Cranky Ladies of History

by Tehani Wessely

  She has him cast overboard and feels nothing but the dull ache of betrayal, and the warmth of a job cleanly done.

  She rests a hand on Chang Pao’s arm. It is warm beneath her fingers, and she guides him belowdecks; bids him lie down beside her.

  She takes him, rough and loud, and she does not care who hears her.

  She will take this fleet, and they will go where she leads them. She is no woman to be stopped by some man.

  But some women, she thinks. And some men.

  She conceives the first of her rules.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Yi Ping finds her sitting, the tea in her water tray long gone cold. She has heard rumours of Chew Ying and his fleet of her children, maintaining her legacy the only way they have ever known.

  They have tangled with the British over the growing opium problem. They knot foreign sashes to their swords and laugh about it. She shakes her head at their youth and enthusiasm for the things she never truly let them experience.

  Still, it has been years, and she tires without them.

  “Long Sao,” he says. “Forgive me. We have a problem.”

  She boils the water again, and watches as Yi Ping washes the tea. “Tell me,” she says, finally, and they talk of books and rumours and plots and things that make her heart ache.

  She thinks of the sea.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Ching Shih is younger, but Zheng’s death is not so fresh. She has battled the British Navy and the Portuguese Navy. She grows weary of running; grows weary of the ghost heads she leaves tumbling in her wake.

  She hides the fleet in coastal towns; continues taking levies, and allows her children to grow again. In a small town, the emperor’s messenger greets her. The messenger has been living here, waiting for a chance to speak to her.

  His life is comfortable, and she wonders that he even bothers to deliver his message, this message that shakes in his hand as he speaks to her. The emperor’s messenger bids her visit Kwangdung, to talk with the Governor there.

  “I am not—” she begins, but the emperor’s messenger interrupts her.

  “Please go,” he says. She considers adding a rule just for this slight, but that seems churlish. She has suffered worse, and the messenger is prostrate before her. “Commander, please return to speak with the Governor.”

  She is tired, but not that tired, and this is a way to grow her fleet without the constant fear of defeat; without a continuing need to set the emperor’s ships on fire.

  Besides, the messenger called her Commander.

  “Chang Pao,” she says. “Cheng Paoyang. Cheng Qi.” Her captains array before her, waiting for her word.

  She turns the fleet towards Kwangdung.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  She counts the money again. It’s not that she doesn’t trust her bookkeepers; rather, when there is a problem, one must seek not to assign blame before one has tackled it oneself. Yi Ping is correct, she soon sees; there’s something missing.

  Together, they trace the paths. She may not be a bookkeeper, but she is used to the ways of money, and Kwangdung is her place. It has chewed her up and spat her out but it hasn’t defeated her, and she will open its mysteries to her.

  It is Sheng, she finds; Sheng, who has been with her since before they moved onto the land. Sheng, who beheaded three British naval men at her order. Sheng, who has couriered in the dens since they landed. Sheng has succumbed to the ghost drug, to the opium that has seeped into Kwangdung.

  He bows his head when he is brought before her. “Long Sao,” he begs. “Forgive me.”

  “My son,” she says.

  She beheads him herself, but has him buried as family. She doesn’t need his ghost coming for her when she has so many others to deal with.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  There is a rule: takings are registered within the fleet, following which it is redistributed. The capturing ship takes 20%, and the rest goes to the fleet. Withholding means ship-wide whipping. Repeated withholding, or withholding of large amounts, results in beheading.

  There is a rule: theft from a village that pays its fees is punished by beheading.

  There is a rule: desertion, or abstention without leave, results in ears cut off before the fleet.

  There is a rule: cuckolding is illegal. Rape is illegal. Both are punished by beheading. Concubines and wives are allowed amongst the fleet, and women who are not kept on are to be released in safety upon the shore, unpenalised and unharmed.

  There are no complaints. Her fleet grows.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Ching Shih purges her gambling dens, her brothels, every place her fleet touches. She purges her fleet of ghosts and opium, and thinks no more of it until a man—a Chinese man, a Kwangdung man, comes for her in the night, dagger raised and gun shaking, a trail of ghost steps behind him.

  “What brings you here?” she grinds out, his dagger grazing her side as she sweeps his legs out from under him.

  He doesn’t answer, but his gait gives him away; in her moment of distraction he draws her blood. He laughs at her, the slow, languid laugh of a Chinese man trapped by a ghost.

  He coughs as she takes him for what he has, and the smell on his breath makes her gag.

  No tool of the British can defeat her, she has always assumed, but her own blood cools at her neck and the stench of the opium dens fills her nostrils.

  She is growing old, and she misses the sea.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Ching Shih sits opposite Ying, her children arrayed along down the table. Ying begins the tea ceremony, washing the cups and rinsing the tea. Xiao Guang leans beside him, preparing a second set. “Long Sao,” Ying begins, as Ching Shih takes her cup and brings it to her mouth. This set is old, now; she purchased it when she first made landfall here in Guangzhou. She remembers laughing as she brought it to Chang Pao, telling him it was their wedding set, inlaid as it was with red dragons and yellow chrysanthemums. He had laughed, too, as she had spilled the tea on her hanfu and watched it fall onto the ground, unused as she was to the firmness without a deck and the lack of sway beneath her.

  The cup is smooth at her lip, and she sips the tieguanyin, a gift from her favourite son.

  “Long Sao,” he says, “The outsiders are coming.”

  This is not news to Ching Shih. Her life is rumours, now. Rumours from her servants, rumours from the employees in her gambling house. Rumours coming in from the ports. What comes next is news, though, and her heart seizes within her chest.

  “There is a rot,” he says, “The opium is brought by the British, and they will not stop. I don’t know if we can keep it at bay.”

  Ching Shih presses her lips together, disappointment pooling in her gut. That her son should give up. That the emperor should give up. That this jewel, the centre of the very world, should give up to these outsiders.

  “We should return the fleet to the sea,” Ying says.

  She puts her cup down, watches as her children do the same.

  “You will stay,” she says. “We will not lose all we have gained after we gave up the sea for it.”

  Her children don’t question her.

  She is the dragon, and she will keep them safe.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  She is surprised on her way to port. The attackers are a mix of foreigners and Chinese men, and they fight unexpectedly well. As she shoves her dagger into the closest attacker, she hears the tear of material; another man has reached for her hanfu and torn it beneath his hand. As she ducks to punish him she hears the whistle of gunpowder overhead.

  She drops to the ground, and takes another man down with her. When it is over, her hanfu is torn, her arm requires mending, and she has lost a guard in the attack.

  She is slow, though, and she fears.

  She is growing older.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  There are
new rumours, of an Imperial Commissioner, of the flow of opium, of the terror of the emperor. “The sky is high,” Xiao Guang says to her when she delivers the news, and Ching Shih laughs; allows herself to complete the chengyu. “The emperor is far away.” She has no faith in the Daoguang emperor, who lets the British and the opium in when it suits him and continues his attacks against the people when it does not.

  She bans the smoking of opium across her organisation; Ying enforces it with banishment and fines. Her people love her, so they obey; there are other drugs in the gambling houses anyway, and it’s no trouble to succumb to other pleasures.

  At her request, Xiao Guang develops a list of allies.

  She worries at the edges of her territory, at the future encroaching.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  The Imperial Commissioner arrives with fanfare that fades into the hush of a waiting storm. He hates the opium, the wind says. He has the emperor’s blessing, says the sand. He will crush the British beneath his wagons, Cheng Shih hears.

  Chew Ying brings his ships and junks to bear; Chang Pao transfers his commission, belatedly, with the Governor’s seal, to the Imperial Navy, and disappears into the distance.

  Ching Shih sends a letter to Governor Lin, and it is no surprise to her when a reply returns immediately.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  There is a rule: women are pirates.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  The Red Fleet takes Hong Kong.

  Not officially, of course. The Red Fleet hasn’t existed in twenty-nine years. Its leader is an old woman, cowed by years on the land and kowtowing to the emperor. Her ability to command, if it ever truly existed and was not a ridiculous lie perpetuated by men, is well and truly gone.

  But when Imperial Commissioner Lin bans trade into Kwangdung, and pressures Macau, held by the Portuguese ghosts, into doing the same, there is nowhere left for the British to ply their trade.

  They go north instead, where there is no Red Fleet, where the emperor’s hand weakens. The fleet loses track of them until word comes that Dinghaih has been occupied by the British. The opium trickles in again, softly, gently, from the north.

  Ching Shih has never been frantic. In all her years of command she has planned, and reacted, and sometimes failed. She remembers ships on fire and a sudden retreat. But the opium trickle becomes a flood from Chekiang, and Ching Shih has no reach there.

  She sends her fleet past Fukien, but the Governor there ignored Lin Ze Xu’s words, and the British are firmly entrenched. Their opium soaks every den and every house north of Wenchow. Ching Shih is not frantic, but she cannot stop a flood upon the land.

  Even after thirty-nine years, it is still not her place.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  She wakes one morning soon after, and the red of the regrettable British East India Company flies over the buildings. The rough sounds of English carry on the wind.

  Ching Shih allows Chang Pao to begin preparing the tea as she looks over the latest missives, as she hears reports of Lin Ze Xu’s banishment, as she considers the options of her fleet.

  She considers the flag fluttering and her fleet, its edges tattered. She thinks of her children; of her grandchildren.

  She breathes in the pu-er, fresh dried this spring, rinsed once and cooling.

  She thinks about the sea.

  “The Dragon, the Terror, the Sea” by Stephanie Lai

  DUE CARE AND ATTENTION

  Sylvia Kelso

  “Damn and blast it, Jo, it’s that bloody Higgins again!”

  “Now, dear, do try to contain yourself. The man’s only doing his job—!”

  “Job my—!”

  The Humber stopped with a perfect screech. The light in the middle of Brunswick Street waved even more madly, and I fended myself off the dash. My lifelong friend Lilian is a superlative medical practitioner, beloved the length and breadth of Brisbane, but no one could slight her with the description “ladylike”.

  “So, Constable, what is it this time?” I pictured the kindest of suppressed additions as, you prognathous ape. “Speeding at ten miles an hour? Eleven miles an hour, down your benighted Queen Street at one o’clock in the morning?”

  “Doctor Cooper—keep telling you—due care and attention—” It was too dark to distinguish features beyond our headlamps, but Higgins’ sixteen-stone silhouette was all too familiar, as were his wheezing gasps.

  “Ahhh!” A Lilian-snort easily expanded to, You blighted official imbecile! “Do the words prolonged labour, breech birth, haemorrhage, utmost urgency, mean anything to you?”

  “Madam, your vehicle clocked…block between Albert…Edward Street, twelve miles an hour…!”

  “Sssst!” Encapsulating, Then lobby to change the laws! Waive them for medical vehicles! You bloated babbling blockhead, give me a chance to save some lives! But when Lilian begins hissing through her teeth it is more than time to intervene.

  “Lilian, Lilian, dear. You know the constable has no power to change the law. Are we not, ah, flogging the messenger somewhat—?”

  “Sstt!!”

  “Now, Lilian, please. Constable Higgins, this is an emergency. Have your station mail the speeding summons care of Auckland House, corner of George and Mary Streets. And are you not somewhat off your beat?”

  “Biked two miles—catch up—”

  “Ssssttttt!”

  “How very zealous. We will be in correspondence with your superiors. And now, we really must go. Lilian?”

  The car backfired, as it does at the most inopportune moments. The constable’s shadow vanished, but shreds of, “Doctor, complaint, law-breaking,” vanished under Lilian’s explosion as we roared round the corner toward New Farm Park.

  “Flog the messenger be damned, Jo, this ape victimises doctors every bloody week! They’re all nitpickers but he’s the absolute bloody limit. I swear, next time I will run right over the obese officious—Scythian!—and leave his body in the street!”

  “Yes, dear, but really, he may wear blue, but he doesn’t tattoo it on himself. Nor does he eat raw meat; and he’s not foreign, like Scythians when they served as police in Athens. Wasn’t that the house number? 28 Moreton Street?”

  Once more the brakes precipitated me into the dash. The engine spluttered into quiet. Closing the car door softly, if with extreme effort, Lilian snatched her medical bag and shot a glance to the gesticulating silhouette across the street, growling, “God grant there’s still something I can manage here.”

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Luckily, or perhaps one should say, thankfully, we were in time for the patient, which preserved Lilian’s temper along with the girl’s life. The prompt arrival of the summons induced another eruption—“Three pounds three and sixpence! That’s a week’s ordinary wages! Hell and damnation, if I see him again I will run over him!”

  Some tricky operations at the Lady Lamington Hospital fortunately assuaged my friend’s wrath, and only routine alarums and excursions intervened before a sudden night-call to Mount Mee. The two hour train-trip to Caboolture preceded seventeen miles on horseback, then a critical operation on a Northern Coast farmer’s wife, an event Lilian summarised at breakfast on her return.

  “So the husband had to do the anaesthetic yet again, Jo, good thing those cow cockies are used to deliveries, even if it’s only calves—God blast and damn!”

  “Lilian! Mind the marmalade, oh, not the Truth again? What is it now?”

  “The Truth?” Down went the newspaper with a toast-snapping slam. “It’s the bloody Parliamentarians! They’re going to victimise all of us!”

  “Another fuss about noise and petrol fumes?”

  “Sttt! They’re proposing a Bill—Police Jurisdiction and Summary Offences! To ban everything from Sunday newspapers to two-up games, and just listen to this: Speeding infringements to be penalised by hefty fines! Loss of licence! And arrest without warrant! ”

  “Goodne
ss! One of those would surely be enough?”

  The newspaper hurtled across the breakfast room. At the door Millie’s mob-cap flashed and vanished but Lilian was already on her feet.

  “Enough? This is intolerable! Am I to go in fear and trembling that the bloody Scythian will arrest me on the street? Jo, I shall telephone David! We must do something about this!”

  “Yes, dear, this is certainly draconian, I agree, and so will he, but perhaps not at breakfast, do you think—!”

  But Lilian had already stormed out into the passage to seize the telephone mouthpiece. “Exchange! Get me Doctor Hardie’s residence. No, not his rooms, his residence. Yes, if you please. Now.”

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  Dr Hardie and Lilian have been confederates almost ever since he came back from overseas in the early ’90s, to upset medical Brisbane with his pioneering X-ray machine. Cemented by their work in setting up the Lady Lamington, the alliance has only strengthened over their years as honorary medical officers at the Children’s Hospital. As I poured more tea and nodded Millie to pick up the battered Truth, scraps of conversation floated from the passageway.