Killigrew and the Golden Dragon

by Jonathan Lunn

  ‘If you will excuse me now, Mr Li?’ said Framjee. ‘And remember what I told you to tell Wu-qua. Seventeen thousand cattis of gunpowder tea, but it must be of the finest quality. And do not just check the samples: make a random check from the rest of the consignment.’

  ‘Hai.’ Li Cheng bowed and hurried away.

  ‘You need to tell your comprador how to do his job?’ Killigrew asked in some surprise.

  ‘He is new. But he seems jolly clever.’

  ‘Can you trust him?’

  Framjee smiled. ‘Ask me again in twenty years’ time. I am afraid my business is not one which engenders trust. My rivals will tell you that their word is their bond, but you should trust a cobra sooner than you should trust them. Their greed knows no bounds.’

  ‘Whereas you are the epitome of honesty, Father,’ Peri said ironically.

  Framjee was unperturbed. ‘Where would I be without you, my conscience, my darling daughter?’

  ‘The very place you stand now, Father, and every bit as wealthy. If you will excuse me, Mr Killigrew? I need to talk to our jockey.’ The lieutenant bowed and Peri wandered off.

  ‘You will have to forgive my Peri, Mr Killigrew. She does not approve of the way I earn my living; though she spends the money freely enough,’ he sighed.

  ‘You surprise me, sir. She does not strike me as the kind to have extravagant tastes.’

  ‘No, you are right. I am not being fair to her. I am jolly glad to have this opportunity to thank you in person for saving her life, Mr Killigrew. If I had to choose between her and my riches, it would be an easy decision, believe me.’ He looked glum. ‘Sometimes I wonder if she is not right to disapprove of the opium trade. I have tried to find alternative goods to import into China, believe me I have. But there is nothing else they will buy. They regard everything the West has to offer as inferior, the work of barbarians. Did you know that is what they call us? “Fan kwae.” “Foreign Devils”.’

  ‘Pardon me for contradicting you, sir, but a more accurate translation would be “ocean ghosts”. It’s just their way of describing us as a pale-skinned people who come from beyond the seas. The Chinese often give people nicknames based on some unusual physical characteristic; they intend no insult.’

  ‘You speak Cantonese, Mr Killigrew?’

  ‘I’ve picked up a smattering. I was here during the war.’

  ‘A terrible business… oh! I do not mean to give offence…’

  ‘None taken, sir, I assure you. I’m not proud of having fought in that war. When I joined the navy I thought that if I ever did have to fight in a war it would be against a ruthless tyrant like Napoleon. Instead I found myself slaughtering the Chinese because they wouldn’t buy our opium.’

  ‘You blame merchants like myself for that.’ Framjee sounded as though he blamed himself.

  ‘I blame men like Sir George Grafton, who used their influence to bring the war about. You were not such a man, as far as I am aware.’

  ‘Perhaps not. But I still profit from the results of that war. But listen to us both, wearing metaphorical hair shirts for what happened ten years ago, when we should be putting those events behind us and trying to build a new relationship with the Chinese. Theirs is a noble culture, Mr Killigrew, with much to teach us.’

  ‘As we have much to teach them, if only they’ll admit it.’

  ‘Ours are two very different cultures, are they not? Perhaps that is why our relations have been so troubled?’

  ‘I sometimes wonder if the problem isn’t that we’re so very different as that we’re so very alike.’

  ‘I am not certain that I follow you, Mr Killigrew.’

  ‘Two powerful empires, both convinced that we are pre-eminent in the world, and that all other cultures should bow down and accept our way of life as superior.’

  Framjee laughed. ‘That is very true, sir. I had not thought of it that way before.’

  Killigrew lit a cheroot and offered one to the Parsi, who shook his head. ‘I’m sorry about the loss of your clipper, sir.’

  Framjee made a dismissive gesture. ‘It was not the first clipper I have lost to Zhai Jing-mu and his pilongs. Thanks to you and your colleagues it should be the last.’

  ‘Your own daughter played a part in capturing him, sir. I think if it had not been for her he might yet have escaped.’

  The Parsi chuckled. ‘I am afraid she is a spirited girl.’

  ‘No need to apologise, sir. So many women these days are raised to be simpering ninnies, it’s refreshing to meet a girl with both sense and backbone. You’ve brought her up well.’

  ‘Her mother deserves the credit for that. I was always too bound up in my work to pay much attention to either of them; until my wife succumbed to malaria in the early days of this colony. Losing her taught me to appreciate the things that really matter in this life: the ones you love. The ship I lost and her cargo were insured; what you rescued for me, no insurance company could put a price on.’

  ‘No. But Zhai Jing-mu could.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Pilongs attack clippers when they’re on their way to Hong Kong with a cargo full of opium; but your ship was attacked as it was sailing for Bombay. My guess is that Zhai Jing-mu knew exactly who was on board.’

  Framjee nodded. ‘I would have paid any amount of money for Peri’s safe return.’

  ‘And Zhai Jing-mu knew that. Someone must have told him that your daughter would be sailing on that ship.’

  ‘That would not surprise me. He has spies everywhere. There are many in China who are opposed to the Manchu government in Peking. Here in Hong Kong, they are safely beyond Chinese jurisdiction. Since this colony was established, it has acted as a magnet for the worst scum of China, who use it as a refuge, a base for their criminal enterprises. I am not one who believes that all the Chinese in Hong Kong are criminals – to the contrary, I would say most of them are honest, honourable, hard-working people. But there are enough criminals to make their presence felt. You have heard of the Brotherhood of Heaven, Earth and Man?’

  ‘The Triads, you mean? I’ve heard rumours.’

  ‘The Triads have close links with the pilongs. Many of the pilongs are members of the Brotherhood.’

  ‘I thought the Triads were political organisations rather than criminal ones? Doesn’t their watchword – fan Ch’ing, fu Ming – translate as “overthrow the Ch’ing dynasty and restore the Ming”?’

  ‘Treason is as much a crime in China as it is in England, Mr Killigrew. Revolutionaries need money, and rarely have scruples about how they get it. The Triads are happy to work with the pilongs, as long as the pilongs restrict their attacks to Western shipping.’

  ‘All the same, the attack on your daughter’s ship took planning, foreknowledge. Could the Triads have provided the pilongs with that kind of information?’

  ‘The Brotherhood of Heaven, Earth and Man has spies in all sorts of surprising places,’ warned Framjee. ‘That is the key to its power.’

  Chapter 4

  Triads

  Hollywood Road was all hustle and bustle when Killigrew, granted a couple of hours leave by Robertson, made his way to the Chinese shantytown of Tai-ping-shan the next day. Pale-faced, languid Chinese gentlemen fluttered fans at their faces as they were pushed on wheelbarrows, seated on one side of the huge wheel while their luggage acted as a counterbalance on the other. Wealthier merchants were carried on palanquins, covered litters, which on mainland China were reserved for the use of mandarins. Coolies hurried back and forth carrying buckets of water slung from bamboo poles on their shoulders. A pair of grubby, cheerful children rode through the crowd on the back of a water buffalo.

  When the British had colonised Hong Kong in 1842 it had been little more than a rock with a few small fishing villages on it. A census taken five years ago, not counting the troops of the garrison, had put the island’s population at 23,872. Of these, 618 had been European. The vast majority of the rest were Chinese. Many of them were opponents
of the Ch’ing Dynasty who had come to the island to be beyond Manchu jurisdiction, but that did not mean they had any great love for the British; others were merely criminals with a price on their heads. Europeans generally avoided Tai-ping-shan, so it was with a devil-may-care sense of recklessness that Killigrew wandered down the narrow, crowded streets.

  In fact there was surprisingly little sense of menace in the shantytown. The Chinese avoided his gaze, but then they found casual eye-contact abhorrent so he did not take it personally. Certainly there were no menacing glares. Killigrew had found that a little politeness went a long way with the Cantonese.

  He wandered about aimlessly – keeping a weather eye open for trouble, but needlessly so – losing himself in the atmosphere: the pleasantly exotic sound of a Chinese band playing in the upper storey of an open-fronted building, the sing-song jabber of cheerful Cantonese voices, the heady aroma of unfamiliar scents and spices. There were animals everywhere – pigs, dogs, hens, goats, ducks – sometimes secured in pens, sometimes just wandering the streets every bit as aimlessly as Killigrew.

  He found an eating stall and ordered gum chen kai: soft, succulent chicken livers and crisp pork fat eaten with wafers of orange-flavoured bread. There were plenty of places to eat in Victoria, but they provided stolidly English food. Even if it had not been in his nature to sample as much foreign culture as he could in the course of his travels, Killigrew would still have gone to great lengths to escape the monotonous fare of mutton and boiled vegetables that seemed to be the staple of every chop-house from Falmouth to Shanghai.

  He sat down at one of the communal tables. The other customers – all of them Chinese – eyed him uncertainly until he wished them hearty eating and rubbed his chopsticks together to remove any splinters like a seasoned Chinese gourmet. They smiled and nodded, and returned to their conversations. He ate his gum chen kai with a bowl of fried rice and was washing it down with delicious rice wine when he saw a vaguely familiar face in the crowd. It took him a moment to place the man: Li Cheng.

  There was no reason why Framjee’s comprador should not pay a visit to Tai-ping-shan, of course – he probably had relatives there, perhaps even lived there himself – yet some instinct made Killigrew wonder. Someone had tipped off Zhai Jing-mu in advance as to which ship Peri Dadabhoy would be travelling on; who was better placed to be privy to such information than the Parsi’s new and untried comprador?

  Killigrew drained the last of his rice wine hurriedly and paid the chef before following the comprador. He was conscious that his Western face and clothes must have stuck out like a brig in a fleet of junks as he trailed Li through the crowds, but the comprador never once glanced over his shoulder. Wherever he was going, he was headed there with a purpose.

  A short distance down the road they came to a joss house with two stone lions, carved in the Oriental fashion – with stone balls in their mouths skilfully carved from the same rock so they could not be removed – on guard on either side of the door. The only other sentinel was an old Chinese monk who smiled and bowed as Li mounted the broad flight of half a dozen steps leading up to the door. After the briefest hesitation, Killigrew followed him. The monk made no attempt to stop him, smiling and bowing just the same as he had for Li.

  Killigrew paused just inside the open door until his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. Various gaudy statues of Taoist immortals, about twelve feet high, towered along the back wall, and the air was heady with the scent of perfumed sandalwood joss sticks being burned as offerings. There was no sign of Li amongst the supplicants kneeling before the numerous altars, but a rattling sound drew Killigrew’s attention to a side door. He ducked through and saw Li on his knees, shaking a porcelain canister full of bamboo sticks until one of them fell out. He picked up the stick, handed the canister to an attendant, and took the stick through another door.

  The attendant saw Killigrew. ‘You wantchee savvy joss, missee?’

  ‘Why not?’ He stepped forwards and the attendant handed him the canister. He kneeled down as Li had done and shook the canister until a stick fell out. It had a Chinese character inscribed on it in red ink, but Killigrew had never mastered the art of reading Chinese script.

  He passed the canister back and the attendant gestured for him to go through the same door as Li. Killigrew emerged into bright sunlight and found himself in a courtyard where a paved path led between ponds full of goldfish. The courtyard was deserted except for Li, who was disappearing through a door on the far side. As soon as he was out of sight, Killigrew crossed the courtyard briskly and then peered cautiously through the door.

  The room beyond was another shrine, windowless, again heavy with the scent of joss sticks. Cones formed by successions of bamboo rings, with strips of lucky red papers hung inside them, dangled from an array of bamboo poles which formed a false ceiling suspended from the real one. Before an altar where another Taoist idol glowered, Killigrew saw Li hand his bamboo stick to an elderly priest dressed in ornate brocaded robes.

  ‘Fan Ch’ing, fu Ming’ said the comprador.

  The priest nodded and pulled aside a silk curtain. Li passed through.

  Killigrew crossed the threshold and the priest beckoned him forward with impossibly long fingernails. The lieutenant held out his bamboo stick but the priest shook his head. ‘English?’

  Killigrew nodded.

  ‘When were you born?’ The priest spoke surprisingly good English.

  ‘The fifteenth of October,’ said Killigrew, and grinned. ‘Birth date of great men.’

  The priest shook his head irritably. ‘What year?’

  ‘The year of…’ Killigrew was about to say ‘Our Lord’ when it occurred to him that speaking of Christ in a Taoist temple might be considered blasphemous by the priest, and he had no wish to give offence. ‘Eighteen hundred and twenty-four. I don’t know what date that is in the Chinese calendar.’

  The old man clearly had enough experience of dealing with Westerners to be able to work it out in his head; either that, or he was making it up as he went along. But Killigrew was not overly superstitious so he did not mind either way. ‘You were born in the Year of the Monkey, in the Dog Moon. In the Celestial Kingdom, the monkey is the king of all the animals.’ The priest gestured expansively. ‘A man born in the Year of the Monkey is intelligent, resourceful and adaptable. He is master of many skills and greatly enjoys being busy, loves travel, and seeks difficult challenges to test himself. He takes great pride in fighting for noble causes but does not take kindly to criticism.’

  ‘How dare you say such a thing?’ snarled Killigrew. The priest stepped back in fear until the lieutenant gestured calmingly. ‘It’s all right, I’m joking.’

  The priest scowled. ‘He is also fond of teasing people. A man born in the Year of the Monkey is rarely troubled by ill health and has very powerful yang. He is also capable of much deceit.’ Finally the priest took the bamboo stick from Killigrew and glanced at the Chinese character inscribed on it. ‘There are many dangers on the path to your karma. The greatest lies within yourself. Two spirits, always opposed, like two battling dragons fighting for control of your heart.’ The priest clenched his fists and knocked the knuckles together in front of his chest. ‘Yin and yang: two people you will never meet again but who will always be with you. When these two dragons are reconciled, you will be at one with yourself; not before.’

  Which was all very interesting mumbo-jumbo, but not what Killigrew had come to leam. He decided to take another chance. ‘Fan Ch’ing, fu Ming,’ he told the priest.

  There was not a flicker of a reaction on the priest’s face. ‘The consultation is concluded,’ he said with a bow.

  Killigrew made for the door Li had passed through, but the priest moved quickly to block his path. ‘You go through that door,’ he said firmly, indicating the one the lieutenant had entered by.

  Killigrew was tempted to force the issue there and then, but after what he had heard he knew he would be able to come back with a search warrant a
nd a large contingent of the Hong Kong police at a later date. He smiled and bowed in the Oriental manner, and re-emerged into the courtyard.

  Two large Chinese men dressed in black pyjamas, crimson sashes and turbans awaited him in the middle of the courtyard. One carried a large scimitar and had two shorter curved swords tucked in his sash, the other a flail made from two rods connected to either end of a third by a short length of chain.

  Killigrew stopped about ten yards away. ‘I don’t know what the Taoist tradition is, but in the West it’s considered bad joss to spill blood in a holy place.’

  Smiling, the two killers bowed as one. Returning their smiles thinly, Killigrew did likewise.

  Then they charged.

  The man with the flail came first, whirling the iron rods skilfully about his head until they blurred. Killigrew backed up the path to receive him, forcing the man to lunge further than he had anticipated. He was already off balance when Killigrew ducked beneath the whirling rods, side-stepped as far as he could on the narrow path and extended a foot. The man tripped and fell headlong into a fishpond.

  The other man came at Killigrew at once, swinging his scimitar. Killigrew caught him by the wrist, whirled him around and plucked one of the short swords from his belt. The swordsman rammed an elbow into the lieutenant’s stomach and broke free. Winded, Killigrew staggered back, clutching the short sword. The swordsman advanced, grinning, while the man with the flail climbed out of the fishpond, sopping wet and cursing in Cantonese.

  Killigrew backed up the path until he was between two more ponds, so they could only attack him one at a time. The swordsman came first, charging with a wild cry. He hacked at Killigrew’s head. The lieutenant parried the blow with the short sword but his arm was jarred so badly he was barely able to defend himself against the next. He continued to back up until he felt one of the wooden posts supporting the veranda at the edge of the courtyard against his back.

  The swordsman swung at his neck. Killigrew ducked, heard a splintering sound behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see the wooden post had been cut clean in two. The swordsman grinned. Killigrew stared at him in amazement, and then recollected himself and stabbed the man in the stomach.