Tai-Pan (82 page)

“Do you feel well enough to be moved, lassie?”

“Her brother, Mr. Sinclair, does not object to her staying here. And I believe Mr. Culum Struan also approves of what I suggest.”

“Has Culum been here today?” Struan asked Mary.

She shook her head and spoke to the monk, her face tragic. “Please tell the Tai-Pan. About—about me.”

Father Sebastian said gravely, “I think you’re wise. Someone should know. Miss Sinclair is very sick, Mr. Struan. She drank a potion of Chinese herbs—perhaps poison would be a better word—to cause an abortion. The poison dislodged the fetus but caused a hemorrhage which is now, by the Grace of God, almost under control.”

Struan felt a sudden sweat. “Who else knows, Mary? Horatio? Culum?”

She shook her head.

Struan turned back to the monk. “ ‘Almost under control’? Does that mean the lass is all right? That in a month or so she’ll be all right?”

“Physically, yes. If there is no gangrene. And if it is the will of God.”

“What do you mean, ‘physically’?”

“I mean, Mr. Struan, that it is impossible to consider the physical without the spiritual. This lady has sinned terribly against the laws of God—against the laws of the Catholic Church and also your Church—so a peace, and a reckoning, must be made with God before there can be a healing. That’s all I was trying to say.”

“How—how did she get here?”

“She was brought here by her amah, who is a Catholic. I obtained special dispensation to treat her and, well, we put her in here and treated her as best we could. The mother superior insisted that someone be informed because we felt she was failing. Word was sent to a Captain Glessing. We presumed he was the—the father, but Miss Sinclair swears he is not—was not. And she begged us not to reveal the cause of her illness.” Father Sebastian paused. “That crisis, by the Grace of God, passed.”

“You’ll keep this secret? What—what has happened to her?”

“Only you, I and the sisters know. We have oaths to God that may not be broken. You need have no fear from us. But I know there’ll be no healing of this poor sinner without a peace and a reckoning. For He knows.”

Father Sebastian left them.

“The—the father was one of your ‘friends,’ Mary?”

“Yes. I don’t—I don’t regret my life, Tai-Pan. I don’t—I can’t. Or—or what I’ve done. It’s joss.”

Mary was looking out of the window. “Joss,” she repeated. “I was raped when I was very young—at least . . . that’s not true. I didn’t know what . . . I didn’t understand, but I was a little forced the first time. Then I . . . then it wasn’t necessary to force—I wanted.”

“Who was he?”

“One of the boys at school. He died. It was so long ago.”

Struan searched his mind but could remember no boy that had died. No boy that could have had the run of the Sinclair house.

“Then after that,” Mary continued haltingly, “I had a need. Horatio . . . Horatio was in England, so I asked—I asked one of the amahs to find me a lover. She explained to me that I . . . that I could have a lover, many lovers, that if I was clever and she was clever I could have a secret life and pretty things. My real life had never been pleasant. You know the father I had. So the amah showed me how. She . . . she procured for me. We—we grew . . . we grew rich together and I’m glad. I bought the two houses and she always brought only very rich men.” She stopped, and then after a long time she whimpered, “Oh, Tai-Pan, I’m so afraid.”

Struan sat beside her. He remembered what he had said to her only a few months ago. And her confident reply.

Struan was at the open window, moodily watching the crowded 
pra
ça
 below. It was sunset. The Portuguese were all in evening dress and they strolled back and forth, bowing, conversing animatedly—the young 
fidalgos
 and the girls flirting cautiously under the watchful eyes of parents and duennas. A few sedan chairs and their coolies plodded in search of customers or deposited latecomers to the promenade. Tonight there was a ball at the governor’s palace and he had been invited but he did not know if he would go. Culum had not returned yet. And word had not come from the bishop.

He had seen Horatio this afternoon. Horatio had been furious because Ah Tat, Mary’s amah, had disappeared. “I’m sure she’s the one who fed poor Mary the posion, Tai-Pan,” he had said. Mary had told him that she had by mistake drunk some herb tea she found in the kitchen—nothing more.

“That’s nonsense, Horatio. Ah Tat’s been with you both for years. Why should she do a thing like that? It was an accident.”

After Horatio had gone, Struan had searched for the men whom Culum and Gorth had been with last night. They were mostly cronies of Gorth and had all said that some hours after Gorth had left, Culum had left; that he had been drinking but was no drunker than the rest, than he usually was.

You stupid idiot, Culum, Struan thought. You ought to know better.

Suddenly he noticed an immaculate, bewigged liveried servant approaching, and he recognized the bishop’s coat of arms instantly. The man came unhurriedly along the 
praia,
 but he passed the residence without stopping and disappeared down the 
pra
ça.

The light was failing fast now, and the oil lights of the lanterned promenade began to dominate the gloaming. Struan saw a curtained sedan chair stop outside the house. Two half-seen coolies left it and lost themselves in an alley.

Struan rushed out of the room and down the stairs.

Culum was sprawled unconscious in the back of the chair, his clothes torn and vomit-stained. He stank of alcohol.

Struan was more amused than angry. He pulled Culum to his feet and threw him over his shoulder and, careless of the stares of the passersby, carried him into the house.

“Lo Chum! Bath, quick-quick!”

Struan laid Culum on the bed and stripped him. There were no bruises on his chest or back. He turned him over. Nail scratches on his stomach. And blotched love bites.

“You idiot,” he said, examining him quickly but scrupulously. No broken bones. No teeth missing. Signet ring and watch gone. Pockets empty.

“You’ve been rolled, laddie. Perhaps for the first time, but surely na the last.” Struan knew that slipping a drug into a lad’s drink was an old trick in whorehouses.

Servants brought pails of warm water and filled the iron bath. Struan lifted Culum into the bath and soaped and sponged him. Lo Chum supported the lolling head.

“Mass’er plentee terribel crazy drink, plentee terribel jig-jig, heya.”

“Ayee yah!” Struan said. As he lifted Culum out, a stabbing pain soared from his left ankle, and he knew that today’s walking had tired his ankle more than he had realized. I’d better bandage it tight for a few days, he thought.

He dried Culum and put him into bed. He slapped him gently around the face but this did not bring him around, so he had dinner and waited. His concern increased with the hours, for he knew that by this time, however much Culum had drunk, he should be recovering.

Culum’s breath was deep and regular. The heartbeat was strong.

Struan got up and stretched. There was nothing to do but wait. “I go-ah number-one Missee. You stay watchee werry good, heya?” he said.

“Lo Chum watchee like mummah!”

“Send word, savvy? Wat time Mass’er wake, never mind, send word. Savvy?”

“Wat for Tai-Pan say ‘savvy,’ heya? A’ways savvy werry wen, never mind. Heya?”

But Lo Chum did not send word that night.

At dawn Struan left May-may’s house and returned to the residence. May-may had slept peacefully, but Struan had heard every passerby and every sedan chair—and many that were only wraiths of his imagination.

Lo Chum opened the front door. “Wat for Tai-Pan early, heya? Brekfass ready, bath ready, wat for Tai-Pan wantshee can, heya?”

“Mass’er wake, heya?”

“Wat for ask? If wake send word. I savvy plenty werry good, Tai-Pan,” Lo Chum replied, his dignity offended.

Struan went upstairs. Culum was still heavily asleep.

“One, two time Mass’er make like—” and Lo Chum groaned and chomped his jaws and snuffled and yawned and groaned loudly.

After breakfast Struan sent word to Liza and Tess that Culum had returned, but he did not tell them how. Next he tried to apply his mind to business.

He signed papers and approved heavier spending on the Hong Kong buildings, indignant at the rising costs of lumber and brick and labor and all manner of ships’ stores, ship repairs, ship equipment.

The pox on’t! Costs are up fifty percent—and no sign of them coming down. Do I lay keels for new clippers next year or gamble on what we have? Gamble that the sea will na sink any? You have to buy more.

So he ordered one new clipper. He would call her 
Tessan Cloud
 and she would be Culum’s birthday present. But even the thought of a new, beautiful clipper did not thrill him as it should. It reminded him of 
Lotus Cloud
 soon to be abuilding in Glasgow, and the sea fight next year with Wu Kwok—if he was still alive—or Wu Fang Choi, the father, and his pirates. He wondered if Scragger’s lads would get home safely. It would be another month at least before they were home—another three months for the news to come back.

He closed his office and went to the English Club and chatted to Horatio for a moment, then with some of the traders, and played a game of billiards, but got no enjoyment from the company or the game. The talk was all business, all anxiety about disaster signs on the international level and the extent of their huge trade gambles of the season.

He sat in the large, quiet reading room and picked up the last mail’s newspapers of three months ago.

With effort, he concentrated on an editorial. It told of widespread industrial unrest in the Midlands and asserted that it was imperative to pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work. Another article lamented that the huge industrial machine of England was operating at only half capacity and cried that greater new markets 
must
 be found for the productive wealth it could spew forth; more production meant cheaper goods, increased employment, higher wages.

There were new articles that told of tension and war clouds over France and Spain because of the succession to the Spanish throne; Prussia was spreading its tentacles into all the German states to dominate them and a Franco-Prussian confrontation was imminent; there were war clouds over Russia and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire; war clouds over the Italian States that wished to throw out the upstart French King of Naples and join together or not to join together, and the Pope, French-supported, was involved in the political arena; there were war clouds over South Africa because the Boers—who had over the last four years trekked out of the Cape Colony to establish the Transvaal and the Orange Free State—were now threatening the English colony of Natal and war was expected by the next mail; there were anti-Semitic riots and pogroms throughout Europe; Catholics were fighting against Protestants, Mohammedans against Hindus, against Catholics, against Protestants, and they fighting among themselves; there were Red Indian wars in America, animosity between the Northern and Southern states, animosity between America and Britain over Canada, trouble in Ireland, Sweden, Finland, India, Egypt, the Balkans . . .

“Does na matter what you read!” Struan exploded to no one in particular. “The whole world’s mad, by God!”

“What’s amiss, Tai-Pan?” Horatio asked, startled from his hate-filled reverie.

“The whole world’s mad, that’s what’s amiss! Why the devil will people na stop hacking each other to pieces and live in peace?”

“Quite agree,” Masterson shouted from across the room. “Absolutely. Terrible place to bring children into, by God. Whole world’s going to the dogs. Gone to the dogs. Much better years ago, what? Disgusting.”

“Yes,” Roach said. “World’s going too fast. The cursed Government’s got its head in its proverbial rectum—as usual. By God, you’d think they’d learn, but they never will. Every God-cursed day you read that the Prime Minister said, ‘We’ve all got to tighten our belts.’ For the love of God, have you ever heard anyone say we could loosen them a bit?”

“I hear the import tax on tea’s being doubled,” Masterson said. “And if that maniac Peel ever gets in, that bugger’s sure to bring in income tax! That invention of the devil!”

There was a general outcry and venom was heaped on Peel’s head.

“The man’s a damned anarchist!” Masterson said.

“Nonsense,” Roach said. “It’s not taxes, it’s just that there are too many people. Birth control’s the thing.”

“What?” Masterson roared. “Don’t start on that blasphemous, disgusting idea! Are you anti-Christ, for God’s sake?”

“No, by God. But we’re being swamped by the lower classes. I’m not saying 
we
 should, but they should, by God! Gallows bait, most of the scum!”

Struan tossed the papers aside and went to the English Hotel. It was an imposing, colonnaded building like the Club.

In the barbershop he had his hair trimmed and shampooed. Later he sent for Svenson, the Swedish seaman masseur.

The gnarled old man pummeled him with hands of steel and rubbed ice all over him and dried him with a rough towel until his flesh tingled.

“By the lord Harry, Svenson, I’m a new man.”

Svenson laughed but said nothing. His tongue had been torn out by corsairs in the Mediterranean many years ago. He motioned for Struan to rest on the mattressed table and covered him tightly with blankets, then left him to slumber.

“Tai-Pan!” It was Lo Chum.

Struan was instantly awake. “Mass’er Culum?”

Lo Chum shook his head and smiled toothlessly. “Long-skirt Mass’er!”

Struan followed the taciturn Jesuit monk along the cathedral cloisters surrounding the inner court and its beautiful garden.

The cathedral clock chimed four o’clock.

The monk turned at the end of the walk and led the way through a great teak door into a vast anteroom. Tapestries draped the walls. Carpets covered the well-worn marble floor.

He knocked deferentially on the far door, and entered the room. Regal and imposing, Falarian Guineppa was sitting on a high-backed chair which seemed like a throne. He gestured in dismissal at the monk, who bowed and went out.