Cinnamon and Gunpowder (31 page)

The Cochin seaman interpreted: “They think you are the Brass Fox; they are ready to join your army.”

For once Mabbot had no witty reply. Her face curdled, and she left the boys kneeling in the dirt.

Mabbot started her search with the closest stilt house, bowing deeply as she poked her head in and inquired after a man named Huynh.

It seemed that each villager she spoke to wanted something for the information. Since we had already given away our food, it was slow going. Enormous flies kept biting the back of my neck.

As we walked past the huts, a woman sitting in a doorway, her body emaciated and covered with pox scars, clicked her tongue at me. She caught my eye and pulled her robe open to reveal a thin breast, offering herself.

I averted my eyes and hurried to catch up with the others.

“What happened here?” I asked Mabbot.

“Opium happened! Oh, missionaries and French militias did their part. But mostly this is a poppy blight. It works so well in India, why not grow it here? This is what I wanted you to see. This was a thriving market. I used to rely on this place. But now…” Mabbot spread her arms and twirled as she sang out in a gilded voice, “Opium!
Yāpiàn
!”

“Opium is not a magic spell,” I said. “Opium per se cannot do this. Sloth and greed, the weakness of men, do this.”

“Wind and your opinions,” she said. “Opium turns hardworking men into lizards. Isn’t that magic? Many here are addicted now, but it didn’t start that way. These hills used to be green. Rice paddies, melons, oxen, ducks. Then the warlords forced these families to grow opium exclusively and took all the profit for themselves. As a result, the farmers starved. Those who resisted were massacred. They smoke now to dull the hunger.”

Just as she entered another hut, I asked Mabbot if I could visit the church. She nodded at Feng, and he followed me up the dusty hill.

It was a mud-and-wattle construction with an arched door and flaking grey paint. Feng stayed outside with his eye on the stilt house while I went in. Even before I adjusted to the darkness, I could sense that the place was empty save for the flies. I dipped my fingers into the urn of dingy water and crossed myself. The nave was littered with kneeling benches. The confessional was little more than an upright casket with a turmeric-colored curtain. Flies circled before the crucifix, which was rough-hewn and gory. I knelt on one of the benches with some difficulty.

“I am sorry for having offended Thee,” I whispered. “I detest my sins, and I dread the loss of heaven…” I trailed off. The chapel of our orphanage was a simple place; even so, my heart was inevitably soothed the minute I entered it. Now I felt nothing but a growing sense of unease. Never had I seen a church as desolate as this. But wasn’t this fitting for me now, rank as I was, forgetting my wife during moonlit strolls with a brigand?

I rose, clumped toward the apse, and chuckled at what I saw there: a potbellied pig and a mangy pye-dog sleeping together on the floor of the altar. I lay down next to them on the cool bricks, and they made room for me. I felt the muscles of my neck relax. It was very quiet, blessedly so, and I closed my eyes. Then Feng hollered, “Wedgwood!” It seemed Mabbot had finally found her man.

By the dour faces on the family crowded into the hut, it was clear that Mabbot’s smuggler was on his deathbed. Most of them left to make room for us, but one young woman sat at his feet, gripping his swollen ankles, as if defying us to take him from her.

His sunken cheeks were pallid, and I could smell the rot on his breath even from where I stood near the door, an almost sweet stench, like the paste found at the bottom of an apple barrel.

“Mabbot,” he whispered as she knelt by the cot. “I’m no good.”

“I can see that, Huynh. I guess you won’t be taking us into Macau.”

“Be careful, the Brass Fox has people everywhere now.”

“Tell me.”

“He steals opium from Pendleton warehouses, he has smugglers, tunnels, and he trains even fishermen to fight. He has an Indian woman with him—she was part of the Bengali uprising. She has thousands of farmers ready to fight with her. People call him ‘hero,’ they say he’s going to free them from Pendleton. I have cousins sworn to him. They say the day is coming.”

We all waited while the man recovered his breath. When Mabbot put her hand on his brow, the young woman at his feet stood, scowling.

Huynh said something in Cochin, and she sat again. “He wants to stop the Pearl River trade,” said Huynh, “the tea, the spice, the silk, the opium—everything.”

“Impossible.”

“If enough smugglers and farmers stop work, the warehouses will stand empty. They have the harbors…” We waited while he coughed. “They are close enough to slit the right throats. It would take months for Pendleton to bribe new harbormasters. If he controls the river, he can strangle the trade, at least long enough to make a real panic in the investors. You know all of Europe would jump at a chance to squeeze into England’s territory.”

“But why?”

“They say to free the people.” The man chuckled, a dry papery sound. “Sounds like something you’d do.”

“But it doesn’t sound like the Fox.”

“Maybe he’ll surprise you.” The laughter became coughing, and suddenly the man was exhausted. “Either way, he’s going to make a mess of things. Why not let him?”

“You know I can’t do that, Huynh.” Mabbot placed a hand on his shoulder. “What do you need?”

“If Grandmother can’t cure me…”

“She’ll outlive us all,” said Mabbot.

“Maybe something for my family.”

Mabbot withdrew a small sack of coins from her coat and, without hesitation, handed it to the young woman, who received it with a stunned expression, then quickly bowed.

Mabbot touched his shoulder again and said, “Goodbye, Huynh, we’ll play cards together in the next world.”

“And I’ll let you beat me like I always did—you’re a terrible loser,” said the dying man as we ducked into the light.

We made our way beyond the meadow to Huynh’s grandmother’s: a tiny hut overhung by moss-choked boughs. The toothless crone waved us in. Mr. Apples, too big for the door, stood guard outside.

Mabbot offered a live pheasant in the sack, which I realized was the very one I had been planning to stuff for Sunday’s dinner. I was about to object when Mabbot, via the translator, addressed the old woman: “Thank you for seeing me again. I’m sorry, but we have no chicken. Will this do?”

The crone reached into the sack and removed the pitiful bird, which had molted in its agitation.

Mabbot laid a large map of the South China Sea upon the dirt floor of the hut and weighed its corners with stones. She also gave the old woman a gold coin.

Mabbot pointed to the Macanese island of Coloane. “Is the man I’m looking for there?”

The crone shooed us until we had pressed ourselves against the walls of the hut, then she sat before the map. Holding the pheasant upside down, she rocked with her eyes closed, muttering to herself. The pheasant became quiet and closed its eyes as well.

Then she twisted the head of the bird cleanly off and let it run in blind circles, leaving a wet calligraphy upon the map. It hit the wall of the hut between my legs, where it loosed its bowels and finally collapsed.

What had I expected, on an outing with pirates, than to witness a satanic ritual?

The old woman threw slivers of etched bone across the map, and then she and Mabbot consulted it.

The witch placed a curled nail on the island that was now bracketed between a bone and an arc of blood.

“Is he telling the truth?” asked Mabbot. “Is he there now?”

“He is waiting for you. He is there, but not telling the truth.”

“The man doesn’t wait. Where will he go next?”

“He will wait. But it is
 … very dangerous.” The witch picked up a bone and tapped the markings on it. “This is bad.”

Friday, October 22

Last night my slumber was traded wholesale for a series of upsetting events.

With the witch’s bloody warnings tainting our course, the
Rose
is finally en route to the rendezvous with the Fox, moving relentlessly through the pitch toward Macau. As if Laroche and the naval patrols were not enough to make me long for English shores, our own crew, it seems, is now more dangerous than ever.

In the deep of the night I was getting the only sleep I would get, worn out from the walk to the witch’s hut, when I became aware of a figure in my cell. At first I thought it a dream, but after a period I was convinced that a person was indeed standing near the door watching me as I slept. When I reached for a candle, Mabbot said, “Good, then, you’re awake. I’m not the only one who can’t sleep on a night like this.”

I had no idea what kind of night she meant; in my cell, nights were much the same. I was groping for a match to light the candle when Mabbot, without hesitation, sat upon me in my hammock, forcing me to make room for her. Wine from the bottle she was wielding sloshed upon my face. She said nothing, just sat there with her back to me and her legs dangling over the edge, leaving me in a most awkward position. After a time I heard that she was weeping quietly.

“My boy,” she whispered, “my Leighton!”

Completely unnerved by this scenario, I resorted to a tactic most common in prey animals: I froze and hoped to be forgotten. Eventually, though, Mabbot lay down in the hammock with me and passed out completely.

Her snoring filled the darkness and I squirmed to extract myself without waking her, no small feat, as she had left little room between me and the wall. When I had finally untangled myself and confirmed that she was still asleep, I strapped on my peg and left the chamber in nothing but the stained canvas sack I used as a nightshirt, quite unsure of my plans.

One may accuse me of protesting too much, and no doubt, under different circumstances, I may have taken time to be tempted by base motives with a woman thus undone in my bed. I was all too aware, though, that Mabbot is no milkmaid. Those who trifle with her tend to meet dramatic ends.

Unable to think of any other option, I made my way across the chilly moonlit deck to the officers’ berth, a narrow chamber on the starboard side of Mabbot’s cabin where the twins and Mr. Apples slept. I rapped upon the door.

I stood at some distance from the berth with my hands up, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible. When Feng answered, I said, “The captain is … indisposed … in my cell. Please help me.”

Very soon we had made it back to my room, where the twins tsked and muttered while lifting the captain from my hammock.

This confusing development would have been enough to keep me sleepless for the rest of the evening, but, as it turned out, we weren’t the only ones awake. As the twins carried Mabbot through the purgatory lamplight of the lower deck, an explosion shook the air. The clamor woke even Mabbot, who blinked in horror at what we saw as we emerged above deck: the steerage blooming with flame.

As every hand crowded the decks in confusion and Mr. Apples called for buckets to quench the flames, it became clear that we were not under attack; the moon was bright and the only thing upon the water with us was the dark line of the Cochin China coast. It could mean but one thing: a saboteur was among us.

Someone had pilfered a cask of black powder and set it off just below the wheel. By luck the helmsman was resting in his cot and relatively unharmed, but the wheel itself had fallen through the deck and was in shambles. Only by a swift bucket line was the conflagration smothered.

When one has been a long time upon the sea, one would rather see blood hemorrhaging from one’s own navel than to see a hole in the deck. Men worked in shifts to jury the rudder, holding their breath as best they could through the smoke.

Mabbot refused to go to her cabin and, somewhat sobered, brought her great stuffed chair to the deck and said, “If aught has a fight to pick with me, best they do it here in public, like men.”

Trying to stay out of the way of the sailors rushing fore and aft, I crouched behind Mabbot’s chair. In a brief respite between shouting orders, Mr. Apples and Mabbot conferred in hoarse whispers.

“We’re close enough for someone to row back to shore,” said Mr. Apples, “but all boats are accounted for, Captain.”