Shanghai (49 page)

Silas remembered standing for what seemed like hours with his father's hand on his shoulder. He didn't remember leaving the room—or when the rage came upon him.

—

The night before the race, Silas slipped into the Hordoon stables and moved to the stall of the family's prize mare. The animal eyed Silas with a barely concealed menace, but Silas walked into the paddock and slapped the horse hard on the rump. The animal hesitated, then shuffled aside.

“Good,” Silas said, careful to keep his voice down and his tone stern. He walked to the back of the stall where the hard tack was kept and pulled out the hand-carved leather saddle that Patterson loved so dearly. Then, using a small, sharp knife, he carefully cut several striations at various points of the saddle's cinch strap, which was
meant to secure the saddle to the horse's belly. He held the thing to the light, and his rage abated. Without the tension that the strap would experience once around the horse's midsection, his cuts could not be seen, even if someone was looking for them. Replacing the saddle in the hard tack box he said, “A little treat for you, Mr. Patterson, from your ‘lad'—and his monkeys.”

* * *

THE DAY OF THE RACE dawned crisp and clear, with a breeze from the east that brought the smell of the ocean to the thriving small city at the Bend in the River. The celebration began early with champagne breakfasts all over the Foreign Settlement and the French Concession. Suzanne was surprised to see customers arrive just after breakfast.
A little something before the race,
she thought. Jiang made ready for early customers, knowing that many Chinese, despite the fact that they were not allowed to attend, had wagered heavily on the race and were trying to guarantee their success with an early morning session of clouds and rain.

The racetrack itself threw open its doors at ten o'clock and the
crème de la crème
of the English, American, French, German, and even Russian communities pushed their way into the lavish facility. They oohed and aahed at the luxury all around them and quickly made their way to the betting windows.

By ten-thirty, over a quarter of a million British pounds had been shoved through the windows. But the real betting was on the side. Richard had taken bets from both Percy St. John Dent and Hercules MacCallum, but they were minor compared to the bet with the Vrassoons. And their bet was unique. It had nothing to
do with which horse won the race. It had only to do with which of their two horses outdid the other—a grudge match.

By eleven o'clock the few bars that had closed the night before had opened, and the excitement in the city ratcheted up as whisky added its own unique acceleration to human joy.

At noon the horses were finally walked out on the track to take their pre-race workouts, and a hush fell over the gathering crowd. Shanghai was used to superlatives—the best wines, the sheerest silks—but the horseflesh on the track in the bright morning sunshine was the finest collection of Thoroughbreds that hundreds of years of careful breeding could produce.

The Vrassoon rider walked beside the large, almost pure-white stallion and offered up sugar cubes as they promenaded around the track. The stallion stood a full two hands taller than any of the other horses on the track. The Vrassoons had kept their animal in a secret paddock all the way downriver at Woosung, so that no one knew much about the stallion. But everything necessary to know was openly on display as the powerful animal pulled hard at the reins, clearly anxious to race.

The Dent's rider noted the muscle of the Vrassoon stallion and then looked at his fine grey gelding, as the Jardine Matheson colt pranced by with its jockey holding the reins tight on his Orkney-bred steed.

The American horse was technically the entrant of Russell and Company, but as Russell's representative, a Mr. Delano, later confessed, “We at Russell's were just a front. Jedediah Oliphant was the money behind our entry. Because of his religious convictions he is opposed to gambling in all of its forms, but he would have killed himself if he'd been left out of the race, so he contacted
us, and, for a modest fee, Mr. Roosevelt and I fronted his Kentucky pony.” And the animal was a marvel—sleek and light of foot and probably the most beautiful animal on the track.

The Hordoons' mare was the last to make its entrance, surprisingly late, and the chocolate-coloured animal seemed to shy away from its rider to the point that the man dismounted and tried to coax it into walking by his side.

At twelve-thirty the bar at the racetrack opened, serving champagne on ice to all comers—and it did a brisk business—as did the betting windows, which by that time had taken in more than three-quarters of a million British pounds.

Then the first set of betting odds were posted, and the lines in front of the betting wickets doubled.

The Vrassoon horse was almost even money, followed by the American horse, then farther down the other three horses.

Side betting came out in the open as the water trap jump was filled and the three hedge jumps were pulled into position. The horses left the track for their final preparations.

The day grew hot, but no one even thought of leaving as the clock clicked slowly toward race time: one o'clock.

—

Silas noted that he was the only non-Chinese on the Bund Promenade that day. Across the water, the challenge of the Pudong stared back at him. He'd never been there, but there were stories, such stories about that bit of Shanghai! He approached a five-spice egg seller and
purchased one of her products. The old seller was pleasantly surprised with Silas's fluent Mandarin and told him as much. He balanced the hot thing between the tips of his fingers as he took a bite out of the top. His teeth scraped just the edge of the hardened yolk, as he had been taught to, allowing the flavoured white of the egg to mix with the dense taste of the yolk. He smiled as he heard the chatter around him. And he took it all in: the peasants squatting on their haunches, planning the next moves in their complicated lives; the rickshaw boys sitting in the shade of their conveyances; the old man on the ground surrounded by the heels of women's shoes while he cobbled an ancient shoe back into use; the four elderly men moving like shadows across the pavement as they performed the moves of their Tai Chi exercises in perfect unison; the man selling delicate wrens and hummingbirds in bamboo cages; the two young men playing Go on a board drawn on the pavement itself, surrounded by other men offering unsolicited advice; a woman carrying a large wreath of flowers destined to be draped across the doorway of a new business for good luck; men, their backs stacked high with parcels or furniture or equipment or cages of live animals or garbage pails or water on poles—men carrying the world itself on their backs. And Silas took it in and it made him smile. Shanghai—his Shanghai—his home.

He turned toward the Pudong and a shiver went up his spine. Instantly he turned back toward the city and heard the roar of hundreds of voices from the direction of the racetrack. He ran to the nearest rickshaw and in rapid Shanghainese shouted, “To the racetrack, as fast as you can!”

A loud gunshot started the race. As soon as the horses hit stride, the Vrassoon rider pulled hard on his stallion's left rein, forcing him to cross in front of the Hordoons' mare. The smaller animal veered, then shied away toward the rail. For a moment the mare lost her gait, then she sorted herself out and headed after the pack of horses that was now several lengths ahead of her.

The other three horses wisely moved away from the big white stallion and raced toward the first of the three hedge fences, with the American horse the first to reach the low hedge.

Oliphant was cheering so loudly that the other members of the House of Zion were taken aback. But he turned to them and screamed, “God's horse! Cheer on God's horse, for God's sake!” The fact that, through Mr. Delano, he had placed what he called “a modest, truly modest wager” on his horse—some seventy thousand British pounds—had nothing whatever to do with his enthusiasm.

The low hedge posed no problem for the American pony, which leaped over the obstruction as simply as a child skips a step while running down stairs. The Vrassoon stallion seemed to gain as he left his feet to clear the obstruction, followed closely by the horse from Dent's and then the Orkney pony of Jardine Matheson, which cut toward the rail as soon as it cleared the hedge and quickly passed the Dent's horse. Then, five full lengths back, the Hordoon mare approached the hedge.

Hercules managed to step on his own gout-afflicted foot when his rider did as he had ordered and passed the Dent's pony on the rail. “Ride,” he shouted, “ride for Scotland!”

—

The Hordoon jockey felt his mare find her stride on the far side of the first of the three hedges and smiled as he thought back to the day's events in the Hordoon stable. Then he whooped a characteristic whoop and grabbed a handful of the mare's mane and shouted, “That'a girl. Good girl, Rachel.”

—

The second hedge, about twice the height of the first, was in the jockey's line of sight as Silas threw money at his rickshaw boy and ran toward the entrance of the Hordoons' racetrack.

—

The American horse was the first to the hedge and just cleared it, with the top of the obstruction rubbing across the animal's belly. The American rider adjusted to the change in mid-air and the horse landed perfectly balanced and shot forward toward the third obstruc-tion—the water jump.

The Vrassoon stallion sailed over the second hedge, its powerful flanks providing more than enough lift to clear the barrier. His front hooves hit ground only half a length behind the American pony.

Quickly after the Vrassoon stallion, the Jardine Matheson Orkney pony raced toward the barrier, then suddenly ducked its head, throwing the rider into the hedge. The hooves of the Dent's horse just missed the fallen rider's head, and when the Dent's rider looked back he was surprised that the Hordoon mare had passed him in mid-air—and raced after the two front-runners.

The third obstacle, the water jump, was approaching quickly, and much to everyone's surprise, while the American pony was in mid-air clearing the water, the Vrassoon stallion made no effort whatsoever to jump and instead raced through the pool, which the Vrassoons had made sure was only six inches deep rather than the traditional three feet. Seeing the Vrassoon stallion, the Hordoon rider let out his reins and urged his mare on through the water.

They were now on the far side of the track beginning the long turn toward home. Only the large hedge remained. The Vrassoon stallion led by two lengths, but the Hordoon mare was closing fast.

—

Silas spotted his father and ran up the aisle to him. With all the noise, Silas couldn't hear the words his father was shouting. Then he looked past his father and saw Patterson. Patterson! Silas whipped around to face the track, and over his shoulder he heard his father's voice shouting, “Milo! Yes, Milo! Catch him Milo! Ride that mare, Milo!”

And Silas's heart sank as the horses made the last wide turn, Milo now only a length behind the Vrassoon horse as they headed toward the large hedge.

Milo, no, not Milo
.

—

Milo sensed it. He didn't know what, but something was different. Some odd smell in the air. Then he dismissed it—it was the anticipation of the race. All the
planning, all the excitement. Each of the great trading houses backing a horse, and the mammoth purse that his father had put up and all the betting and all the people—it must be that, just that. Then he smelled it again, and so did the Hordoons' prize mare in her stall.

“Easy, Rachel,” Milo said, but the powerful animal's eyes were wild and she reared, kicking out with her front legs against the wooden slats of the paddock. “Easy,” Milo cooed to the animal. Suddenly the horse turned in the stall and slammed her powerful back hooves against the stall's gate. “No, Rachel, no,” he shouted. Then he smelled it again. A dry, musky, acidic smell in the air.

Had Milo asked a Chinese peasant, he would have been told what the reek was—the smell of change. But there were no Chinese workers in the Hordoons' stables. All the work there was done by the Hordoons, some of Maxi's old irregulars, and of course Patterson, who even now came running down the centre aisle of the stable, shouting, “Leave that animal alone, boy.”

Milo took a step back from the mare. Patterson opened the gate and swacked the horse hard across the nose. “No, me lovely, we'll none of that.” Then he moved past the horse and got his prized saddle out of the hard tack box.

“Trouble, gentlemen?” Richard said as he came into the stable.

“No, sir, no trouble.”

“I hope not. It's race day. Race day,” he repeated happily. “Where's your brother, Milo?”

“I don't know, Father.”

The mare shied away from Richard. “Easy, Rachel, easy,” he said as he put his hand on the animal's smooth flank. As he did, he continued to speak softly
to the animal and run his hands along her back. Then he slipped the bit into her mouth and tossed the reins over her neck. “What's gotten into her?”

“She smells something,” said Milo.

“Nonsense,” snarled Patterson. “What does an animal smell, do you suppose, lad? She's just excited about racing, like me.” Patterson hoisted the saddle up on the mare's back.

Milo looked to his father and was about to ask, “Don't you smell it, Father?” when the mare reared suddenly and kicked out. Her right fore hoof caught Patterson beneath the chin and the man crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Milo grabbed the reins and yanked hard, turning the powerful animal's eyes to his. The mare immediately calmed. Milo ran his hand up the horse's muzzle.

Richard pulled Patterson to his feet. The man had a hard noggin, and, unlike those whom he called monkeys, his bulldog Scottish body was built to take a fall. But the blow to his head had left him woozy and disoriented, so, over the man's vociferous objections, Richard sent him back to his home and turned to his son.