Tai-Pan

by James Clavell

  “How much did Gorth pay, to keep your mouth shut?”

  “Two hundred guineas.”

  “What happened to the girl?”

  “I don’t know. That’s God’s mortal truth, so help me! Relations came for her. He paid ’em hundred nicker and they were satisfied. They took her away. She were only a heathen.”

  Struan put the knife away. “You may have to repeat that in a court of law.”

  “That bugger’s dead, I hear, so there’s naught to be said, I’d be thinking. And how can I say anything? Don’t know her name and there’s no corpse that I knows of. You know how it is, Tai-Pan. But I’ll swear on a Bible to Brock, if that’s wot’s in yor mind.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fortheringill.”

  He climbed the stairs to the Blue Room. Its whitewashed walls were a dirty gray, and wind blew through cracks. There was a huge mirror on one wall, and crimson-frilled curtains were draped around the great four-poster. Paintings were stacked on the floor and hung on the walls, and the floor was speckled with oil- and watercolor paints. In the center of the room was an easel, and scattered around it were dozens of pots of paints and paintbrushes.

  Aristotle Quance was snoring in bed. Only his nose and nightcap were visible.

  Struan picked up a broken pitcher and flung it against the wall. It exploded into tiny pieces, but Quance just snuggled down deeper under the covers. Struan picked up a larger pitcher and crashed it against the wall.

  Quance eased himself up and opened his eyes. “Bless my soul! The Devil himself, by all that’s holy!”

  He bounded out of the bed and embraced Struan. “Tai-Pan, my beloved patron! I worship you! When did you arrive?”

  “Get away with you,” Struan said. “Just got in today!”

  “I hear Gorth’s dead.”

  “Aye.”

  “Thank the Lord for that. Three days ago that dung-eater came here and swore he’d cut me throat if I told a soul about the girl.”

  “How much did he give you na to tell?”

  “Not a penny, dirty miser! Great balls of fire, I only asked a hundred.”

  “How’re things with you?”

  “Terrible sad, my dear fellow. Herself is still here. Oh God, protect me! So I have to still hole up here. Can’t move—daren’t.” Quance hopped back into bed and, picking up a huge stick, thumped the floor three times. “Ordering breakfast,” he volunteered. “Care to join me? Now tell me all your news!”

  “You eat breakfast at nine at night?”

  “Well, my dear fellow, when you’re in a whorehouse you act like a whore!” He roared with laughter, then grabbed his chest. “God’s blood, Tai-Pan, I’m faint. You see before you a shadow of a man—a veritable ghost of the immortal Quance.”

  Struan sat on the bed. “Mrs. Fortheringill said something about a bill. I gave you a bag of gold, by God!”

  “Bill?” Quance rummaged under the pillow and shoved a half-eaten sandwich, two books, a few paintbrushes and several articles of female underwear out of the way and found the paper. He pressed it into Struan’s hands breathlessly. “Look what that usurer’s charging you.”

  “Charging you, you mean,” Struan said. He read the total. “Good God Almighty!” The bill came to four hundred and sixteen pounds four shillings and four pence and a farthing. Seven and sixpence per day, board and lodging. One hundred and seven pounds for paints, brushes, canvas. The balance was headed “Miscellaneous charges.”

  “What the devil’s this figure?”

  Quance pursed his lips. “’Pon me word, that’s what I’ve tried to get out of the old cat.”

  Struan went to the door and bellowed downstairs. “Mrs. Fortheringill!”

  “Did you call me, Tai-Pan?” she asked sweetly from the well of the stairs. “Aye. Would you kindly step this way?”

  “You wanted me?” she asked even more sweetly as she came into the room.

  “What the devil’s this?” Struan stabbed the bill viciously with a finger. “‘Miscellaneous’—nearly three hundred and twenty pounds!”

  “Ah,” she replied archly. “Trade, Tai-Pan.”

  “Eh?”

  “Mr. Quance likes company at all hours, and that’s the amount of his trade since he’s been in our care.” She sniffed disdainfully. “We keep proper books here. It’s correct to the minute.”

  “Lies!” Quance howled. “She’s cooked the books, Tai-Pan. It’s blackmail!”

  “Blackmail?” Mrs. Fortheringill shrieked. “Why you—you—and here’s me and my ladies saving you from worse than death and the second time to boot!”

  “But three hundred-odd pounds?” Struan said.

  “Correct to the minute, by God. He likes to paint ’em as well as … my bookkeeper’s the best in Asia. Has to be!”

  “It’s impossible,” Struan insisted.

  Quance stood on the bed and put one hand over his heart and with the other pointed at the woman. “I refuse the entire bill on your behalf, Tai-Pan!” He was puffed up like a peacock. “It’s usury!”

  “Oh, it is, is it? Well, I’ll tell you, you blathering old fart-dungheap right to your face—out you go! And I’ll send word to that woman tonight!” The little woman spun around and screeched, “Ladies!”

  “Now, Mrs. Fortheringill, there’s no need for temper,” Quance said tentatively.

  The girls came running. Eight of them.

  “Take them out and put ’em in me room,” she ordered, waving at the paints and brushes and paintings. “No more credit, and them’s mine until the bill’s paid to the penny!” And she huffed out.

  Quance scrambled out of bed, his nightshirt flaring. “Ladies! You’ll touch nothing, by God!”

  “Now, be a good boy,” Nellie said calmly. “If Ma’am says they’s to go, if the Lord Himself was standing there, they’s to go!”

  “Oh yes, funnybunny darling,” another said. “Our Nelly’s said it proper.”

  “Just a minute, ladies,” Struan said. “Mr. Quance’s been given a bill. That’s the reason for all the trouble. Miss Nelly, er, have you, well, spent time with him?”

  Nelly stared at Struan. “‘Time’ you say, Tai-Pan? Our dear Mr. Quance has an appetite for time the like of which ain’t even in the Bible.”

  “Oh yes, Tai-Pan,” another said with a chuckle. “Sometimes he likes two of us together. Oh, he is a one!”

  “To paint, by God!” Quance shouted.

  “Oh, go on with you, Mr. Quance,” Nelly said. “We’s friends together.”

  “He paints us some of the time,” another said agreeably.

  “When?” another asked. “I ain’t ever beed painted.”

  “Lies, by God!” Quance protested to Struan, and when he saw the Tai-Pan’s expression, he winced and shrank back into the bed. “Come now, Tai-Pan,” he implored. “No need to be precipitate. A fellow can’t help it if he’s—popular.”

  “If you think I’m paying for your quent, you’re sick in the head!”

  “What’s ‘quent’?” Nelly asked, indignant. “We’re respectable ladies, that’s wot. We bleedin’ well are and we don’t like dirty words!”

  “It’s Latin for ‘time,’ my dear Miss Nelly,” Quance said hoarsely.

  “Oh,” she said, and bobbed a curtsy. “Beggin’ yor pardon, Tai-Pan!”

  Quance clutched his heart and rolled his eyeballs. “Tai-Pan, if you forsake me, I’m finished. Debtors’ prison! I beg you”—he clambered out of bed and knelt supplicatingly—“don’t turn your back on an old friend!”

  “I’ll settle this bill and take all your paintings against your loan. But this is the last penny. Understand, Aristotle? I’m paying no more!”

  “Bless you, Tai-Pan. You’re a prince.”

  “Oh yes,” Nelly said and sidled up to Struan. “Come on, luv. You pay Ma’am’s bill and it’ll be on the house.”

  “Wot about me?” another asked. “Course, Nelly’s got more trickeries.” They all nodded amiably and waited.

  “I’d recommend,�
�� Quance started, but Struan’s glare cut him short. “Every time you look at me like that, Tai-Pan, I feel near death. Forlorn. Lost. Forsaken.”

  In spite of his irritation Struan laughed. “Devil take you!” And he strode for the door. But a sudden thought stopped him. “Why’s this room called the Blue Room?”

  Nelly leaned down and picked up the chamber pot from under the bed. It was blue. “Ma’am started a new fashion, Tai-Pan. Each room have a different color, Tai-Pan. Mine’s green.”

  “I’ve got the old cracked gold one,” another said with a sniff. “Ain’t ladylike at all!”

  Struan shook his head hopelessly and disappeared.

  “Now, ladies,” Quance said in an exultant whisper, and there was an expectant hush. “As the slate’s clean, after breakfast I propose a modest celebration.”

  “Oh good,” they said, and clustered around the bed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  At midnight the lorcha nosed the beach at Aberdeen, and Struan jumped into the shallows, Fong beside him. Earlier he had landed his men secretly just to the west and positioned them around the well. He tramped up the beach toward the well and the fork in the path. Fong carried a lantern and was very nervous.

  The moon was hidden by the low overcast, but a trace of its glow filtered through. The air was heavy with the stench of low tide, and the hundreds of sampans in the narrow inlet were like so many hibernating wood bugs. No lantern except Fong’s cut the darkness. There were no sounds but for the inevitable foraging of dogs.

  The village was equally ominous.

  As Struan broke out onto the fork in the path, he searched the night. He could feel many eyes watching him from the sampans.

  He loosened the pistols in his belt and stood carefully out of the light of the lantern that Fong had placed on the lip of the well.

  The silence intensified. Suddenly Fong stiffened and pointed shakily. Just beyond the fork, lying across the path, was a sack. It looked like a rice sack. His pistols ready, Struan motioned Fong ahead, not trusting him. Fong advanced, panic-stricken.

  When they reached the sack, Struan tossed Fong a dirk, haft first. “Cut it open.”

  Fong knelt down and slit the hempen sacking. He let out a terrified whimper and backed off.

  Scragger was in the sack. He had no arms or legs or eyes or tongue, and the stumps of his limbs were cauterized with tar.

  “Top o’ the evening, matey!” Wu Kwok’s malignant laughter echoed harrowingly out of the night and Struan jerked to his feet.

  The laugh seemed to come from the sampans.

  “What do you want, you devil from hell?” Struan shouted back.

  There was a guttural stream of Chinese, and Fong blanched. He shouted something back, his voice constricted.

  “What did he say?”

  “He … Wu Kwok says I’m to go—there.”

  “You stay where you are,” Struan said. “What do you want, Kwok?” he yelled at the sampans.

  “You alive! For Quemoy, by God! You an’ yor muckpissed frigates!”

  Figures swarmed from the sampans and raged up the hill with spears and cutlasses. Struan waited until he could see the first of the pirates clearly, then dropped him with a shot. Immediately muskets blazed from Struan’s ambushing crew. There were screams, and the first wave of twenty or thirty pirates was annihilated.

  Another wave of shouting cutthroats hurtled up the path. Again the muskets blasted them to pieces, but four gained the well. Struan cut one down, Fong another, and musket balls killed the other two.

  Again a quietness.

  “The pox on you, matey!”

  “And you, Wu Kwok!” Struan bellowed.

  “My fleets be goin’ again’ the Lion and Dragon!”

  “Come out of your rat hole and face me and I’ll kill you now. Scum!”

  “When I catched you, that be yor way o’ dying, matey. A limb a week. That scum live five, six week, but you be a year adying, I’ll be bound. We meets face t’ face in a year, if not afore!” Again the evil laugh and then silence. Struan was tempted to fire the sampans, but he knew that hundreds of men and women and children were aboard.

  He stared down at the half-opened sack. “Pick it up, Fong.” And he called to his men in the surrounding darkness: “Fall back on the lorcha, lads!”

  He covered Fong and they withdrew. When he was well out to sea, he put a chain around the sack and read a service over it and cast it into the deep. He watched it disappear in a tiny circle of sea froth.

  Struan would have liked to tell Scragger about the farewell he had had with his sons.

  He had put them into the hands of the captain at Whampoa, with letters to The Noble House’s agents in London whom he had made responsible for the boys and their schooling.

  “Well, good luck, lads. When I get home I’ll come to see you.”

  “Can I be seeing you, Yor Worship, privy?” little Fred had asked, trying not to cry.

  “Aye, laddie. Come along.” Struan had taken him into a cabin and Bert, the Eurasian, had been uneasy to be left alone and Wu Pak had held on to Bert’s hand.

  “Aye, Fred?” he had asked when they were alone.

  “Me dad sayed we was t’ have a proper name afore we be leaving home waters, Yor Worship.”

  “Aye, lad. It’s on your papers. I told you last night. Do you na remember?”

  “Beggin’ yor pardon, no, Yor Worship. I forgets. Can we be knowing it again, please?”

  “You’re Frederick MacStruan,” he had said, for he had taken a liking to the boy and the clan name was a good one. “And Bert’s Bert Chen.”

  “Oh,” the little boy had said. “Yus, now I remembers. But why’s we different? Me and my bruvver?”

  “Well,” Struan had said as he tousled the boy’s head, remembering with frantic pain the loss of his own sons, “you’ve different mothers, have you na? That’s the reason.”

  “Yus. But we be bruvvers, Your Honor,” Fred had said, his tears brimming. “Beggin’ yor pardon, can we be having the same name? Chen’s a proper nice name. Frederick Chen’s nice, Tai-Pan.”

  So Struan had changed the papers and the captain had witnessed his signature. “There, lads, now you’re both MacStruan. Albert and Frederick MacStruan.”

  Then they had both wept happily and had put their arms around him.

  Struan went below and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Scragger’s end had sickened him. He knew it was a favorite torture of Wu Fang Choi, Wu Kwok’s father and little Wu Pak’s grandfather. The victim who was to be dismembered was given three days’ time to choose which limb was to come off first. And on the third night a friend of the man would be sent to him secretly to whisper that help was on the way. So the man chose the limb he felt he could most do without until help came. After the tar had healed the stump, the man was forced to choose yet another limb, and again there was the promise of imminent help which would never come. Only the very strong could survive two amputations.

  Struan got off the bunk and went on deck. There was a slight swell and the cloud cover had thickened: no moon glow now. The sea was high but safe enough.

  “Rain tomorrow, Mr. Struan,” Cudahy said.

  “Aye,” he replied. He peered east, into the wind. He could feel the sea watching him.

  “Supreme Lady,” Ah Sam said, touching May-may awake. “Father’s cutter’s approaching.”

  “Has Lim Din drawn his bath?”

  “Yes, Mother. He’s gone upstairs to welcome Father.”

  “You can go back to bed, Ah Sam.”

  “Shall I wake Second Mother?” Yin-hsi was curled up in a bed at one side of the cabin.

  “No. Go back to bed. But first give me my brush and comb, and make sure Lim Din has breakfast ready if Father wants it.”

  May-may lay back for a moment, remembering what Gordon Chen had told her. That dirty turtledung assassin! Fancy his accusing my son of being connected with a secret society! He was paid more than enough to keep his mouth shut
and die quietly. How foolish!

  She eased out of bed cautiously. For the first few seconds her legs felt weak and wobbly. Then she stopped reeling and stood erect.

  “Oh,” she said aloud, “that feels better.” She walked to the mirror and studied herself critically. “You look old,” she said to her reflection.

  “You don’t at all. And you shouldn’t be out of bed,” Yin-hsi said, sitting up in her bed. “Let me brush your hair. Is Father back? I’m so pleased you’re better. You look really very good.”

  “Thank you, Sister. His boat’s just approaching.” May-may allowed Yin-hsi to brush her hair and braid it. “Thank you, dear.”

  She perfumed herself and got back into bed feeling refreshed.

  The door opened and Struan tiptoed in. “What’re you doing awake?” he asked.

  “I wanted to see you back safe. Your bath’s ready. And breakfast. I’m very glad you’re back safe and sound!”

  “I think I’ll turn in for a few hours. You go back to sleep, lassie, and we’ll have breakfast when I wake up. I’ve told Lim Din to let me sleep unless there’s something urgent.”

  He kissed her briefly, a trifle embarrassed by Yin-hsi’s presence. May-may noticed this and smiled to herself. How curious barbarians were!

  Struan nodded vaguely to Yin-hsi and left the room.

  “Listen, dear Sister,” May-may said, when she was certain Struan was out of earshot. “Bathe with perfumed water, and when Father is heavily asleep go into his bed and sleep with him.”

  “But, Supreme Lady, I’m sure that Father did not indicate in any way that he wanted me to go to him. I was watching very carefully. If I went uninvited, I—he might be very angry and send me away, and then I’d lose much face before you and before him.”

  “You just have to understand barbarians are very different from us, Yin-hsi. They’ve no idea of face as we have. Now, do as I say. He’ll have a bath and go to bed. Wait an hour. Then join him. If he wakes up and orders you out, just be patient and say”—she changed to English—“‘Supreme Lady sent me.’”

  Yin-hsi repeated the English words and memorized them.

  “If that’s no use, come back here,” May-may continued. “No face is lost, I promise you. Don’t be afraid. I know a lot about Father and how he views face. We certainly can’t have him visiting those dirty whorehouses. The naughty man went straight to one of them last night.”