The Secret Mandarin (33 page)

Robert dropped my hand and I looked to see where I might fling myself, thinking to pull him beside me out of the firing line, when to my astonishment, instead of falling back in the face of the fracas, Robert stepped up between the mandarin and the bank of guns on the dock, and held up his hand while he addressed the Chinaman.

‘You say this crew owe you money. I am most interested in that. What are these debts?’ he asked the man. ‘How much?’

I could not believe Robert was bothering with this. It had been laid as a red herring, surely. The Chinese simply wanted to stop us leaving. Peverill froze, holding his men at action stations while Robert called the man’s bluff.

‘Many
sycee
dollars,’ the mandarin said, moving very slightly towards the ropes again. The
sycee
was the currency of the opium traders—a form of silver dollar.

‘How many?’ Robert enquired.

‘Twenty,’ the man spat.

This was a lot of money. More than a ragged crew of Chinamen could easily spend in their few days at port. Even the most degenerate of them.

‘Ah, my friend. Twenty
sycee
dollars.’ Robert languidly waved Wang towards a chest and had him open it. He pulled out a bag of money and nonchalantly dropped it into the mandarin’s hand.

‘Twenty,’ he said, ‘and no need to take the sail or fire a single shot. We do not want your brave men to die here.’

A grin broke out on Peverill’s face. Robert had called the Chinese’s bluff. The young captain was enjoying this. All eyes were on the mandarin, of course, who hesitated, halted in his tracks. He was not sure what to do. His followers
had their knives still drawn and in turn the guns of Peverill’s men remained trained upon them as Robert bowed deeply and moved to walk the mandarin off the ship.

‘Thank you for allowing me to fulfil this debt with honour,’ he said graciously.

The mandarin did not reply. There was a mere, mean incline of his head, his still eyes trained on the sail behind him. If a single shot were fired, that would be it. Open warfare. Robert put out his hand and lowered the man’s knife.

‘It is settled,’ he said. ‘With honour.’

Robert hoped that without an excuse he might win us the few minutes we needed to get away. The man’s jaw twitched a second. If the ship sailed he would no doubt know the wrath of his own country’s soldiers when they arrived in Foo Chow Soo the following day to discover he had accepted twenty dollars rather than halting our expedition. He had to do something. I saw his body tense, all at once, and then he dropped the bag of silver and bolted, screaming, towards the sail, with his knife held high. One clear shot rang out. It was Peverill who had taken aim. The man dropped to the ground on the deck and the soldiers trained their guns on the mob immediately. Everyone froze. Everyone that is, except McFarlane, who bounded back up onto the ship as two of his sailors pulled up the gangplank smartly behind him, and, in less than a minute, the fracas was isolated on the dockside.

The Chinese stared, calculating what to do. The truth was that they would be crazy to take on an overexcited Englishman with fourteen guns at his disposal, despite their greater numbers. McFarlane’s men were already casting off and there were bullets trained upon the little group at close quarters.

‘Put down your weapons,’ I heard Peverill shout and the
two remaining mandarins, presumably making a swift calculation of their odds, dropped their knives to the ground, followed shortly by their compatriots. I could hear the metal clink against the stone of the dock.

Peverill nodded up at us. We were already a few feet away and it was so dark we would not be able to see him much longer. I was sad to leave such brave men behind. For my part, I thought the army’s orders were wrong. Foo Chow Soo was hardly a place worth defending and it was certainly not worth dying for. These men were soldiers, though, and orders were orders.

‘Send reinforcements as soon as you can!’ Peverill shouted up. ‘Safe journey, McFarlane!’

I waved. And the last I saw the Chinese were being rounded up as the soldiers disappeared into the darkness.

Sailing away, I was overcome with relief almost immediately, and grief too. There would surely be a confrontation in the little town, if not today, then tomorrow. I hoped they would stave it off with as few casualties as possible.

‘Nice try,’ Captain McFarlane said to Robert, dropping the bag of silver into his hand. ‘We were lucky it was not worse. I will have the men drop that blaggard’s remains overboard when we get out to sea.’

‘A stiff breeze we have behind us, Captain McFarlane,’ Robert said. ‘One close call and now another.’

He had a good point. It was the wildest weather I had seen for two years. Out of the sheltered bay, the waves rose twenty feet in our wake. Robert and I stayed with the captain, soaked, on deck.

‘I hate to leave Gilland in charge of such a mess. It’s a pig’s ear,’ Robert sighed.

I expect our thoughts were all still there.

‘God knows if it will come off without incident in the end,’ the captain shrugged. ‘The Chinese know they cannot
retake the port from us, when it comes to it. That would mean another war. And you are gone now. There is no measure in a fight, Mr Fortune,’ he replied. ‘But it’s been stewing for weeks. We must look to our own troubles, I think, and let the consul deal with his. Best to sail up the coast a little, or rather, ride the tide, and then dock if we can. For only a madman would hazard open water in this weather! I do believe it’s getting worse.’

‘Will they follow us, do you think?’

‘They will be shot trying,’ McFarlane swore. ‘Peverill will cover for us. No, we will set ourselves to it. We just have to make it through this storm to one of the bays further up the coast, as far off as we can.’

Below decks, Sing Hoo’s customary moaning had started up only to be drowned out by the howling of the wind. The rest of our men crouched terrified in the stew of vomit and piss that quickly collected below decks, each one convinced that death was to hand.

‘Do you think you might ride the storm better on deck, Mary?’ Robert asked kindly. ‘I know you hate being shut in.’

I admitted that being stowed below with our rancid gardeners was not an appealing thought. As the ship pitched and the crew tried to set our course, McFarlane barked orders from the poop deck, shrouded in his sou’wester. Robert kept his arm around me.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘let’s try it,’ and he secured our waists by rope to the vessel before handing me a sturdy-looking knife.

‘If the ship breaks you must cut yourself free, Mary,’ he said, ‘or be dragged down with her.’

‘All right,’ I replied and stowed the knife in my pocket.

This was a contrast to Robert’s demeanour the last time I braved a storm in his company and for that matter, a contrast to the last time he had tied me to a ship.

On deck the water was everywhere and there was little
time to think or worry what was going to happen. Every second was taken up in itself and it was enough to stand, the waves breaking over us and the ship pitching hard. The ragged crew knew their business, and we haltingly moved up the coastline as my heart pounded. I never lost my terror after the
Regatta
but being out in the heart of it, I realised, was a far better way of dealing with a storm.

‘Come on then!’ I shouted at the water. ‘Come on!’

Robert and I clung to each other, falling more than once onto the deck and scrambling to our feet together. Many hours of soaking later, the ship finally found a sheltered bay and McFarlane dropped anchor. It was dawn and the rising sun lit the storm clouds over the open ocean. The storm was failing now in any case. The wind had almost blown itself out.

Robert and I retreated to the cabin, soaked to the skin, and crawled into the hammock, which was the best the
Island Queen
could afford. We fell fast asleep and when we woke the ship was moving steadily ahead and the sun was high. Robert dropped his feet to the floor and peered out of the porthole.

‘I’m hungry,’ he announced. ‘Let’s hope the ship’s provisions will run to something.’

I leaned over and lifted my sodden coat. From the pocket I withdrew Gilland’s present—the jar of marmalade. The label slid clean off the glass.

‘I will see if there is any bread,’ Robert promised and he disappeared out of the room to rifle the galley.

The fishing was fine that trip. We caught both shark and tuna. There were hardly any provisions on board, bar some ship’s biscuits and a rough corn bread that the cook baked each morning. Nonetheless, we had tea and rice of our own and with the daily catch this proved adequate. McFarlane was a rough fellow. His usual cargo was opium and he looked
most bemused at the array of plants that appeared on deck the first morning after the storm. Robert set Sing Hoo and Wang to complete the construction of the Ward’s cases he needed for the long, onward journey—sixteen by his calculation. We could not plant them up as we had no soil, but at least they would be ready. McFarlane’s crew, Chinese to a man, were taut, thin fellows with sharp teeth like street dogs. I noticed that neither Wang nor Sing Hoo even attempted to sell them any of our provisions—a mark no doubt that they were feral men and would take what they wanted at knife-point the second it was offered on the black market, for they knew there could be no appeal against it.

Our men kept below deck and together. Robert and I visited them regularly. On the first day we spent over two hours calming them and by means of drawing a rough map helped them understand the route of our journey. I described Hong Kong and made promises of a fine feast once we had docked.

‘Dim sum,’ I promised, ‘and roast pork.’

Most recovered their stomachs as the storm subsided and the promise of a square meal heartened them.

‘You are good for morale,’ Robert said.

‘They are afraid. We must promise them the familiar as a comfort.’

Robert nodded and later I heard him in conversation with one of the lead men, discussing the germination of the tea seeds in the cases, and expressing his own preference for black tea rather than green.

It was on board the
Island Queen
that I took the decision on our first day at sea to allow my hair to grow back. It was a landmark, of sorts, for in that I recognised my travelling was soon to be over. Late that afternoon, when we were underway, I had Wang bring up my case from Ning-po. Slowly, I pulled out all my silks, my bodices and corsets. The colours
were pale compared to the attire I was now accustomed to—brash Chinese shades that shone in the sunshine. As I drew one gown and then another to my face my skin seemed to lighten and I looked like a woman once more. I scrubbed myself clean and then stood for an hour piling up my hair and securing it with combs and pins until the shaved part of my scalp was obscured. I looked elegant, even sophisticated, as I slipped on my lace-up boots and a plain, cotton day dress in the palest blue. My waist was tinier than ever, I warranted myself. And yet in the mirror I was a stranger.

When Robert came to the cabin his face broke into a grin.

‘You look beautiful, Mary,’ he said. ‘I must transform myself now or we will be an odd pair, don’t you think?’

He slipped his arm around me and inspected my form more closely as he kissed my neck. I said nothing.

That evening Captain McFarlane jumped up and held out my seat at the dinner table. The candles were burning low but even in that odd light I could still make out the cramped shabbiness of his quarters, though, I admit, they were comfortable enough.

‘Please,’ he gestured, and I sat down.

Robert had found a pair of breeches and a jacket.

‘We are all dressed for dinner, eh?’ he grinned at himself in the glass before he took his place.

‘You do appear quite different,’ McFarlane commented, and then he rang the bell and they brought the fish. The boy who served it glared at me in this new incarnation but I merely glared back at him. Lord knows what our tea gardeners would make of me.

‘A toast,’ McFarlane raised his glass. ‘Before we sup. To the brave men we left at Foo Chow Soo. May they last until we can send comrades to strengthen their numbers! Our prayers are with them, every one.’

We drank to that and then had a moment’s silence. We were the lucky ones, there was no doubt.

‘Come now,’ said the captain. ‘We must enjoy our meal and a week or so’s company.’

And we set to.

I was no longer accustomed to eating with my waist pinned and given the tightness of the stays I managed very little. Robert wolfed his food and engaged McFarlane in some talk of Edinburgh and the gardens at Inverleith where he had worked as a boy when first he left his father’s house. McFarlane’s father had been a fisherman at Granton.

‘Changed days,’ he sighed.

‘And you ferry opium?’ Robert enquired.

‘Yes. Five years in the navy, of course. And now, all this,’ he gestured around him, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Two years ago I went to London,’ he continued. ‘I visited the theatre and there on stage they portrayed an opium trader. Their notion was rather far from the truth, I’m afraid. It is as profitable as they showed it, but, well, some of the other advantages were rather poorly imagined. I am not a man of the world really. I could have a far finer ship, but this old girl sees me right.’

‘Ah,’ Robert’s eyes glinted, ‘what they say in Drury Lane matters little. Many things on the stage in London are not as they seem.’

After dinner McFarlane brought out a box of cigars and he and Robert puffed away over an excellent port, while I went back to the cabin. On the way I passed one of our gardeners. Our eyes met and he caught his breath, surveying me as if I was a strange curiosity.

I smiled. ‘You may still call me Master,’ I told him, and hearing my voice seemed to confuse him further and he rushed off to tell the others what he had encountered.

Back in the cabin, my fingers fumbled as I undid the laces
and took down my hair. I climbed into the hammock and blew out my candle but I could not sleep despite the comforting rock of the ship on the water. Tomorrow I would face them and answer all the questions. Perhaps Wang would answer them for me—he was probably facing them now. The ship creaked. I told myself it was only a week or so.