Mandarin-Gold (24 page)

'My master,' he said breathlessly. 'I have urgent news.'

Lu stirred uneasily from his slumber and sat up on the silken couch. Through the parchment window, the Pearl River ran like liquid lead. The sun was not yet up; the junks and sampans showed no lights.

'An important procession has been sighted approaching Canton. We have sent out emissaries. They report it is Lin Tse-Lsu, the Governor General of Hupeh and Hunan.'

Lu's voice was only a whisper. The room felt suddenly grey as the rushing river, and intensely cold. Only once or twice to his knowledge had a Chinese Emperor sent a Special Commissioner to an outlying province. When he did, it meant that the local Viceroy or Governor was this Commissioner's subordinate, that their past actions would be ruthlessly scrutinized for any sign of laxness or misdeeds.

Because of the Commissioner's long journey, and the fact that the Emperor was personally involved, the Viceroy concerned would almost certainly have to be shown to have been negligent in some way, and Lu knew that the Commissioner would not lack informants about his own involvement with, the Coast trade.

Lu had accepted enormous bribes to help what he held office to halt. Sometimes he had even used official barges and Chinese sailors to ferry mud ashore more quickly. When Lin arrived bluffs would be called and guilty consciences bruised. Mandarins would be arrested at random and their wealth confiscated; others would be draped in chains and beaten by bamboos. Some might even be put to death. Those who feared these unhappy attentions would be eager to incriminate others to diminish their own risk of punishment. He could not trust anyone to keep silence about his own involvement; fear would loosen their long tongues as a sharp knife loosens the cord around a bale of hay.

Lin.

The name rang in the cold room with all the harshness of a hollow gong. Their paths had crossed before, briefly, when Lin had dealt ruthlessly with salt smugglers, who sought to make fortunes for themselves by breaking the Government monopoly in that essential trade.

Lu had only been involved on the periphery of events, in pocketing a percentage for allowing illegal transactions to prosper, and he had not been discovered, although he wondered whether Lin suspected him.

Lin's success then had so impressed the Emperor that he asked him for his suggestions to suppress the forbidden opium trade. Lin had proposed an ingenious scheme to stem the frightening flow of Chinese silver overseas in the chests of the opium ships. The most common coins were of copper, called cash. These had holes in their centres and were frequently carried on a string around the owner's neck. For generations, one ounce of silver had equalled 1,000 cash.

Now the rarity value of silver had increased, so much that an ounce was worth 1,600 cash. Because many local taxes were collected in cash and paid to Peking in silver, the physical difficulty of carrying so many tiny copper coins so far now jeopardized the country's fiscal system.

Lin's proposal was that, instead of selling legitimate goods, such as rhubarb and tea, to foreign merchants at the prices commanded in China, the Barbarians should pay twice or even five times the local market price. In this way, more money would enter China than was leaving it. Yes, Lin was clever. Worse, he was incorruptible.

As the second of three sons of a poor scholar, born in the capital of Fuhkien, a province on the South East Coast, Lin had learned Manchu, the language of the conquering emperors of China, and by knowing their language he had assimilated their ways.

Now in his fifties, given to writing gentle poems and to decorating fans, he was always willing to help young men of ability from poor families to rise as he had risen. When the Emperor had summoned him and ordered him to proceed to Canton to investigate past affairs, as the Son of Heaven described the object of his visit, Lin realized that his visit could either mark the pinnacle of his career or its ruin. There would be no compromise, no half-success.

Lin had set out from Peking with six men-at-arms to protect him, an outrider, a cook and two kitchen men to prepare vegetables and to wash dishes: Because Lin was basically a simple man, and he felt it important to travel without ostentation, he made it known that none of his staff would ride far ahead to assure the best accommodation for each night, and none would stay behind to take bribes.

Out of his own salary, he paid twenty servants to bear the litter on which he lay, and he hired two wagons and a stretcher to carry the luggage. At Government rest houses, Lin would eat only the ordinary fare offered to all travellers. Never was he or any of his colleagues to ask for a special menu or an extravagant dish, like fried swallows' nests. And he forbade his bearers to accept the gratuities customarily offered by locals eager to ingratiate themselves with authority.

By such means, Lin intended to set an example of - frugality and incorruptibility. In previous years, officials had frequently travelled the countryside with hundreds of armed retainers, virtually private armies, looting and pillaging as they went, and forcing villages to feed and accommodate them all for nothing.

So Lin journeyed with few retainers, and observed the strict religious rites of each day. On board ship in the Yangtze, for instance, he set out his incense altar on the deck,
kowtowed
in the direction of the Emperor's Palace in Peking, wished him a Happy New Year, and bowed to the shades of his ancestors.

Nothing delayed him.

At Nan-Ch'ang freezing winds were so strongly against him that his ship's sails stiffened with ice, and he had to send into the town for labourers with ropes to pull him past the quay. Now, after three months' journey, by land, river and latterly by sea, he approached Canton.

Runners from Viceroy Lu spread the word of Lin's arrival, and the Hong merchants spent hours on their knees praying to the gods that their guilt might not be discovered. Their emissaries meanwhile sailed in swift centipedes to Macao to warn comrades there, for clearly this man Lin presented a grave threat to all their enterprises. A hush, such as usually proceeded some ritual sacrifice, fell upon the hundreds of people who crowded the Canton quayside as his procession of boats approached.

River police with staves beat humble sampans to one side. Bearers in freshly laundered clothes stood by a newly varnished sedan chair for Lin to use, and lictors cracked their whips to keep a proper and respectful distance between the bearers and the inquisitive mob.

Elliot, watching the scene from the verandah of the English factory, thought the merchants had little enough to fear; the legend of Lin's ruthlessness was doubtless like other delusions with which the Chinese loved to surround themselves. It belonged to the unreality of guns painted on the doors of unarmed forts, and all-seeing eyes on the bows of boats.

Lin, rowed the final few miles by oarsmen in new white uniforms trimmed with red, sat in the stern, his jaw set, looking neither to right nor left.

Viceroy Lu and a dozen other notables leapt ashore from their splendid craft to genuflect before him. He waved them away as though their antics irritated him, and the linkmen carried his chair at a steady jog-trot to the local school where he was to set up headquarters.

'What do you think will happen now?' Elliot asked Jardine's manager, as the crowds melted away.

'Nothing,' the manager replied shortly. 'We've had all sorts of mandarins here over the opium trade. They issue a few fierce edicts, send back reports about their plans — and then they settle down to take their bribes like the rest.

'I'll wager this fellow Lin is no different, although he may prove more expensive. We'll have to see what the Hong merchants say. They'll soon find out his weaknesses.'

Everyone waited for less than a week before Lin published his first edict to foreigners. It began: 'I, Lin, Imperial High Commissioner of the Court of Heaven, President of the Board of War and Viceroy of Hu- Kuang, issue these my commands to the Barbarians of every nation.

'Let the Barbarians deliver to me every particle of opium on board their store-ships. There must not be the smallest grain concealed or withheld. And at the same time let the said Barbarians enter into a bond never hereafter to bring opium in their ships and to submit, should any be brought, to the extreme penalty of the law against the parties involved.

'If the Barbarians obey, their past errors will be pardoned. I will inform the Dragon's Seat that they are penitent and humble, and they will be allowed to trade in legitimate merchandise.

'If they do
not
obey immediately, then the inexorable force of the Chinese army, and the strength of the glorious Chinese navy, will be brought to bear upon them. All trade will end
for ever.
There will be no further transactions between the East and West of any kind.

'I, Lin, the High Commissioner, will cause deep pits to be dug. They will be filled with burning oil, and all opium will be cast into them and utterly destroyed. All Barbarian ships in which other opium is found will also be set on fire, and all other cargo they may be carrying will inevitably be destroyed. They will thus not only make no profit, they will be ruined instead.

'The Barbarians have three days to make their decision. Do not indulge in idle expectations, or seek to postpone matters, deferring to repent until lateness renders repentance ineffectual. Take note! A special Edict! Forget not!'

Even as Elliot and Jardine's manager read this warning, Lin was addressing the Hong merchants on the same subject. Such was his personality that these merchants, millionaires to a man, dropped to their knees and beat the ground with their foreheads to show the extent of their awe and respect. Lin waited until the abject drumming of their skulls had ceased, and then addressed himself in language that left no room for comfort or doubt about his intentions.

'You have hitherto been too friendly with the Barbarians,' he told them. 'You should, from henceforth, cultivate severity of deportment. You should act with energy,
not
to accrue more fortunes from forbidden and distasteful trade. In the meantime, you will surrender all the opium stocks —
all,
I repeat — of which you have knowledge.

'As a measure of the severity in which I regard this matter, I, the High Commissioner, will forthwith solicit the Imperial death-warrant, and select for execution one or two of the most unworthy of you. Never say that you did not receive early notice. Oppose not! A special Edict!'

The Hong merchants again prostrated themselves at his words.

Other mandarins had spoken in like terms to them, but they had been men of clay, who could be fashioned and persuaded by bribes. Lin was a man of iron; and iron could not be moulded by man's hands. Iron was stronger than the hands of any man.

Under the heavy wind and against the endless, smiling waves, the timbers of the
Hesperides
creaked like a forest in a storm. Gunn lay awake in his bunk, the porthole open. The moon painted the cabin walls silver.

He heard soft movements that did not belong to the accustomed groan of a plank against plank, and was instantly alert, prepared for trouble. A shadow, deeper than the rest, detached itself from the door. He reached under the mattress for his pistol.

'What ever for?' Gunn asked, puzzled. He had hardly seen this waif since they set sail: once or twice on deck, another time with MacPherson. He had been so busy with so many problems that he had almost forgotten she was aboard. No, that was not quite true. She excited him with her slim body and small breasts and delicate hands. And he did not want to see too much of her in case he forgot she was MacPherson's woman.

'You treating MacPherson-San for some illness?'

'Yes.'

'I do not know why he ill. But since you come, he has no trub. All smiling fellah. Like he used to be. So I want thank you most muchee. Topline thank you.'

'My job is curing people,' said Gunn, and then thought: Not any more. My job now is making money, and this was something altogether different. 'You speak English well, Ling Fai.'

'MacPherson-San taught me say thank you English way. Now I say big thank you as Chinee woman thanks man.'

Suddenly, she was in the bunk beside Gunn, her clothes off and her body warm against his. He felt her mouth on his chest, and then she moved down on his stomach, and sought him out, soft as warm honey, taking his hardening phallus between her lips.

All restraint vanished, Gunn caressed her breasts, and then slowly drew her up so that she lay on him. For a time they lay silent thus, their ears rilled with the drumming of their hearts and the roar of the sea beyond the hull. Then their bodies began to move.

Afterwards — how long afterwards Gunn did not begin to guess — he was alone and the bunk seemed empty and altogether too large. He pushed back the sheet, climbed out, lit the oil lamp, and stood looking at himself in the mirror above the zinc washbasin. How long ago it seemed that he had looked at his reflection in his cabin in the
Trelawney
after he had heard that Marion had run off with Cartwright!

Since then he had been paid to get a native woman with child. He had been marooned and left for dead. In turn, he had bullied another man out of his company as the Parsee had sought to swindle him, and for a far greater sum. Then he had marooned this man, and seized his ship.

Most important of all, most despicable of all, he had rewarded MacPherson — who had saved his life — by lying with MacPherson's woman, two, three, four times in a night. And he would do the same again if he had the chance; and he knew he would be offered the chance.