“There were incidents of violence,” Gladstone continued, “some of them bestial beyond belief, and we are not free from blame. Although I cannot imagine that we descended to such things as I have heard tell.” He shook himself very slightly. “But that is not an excuse. We have dealt with savages before, and we should not assume that because a man can create exquisite beauty or invent such blessings for mankind as paper and porcelain, even gunpowder with all its uses, that he is a civilized creature in his soul. And whatever he is, it does not excuse us from our own duty to God as Christian men.” His face was dark with anger and his body shook.
Rathbone looked across at Monk and saw the pity in his face, and also a degree of confusion.
Gladstone regained his self-control and went on with his lesson. “Incident after incident escalated until the Chinese confiscated thousands of pounds of opium, an act in which they were justified. Some deny this, but it is the truth. It was a contraband substance, smuggled into China by us. The Royal Navy attacked. The Chinese ships were small, and their weapons and armor medieval. Our broadsides sank them, drowned their sailors with barely any loss to us. We attacked the land fortifications at river mouths, bombarded city walls, and the women and children sheltering within them. Our ships-such as Nemesis, which was steel-hulled, and a paddle-wheeler, independent of wind and tide-were beyond their power to fight. Some of them had primitive firelock guns; others merely bows and arrows, God help them. Our victory was total.”
The enormity of it slowly took shape in Rathbone’s mind.
“Three hundred million people,” Gladstone went on quickly, as if in haste to get the entire tale out. “We made them ransom their own port of Canton for six million silver dollars. By 1842 we controlled Shanghai, and the whole mouth of the Yangtze River, and we forced on them one shameful treaty after another. We took from them the island of Hong Kong, and the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Mingbo, and nine million dollars, which is nearly two million pounds in reparation for the contraband opium they had seized and destroyed.”
He shook his head. “That was only part of it. There were other concessions as well. In 1844, France and the United States exacted the same concessions, but that does not excuse us. It was our war, our weapons and our greed that began it and forced it to a conclusion.”
Finally he faced Rathbone and Monk. “The Second Opium War, a few years later, was no better. Again we grew rich on the ruin of another race. France, the United States, and this time Russia as well joined us in war and plunder. But we played the major part, and most certainly took the largest gain in treaties, and seizures of further ports along the coast. All the while we continued to sell opium to a wretched people, who were drowning in a sunless sea of addiction. It is an episode of appalling shame, and you will find many who would deny it.”
Rathbone cleared his throat. “And the Pharmacy Act will regulate the sale and labeling of all medicines in Britain, and prevent them being sold by people who have no medical knowledge or skill?”
“It will,” Gladstone agreed. He looked from one to the other of them. “Mr. Wilkie Collins, a writer of considerable skill and, more important, a great reputation, is a keen supporter of the bill, but it was Dr. Lambourn who was going to provide the professional evidence. His death was a great blow; his discredit an even greater one. But we will surmount it, I promise you. However, I would dearly like to know what it was that he discovered that would make anyone wish both to kill him and then to discredit him. Perhaps, gentlemen, we need to know.
“Sinden Bawtry told me the report was too ill-conceived to be of use and that out of respect for Lambourn’s memory it was destroyed. I believed him at the time, but what you have said has caused me grave doubt. I have known Bawtry for some years, a man of skill, intellect, and great generosity to the country. Even so, he may have been deceived. There are ugly truths that Dr. Lambourn might have uncovered accidentally in his research.”
Gladstone smiled with bleak goodwill but no pleasure at all. “Do what you can to save Mrs. Lambourn,” he urged. “I shudder to think of our shame exposed in the courts, but it would be doubly evil to conceal it by sacrificing an innocent woman. To do so would be to defile not only our trade but our justice as well. But I warn you, it will earn you some bitter enemies, Sir Oliver. Do what you can, gentlemen. And keep me apprised. Good day to you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Rathbone said gratefully.
OUTSIDE, IN THE SOMBER dignity of Downing Street, Rathbone turned to Monk.
“I’m not sure if this makes it better or worse. Nothing is what I thought it was. I had assumed a clever but deeply flawed man whose distorted sexual appetites had finally ended his life in tragedy and suicide; and a wife whose grief and sense of betrayal had driven her to an obscene revenge. Instead it now seems we have a remarkable man whose only flaw was to leave his opium-addicted wife without the formality of a divorce. He lived with the woman he truly loved, without deceiving her as to her situation. Out of compassion, or sense of duty, he maintained support for his wife both financial and emotional.
“He could not be misled or bought off from writing a report on the dangers of opium use without restrictions, and was murdered for his courage. His widow, or apparent widow, loved him enough to risk her own life to redeem his reputation. His wife was not a prostitute at all, as assumed, but a woman supported by one decent man who asked nothing whatever from her. Is anything the way it appears to be?”
Monk shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Rathbone thought of other times in his life when suddenly nothing turned out as he had expected. The familiar had unaccountably become alien and all his confidence was swept away. Did that happen to everyone?
He kept pace with Monk, their footsteps all but silent in the quiet street.
“This close to a verdict, it may be impossible to turn things around, and that frightens me,” Rathbone went on. “Someone has committed two murders. I can’t believe that Lambourn’s death and Zenia Gadney’s are not connected. Amity Herne has lied on oath, but I don’t know why. Is it enmity against her brother, or against Dinah, or to justify her husband having condemned Joel’s report? Or does she have some vested interest in blocking the bill herself?”
“I don’t know, either,” Monk admitted. “But Gladstone is right. No one is going to like us for opening up the horror of the Opium Wars!” He stopped in the street and stared at Rathbone. “But you’ll do it!”
“Oh, yes,” Rathbone said. Then, the moment the words were past his lips, he wondered if he had just committed himself to ruining his career.
CHAPTER 17
Monk was deeply shaken by what Gladstone had told him. Perhaps before his amnesia he had been aware of at least some of the shame of Britain’s part in the Opium Wars, but not the depth of the greed. The violence of it and the duplicity horrified him. There was arrogance in the assumption that any country had the right to smuggle such a poisonous substance to a less technically advanced people, and by weight of superior weaponry, conquer them. Then on top of all that, they had demanded reparation for what had been the results of their own savagery.
Had Britain been the victim, not the attacker, he would have burned with outrage at it. He would have condemned the invaders and thirsted for revenge.
But it was his own people who had been the barbarians, the people he had believed to be civilized, to have carried some core of honor, and a better system of beliefs, to races with a dimmer sense of what was right and with laws less just.
He sat in the glow of the firelight in his own house with the familiar pictures on the walls of the parlor, the books he had read and loved on the shelves. Scuff was asleep upstairs. Quietly he related to Hester what Mr. Gladstone had told him.