Tai-Pan (9 page)

“Shoot yoursel’ or swear by God you’ll na touch drink again. It’s poison to you, Robb. You’ve been drunk for almost a year. You’ve the children to think of. The poor bairns are terrified of you and rightly; and I’m tired of pulling you out of gutters. Look at yoursel’, Robb! Go on!”

Struan had forced him to look into a mirror. Robb had sworn, and then Struan had sent him to sea for a month with orders that he was to be given no liquor. Robb had almost died. In time he had become himself again, and he had thanked his brother and lived with Sarah again and tried to make peace. But there was never peace again between them—or love. Poor Robb, Struan thought. Aye, and poor Sarah. Terrible to live like that, husband and wife.

“What the devil made Robbie do that?”

“I think he wanted to break up a quarrel,” Cooper said. “I was getting angry. Sorry.”

“Dinna apologize, Jeff. It was my fault. Well,” Struan added, “let’s na waste Robb’s guts, eh? His toast?”

They drank silently. All around the shore the merchants and sailors were roistering.

“Hey, Tai-Pan! And you, you blasted colonial! Come over here!”

It was Quance, seated near the flagpole. He waved at them and shouted again. “Blast it, come over here!” He took a pinch of snuff, sneezed twice and dusted himself impatiently with a French lace kerchief.

“By God, sir,” he said to Struan, peering up at him over rimless spectacles, “how the blasted hell can a man work with all this din and tumult? You and your blasted liquor!”

“Did you try the brandy, Mr. Quance?”

“Impeccable, my dear fellow. Like Miss Tillman’s tits.” He took the painting off the easel and held it up. “What do you think?”

“About Shevaun Tilknan?”

“The painting. Great spheroids of balderdash, how can you think about a doxy’s tail when you’re in the presence of a masterpiece?” Quance took another pinch of snuff and choked, and gulped from his tankard of Napoleon brandy and sneezed.

The painting was a water color of the day’s ceremony. Delicate. Faithful. And a little more. It was easy to pick out Brock and Mauss, and Glessing was there, the proclamation in his hands.

“It’s very good, Mr. Quance,” Struan said.

“Fifty guineas.”

“I bought a painting last week.”

‘Twenty guineas.”

“I’m na in it.”

“Fifty guineas and I’ll paint you reading the proclamation.”

“No.”

“Mr. Cooper. A masterpiece. Twenty guineas.”

“Outside of the Tai-Pan and Robb, I’ve the biggest Quance collection in the Far East.”

“Dammit, gentlemen, I’ve got to get some money from somewhere!”

“Sell it to Brock. You can see him right smartly,” Struan said.

“The pox on Brock!” Quance took a very large gulp of brandy and said, his voice hoarse, “He turned me down, blast him!” and he dabbed furiously with his paintbrush and now Brock was gone. “By God, why should I make him immortal? And a pox on both of you. I’ll send it to the Royal Academy. On your next ship, Tai-Pan.”

“Who’s going to pay the freight? And insurance?”

“I will, my boy.”

“With what?”

Quance contemplated the painting. He knew that even in old age he could still paint and improve; his talent would not deteriorate.

“With what, Mr. Quance?”

He waved an imperious hand at Struan. “Money. Taels. Brass. Dollars. Cash!”

“You’ve a new line of credit, Mr. Quance?”

But Quance did not answer. He continued to admire his work, knowing he had hooked his prey.

“Come on, Aristotle, who is it?” Struan insisted.

Quance took an enormous gulp of brandy and more snuff and sneezed. He whispered conspiratorially, “Sit down.” He looked to see there was no one else listening. “A secret.” He held up the painting. “Twenty guineas?”

“All right,” Struan said. “But it better be worth it.”

“You’re a prince among men, Tai-Pan. Snuff?”

“Get on with it!”

“It seems that a certain lady admires herself greatly. In a mirror. With no clothes on. I’ve been commissioned to paint her thus.”

“Great God Almighty! Who?”

“You both know her very well.” Then Quance added with mock sadness, “I am sworn not to reveal her name. But I shall put her posterior into posterity. It’s superb.” Another gulp of brandy. “I, er, insisted on seeing her all. Before I agreed to accept the commission.” He kissed his fingers in ecstasy. “Impeccable, gentlemen, impeccable! And her tits! Good God on high, nearly gave me the vapors!” Another gulp of brandy.

“You can tell us. Come on, who?”

“First rule in nudes as in fornication. Never reveal the lady’s name.” Quance finished the tankard regretfully. “But not a man among you who wouldn’t pay a thousand guineas to own it.” He got up and belched heartily and dusted himself down and closed his paint box and picked up his easel, enormously pleased with himself. “Well, that’s enough business for this week. I’ll call on your compradore for thirty guineas.”

“Twenty guineas,” Struan said.

“A Quance original of the most important day in the history of the Orient,” Quance said scornfully, “for hardly the price of a hogshead of Napoleon.” He returned to his longboat and danced a jig as he was cheered aboard.

“Good God Almighty, who?” Cooper said at length.

“Must be Shevaun,” Struan said, with a short laugh. “Just the sort of thing that young lady would do.”

“Never. She’s wild, yes, but not that wild.” Cooper glanced uneasily at the Cooper-Tillman depot ship where Shevaun Tillman was staying. She was his partner’s niece, and she had come out to Asia a year ago from Washington. In that time she had become the toast of the continent. She was beautiful and nineteen and daring and eligible, and no man could trap her—into bed or into marriage. Every bachelor in Asia including Cooper had proposed to her. And they all had been refused but not refused: held on a rein, as she held all her suitors. But Cooper did not mind; he knew she was going to be his wife. She had been sent out under the guardianship of Wilf Tillman by her father, a senator from Alabama, in the hope that Cooper would favor her and she would favor him, to further cement the family business. And he had fallen in love with her the moment he had seen her.

“Then we’ll announce the betrothal immediately,” Tillman had said delightedly a year ago.

“No, Wilf. There’s no hurry. Let her get used to Asia and used to me.”

As Cooper turned back to Struan, he smiled to himself. A wildcat like that was worth waiting for. “It must be one of Mrs. Fortheringill’s ‘young ladies.’ ”

“Those rabbits’d do anything.”

“Sure. But they wouldn’t 
pay
 Aristotle for that.”

“Old Horseface might. Good for business.”

“She’s business enough now. Her clientele’s the best in Asia. Can you imagine that hag giving money to Aristotle?” Cooper pulled impatiently at his muttonchop whiskers. “Best she’d do is give it to him in trade. Perhaps he’s joking with us?”

“He jokes about everything and anything. But never about painting.”

“One of the Portuguese?”

“Impossible. If she’s married, her husband’d blow her head off. If she’s a widow—that’d blow the top off the whole Catholic Church.” The weathered lines of Struan’s face twisted into a grin. “I’ll put the whole power of The Noble House on finding out who. Bet you twenty guineas I find out first!”

“Done. I get the painting if I win.”

“Dammit, I’ve taken a fancy to it now that Brock’s out.”

“The winner gets the painting and we’ll ask Aristotle to paint the loser into it.”

“Done.” They shook hands.

A sudden cannon, and they looked seaward.

A ship was charging through the east channel under full sail. Her free-lifting square sails and gallants and royals and topgallants were swelling to leeward, cut into rotund patterns by the buntlines and leach lines, her taut rigging straining and singing against the quickening wind. The rake-masted Clipper was on the lee tack on a broad reach and her bow wave flew upward, her gunnel awash, and above the froth of her wake—white against the green-blue ocean—sea gulls cried their welcome.

Again the cannon barked, and a puff of smoke swung over her lee quarter, the Union Jack aft, the Lion and the Dragon atop the mizzen. Those on the beach who had won their wagers cheered mightily, for huge sums of money were gambled on which ship would be the first home and which ship would be the first back.

“Mr. McKay!” Struan called, but the bosun was already hurrying over to him with the double telescope.

“Three days early an’ record time, sorr,” Bosun McKay said with a toothless smile. “Och aye, look at her fly. She’ll cost Brock a barrel of silver!” He hurried inland.

The ship, 
Thunder Cloud
, came barreling out of the channel, and now that she was clear, she ran before the wind and gathered speed.

Struan put the short double telescope to his eyes and focused on the code flags he was seeking. The message read: “Crisis not resolved. New treaty with Ottoman Empire against France. Talk of war.” Then Struan studied the ship; her paint was good, her rigging taut, her guns in place. And in one corner of her fore-royal sail was a small black patch, a code sign, used only in emergencies and meaning “Important dispatches aboard.”

He lowered the binoculars and offered them to Cooper. “Do you want to borrow them?”

“Thanks.”

“They’re called bi-oculars, or binoculars. Two eyes. You focus with the central screw,” Struan said. “I had them made specially.”

Cooper peered through them and saw the code flags. He knew that everyone in the fleet was trying to read their message and that all companies spent much time and money trying to break the code of The Noble House. The binoculars were more powerful than a telescope. “Where can I get a gross of these?”

“A hundred guineas apiece. A year to deliver.”

Take it or leave it, Cooper thought bitterly, knowing the tone of voice. “Done.” New code flags were raised, and Cooper handed the binoculars back.

The second message was a single word, “Zenith,” a code within the master code.

“If I were you,” Struan said to Cooper, “I’d unload your season’s cotton. In a hurry.”

“Why?”

Struan shrugged. “Just trying to be of service. You’ll excuse me?”

Cooper watched him leave to intercept Robb, who was approaching with the bosun. What’s in those goddam flags? he asked himself. And what did he mean about our cotton? And why the hell hasn’t the mail ship arrived?

This was what made trading so exciting. You bought and sold for a market four months ahead, knowing only the market position of four months ago. A mistake and the inside of a debtor’s prison you’d see. A calculated gamble that came off and you could retire and never know the Orient again. A wave of pain swept up from his bowels. Pain of the Orient that was always with him—with most of them—and a way of life. Was it a friendly tip of the Tai-Pan’s or a calculated ploy?

Captain Glessing, accompanied by Horatio, was eying 
Thunder Cloud
 enviously. And also impatiently. She was a prize worth taking, and as the first ship of the year to make the voyage out from England and from Calcutta, her holds would be crammed with opium. Glessing wondered what the flags had meant. And why there was a black patch on the fore-royal.

“Beautiful ship,” Horatio said.

“Yes, she is.”

“Even though she’s a pirate?” Horatio asked ironically.

“Her cargo and owners make her a pirate. A ship’s a ship, and that’s one of the most gorgeous ladies who ever served man,” Glessing answered crisply, unamused by Horatio’s wit. “Speaking of ladies,” he said, trying not to be obvious, “would you and Miss Sinclair care to sup with me tonight? I’d like to show you around my ship.”

“That’s very nice of you, George. I would indeed. And I imagine Mary would be delighted. She’s never been on a frigate before.”

Perhaps tonight, Glessing told himself, there’ll be an opportunity to determine how Mary feels about me. “I’ll send a longboat for you. Would three bells—the last dogwatch—be all right?”

“Better make it eight bells,” Horatio said nonchalantly, just to show that he knew that three bells in this watch would be seven-thirty, but eight o’clock would be eight bells.

“Very well,” Glessing said. “Miss Sinclair will be the first lady I’ve entertained aboard.”

Good God, Horatio thought, could Glessing have more than a fleeting interest in Mary? Of course! The invitation was really for her, not me. What a nerve! Pompous ass! To think that Mary would even consider such a match. Or that I would allow her to marry yet!

A musket clattered to the stones and they glanced around. One of the marines had fainted and was lying on the beach.

“What the devil’s the matter with him?” Glessing said.

The master-at-arms turned the young marine over. “Don’t know, sorr. It’s Norden, sorr. He’s been acting strange like, for weeks. Perhaps he’s the fever.”

“Well, leave him where he is. Round up the sailors, marines to the boats! When everyone’s aboard, come back and fetch him.”

“Yes, sorr.” The master-at-arms picked up Norden’s musket and threw it to another marine and marched the men away.

When it was safe to move, Norden—who had only pretended to faint—slipped into the lee of some rocks and hid. Oh Lord Jesus, protect me till I can get to the Tai-Pan, he prayed desperately. I’ll never get an opportunity like this again. Protect me, oh Blessed Jesus and help me get to him afore they come back for me.

Brock was standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, his telescope trained on the flags. He had broken Struan’s code six months ago and understood the first message. Now, wot about ‘Zenith’? Wot do that mean? he asked himself. And wot be so important about Ottoman treaty that Struan’s’d risk telling about, open like, even in code, ’stead of in secret when they be aboard? Maybe they knowed I broke the code. Maybe they want me t’understand it and ‘Zenith’ means, private to them, the message be false. Crisis and war means price of tea and silk be going up. And cotton. Better buy heavily. 
If
 it be true. And perhaps put my head in Struan’s trap. Where the hell be 
Gray Witch
? Not right for her to be beat. Damn that Gorth! He costed me a thousand guineas.