“Robb?” Struan said, not looking up.
“Five years as Tai-Pan and I can send Culum back to Scotland? Now? Change anything and everything I like?”
“Aye, by God. Do I have to repeat mysel’? In five months you do what you like. If you agree to the other conditions. Aye.”
There was a vast silence in the hold, but for the constant scurry of the rats in the darkness.
“Why should you want me out, Uncle?” Culum said.
“To hurt your father. You’re the last of his line.”
“Aye, Robb. That he is.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say! Terrible.” Culum was aghast. “We’re kin. Kin.”
“Yes.” Robb said, anguished. “But we’ve been talking truths. Your father will sacrifice me, you, my children, to his ends. Why shouldn’t I do the same?”
“Maybe you will, Robb. Maybe you will,” Struan said.
“You know I’d do nothing to hurt you. Lord God on high, what’s happening to us? We’ve acquired some bullion and all of a sudden we’re stinking with greed and God knows what else. Please let me go. In five months. Please, Dirk.”
“I
must leave. Only in Parliament can I really control Longstaff and his successors—as you’ll do when you leave Asia. That’s where we can put the plan into effect. But Culum must be trained. A year as Tai-Pan and you leave.”
“How can he be trained in such a short time?”
“I’ll know in five months if he can be Tai-Pan. If na, I’ll make other arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“Are you ready to agree to the conditions, Robb? If so, swear on the Book and let’s go aloft.”
“What arrangements?”
“God’s death! Do you agree, Robb, or do you na? Is it one year or five? Or none?”
Robb shifted his weight on his legs as the ship heeled under a thickening wind. His whole being was warning him not to take the oath. But he had to. For his family’s sake he had to. He took the Bible and it was heavy. “Even though I loathe the Orient and everything it stands for, I swear by God to abide by the conditions to the best of my abilities, so help me God.” He handed the Bible to Struan. “I think you’ll regret making me stay as Tai-Pan—for one year.”
“I may. Hong Kong will na.” Struan opened the Bible and showed them the four half coins that he had stuck on the inside cover with sealing wax. He listed all Jin-qua’s conditions—except the one lac to Gordon Chen. That’s my business, Struan told himself, and he wondered briefly what Culum would think of his half brother—and of May-may—when he heard about them. Robb knew about May-may though he had never met her. Struan wondered if his enemies had already told Culum about Gordon and about May-may.
“I think you were right to swear us, Dirk,” Robb said. “God alone knows what devilment these coins mean.”
When they returned to the cabin, Struan went to the desk and broke the seal on the letter. He read the first paragraph and shouted with joy. “She’s alive! Winifred’s alive, by God. She got well!”
Robb grabbed the letter. Struan was beside himself and hugged Culum and began to dance a jig and the jig became a reel and Struan linked arms with Culum and they pulled Robb with them and all at once their hatred and distrust vanished.
Then Struan held them still with the hugeness of his strength. “Now, together! One, two, three,” and they shouted the Latin battle cry of the clan at the top of their voices.
“Feri!” Strike home!
Then he hugged them again and roared, “Steward!”
The seaman came running. “Aye, aye, sorr?”
“A double tot for all hands. Order the piper to the quarterdeck! Bring a bottle of champagne and another pot of tea, by God!”
“Aye, aye, sorr!”
So the three men made peace with each other. But they all knew in the secret depths of their minds that everything had changed between them. Too much had been said. Soon they would go their separate ways. Alone.
“Thank God you opened the letter afterward, Dirk,” Robb said. “Thank God for the letter. I was feeling terrible. Terrible.”
“And I,” Culum said. “Read it out, Father.”
Struan settled himself in the deep leather sea chair and read the letter to them. It was in Gaelic, dated four months ago, a month after Culum had sailed from Glasgow.
Parian Struan wrote that Winifred’s life had hung in the balance for two weeks and then she had begun to mend. The doctors could give no reason, other than to shrug their shoulders and say, “The will of God.” She was living with him in the little croft that Struan had bought for him many years ago.
“She’ll be happy there,” Culum said. “But there are only gillies and goats to talk to. Where’s she going to go to school?”
“First let her get very well. Then we can worry about that,” Robb said. “Go on, Dirk.”
Then the letter gave news of the family. Parian Struan had had two brothers and three sisters and they had all married, and now their children were married and they had children. And too, his own children, Dirk and Flora by his first marriage, and Robb, Uthenia and Susan by his second, had families.
Many of his descendants had emigrated: to the Canadian colonies, to the United States of America. A few were scattered over the Indies and Spanish South America.
Parian Struan wrote that Alastair McCloud, who had married Robb’s sister Susan, had come back from London with his son Hector to live again in Scotland—the loss of Susan and his daughter Clair from the cholera weighed heavily on him and had almost broken him; that he had received a letter from the Kerns—Flora, Dirk’s sister, had married Farran Ken and last year they had sailed for Norfolk, Virginia. They had arrived safely and the voyage had been good, and they and their three children were fit and happy.
The letter continued: “Tell Robb Roddy went off to university yesterday. I put him on the stagecoach for Edinburgh with six shillings in his pocket and food for four days. Your cousin Dougall Struan has written that he will take him in in his holidays and be his guardian until Robb comes home. I took the liberty of sending a sight draft in Robb’s name for fifty guineas to pay for a year’s room and board and a shilling a week for pocket money. I also gave him a Bible and warned him against loose women and drunkenness and gambling and read out the piece of Will Shakespeare’s
Hamlet about ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ and made the lad write it down and put it in the cover of the Good Book. He writes with a good hand.
“Your dear Ronalda and the children are buried in one of the plague pits. I am sorry, Dirk laddie, but the law said that all that died had to be buried thus with burning and then with quicklime for the safety of the living. But the burial was consecrated according to our faith and the land set aside as hallowed ground. God rest their souls.
“Do not worry about Winnie. The lassie is truly bonny now and here by Loch Lomond where the foot of God has lain, she will grow into a fine, Godfearing woman. Take heed now: Do not let the barbarian heathen in Indian Cathay take your soul awa’ and lock your door carefully against the evil that breeds in those devil lands. Will you not come home soon? My health is very fine and the good Lord has blessed me. Only seven more years for my three score and ten which the Lord promised but one in four hundred sees these evil days. I am very well. There were bad riots in Glasgow and in Birmingham and Edinburgh, so the papers say. More Chartists’ riots. The factory workers are demanding more money for their labors. There was a good hanging two days ago in Glasgow for sheep stealing. Damn the English! What a world we are living in when a good Scotsman’s hanged for just stealing an English sheep, by a Scots judge. Terrible. At the same assize hundreds were transported to Australian Van Diemen’s land for rioting and striking, and for burning down a factory. Culum’s friend, Bartholomew Angus, was sentenced to ten years’ transportation, to New South Wales, for leading a Chartist riot in Edinburgh. Folk are . . .”