Chapter Nine
NOT MUCH COULD be done in a shipyard in the dead of winter, even one as well placed as Parker’s on Montgomery Street, with its East River ways in spitting distance of the harbor. In late January the river was hard frozen, the tide running dark and deep below nearly two inches of ice. Even on clear days the weak winter sun wasn’t enough to warm a half-laid keel to the point where the shipwrights could work without fear of splintering the wood. Mornings and afternoons Danny Parker kept the most skilled of his craftsmen—the ones he dare not lay off lest his rivals snag them—busy in the sheds, carving trunks into masts and thick planks into rudders, or in the chandlery, where strands of hemp were woven into sheets as thick as a man’s wrist and twice as flexible, and canvas was stretched and stitched and formed into the mainsails and jibs and topgallants and royals that would someday catch the wind and pump speed not just into a ship but into the hearts of all who saw her.
Evenings were for sitting close to the stove and nursing a glass of rum, and spreading the plans of a ship yet to be built on a nearby table. Or maybe one already built that might serve as an inspiration for something better.
“The full set,” Sam Devrey said. “The Ann McKim exactly as she was made.”
Danny Parker whistled softly through his teeth. “I heard those plans were under guard down there in Maryland. How did you get them?”
Devrey shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They’re authentic, that’s all you need to know.”
Parker took another swallow of his rum and leaned closer to the drawings. Much of what they showed he already knew. The Ann McKim was the talk of every port in the nation. Her bow was less bluff than anything afloat, and she had a low freeboard, a narrow V-shaped hull, and three masts rather than the two of the Baltimore clippers that were her forerunners. Not to mention live oak frames and a hull sheathed in copper and deck fittings of the finest mahogany and the best brass. The result was not just the fastest ship afloat able to make the China run but the most beautiful. Christ, what wouldn’t he give to build a ship like that here at Parker’s? His right arm maybe. “Does Mr. Astor know you’ve got—”
“Mr. Astor need not be troubled by these conversations. I’ve told you that before.”
“Aye, you have, Mr. Devrey. But if you’ll excuse me saying so, the money required to build a ship like this…”
“Never fear, when the proper time comes, I will put the funds in your hands.” Lately he’d been thinking he might be able to raise some money by borrowing against his collection of jade. It was hard to imagine putting his treasures at risk, but if it were necessary…No need to face that now. They needed to solve the design problems first.
“Ship like you’re after would cost a fair bit to build,” Danny said again.
Parker had no real reason not to trust Sam Devrey. He just didn’t. Old man Astor was a right bastard, of that he was certain. And he didn’t blame Devrey for wanting to have a ship or two of his own in the fleet, maybe even set up a rival firm. All the same, he needed to protect himself. “Say we came to an agreement and I did build her, would you be able to guarantee further commissions?” Astor would drop him quick as he sneezed if he found out that Parker’s had built a rival ship for Sam Devrey. And Devrey Shipping was his largest and most important customer.
“You mistake my meaning, Danny. I’ve no intention of building a sister ship of the Ann McKim.”
“But she’s the fastest thing there is on the China run and—”
“Fast, yes. But too damned narrow, and only four hundred ninety-four tons burthen. She can carry only half as much as a full-bodied ship of the same size. It is not enough to be fast, Danny, I need a ship that will be profitable.”
“Then I don’t suppose we’ll be needing these.” The shipwright rolled up the plans as he spoke. “However much you had to pay to get them.”
“Keep them, Danny. Study them. I’ve made a copy and I shall do the same. Let us see what is to be learned from Mr. McKim’s exquisite folly.” The Baltimore trader who commissioned the ship had named her for his wife and put her face on the figurehead. When his ship was built, Sam had already decided, he would call her the Mei-hua. He’d tell Carolina he was naming the vessel for a mythical Chinese princess. Though the way things were between them now, she might not ask. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done on his birthday, but he wasn’t sorry either. She was far less demanding and more docile. Probably not pregnant, though. He suspected she’d have told him if she were. Bad joss. “Think on the Ann McKim, Danny. Long and narrow gives you speed but not enough lading. How can we have both?”
According to Ah Chee, it was Wood Monkey year. Some of the men said Wood Rooster, others Fire Dog. Lee Leper Face insisted it would be Water Sheep year in a few days. Bo One Ear—who was the closest thing on Cherry Street to a proper astrologer from the Middle Kingdom and who posed as an expert in feng shui—was certain only that this new year, celebrated always on the second new moon after the shortest sun day, would arrive in ten days’ time.
Mei-hua was insistent that they celebrate the correct new year. “No mistake. No mistake,” she said, stamping her tiny foot. “Very important.”
Ah Chee had been attentive. She knew the plum blossom had bled in Chrysanthemum month and Good month and Closed-up-Virgin month. But there had been no evidence of blood in Last month. Now it was First month, and though the bamboo straw had not yet reappeared in her kitchen, so conceivably Mei-hua thought it might still be required in the bedroom, Ah Chee understood the urgency of the question. “Too long away from Middle Kingdom,” she muttered. “Don’t know up or down anymore.”
She would ask those for whom this was their home place.
“For the love of God, woman,” the pigman repeated for the third time, “it’s February, 1835. What else could it be after 1834? Where have you been all this time?”
Ah Chee shook her fist at him, almost weeping with frustration. “What year? What year?”
“1835,” he bellowed at the top of his voice. “Just like I keep telling you. The fourth of February, 1835!”
At home in her kitchen it took all Ah Chee’s good sense to keep from lighting ten incense sticks to make sure the pigman would come down with plague. He provided her with very special excellent ham and pork at a not too terrible price. One joss stick only. Ask that maybe he would be constipated for a week. “No shit,” she murmured as the first tendrils of scented smoke rose toward the benign face of Zao Shen. “Seven days no shit.” On the twenty-third day of Last month she had made special sweet moon cakes in the kitchen god’s honor. Best-tasting moon cakes ever, with sweet bean paste inside and honey on the top. Had to be Zao Shen would listen to her request, he might even get carried away. “No very too much no shit,” she murmured before she knelt in a deep and respectful kowtow. “One week only. Good pigman most of the time.”
Mei-hua had been napping before Ah Chee returned from the market. Indeed, she was taking many naps these days. That was another reason to hope, though neither woman had yet spoken aloud the possibility. Now the plum blossom appeared at the door of the kitchen. “What are you asking of Zao Shen?”
“Not your business.” If the pigman suspected the real reason he was suffering, his reciprocal curses must not fall on Mei-hua. “You think only good thoughts about every people.”
Mei-hua shrugged. “What did you find out? Is it Water Sheep or Wood Monkey?” She was hoping for Wood Rooster—pride and willingness to fight were fine attributes for a son—so she did not mention that one. In case Zao Shen might choose to spite her.
“Very stupid peoples in this place. Pigman keep shouting numbers at me. 1835. He say 1835. Wouldn’t tell what year.”
Fortunately, the next day a new man arrived on Cherry Street. He was called Bo Fat Cheeks, and he’d been a cook’s helper on a Devrey merchantman until he broke his leg. One of the men from downstairs took his place on the ship’s return journey to Canton, while Fat Cheeks was installed in his place in the Lord Samuel’s lodg
ing house. This Bo had been away from home less than a year, and he was astonished there could be doubt in anyone’s mind. It would soon become Wood Monkey year.
Ah Chee was only somewhat gratified to have been right all along. Wood Monkey was a better girl year. Chattering. Jumps around a lot. Small. But if tai-tai had a small son, better than no son at all. Ah Chee made plans for the new year feast. They were immeasurably improved by the fact that Fat Cheeks had brought with him a sack of mung beans and quickly understood that he must give a large share to the household of the supreme lady tai-tai upstairs. So Ah Chee would have proper long, white bean sprouts, not the short, stubby brown things that were all she had managed to achieve by sprouting the beans she could buy in this place. She would save most of the mung beans to make sprouts for strong son soup and use only a few for the feast to welcome Wood Monkey year. A girl year wasn’t worth more.
“Carolina, who is that peculiar creature?”
“What creature, Aunt Lucy?” Carolina did not look up from her sewing.
“Over there on the park bench.” Lucy stood by the window, gazing through the lace curtains rather than pushing them aside.
The park—really only a small square of grass and two trees and three benches, grudgingly installed by the speculators because it was easier to sell family houses when such amenities were present—was where Nurse took little Zachary on these April afternoons. Carolina immediately sprang to her feet and rushed to stand beside her aunt. A tiny woman was seated on a bench next to the one where Carolina’s baby-nurse and her son were enjoying the spring sunshine. The woman was so short her feet didn’t reach the ground but stuck straight out in front of her, and she wore the oddest imaginable conical straw bonnet. “Oh her,” Carolina said. “Very peculiar, I agree. But harmless, I’m sure.”
“How can you be sure, my dear? These days the papers are full of the most dreadful goings-on. All these horrid immigrants and their fighting and this talk of laboring people forming associations and going on…What do they call it?”
“On strike. And they’re called unions, not associations,” Carolina said, her gaze still firmly fixed on the park across the road.
“Yes, that’s it. Such times. Perhaps that creature over the way has something to do with these unions. You should notify the constable of the ward, my dear. Or even the High Constable.”
“The High Constable has more important things to be concerned with.”
“Well, yes, I suppose. But the neighborhood has a marshal, I’m sure.”
“It is not necessary to do anything, Aunt Lucy. Look, they’re coming back now.” Nurse had risen from the bench and started for home. She pushed little Zac’s pram right past the strange woman. “Harmless, as I said.” Carolina turned away, unwilling to let her aunt observe her too closely when she added, “I suspect she may have something to do with Samuel.”
“With your husband? However do you mean?”
“The shipping business deals with foreigners every day, Aunt Lucy. All the Devrey ships go to foreign ports. I expect that strange little woman is from one of them. Canton perhaps.”
“But why is she sitting over there watching this house? Carolina, I think you must—”
“I must do nothing, Aunt.” The nurse had reached the front door with her charge, and Carolina rushed to open it herself. “Give Zachary to his Aunt Lucy, Nurse.”
Cooing over the baby provided an adequate distraction. Even someone as flighty as Lucy might otherwise suspect that Carolina had seen the little woman before. God help her if her mother-in-law had been visiting. There was no question in Carolina’s mind that Celinda Devrey would have marched across the road and confronted the creature. And if that were to happen, if Carolina had actually to think about what these visits meant, of what was happening to her and to her marriage and by inference to her son, she had no idea what she would do.
Sometimes she could convince herself that terrible night five months ago had not happened. Particularly since there were no consequences. What had she been thinking? How could she have made such a wanton display of herself? No wonder her husband treated her as he did. Once, on the evening before her ninth birthday, she had sneaked downstairs after her bedtime, intending to peek into the parlor and see if Papa had laid out an array of presents as he did every year. Her papa was indeed in the parlor. Lying on the floor on top of Peg, the fat little housemaid. Bouncing up and down with such force poor Peg’s head was thumping on the carpet.
If she was treated like a housemaid, it could not be Samuel’s fault. It must be hers.
Samuel was her husband, the father of her child. If she blamed him for the coldness between them, where would she be? She was somehow an unnatural wife and quite probably an unfit mother. She must deserve to be treated exactly as Samuel treated her. Otherwise why would he do so?
Sitting on the bench, watching the house of the yellow hair concubine, even seeing her when she opened the door to let in the baby boy and the servant who looked after him, Ah Chee calculated it to be shen hour. Once she had heard the lord explain to Mei-hua about time in this place. Hours here, he said, were only half as long as hours in the Middle Kingdom and without names. Ah Chee could never understand about such a ridiculous way of telling time, but she did not have to. She had only to look up at the sky and see that the sun had traveled about half the way from being right overhead to disappearing altogether. So, because this was Peach Blossom month, she knew it was shen hour. And in this place, just as in Middle Kingdom, shen would be followed by you. This time of year it was dark by the end of you and the start of xu. Long way to go home to Cherry Street. If she did not start now, Ah Chee was not sure she could find her way.
Three times before she had made this long march, following the big carriages pulled by many horses. “Om-nee-bus.” She had attempted to get on an om-nee-bus a long time ago, before she knew what it was called, when she first tried to come and see where Lord Samuel went when he left his tai-tai. A man inside the big om-nee-bus wore a jacket with shiny button things and a funny cap. Told her she must pay money to ride. So Ah Chee got off. Walked along the road and watched. As long as the big carriages kept going by her, she was in the right place. But now it would be dark soon. Could be no om-nee-bus go up road or down road when it was dark. Could be that if the plum blossom was alone when it got dark she would forget it was very too much necessary she lie still and make a strong son. Almost four months now since she had bled, and every Peach Blossom morning so far she retched green yin juice from her stomach. So son definitely coming.
Wait here too much. Know only bad things she knew before. Yellow hair had a big fine house, bigger than the whole house on Cherry Street. And yellow hair didn’t share her house with many men. Only servants. Yellow hair also had a son. The first time she saw him Ah Chee had convinced herself the baby was a girl, but today she saw a for-sure-boy baby in push thing with wheels. For-sure-son of yellow hair and Lord Samuel. As for the only thing she wanted to see, that did not appear. She had waited and waited, but the lord had not come. Leper Face and Taste Bad and the others said he made business in a new very too much big house on Canal Street. She had passed Canal Street on her long trudges up and down the rock streets of this place. Many too much big new houses. Ah Chee had no idea which one was the business place of Lord Samuel and no intention of trusting one of the men to take her there. They would whisper about it to the lord, and he would for sure guess what Ah Chee knew. It was no good to know things if other people knew you knew before you told them. Very much too late to stay here now. Ah Chee got off the bench and began hobbling south in the direction of Cherry Street.
She heard the sound of a small rig and a horse behind her, but she’d heard many of those during the course of her long wait. Too much trouble turn around and look. Be wrong one more time.
“Ni gan she me?” a voice demanded. What are you doing here?
Ah Chee’s smile was so wide it showed all the empty places where teeth had been before she got old. Jade Empe
ror was at last satisfied with her. Make Lord Samuel come to yellow hair house while Ah Chee still here. She made the smile go away before she turned. “Zhang san li shih, come to this place,” she said. “Why not this old woman?” The world and his wife came to Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. Why not Ah Chee?
Sam had reined in the buggy as soon as he saw her. Now he leaned forward and stretched out his arm. “Get in. I’ll give you a hand up.”
Ah Chee allowed herself to be hauled into the buggy, though the thought of the last time she rode beside the Lord Samuel, when the devil woman stole Mei-hua’s son as well as Ah Chee’s money, made her shudder.
Sam looked over at his house. There was no indication that he had been seen, but even if he had, he could not go inside and leave Ah Chee to her own devices. “How did you know to come here looking for me?”
“This old woman did not come looking for the lord. This old woman—”
Sam flicked the whip over the horse’s back and the buggy started forward. Another flick of the whip and the horse broke into a trot.
The buggy’s metal wheels struck sparks from the cobbles and the whole rig shook. Ah Chee gripped the edge of the seat with both hands. “Where you go so fast with this old woman?”
“Into the woods,” Sam shouted over the rattling. “Where I can beat you and no one will hear your screams.” There was construction as far north as Twenty-fifth Street, but there were still stretches of the old Manhattan wilderness to be found near Fourteenth Street. When he pulled up the buggy was hidden beneath a stand of willows showing the first traces of April green. “Now you will tell me how you got here and why. Otherwise I will beat you to death with this horse whip and leave your body for the dogs to eat.”
They both knew it was an idle threat, just as they both knew Ah Chee had come here for the very purpose of telling him something. Sam, however, was not quite sure why she hadn’t simply made an opportunity to speak to him back on Cherry Street. He’d wager any amount that she had walked the two miles from there to here. It must have hurt like the very devil. The only reason she would put herself through such an ordeal had to be to let him know she could. Or, more precisely, that she knew where to find him. Still more to the point, that she knew about Carolina and his son. So what did Ah Chee really want?
City of God Page 13
