1636- the China Venture

by Eric Flint

  * * *

  The members of the extended Fang family, aided by their house servants, barricaded the gates to Fang Kongzhao’s home, where they had congregated for safety, and several of the younger ones took to the rooftops. A few of these brought bows and arrows up with them, but most were armed with roof tiles and other projectiles of convenience. The servants, above and below, were also equipped with buckets of water. It was a thoughtful precaution on Fang Kongzhao’s part.

  Yizhi made the rounds, looking out the upper story windows on each side of the Fang residence, to track as best he could the movements of the rioters. By the hour of the rat—from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. in European reckoning—several fires could be seen burning.

  “The Yao, the Hu, and the Chang families have all lost at least one home,” he reported to his father.

  “There will be more affected before the night is over,” said his father grimly. He was right. By sunrise, dozens of homes had been attacked. Whether because of his reputation for fair dealing, or because of the preparedness of his family and servants, Fang Kongzhao’s home was unscathed.

  Fang home

  Tongcheng

  Fang Kongzhao motioned his son forward.

  “Yizhi, I need you to take the women of the household, under suitable escort, to Nanjing. I want them to stay there for several months, at least, until we are sure that we have caught all the rebels, and there are no bandit bands lurking near Tongcheng.”

  Yizhi bowed. “Of course, Father, but what of you?”

  “The district magistrate is young, but still wise enough to know that he needs my guidance in these matters.” Kongzhao had been in government service from 1618 to 1625. He had been a magistrate in Sichuan and Fujian, and director of the Bureau of Personnel and later of the Bureau of Operations in the Ministry of War.

  After some initial success, plundering and burning the houses of the more hated landlords, the rebels had fought among themselves. Some had surrendered in response to an offer of leniency, and others had been killed or captured by the local militia, placed under Kongzhao’s command.

  “While the internal threat is pacified, the bandit armies are still on the move. One of them may belatedly heed the messages from our Tongcheng rebels, and probe our defenses. I must see to it that the walls of Tongcheng remain in good repair, that we have enough supplies to withstand a siege of a month or more, that our citizens are trained to fight, and that we keep a proper lookout for the enemy.”

  “Are you sure, Father, that it is wise for grandma, auntie and my wife to travel this late in the year?”

  “It is better that they face snowflakes than arrows,” said Kongzhao.

  Chapter 13

  September 1634

  Texel

  The southwest wind that had kept the Rode Draak and Groen Feniks in port brought a welcome surprise: Captain David Pieterszoon de Vries in the Walvis, accompanied by two other ships, the Koninck David and the Hoop. They were Hamburg-bound, but being Dutch, De Vries and his fellow captains had been anxious for news of the Netherlands. A fisherman had told them about the ceasefire, the USE squadron in the Zuiderzee, and the SEAC ships waiting at Texel for a friendly wind. Since he had been consulted about the China venture the year before, he was curious and decided to pay a call on Captains Lyell and Hamilton while his crew took on fresh water and provisions. That in turn led to dinner with De Vries, his apprentice navigator the up-timer Philip Jenkins, the captains of the Koninck David and the Hoop, the local SEAC agent, and of course Ambassador Salvius, the four up-timers of the China mission, SEAC Senior Merchant Peter Minuit, and Maarten Gerritszoon Vries.

  That night, Lyell summoned his first mate to the quarterdeck. “We are waiting for a transfer of cargo from the Walvis, which just put into port.”

  “The Walvis?”

  “Chartered by the United Equatorial Company, and captained by David Pieterszoon de Vries. Mr. Garlow thinks that some of the goods they collected in the New World will be quite salable in China. And De Vries, who served with Coen in Batavia, agrees. They are giving us a sampling of their wares and if they sell well, there’s more where it came from.”

  “What exactly are they giving us? How will it affect stowage?”

  “A few tons of assorted woods, cut into planks, and a couple of tons of something they call unvulcanized latex.”

  “Unvulcanized latex? What’s that?”

  “It’s a bit like pine resin, not really solid or liquid. It stretches easily.”

  “How soon will it be ready for us, sir? What will we do if the easterlies start blowing?”

  “It’s too late to leave today in any event, and Captain de Vries promised that it would be ready for us tomorrow.”

  September 1634

  In the English Channel

  And now we’re committed, Eric mused. Captain Lyell had advised that the journey to Dutch Batavia, while it could be accomplished in six months or less, more often took seven or eight, and could take even longer. Although Lyell was hopeful that with the up-timers’ watches, sextants, and lunar tables, he would have a better idea of the ship’s longitude during the long journey and thereby cross the doldrums in the Atlantic, and turn north in the Indian Ocean, at the best meridians. That would make for an unusually fast passage. The fastest one on record so far was the Gouden Leeuw: one hundred twenty-seven days in 1621.

  Normally, there were two major convoys of VOC ships to Batavia: the Christmas fleet and the Easter fleet. The Easter fleet arrived in Batavia at a bad time relative to the monsoon season, and even the Christmas fleet could arrive too late to catch the southwest monsoon to China and have to tarry in ague-ridden Batavia for as much as half a year.

  Hence, the VOC had experimented in 1626 to 1628 with a fleet after the September fair. This “Fair Fleet” had left in October, and arrived in Batavia in June or July, soon after the southwest monsoon season had begun.

  However, Captain Lyell urged that in September, the winds in the English Channel and the North Sea were more likely to be from a favorable direction than in October. Other SEAC captains disagreed. The SEAC directors had authorized him to proceed at his discretion. But they had written into his contract he would get a bonus if he arrived in Batavia in less than seven months and face a penalty if he exceeded nine months, not counting any time spent stopping to resupply at Sao Tiago in the Cape Verde Islands, or at the Cape of Good Hope.

  Still Lyell’s decision would have consequences for everyone on the ship. If the USE mission to China failed, the up-timers would have to return, tails between their legs, either on the Rode Draak and its consort, or, if those had already sailed home with a return cargo from somewhere in Asia, on the next SEAC flotilla.

  According to William Usselincx, the SEAC intended to send out another pair of ships in a year or two. And probably no more, until one of the ships returned with a cargo, or at least a Dutch ship came back with a favorable report. The second pair would seek word of the USE mission in Batavia and Dutch Taiwan. If that failed, it might, depending on European and local politics, try its luck at Portuguese-held Macao or Malacca, Vietnamese Tonkin, or Thai Ayutthaya.

  Eric sighed. At least they’d been given an experienced diplomat, this Baron Salvius, to negotiate with the Chinese. That should improve their chances of success. It would be better if he spoke Chinese, but Mike and Eric could translate.

  Gustav Adolf, the Emperor of the United States of Europe, had only a mild interest in China, and had deferred to Mike Stearns when it came to framing the instructions for Baron Salvius. Those were, in essence: (1) Find out what’s going on, how it differs from what happened in the old time line, and how it might affect the USE over the next decade. (2) Establish regular trade regulations or, if that is not possible, at least develop a channel of trade that the Chinese government would tolerate.

  On the larger issue whether to warn the Ming of their peril, Mike had decided to leave this to the discretion of the ambassador. Moreover, the ambassador was not to reveal that f
our members of the mission were from the “old” future without their consent.

  There had been heated debate as to whether they should sail, not for Ming China, but for the Liaotung Peninsula, where they could open up communications with the Jurchen of Manchuria—the future rulers of China, according to the history books.

  But while the Jurchen emperors—the Qing dynasty—had been more willing than the Ming to accept new tributary states, they had restricted foreign maritime trade to Canton. The USE needed the resources of Ming China now, not ten years from now. Hopefully, if the USE embassy did save the Ming dynasty, the Chinese would be sufficiently grateful to provide desirable trade terms.

  There was a lot, of course, that the up-timers didn’t like about imperial China, whether Ming or Qing: foot-binding, slavery, and the lack of any democratic institutions worth mentioning. When told that the “bandits” were sometimes “rebels,” Mike Stearns had been briefly intrigued. But Eric Garlow and Mike Song had convinced him that they were nothing like the new time line’s Committees of Correspondence or the American revolutionaries in the universe they’d come from. While the bandits did call occasionally for dividing land equally and abolishing grain taxes, this seemed more a ploy than anything else. The bandit armies were infamous for plunder, and for mass rape, arson and murder. There was no reason to think that even if one of them succeeded in replacing the Ming dynasty that they’d be a better alternative—and they’d probably be worse.

  October–November 1634

  At sea

  After about another two weeks, at about 5 degrees north and 15 degrees west, with the Gulf of Guinea opening up to the east of the SEAC ships, they abruptly changed course from east-southeast to west-southwest, heading toward Salvador, Brazil.

  Jim Saluzzo and Jacob Bartsch, as the mission’s astronomers, were assisting Captain Lyell with navigation; in particular the determination of the ship’s latitude and longitude.

  “Why are we heading toward Brazil now, when we need to go east around the Cape and across the Indian Ocean?” Jim asked.

  “In your up-time steamships, you wouldn’t have to, but we are at the mercy of the winds. We take the shortest path through the doldrums, and then we must clear the southeast trades. They oppose our southward movement, so we let them take us west to near Brazil, where their southward extent is least, and then turn south.”

  Hence, in early November, still shy of the thirty-degree west meridian—per Jim’s calculations—they curved south. After they crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, the ship’s heading was gradually altered, until at last they were heading east-southeast. On this maneuver, they made very, very slow progress.

  As they crossed 35 south, the wind increased in speed and shifted to a more favorable direction. They entered the westerlies, the Roaring Forties, and the Rode Draak sometimes had to reduce canvas for safety’s sake.

  They dipped only slightly below 45 degrees south, for fear of ice drifting up from Antarctica, but they traveled in a broad arc around the Cape of Good Hope, passing safely south of it in late November.

  * * *

  Ambassador Salvius was profoundly unhappy. Captain Lyell intended to follow the Brouwer Route to Batavia, the Dutch colony that the up-time maps identified as Jakarta, Indonesia. This route cut through the Roaring Forties and avoided the monsoon-controlled region of the Indian Ocean. A passage that once had taken a year or more could now be accomplished in as little as six months.

  But that wasn’t fast enough to suit Ambassador Salvius. It was not that he was enthusiastic about assuming his post, although he did greatly value the opportunity that trading with the Chinese offered for increasing his wealth. But no, it was the fact that the damned Brouwer Route avoided all ports-of-call at which women of easy virtue might be found. And after all the stories he had heard of the licentiousness of India!

  In 1627, Salvius had married the widow of a goldsmith, a woman thirty years older than himself, and thereby acquired a fortune. In doing so, he had had no intention of denying himself the pleasures of the bedchamber and indeed he had found his appointment in 1631 as Gustavus Adolphus’ general war commissioner in Hamburg to be quite convenient. The whores of Hamburg were notorious among the ports of Europe in both quantity and quality, and the brothel-keepers had made it clear to their girls that it was politically important to keep him happy.

  The Portuguese had proven that great profits could be made in the China trade, and the USE Navy’s triumphant descent of the Elbe had made it pellucidly clear that it would be advantageous to attach himself to the Americans in some capacity if he wanted to continue his ascent. And so, when his contacts reported that the USE was contemplating a mission to China, he made sure his name was on the short list.

  But he hadn’t thought through the implications of half a year’s nonstop sailing on a ship with more than three hundred men and only three women. One of those, Martina Goss, was a newlywed, and, even if she weren’t all dewy-eyed over her husband, he was not only on board, but a member of one of the more prominent of the American families.

  The second was Eva Huber. She was a German commoner, and a refugee at that, but she was accompanied by her brother and that might prove an impediment. Or not, if he could be bought off.…

  And finally there was Judith Leyster. She was unmarried, and had no relative on board to protect her. According to Peter Minuit, she was the eighth child of a Haarlem brewer and clothmaker. A bankrupt one. Supposedly the up-timers had books that showed that she was a talented artist, but the siege of Amsterdam had depressed the art market.

  He would keep an eye on both Eva and Judith.

  Chapter 14

  Year of the Dog, Eleventh Month (Dec. 20, 1634–Jan. 18, 1635)

  Imperial Office of Transmission

  Beijing

  The emperor has reviewed the calendar proposed by the Western Office of the Astronomical Bureau for the Eighth Year of His Reign, the coming Year of the Pig. The emperor decrees that the new calendar meticulously coincides with the motion of the sky; therefore, he promotes its use. The employees of the Supervisor’s Office will have to study it and comply with it forever. The Historian’s Office will print it in order to enlighten institutions and rites. Praise must be given to the respectable and diligent Li Tianjing and his assistant Tang Ruowang.

  “This memorial shall be disseminated in a timely manner and the yamen informed of it. All conflicting calendars shall be destroyed and their publishers punished in accordance with the Code.”

  Part Three

  1635

  On the road to Mandalay,

  Where the old Flotilla lay,

  With our sick beneath the awnings

  when we went to Mandalay!

  —Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay

  Chapter 15

  February 1635

  Eastern Indian Ocean

  Judith Leyster and her sketchbook had become a familiar site on the open decks of the Rode Draak. At first, she had confined herself to the poop and quarter decks. The general policy on an East Indiaman was to keep the crew and the passengers separate, and the crew was not permitted aft of the main mast unless their duties called them there.

  However, one of her sketches, of their consort the Groen Feniks, had caught the captain’s eye and fancy. The sketch had ended up in the captain’s cabin and Judith had gotten the captain’s express permission to go forward when she wished, provided she stayed out of the crew’s way.

  Judith Leyster watched and sketched in quick alternation as several sailors stepped out on the footropes attached to the yard of the main topsail, and on command, tied the reef points, short lines laced through the sail, around the yard to reduce the sail’s area.

  Sails had to be shortened if the wind increased in strength to the point that it was feared that if the trend continued, the force of the wind on the full expanse of sail would carry away the sail, the mast, or both. Reefing was the “new-old” way of doing that. The sails had several rows of reef points, so the sail could be s
ingle-, double- or even triple-reefed, depending on how much the sail area needed to be reduced.

  One of the ship’s officers had told Judith, at the beginning of the voyage, that reefing was new to them. Reefs had been used on lower sails as early as the thirteenth century, but at the beginning of the sixteenth century they had fallen out of favor. Instead sailors attached extra pieces of sail cloth, called bonnets and drabblers, to the base sail when winds were light, and removed them when the wind freshened. It was an even more ancient method of adjusting the sail area than reefing, one that would have been known to the Swedish crew’s Viking forebears.

  In the old time line, reefing hadn’t reappeared until the 1650s, but once shipwrights and skippers had been exposed to up-time nautical literature, the more innovative ones had become early adopters. Or re-adopters. It had been hard on the Rode Draak’s crew at first, as none of them had prior experience with reefing, and thus the techniques had to be reinvented.

  Judith looked up at the sky, and then quickly added the interesting cloud she had spotted to her sketch. The cloud was not in fact behind the sailors, but that’s why the term “artistic license” had been coined. She was so intent on her work that she didn’t realize someone was standing right beside her until he spoke.

  “I understand that you’re a painter,” said Ambassador Salvius.

  Judith stopped working to answer him. “Yes, sir, that’s correct. I became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke in 1633.”