“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:
Sorry to tell your father died raving, besotted with whisky. He must have bribed a servant to sneak it in again. Much more to tell in person. Thank God he’s out of his misery but it was the Brocks, my cursed father and my brother Morgan, who give us no peace and caused his strokes—the final one came just after you left when we discovered details, too late, of their secret Hawaiian coup against us. Jamie has a few details.
For a moment he stopped reading, sick with rage. Soon there’ll be a reckoning, he promised himself, then read on:
Beware of our friend Dmitri Syborodin. We discover he’s a secret agent for that revolutionary, President Lincoln, not the South as he pretends. Beware of Angelique Richaud …
His heart twisted with sudden fright: Our Paris agents write that her uncle Michel Richaud went bankrupt shortly after she left and is now in Debtors’ Prison. More facts: her father keeps very poor company, has very substantial gambling debts, and secretly boasts to intimates he’ll soon represent all our French interests—received your letter of the 4th recommending this, presume at her instigation—he won’t, he’s insolvent. Another of his “secrets”: you’ll be his son-in-law within a year. Of course, ridiculous, you are far too young for marriage, and I could not conceive of a worse connection. Singly or together they are out to snare you, my son. Be circumspect and beware of feminine guile.
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.
CHAPTER TWELVE
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 the
ir 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.”
“Oh! Oh, thank you!” She brightened seeing that two were from Colette, one from her aunt, the last from her father. “We’re such a long way from home, no?”
“Paris is the world, yes; yes, it is. Well, I expect you’ll want some privacy, you can use the room across the hall. If you’ll excuse me …” Vervene motioned at his heaped desk, his smile self-deprecating. “Affairs of State.”
“Of course, thank you. And thank you for your good wishes, but please, not a word ….” She swept out graciously, knowing that within hours her marvelous secret would be common knowledge, whispered from ear to ear. Is that wise? I think so. Malcolm did ask me, didn’t he?
Vervene opened his letters, scanned them, quickly saw they both asked for money but no other bad news, at once put them aside to read and enjoy later and began the dispatch for Seratard—with a secret copy for André Poncin—delighted to be the bearer of good tidings. “Wait a moment,” he muttered, “perhaps it’s like-father-like-daughter and just the usual exaggeration! Safer to report it as a few minutes ago Mademoiselle Angelique whispered in confidence that … then the Minister can make up his own mind.”
Across the hall, in a pleasant antechamber that faced the small garden off the High Street, she had settled herself expectantly. Colette’s first letter gave her happy news of Paris and fashion and affairs and their mutual friends so delightfully that she raced through it, knowing she would reread it many times, particularly tonight in the comfort of her bed when she could savor everything. She had known and loved Colette most of her life—at the convent they had been inseparable, sharing hopes and dreams and intimacies.
The second letter gave more exuberant news, ending about her marriage—Colette was her own age, eighteen, already married a year with one son: I am pregnant again, dearest Angelique, my husband is delighted but I am a little fretful. As you know the first was not easy though the Doctor assures me I will be strong enough. When will you return? I cannot wait …
Angelique took a deep breath and looked out of the window and waited until the twinge had passed. You must not leave yourself open, she repeated to herself, near tears. Even with Colette. Be strong, Angelique. Be careful. Your life has changed, everything changed—yes, but only for a little while. Do not be caught unawares.
Again a deep breath. The next letter shocked her. Aunt Emma wrote the awful news of her husband’s fall and: now we are destitute and my poor poor Michel languishes in Debtors’ Prison with no help in sight! We’ve nowhere to turn, no money. It’s terrible, my child, a nightmare …
Poor darling Uncle Michel, she thought, weeping silently, a shame he was such a bad manager. “Never mind, dear darling Aunt-Mama,” she said aloud, filled with a sudden joy. “Now I can repay all your kindnesses, I’ll ask Malcolm to help, he’ll certainly …”
Wait! Would that be wise?
While she pondered that she opened her father’s letter. To her surprise the envelope contained only a letter, without the expected sight draft she had asked for, on money brought with her from Paris and deposited in the Victoria Bank, money that her uncle had generously advanced to her—on the solemn promise that she must not tell his wife and that her father would instantly repay the loan the moment she reached Hong Kong, which he told her he had done.
Hong Kong, September 10. Hello, my little cabbage, I hope that all is well and your Malcolm idolizes you as I do, as the whole of Hong Kong does. It’s rumored his father is at death’s door. I will keep you advised. Meanwhile I write in haste as I leave for Macao on the tide. There’s a wonderful business opportunity there, so good that I have temporarily pledged the money instruments you left in safekeeping and will invest for you as an equal partner. By the next post I will be able to send you ten times what you wanted and tell you the wonderful profit we have made—after all, we have to think of your dowry, without which … eh?
Her eyes could not read on, her brain in turmoil. Oh my God! What business opportunity? Is he gambling all that I have in the world?
It was nearly two o’clock and McFay was weary, his stomach empty, his mind filled with gloom. He had written a dozen letters, signed half a hundred chits, paid dozens of bills, checked the previous day’s books, which showed trading was down, found that all goods ordered from America were either cancelled, held up or offered at increased prices, all busin
ess with Canada and Europe equally affected in some degree by the American civil war. No good news either in any dispatches from Hong Kong—a lot of bad from their branch in Shanghai, though Albert MacStruan, the power there, was doing a sterling job. My God, he thought, it’d be a catastrophe if we have to evacuate Shanghai, with all our investments there.
The city was again in turmoil and the three foreign concessions under British, French and American control beset with rumors that armies of rebel irregulars of the immense Tai’ping Rebellion, based in and around Nanking—a major city southwards they had captured nine years ago and used as a capital—were again on the move. The clipping from the Shanghai Observer read:
Two years ago when our valiant force of British and French troops, ably assisted by the local mercenary army, organized and paid for by our merchant princes, both European and Chinese, under the command of the gallant American soldier of fortune, Frederick Townsend Ward, drove off the rebels for a thirty-mile radius, we all presumed the threat was put away forever.
Now eyewitnesses report an irresistible army of half a million rebels, with some European officers, have massed to come against us, and another half million will again stab north for Peking. Their opposing Manchu armies are unreliable and helpless, their Chinese levies mutinous, so this time we will not survive. It is hoped that Her Majesty’s Government will prevail on the Manchu authorities to appoint Captain Charles Gordon to command of Mr. Ward’s force, grievously wounded in action, and to the position of overall command of Manchu training. Your correspondent believes this will be, as usual, too little too late.
We need a fully equipped British Army stationed in China, permanently—nervousness in India over the recent, dreadful Indian Mutiny of native sepoys notwithstanding. Business continues to be disastrous with the price of silk and tea at an all-time high. Famine conditions exist in most areas within five hundred miles …