Tai-Pan (62 page)

“Yes, lord,” she whispered, biting her lips.

“You dare to get clothes made behind my back and dare to wear them wi’out my approval, by God? Well, 
do you?
”

“Yes, lord.”

“I’ll sell you tomorrow. I’ve a mind to throw you out now, you miserable motherless whore! Kowtow! Go on, kowtow, by God!”

She blanched at his fury and kowtowed quickly. “Now keep kowtowing until I come back!” He stormed out of the room, and went into the garden. He jerked out his knife and selected a thin bamboo from a newly planted grove. He cut it and slashed the air and rushed back into the living room.

“Take your clothes off, you miserable slave! I’m going to flog you till my arm hurts!”

Trembling, she stripped. He seized the dress from her hand and threw it aside.

“Lie down there.
^v
He pointed at the ottoman. She did as he ordered. “Please no to whip me too hard—I’m two months with child.” She buried her head in the ottoman.

Struan wanted to take her in his arms, but he knew that this would make him lose face in front of her. And a whipping was the only way to give her back her dignity.

So he slashed her buttocks with the bamboo. Hard enough to hurt, but not to damage. Soon she was crying out and weeping and squirming, but he kept on. Twice he deliberately missed her and slashed the leather violently, so that the noise was terrifying, for the benefit of Lim Din and Ah Sam who he knew would be listening.

After ten blows he paused and told her to stay where she was, and went over to the brandy bottle. He drank deeply, hurled the bottle against the wall, and resumed the whipping. But always with great care.

Finally he stopped and dragged her up by the hair. “Put on your clothes, you miserable slave!” When she was dressed, he bellowed, 
“Lim Din! Ah Sam!”

They were trembling at the door in an instant.

“Wat for nae tea nae food, you miserable slaves! Get food!”

He hurled the bamboo at the side of the door and turned back to May-may.

“Kowtow, you motherless wreck!”

Aghast at the limitlessness of his fury, she hastily complied.

“Clean yoursel’ and come back here. Thirty seconds or I’ll start all over again!”

Lim Din served the tea and though it was just right, Struan said it was too cold and threw the teapot against the wall. May-may and Lim Din and Ah Sam rushed away and hurried back with more.

The food came with incredible speed also, and Struan allowed himself to be served by May-may. She whimpered with pain and he shouted, “Shut up or I’ll whip you forever!”

Then he fell silent, ominously, and ate, letting the quiet torture them.

“Pick the bamboo up!” he screamed as he finished.

May-may fetched the bamboo and handed it to him. He prodded her in the stomach. “Bed!” he ordered harshly, and Lim Din and Ah Sam fled, secure in the knowledge that the Tai-Pan had forgiven his Tai-tai, who had gained limitless face by enduring his righteous fury.

May-may turned around tearfully and went along the corridor toward her quarters, but he snarled, “My bed, by God!”

She ran into his room. He followed and crashed the door shut, and bolted it.

“So, you’re with child. Whose child?”

“Yours, lord,” she whimpered.

He sat down and extended a booted foot. “Come on, hurry up.”

She fell on her knees and pulled off the boots and then stood beside the bed.

“How dare you think I’d want you to meet my friends? When I want to take you out of the house, I’ll tell you, by God.”

“Yes, lord.”

“A woman’s place is in the home. 
Here!
”

“Yes, lord.”

He allowed his face to soften a trace. “That’s better, by God.”

“I did na want to go to ball,” she said in a tiny whisper. “Only to dress like . . . I never want ball. How for go ball—never never want. Only to please. Sorry. Very sorry.”

“Why should I forgive you, eh?” He began to undress. “Eh?”

“No reason—none.” Now she was crying piteously, silently. But he knew that now was too soon to relent completely.

“Perhaps, as you’re with child, I may give you another chance. But it better be a son, not a worthless girl.”

“Oh yes—please, please. Please forgive.” She kowtowed and knocked her head on the floor.

Her crying was tearing at him, but he continued to undress sullenly. Then he blew the lantern out and got into bed.

He left her standing.

After a minute or two he said curtly, “Get into bed. I’m cold.”

Later, when he could stand her weeping no more, he put his arms around her tenderly and kissed her. “You’re forgiven, lass.”

She cried herself to sleep in his arms.

With the passing weeks spring became early summer. The sun gathered strength and the air became heavy with moisture. The Europeans in their regular clothes and long woolen underwear
—
and bustled dresses and whalebone corsets
—
suffered intensely. Sweat dried in the armpits and groin, and festering sores erupted. The usual summer sickness began
—
the Canton gutrot, the Macao flux, the Asian distemper. Those who died were mourned. The living stoically endured their torments as unavoidable tribulations sent by the good Lord to plague mankind, and continued to close their windows against the air which all believed carried the noxious gases that the earth emanated in summer; they continued to allow their doctors to purge them and leech them, for all knew that that was the only real cure for sickness; they continued to drink fly-touched water and eat flyblown meats; they continued to avoid bathing, which all knew was dangerous to health; and they continued to pray for the cool of winter, which would once more clean the earth of its more deadlier poisons.

By June the distemper had decimated the ranks of the soldiers. The trading season was almost over. This year huge fortunes would be made. With joss. For never had the buying and the selling been so extravagant at the Canton Settlement. The traders and their Portuguese clerks and their Chinese compradores, and the Co-hong merchants, were all exhausted by the heat but more by the weeks of frantic activity. All were ready to relax until the winter’s buying could begin.

And this year at long last, unlike any previous year, the Europeans were looking forward to summering in their own homes, on their own soil of Hong Kong.

Their families at Hong Kong had already moved from the cramped shipboard quarters to Happy Valley. Construction had boomed. Queen’s Town was already taking shape: streets, warehouses, jail, wharves, two hotels, taverns, and houses.

The taverns that catered to the soldiers were nesting near the tents by Glessing’s Point. Those that served the sailors were opposite the dockyard on Queen’s Road. Some of these were tents, crude, temporary structures. Others were more permanent.

Ships arrived from home bringing supplies and relatives and friends, and many strangers. And each tide brought more people from Macao—Portuguese, Chinese, Eurasian, European
—
sailmakers, weavers, tailors, clerks, servants, businessmen, sellers and buyers, coolies, job seekers or those whose jobs now forced them to Hong Kong: all who served the China trade, all who lived upon it, or fed off it. Those who came included madams, girls, opium users, gin makers, gamblers and smugglers and pickpockets and kidnapers and thieves and beggars and pirates
—
the dross of all nations. These too found dwellings, or began to build dwellings and places of business. Gin shops, brothels, opium cellars began to infest Queen’s Town and spot Queen’s Road. Crime increased violently, and the police force, such as it was, was engulfed. Wednesday became whipping day. To the enjoyment of the righteous, convicted felons were putilicly flogged outside the jail as a warning to the evil.

British justice, though quick and harsh, did not seem cruel to the Chinese. Public torture, and beatings to death, thumbscrews and mutilation and loss of eye or eyes or hand or hands or foot or feet, branding, flesh slicing, gar-roting, blinding, tongue ripping, genital crushing
—
all were conventional Chinese punishments. The Chinese had no trial by jury. Since Hong Kong was beyond the pale of Chinese justice, all criminals on the mainland who could escape fled to the safety of Tai Ping Shan and scoffed at the weakness of barbarian law.

And as civilization flourished on the island, refuse began to collect. With the refuse came the flies.

Water began to stagnate in discarded barrels, in broken pots and pans. It was cupped in bamboo scaffoldings, in the beginnings of gardens, and in the thin marsh of the valley basin. These small putrid waters began to seethe with life: larvae, which became mosquitoes. They were tiny, fragile and very special
—
and so delicate that they flew only when the sun was down: the Anopheles.

And the people in Happy Valley began to die.

“For God’s sake, Culum, I dinna ken any more than you do. There’s a killer fever down in Queen’s Town. No one knows what causes it and now little Karen’s got it.” Struan was miserable. He had not heard from May-may for a week. He had been gone from Hong Kong for almost two months, except for a hurried visit of two days, some weeks ago, when his need to see May-may overpowered him. She was blossoming, her pregnancy was without sickness, and they were more content with each other than they had ever been. “Thank the Lord our last ship’s gone and we’re leaving the Settlement tomorrow!”

“Uncle Robb says it’s malaria,” Culum said heatedly, brandishing Robb’s letter that had just arrived. He was frantic with worry over Tess. Only yesterday he had received a letter from her saying that she and her sister and mother had moved off the ship into Brock’s partially completed factory. But no mention had been made of malaria. “What’s the cure for malaria?”

“There is na one that I know. I’m no doctor. And Robb says only a few of the doctors think it’s malaria.” Struan waved the fly whisk irritably. “ ‘Malaria’ is Latin for ‘bad air.’ That’s all I know—anyone knows. Mother of God, if the air of Happy Valley’s bad, we’re ruined!”

“I told you not to build there,” Culum raged. “I hated that valley the first time I saw it!”

“By the blood of Christ, are you saying you knew in advance the air was rotten?”

“No. I didn’t mean that. I mean—well, I hated the place, that’s all.”

Struan slammed the window shut against the stench from the Settlement square and fanned more flies away. He prayed that the fever wasn’t malaria. If it was, the plague could touch anyone who slept in Happy Valley. It was common knowledge that the earth in certain areas in the world were malaria-poisoned and for some reason gave off lethal gases by night.

According to Robb, the fever had begun mysteriously four weeks ago. First it had struck the Chinese laborers.

Then it had afflicted others—a European trader here, a child there. But only in Happy Valley. Nowhere else on Hong Kong. Now four or five hundred Chinese were infected, and twenty or thirty Europeans. The Chinese were superstitiously afraid, certain that the gods were punishing them for working on Hong Kong against the emperor’s decree. Only increased wages had persuaded them to return.

And now little Karen was smitten. Robb had ended the letter: “Sarah and I are desperate. The course of the sickness is insidious. First a ghastly fever for half a day, then a recovery, then a more severe recurrence of the fever in two or three days. The cycle is repeated again and again, each attack worse than before. The doctors have given Karen as strong a calomel purgative as they dare. They’ve bled the poor child but we don’t hope for much. The coolies have been dying after the third or fourth attack. And Karen is so weak after the purgative and leeching, so very weak. God help us, I think Karen’s lost.”

Struan strode for the door. Good God, first the baby, now Karen! Sarah had given birth to a son, Lochlin Ross, the day after the ball, but the child had been born sickly, his left arm damaged. Her labor had been very hard and she had almost died. But she had escaped the dreaded childbirth sickness, and though her milk had turned sour and her hair had grayed, her strength had gradually returned. When Struan had gone back to see May-may, he had visited Sarah. The lines of anguish and bitterness had etched themselves deep into her face, and she looked like an old woman. Struan had been further saddened when he had seen the babe: useless left arm, sickly, crying piteously, not expected to live. I wonder if babe’s dead, Struan thought as he jerked the door open; Robb does na mention him.

“Vargas!”

“Yes, senhor?”

“Have you ever had malaria in Macao?”

“No, senhor.” Vargas whitened. His son and nephew worked for The Noble House and now they lived on Hong Kong. “Are they sure it’s malaria?”

“No. Only some of the doctors think so. Na all of them. Find Mauss. Tell him I want to see Jin-qua right smartly. With him.”

“Yes, senhor. His Excellency wants you to dine with him and the archduke tonight at nine o’clock.”

“Accept for me.”

“Yes, senhor.”

Struan closed the door and grimly sat down. He wore a light shirt without cravat, and light trousers and light boots. The other Europeans thought him mad to risk the devilish chills that all knew were borne by the summer winds.

“It canna be malaria,” he said. “Na malaria. Something else.”

“The island’s accursed.”

“Now you’re talking like a woman,” Struan said.

“The fever wasn’t there before the coolies. Get rid of the coolies and you’ll be rid of the plague. They’re carrying it with them. 
They’re
 doing it.”

“How do we know that, Culum? I’ll admit it started in the coolie lines. And I’ll agree they live in the low-lying parts. And I’ll agree that as far as we know you can only get malaria by breathing the poisoned night air. But why is there fever only in the valley? Is it only Happy Valley that’s got bad air? Air’s air, for the love of Christ, and there’s a fine breeze blowing there most of the day and night. It does na make sense.”