Shanghai (6 page)

Then everything moved quickly. The Manchus' bannered troops raced forward and the battle was joined. But the Chinese weaponry was not up to the task. Many men carried only rattan shields with painted heads of devils or wild animals on them for protection. Some wore tiger-head caps. Neither was any match for a bullet manufactured in Manchester or Leeds. The Chinese had no artillery worthy of the name. Their muskets were of the antique matchlock design and were as likely to send the small-calibre shot backward as forward. Cromwell had used better weapons when he'd forced the King from his throne two hundred years earlier. And although it was the Chinese who had invented gunpowder, they hadn't perfected it. Twice Maxi had set full kegs of Chinese gunpowder alight only to find the damage done was less than what two of his rifle men could have inflicted in five minutes.

After an initial successful foray, Maxi had moved his irregulars to one side. He had real appetite for a fight but none for a slaughter.

“They will fight the way they fight, Maxi. Nothing more,” Richard said at last.

“Won't they fight to protect their homes?”

“Why should they? Invaders have come before—shite, Tartars rule them now—but China remains as Chinese as ever, and I think it always will. Eventually the Middle Kingdom opens its legs and simply takes us in.”

Maxi wanted to pursue this, but Richard turned away, thinking,
Fifteen years, fifteen years to get here.

During that time he had had more direct dealings with common Chinamen than any other foreigner. He spoke their languages better than any non-Chinese except the accursed Jesuits, who were now
persona non grata
in the Middle Kingdom, and he and Maxi had ventured up the coast well before the others. A fact that made them no friends in the world of the English, Scottish, and American opium traders in Canton.

The first time he'd set foot in Shanghai, Richard had known it was the key to everything for which he had worked. He had performed a full kowtow before the purple-robed chief government official, the Mandarin—the
Ch'in-ch'ai—
and then invited him onboard his ship. The man had declined his offer but was clearly interested in the Foreign Devil who spoke the Common Tongue. Through the Mandarin, Richard met Chen, and things had begun—things, plans. For the next two years he'd devoted himself to learning their complex dialect. Even with his tremendous facility for languages, he had found it hard going—but rewarding. And he had kept the glorious harbour at the Bend in the River at the centre of his plans. And now they were here.

“Say that thing about spreading the legs again, brother mine. It's a nice change to hear you talk of such things,” Maxi said, showing off his large white teeth.

“They'll put up a show. But they don't think they need to defend themselves against barbarians like us. We'll win the battle and get what we think we want. But ultimately we'll do their bidding. It has always been thus here.”

“You're a God-eating philosopher, brother.”

And you're enjoying all this too much,
Richard wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He would need his
brother's fury if he were to break free of the detestable House of Vrassoon and trade in the China smoke on his own terms up here in Shanghai. For he had no doubt that once the port was open, once the fighting was done, the mongrel Vrassoons would be there with their self-serving rules and their political friends in London, their damnable monopoly on direct trade from England to China, and their base of power in India. Their cohorts in crime, the Kadooris, might even follow them, using their monopoly on rubber in Siam to wedge their way into the new market—and no doubt this
was
the new market. Not the old Canton routes that were littered with outstretched palms at every turn demanding squeeze. No. Now that the British navy had been lured into war there would be new treaty ports. And these new treaty ports, especially Shanghai, would offer real access to the interior—and the north of China, the heart of the Celestial Kingdom.

He sighed.
Patience,
he thought.
Patience.
It had taken him a decade and a half to get here; a few more years meant nothing. Soon he'd have a foothold, and his twin boys would join him, just up ahead, at the Bend in the River.

The Village of Shanghai December 1841

T
HE
B
ODY
G
UARD

“It hurts, Papa.”

“Don't touch it, and it will heal more quickly.”

“But it hurts.”

Despite himself, the Body Guard said softly, “Yes, it does.” He smiled at his ungainly son. The boy, if left alone, would spend all his time with their baby cormorants. He refused to hunt, reluctantly fished, and only went through the motions of his fighting lessons so he could return to the birds. Often the Body Guard found the boy in the bird coop singing to the young chicks. He would have slept with the birds if his father
had permitted it. The boy's gentleness won the birds' hearts—and grudgingly his father's as well.

“Ouch!” the boy said as he picked at the scab.

“Leave it alone and allow it to heal.”

“But it hurts.”

“And it will for the rest of your life.”

“For the rest of my life?”

The boy's shocked expression made the Body Guard laugh out loud. “Come,” he said. He held out his left hand. The tattooed cobra on the back of his hand stood out even more starkly than usual in the rising sun.

The Body Guard's son made his way carefully to the stern of the rocking boat where his father sat, the handle of the wedge-shaped piece of carved wood that acted as both paddle and rudder held securely in his other hand. The boy knew better than to ask his father to leave his position of control of the boat while their birds were still underwater fishing.

“Why do I have to have this?” the boy said, pointing at the tattoo.

“Because you are the eldest.”

“But what if I don't want it?”

The Body Guard remembered a similar conversation he had had with his own father almost twenty-five years before. At the time, he had taken some solace when his father said, “It may mean nothing. It hasn't meant anything for more years than anyone can count. It will have meaning only when the White Birds on Water approach.”

He reached over and patted his son's cheek, feeling the velvet softness of his skin.

The boy, for a moment, enjoyed his father's touch, then moved his head away from the callused, rough palm. “It's not funny, Papa, it hurts.”

“I know it does, son. Once we call back our cormorants, put your hand in the water. It's cold enough to help.”

“Is mine going to be a cobra like yours?”

“Yes, once the scab comes off.”

“What does it mean, Papa?”

He was about to repeat what his father had said to him, then stopped himself. The signs were everywhere. The first of the White traders had arrived at the Bend in the River on the very day of his grandfather's birth. Since then there had been English and Portuguese traders who had anchored offshore from time to time, but none brave enough to break the Manchu law against setting foot on the sacred soil of the Celestial Kingdom. Thanks to the traders, there was now opium to be had in the village. Not much, but some. Through darkened windows, pigtailed Chinese men with shaven foreheads could be seen sucking on long bamboo reeds. The arrival of the raving Black Robe with his stupid book fifteen years ago had raised more alarms—perhaps a further sign. Now there were two of them in the village—but they were not White Birds on Water. Three years ago Commissioner Lin's men had actually boarded an English trading ship in Canton Harbour and thrown twenty thousand opium caskets into the sea. Afterwards, Commissioner Lin had organized formal prayers begging the water's forgiveness for polluting it. The tale was told as a show of Chinese power, but the Body Guard thought of it as just another sign of the approaching darkness.

The eldest cormorant broke the water's surface not four feet from the boat. The Body Guard slapped the gunwales twice and the bird approached. Reaching over the side, he carefully plucked his old friend from the cold waters of the Yangtze.

As he put the bird on the plank in front of him, he noticed the lack of new moult and the frayed tail feathers. He reached out and touched the metal ring around the base of the bird's neck that stopped the cormorant from swallowing his catch. Then he smoothed down the bird's neck feathers and applied a gentle pressure just above the neck ring. Two wriggling, plump fish burped up the bird's neck, out of its mouth, and onto the bottom of the wooden boat.

The boy quickly picked up the fish and packed them into the reed basket at his side.

The Body Guard looked from the old bird to his young son—one ending, another just beginning.

He had sculled his slender carrack out farther than usual, past where the Huangpo River emptied into the mighty Yangtze. The current here was strong and the water cold. Good for fishing at this time of year, but treacherous. The light was growing all around them. He had no desire to be caught in the open water when the sun was fully awakened.

He reached into the water and slapped the side of the boat three times, hard. Quickly his four remaining birds made their way to the boat. He pulled on the rudder and turned the boat so that the side with the birds was away from the Yangtze and toward the much calmer Huangpo. “Come, help me,” he told his son. “It's time to bring breakfast home for your mother and brother.” He reached into the water and plucked out one young cormorant, then a second. “Pinch out the fish and put them in the basket.” He didn't at first notice that his son hadn't responded. He quickly lifted the last two birds from the cold Yangtze water, then turned to the boy, who was standing on the boat's single plank seat with his hand over his eyes, looking toward the rising sun.

“Help me, boy.”

“Papa, what are those?”

His eyes followed his son's outstretched hand and there, coming out of the rising sun, just taking the large bend of the mighty Yangtze, were four massive ships in full sail—their decks and sides draped with white canvas.

These were not the trading ships he had seen before. These were warships heading upriver toward Nanking. But it wasn't even that which so concerned the Body Guard. He drew his son close to him and held him tight as their boat rocked in the wash from the four great fighting ships.

“What is it, Papa? Why are you afraid?”

“I'm not afraid, son,” he said, although he felt the blood rush into the cobra tattooed on his hand and the one he had never shown his son, which was etched in scar tissue on his back.
So it has begun,
he thought.
All the stories from my father and grandfather of the Narwhal Tusk and a task for our family. Finally the day has come.
He instinctively rubbed the tattooed cobra and stretched his fingers. Then he thought of his younger brother's son and made a tight fist. The cobra's hood opened as the blood gushed into the veins on the back of his hand—and made the scar tissue on his back turn a flaming red. The cobras were gorged and ready to strike, to choose which of the boys was strong enough to carry the family's responsibility, carved into the surface of the Narwhal Tusk.

“Sit by me, son. Your test is approaching. It is time for me to explain the tattoo on the back of your hand.”

T
HE
C
ONFUCIAN

He saw them first reflected in his great-grandfather's ebony writing stone, which he had mounted on the
wall of his study. The white image glided across the darkness of the stone.

He carefully allowed the ink from his brush to return to the well on his desk, then powdered the document he had just finished. He waited for the ink to set, then shook off the powder. It sifted to the polished hardwood floor. He rolled the rice paper and sealed it with a wax imprimatur from his ring—the etching of a scholar sitting beneath a tree in a concubine's garden—then placed it atop a small pile of other scrolls.
Few of the candidates would be admitted to the civil service from this lot,
he thought. Over the years he had noticed a marked decline in qualified candidates. It had worried him, but looking up at the white reflections moving stately across the darkness of the ebony writing stone, it occurred to him that his worry was severely misplaced.

He took a deep breath and turned away from the reflections and walked out onto the balcony that overlooked the north reach of the Yangtze.

The glistening of a crane's expansive wings in the first rays of the rising sun drew his eye. He watched as it gracefully descended to the point where the great river made its final turn toward the sea. Shortly the bird melted into a tiny black dot on the horizon. He leaned against the hardwood railing and smelled the incoming ocean—and waited.

Something came around the bend in the river. Everything shifted. And there they were, four great men-o'-war, four masts apiece, in full sail. Four white birds on water—and he knew they would not be the last. Without thinking, he fell back into the patterns that his grandfather had written of in the ancient journal.
Do not be fooled by the exterior of a thing but do not ignore it either. See the thing—breathe in the thing—then sense its vital

essence. Speak that essence aloud to understand what you have seen. Then write in the book what you have spoken.

He spoke. His voice was strong and carried on the morning wind. “Ships, within whose cannons is the explosive stuff of change.

“So it has begun at last—the prophecy, the Ivory Compact, is finally in motion. The Age of White Birds on Water is upon us.” He took his brush and made an entry in the secret journal that had been passed down to him by the previous Confucians of the Ivory Compact.

The cries of birds drew his eyes from his writing.