All day he had felt dulled. His head and chest ached, and he knew that his dreams would be bad tonight. He would have liked to get drunk, to lose himself. But he knew that there was danger coming. He took a last turn around the rain-swept deck with a lantern, then went below to check on Liza and Lillibet.
“Here’s thy tea, luv,” Liza said. “Best get into dry clothes. They be ready for thee.” She pointed at the bunk and at the sea coat and trousers and sea hat and boots.
“Thanks, luv.” He sat at the table and drank the tea.
“Da’,” Lillibet said, “will you play game with me?” And when Brock did not answer, for he had not heard her, she tugged at his wet coat. “Da’, will you please play a game with me?”
“Leave thy father be,” Liza said. “I be playin’ with thee.”
She took Lillibet into the next cabin and thanked God that there was peace between her man and Struan. Brock had told her what had occurred, and she thanked God for answering her prayers. The wind be miracle, she told herself. Now all that he needed be patience. He be comin’ round to bless Tess. Liza asked God to guard Tess and Culum and the ship and all of them, then sat down and began to play a game of noughts and crosses with Lillibet.
This afternoon Gorth’s coffin had been put into a cutter. Liza and Brock had gone into deep water and Brock had said the funeral service. When he finished, he had cursed his son and cast the coffin into the deep. They had returned to the
White Witch and Brock had gone into his sea cabin and bolted the door, and he had wept for his son and for his daughter. He wept for the first time as a man, and the joy of life had gone out of him.
All night the wind and the rain gradually worsened. With the coming of dawn the downpour was strong but not fearsome and the sea high but not threatening.
Brock had slept in his clothes, and he came on deck blear-eyed. He checked the barometer. Still 29.8 inches, steady. He rapped it with a knuckle but the reading did not change.
“Morning, sir,” Pennyworth said.
Brock nodded apathetically.
“It just be a rainstorm, I’m thinking,” Pennyworth said, perturbed by Brock’s lackluster manner.
Brock peered at the sea and sky. The cloud blanket was only a few hundred feet away and hid the mountains of the island and the Peak, but this too was not unusual.
Brock forced himself to walk forward and check the anchor hawsers. They were firm: three anchors and three hawsers as thick as a man’s thigh. Enough to hold in any storm, he thought. But this did not please him. He felt nothing.
China Cloud was riding neat and sleek in the harbor, the watch cowering in the lee of the quarterdeck. All the other ships were riding without trouble, the huge flagship dominating the harbor. A few late-coming sampans and junks were searching for moorings beside the floating village in the lee shore of a small cove near Glessing’s Point.
Brock went below, and Pennyworth and the rest of the watch were greatly relieved to have him gone.
“He’s aged since yesterday,” Pennyworth said. “He looks like he’s dying on his feet.”
In the dawn light, Struan was checking the rough shutters on the first floor. He went downstairs to the main floor and checked the others. He read the barometer: 29.8 and steady.
“By the gods!” he said, and his voice rattled around the buildings. “Either begin to drop or finish the godrotting rain and let’s have done with it.”
“Wat, Tai-Pan?” May-may called down from the landing.
She looked minute and lovely. “Nothing, lassie. Go back to bed,” he said.
May-may was listening to the rain pattering and wished she was in Macao where the sound of the rain on the roof would be sweet. “I dinna like this rain,” she said. “I hope the children are all right. I miss them very much.”
“Aye. Go back to bed, there’s a good lassie. I’m going outside for a while.”
She waved jauntily. “You be careful, now.” Struan pulled on his heavy sea coat and went outside. Now the rain was slanting. It had not increased in the last hour. In fact, he thought, it seemed to be lessening. The clouds were very low. He studied the lie of
China Cloud. She’s pretty and safe, he told himself.
He went back and checked the barometer. No change. He ate a good breakfast and prepared to leave again. “Up! Down! Why you so unpatient? Where you go now, heya?” May-may asked.
“The harbor master’s office. I want to see if Culum’s all right. Dinna on any account go out or open any of the windows or doors, Supreme Lady Tai-tai or nae Supreme Lady Tai-tai.”
“Yes, Husband.” May-may kissed him. Queen’s Road was deeply puddled and almost empty. But the wind and the rain felt bracing, and it was better than being shut up in the box of the factory. It was just like a spring nor’easter in England, he thought; nae, na as strong as that.
He entered the harbor master’s office and shook the rain off.
Glessing got up from his desk. “Morning. Strange storm, isn’t it? Care for tea?” He motioned to a chair. “Suppose you’re looking for Culum and Mrs. Struan, They’ve gone to early service.”
“Eh?”
“They’ll be back any minute. It’s Sunday.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten.”
Glessing poured the tea from a huge pot, then put it back on the side of the brazier. The room was large and filled with charts. A mast came through the raftered ceiling, and beside it was a hatch. Signal flags were in neat cubicles, muskets in racks, and the whole room was tidy and shipshape. “What’s your opinion of the storm?”
“If it’s a typhoon, then we’re dead in its path. That’s the only answer. If the wind does na back or veer, thea the vortex’ll pass over us.”
“God help us if you’re right.”
“Aye.”
“Once I got caught in a typhoon off Formosa. Never want to be in a sea like that again, and we weren’t anywhere near the vortex. If there is such a thing.”
A gust of rain-heavy wind rattled the storm shutters. They watched the wind indicator. Still inexorably north.
Glessing put down his teacup. “I’m in your debt, Mr. Struan. I got a letter the day before yesterday from Mary. She told me how kind you were—you and Culum. Particularly you. She sounds very much better.”
“I saw her just before I left. She certainly was ten times better than the first time I saw her.”
“She says she’ll be released in two months. That you told the Papist you’d accept responsibility for her. Of course, that’s up to me now.”
“As you wish. It’s only a formality.” Struan wondered what Glessing would do when he found out the truth about Mary. Of course he had to find out; how could May-may believe that he would na?
“Did the doctor say what her trouble was?”
“A stomach disorder.”
“That’s what she wrote. Again, thanks.” Glessing moved a chart on his desk and wiped a tea stain off the teak. “Culum mentioned that you were Royal Navy as a lad. At Trafalgar. Hope you don’t mind my asking, but my father had the honor of serving there too. I was wondering what ship you were in. He was flag lieutenant to Admiral Lord Collingwood, in—”
“In
Royal Sovereign,” Struan said for him. “Aye. I was aboard.”
“By Jove!” was all that Glessing could splutter.