Cinnamon and Gunpowder (15 page)

“We’ve had our differences, but I cannot manage this next part without her. You will tell her that. Remember my face. She must believe it was really me you’ve met today. You will tell her everything, won’t you?”

I found myself nodding.

The Fox then whispered something to Kittur, kissed her, and went to the fore to peer east with a spyglass. She tossed me a small apple, which I ate in two bites. It was gone before I knew it and tasted better than anything I had ever put in my mouth. I was suddenly very tired. The instrument was again in her hands, and she began to play a song that sounded like the bombinating of a thousand bees.

Her voice was so lush that she seemed to be singing. “He’s a great man. Did you see it in the eyes of the ship hands? They adore him.” Her spectacles glinted in the sun.

“Madam, I assure you, I care not. I wish only to be returned to my life.”

“Men who long for the past are already dead. Look to the future, Owen.”

It was then that the lookouts called, “Sail ho!”

Leaning from the shade of the canvas awning I saw, in the rain-smudged northeast, the seed of a ship growing. The men on the masts called, “
Rose
!”

“Fly! Fly west!” the Fox shouted.

“The wind is with her,” said the helmsman.

“That will change when she is abreast. We have twice her speed running. Stay the course.”

The
Rose
advanced at an alarming rate as we beat windward with sickening lurches.

“How did she find us?” I asked Kittur.

“Her crow’s nests are three times higher than ours. She probably spotted us as soon as we changed course.”

I was so weak from my trial at sea that I feared a battle would be the end of me. No matter where I stood on the tiny deck, I was nearly trampled by the lascars lunging with lines or moving in a tight choreography to tack now starboard, now port. The schooner heeled at a frightening angle as we pushed into the wind. I found myself gripping the belay pins to keep my footing.

Soon the
Rose
was directly east of us, perhaps a mile distant, and changing her course to beat, as we were, against the weather. Almost immediately she began to fall behind as the schooner outpaced her.

I was making my way down the companionway to relative safety below deck when I heard the Fox yell, “Jettison the cook!”

The very men who had kindly pulled me from the sea now grabbed my arms and dragged me to the aft railing. There the Fox said, “Give the man a barrel!” and shook my hand as if we had just shared a pint as friends. “Here is the message: Tell her that it’s time we worked together. I have a few things I need to set in order first, but she must meet me in Macau, on Coloane Island, northeast of the ruined temple. Follow the riverbed past the rocky hills to San Lazaro. There is a tavern there called the Serpent’s Tail. Repeat it.”

“Coloane Island, northeast of the temple—”

The Fox nodded to his men.

“No, wait!” I found myself in the water again, this time hugging an empty apple barrel.

To my horror, both ships were moving steadily away from me as the
Rose
followed the
Diastema
northwest. For ten desperate minutes I thrashed, pushing the barrel before me and hollering like a sea lion. Then, glory, the prow of the great ship slowly turned as if noticing me. I realized that the
Rose
was, of course, tacking; what I had seen as moving away had, in fact, been the backswing of a wide serpentine course that came to sweep me up on its next pass. If the
Rose
had been running a narrow course, I would have been left, a grain in the field, and so I thanked God for tacking.

Rope ladders were unfurled against the hull for me to cling to as the
Rose
loomed. I had not made it halfway up the ladder with quivering arms when Mabbot screamed down at me, “Was that the Fox?”

“Aye,” I croaked.

“Louder, man, and tell me—was it?”

As it was taking all of my withered strength not to fall from the ladder, I looked up at her and nodded. At her calls for redoubled speed, the bells rang out, and I could hear above me the crew tumbling about the deck trying to wring every drop from the adverse winds.

As I threw myself over the bulwarks to collapse upon the planks, the Fox’s schooner was already shrinking toward the horizon. The climb left me completely flaccid, and once upon the deck, I curled up, unable even to shiver.

“We’ll not catch her, Captain,” Mr. Apples shouted.

“Here’s an ugly fish,” I heard Mabbot say above me. “Let’s hope he tastes better than he looks.” She nudged me with her boot and said, “Did you think I’d go without Sunday’s feast?” When I didn’t respond, she kicked me in the ribs. “Wedge, you had better have some information for us.”

Even as I groaned, the twins dragged me to Mabbot’s cabin, where, fighting to keep the apple from coming back up, I told her the entire tale. Mabbot paced in a tight circle as I related what the Fox had said. “If not for my bungled escape,” I added, “we would have missed the man entirely.”

“
Work together?
” Mr. Apples laughed. “Did the Fox say that? Captain, that smells strongly of horseshit. I can fairly taste it.”

“But there
is
a plan here. Something ambitious—I can almost see it—tunnels in Canton, a patchwork army of angry men.” Mabbot was kneading her temples with her knuckles. “He’s captured with a gang of smugglers by Captain Jeroboam—which shows he’s overreaching, getting reckless. After escaping the penal island, he flies east to regroup with his colleagues, deny rumors of his capture, set his things in order … then heads for the South Atlantic again to recruit slaves from the Congo. Who is he fighting if he needs men in every sea? But now he’s changed course again—”

“It was Ramsey dead,” I said. “That sealed it. He said plans had to be accelerated now.”

“But what is he up to? Fetch Braga—he’s been more reticent than I’d like.”

Braga was brought to the cabin and stood with his hands folded behind his back like a soldier at ease. The man had been pilfering garlic from the galley; even from where I sat in my puddle of seawater, I could smell that his grey-streaked beard was rank with it.

“You haven’t told us everything you know about these tunnels,” said Mabbot.

Braga was quiet for a moment, and I felt sympathy for his position. Only minutes before, I had been obliged to spew everything I knew to stay alive. Braga, though, managed to keep his dignity as he spoke with quiet calm.

“The tunnels we dug are not just for smuggling. The Fox is filling the chambers with a massive cache of black powder.” He paused. “Directly under the Barbarian House.”

This meant something to Mabbot, for her jaw dropped.

“Sounds like something you’d try, Cap’m,” said Mr. Apples.

“He calls it his
insurance
,” said Braga. “Beyond that, I know what you know—that he has spent his gold building a guerrilla army.”

“But where is this army?”

“In the washing rooms of barons, in the cotton fields, in the holds of junks. On every continent, his fighters are waiting for the call to bring the opium empire crashing down. Pendleton has raised the army for him—slaves, lascars, starving farmers, opium addicts, smugglers risking torture and death for pennies. All waiting to feast on the corpse of Pendleton.”

“But Pendleton has never been in better health.”

“The weight of the entire Oriental trade rests on one rotten peg: the smugglers who bring the opium into Canton. Without them, Pendleton would have to go back to paying precious British silver for their tea. The empire would crumble. How many of the smugglers now follow the Fox? And he knows the price of every corrupt official who has dipped his toe in the Pearl River—he can give that rotten peg a push. And then, of course, he has his insurance.”

“But even if he could break Pendleton’s back, how would he stand to profit? He has never been much for selfless acts,” said Mabbot. “And now this invitation to join him in Macau.”

Braga shrugged.

“Your life depends on your honesty, Mr. Braga,” said Mabbot. “If you have anything else to tell us, this is your last chance.”

He only shook his head. Mabbot opened the door for him herself, and he left.

“With every answer, we get a sack of questions,” said Mr. Apples.

“But we know the Fox is about to stage something dramatic,” said Mabbot. “We know I am featured in it. What do you think my role is, water nymph? Mrs. Macbeth? He’s got something grand in his skull.”

“It’s a show I’d rather miss.”

“Heavens, no—orchestra seats, Mr. Apples. Anyway, we have our headings now, don’t we?” said Mabbot. “And damn his fast ship, we can take our ease getting there. The men are itchy for a plunder anyway. First to Cochin China, then straight on to Macau.”

“But it’s a poison pie he’s offering, for sure, Captain. A poisoned horseshit pie.”

“I’ve noted your concern. Have you noted the heading?”

“Aye.”

“Then to it.”

When Mr. Apples left, Mabbot turned a sad gaze on me and asked, “Tell me, did you see my boy smile?”

I am now of a small cadre in the know: Mabbot, Mr. Apples, the twins, and myself. Of course Mabbot assured me it would mean my death if I spoke of her son to another soul, and given how she has kept her crew in the dark about it for so long, I take her at her word.

9

THE
PATIENCE

In which many are punished

When I was feeling strong enough to walk again, I found the pinnace lashed as securely as ever with my sack of provisions still stowed discreetly under the seat, this journal undiscovered. After fishing a new pair of boots from a barrel of discarded and mouldering clothes, I went to make my peace with my saviors.

I owe my rescue ultimately to two men. The first is old Pete, the weathered ancient who watches the waves. After Mr. Apples found my cell empty in the morning, it was this old Pete’s inscrutable reckoning that led the
Rose
back to find me. Mabbot had circled for a few hours in the waters where I should have been, and it was there that they spotted the
Diastema
on the horizon, recognizing it from the description the prison guards gave.

I offered the old man figs, but he eats only salted sardines with rice and that in the tiniest amounts. I sat with him but could not tell if he valued my company. His simple smile does not leave his face in any circumstance, even as he took in my scarlet nose and sun-blistered lips. He is as benign as a teapot. The events of the last few days have been brutally humbling, and sitting near this man in his wicker chair as he stares at the water does nothing but humble me further. I upbraid myself for not having recognized, at first sight, a saint in the flesh.

The other man is a more complicated story. Mabbot told me that Asher, the graveyard watch chief, had been ordered to “make right” my escape. The poor man hadn’t slept, and it was he who finally spotted the
Diastema
from the nest. I made him a few savory griddle cakes of pounded cornmeal with onions, topped with slices of pickled herring. I found him moping silently in his hammock. He would not look at me, and when I handed him the plate, he threw it against the wall.

Joshua showed up for his reading lesson as if there had been no intermission, and I was glad for it. He showed me the mother-of-pearl inlaid box of ink and quills Mabbot had given him, but when I opened it, I screamed and dropped it; he had stashed a dead rat inside.

At first, Joshua’s laugh frankly unsettled me, but when I hear it now, I cannot help but join in, even after juvenile pranks like this. In a world that feels, day by day, more soiled and fraught, Joshua’s laugh can wash a room clean.

He brought too a tattered leather-bound Bible. It was a dramatically simplified missionary translation, with no sentence longer than ten words, but I held it to my forehead for a long moment before we sat.

Our reading lesson began, as any should, with Genesis. Translating these primal stories by gesture and drawing was arduous work. Joshua made it no easier. While his reading is confoundingly slow, his wit has the devil’s speed. No sooner had a sentence been laid out than he had some objection to it. He knows many of these stories already, but he resists them with heathen vigor. The stick figure I made to represent Abel’s wife he practically obliterated with question marks. In addition, he wanted to know who made God, and didn’t He have a stick to kill the serpent with?

I set him to the task of copying sentences. For our next lesson I’ll put together a less inflammatory curriculum. I think I’ll ask the boy to write about his own family.

As I watched Joshua making the tentative loops and spears of the alphabet, I fought a strong urge to wrap my arms around him and pull him to my chest. I was worried for him; he was so thin and this sea life so treacherous. A reverie sprang up in my mind: I saw my late beloved Elizabeth at the door with her apron full of greens, I saw over her shoulder the apricot tree in bloom, I saw even the squirrel she fed despite the havoc it brought to the garden, and there at the kitchen table was Joshua, hunched over his letters, playing the part of our own son.