Sea of Poppies (12 page)

Through the Reverend's influence, Benjamin Burnham found a position as a clerk with the trading firm of Magniac & Co., the predecessors of Jardine & Matheson, and from then on, as with every other foreigner involved in the China trade, his time was divided between the two poles of the Pearl River Delta – Canton and Macao, eighty miles apart. Only the winter trading-season was spent in Canton: for the rest of the year the traders lived in Macao, where the Company maintained an extensive network of godowns, bankshalls and factories.

‘Ben Burnham did his time, offloading opium from receivingships, but he wasn't the kind of man who could be happy on another man's payroll, drawing a monthly tuncaw: he wanted to be a nabob in his own right, with his own seat at the Calcutta opium auction.' As with many another Fanqui merchant in Canton, Burnham's church connections were a great help, since several missionaries had close connections with opium traders. In 1817, the year the East India Company gave him his articles of indenture as a free merchant, an opportunity presented itself in the form of a team of Chinese converts who had to be escorted to the Baptist Mission College in Serampore, in Bengal. ‘And what better man to bring them in than Ben Burnham? Before you know it, he's in Calcutta, looking for a dufter – and what's more he finds one too. The good old Roger of Rascally gives him a set of chabees to a house on the Strand!'

Burnham's intention in moving to Calcutta was to position himself to bid in the opium auctions of the East India Company: yet it was not the China trade that provided him with his first financial coup; this came, rather, from his boyhood training in another branch of the British Empire's commerce. ‘In the good old days people used to say there were only two things to be exported from Calcutta: thugs and drugs – or opium and coolies as some would have it.'

Benjamin Burnham's first successful bid was for the transportation of convicts. Calcutta was then the principal conduit through which Indian prisoners were shipped to the British Empire's
network of island prisons – Penang, Bencoolen, Port Blair and Mauritius. Like a great stream of silt, thousands of Pindaris, Thugs, dacoits, rebels, head-hunters and hooligans were carried away by the muddy waters of the Hooghly to be dispersed around the Indian Ocean, in the various island jails where the British incarcerated their enemies.

To find a kippage for a convict ship was no easy matter, for many a seaman would heave sharp about at the prospect of signing on to a vessel with a cargo of cutthroats. ‘In his hour of need, Burnham broached his business by calling upon a friend from his chocolateering days, one Charles Chillingworth, a ship's master of whom it would come to be said that there was no better manganizer at large on the ocean – not a single slave, convict or coolie had ever escaped his custody and lived to gup about it.' With Chillingworth's help, Benjamin Burnham seived a fortune from the tide of transportees that was flowing out of Calcutta, and this inflow of capital allowed him to enter the China trade on an even bigger scale than he had envisaged: soon he was running a sizeable fleet of his own ships. By his early thirties, he had formed a partnership with two of his brothers, and the firm had become a leading trading house, with agents and dufters in such cities as Bombay, Singapore, Aden, Canton, Macao, London and Boston.

‘So there you are: that's the jadoo of the colonies. A boy who's crawled up through the hawse-holes can become as grand a sahib as any twice-born Company man. Every door in Calcutta thrown open. Burra-khanas at Government House. Choti hazri at Fort William. No BeeBee so great as to be durwauza-bund when he comes calling. His personal shoke might be for Low-Church evangelism, but you can be sure the Bishop always has a pew waiting for him. And to seal it all, Miss Catherine Bradshaw for a wife – about as pucka a memsahib as ever there was, a brigadier's daughter.'

The qualities that had made Ben Burnham into a merchant-nabob were amply in evidence during his tour of the
Ibis
: he examined the vessel from stem to stern, even descending to the keelson and mounting the jib-boom, noting everything that merited attention, either by way of praise or blame.

‘And how does she sail, Mr Reid?'

‘Oh she's a fine old barkey, sir,' said Zachary. ‘Swims like a swan and steers like a shark.'

Mr Burnham smiled in appreciation of Zachary's enthusiasm. ‘Good.'

Only when his inspection was over did the shipowner listen to Zachary's narrative of the disastrous voyage from Baltimore, questioning him carefully on the details while thumbing through the ship's log. At the end of the cross-examination, he pronounced himself satisfied and clapped Zachary on the back: ‘Shahbash! You bore up very well, under the circumstances.'

Such reservations as Mr Burnham had concerned chiefly the lascar crew and its leader: ‘That old Mug of a serang: what makes you think he can be trusted?'

‘Mug, sir?' said Zachary, knitting his brows.

‘That's what they call the Arakanese in these parts,' said Burnham. ‘The very word strikes terror into the natives of the coast. Fearsome bunch the Mugs – pirates to a man, they say.'

‘Serang Ali? A pirate?' Zachary smiled to think of his own initial response to the serang and how absurd it seemed in retrospect. ‘He may look a bit of a Tartar, sir, but he's no more a pirate than I am: if he was, he'd have made off with the
Ibis
long before we dropped anchor. Certainly I couldn't have stopped him.'

Burnham directed his piercing gaze directly into Zachary's eyes. ‘You'll vouch for him, will you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘All right then. But I'd still keep a weather eye on him, if I were you.' Closing the ship's log, Mr Burnham turned his attention to the correspondence that had accumulated over the course of the voyage. M. d'Epinay's letter from Mauritius seemed particularly to catch his interest, especially after Zachary reported the planter's parting words about his sugar-cane rotting in the fields and his desperate need for coolies.

Scratching his chin, Mr Burnham said, ‘What do you say, Reid? Would you be inclined to head back to the Mauritius Islands soon?'

‘Me, sir?' Zachary had thought that he would be spending several months ashore, refitting the
Ibis
, and was hard put to respond to this
sudden change of plan. Seeing him hesitate, the shipowner added an explanation: ‘The
Ibis
won't be carrying opium on her first voyage, Reid. The Chinese have been making trouble on that score and until such time as they can be made to understand the benefits of Free Trade, I'm not going to send any more shipments to Canton. Till then, this vessel is going to do just the kind of work she was intended for.'

The suggestion startled Zachary: ‘D'you mean to use her as a slaver, sir? But have not your English laws outlawed that trade?'

‘That is true,' Mr Burnham nodded. ‘Yes indeed they have, Reid. It's sad but true that there are many who'll stop at nothing to halt the march of human freedom.'

‘Freedom, sir?' said Zachary, wondering if he had misheard.

His doubts were quickly put at rest. ‘Freedom, yes, exactly,' said Mr Burnham. ‘Isn't that what the mastery of the white man means for the lesser races? As I see it, Reid, the Africa trade was the greatest exercise in freedom since God led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Consider, Reid, the situation of a so-called slave in the Carolinas – is he not more free than his brethren in Africa, groaning under the rule of some dark tyrant?'

Zachary tugged his ear-lobe. ‘Well sir, if slavery is freedom then I'm glad I don't have to make a meal of it. Whips and chains are not much to my taste.'

‘Oh come now, Reid!' said Mr Burnham. ‘The march to the shining city is never without pain, is it? Didn't the Israelites suffer in the desert?'

Reluctant to enter into an argument with his new employer, Zachary mumbled: ‘Well sir, I guess . . .'

This was not good enough for Mr Burnham, who quizzed him with a smile. ‘I thought you were a pucka kind of chap, Reid,' he said. ‘And here you are carrying on like one of those Reformer fellows.'

‘Am I, sir?' said Zachary quickly. ‘I didn't mean to.'

‘Thought not,' said Mr Burnham. ‘Lucky thing that particular disease hasn't taken hold in your parts yet. Last bastion of liberty, I always say – slavery'll be safe in America for a while yet. Where else could I have found a vessel like this, so perfectly suited for its cargo?'

‘Do you mean slaves, sir?'

Mr Burnham winced. ‘Why no, Reid. Not slaves – coolies. Have you not heard it said that when God closes one door he opens another? When the doors of freedom were closed to the African, the Lord opened them to a tribe that was yet more needful of it – the Asiatick.'

Zachary chewed his lip: it was not his place, he decided, to interrogate his employer about his business; better to concentrate on practical matters. ‘Will you be wishing to refurbish the 'tween-deck then, sir?'

‘Exactly,' said Mr Burnham. ‘A hold that was designed to carry slaves will serve just as well to carry coolies and convicts. Do you not think? We'll put in a couple of heads and piss-dales, so the darkies needn't always be fouling themselves. That should keep the inspectors happy.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Mr Burnham ran a finger through his beard. ‘Yes, I think Mr Chillingworth will thoroughly approve.'

‘Mr Chillingworth, sir?' said Zachary. ‘Is he to be the ship's master?'

‘I see you've heard of him.' Mr Burnham's face turned sombre. ‘Yes – this is to be his last voyage, Reid, and I would like it to be a pleasant one. He has suffered some reverses lately and is not in the best of health. He will have Mr Crowle as his first mate – an excellent sailor but a man of somewhat uncertain temper, it must be said. I would be glad to have a sound kind of fellow on board, as second mate. What do you say, Reid? Are you of a mind to sign up again?'

This corresponded so closely to Zachary's hopes that his heart leapt: ‘Did you say second mate, sir?'

‘Yes, of course,' said Mr Burnham, and then, as if to settle the matter, he added: ‘Should be an easy sail: get under weigh after the monsoons and be back in six weeks. My subedar will be on board with a platoon of guards and overseers. He's had a lot of experience in this line of work: you won't hear a murmur from the thugs – he knows how to keep them shipshape. And if all goes well, you should be back just in time to join us on our Chinese junket.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir?'

Mr Burnham slung an arm around Zachary's shoulders. ‘I'm telling you this in confidence, Reid, so hold it close to your chest. The word is that London is putting together an expedition to take on the Celestials. I'd like the
Ibis
to be a part of it – and you too for that matter. What'd you say, Reid? Are you up for it?'

‘You can count on me, sir,' said Zachary fervently. ‘Won't find me wanting, not where it's a matter of effort.'

‘Good man!' said Mr Burnham, clapping him on the back. ‘And the
Ibis
? Do you think she'd be useful in a scrap? How many guns does she have?'

‘Six nine-pounders, sir,' said Zachary. ‘But we could add a bigger gun on a swivel mount.'

‘Excellent!' said Mr Burnham. ‘I like your spirit, Reid. Don't mind telling you: I could use a pucka young chap like you in my firm. If you give a good account of yourself, you'll have your own command by and by.'

Neel lay on his back, watching the light as it rippled across the polished wood of the cabin's ceiling: the blinds on the window filtered the sun's reflection in such a way that he could almost imagine himself to be under the river's surface, with Elokeshi by his side. When he turned to look at her, the illusion seemed even more real, for her half-unclothed body was bathed in a glow that swirled and shimmered exactly like flowing water.

Neel loved these intervals of quiet in their love-making, when she lay dozing beside him. Even when motionless, she seemed to be frozen in dance: her mastery of movement seemed not to be bounded by any limits, being equally evident in stillness and in motion, onstage and in bed. As a performer she was famed for her ability to outwit the quickest tabla-players: in bed, her improvisations created similar pleasures and surprises. The suppleness of her body was such that when he lay on her, mouth to mouth, she could curl her legs around him so as to hold his head steady between the soles of her feet; or when the mood took her, she could arch her back so as to lever him upwards, holding him suspended on the muscular curve of her belly. And it was with a
dancer's practised sense of rhythm that she would pace their lovemaking, so that he was only dimly aware of the cycles of beats that governed their changes of tempo: and the moment of release, too, was always utterly unpredictable yet totally predetermined, as if a mounting, quickening
tál
were reaching the climactic stillness of its final beat.