“Aye. But first mount an immediate attack against Canton.”
“But that’s a waste of time, what?”
“Mount an attack within the week. You’ll na have to press it home. Ransom Canton again. Six millions of taels.”
“Why?”
“You need a month or more to get the fleet ready to stab north. The weather’s na right yet. You’ll have to wait till the reinforcements arrive. They’re due when?”
“Month, six weeks.”
“Good.” Struan’s face hardened. “In the meantime the Co-hong’ll have to find six million taels. That’ll teach them na to warn us, by God. You have to show the flag here, before you go north, or we’ll lose face. If they get away with burning the Settlement, we’ll never be safe in the future. Order
Nemesis to stand off the city. A twelve-hour ultimatum or you’ll lay waste Canton.”
Zergeyev moaned, and Struan went over to him. The Russian was still in shock and almost unconscious.
Then Struan noticed Mauss’s Chinese convert watching him. The man was standing on the main deck beside the starboard gunnel. He made the sign of the cross over Struan and closed his eyes and, silently, began to pray.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Struan jumped out of the cutter onto their new wharf at Queen’s Town and hurried along its length toward the vast, nearly completed three-story building. His limp was more pronounced today under a white-hot sky. The Lion and the Dragon fluttered atop the flagpole.
He noted that many smaller buildings and dwellings were completed all over Happy Valley and that a start had been made on the church on the knoll; that Brock’s wharf on the far side of the bay was completed and the factory adjoining it almost ready. Other buildings and residences were still encased in soaring sheaths of bamboo scaffoldings. Queen’s Road was rock-surfaced.
But there were very few coolies working, although it was only early afternoon. The day was hot and very humid. A pleasant easterly wind had begun to touch the valley lightly.
He strode into the main foyer, his shirt sticking to his back. A perspiring Portuguese clerk looked up, startled.
“Madre de Deus, Mr. Struan! Good day, senhor. We did not expect you.”
“Where’s Mr. Robb?”
“Upstairs, senhor, but there—”
But Struan was already running up the staircase. The first-landing hallway led off north and east and west into the depths of the building. Many windows watched seaward and landward. The fleet was silently at anchor and his lorcha had been the first home from Canton.
He turned east and passed the half-completed dining room, his footsteps a brittle echo on the uncarpeted stone. He knocked on a door and opened it.
The door let into a spacious suite. It was half furnished: chairs and sofas and stone floor and Quance paintings on the wall, rich carpets, an empty fireplace. Sarah was sitting in a high-backed chair beside one of the windows, a bamboo latticed fan in her hand. She was staring at him.
“Hello, Sarah.”
“Hello, Dirk.”
“How’s Karen?”
“Karen’s dead.”
Sarah’s eyes were pale blue and unwavering, her face pink and greasy with sweat. Her hair was streaked with white, her face aged.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said.
Sarah fanned herself abstractedly. The slight breeze made by the fan wafted a limp strand of hair into her face but she did not brush it away.
“When did it happen?” he asked.
“Three days ago. Perhaps two,” she said, her voice flat. “I don’t know.”
The fan kept moving back and forth, seemingly of its own volition.
“How’s the bairn?”
“Still alive. Lochlin’s still alive.”
Struan wiped a droplet of sweat off his chin with his fingers. “We’re the first back from Canton. They burned the Settlement. We got Robb’s letter just before we left. I’ve just arrived.”
“I watched your cutter come ashore,” she said.
“Where’s Robb?” he asked.
She motioned with the fan at a door, and he saw the thinness of her blue-veined wrists.
Struan went into the bedroom. The room was large, and the canopied fourposter had been made from a pattern of his own.
Robb was lying in the bed, his eyes closed, his face gray and gaunt against the sweat-stained pillow.
“Robb?” Struan said. But the eyes did not open and the lips were slightly parted. Struan’s soul twisted.
He touched his brother’s face. Coldness. Death-coldness.
A dog barked close by, and a fly battered the window. Struan turned and walked out of the room, and closed the door quietly.
Sarah was still sitting in the high-backed chair. The fan moved slowly. Back and forth. Back and forth.
He loathed her for not telling him.
“Robb died an hour ago,” she said. “Two or three hours, or an hour. I don’t remember. Before he died he gave me a message for you. It was this morning, I think. Maybe it was in the night. I think it was this morning. Robb said, ‘Tell Dirk I never wanted to be Tai-Pan.’ ”
“I’ll make the necessary arrangements, Sarah. Best you and the bairns get aboard
Resting Cloud.”
“I closed his eyes. And I closed Karen’s eyes. Who’ll close your eyes, Tai-Pan? Who’ll close mine?”
He made the arrangements and then walked up the small rise toward his house. He was thinking about the first day Robb had arrived in Macao.
“Dirk! All your troubles are over, I’ve arrived!” Robb had said with his wonderful smile. “We’ll smash the East India Company and obliterate Brock. We’ll be like lairds and start a dynasty that will rule Asia forever! There’s a girl I’m going to marry! Sarah McGlenn. She’s fifteen now and we’re betrothed and we’ll marry in two years.”
Tell me, God, Struan asked, where do we go wrong? How? Why do people change? How do quarrel and violence and hatred and hurt come from sweetness and youth and tenderness and love? And why? Because they always do. With Sarah. With Ronalda. And it’ll be the same with Culum and Tess. Why?
He was at the gate in the high wall that surrounded his house. He opened it and looked at the house. All was quiet: ominously quiet. The word “malaria” flooded his brain. A slight wind waved the tall bamboos. The garden was well planted now: flowers, shrubs, bees foraging.
He walked up the steps and opened his door. But he did not enter at once. He listened from the doorstep. There was no welcome laughter, no muted chattering singsong from the servants. The house felt empty.
He looked at the barometer: 29.8 inches, fair weather.
He walked slowly down the passageway, the air strangely incense-laden. He noticed dust where there had been none before.
He opened the door of May-may’s bedroom. The bed was made and empty and the room abnormally neat and tidy.
The children’s room was empty. No cots or toys.
Then he saw her through the windows. She came from the hidden side of the garden with cut flowers in her hand and an orange sunshade shielding her face. Then he was outside and she was in his arms.
“God’s blood, Tai-Pan, you’ve crushed my flowers.” May-may put the flowers down and threw her arms around his neck. “Where you come from, heya? Tai-Pan, you crush me too tight! Please. Wat for your face so strange?”