“Sorry, Mister Wythy, sir,” Cony apologized, once he had rejoined them. Alan offered him the rest of his grog. It was far below the standards of Navy Issue from the Victualling Board—the rawest stuff he’d tasted since leaving the West Indies. “God, that’s awful, sir!”
“You stay here, Cony. We’ll follow him now.”
“Headed for the French factory, Cony?” Alan asked.
“Nossir, ’e’s on t’other side o’ the street. Just goin’ into Old Clothes Street now, sir,” Cony related.
“Dead end, else he’d get into the city proper, an’ I doubt he’s got that much clout with the mandarins.” Wythy grinned. “No, our lad’s off t’ put the leg over some Chinee lass. Better cut o’ bagnios lays in that direction. ’Bout a dozen of ’em. Co Hong quality stuff.”
“Aha,” Alan commented. Wythy had at last informed him where he could get some quim.
“He’ll be in there ‘bout an hour’r so,” Wythy said, pulling out his pocket watch. “If the brute has any taste, that is. If he’s the peasant Zachariah thinks him, I’d make it a quarter o’ that. Let’s be meanderin’ so we may keep a sharp eye peeled for when he comes out. Cony, ye want the rest o’ my rum, as well?”
“Well, h’it ain’t so bad, once ya gets some down, sir, thankee right kindly,” Cony agreed.
They strolled west, past the Chow Chow Hong, the East India Company Factory, the Swedish, to take guard across the street from the entrance to Old Clothes Street.
“Well, damme,” Percival said as he and Twigg heaved into sight.
“Sicard?” Wythy asked.
“In there,” Twigg whispered, pointing with his chin.
“Same fer Choundas,” Wythy snarled. “Now what’s so allfired secret they gotta do their talkin’ in a brothel? Ain’t their ships good ’nough?”
“This may be some theatric, to keep us off-balance,” Twigg sighed with the exasperation of a longtime expert at the art of tailing a man. “Unless there’s someone they’re meeting in there, someone they wouldn’t want even the Chinese, or the Co Hong, to know about.”
“A Chinese pirate, maybe, sir?” Percival asked. “Or do these Malay or Mindanao raiders ever come up the Pearl to trade in Canton like anyone else?”
“How many brothels in there, Tom?” Twigg asked.
“Only four I know of that cater t’ Western custom. Rest is fer the Co Hong, ’r the Chinee exclusively. There’s touts enough in the street if ye wish t’ ask about. If they went t’ one of the best ones, ye can wager the pimps’r still pickin’ their chins up off the street at the novelty of it,” Wythy imparted with a soft laugh.
“Well, I need some volunteers, then,” Twigg demanded. “To enter those brothels that accept Europeans.”
“I’ll go, sir,” Alan piped up. It had been a long time since Calcutta—and Padmini, Draupadi and Apsara!
“Speak fluent French, Mister Lewrie?” Twigg simpered. “Speak Chinese, come to think on it? Would you know what to look for?”
“Would you, sir?” Alan shot back without a pause.
“Most probably I would not, sir,” Twigg smiled. “But I would know most of the French Compagnie des Indies officials by sight, and more than a few of the notorious Chinese coastal pirates as well. Tom, we’re in your hands now.”
“Aye, Zachariah. Look, you an’ Percival try the last two on the left. Lewrie an’ I’ll look into the others. Hope the pimps speak pidgin at the best.”
The pimps did, though it didn’t do much good. Old Clothes Street was full of European barbarian foreign-devils that night, and to the Chinese, they all pretty much looked alike, so even the offer of some cash didn’t get them any useful information.
“Ever’body got a condom?” Wythy asked. “Just in case.”
Percival didn’t. He was relegated to street lookout on the other side of Thirteen Factory Street. Percival was very putout.
“We can use yer services again, Cony,” Wythy said.
“Aye, sir, though … uhm … I h’ain’t got much money, sir.”
“I didn’t come prepared for sport, either, sir,” Alan said, “Not in the financial sense, anyway. Do you think the tariff would be dear?” he asked with an innocent expression.
“Well, damme!” Twigg griped, but dug out his purse and handed over enough golden guineas to pay for their socket-fees, an act which half killed his soul, and made Alan delight in the prospect of getting the leg over at Twigg’s expense.
They saw Cony into one of the brothels, assuring the warder at the door that Cony was a minor tai pan, no matter that he was dressed as a sailor.
“Ye want this’un, then?” Wythy asked. “An’ I’ll take the last but one on the right. Meet us at the Chun Qua Factory whether ye learn anythin’ or no. Don’t dawdle, Mister Lewrie. Half an hour, shall we say?” Wythy grinned.
“The things I do for King and Country, sir,” Alan smiled back.
“An’ not a jot on what I’ve done in the King’s name, boy.”
“Aye, sir.”
The expedition took a lot longer than Wythy’s stricture of half an hour. And, Lewrie suspected, if his own experience was anything to go by, none of the others would be getting back to the Chun Qua Factory before he did—might not even get back before dawn!
First, he had to pay the warder to get into the bloody place. It was nice to learn that the bobbing little weasel could speak pidgin, no matter what the mandarins’ laws had to say about limiting the number of Chinese exposed to foreign-devil barbarians, their languages and alien ideas. It did, however, cost him six pence, which was not so nice.
He was lit into a small alcove through a semi-circular archway by a giggling little maid-servant. There were several of the alcoves along the main hall, screened off by folding rice-paper screens painted with some truly awe-inspiring Oriental pornography. Try as he would, he could not overhear any French being spoken, nor did he see either Sicard or Choundas in any of the alcoves.
“Wythy must be right,” he muttered to himself. “The man’s not here, or he’s a damn quick worker. On, off and ‘Where’s my shoes.’”
The maid-servant seated him on pillows before a very low black-lacquered table, and began lighting lamps. Another maid came trotting in with a serving tray, offering steaming-hot towels, steaming-hot tea (an excellent early-spring picking Yu Tsien, he noted) and plates of tiny dumplings called dim sum for an appetizer. The first little maid returned with a straw-wrapped bottle of mao tai brandy and delicate little paper-thin drinking cups.
An older Chinese lady entered, dressed in a black silk robe all figured in gold-and-silver thread birds. She looked hard as flint and twice as old.
“You wan’ guhl?” she began. “One guhl? Two guhl? Wan’ see? Mak choose?”
“Have you any French customers, Mother Abbess?” Alan asked.
“No got French guhl. China guhl, got.”
“No,” he reiterated, speaking slowly as possible. “Have any men who are French come here in the last quarter-hour?”
“Ho, you wan’ boy!” The madam comprehended. “Eeeh, got China boy. French boy, no got.”
“Good Christ, I didn’t go to Oxford!” Lewrie shot back. “You misunderstand me. Me want girl! No want boy. I look for friends here. Red-haired man. Man with beard? He come here?”
“Wan’ guhl wi’ beard?” she gasped. “Aw fo’n debbil … loony!”
“Want girl,” Alan sighed, giving it up as a no-go. “You bring girl? Me make choose, right?”
“W’y you no say so? Wan’ guhl? Yes, I b’ling,” she huffed.
“I fear this is not going to improve my conversational skill,” Alan commented to the little fourteen-year-old maid as she poured him a revivifying cup of brandy. She covered her mouth and giggled.
The girls arrived, four of them at once, and they didn’t titter or giggle, thank the good Lord. Hair black as ink and elaborately coiffed, stuck through with long decorative pins—hair as lacquered and shiny as polished ebony wood. Faces painted bolder t
han any English whore’s, with pale powdered faces and bright rouge and lip-gloss, their eyes and lashes outlined and brushed so that they loomed enormous, upper lids brushed with powder so they seemed like almonds enameled in blue and black. They talked among themselves, waving the huge sleeves of their intricately designed and figured silk robes.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Lewrie breathed at the sight of them. Choosing could be a hard process, for they were as lovely a quartet as any he’d ever suspected existed. And this was one of the brothels that specialized in Europeans—surely these would be thought of as mundane, with the absolute very best saved for the Chinese as too-precious pearls to be cast before foreign-devil swine!
They enveloped him, one seated to each side, one seated by the doorway to play a stringed instrument for his enjoyment, while the fourth began to sing, lolloping out some horribly off-key (to his Occidental ear) nonsense in a quavery, breathy voice. The one to his right plied chopsticks to feed him bites of dim sum, while the one to his left kept the tea and brandy flowing. And after each song, they would trade places, to introduce him to all their accomplishments.
“Speak English?” he asked each of them as they settled in at his side. “Speak pidgin? French? Bloody Latin?”
Sadly, three of them could not, but Wei Yen could. She was youngest of the four. It was hard for him to judge just how old she really was, but he guessed around sixteen or seventeen. Her skin was clearer, her features more delicate than the others’, her mien not as artificially gay and “cherry-merry” as the other three, either.
There was more tea, more dim sum, some more appetizers fetched out, another bottle of mao tai. And then the madam was back, with her hand out for more silver, to pay for the treats supplied so far.
“You mak choose, now,” the woman said, making it sound like a demand more than a request. “You wan’ one guhl, two silla. Two guhl, fo’ silla. Wan’ keep aw fo’, ten silla.”
“One girl. Wei Yen,” Alan replied, forking over two shillings for the girl and another six pence for the entertainment. The others bowed their way out and tripped down the main hall, toward the front of the establishment, their services already in demand.
Wei Yen beamed at him with a maidenly little smile, then took him by the hand and led him in the other direction, towards the back.
“Give bath,” she promised.
A steaming wood tub sat sunk into the floor of each bath cubicle, some already full by the sounds coming from them. Lewrie took his time dawdling on his way to his, trying to peer into each one or linger long enough to listen to see if he could hear French being spoken. He shrugged, thinking Choundas either not there, or long gone by this time.
Wei Yen hung up his garments, wrinkling her pretty little nose each time and sing-songing something in Chinese, laughing softly as she did so. Lewrie preferred to think that they were jokes. When he was bare to the world, she indicated that he should get into the tub. He slid down into the extremely hot water, wincing on his way down, and found a bench to sit on by the side.
Wei Yen walked with mincing little steps to the other side of the tub and disrobed down to a very thin nankeen under-grown, which she slipped back off her shoulders as he watched, entranced.
She was a little bit of perfection. Middling shoulders, slim neck, creamy skin the color of pale ochre wheat. The silk robe she had worn had concealed the springy young bounty of her breasts that stood up firm and proud and straight-ahead together, shadowing a dark cleft he wanted to dive into. There was the slightest bit of stockiness around her rib cage, but the waist was wasp-thin as a doll’s, and her belly was so firm and flat, with a ridge of what he hoped would prove to be damned talented muscle down the center, leading to …
“Shaved?” he asked the room as she came toward him. She slid down into the tub with him gracefully, and came to his side. If she had seemed maidenly shy and tender before, it had been a theatric, for she became an unleashed tiger. She sat straddling him on the bench seat, reaching down to seize his member, which sprang awake as the Brigade of Guards in a twinkling. They slopped around in the tub, splashing water everywhere. She almost let him enter her, then slid away from him until she had him roaring in frustration.
But no. He had to leave the tub, sit on another damned stool while she soaped him from head to toes and scrubbed him clean with a sponge, sliding away from his soapy embraces and laughing all the while. Back into the tub for a cleansing soak, and then she was toweling him dry, letting him towel her dry. Then they gathered up their clothing and went up a back stairway to a private chamber.
He came to his senses just long enough to remember his condom, and then they were delightfully engaged, at long last, both making noises more usually associated with Iroquois massacres. “Father’s wrong, ya know!” he said between gasps. “Bengali women have nothing on you, my dear!”
He lay utterly spent at long last, used up far further than he could ever remember, while the girl stroked him and kissed him, working him over with a small towel, and loosing her long dark hair that spread like a cloak to cover them both. She’d come unpinned somewhere in the second bout whilst teaching him an entirely novel manner, wrists and one ankle behind his neck as he sat on the edge of the bed clasping her small bottom like holding two small melons.
Her teasing fingers, and the moist warmth of the towel, strayed to his member, and it flickered with renewed interest.
“You wan’ ’gin, qua?” she said with a gasp of wonder.
“Again? After that?” he chuckled. “Well, in a few, perhaps.”
“No wan’ ’gin, soon you go, qua,” she said in a soothing whisper. “’Nudda man, he wan’, I got go. You stay, ’nudda one silla. You wan’ chai, mao tai? Wan’ eat ’gin? Allee same silla.”
“I stay,” Alan replied. “Mao tai, you and me both, right?”
She gave him a kiss and slid out of bed to slip on her undergown, open the door and call for one of the maid-servants.
While they drank and recuperated, he quizzed her as much as he was able. He learned that she had once been one of those little maids, purchased from a peasant family far to the north when the crops failed. Girl children could always be sold to support poor families. It was a prime reason to keep them, instead of putting them to death at birth: as a hedge against an uncertain future.
They were just about to partake of another spell of amour when Alan got down to his real questions, and the reason he had chosen her instead of one of the others who had no pidgin or English.
“Does a red-headed man ever come here?”
“Red? Wha’ red?”
“Like this pillow tassel. Red,” Alan prodded. “Dull, like ginger.”
“Aw fo’n debbil red ha’,” she tittered.
“Pale skin, like yours. He has a thin beard.” Alan had to make a partial mask over his lower face with both hands. “Not long. Short, ginger-colored beard.”
“Him debbil!” the girl shuddered.
“He comes here?” And she nodded her assent. “Did he come here tonight?”
“Him mak nudda guhl ’night,” Wei Yen said, looking thankful. “Debbil, him! Mak wan’ li’l guhl, no wan’ ollo guhl, my. Las’ yea’, him wan’ my, no so ollo. ’Night, him wan’ new li’l guhl Yi.”
“So he did come here tonight!” Lewrie exulted. “And is he still here? Right now?”
“Him heah. Him ba’ man debbil! Hu’t, my! Hu’t Yi allee same!”
“What does he do?”
The girl could find no words, so she forced him onto his back and began to slap the air over his chest. “Dat!” She bit at his nipples. “Dat!” She pretended to slap and choke him. “Dat!” Teeth took hold of his shoulder and neck. “Dat!” she told him, biting lightly.
“Jesus Christ, what a monster,” Lewrie agreed as she sat back up.
“Whi’ lak dead, him!” Wei Yen shuddered once more. “Bear’ mak sclatch. No wan’ guhl, wan’ bebbee. No wan’ bebbee guhl him on top! Him wan’ …” She slipped off to one sid
e of the bed, knelt with her head on the pillow, arms held behind her back as though they would be tied if with Choundas, then slapped her rump. “Wan’ go ba’ place, allee same guhl place.”
“The pervert!” Lewrie growled. “What an utterly rotten bastard!”
“‘Otten bassah’?” Wei Yen said, sitting up once again.
“Rotten,” Lewrie corrected.
“Lotten bassah,” the girl parroted, then said it to herself several times, trying “pervert” on for addition to her vocabulary as well.
“Well, you’re not with him now, you’re with me. And I’m not a rotten bastard, or a pervert,” Lewrie assured her, drawing her down to him. “Well, not much of one, anyway.”
Then there came a muffled scream from down the hallway, and a series of yelps. Wei Yen stiffened in his arms, burying her face in the pillows. “It him, red ha’ fo’n debbil!”
“He’s still here!” Lewrie said, starting off the bed, almost dragging the frightened Wei Yen with him. “Oh, what luck!”
More wails of terror and pain, hiccupy little strangling wails such as a very young girl, one even younger than Wei Yen, would make. The sound of cuffs or blows, perhaps, preceding each new outcry.
Lewrie went to the door and opened it to hear better, even as Wei Yen tried to drag him back. He saw another door open, saw Captain Jacques Sicard lumbering to the noise as the madam and one of her bully-bucks came up the stairs from the front of the bordello, their sing-song voices sounding anything but musical. Sicard was rapping on the door, whispering “Guillaume!”
Lewrie ducked back as Sicard began to remonstrate with the madam, opening a purse to pay her off for whatever damage or harm his man was causing. Another door opened, only a couple of rooms beyond his own, and a distinguished Chinese gentleman emerged, drawn to the commotion. He stopped in his tracks, though, and squinted his eyes, when he saw Lewrie, just shutting his door.
“You no go, him hu’t!” Wei Yen rasped, dragging him back into the room completely and slamming the door with her behind. “Ver’ ba’ man, him! Wei Yen mak you contentee, no silla, you stay ’way!”
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