The first cramp clawed her out of a crooked sleep that was sated with prison hulks and sloe-eyed, raving demons, the women bloated with child, the men horned and grasping her away from Tess Struan, who stood guard over Malcolm like a malevolent ghoul. A second cramp followed quickly and brought her awake to reality and what was happening.
Relief that it had begun obliterated the previous hours of trepidation, for it had seemed an eternity before she had slept. Now it was just past 4 A.M. The last time she looked at her clock it was almost 2:30. Another cramp, rougher than before, went through her and concentrated her on the sequence.
Trembling fingers uncorked the second bottle. Again she gagged on the putrid taste and almost brought the liquid up but managed to keep it down with a spoon of honey, all the while her stomach churning with revulsion.
She lay back gasping. Fire seemed to spread from her stomach. In moments sweat poured out of her. Then the sweating passed leaving her limp, soaked and hardly breathing.
Waiting. As before, nothing. Just a bilious, sweet-sick disquiet that had, after hours of anxiety, drifted into troubled sleep. Her dismay crested. “Blessed Mother, let it work, let it work,” she murmured through her tears.
More waiting. Still nothing. The minutes passed.
Then, unlike before, a startlingly different cramp almost doubled her up. Another. Just bearable. More, still bearable. She remembered the second half of the infusion and she sat up and began to sip it. The taste was bad but not as bad as the liquid in the bottles. “Thank God I don’t have to take more of that,” she muttered, and sipped again. Another sip. After each sip a taste of chocolate …
More cramps, stronger now. An increasing rhythm to them. Don’t worry, everything’s happening, she thought, just as André forecast. Her stomach muscles were beginning to feel stretched and angry. More sips and more cramps and then the last drop was down. Honey jar almost empty-last of the chocolate but now even its sweetness could not mask the bilious aftertaste. A draft from under the boudoir door swayed the flame of the lamp on the side table, making the wall shadows change and dance. Stoically she lay back and watched them, her hands holding her belly against the shafts of pain, the muscles tightening and loosening, becoming more tight, knotting under her fingers.
“Watch the shadows, think good thoughts,” she whispered. “What do you see?”
Ships and sails and the roofs of Paris and brambles and, look, there’s the guillotine, no, not the guillotine but a bower covered with climbing roses, why it’s our country cottage near Versailles where we would go in the spring and summer growing up, my brother and I, darling Maman dead so long ago, Father gone only God knows where, Aunt and Uncle loving us but no substitute for darlin—
“Oh, Mon Dieu!” she gasped as the first of the violent spasms slashed her, then cried out at the next, frantically crammed part of the sheet into her mouth to stop the shrieks that burst out of her and would have brought all the Legation pounding on her bolted door.
Then the chills began. Ice picks into her guts. And more violence, twenty times worse than the worst monthly cramps. Her body heaved against the strain, limbs twitching in time with the waves of torment that ripped from her loins and into her head. “I’m going to die … I’m going to die,” she moaned, her teeth grinding on the sheet, muffling the screams that followed with more spasms and chills and more, on and on and on and then stopping. Quite suddenly.
At first she thought she had truly died but soon her senses focused and she saw that the room had ceased spinning, the flame of the lamp was low but still burning and she heard the tick of the clock. The hands of the clock pointed to 5:42.
She struggled up in the bed, feeling awful. A glance in her hand mirror frightened her. Ashen features, hair lank with sweat, lips discolored by the medicine. She rinsed her mouth with some of the green tea and spat into the chamber pot and pushed it back under the bed again. Grimly she fought out of her soiled nightdress, used a damp towel to clean her face and neck as best she could, combed her hair and lay back exhausted but feeling better for the toil. It was only then that she noticed the red smear on her nightdress, thrown carelessly onto the threadbare carpet.
A quick examination confirmed that blood was seeping. She arranged a clean towel between her legs and, in the dawn, lay back once more, almost sinking into the mattress with fatigue. Warmth spread through her tired limbs. The flow increased.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SUNDAY, 9TH NOVEMBER:
“Illustrious Chen said to tell you anything that might affect the tai-pan, Elder Sister,” Ah Soh began uneasily. “The night before last Golden Pubics started her monthly and sh—”
“Ah, that’s why she took to her bed and would not see my son,” Ah Tok said. They were in her room at the end of the corridor, safe from prying ears. “He was like a teething child all day, worse this morning, it’s time we went home.”
“Yes. But listen further: she says it’s her monthly but I know her dates like my own. It seems not possible. Normally she is like any young civilized virgin, regular, though …” Ah Soh toyed nervously with her smock, “though now that I remember it her last one was sparse, almost as if she missed it.”
The older woman belched and used a toothpick. “To miss, or to be little, or irregular with all the anxiety over my son’s wounds and the vile, murdering barbarians surrounding us here is ordinary news, not unusual.” On the table between them were various bowls with the remains of her lunch: sweet and sour soup, stir-fried mixed fresh vegetables, a ginger-basted fish with soy, pork slivers in black bean sauce, garlic prawns, and rice. “It’s ordinary, Younger Sister.”
“What is un-ordinary is that yesterday morning when I went to bring her tea, and hot water to bathe, I had to bang several times to awaken her and she would not let me into her room, just shrieked rudely, ‘Go away!’ through the door in that vulgar voice of hers, and then”—Ah Soh dropped her voice dramatically—“just minutes later, Big Pointed Nose, that other sort of foreign devil our foreign devils call Frogs, he knocked softly like this.” She rapped three times, then a fourth. “She let him in at once!”
Ah Tok blinked. “At once? Him? The Frog? She let him in but not you? You saw him?”
“Yes, but he did not see me.”
“Ayeeyah! That was clever. Go on, Younger Sister!” Ah Tok said, now hanging on every word. “Go on.”
“He stayed a few minutes, then came out carrying things wrapped in a brown piece of silk. Like a thief in the darkest night. But he did not see me spying on him.” Ah Soh paused again, loving—like all Chinese—to be the purveyor of gossip and secrets. “… Or even when I followed him.”
“By all gods great and small, you did?” Ah Tok poured two glasses of the Madeira wine they savored. “Long life, Younger Sister, may your Jade Gate never trouble you. Go on, go on!”
“He went down to the shore and got into a rowing boat and rowed out to sea. After a while I saw him drop whatever it was over the side into the sea.”
“No!”
“Yes. Then he rowed back. But he didn’t see me, never.”
“What could it have been?”
Ah Soh leaned closer. “When Missee let me in I looked around carefully. Her bed and nightdress were soaked with sweat, and she looked as though she had had a Happy Valley fever. Her personal towels were soaked, heavier than usual. She told me to clean everything, to bring hot water and not to let anyone in—even the tai-pan. As soon as I had done what was necessary she flopped back in bed and went to sleep.”
“That’s not strange, but Pointed Nose is!” Ah Tok nodded sagely. “This is like donkey dung, shiny on the outside but still all dung. Clearly he disposed of something for her.”
Ah Soh hesitated. “Your Honored Son, is there a chance he has lain with her?”
Ah Tok cackled. “I am sure he has tried but Golden Pubics will not let his Celestial Stem relish the breaching of her Gate, though she flaunts it every chance she gets. I’ve heard him moaning her name in his
sleep, poor man. Disgusting, if she was a civilized person we could arrange the price and that would end it.”
Ah Soh watched Ah Tok thoughtfully pluck a piece of the decimated fish head with her chopsticks, suck the bone clean and spit it into her bowl. The younger woman would gladly have partaken of the leftovers, their cook not as good as Ah Tok’s. “How’s your cook these days?” she asked innocently.
“Improving. The dog comes from my village so he had promise. I’m training him, of course.” Ah Tok grimaced. “Baffling, Younger Sister. How is the Empress today?”
“Irritable as usual. The flow continues, stronger than normal. Medicine Man Giant came to see her this morning but she would not see him, told me to send him away. There’s someth—”
“Has my son seen her yet?”
“She will see him this afternoon.”
“Good, today his tongue’s like an asp to his old mother over her. Pointed Nose and Pubics in a secret plot? Smelly, smelly indeed. Keep your eyes and ears open, Younger Sister.”
“There’s something else.” Ah Soh’s eyes rolled with excitement. She reached into her pocket and put the cork on the table. The lower part was stained purple to black. “I found this under the bed when I was reaching for the chamber pot.”
The wrinkled face became even more wrinkled with puzzlement. “So?”
“Smell it, Elder Sister.”
Ah Tok obeyed. The odor was pungent, slightly familiar. “What is it?”
“I cannot be sure … but it smells to me like Dark of the Moon. I think the bottle this corked contained Dark of the Moon … with other herbs.”
The older woman gasped. “The expeller? To cause a miscarriage? Impossible! Why should she want to do that?”
“Very bad face for your son to be named a father before marriage, eh? You know how foreign devils carry on about marriage and scandals and virginity, no fornication before the wedding—the man always blamed, how foolish! Bad face for your son. Then there’s Tai-tai Tess to answer to, as well as her foul and vengeful foreign devil god.”
Both women shuddered. Ah Tok sniffed the cork again. “You think Pointed Nose threw the bottle into the sea?”
“I’m missing a teapot too, that could have been for the accompanying herbs, she wanted hot water and honey too.”
“To take away the taste! Ayeeyah!” Gravely Ah Tok said, “My son is … is quite unbalanced about that woman.”
“What should we do?”
“You were right to tell me. We will write at once to Illustrious Chen and send him the cork in the first mail. He will know if you are right, and then what to do.” Shakily Ah Tok poured another glass of wine for each of them. “Keep your eyes wide, be like a clam, I will do the same—not a word to her, my son, or anyone until we hear from him what to do.”
Malcolm Struan was hobbling across the High Street heading for the Struan Building, leaning heavily on his sticks. The sky was overcast, a slight wind off the sea, the afternoon chilly and his crushing worry had dropped away. Seeing Angelique, convinced that she was all right, more lovely than ever, though pale and drowsy, had done it. He had stayed only moments, not wanting to tire her.
A group of mounted traders reined in politely to allow him to pass, raised their riding crops in salute. “’Day to you, Tai-pan,” Lunkchurch said, grim-faced like the others. “Will you be at the Club at sundown?”
“What’s amiss?” Struan said.
Lunkchurch jerked his thumb at the squat, black-hulled, two-masted steamer anchored in the bay near Marlowe’s frigate. She flew the flag of Brock and Sons. “Her and her news. Norbert’s called a meeting: just traders, not Sir William.”
“I was going to do the same. Sundown, good, I’ll be there,” Malcolm said tightly. Ocean Witch—all Brock’s major vessels were surnamed “Witch” as Struan’s used “Cloud”—had unexpectedly arrived late yesterday evening with news, mails and the latest Hong Kong papers. “Bloody stupid!”
Major editorials in all papers were about Admiral Ketterer and the fleet’s highly successful attack on Chinese pirate nests in and around Mirs Bay and that now he was en route to Shanghai for coaling. The Guardian, using big, angry type, summed up the problem:
In a dispatch to the Governor, Admiral Ketterer wrote that they had suffered some casualties caused by Chinese shore batteries being armed with modern cannon—cannon made in Birmingham, emanating from Hong Kong, and acquired through fair means or foul by Wu Sung Choi, leader of the White Lotus fleets who, regrettably, was not captured or killed.
Astonishingly, because of this minor incident (the cannon were spiked by a landing party of marines) the Admiral recommended that all sales of all arms—and all opium—be declared illegal and embargoed throughout Asia at once, particularly to China and Japan, with the stiffest penalties for any infraction.
This unwarranted interference with legitimate trade, this unconscionable imputation of blame on all China traders—renowned for their fair-mindedness, their intrepid Empire-building capabilities, their loyalty to Her Majesty, God Bless Her, and of putting the Mother Country before profit—must be protested in the strongest terms.
The Editors would like to ask the Admiral: Who provides the taxes to pay for the greatest navy the world has ever seen (of which he is undoubtedly an admirable member though clearly misinformed on vital matters of interest to the Crown) without which our Empire ceases? Only and always hard-working traders and their trade …
“Ketterer’s a bloody fool,” Struan said. “Norbert’s right in that. Perhaps now Sir William will see the light and ask for a replacement at once. We’ve got to deal with the Jappos here ourselves and Ketterer won’t move without crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.”
“We certainly needs a bugger with balls,” Lunkchurch said. “Ketterer’s a damp fart.”
One of the other men said, “Hey, Charlie, he smashed the pirates when he’d the order, he’ll do the same here. Wot’s an extra few months, eh? Tai-pan,” he asked anxiously, “can we know how Miss Angel is?”
“She’s fine, she’s fine now.”
“Thank God for that!”
News that she had taken to her bed had flashed around the Settlement yesterday and when it was learned she had refused to see Babcott, Hoag or even the tai-pan concern escalated: “Christ, it’s the Frog cooking, she’s poisoned.” … “No, she’s caught their plague.” … “Frogs don’t have plagues, for God’s sake, just lice.” … “We all got lice … I heard it was cholera…. ”
Universal relief permeated Yokohama at noon today when Minister Seratard had put out an official bulletin that she was in perfect health, merely suffering from a temporary indisposition—quickly whispered it was just her period.
“My fiancée’s fine,” Malcolm said again. Proudly.
“That’s a relief,” Lunkchurch said. “You hear Witch’s leaving on tonight’s tide?”
Malcolm glanced out to sea, much of his disquiet returning. Last night when he had first heard of the ship’s arrival he had been filled with a nauseating, sudden panic that Tyler Brock or Morgan Brock were aboard. It was only when Jamie reassured him they were not that he could think clearly.
Why the hell does Tyler Brock terrify me, even now? he asked himself again. I can understand it when I was small but now Tyler’s not much taller than me, though ugly as ever, rough-visaged and foulmouthed, with his big belly and his one eye always bloodshot. What does that matter? There are many men in Hong Kong like him, many uglier. Many such enemies. But they don’t frighten me. He’s always been our enemy and we’ve contained him every time—Dirk did, my father did, Mother did, has, and I must, but … Christ Almighty, I hate that bugger for all the grief he’s caused Mother and the family.
He took a deep breath and concentrated on Ocean Witch. “She’s not due out for two days.”
“That’s the rumor.”
“But why? Why so fast a turnaround?”
“Don’t know, but that’s the poop.”
“We’ll soon find
out. ’Day!” Malcolm cast off his foreboding and continued across the road. Ahead was the Struan Building where he was heading and beyond that the spire of Holy Trinity. He had been to the early service this morning and had prayed for Angelique and for strength and afterwards had felt better. But God curse all Brocks forever, let me kill Norbert quickly an—
“Tai-pan!”
Startled from his reverie he looked up, around. Phillip Tyrer was hurrying from the British Legation. “Sorry, but we all just wanted to know how Miss Angelique was.”
“Fine, she’s fine,” Malcolm said. Now, behind Tyrer, he saw Sir William peering at him out of one of the ground floor windows. He waved a stick and gave an awkward thumbs-up and saw the Minister wave back. Just before Sir William retreated into the room he caught a glimpse of another man beside him. “Oh, that your tame samurai, Nakama?”
“Who? Oh yes, yes, it was. Is she really all right?”
“Everything with her was very good, thank you.”
“Thank God for that, we were all worried to death!” Phillip Tyrer beamed down at him, a picture of health, ruddy, strong, taller than Struan but only because now he walked, and stood, hunched over. “You’re looking much better yourself.”
“Wish that were true, Phillip.” Abruptly Malcolm’s envy prompted him to say sharply, “I hear Nakama’s been giving you all sorts of information, you and Sir William?”
Tyrer’s smile faded. “Yes, I suppose he has.”
“The arrangement was that you were to keep Jamie and me informed. Everything. Eh?”
“Well, yes, yes, it was. But Sir William … he’s trying to find out the politics of Japan an—”
“Politics of a country and business are like a pair of gloves, Phillip. Perhaps you’d drop by tomorrow, before tiffin? I’d appreciate knowing what’s new.” He forced a smile. “Please give my best to Sir William, see you tomorrow.”
He limped down the street, angry at himself for being so caustic, sick to death of walking like this, then climbed the stairs of the Struan Building heading for his suite. His back and stomach ached alarmingly. No more than usual, he thought irritably, and that’s no cause to snap at Phillip. He was just trying to be pleasant. Never mind, a little of Ah Tok’s elixir and I’ll be fine again. I’ll ask Phillip to dinner an—