China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “But opium’s bad.”

  “Opium’s bad.”

  “Yet you’re helping me.”

  “You’re a friend, Trader. Nobody’s perfect.” He smiled. “So there you go.”

  “I’m worried about Marissa, Read. I feel bad about leaving her.”

  “Sure. Were you going to marry her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you give her a parting present?”

  “Yes. I’m giving it to her in the morning, when I leave.”

  “She’ll be all right.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Will you keep an eye on her, look after her?”

  Read gazed at him. Was there something a little strange in his look as he smiled? “I’ll do that,” Read said.

  * * *

  —

  Mrs. Willems made them all a meal that evening, and then John Trader spent the night with Marissa, and they made passionate love, and he told her he didn’t want to go, and she told him she knew he didn’t have any choice, and she was sad. But though she looked sad, she wasn’t going to cry, and she smiled bravely, and they made love again. And he loved and admired her very much, although it seemed to him that even now, maybe, he didn’t really know her.

  She was pleased with her presents. And if she cried after he was gone, he didn’t see it.

  Read went with him to his lodgings. Tully had left the day before, but Trader’s chests and valises were all ready, and two men put them on a cart and hauled them to the quay.

  Then Trader got into the jolly boat with his possessions. He shook Read’s hand and was rowed out to the ship anchored in the Macao Roads.

  When Trader and his bags were aboard, he found that he was the last passenger to embark, and soon afterwards the ship was ready to weigh anchor.

  As he stood by the side of the ship, a friendly sailor addressed him. “All aboard then, sir?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” John stared across the water at the distant quay.

  “Been to Hong Kong before, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Pity about the water.”

  “Water? What water?”

  “The drinking water at Hong Kong, sir. Haven’t you heard?”

  “I’ve heard nothing. What do you mean?”

  “Oh, very nasty, sir. The Chinese have put up signs by all the wells on Hong Kong and the shores around there, to say that they’ve been poisoned. The wells, I mean. Not very nice thing to do, is it?”

  “Good God! Then what are we going to drink?”

  “Couldn’t say, sir. Not to worry, eh?”

  And so John Trader left Macao. He’d lost his woman. He still didn’t know whether he’d lost his fortune, or whether he’d be able to trade with China at all; or whether before long, at Hong Kong, he might die for lack of water.

  * * *

  ◦

  Nio gazed around him. There were at least fifty men in the large cell. He’d been there a week. Others longer. They were all smugglers and pirates, rounded up and brought there.

  But once in the cell, nothing had happened. Were they going to be interrogated, tried, executed? Nobody knew. All he knew was that the place stank.

  Perhaps if Sea Dragon had been with them, they mightn’t have been caught. After that terrible night when he’d failed to come out of Lin’s headquarters, Nio and the other men had made their way back to their camp. But the next day, Nio had gone back to the city to find out what he could. For three days he’d stayed there, and not a word had emerged.

  But then the story had seeped out—from the sergeant to a friend, then to others. And soon, although nothing official ever appeared, all the gangs and the keepers of teahouses and the policemen, of course—all knew that Sea Dragon had tried to kill Lin and been caught and died under torture and never spoken a word, not so much as his name. Sea Dragon was a hero up and down the coast. In time, no doubt, his name would resonate in legend, all over the China seas.

  The crew had stayed together. Partly held by a reverence for his memory, partly because they had no place to go and nothing else to do. And they’d all promised one another that they’d stick together and, when times got better, go out to sea again and ship opium and earn good money just as they had when Sea Dragon the hero had led them.

  Then in a dawn raid on their camp, they’d been caught, every one of them, and taken to this place. Perhaps if Sea Dragon had still been there, they’d have posted a better guard. Perhaps they’d have killed the troops who had somehow found them.

  It was a disaster. It was probably the end of his life.

  He had only one big regret. That cache of money for Big Sister. Did she think of him? Of course she did. And he thought of her, every day.

  The money was still in the same hiding place. He’d been intending, the very day the troops came, to tell his companions that he must go see his family and then secretly take the money to her. He cursed himself for not doing it sooner. And every day he tried to devise ways to escape, not for the sake of his own freedom, but so that he could give that money to Big Sister and see her face.

  This morning, he was just in the middle of devising a new way of tricking the guards and breaking out, when he was surprised to see through the cage bars, which ran along one side of the big cell, a small knot of people approaching. Four of them were policemen. But one was a young mandarin.

  He heard the young mandarin tell the guards to open the cage door so that he could get into the cell. The guards were arguing with him. They didn’t like the idea. But then he heard the young mandarin say something about Commissioner Lin, and a moment later he heard the key turn.

  He couldn’t see the mandarin’s face from where he was, but the man seemed to be very quick at his work. He was selecting prisoners, one by one. They were being taken out of the cell and made to stand in a line.

  The mandarin was coming his way. Nio caught sight of his face. And froze.

  It was Lin’s secretary. He recognized him at once. He even knew his name. It seemed no time at all since they’d been face-to-face in Hog Lane. He was going to be discovered. He tried to hide himself behind another prisoner.

  But Shi-Rong detected the movement. In an instant he was in front of Nio, staring at his face. “This one,” he said.

  And Nio was led out of the cell and made to stand in the line—though whether as a prelude to interrogation or execution, he could not guess.

  October 1839

  Nio’s doubts began on a warm October day.

  In the coastal regions by the mouth of the Pearl River, each October, the semitropical heat, humidity, and rainstorms of the long summer monsoon come to an end. A new and delightful season begins. The skies are clear and blue; light breezes waft over the waters. It is like a perfect English summer—though more reliable.

  Nio was standing on a promontory at the end of the Bogue. Just behind him, four bearers with a silk-curtained mandarin’s litter waited patiently; and a short distance in front, just out of earshot, Commissioner Lin and Shi-Rong were gazing across the waters of the gulf, to where twenty war junks were going through their maneuvers.

  Like the two mandarins, Nio also watched the war junks intently. For the exercise would ensure that, if it came to a fight with the barbarians, the gallant sailors of the Celestial Kingdom would destroy the British Navy.

  * * *

  —

  Shi-Rong was excited. If he’d failed Lin in the matter of the pirate, he’d begun to redeem himself with his intelligence gathering on Macao. Today, back on the mainland, he’d prepared a small surprise for the commissioner, which he was hoping the great man would like. First, however, there were the maneuvers to watch. He’d bought a Dutch spyglass when he was at Macao—a little brass sea captain’s telescope of which he was rather proud—through which he could follow the ac
tion closely as soon as it began.

  But he had one question: “There are British merchantmen out in the gulf, Excellency. You don’t mind them seeing our tactics?”

  “I want them to see,” Lin answered. He gazed across the water. “It is always a good idea, Jiang, to frighten your enemy. Sow doubt and panic in his mind. Destroy his morale. That is what I did when we told the barbarians we’d poisoned the wells at Hong Kong. We were letting them know what we could do if we wanted. Today we shall show them how easily we can crush them at sea.” He pointed to the war junks. “Look, they are beginning.”

  The battle tactics of the Chinese navy were precise and had been perfected over many generations. If the enemy fleet was large, fire ships might be sent in to sow confusion and despair. But the main attack was always the same.

  The war junks were not large, like some of the big, clumsy merchant vessels. Mostly they were about a hundred feet, stem to stern. But they maneuvered well in the coastal waters where they patrolled against the local pirates.

  A war junk was a little floating fortress, full of fighting men. It had perhaps a half-dozen cannon on its deck, whose purpose was to damage the enemy’s masts and rigging and slow them down. As it closed in, well-trained archers would send volley after volley of arrows to kill the fighting men on the pirate decks. Then they would board.

  Today the cannon fired only wadding and the arrow tips were blunted, but Shi-Rong could see that the archers’ aim was deadly accurate as the arrows rattled upon their opponents’ decks.

  “Admiral Guan knows his business,” Lin remarked with satisfaction. “Every ship exactly in line. Perfect coordination.”

  Now Shi-Rong could see the marines snare the enemy’s masts with grappling hooks and drag the vessels together. Then—some on boarding planks, others swinging across on ropes—with short swords and knives in hand, they swarmed onto the enemy ships.

  “There they go,” Shi-Rong cried. “Grapple and board. They’re like flying squirrels.” He laughed. “Is it true, Excellency, that the admiral’s marines are trained in martial arts?”

  “Many of them are,” Lin replied. He nodded with satisfaction. “The barbarians will be cut to pieces.”

  They watched for half an hour. At the end of the performance, the stout figure of Admiral Guan himself could be seen on deck as his ship sent up a firework salute to the commissioner. Lin allowed himself a smile of pleasure.

  And now came Shi-Rong’s moment. “With your permission, Excellency,” he said as he stepped forward and raised his brass telescope so that it flashed in the sun. As if from nowhere, three dragon boats that had lain concealed in a nearby creek now appeared, one in front, two behind, their crews paddling furiously, but perfectly synchronized. Red flags fluttered in the sterns. When they drew level with the commissioner, the men gave a loud cheer.

  “These are your men?” Lin asked. “The ones you took from the jails?”

  “Yes, Excellency. We have ten crews now, with more to come. I have them patrolling the coast, as you commanded.”

  “And they are effective?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “This proves two principles I have often enunciated,” Lin declared. “First, never execute a man who can be useful. What is the second?”

  “Set a thief to catch a thief, Excellency.”

  “Quite so. These villains know every inlet along the coast and every trick the smugglers use. What better men could we find to use as coastguards?”

  “Indeed.”

  “By the way…”—Lin glanced back towards Nio—“why isn’t that young ruffian with the scar on his face in the boats?”

  “It turns out he’s not a local man, Excellency. None of the crews wanted him in their boat. So I use him to run errands for me, which he does quite well.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy the great man. “Time to inspect the fort,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  As the bearers carried the commissioner, in his curtained litter, along the bank of the river, Nio and Shi-Rong walked behind.

  Nio kept his head respectfully bowed. Everyone knew that Shi-Rong had interrogated Sea Dragon, which made him a man to be feared. That first moment when the young mandarin had picked him out in the prison, he’d thought Shi-Rong must have recognized him. As the days went by, however, it had become clear that the busy nobleman had no idea who he was. To Shi-Rong, Nio was just one more of the nameless multitude; and if he had a scar on his face, so had thousands of others. Nio intended to keep it that way.

  When Shi-Rong gave him an order, Nio carried it out at once; if asked a question, he answered as briefly as possible. He spoke only when he was spoken to, and that wasn’t too often.

  But after the success of his little show, Shi-Rong was in such a good mood that he even deigned to speak to Nio in quite a friendly way. “So, young man,” he asked pleasantly, “what do you do with the money you are paid?”

  “Your servant saves it, master.”

  “And what do you save it for?”

  “For my Big Sister, sir. She needs the money.”

  “Oh.” Shi-Rong gave him an approving nod. “Very commendable. Well, we’re going to see some of the finest soldiers in the empire now.”

  “Bannermen, Lord?”

  “Yes. Manchu warriors. Not that our Han soldiers leave anything to be desired,” he added. “But these are the best Manchu bannermen. Second to none.”

  “They say that the Hakka people are also valiant warriors,” Nio offered.

  “Really? Nothing like these Manchu bannermen, though.”

  Nio did not reply.

  And sure enough, as they approached the fort, they saw a guard of about a hundred smartly turned-out Manchu, lined up for Lin to inspect.

  There were two groups. The archers, in tightly belted coats with quivers of long arrows at their sides and carrying their mighty composite bows, were still in their dome-shaped rattan summer hats, with a button on top and a feather trailing behind. The musketeers, in soft leather boots and jerkins, were for some reason wearing their cylindrical velvet winter hats, which widened upwards—devilishly smart, Nio had to confess. Each of them held a long, heavy matchlock.

  Lin descended from his litter and signaled Shi-Rong to stand just behind his shoulder. Nio stood close to his master. Then the captain of the guard shouted an order, and the archers loosed a flight of arrows, one, two, three times—at amazing speed. Nio was impressed.

  “Those are the most powerful bows in the world,” Shi-Rong told him. “The arrows are so heavy they can go through two men.”

  Now it was the turn of the musketeers. The captain shouted the first order. “Prime your pan!”

  Swiftly the men took out small horn flasks and poured a little gunpowder into the small pan on the stock of the musket.

  “Close your pan!” They slipped the lid across the pan, shook their musket, then blew any last traces of gunpowder safely away.

  “Cast about. And load!” They tipped up the muzzle end, took one of the little packets of powder they carried on their jerkins, and emptied it down the barrel. Then the musket ball was dropped in, followed by a little cotton pad.

  “Ram your charge.” Taking the scouring stick from its socket under the barrel, they rammed it down the barrel several times to push the ball and charge firmly into place. “Return your scouring stick.” The stick was put back in its socket for future use.

  During all this complex process, Nio watched intently. Sea Dragon’s pirates hadn’t used firearms, and he’d never seen this drill before.

  Shi-Rong glanced at him and smiled. “Just like loading a cannon,” he remarked.

  “Fix your match!” the captain ordered. And the musketeers took the smoldering cord they carried in their left hands and attached it to the S-shaped metal lock above the firing pan. First they made s
ure it would come down exactly on the firing pan. Then they blew on the smoldering end to produce a tiny flame.

  “Present!” the captain called, and they took aim. “Open your pan!” With right finger and thumb, each musketeer slipped back the cover of the pan to expose the gunpowder.

  “Fire!” the captain shouted. The triggers were pulled, the lock descended onto the open pan, the gunpowder ignited, there was a loud bang, and a narrow flash of flame issued from the barrel of each gun, followed by a great plume of dark blue smoke. All, that is, except for three muskets that had failed to fire.

  “Excellent!” cried Lin, and turned to Shi-Rong.

  “Splendid,” Shi-Rong agreed, and turned to Nio. “Well,” he asked, “what do you think of that?”

  Nio frowned. The process, from the first order to the firing of the musket, had actually taken a full minute. “It seems rather slow, sir,” he murmured hesitantly to Shi-Rong. And thinking of the speed with which Sea Dragon and the pirates used to move: “Wouldn’t the enemy rush at them before they were ready to fire?”

  “What does he say?” Lin demanded.

  As Shi-Rong told the great man, Nio cringed. How could he have been so stupid, when all he had to say was “Wonderful, sir,” or something of that kind? Would the commissioner be enraged and throw him back in jail?

  But he mistook his man. Lin prided himself on knowing how things worked.

  “The question is correct,” he announced. “Explain to him,” he told Shi-Rong, “the reason that the order of our army is so perfect is because each part supports the others. While our musketeers load, they are protected by a wall of pikemen. But when they fire, not only does the noise and smoke terrify the enemy, but the musket balls, which are made of lead, spread out on impact—and make a huge wound. I have seen a shoulder hit take off a whole arm. Any hit, you probably die.” He nodded grimly. “For over two hundred years, the world has trembled before our armies.”