very well, and will introduce you. He is an old friend of Zheng's, and needs eunuchs in the Literary Depth Pavilion for rescript writing. But wait, you are not literate, are you? But Wu also administers the eunuch priests maintained to attend to the spiritual welfare of the concubines.'

'My master here is a lama,' Kyu said, indicating Bold. 'He has trained me in all the mysteries of the bardo.'

The eunuch regarded Bold sceptically. 'Be that as it may, one way or another the memorial from Zheng will get you in. He has recommended you very highly. But you will need your pao, of course.'

'Pao?' Kyu said. 'My precious?'

'You know.' The eunuch gestured at Kyu's groin. 'It is necessary to prove your status, even after I have inspected and certified you. Also, more importantly perhaps, when you die you will be buried with it on your chest, to fool the gods. You don't want to come back as a shemule, after all.' He glanced at Kyu curiously. 'You don't have yours?'

Kyu shook his head.

'Well, we have many here you can choose from, left over from patients who died. I doubt you can tell black from Chinese after the pickling!' He laughed and led them down a hall.

His name was jiang, he said; he was an ex sailor from Fukian, and was puzzled that anyone young and fit would ever leave the coast to come to a place like Beijing. 'But as black as you are, you'll be like the quillin that the fleet brought back last time for the Emperor, the spotted unicorn with the long neck. I think it also was from Zanj. Do you know it?'

' It was a big fleet,' Kyu said.

'I see. Well, Wu and the other palace eunuchs love exotics like you and the quillin, and so does the Emperor, so you'll be fine. Keep quiet and don't get mixed up in any conspiracies, and you'll do well.'

In a cool storage building they went into a room filled with sealed porcelain and glass jars, and found a black penis for Kyu to take with him. The head eunuch then inspected him personally, to make sure he was what he said he was, and then brushed his certification onto the introduction from Zheng, and put his chop to it in red ink. 'Some people try to fake it, of course, but if they're caught they get it handed to them, and then they aren't faking it any more, are they. You know, I noticed they didn't put in a quill when they cut you. You should have a quill to keep it open, and then the plug goes in the quill. It's much more comfortable that way. They should have done that when you were cut.'

'I seem to be all right without it,' Kyu said. He held the glass jar up against the light, looking closely at his new pao. Bold shuddered and led the way out of the creepy room.

While further arrangements were made in the palace, Kyu was assigned a bed in the dorm, and Bold was offered a room in the clinic's men's building. 'Temporary, you understand. Unless you care to join us in the main building. Great opportunities for advancement… 'No thank you,' Bold said politely. But he saw that many men were coming in to request the operation, desperate for a job. When there was famine in the countryside there was no shortage of applicants, they even had to turn people away. As with everything in China, there was a whole bureaucracy at work here, the palace requiring as it did several thousand eunuchs for its operation. This clinic was just a small part of that.

So they were launched in Beijing. Indeed, things had gone so well that Bold wondered if Kyu, no longer needing Bold as he had during their journey north, would now abandon him – move into the Forbidden City and disappear from his life. The idea made him sad, despite all.

But Kyu, after being assigned to the concubines of Zhu Gaozhi, the Emperor's eldest legitimate son and the Heir Designate, asked Bold to come with him and apply to be a stabler for the Heir. 'I still need your help,' he said simply, looking like the boy who had boarded the treasure ship so long ago.

'I'll try,' Bold said.

Kyu was able to ask the favour of an interview from Zhu Gaozhi's stable master, and Bold went in and displayed his expertise with some big beautiful horses, and was given a job. Mongolians had the same kind of advantage in the stable that eunuchs had in the palace.

It was easy work, Bold found; the Heir Designate was an indolent man, his horses seldom ridden, so that the stablers had to exercise them on a track, and in the new parks of the palace grounds. The horses were all very big and white, but slow and weak winded; Bold saw now why the Chinese could never go north of their Great Wall and attack the Mongols to any great effect, despite their stupendous numbers. Mongols lived on their horses, and lived off them too made their clothes and shelter from their felt and wool, drank their milk and blood, ate them when they had to. Mongolian horses were the life of the people; whereas these big clodhoppers might as well have been driving millstones in a circle with blinkers on, for all the wind and spirit they had.

It turned out Zhu Gaozhi spent a lot of time in Nanjing, where he had been brought up, visiting his mother the Empress Xu. So as the months passed, Bold and Kyu made the trip between the two capitals many times, travelling on barges on the Grand Canal, or on horseback beside it. Zhu Gaozhi preferred Nanjing to Beijing, for obvious reasons of climate and culture; late at night, after drinking vast quantities of rice wine, he could be heard declaring to his intimates that he would move the capital back to Nanjing on the very day of his father's death. This made the enormous labour of building Beijing look odd to them when they were there.

But more and more they were in Nanjing. Kyu helped run the Heir's harem, and spent most of his time inside their enclosure. He never told Bold a thing about what he did in there, except one time, when he came out to the stables late at night, a bit drunk. This was almost the only time Bold saw him any more, and he looked forward to these nocturnal visits, despite the way they made him nervous.

On this occasion Kyu remarked that his main task these days was to find husbands for those of the Emperor's concubines who had reached the age of thirty without ever having relations with the Emperor. Zhu Di farmed these out to his son, with instructions to marry them off.