Then he went below.
“All’s well, luv,” he said. Liza was stationed like a rock in front of the children’s cabin.
“Thank you, Tyler,” she said and put down the pistols. “Were it bad?”
“Passing bad. It be the bullion. Pirated in harbor! In harbor! There beed English among pirates. I killed one, but the leader, godrot him, he slipped away. The kids all right?’”
“Yes. They be inside. Asleep now.” Liza hesitated. “I think I’d better talk to thee.”
“We be talkin’, baint we?”
She walked down the corridor gravely, to the main cabin. He followed her, and she closed the door.
At three bells Brock came on deck again. The fog had lessened but the wind had fallen off. He sniffed and tasted it and knew that soon the wind would freshen again and by morning the fog would vanish. “Gorth, let’s below and check the cargo.”
“None of those gallows-fornicating bait got below, Da’!”
“We be looking anyways. You come too, Nagrek.”
Brock picked up a lantern and they went to the hold.
“There! The door be still bolted,” Gorth said, his wound racking him.
Brock unlocked the door and they went inside. He set the lantern on the bullion and relocked the door.
“Have thee lost thy senses, Da’?” Gorth said.
Brock was looking at Nagrek.
“What’s amiss, Mr. Brock?” Nagrek was petrified.
“Seems that Nagrek’s been fingering thy sister, Gorth. Tess.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t, by God,” Nagrek burst out. “I didn’t at all!”
Brock picked up the cat-o’-nine-tails that hung on the wall of the hold. “Seems he went to her cabin while she sleeped and then woked her and played with her.”
“I didn’t touch her. I didn’t harm her. I didn’t by God,” Nacrek cried. “She askt me into her cabin. She askt me. This afternoon she askt me. She did, by God.”
“So you was in her cabin!”
Gorth lunged for Nagrek and cursed with pain as the pitch of the wound in his side parted. Nagrek fled for the door, but Brock shoved him back.
“Yo’re a dead man, Nagrek!”
“I didn’t harm her I swear to God I swear to—”
“You put yor stinking hands under her shift!”
The cat clawed Nagrek again and again as Brock drove him deeper into the hold. “You did, by God, didn’t you?”
“I swear to God I didn’t touch her. Doan, Mr. Brock. Please. It were no harm done—I’m sorry—I only touched her—there were nothing more—nothing more.”
Brock stopped, his breathing spasmodic. “So it were true. You heared, Gorth?” Both men sprang at Nagrek, but Brock was faster and his fist smashed Nagrek unconscious. He pushed Gorth away. “Wait!”
“But, Da’—that scum . . . ”
“Wait! Yor ma said the poor lass were afeared to say anything at first. Tess be thinking because he touched her there now she be going to have child. But Liza sayed Tess still be virgin. He only touched her, praise be to God!”
When Brock had caught his breath, he stripped Nagrek and waited until he was conscious. Then he cut away his manhood. And beat him to death.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You wanted to see me, Father?” Culum’s face was stark.
Struan was standing on top of the knoll, the binoculars around his neck, knife in his belt, a bunched fighting iron on the ground. He had watched Culum come ashore and walk into the valley and climb the knoll. The wind had broomed the sky clean and the sun on the horizon brought the promise of a fine day.
Struan gestured below. “The view’s good from here, eh?”
Culum said nothing. His knees were jelly under the flame of his father’s eyes.
“Do you na agree?”
“The church will—everyone will be—”
“I know all about the church,” Struan interrupted. “Did you hear about Brock?” The voice was too soft, too calm.
“What about him?”
“He was pirated in the night. Pirates cut his cable and he drifted ashore. Then they boarded him. Did you na hear the shooting?”
“Yes.” Culum was oppressed and spent. Sleepless nights, and then realizing that he alone could save them, then deciding and tricking Longstaff. “But I didn’t know it was that.”
“Aye. Pirated in Hong Kong harbor. Soon as the fog had cleared I went alongside. Brock said he’d lost seven men and the captain.”
“Gorth?”
“Nay. Nagrek Thumb. Poor man died of his wounds. Gorth was cut but not badly.” Struan’s face seemed to harden. “The captain died defending his ship. That’s the way to die.”
Culum bit his lip and looked around the knoll, his heart pounding. “You mean that this is my Calvary?”
“I dinna follow you.”
“Captains dying defending their ships? This is my ship—this knoll—isn’t that what you mean? Are you asking me if I want to die defending this?”
“Do you?”
“I’m not afraid of you.” The words rasped out of Culum’s parched throat. “There are laws against murder. I can’t fight you, and you can kill me, but you’ll hang for it. I’m unarmed.”
“You think I’d kill you?”
“If I got in your way, yes, and I have got in your way, haven’t I?”
“Have you?”
“You used to be God to me. But in the thirty days I’ve been here I’ve come to know you for what you are. Killer. Murderer. Pirate. Opium smuggler. Adulterer. You buy and sell people. You’ve sired bastards and you’re proud of them and your name stinks in the nostrils of decent people.”
“What decent people?”
“You wanted to see me. I’m here. Tell me what you want and let’s have done with it. I’m tired of playing mouse to your cat.”
Struan picked up his haversack and set it on one shoulder. “Come on.”
“Why?”
“I want you in private.”
“We’re alone now.”
Struan motioned with his head at the ships at anchor. “There’re eyes there. I can feel them watching us.” He pointed at the foreshore dotted with Chinese and Europeans. Traders were pacing out their lots. Children were already at play. “We’re being watched everywhere.” He pointed to a hilltop in the west. “That’s where we’re going.”
The hill was almost a mountain. It rose to thirteen hundred feet, rocky and sparse and brooding.
“No.”
“It is too far for you?” Struan saw the hatred in Culum’s face and waited for an answer. There was none. “I thought you were na afraid.”
He turned away and walked down the knoll and onto the rising shoulder of the mountain. Culum hesitated, fear consuming him. Then he began to follow, dominated by Struan’s will.
As Struan climbed, he knew that he was playing another dangerous game. He did not stop or look back until he had gained the crest of the mountain. It was windswept and gaunt. He looked back and saw Culum struggling far below.
He turned his back on his son.
The panorama was vast. Awesomely beautiful. The sun high in the blue sky and the Pacific sea a blue-green carpet. Brown-green mountains of the islands were jutting from the sea carpet, Pokliu Chau to the southwest; Lan Tao, the huge island, bigger than Hong Kong, fifteen miles westward; and the hundreds of small, barren islands and bleak rocks that surrounded the Hong Kong archipelago. The ships in harbor were clear in his binoculars, and north was mainland China. He could see fleets of junks and sampans tacking up the Lan Tai channel heading for Hong Kong’s western approaches. More were sailing back into the Pearl River estuary. North and south and east and west there was sea traffic: frigates on patrol, fishing junks, sampans, but no merchantmen. Well, he thought, a few weeks and the end of the second war and then the merchantmen will dominate the sea.