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BOOK: Merline Lovelace
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Standing amidships, Straithe caught the murmurs and turned. He raked her with a quick look, then said a few words to the man at his side. The scowling seaman pulled off his hat and handed it to the captain. Straithe strode to Sarah and handed her the wide-brimmed canvas hat.

“Keep this on, and stay well aft, clear of the booms.”

The booms, Sarah guessed, were the massive, swinging timbers that anchored the ship’s triangular sails. Eyeing the way the rearmost boom swept across the deck like a huge scythe at that precise moment, she readily agreed to keep out of its path.

“See that you do,” Straithe said curtly. “If you cause a disturbance or dally with the men, I’ll toss you over the side.”

Before she could think of an appropriate answer to that bit of incivility, he strode off. Obviously, he was already regretting his decision of the night before.

Well, he could regret all he wished. She was aboard the
Phoenix,
and here she would stay. Plunking the floppy canvas hat on her head, Sarah retreated to a small bench in the lee of the cabin. It was well aft, as
the captain had ordered, but gave her full view of the deck and the sparkling sea beyond the bow.

The crew continued to eye her askance as they went about their tasks. Sarah caught more than one comment about women being bad joss, even if they could stitch a man’s head as neat as any sailmaker. She endured their mumbling and disapproving glances the rest of that day, and the next.

On the morning of the third day, Okunah approached her, dragging behind him the youngest member of the crew. The lad, whom Sarah later learned was all of eleven years old, had grown a boil the size of a giant sea turtle’s egg in his armpit.

The African’s rich voice carried over the sound of the boy’s vociferous protests. “Would ye help me with the lancing, Miss Say-rah?”

His captive twisted and plunged in Okunah’s hold like a tethered goat. “I don’t want no lancing.”

“Aye, ye do.”

When the African reinforced this statement by thumping his free fist against the boy’s head, Sarah scrambled up and accompanied them to the makeshift surgery. She chatted cheerfully to the boy, Henry Fulks by name, about her brothers’ escapades, trying to distract him from the evil-looking knife Okunah put to his armpit. She didn’t think he’d paid her the least heed until he took her hand in a bone-crushing grip.

“Tell me again about your brother, Harry,” he pleaded. “Did he really set off strings of firecrackers in the chicken coop?”

“He did. The hens laid no eggs for weeks afterward. That was what convinced Papa to send him back to England to school.”

“I never went to no school. I…”

He gave a startled yip. Sarah smiled reassuringly as an astonishing amount of liquid gushed from the boil into the bowl she held at the ready.

“There, isn’t that better?”

“Aye, ma’am, it is!”

The painful pressure relieved, Henry hopped off the table. Another clout from Okunah’s big fist reminded him of his manners. He thanked Sarah with a lopsided grin and raced out of the mess. She could only shake her head at the resiliency of youth.

Seeing the towheaded Henry rid of his pain put an end to most of the crew’s muttering. But it was Sarah’s unexpected talent as a smuggler that won her their unconditional acceptance.

She certainly hadn’t intended to involve herself in illegal activity. It came about quite by accident when the
Phoenix
anchored off the island of Namoa, some three hundred miles north of Macao. Following the captain’s strict orders, Sarah tugged the brim of her borrowed canvas hat down low on her forehead and kept well out of sight. Perhaps she should have retreated below decks, but she found herself quite unable to pass up a firsthand glimpse of smugglers plying their trade.

The crew had hardly furled the sails before a scow put out from the war junk patrolling Namoa harbor. As the shallow-bottomed scow approached, Sarah spotted an official wearing the red glass button of a mandarin on his black hat. He was seated comfortably in an armchair set amidships and shaded by a large embroidered silk umbrella. A full complement of scribes and attendants accompanied him.

“Who is that?” she asked John Hardesty, whom the captain had sent to keep a close watch on her.

The seaman squinted his one good eye at the approaching scow. “I don’t rightly know, miss, but I expect he’s the official in charge of the port.”

“The official in charge?” Sarah gasped. “Is he coming to arrest us?”

Hardesty gave a snort of laughter. “He’s a’comin’ for his squeegee.”

Before he accepted his bribe, however, the mandarin participated in an elaborate ritual to save his face and satisfy his honor. Accompanied by his entourage, he came aboard and accepted the courteous greetings of the captain and the first mate. They seated him comfortably under an awning spread amidships for the occasion and offered wine and a box of cigars. The scent of rich tobacco drifted to Sarah’s secluded corner, as did their voices. She listened in some nervousness as the mandarin inquired by means of an official interpreter as to why the
Phoenix
had anchored at Namoa, since no foreign ship might enter any port but Canton.

“I would not have come to Namoa,” Straithe replied gravely, “had not contrary winds driven me from my course. I beg Your Excellency’s indulgence and request permission to replenish my water and provisions.”

The mandarin blew a fragrant cloud of smoke from his cheroot. A wave of a languid hand brought the translator to attention. The lesser official pulled a red scroll from his sleeve, unrolled it, and read the contents in a high-pitched, singsong English.

“By Imperial Edict dated Guo-Dong, twelfth year, third moon, second sun! Outer Barbarians may trade only at the port of Canton, or suffer immediate separation of their heads from their bodies.”

Sarah gulped. Knowing the penalty for sailing with
Straithe was one thing. Hearing it read aloud was another matter altogether.

“His Majesty, however, possesses a heavenly compassion even to Barbarians who are not worthy of it,” the translator continued. “He does not deny aid to a ship in distress. Such ship shall be supplied with necessary provisions, but shall be directed to put out to sea again on the next tide and make immediately for Canton. So it is decreed. So it shall be done!”

“And so you are directed,” the mandarin informed Straithe through the interpreter.

“And so we shall sail,” the captain replied.

The scribe rolled up the red scroll with a flourish and bowed. Another languid wave from his superior sent him and the other attendants back to the scow. The two principals then lapsed into Pidgin and got down to the real business at hand.

“All same custom, last time we come?” Straithe asked politely.

His Excellency smiled benignly. “All same.”

The captain had the bribe ready. He passed a heavy bag to his guest. The sound of metal clinking against metal carried across the deck.

“Does he pay in coin?” Sarah whispered to Hardesty.

“Small silver ingots. Spanish tears, we calls ‘em. That’s all the buggers…beggin’ your pardon, miss…will take exceptin’ opium, and the capt’n, he won’t deal in that.”

She eyed Straithe with grudging respect. A breeze off the shore ruffled his black hair and lifted the ends of the snowy white stock he’d tied around his neck in anticipation of his meeting with the port official. His green frock coat fit superbly across his broad shoulders.
If she didn’t know him for a libertine and a scoundrel, she might have mistaken him for a proper English gentleman.

Yet Straithe hadn’t sunk totally beyond reproach, she had to admit. Unlike a good many of his contemporaries, he refused to deal in opium, the product that formed the dark underpinning of the China trade.

Sadly, the European nations had little to offer the Chinese in the way of trade goods. The residents of the Celestial Kingdom had no use for heavy woolens or tin, so Chinese merchants would accept only hard silver in exchange for the spices and tea and precious porcelains so prized in the West. Over time, members of the English Parliament had become seriously alarmed at the drain on the nation’s silver reserves. So alarmed, in fact, that these otherwise upstanding and righteous men had encouraged the East India Company to begin shipping in the one product that assured a ready market the next time English ships sailed into Chinese ports—the so-addictive opium.

The Reverend Mr. Abernathy had thundered from his pulpit against this abominable practice, first in India, where the poppies were harvested and milked of their juices, then in China, where the millions of tons of opium shipped in by foreigners over the decades were slowly causing an addiction of epidemic proportions. The Presbyterian minister was not alone in his crusade. By Imperial Edict, the sentence for any foreign devil caught bringing in opium was summary execution. Tragically, the profits were so enormous and the customs officials so corrupt that the flood continued unabated.

That Straithe refused to dip into the lucrative opium trade could not but raise his standing in Sarah’s eyes.
Tipping back the brim of her canvas hat to better observe the captain, she watched him bid a courteous farewell to his guest. The mandarin had no sooner departed the schooner, his duty done and his honor satisfied at the stern warning he’d issued to the barbarians, than swarms of sampans set out from the shore. Heavily laden with tea chests stacked to the tops of their curved bamboo roofs, they rode dangerously low in the water.

At the same time, the crew of the
Phoenix
began bringing bales of cargo out of her hold. To Sarah’s astonishment, these included rich, dark furs that glistened like sable in the sunlight.

“We got them beavers and otter skins from the Rooskies at Fort Ross, in the Americas,” Hardesty confided. “We paid a pretty penny, too, since the waters are playin’ out.”

“And what is that?” Sarah nodded to a cord of logs tied with thongs.

“That be sandalwood, miss. We picked a load of it up in the Sandwich Islands.”

Sarah sniffed appreciatively as the crew brought up bundle after bundle of the light, fragrant wood. Its oil, when extracted through steam distillation, went into fine soaps, perfumes, and incense. The wood itself, she knew, was highly prized by the Chinese and used to make the intricately carved chests and boxes they so loved.

But it was the final box extracted from the hold that caused Hardesty to cackle with glee. When Sarah inquired as to the contents of the small cask, he swallowed his cackles and turned a bit red in the face.

“That be…uh…”

“What?”

“Well, privates, if you catch my meaning, miss. From tigers.”

She stared at him blankly. “Pri…oh!” Her face went as red as his. “Oh, my goodness!”

She stared at the chest for some moments, until curiosity compelled her to ask, “Why would anyone want to trade for that particular…commodity?”

Hardesty turned a deeper shade of crimson. “Well, you see, miss, it’s like this. We got aholt of a book of sorts, from one of the Popish long-skirts.”

“From a Jesuit priest?”

He nodded. “It’s a translation from the Chinee.”

“A translation of what?”

“Well, er, matters of the bedchamber, you might say.”

Hardesty watched her nervously with his one eye. When he saw that she wasn’t going to faint dead away in shock, he became a bit more expansive.

“According to our book, a fellow’s supposed to grind up this here…commodity…into powder. If he puts a pinch or two in a cup of wine made from plums harvested on the fifth day of the fifth month, he’ll, er, perform more nobly.”

“I see,” Sarah said faintly.

“It’s got something to do with this yin and yang faradiddle.”

Ah, yes. Yin and yang. Earth and heaven. Male and female. White tigers and green dragons. Sarah understood only enough of Oriental philosophy to admire the fact that it was so balanced.

The short, leathery seaman winked his one eye. “None o’ the other Westerners know about that book,” he confided. “Nor about them, you know,
commodities. We got a monopoly on the trade, if you take my meanin’, miss.”

Sarah supposed that trading in this particular commodity could not be considered anywhere near as evil or disgusting as trading in opium. Still, her newly revised opinion of the captain slipped a notch or two.

Not so far, however, that she didn’t protect his interests when the bartering began.

Like most barbarians, she had no ear for the Chinese language. A single syllable could be spoken in at least four different tones, all of which conveyed different meanings. Even the Chinese themselves, if they hailed from different villages or provinces, had difficulty understanding each other. Often, they would trace the word on their palms or squat to write a character in the dust. For if spoken sounds could be inflected to produce several different meanings, written characters could not.

In her years in Macao, Sarah had picked up a working knowledge of several hundred characters—far fewer than the average Chinese child of four or five, but enough for her to recognize the names of the people who worked at the Mission House and the brands of tea Cook purchased for her delectation. All the Abernathys shared the English passion for tea. Sarah had taken it a step further by learning to identify each delicate flavor and its origins. Thus, she knew at once that the symbols on the tea chests being offered to the captain didn’t match the source the merchant cited. If anything, the characters denoted an inferior blend grown far to the west.

“Mr. Hardesty,” she whispered urgently. “Go and tell the captain to inspect the tea inside those chests.”

The one-eyed seaman cast her a doubtful glance.

“I’ll wager he’ll find it grass green in color,” she insisted. “Not silvery gray as it should be. Go at once, before he closes the deal and loses face.”

Still doubtful, Hardesty went to do her bidding. Snaking his way through the chests and bales on the deck, he approached the captain. Sarah saw Straithe bend his dark head to listen, then turn to throw a quick, frowning glance her way. She flattened herself against the wooden bulkhead, mindful of his order to keep herself out of sight.

BOOK: Merline Lovelace
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