Shanghai (7 page)

Below him, in the hundreds of flooded rice paddies that separated him from the river, peasants were attaching long reeds to the feet of hundreds of tiny starlings. The birds screamed in protest. On a signal the starlings would all be released to fly skyward with their reeds clattering beneath them, in order to frighten away devils that could hurt the tender newly planted rice plants.

The Confucian wanted to laugh.
There are more serious devils approaching than those that would destroy your rice,
he thought. “And these devils will not be frightened away by the silly clatter of reeds beneath tiny birds.” This last he said aloud.

In response, an ancient voice sang in his head, and he knew that his ancestors were calling in a debt made all those years ago on a far-off holy mountain. And the paying of that debt would change everything.

J
IANG, THE
C
ONCUBINE

Jiang carefully disentangled herself from the fat salt merchant and slipped on a silken robe. The scent of opium lingered in the hot air of the stuffy bedchamber. She flung open the wooden shutters of the third-storey room and for a moment thought the opium was still alive in her
blood, causing her to hallucinate. But that moment quickly passed. She had seen what she had seen. A great warship, draped all in white, entering the Huangpo River.

She picked up her leather pouch of silk ropes and her two-stringed arhu from the table, then quickly made her way down the stairs.

Outside, the morning streets were already alive. The men from the night-soil wagons were quickly collecting the round, red honeypots from each house, then emptying the contents into the wagons. A second set of men gave the night-soil pots a quick rinse and returned them to the appropriate homes. Jiang knew that although night-soil collection was the lowliest of professions, it also paid the highest financial rewards. Because of that, Jiang's family always married their first daughter into the Zhong clan that controlled this lucrative business. In the meantime, she was happy that she was upwind of the night-soil cart.

She turned a sharp corner and a five-spice egg seller fish-eyed her, then put one nasty finger to a nostril and blew hard. Green snot splatted to the ground inches from the pot. “Missed,” the egg seller chortled. “Was his spear big?” she asked Jiang with feigned innocence.

“He would have split you in half, old lady,” Jiang quipped.

“Only if he entered the dark passage. In the sacred lotus I can take a stallion.” She laughed at her own joke and again blew her nose. This time some of the green mass went in the pot.

“Ah!” Jiang shouted.

“Special ingredient,” the five-spice egg seller chimed back.

All around Jiang the morning smell of porridge escaped from coal-fired braziers. She usually didn't
care to eat at this hour, but the subtle smell of a steamed pork bun drew her down an alley on her way toward the water. The gentle woman selling the buns allowed her hand to linger just a moment too long on Jiang's smooth skin before she took Jiang's half-
tael
piece.

The first bite of the bun filled Jiang with an old joy.
When I get old I can have as many of these as I want. Fat. Fat. Ah, to be free enough and old enough to be fat,
she thought.

She avoided the accusatory looks of the women in the streets as she ran out of the alley, past the fish sellers and the wooden tables thick with wriggling eels ready to be sliced. For a moment she paused in front of the snake seller. Did she need more man in her now? she wondered.

“Cobra?” she asked.

“Man's food,” the toothless vendor replied.

“Most days I agree,” Jiang said, “but not today.”

“Expensive,” he prompted.

“How much?”

He quoted an astronomical figure—the laughing price—and she promptly laughed in his face and turned to go. He chased after her and said, “So tell me, how much are you willing to pay?”

She quoted an outrageously low price—the crying price—and he made appropriate protestations.

Five minutes, two threats to leave, and one threat to kill her later and they had settled on a price.

The snake man reached into his burlap bag and withdrew a king cobra as fat around as a man's arm. He adjusted his hand to secure his grip on the back of the reptile's head.

She nodded.

The snake lashed out with the full strength of its six-foot body, but the snake seller was expert at his craft. He knelt in front of a thick log sticking out of the ground. With one quick motion he forced open the cobra's jaws and the fangs scissored out of its mouth. Just as the poison tipped the end of the fangs, the man slammed the cobra's head down onto the cut end of the log. The fangs dug deep into the soft wood. The body of the snake thrashed viciously at the air, but it was firmly secured to the log by its fangs. The snake seller looked up and smiled a toothless grin, then withdrew a slender blade and made his first cut.

Jiang enjoyed the skinning of the snake. She had seen it done many times before, but it never failed to surprise her when the snake seller threw the skin high into the air. It landed on the ground and thrashed—thrashed as if it were still somehow alive.
Very male,
Jiang thought.
With the arrival of the ships I'll need all the masculine blood in me that I can manage.

She gave the tail third of the flesh to the beggars standing to one side, who ate it raw. The rest she tucked into a package, and then she raced toward the river.

She got there just as the second ship rounded the west bend.

She watched the great ships—and she knew that nothing would be the same, ever again.

A clatter of birds above her made her look up. The starlings from the rice paddies were falling in ever-narrowing spirals, the weight of the reeds dragging them earthward. A tiny bird crashed to the ground on the path ahead of her. She ran to retrieve it, only to be caught in a hail of hundreds of falling, screaming starlings.

She put up her lovely hands to protect her face, and as she did she looked to the high ridge.

There she saw the Body Guard and the Confucian, both staring at the ships.

Then she heard the sound of the Chinese artillery—all three did. And all three of the Chosen knew that their job was to usher in the darkness, not defeat it with cannons.

At the Bend in the River December 1841

As Richard contemplated his future at the Bend in the River, the mizzen-mast let out a shriek and the single topgallant sail ripped into shreds like so much tissue. The long canvas strands were quickly picked up by the strong wind and snapped angrily.

A second gingall blast from the shore battery slammed into the bowsprit.

“Cannon on the south shore!” screamed two seamen in unison from their respective crow's nest perches.

Orders were shouted. A sailor's torn body was quickly covered with sheeting, as all hands ran to battle stations
and the great ship came about, its massive expanse of canvas luffing in the momentary calm.

The hills on the south side of the river just past the widest part of the arc were lined with long-barrelled, small-calibre cannons: gingalls. But there were enough of them to do some damage. Once the ship was broadside to the land, the mariners dropped anchor both fore and aft—then the port side gun ports slammed open.

The grind and screech of iron wheels against oaken floorboards filled the air as the ship's cannons moved forward and stuck their snouts out of their respective gun ports. Then all noise ceased. The wind seemed to pick up, but the anchors held the great ship still in the water.

Admiral Gough stared at the shore and, as far as Richard could tell, said a prayer. Then he straightened his waistcoat and gave an order to his adjutant, who promptly called out: “Fire!”

The heavens opened as the thunder of the ship's twenty-six wide-bore port side cannons transformed the Chinese gun emplacements into the muddy, blooded places where men's lives come to an abrupt end. Richard watched, and the horror of lives lost entered his head. For an instant he thought of his last moments with his mother in the hovel in Calcutta—her life slowly flowing from her emaciated White Russian body, her red hair so thin that he saw more scalp than hair. Then his wife's dying cry of “Why? What have you done!” echoed through his head. He turned—and he was with her again.

—

“What have you done, Richard?” Sarah asked as she turned slowly in the morning light of their Malay
bedroom, showing off her large, pregnant belly to her handsome husband.

Richard sat up in their bed and put on a face of mock horror. “My goodness,” he said, pointing at her belly, “could I have had something to do with that?”

“Only a very little something—a very, very little something,” she said as a lascivious grin creased her full lips. Then she posed demurely, although completely naked, against a foot post of their four-poster bed.

Richard laughed, then said, “It's a work day, Sarah” and got to his feet.

“Really?” she asked, pointing at his tented pyjama bottoms. “That kind of work I could, perhaps, help you with.”

“Really?”

“Really, my darling!”

Richard held out his hand, and she took it. He guided her onto the bed, then stood back. Another aghast look crossed his face. “I do believe that the dirty deed was done on these very premises.”

But Sarah knew differently. It had been the day on the south island when she had insisted on a picnic. There on the beach, as the sun set, they had made slow, easy love. And she had connected to the ground and the sound of the waves rolling in and a new life within her. That night they'd slept beneath the stars and she had felt it—the earth spin. And she had spun with it.

Richard positioned the pillows to support her back, and she mounted the high bed, then held her arms out to her fine husband, the father of that which grew within her.

“Promise me something, Richard?”

“Anything.”

“That you'll write something for me. Just for me.”

“I've already—”

“Something new. After I give birth. Something to celebrate me becoming a mother. And be sure to give it to our child.”

“As you wish, Sarah.” He breathed the words into her mouth. “As you wish.”

Then, as their energies came together and they brought what Asians call the clouds and rain, she whispered in his ear, “What have you done, Richard, what have you done?” But Richard heard more than just a coy come-on in the words. He heard the beginnings of an accusation.

—

The cannonade lasted for hours, despite the fact that it had been some time since the shore batteries had returned fire.

Before the landing party had fully disembarked, Richard took Maxi aside. Jollyboats, cutters, bumboats, and colourful skiffs were in constant motion between the large troop transports and the landing site. As usual, the Chinese hadn't deigned to defend against the foreigners' landing.

“They may fight as you get closer to the centre of the city,” Richard said. “The walls you should be able to scale with no problem. In the first skirmish, head toward the south gate.”

“You've told me three times, brother mine.”

“Fine, Maxi, but I need you to listen carefully. I don't think the armada is going to stop here. To them, Shanghai is insignificant. It's the mouth of the Grand Canal and Nanking that they want. And they'll need me
to translate when the Emperor has finally had enough and decides he wants a treaty. So I won't be with you in the city.”

“On my own am I, then?” said Maxi with a grin.

“Not really. Chen will meet you there and lead you to the Warrens. There he'll introduce you to the other Chinese power-brokers. You'll recognize some of them from our earlier trips, but there are bound to be those you don't know. Let Chen do the talking—even your pidgin is godawful, and they'll take it as an insult. Which, by the by, it is. When will you finally—?”

“Never, brother. It was hard enough for me to learn passable English. This Mandarin is well beyond me. You have the gift to pick up these odd tongues, not me.”

“Just keep your mouth shut, but listen carefully, and get Chen to translate everything. Everything. Don't push for anything. Just remind Chen that I am on my way and that we have been good as our word for better than five years with him. We've made him a wealthy man, Maxi, and now it's time for him to return the favour. We want access to any survey plans of the city. We won't be allowed to live within their walls, but then again we don't really want to. We need to know who owns the land next to the river and exactly who has access to the wharves. Get Chen to begin negotiations with whoever that is. He won't sell anything yet, but we'll have our foot in the door.”

“Do you want me to stay in Shanghai?”

“Not unless you have to.”

“That'd technically make me break my contract with the British Expeditionary Force, brother mine.”

“Would it?”

“You know it would.”

“Does that bother you, Maxi?”

“Not much,” he said as a darkness crossed his face “You'll be with the real action, though, won't you, brother mine?”

“Bureaucrats will decide the important things in the Celestial Kingdom. Battles are just for show, I'm afraid.”

“Men die for show?”

“Yes, Maxi, and it won't be the last time for that.” Maxi scowled and Richard readied himself for a fight. But none came. “I'll be at the treaty table, since none of our ninnies speak a word of the Common Tongue.” He paused, then added, “I'll be there to make the sacrifices of those lives mean something.”

Maxi nodded but didn't speak. Orders were being shouted all around them.

“After we take Chinkiang, I think it's just a matter of endless negotiations until Shanghai is opened up—and I want us ready to move as soon as it is.”