Mean Sun (13 page)

“Who, Mr. Hines wishes to know, would that be, Grimmel?” inquired Hines, observing him through dull, feverish eyes.

“’Who would that be?!’” bellowed Grimmel, now sniggering with malicious exaltation. “Old Belfry, man!” he roared. He then caught hold of himself with a clever glint in his eye. “Now, Hines, don’t you tell him a word of it, you hear? Not a hint. I’ll do that when he’s well into his cups. Aye!” The thought brought more mean laughter bubbling up with a spray of spittle. “What a pretty face he’ll make when he learns he’s be declared a culprit.”

Grimmel impulsively gave Hines a hug that lifted the man high off his feet.

“The first cup is mine, Hines!” said Grimmel. “But say nothing to Belfry, man. I’ll be the one to do that.”

Our boats deposited the first of us on leave upon the dock at dusk. The first sight that met my horrified eyes as we stepped out was a string of severed heads arrayed on pikes for perhaps a hundred yards leading into town. The heads were all shaven clean from the forehead to the crown and each had a long braid of hair that made a pigtail. The flies had made a meal of them, so their drawn faces looked more like diseased buds. None of the passersby took note of them. One fellow was smoking a pipe beside one of the pikes and leaning against it as if it were a street lamp, at intervals idly brushing the flies away from him.

A rattling collection of carts pulled by men came charging up to our party, eagerly gesturing for us to climb on board. Mr. Hines, Mr. Grimmel, Liam Smith and I squeezed into one of the carts and the little driver sped off, with such a dash that my head jerked back from the motion.

Soldiers were loitering in clusters along the wharves and roads, a scraggily, pathetic band who watched our arrival with hard, sullen faces. Their uniforms were soiled, poxed with holes and threadbare. Some sported exotic caps, colorful scraps of cloth about their necks, gold trinkets, and an assortment of baubles, all which I took to be booty. They were less an army than a tribe of yellow savages.

My own unease I saw reflected in the solemn expressions of Hines and Liam Smith. Apart from a few owlish utterances, not a one of us could render a proper display of excitement. Mr. Smith, perhaps inspired by the fellow beside the head, took out his own unlit pipe and began chewing on the stem and making sucking noises until that object became the warm focus of all our attention.

From time to time the tension among us would be shattered by a giddy burst of laughter from Grimmel, which seemed unconnected to any event and would spread in turn from one another, until we were all clucking like hens on the way to market.

These remote, dreadful forebodings rode with us all the way into the old Dutch section of the town. A procession of grim-faced little shops ran down the length of the narrow street on both sides. The patrons of these establishments were yet more beggarly soldiers, by and large, who with fractured faces stared at our passing with ravenous speculation. The mud, the filth and the unwholesome stench of the place enflamed all of my most fearful apprehensions, and swept over them as a storm sweeps over a barren field. I felt as if I had stepped into hell.

This street angled to form an elbow at its end. In the crook of this elbow was a small public house like the up-ended prow of a ship. Its thatched roof came down like a mop of hair to meet two glowing eyes, which were its windows. Our cart halted before it and we hopped down and made for the door with some haste.

To my relief, we entered a warmly lit parlor that was chock-a-block with mostly European faces, sailors all. The room was thick with smoke, and loud with conversation. Tables ran the length and breadth of the walls. Grimmel scanned the sea of faces and then declared,

“That’s him there! Captain Belfry and no other.”

The fellow he pointed to was near Grimmel in age and decline. He was dressed in a handsome brocaded jacket, and wore a ring on every finger. He had a thinning stand of red hair on his head, smooth sunbaked cheeks, and a wide, cocked smile. It was an extraordinary face, knavish like a boy’s, and one that our entire party instantly warmed to.

With his thumbs brazenly hooked in his pockets, as if he were the only bird on the mud bank, Grimmel swaggered over to him.

“Captain Belfry!” said Grimmel. “I had expected next to meet you down in the murky blue.”

“Arthur Grimmel!” shouted Belfry. “A face no mother could forget!”

The two men roared with laughter and many hail and hearty exclamations. When this row subsided, Grimmel gestured to us.

“This is Daniel Wren,” said Grimmel, assuming a more gentlemanly posture. “You know Mr. Hines, of course, and this fine fellow is Liam Smith.”

This jolly fellow shook our hands and clapped us on our backs and ordered cups of rice wine all around.

Room was made at the table for us and we took our seats. Belfry had just arrived on the
Seahorse
from the Indian coast and had many a lively tale to tell. And a sublime yarn spinner he was, too, for every story was an airy castle raised stone upon stone from base to pinnacle with the care of a master mason. Each story began with a cough that found your ear, with him beetling his brow in concentration, then a simple: “Did I ever tell you…”

With Grimmel urging him on for the next several hours we drank our rice wine and the older sailors talked of bygone times and their adventures. Many in Belfry’s crew came around to pump the hands of Grimmel and Hines.

The conversation strayed to the war raging between the general and the young emperor Kangxi.

“All over a bloody haircut,” said Belfry. “The Manchu took over the country and forced the Han Chinese to wear the pigtail of the Manchu as a show of loyalty to their new emperor, who’s but a boy. It became either haircut or head. The general and his lot refused.

“General Jheng Jiing wants to be the future king of Taiwan,” he continued. “The girl, Wen Xi, was captured by the general’s men. Her father is the Duke Ebilun of the Niohuru. Now she’s forced to be his concubine. I tell you, there’s a fine prize for the fellow who can deliver her up.”

“And why does the general not have your head?”

“I trade with him,” answered Belfry. “Sees me as his admiral.”

Near midnight when most were in a balmy haze and the conversation had thinned, Grimmel took a more earnest tone.

“Now, Captain Belfry,” said he, “we did not expect to find you in Amoy, and I for one, am a little confounded by the discovery, sir.”

Belfry had caught a whiff of burning smoke from his pipe into his left eye and held it shut, while the open eye cast about at the faces in vague anticipation.

“A terrible day indeed,” whispered Grimmel. “To think I must be the one to bear these black tidings.”

“What’s black about it, you old soaker?” demanded Belfry. “Perhaps the bowl of my pipe might clear your thick head.”

“If you have heard already, don’t sport with me,” Grimmel said, teasing Belfry’s patience anew. “Tell me true, you have not heard the news?”

“If I had a ball and pistol, I’d shoot out his other eye,” said Belfry, smiling gamely at Hines, Smith and myself. None of his men returned the smile.

“The Crown has declared you a pirate,” said Grimmel. “An outlaw.”

Now both eyes were open and large. He dropped his heavy boots from the table to the floor and set his hands on his knees like one bracing for a laugh.

“Ha!” roared Belfry. “A sad joke! A cod could beat you at that game.”

“It’s true.”

Belfry looked to Hines, who nodded his head.

“We travel under orders to capture you, if we so encounter,” said Hines.

“I have a Letter of Marque—” cried Belfry, his mouth gaping wide.

“—Rescinded,” declared Grimmel, contentedly picking a particle from his cup, then taking a sip. “Because of that nasty affair with our allies the Dutch, who accuse you of burning two of their plantations to the ground.”

Belfry was up on his feet in an instant, plaintively addressing the whole room as if his battle had now extended to every man in it.

“They are lying swine!” he shouted, drawing a general silence in the pub. “Two brothers were the overseers to those plantations. They beat their workers blind and they run off. And those two
villains burnt up the plantations themselves, afraid the Company would hang them. They falsely laid the thing to me! The filthy Dutch!”

“You have all our sympathy—” began Grimmel.

“—They can’t do this thing to me!” bellowed Belfry. “I fought the Dutch in three wars! Now they drop me overboard, without so much as a kind word or a mark of respect! —”

Belfry railed until everyone knew the story, then sank miserably back into his seat.

When we returned to the
Sovereign,
Captain Hearne was at the rail with his glass, observing a bonfire in the distance. Two nights I had seen him do so. He lowered the glass and regarded Grimmel.

“Did you encounter Captain Belfry?” he asked.

“Aye, sir,” Grimmel replied. “And in fair health.”

Hearne dismissed us with a nod.

Grimmel was impatient to report his evening with Belfry to Mr. Stempel, who we found down in surgery, sweating profusely from the fever. Grimmel merrily recounted his exchange with Belfry over and over again, embellishing each retelling with new details, until Stempel fell into a laughing fit of coughing that made his hammock sway to and fro.

“Tell us you’ll be making shore with us tomorrow,” said Grimmel. “Belfry will need your support.”

“Weeping many endure for a night,” said Stempel weakly, “but joy cometh in the morning.”

“Rest now, my friend,” said Hines sweetly. “’Till the morning then.”

In the morning I learned that Mr. Stempel had succumbed to his illness and died. His request was always that he be buried at sea. That afternoon, after a heartfelt ceremony, Stempel’s body was rowed out to the edge of blue water and deposited with the Almighty. He was much beloved by the crew, and particularly by Grimmel.

Chapter 11

The Volcano

A perfect bloom was selected that afternoon and planted into an elegant jade vase. I was to accompany Lord Douglas to the residence of Wen Xi to make the presentation.

Greyson and I found an official embassy of six waiting when he arrived at the dock, led by our little interpreter. Our carriage was elaborately decorated with beast-like carved heads with menacing teeth and great bulging eyes, highly colored panels and a round canopy to shade the travelers from the sun, though it was a clear, breezy day. Two small horses drew it. Mr. Wong bowed and bowed and gestured us into the cart.

The driver of the carriage proceeded along a precarious rocky path, which led up a steep incline perhaps a mile from the shore. As we climbed, a lovely view of the harbor rose up, and I could see the
Sovereign
resting at anchor atop a twinkling bay and the winding parapets that led out to the fortresses.

The four portly soldiers trudged in the dust behind our carriage the whole way, toting formidable ceremonial axes on their armored shoulders and daggers bristling from their belts. None of them carried firearms, but all were so uniform in appearance that one could have taken them for brothers.

“Red is Chinese good luck color,” remarked Wong, admiring the rose. “She will be most pleased.”

“We have heard that Mistress Wen Xi is a very beautiful woman,” said Greyson.

“Yes, yes, yes,” replied Wong. “Much beautiful. Han Chinese beauty—most beautiful.”

The path turned sharply, the bay disappeared, and suddenly a large compound loomed before us. There were no windows or doors, only a single, large stone gate. Our little procession halted and Wong nimbly hopped down and vanished through the gate.
The soldiers took up their positions beside two more brothers stationed outside the gate. An hour passed wordlessly between Greyson and myself. Only the taunting screech of sea gulls overhead occasionally broke the silence. Water was brought out for the soldiers in large buckets, but none was offered to their visitors. Wong finally reappeared, impatiently waving for us to follow.

“Wen Xi will grant you audience,” he said.

The dreadful, tarrying little fellow ushered us into an impressive courtyard which was lavishly planted with fruit trees, scented shrubs and flowering vines, all laid out with scrupulous symmetry and thought. The austere face that marked the exterior of the compound gave way to a vista of open rooms and corridors leading into the living quarters. In all, I counted nine bays that composed the compound.