Some I will now share with you and not with him, or your brothers and sisters. Under no circumstances are these secrets to be shared with anyone. Anyone. You promise before God."
"Yes Mother, I swear it."
"First: perhaps one day we may need to give each other personal or dangerous information in a private letter--never forget anything in writing may be read by alien eyes. Whenever I write to you I will always add, P.s. I love you. You will do the same, always, without fail. But if there is no P.s. I love you, then the letter contains important and secret information, from me to you or you to me only. Watch!" Shielding the paper she had prepared, she lit some safety matches and held them under the paper, not to fire it but to almost scorch it, line by line.
Miraculously, the hidden message appeared: Happy Birthday, under your pillow there's a sight draft for ten thousand pounds. Keep it secretly, spend it wisely.
"Oh Mother, there is? There really is, ten thousand?"' "Yes."
"Ayeeyah! But how do you do it? The writing?"' "Take a clean quill or pen and write your message carefully in a liquid I will give you, or milk, and let it dry. When you heat the paper as I did, the writing will appear." She used another match and gravely lit a corner of the paper. In silence they watched it burn. She ground the ashes to dust under her tiny high-booted foot. "When you're tai-pan, trust no one," adding strangely, "even me."
Now, Struan held her sad letter over the candle's flame. The words came into view, no mistaking her handwriting: Sorry to tell your father died raving, besotted with whisky. He must have bribed a servant to sneak it in again. Much more to tell in person. Thank God he's out of his misery but it was the Brocks, my cursed father and my brother Morgan, who give us no peace and caused his strokes--the final one came just after you left when we discovered details, too late, of their secret Hawaiian coup against us. Jamie has a few details.
For a moment he stopped reading, sick with rage.
Soon there'll be a reckoning, he promised himself then read on: Beware of our friend, Dmitri Syborodin.
We discover he's a secret agent for that revolutionary, President Lincoln, not the South as he pretends. Beware of Angelique Richaud...
His heart twisted with sudden fright: Our Paris agents write that her uncle Michel Richaud went bankrupt shortly after she left and is now in Debtor's Prison. More facts: her father keeps very poor company, has very substantial gambling debts, and secretly boasts to intimates he'll soon represent all our French interests--received your letter of the 4th recommending this, presume at her instigation--he won't, he's insolvent. Another of his "secrets": you'll be his son-in-law within a year. Of course, ridiculous, you are far too young for marriage, and I could not conceive of a worse connection. Singly or together they are out to snare you, my son. Be circumspect and beware of feminine guile.
For the first time in his life he was furious with his mother. Shakily, he shoved the paper into the flame, held it while it burned then pulverized the ash to nothingness, smashed the flame out and sent the candle skittering and lay back nauseated, heart pounding, all the time his mind shouting; how dare she investigate Angelique and her family without asking me! How dare she be so wrong! Whatever sins they committed Angelique is not to blame.
Mother of all people should know the sins of the fathers are not to be blamed on the children! Wasn't my beloved grandfather much worse, wasn't he a killer and not much more than a pirate, as her father still is? She's a bloody hypocrite! It's none of her business who I marry. It's my life and if I want to marry Angelique next year I will. Mother knows nothing about Angelique--and when she knows the truth she'll love her as I do--or else by God! She...
"Oh Christ," he gasped as pain ripped him apart.
McFay looked up from the piles of letters, documents and journals littering his desk. "How is he?" he asked anxiously as Dr.Babcott came in and closed the door. The office was spacious, facing the High Street and the sea.
"It was a stomach seizure of some kind, Jamie. To be expected, I'm afraid, poor chap. I dressed his wound-- he'd torn a few stitches. I gave him a draft of laudanum." Babcott rubbed his eyes, red-rimmed with fatigue, his frock coat heavy and frayed at the sleeves and stained, here and there, with chemicals and dried blood. "Not much more I can do for him at the moment. What's the latest from the fleet?"
"Status quo: the fleet's at action stations, Legation's still surrounded, the Bakufu are supposed to appear soon."
"What happens if they don't?"
McFay shrugged. "I've had orders to get Malcolm back to Hong Kong as soon as possible--very important for him. I can get him on the mail sh--"
"I absolutely forbid it," Babcott said with more anger than he intended. "That would be stupid and highly dangerous, highly dangerous. If they got into a storm which is likely this time of the year ... well, severe and prolonged vomiting would tear the repairs apart--which would kill him. No!"
"Then when will it be safe?"
The doctor glanced out of the windows.
Whitecaps out past the headland, none in the bay.
Sky overcast. He weighed his helplessness against his knowledge. "At least a week, perhaps a month. God knows, Jamie, I don't."
"If you were to go on the mail ship, would that help?"
"For Christ's sake, no! Didn't you hear me clearly? No. No! He's not to move.
Nine days on a ship would kill him."
McFay's face closed. "What are Malcolm's chances? Really. It's very important I know."
"Still good. His temperature's more or less normal and there's no sign of any festering."
Babcott rubbed his eyes again and yawned.
"Sorry, didn't mean to snap at you. Been up since midnight patching the results of a sailor versus soldier Drunk Town brawl, and a dawn emergency in the Yoshiwara, had to sew up a young woman who tried to cut herself into the next world." He sighed. "It would help to keep him as calm as possible. I'd say his bad news probably brought on the attack."
The knowledge and implications of Culum Struan's death and therefore Malcolm's new status as tai-pan--of vital and immediate concern to all their rivals--had rushed through the Settlement. In Brock's, Norbert Greyforth had interrupted a meeting to open the first bottle of champagne from the case he had had kept chilled against this day for many weeks--chilled in their new, and highly profitable Ice House next door to their godown. "Best news we've had in years," he chortled to Dmitri, "and I've another twenty cases for the party I'm throwing tonight. A toast, Dmitri!" He raised his cut glass, the best Venetian that money could buy. "Here's to the tai-pan of the Noble House: out with the Old, out with the New by God, and may they be bankrupt within the year!"
"I'll drink with you, Norbert, to the success of the new tai-pan, none of the rest," Dmitri said.
"Open your eyes to reality. They're the old, we're the new--once they had guts when Dirk Struan was alive but now they're weak, McFay's weak--why with his enthusiastic help and a little persuasion on the night of Canterbury's murder we could have roused the whole Settlement, the fleet, the Army, we'd have captured this bugger Satsuma king, hanged him, and be living happily ever after."
"I agree. John Canterbury's going to be revenged, one way or another. Poor bastard," Dmitri said. "You know he left me his business?"' Canterbury's was one of the smaller trading houses, specializing in the export of silk cloth, and particularly cocoons and silkworm eggs, a highly lucrative trade to France where the silk industry, once the best in the world, had been decimated by disease. "John always said he would but I never believed him. I'm his Executor too --Wee Willie gave me the deed before he left."
"Samurai are all bastards, no reason to murder him like that. What about his musume? Old John was beset by her. She's carrying, isn't she?"' "No, that was a rumor. In his will he asked me to take care of her, give her money to buy her own shack. I went to see her but her mama-san, Raiko, that old bat, she told me the girl had gone back to her village but she'd send on any money. I paid over what John had said so that was that."