Struan heard her returning, still mumbling irritably in Chinese.
“What’re you saying?” he demanded.
“Am I so mad as to waste so much hard-earned cash? Am I a barbarian? Am I a waster—”
“All right. But I still dinna understand why you think the sea god’ll answer your prayers when he’s been so obviously duped. The whole matter is fantastical stupid.”
“Will you na say such things so loudly,” she said. “He’s got offering. Now he’ll protect us. It’s na real silver a god want, merely idea. That’s what he got.” She tossed her head. “Gods are like people. They believe anything if you tell them right way.” Then she added, “Maybe the god is out and will na help us anyway and we’ll sink, never mind.”
“Another thing,” Struan said dourly. “Why should we whisper, eh? It’s a Chinese sea god. How the hell can he understand English, heya?”
This confounded May-may. She frowned, thinking hard. Then she shrugged. “A god is a god. Perhaps they speak the barbarian tongue. Would you like more tea?”
“Thanks.”
She poured it into his cup and hers. Then she clasped her hands around her knees and settled herself on a hatchway and hummed a little song.
The lorcha wallowed in the river current. Dawn was breaking.
“You’re quite a woman, May-may,” Struan said.
“I like you, too.” She nestled against him. “How many men are there like you, in your country?”
“About twenty million, men, women and children.”
“There are, they say, three hundreds of millions of Chinese.”
“That would mean that every fourth person on earth is Chinese.”
“I worry for my people if all barbarians are like you. You kill so many, so easily.”
“I killed them because they were trying to kill me. And we’re na barbarians.”
“I am glad I saw you at your killing,” she said weirdly, her eyes luminous, her head framed by the growing light of dawn. “And I’m werry glad you were na deaded.”
“One day I’ll be dead.”
“Of course. But I’m glad I saw you at your killing. Our son Duncan will be worthy of you.”
“By the time he’s grown it will na be necessary to kill.”
“By the time his children’s children’s children are grown there will still be killing. Man is killer beast. Most all men. We Chinese know. But barbarians are worse than us. Worse.”
“You think that because you’re Chinese. You’ve many more barbaric customs than we have. People change, May-may.”
Then she said simply, “Learn from us, from the lessons of China, Dirk Struan. People never change.”
“Learn from us, from the lessons of England, lass. The world can grow into an ordered place where all are equal before the law. And the law is just. Honest. Without graft.”
“Is that so important if you are starving?”
He thought about that a long time.
The lorcha plodded downstream. Other craft passed, upstream and downstream, and the crews stared at the lorcha curiously but said nothing. Ahead the river curled and Struan eased the lorcha into the channel. The canvas patch seemed to be holding.
“I think so,” he finally answered. “Aye. I think that’s very important. Oh yes, I wanted to ask you something. You said you went to see Jin-qua’s Supreme Lady. Where did you meet her?”
“I was slave in her house,” May-may said calmly. “Just before Jin-qua sold me to you.” She looked into his eyes. “You bought me, didn’t you?”
“I acquired you according to your custom, aye. But you’re no slave. You can leave or stay, freely. I told you that the first day.”
“I did na believe you. I believe you now, Tai-Pan.” She watched the shore and the boats passing. “I’ve never seen a killing before. I dinna like killing. Is that because I am woman?”
“Aye. And nay. I dinna ken.”
“Do you like killing?”
“Nay.”
“It is a pity your arrow miss Brock.”
“I did na aim at him. I was na trying to kill him, just to make him swerve.”
She was astonished. “I swear to God, Tai-Pan, you’re peculiar fantastical.”
“I swear to God, May-may,” he said, his eyes crinkled into a smile, “you’re peculiar fantastical.”
She lay on her side, watching him, cherishing him. Then she slept.
When she awoke the sun was up. The land beside the river was low and ran back to misted horizons. An abundant land, patterned with numberless paddy fields, green and waving with winter rice. Clouded hills afar off.
The Marble Pagoda was just ahead. Beneath it was
China Cloud.
BOOK II
CHAPTER NINE
Four days later
China Cloud was secretly at anchor in Deepwater Bay, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. It was a cold morning with a sky cloud-locked, the sea gray.
Struan was standing by the diamond-shaped windows in the main cabin, looking at the island. The barren mountains fell steeply into the sea around the bay, their peaks cloud-shrouded. There was a small sand beach at the bay’s apex and then the land climbed quickly once more to the clouds, rugged and lonely. Sea gulls cawed. Waves lapped the hull of the ship sweetly and the ship’s bell sounded six times.
“Aye?” Struan said in answer to a knock.
“Cutter’s returned,” Captain Orlov said wearily. He was a vast-shouldered hunchback, barely five feet tall with massive arms and huge head. A fighting iron was thonged to his wrist. Since the bullion had come aboard he had worn the fighting iron night and day and had even slept with it. “By the beard of Odin, our cargo’s worse’n the black plague.”
“More trouble?”
“Trouble, you say? Never on a ship o’ mine, by Jesus Christ’s mother’s head!” The tiny, misshapen man cackled with malevolent glee. “Least not while I’m awake, eh, Green Eyes?”
Struan had found Orlov wandering the docks of Glasgow many years ago. He was a Norseman who had been shipwrecked in the dangerous Orkneys and could not find a new ship. Though seamen knew no nationality, no owner would trust a ship to so strange a man who would call no one “sir” or “mister,” who would serve only as captain—nothing less.
“I’m best in world,” Orlov would shout, his mottled, beak-nosed face shaking with fury. “I’ve served my time before the mast—never again! Test me, and I’ll prove it, by the blood of Thor!”
Struan had tested Orlov’s knowledge of sea and wind, and tested his strength and courage, and had found nothing wanting. Orlov could speak English, French, Russian, Finnish and Norwegian. His mind was brilliant and his memory astonishing. And though he looked like a goblin and could kill like a shark if need be, he was fair, and completely trustworthy. Struan had given him a small ship and then a bigger one. Then a clipper. Last year he had made him captain of
China Cloud and he knew that Orlov was everything he claimed.