Gai-Jin (29 page)

“Done!” the man said truculently even though Ah Tok was an accomplished player.

“What’s all that about?” Struan said.

“Servants’ talk, nothing important, my son.”

When they had finished they gave him a fresh, crisp night shirt. “Thank you,” Struan said to them, greatly refreshed. They bowed politely and were gone.

“Ah Tok, bolt her door, quietly.”

She obeyed. Her sharp ears heard the rustle of skirts in the adjoining room and she resolved to increase her vigilance. Nosey, foreign devil toad belly whore with her Jade Gate so hungry for the Master a civilized person can almost hear it salivating …

“Light the candle for me, please.”

“Eh? Are your eyes hurting you, my son?”

“No, nothing like that. There are safety matches in the bureau.” Safety matches, the recent Swedish patent, were usually kept locked away as they were highly sought after, therefore had a ready sale and therefore had a habit of disappearing. Petty theft was endemic in Asia. Uneasily she used one, not understanding why they would not light unless the side of their special box was struck. He had explained why but she only muttered about more foreign devil magic.

“Where do you want the candle, my son?”

He pointed at the bedside table within easy reach. “Here. Now leave me for a little while.”

“But, ayeeyah, we should talk, there is much to plan.”

“I know. Just wait outside the door and keep everyone away until I call.”

Grumbling, she walked out. So much talk and bad news had exhausted him. Nonetheless, painfully he balanced the candle on the side of the bed, then lay back a moment.

Four years ago on his sixteenth birthday his mother had taken him to the Peak to speak privately: “Now you are old enough to learn some secrets of the Noble House. There will always be secrets. Some your father and I keep from you until you become tai-pan. Some I keep from him, and some from you. Some I will now share with you and not with him, or your brothers and sisters. Under no circumstances are these secrets to be shared with anyone. Anyone. You promise before God.”

“Yes, Mother, I swear it.”

“First: perhaps one day we may need to give each other personal or dangerous information in a private letter—never forget, anything in writing may be read by alien eyes. Whenever I write to you I will always add, p.s. I love you. You will do the same, always, without fail. But if there is
no
p.s. I love you, then the letter contains important and secret information, from me to you or you to me only. Watch!” Shielding the paper she had prepared, she lit some safety matches and held them under the paper, not to fire it but to almost scorch it, line by line. Miraculously, the hidden message appeared:
Happy Birthday, under your pillow there’s a sight draft for ten thousand pounds. Keep it secretly, spend it wisely
.

“Oh, Mother, there is? There really is, ten thousand?”

“Yes.”

“Ayeeyah! But how do you do it? The writing?”

“Take a clean quill or pen and write your message carefully in a liquid I will give you, or milk, and let it dry. When you heat the paper as I did, the writing will appear.” She used another match and gravely lit a corner of the paper. In silence they watched it burn. She ground the ashes to dust under her tiny high-booted foot. “When you’re tai-pan, trust no one,” adding strangely, “even me.”

Now Struan held her sad letter over the candle’s flame. The words came into view, no mistaking her handwriting:

For a moment he stopped reading, sick with rage. Soon there’ll be a reckoning, he promised himself, then read on:

For the first time in his life he was furious with his mother. Shakily, he shoved the paper into the flame, held it while it burned then pulverized the ash to nothingness, smashed the flame out and sent the candle skittering and lay back nauseated, heart pounding, all the time his mind shouting: How dare she investigate Angelique and her family without asking me! How dare she be so wrong! Whatever sins they committed Angelique is not to blame. Mother of all people should know the sins of the fathers are not to be blamed on the children! Wasn’t my beloved grandfather much worse, wasn’t he a killer and not much more than a pirate, as her father still is? She’s a bloody hypocrite! It’s none of her business who I marry. It’s my life and if I want to marry Angelique next year I will. Mother knows nothing about Angelique—and when she knows the truth she’ll love her as I do—or else, by God! she …

“Oh, Christ,” he gasped as pain ripped him apart.

McFay looked up from the piles of letters, documents and journals littering his desk. “How is he?” he asked anxiously as Dr. Babcott came in and closed the door. The office was spacious, facing the High Street and the sea.

“It was a stomach seizure of some kind, Jamie. To be expected, I’m afraid, poor chap. I dressed his wound—he’d torn a few stitches. I gave him a draft of laudanum.” Babcott rubbed his eyes, red-rimmed with fatigue, his frock coat heavy and frayed at the sleeves and stained, here and there, with chemicals and dried blood. “Not much more I can do for him at the moment. What’s the latest from the fleet?”

“Status quo: the fleet’s at action stations, Legation’s still surrounded, the Bakufu are supposed to appear soon.”

“What happens if they don’t?”

McFay shrugged. “I’ve had orders to get Malcolm back to Hong Kong as soon as possible—very important for him. I can get him on the mail sh—”

“I absolutely forbid it,” Babcott said, with more anger than he intended. “That would be stupid and highly dangerous, highly dangerous. If they got into a storm, which is likely this time of the year…well, severe and prolonged vomiting would tear the repairs apart—which would kill him. No!”

“Then when will it be safe?”

The doctor glanced out of the windows. Whitecaps out past the headland, none in the bay. Sky overcast. He weighed his helplessness against his knowledge. “At least a week, perhaps a month. God knows, Jamie, I don’t.”

“If you were to go on the mail ship, would that help?”

“For Christ’s sake, no! Didn’t you hear me clearly? No. No! He’s not to move. Nine days on a ship would kill him.”

McFay’s face closed. “What are Malcolm’s chances? Really. It’s very important I know.”

“Still good. His temperature’s more or less normal and there’s no sign of any festering.” Babcott rubbed his eyes again and yawned. “Sorry, didn’t mean to snap at you. Been up since midnight patching the results of a sailor-versus-soldier Drunk Town brawl, and a dawn emergency in the Yoshiwara, had to sew up a young woman who tried to cut herself into the next world.” He sighed. “It would help to keep him as calm as possible. I’d say his bad news probably brought on the attack.”

The knowledge and implications of Culum Struan’s death and therefore Malcolm’s new status as tai-pan—of vital and immediate concern to all their rivals—had rushed through the Settlement. In Brock’s, Norbert Greyforth had interrupted a meeting to open the first bottle of champagne from the case he had had kept chilled against this day for many weeks–chilled in their new, and highly profitable, ice house next door to their godown. “Best news we’ve had in years,” he chortled to Dmitri, “and I’ve another twenty cases for the party I’m throwing tonight. A toast, Dmitri!” He raised his cut glass, the best Venetian that money could buy. “Here’s to the tai-pan of the Noble House: out with the Old, out with the New, by God, and may they be bankrupt within the year!”

“I’ll drink with you, Norbert, but to the success of the new tai-pan, none of the rest,” Dmitri said.

“Open your eyes to reality. They’re the old, we’re the new—once they had guts when Dirk Struan was alive but now they’re weak, McFay’s weak–why, with his enthusiastic help and a little persuasion on the night of
Canterbury’s murder we could have roused the whole Settlement, the fleet, the Army, we’d have captured this bugger Satsuma king, hanged him, and be living happily ever after.”

“I agree. John Canterbury’s going to be revenged, one way or another. Poor bastard,” Dmitri said. “You know he left me his business?” Canterbury’s was one of the smaller trading houses, specializing in the export of silk cloth, and particularly cocoons and silkworm eggs, a highly lucrative trade to France where the silk industry, once the best in the world, had been decimated by disease. “John always said he would but I never believed him. I’m his Executor too—Wee Willie gave me the deed before he left.”

“Samurai are all bastards, no reason to murder him like that. What about his
musume?
Old John was besotted with her. She’s carrying, isn’t she?”

“No, that was a rumor. In his will he asked me to take care of her, give her money to buy her own shack. I went to see her but her mama-san, Raiko, that old bat, she told me the girl had gone back to her village but she’d send on any money. I paid over what John had said, so that was that.”

Thoughtfully Norbert finished his wine and poured more and felt better. “You should take care of yourself too,” he said, keeping his voice down, judging the time ripe. “You’ve the future to think of, not a few rolls of cloth and worm eggs. Consider the Great Game, the American game. With our contacts we can buy any amount of British, French or Prussian armaments—we’ve just signed an exclusive deal to represent Krupp’s in the Far East—at better prices than Struan’s can give you, have them delivered in Hawaii for transshipment to … to wherever, no questions asked.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“Whatever you want, we can get cheaper and faster.” Norbert refilled their glasses. “I like Dom Pérignon, it’s better than Tatt—that old monk knew about color and sugar, and the lack of it. Like Hawaiian sugar,” he added delicately, “I hear it’s going to be so pricey this year to be almost a national treasure, for North or South.”

Dmitri’s glass stopped in midair. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, just between us, Brock and Sons have the lock on this year’s crop, meaning that Struan’s won’t have so much as a hundred-pound sack, so your deal with them won’t happen.”

“When’s this going to be common knowledge?” Dmitri’s eyes slitted.

“Would you like to be part of it? Our deal? We could use a trustworthy agent for the States, North and South.”

Dmitri poured for both of them, enjoying the touch of the chilled glass. “In return for what?”

“A toast: to the demise of the Noble House!”

* * *

Throughout Yokohama other toasts were being quaffed at the rare tidings of Culum’s death and the succession of a new tai-pan, and in boardrooms throughout the Far East, and elsewhere, that traded with Asia. Some toasts were celebratory, some vindictive, some toasted the succession, some cursed all Struan bones to the devil, some prayed for their success, but all men of business considered how the news would affect them, for, like it or not, Struan’s was the Noble House.

In the French Legation Angelique clinked glasses, sipped the champagne warily, her glass cheap and barely adequate, like the wine. “Yes, I agree, Monsieur Vervene.”

Pierre Vervene was the Chargé d’Affaires, a tired, balding man in his forties. “The first toast requires a second, Mademoiselle,” he said, raising his glass again, towering over her, “not only prosperity and long life to the new tai-pan, but to the tai-pan—your future husband.”

“La, Monsieur!” She put down her glass, pretending to be cross. “I told you that in confidence because I’m so happy, so proud, but it must not be mentioned out loud, until he, Monsieur Struan, makes it public. You must promise me.”

“Of course, of course.” Vervene’s tone was reassuring but he had already mentally drafted the dispatch he would rush to Seratard aboard their flagship at Yedo the moment she left. Clearly there were innumerable political ramifications and opportunities that such a liaison would create for France and French interests. My God, he was thinking, if we’re clever—and we are—we can control the Noble House through this young strumpet with nothing to recommend her except a fairly pretty face, delectable breasts, an overripe maidenhead and buttocks that promise her husband a wanton vigor for a month or two. How the devil did she snare him—if what she says is really true. If it is …

Merde
, the poor man must be insane to settle for this baggage, with no dowry and disreputable lineage, to be the mother of his children! What incredible luck for that odious swine, Richaud, now he’ll be able to redeem his paper. “My sincerest congratulations, Mademoiselle.”

His door swung open and the Legation’s Number One Boy, an elderly, rotund Chinese dressed in linen coat, black trousers and black skullcap and laden with mail, barged in. “Heya, Mass’er, all same mailah, never mind!” He plonked the letters and packages on the ornate desk, gawked at the girl, and belched as he left.

“My God, these foul-mannered people are enough to drive one mad! A thousand times I’ve told that cretin to knock first! Excuse me a moment.” Quickly Vervene leafed through the letters. Two from his wife, one from his mistress, all postmarked two and a half months ago: Both asking for money, I’ll wager, he thought sourly. “Ah, four letters for you,
Mademoiselle.” Many nationals sent their mail in care of their nearest Legation. “Three from Paris and one from Hong Kong.”