Tai-Pan (44 page)

“You’d let me live my life and end my life hating you? Just to further The Noble House?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“You’re unholy.”

“I agree. In some ways,” he said, munching the chicken, “I’m all the things you said, and more. I break many of the Commandments but na all. I know what I do and I’m ready to answer for what I do. But I’m the only man on earth you can completely trust—providing you dinna, with calculation, go against the house. I’m 
the
 Tai-Pan. With suffering and devilment you’ll be the 
same
.”

“It’s not worth the hypocrisy. Or the evil.”

“Ah, lad, you do my heart good,” Struan said, throwing away the chicken bone. “You’re so young. I envy you your years ahead. Na worth it? To be the best? To rule Brock and the others by the skill of your presence? Longstaff, and through him the Crown? The Emperor of China? And through him three hundred millions of Chinese?” Struan drank some wine. “It’s worth it. Much hatred and a little playacting is a small price to pay.”

Culum leaned back into the cradle of the rock, his mind raging with the relentless words and questions and implacable answers. Is this the will of God? he asked himself. The strongest survive at the expense of the weak? For God made all things and the pattern thereof. But Jesus said, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” Did He mean the earth—or the Kingdom of God?

Meekness would not have obtained the bullion, or protected it. Meekness would not have saved The Noble House this time over the knoll. Meekness will never make progress, never overcome the cruel and the greedy. If I’m Tai-Pan, the Charter will go forward. Wealth with a purpose—an immortal purpose, 
he
 said. Very well.

Culum Struan’s hatred of his father vanished. And with the hatred, his love. All that remained was respect.

“Why did you come up here?” Culum asked.

Struan knew that he had lost his son. He was saddened as a father, but not as a man. He had brought his enemy to battle on his own terms and in his own time. So he had done his duty as a father.

“To tire you so I could talk and make you understand,” he said. “And to show you that though the view from the knoll is fine, from here it is grand.”

Culum saw the view for the first time. “Yes. Yes, it is.” Then he leaned forward and chose a piece of chicken and began to eat.

Struan kept the pain off his face. The lad’s smile will come back, he told himself. Give the lad time. It’s raw growing up so fast. Give the lad time.

He felt very tired. He leaned against a rock and turned his binoculars south, seeking 
China Cloud.
 But it was nowhere in sight. Idly he scanned the horizon. Then his eyes fixed.

“Look, lad. There’s 
Blue Cloud
!”

Culum took the binoculars and saw the clipper. She was a sister to 
Thunder Cloud,
 18 guns, as fleet, as beautiful. As beautiful even to Culum, who loathed ships and the sea.

“She’ll have a hundred thousand guineas’ worth of opium aboard her,” Struan said. “Now what should you do? We’ve three ships here and sixteen more due within the month.”

“Send them north? To sell their cargoes?”

“Aye.” A shadow crossed Struan’s face. “That reminds me. You remember Isaac Perry?”

“Yes. It seems a century ago.”

“I beached him, remember? Because he failed McKay, and because he was afraid of me and I didn’t know why. I gave McKay fifteen days to find out the answer to that riddle, but he never came back to Canton. Last night I saw McKay. He’s got a shore berth now—a deputy magistrate and peeler.” He lit a cheroot, cupping his hand against the wind, and passed it over to Culum and lit another. “Well, it seems that Perry has a berth with Cooper-Tillman now. On their Virginia-Africa run. Slaving.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Wilf Tillman told me. Last night. He shrugged and said that Perry had na wanted the China run any more. So he had offered Perry a blackbirder. Perry took it. He left a week ago. Just before Perry left, McKay tricked him. They got drunk together. McKay said he’d been sacked by me—as he had—and cursed me, asked for a berth on Perry’s new ship, swearing to revenge himself on me. Drink makes any tongue wag and Perry’s wagged. He told McKay that he’d sold a copy of our secret trading places up the coast—latitudes and longitudes—and names of our opium dealers to Morgan Brock. The last time he was in London.”

“Then Brock knows all the secret places?”

“The ones Perry’s used. Ten years of trading. That covers most.”

“What can we do?”

“Find new places and new men to trust. So you see, lad, you canna put too much faith in anyone.”

“That’s terrible.”

“That’s a law of survival. Rest for an hour, then we’ll be off.”

“Where to?”

“Aberdeen. We’re going to have a look quietly. Against the picking of Wu Kwok’s men.” He opened the haversack and passed over a pistol. “Can you use one of these?”

“Not very well.”

“It might be as well for you to practice.”

“All right.” Culum examined it. He had used dueling pistols once in a foolish university squabble, and both he and his adversary had been so terrified that the bullets had missed by yards.

“We can go now,” Culum said. “I’m not tired any more.”

Struan shook his head. “I want to wait until 
China Cloud
 heaves over the horizon.”

“Where’s she been?”

“Macao.”

“Why?”

“I sent her there.” Struan brushed crumbs off his jacket. “A reward’s just been put on the head of my mistress. And my son and daughter by her, if they’re captured alive. I sent Mauss and 
China Cloud
 to bring them both here. They’ll be safe aboard.”

“But Gordon’s already here. I saw him yesterday.”

“This lass is not his mother.”

Culum found it curious that now he was not hurt by the knowledge that his father had two—no, three—families. Three, counting himself and Winifred. “Kidnaping’s a terrible thing. Terrible,” he said.

“There’s a reward on your head now. Ten thousand dollars.”

“Am I worth that? I wonder.”

“If a Chinese offers ten, you can bet that you’re worth a hundred.” Struan again focused the binoculars on 
Blue Cloud.
 “I think a hundred thousand would be more correct. For you.”

Culum shaded his eyes from the sun and understood his father’s compliment. But he let it pass unacknowledged. He was thinking about the other mistress and wondered what she was like and what Gordon’s mother was like. His mind was working coldly, dispassionately, without rancor, but with contempt for the weakness and promiscuousness of his father. Culum found it strange that his mind was so very calm.

“What’s Brock going to do about the bullion? He’ll be pirated and pirated so long as he has it.”

“He’ll have to ask us to take some back. For paper. We’ll do this immediately. And then at less than the usual interest. Tell Robb to arrange it.”

“Then we’ll be pirated.”

“Perhaps.” Struan was watching 
Blue Cloud
 slowly beating up against the wind in the passage between Lan Tao and Hong Kong. “As soon as 
China Cloud
 returns, I’m leaving. I’ll go with the expeditionary force and I’ll na be back to Hong Kong until the day before the ball.”

“Why?”

“To give you time to get used to our ‘enmity.’ You’ll need practice. You and Robb are to start the buildings. The plans are already settled. Except for the Great House. I’ll decide about that later. Begin to build a church on the knoll. Get Aristotle to design it. Pay him a tenth of what he asks in his first breath. You and Robb are to do everything.”

“Yes, Tai-Pan,” Culum said. Tai-Pan. Not Father. Both men heard its finality. And accepted it.

“Build my cottage on suburban lot seventeen. Robb has the plan. It’s to be up in three weeks, the garden planted, and a ten-foot wall around it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Whatever it costs. Put a hundred, two hundred men abuilding it if necessary. Furnished, landscaped as the plan says. And I want all our buildings finished in three months.”

“There’s at least ten months of building there. A year or more.”

“Aye. So we use more men. More money. Then we’ll finish earlier.”

“Why hurry?”

“Why na?”

Culum looked out to sea. “What about the ball?”

“You arrange everything. With Robb and Chen Sheng, our compradore.”

“And Robb? He’s not to know that our enmity is a masquerade?”

“I’ll let you decide that. You can tell him the night of the ball. If you want.”

China Cloud
 crested the horizon.

“We can go now,” Struan said.

“Good.”

Struan put the glasses and the remains of the food back into the haversack. “Send some men up here secretly to keep a permanent watch during daylight.”

“What for?”

“Ships. From here we’d have four or five hours’ advance notice of arrivals. Especially the mail packets. Then we send a fast cutter and intercept her and get our mail before the others.”

“And then?”

“We’ve the jump on everyone. In four hours you can do a lot of buying and selling. Knowing four hours ahead of others could be the difference between life and death.”

Culum’s respect increased. Very clever, he thought. He was staring idly westward at the big island of Lan Tai. “Look!” he cried suddenly, pointing just south of it. “There’s smoke. A ship’s on fire!”

“You’ve sharp eyes, lad,” Struan said, swinging the binoculars over. “God’s death, it’s a steamer!”

The ship was black and lean and ugly and sharp-nosed. Smoke poured from her squat funnel. She was two-masted and rigged for sails, but she wore no sails now and steamed malevolently into wind, the red ensign fluttering aft.

“Look at that belly-gutted, stinking fornication of a Royal Navy ship!”

Culum was rocked by the vehemence. “What’s the matter?”

“That bloody iron-festering whore—that’s what’s the matter! Look at her steam!”

Culum stared through the glasses. The ship looked harmless to him. He had seen a few paddle ships like her before. The Irish mail packets had been steamers for ten years. He could see the two giant paddle wheels, amidships port and starboard, and the billowing smoke and the frothing wake. There were cannon aboard. Many.

“I can’t see anything wrong with her.”

“Look at her wake! And her heading! Into wind, by God! She’s steering due east. Into wind. Look at her! She’s overhauling our ship as though 
Blue Cloud’s
 a pig-rotten brig in the hands of godrotting apes—instead of one of the best crews on earth!”

“But what’s wrong with that?”

“Everything. Now a steamer’s in the Orient. She’s done the impossible. That rusty, iron-hulked, machine-powered, Stephenson-invented pus-ridden harlot has sailed from England to here, against all the sea’s disgust and the wind’s contempt. If one does it, a thousand can. There’s progress. And the beginning of a new era!” Struan picked up the empty wine bottle and hurled it against a rock. “That’s what we’ll have to use in twenty or thirty years. Those bitch-fornicating abortions of a ship, by God!”

“It is ugly, when you compare it to a sail ship. To 
Blue Cloud.
 But being able to sail into wind—to forget the wind—means that it’ll be faster and more economic and—”

“Never! Na faster, na with the wind abaft the beam, and na as seaworthy. And na in a storm. Those smellpots’ll turn turtle and sink like a stone. And na as economic. They have to have wood for the boilers, or coal. And they’ll be nae good for the tea trade. Tea’s sensitive and it’ll spoil in that stink. Sail’ll have to carry tea, thank God.”

Culum was amused but didn’t show it. “Yes. But in time they’ll improve, certainly. And if one can sail out here, as you say, a thousand others can. I think we should buy steamers.”

“
You
 can, and you’ll be right. But damned if I’ll buy one of those stenchfilled monstrosities. Damned if the Lion and Dragon’ll fly one of them while I’m alive!”

“Do all seamen feel as you do?” Culum asked the question carelessly, warmed inside.

“That’s a right stupid question! What’s on your mind, Culum?” Struan said tartly.

“Just thinking about progress, Tai-Pan.” Culum looked back at the ship. “I wonder what her name is.”

Struan was studying Culum suspiciously, knowing that the man’s mind was working but unaware of what it was planning. That’s odd, he told himself. That’s the first time you’ve thought of Culum as a man and na as your son and na as “Culum” or “lad” or “laddie.” “Thank God I won’t live to see the death of sail. But that whore heralds the death of the China clipper. The most beautiful ships that have ever sailed the seas.”

He led the way down the mountain toward Aberdeen. Later the steamer passed close enough for them to read her name. It was 
Nemesis.
 H.M.S. 
Nemesis.

The two frigates poured broadside after broadside into the first of the forts athwart the Bogue, the ten-mile neck of water that guarded the approach to Canton. The Bogue was heavily fortified with dominating forts and dangerously narrow at its mouth, and the frigates appeared to be at a suicidal disadvantage. There was scant room to maneuver, and the cannons in the forts could hold the attackers easily at point-blank range as they tacked back and forth, groping upstream. But the cannons were set firm in their beds and could not traverse, and centuries of corrupt administration had allowed the fortifications to languish. Thus the token cannon balls of the forts passed harmlessly to port or to starboard of the frigates.

Cutters left the frigates, and the marines stormed ashore. The forts were taken easily and without loss, for the defenders, knowing themselves to be helpless, had wisely retreated. The marines spiked the cannon and a few stayed to occupy the forts. The rest went aboard again, and the frigates moved north a mile and poured broadside after broadside into the next forts, subduing them as easily.

Later a fleet of junks and fire ships was sent against them but the fleet was sunk.

The two frigates could decimate so many junks so easily because of superior firepower, and because their rigging and sails gave them speed to all points of the compass, whenever the wind blew. Junks could not tack as a frigate could tack, or beat to windward. Junks were designed for Chinese waters and monsoon winds, the frigates for the howling misery of the English Channel or North Sea or Atlantic where storm was commonplace and tempest a way of life.