Shanghai (5 page)

The Master Carver left the workshop. From the other side of the high wall he heard the chatter from the open-air hot-water shop and the distant song of the dumpling hawkers. For a moment he thought of leaving the family compound and calling over one of the street vendors, who would cook up a dumpling-and-soup meal right there for him. But he decided against it and made his way past the storage shed toward the compound's bamboo stand. Pushing his way through the dense front row of canes, he stepped into an open, grassy glade. To one side was a sheer wall of rock covered with vines. He pulled back the dense vegetation and descended the steep concealed stairway there.

At the bottom of the stairway he used his hands to guide him along a long corridor that was cut from the rock itself. Twice he hit his head on outcroppings from
above, but he did not dare light a taper. Finally the passage took a sharp turn to the right, and then a long gentle curve to the left, and opened to a wide, tall space.

He pressed down on his cane, stood up to his full height, and lit the torch affixed to the wall. The large, beautifully crafted mahogany box, sitting on its stone stand in the centre of the chamber, seemed to draw the light.

The Master Carver took a deep breath of the mineral-rich air and thought,
First the
Fan Kuei
ships sail up our coast, then they dare enter the great river. Maybe now is the time.

When the Round-Eyed barbarians had begun to arrive in the south down by Canton, almost four generations ago, some of the Chosen's descendants had believed it was the time of White Birds on Water. But the Master Carver of that time had rejected this conclusion. Although the arrival of the British and their ludicrous desire to trade trinkets was a new reality in the Manchu-ruled Middle Kingdom, it was not the appointed time.

The Long Noses had tried to trade with the Middle Kingdom for many years thereafter but had always been rebuffed. What did these intensely ugly men have to offer China? Their goods were inferior to those readily available throughout the Middle Kingdom. Their manners were appalling, few spoke even the rudiments of the Common Speech, and none could read.

The Carver flipped open the latches of the mahogany box on the stone pedestal. They made reports like a firecracker in the underground space. He paused and then opened the case. The Narwhal Tusk, now deeply yellowed with age, nestled on its plush purple silk pad. Perhaps his talented son would be the one who would
have to make a replica of the Tusk. Hopefully he would be up to the task.

The Carver leaned down and looked in the first of the three windows in the Tusk: hundreds of Han Chinese men with shaved foreheads and pigtails seemingly dancing with long reeds in their mouths. “What must have seemed fanciful back then is common now,” he said aloud to the empty space.

The arrival of the pale foreigners' opium did not begin the Age of White Birds on Water, although it was surely the precursor of change. The Master Carver of that time had indeed readied himself. But although there was noted change in some of the Middle Kingdom, there was no real change here. Not at the Bend in the River, where the black cloud in the sky had led the first Carver. There had even been sightings of a very young, violent, teary-eyed general from Beijing. But not here—not in the agricultural backwater where they had been told—no,
promised
—that the rebirth would happen.

Everyone in the Middle Kingdom felt the creep of the darkness that had begun some three or four generations before.

But Q'in She Huang's order was to allow the darkness in. To foster it. Just as only the brutality of winter cleanses the earth for the spring's planting, so the darkness would have to deepen to permit the arrival of the light.

And the darkness was surely intensifying. The Confucian, who was the nominal proconsul for the district, had lost one of his sons to the drug, and his overly proper wife was so addicted that she once sold herself to a cotton merchant to get the money she needed for her daily pipes. The Confucian, no doubt, thought that the predicted darkness had already arrived.

But it was not the Age of White Birds on Water. Not yet.
There is no darkness here,
the Master Carver thought,
but the time approaches.

The Master Carver allowed his fingers to trace the supple firmness of the ivory, lingering on the centre section for just a moment. Only in ivory could such carving exist. Only its malleable density, its exquisite solidity could permit such work. And narwhal was the purest form of ivory in the world—and so very hard to find. Almost thirty years ago he had secured a tusk and stored it away carefully should it ever be needed to produce a replica. Now he wondered if it would.

Q'in She Huang's vision in the Tusk had last been seen by the Chosen Three over seventy years ago, when the first Round Eye had ventured into the hamlet. His black robe and raving made him a source of laughter for most of the village's residents, but not for the descendants of those who were bound by the Ivory Compact.

Even as this Jesuit was making a grotesque mockery of the Common Tongue, to the delight of the hamlet's children, the Chosen Three sought out the Carver and viewed again the “life within”—the vibrant tableau of figures beneath the filigree inscription: The Age of White Birds on Water.

But that was so long ago that once again—as the Carver had hoped—the very existence of the Tusk had fallen first into dispute, then into open ridicule. Secrets were best thought to be nothing but whimsy.

I feel it is near,
the Carver thought,
and will shortly be upon us. The darkness and pain will begin. We must endure this. The three descendants of the Chosen must force this darkness on the people if the rebirth is ever to come to pass.

The Carver took a deep breath, then closed the box and snapped the latches shut. He was tempted to take
the Tusk out of its box a second time and stare at the future, but he resisted temptation and walked back into the corridor. There, deep in a crack in the rock, was a large statue. The Carver put the torch in front of it and knelt in prayer—prayer to the man who had first enlisted his ancestor to carve Q'in She Huang's vision in the Tusk and then had protected his ancestors from the wrath of the teary eyed rebel general—Q'in She Huang's Head Eunuch, Chesu Hoi.

Shanghai was little more than a large trading village at the Bend in the River in 1841. It would soon change—for the worse.

The Yangtze River December 1841

The great swaths of white sails draped on the sides of the British man-o'-war, HMS
Cornwallis,
rippled in the breeze with the dawning light. With the rising sun at its back, the expanse of white canvas provided a degree of camouflage for the great fighting vessel—and those that followed. After narrowly avoiding a confrontation near Woosung at the mouth of the Yangtze, the British had taken precautions. They had finally realized the significance of entering a main artery that could lead directly to the heart of China.

The wind picked up and the halyards snapped to. Overhead the mizzen-mast's sails caught the wind
first and swelled. They were quickly followed by the fore-course, topsail, and topgallant, and the great ship heeled hard to port, its miles of hemp rope drawn taut, its block-and-tackle systems straining to keep control as its starboard canvas and flying jibs flapped wildly.

All eyes on the ship were trained on the water ahead. All but those belonging to Richard Hordoon, the Expeditionary Force's translator. His eyes were locked on the text of a letter from the famous English opium eater Thomas De Quincy. He read the great man's beautifully penned words several times, folded the letter, and placed it carefully in his personal journal. Then he strode to the port rail on the quarterdeck, stared ahead at the approaching bend in the river, and smiled. The wide arc of the mighty Yangtze, as it swung past the mouth of the Huangpo River, was the best natural harbour Richard had ever seen.

A two-man Chinese junk came about and nestled into the side of the ship. Maxi, his face and bare arms covered in engine room grease, pulled himself up, hand over hand, on the rope hung from the quarterdeck, spotted his brother Richard, flung his arms open, and called out, “Mission accomplished! Another damned engine works as well as a Baghdadi farts.”

Richard shook his head and signalled his brother to follow him astern.

Maxi's antics drew sidelong looks from several mariners and a few of the officers. Two of the senior midshipmen stepped forward, but Maxi turned to them and challenged them in Yiddish. “Something to say to me, gentlemen?”

The midshipmen muttered something about decorum, but the red-haired Jew ignored them. Although the
British didn't like Maxi, they needed him. Not just because he was a genius in a boiler room—and the new steamships were proving temperamental in China's tropical heat—but also because he led the expedition's irregulars—a fighting unit that in a hundred years would be called guerilla fighters. The British army had learned much since its disgraceful defeat by the Americans in 1776 and the ensuing stalemate in 1812. Its leaders understood that fighting in formation was still a powerful battlefield tactic, but the regimental stand, shoot, kneel, and reload approach to warfare needed to be supported by advance attack teams that had to be local. Since the British didn't trust the Chinese, let alone the Manchus, the next best thing was this noisome Mesopotamian Jew and his band of opium traders—the irregulars.

Maxi's men always preceded the Expeditionary Force on the battlefield. Sometimes they scouted; more often they tested enemy defences and emplacements and reported back to Admiral Gough. Sometimes they didn't bother reporting back. They took some casualties, but not many. Maxi knew his men. He even knew some of their children. They all worked for the Hordoon trading company out of Canton. These men were the “unwanted,” not good enough for the classier opium traders, like the Dents, the Jardine Mathesons, the Oliphants, and the damnable Vrassoons. These men owed their very existence to the ingenuity of the Hordoon brothers, and they knew it. They understood Maxi and thought of him as one of them—an outcast. He never recklessly endangered their lives, and yet he never shied away from a legitimate fight. He knew how to lead, and they followed.

Maxi caught up to his older brother near the stern of the quarterdeck just past the gig, the Captain's personal
boat, which sat on iron deck crutches, its suspension launch wires looped like coiled snakes on a pair of side bollards. Over Richard's shoulder he saw Admiral Gough on the command deck, a full seven storeys above the orlop deck where Maxi and his men were billeted.

Richard was leaning against a deck winch, with one foot on a brass capstan. He stared at the shoreline.

“What do you see, brother mine?”

“Eyes, Maxi. Eyes watching.”

“The Chinamen always watch, Richard, so what's so different now?”

These eyes are expecting us,
Richard wanted to say, but he stepped away from his brother. Some thoughts were too dangerous, even for family. Family. He allowed himself the luxury of thinking about his twin boys in Malaya, already so strong and wiry at three. They were evidently a handful for their
amah.
Them so strong, and at the end their mother so weak. An image of his wife's final gasps for life in the birthing room came to him, as it did so often.

“Boys, Sarah, two boys,” he'd said. But her eyes were wild with fear and pain. She'd grabbed him by the hand and yanked him down to her, then spat out, “Why? What have you done, Richard? What have you done?” He'd pulled his arm free and her fingernails had left four crimson lines on his forearm. He tried to calm her, “Sarah, please …” but she'd shrieked back at him, “Tell me, what have you done?” She'd died in the bed, but her pain-contorted face and her terrified question—“What have you done?”—lived on in Richard's head.

Like so many other questions,
he thought.

“Do you think they'll fight, or will it be more of that marching up and down
mishagas
?”

“What …?”

“Will the Chinese fight this time or just do that parading nonsense?” Maxi repeated.

The extraordinary pre-battle theatrics of the enemy had taken them all by surprise. The Chinese appeared that first morning on the battlefield wearing elaborate Chinkiang silks and then proceeded to parade up and down and slap each other on the back as a few of the soldiers pantomimed acts of supposed ferocity. It seemed that the Chinese believed that all they had to do to win a battle was to behave as if they were already victorious. Evidently they felt that the actual details of the fighting were beneath their concern, so they left them to the imagination of their enemy. Why bother with the fine points if you have already won the engagement? Their display lasted for almost ninety minutes.

When, apparently much to the surprise of the Chinese, the British didn't turn tail and run, the Celestials began the second act of their little war drama. Soldiers wielding ancient swords and shouting strange cries and various terms of opprobrium moved forward and performed somersaults and other acrobatic feats—all from a distance, but well within firing range of the fully arrayed forces of the British Expeditionary Force.

Maxi, as the leader of the irregulars, was closer to the show than the army itself and was shocked when he heard shots—two of them—whistle over his head. Instantly the closest acrobat-warrior paused in the air, mid-somersault, and, as if someone had cut his strings, crashed to the ground, his ancient sword beneath his body. And lay very, very still. Maxi sprang to his feet to see which of his men had fired, disobeying his orders, and was astounded to see the Queen's man, the
diminutive Pottinger, jumping up and down in celebration thirty yards behind him.

“Bagged him. Bagged him like a partridge, I did.” The man's upper-class lisp seemed to saw through the heavy air.