Tai-Pan

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Gorth came charging into the foyer of the Club like a wild bull, a cat-o’-nine-tails in his hands. He shoved startled servants and guests out of the way and crashed into the gaming room.

“Where be Struan?”

“I believe he’s in the bar, Gorth,” Horatio said, shocked by Gorth’s face and the cat that twitched maliciously.

Gorth whirled around and bolted across the foyer and into the bar. He saw Struan at a table with a group of traders. Everyone moved out of the way as Gorth strode up to Struan. “Where be Tess, you son of a bitch?”

There was dead silence in the room. Horatio and the others crowded the doorway.

“I dinna ken, and if you call me that again I’ll kill you.”

Gorth jerked Struan to his feet. “Be she on

China Cloud?”

Struan freed himself from Gorth’s grip. “I dinna ken. And if she is, what does it matter? Nae harm in a couple of youngsters—”

“You be planning it! You planned it, you scum! You tol’ Orlov t’marry ’em!”

“If they’ve eloped, what does it matter? If they’re married now, what does it matter?”

Gorth slashed at Struan with the cat. One of the iron-tipped tails sliced Struan’s face neatly. “Our Tess wedded to that pox-ridden rake?” he shouted. “You stinking son of a bitch!”

So I was right, Struan thought. You

are the one! He lunged at Gorth and grabbed the handle of the cat, but others in the room fell on the two of them and pulled them apart. In the melee a candelabrum on one of the tables crashed to the floor, and Horatio stamped out the flames which caught the fluffy carpet.

Struan ripped himself free and glared at Gorth.

“I’ll send seconds to call on you tonight.”

“I baint needin’ seconds, by God. Now. Choose yor god-rotting weapons. Come on! And after you, Culum. I swear to God!”

“Why provoke me, Gorth, eh? And why threaten Culum?”

“You knowed, you son of a bitch. He be poxed, by God!”

“You’re mad!”

“You baint covering up, by God.” Gorth tried to fight loose from the grasp of four men but could not. “Let me go, for Christ sake!”

“Culum’s na poxed! Why say he is?”

“Everyone knowed. He beed t’ Chinatown. You knowed it and that be why they’s gone—afore it be showing terrible.”

Struan picked up the cat in his right hand. “Let him go, lads.”

Everyone backed off. Gorth went for his knife and readied for a charge, and a knife seemed to appear in Struan’s left hand as if by magic.

Gorth feinted but Struan remained rock-still and let Gorth see for an instant all the primeval murder lust that was consuming him. And his pleasure. Gorth stopped in his tracks, his senses screaming danger.

“This is nae place to fight,” Struan said. “This duel’s na of my choosing. But there’s nae anything I can do. Horatio, would you be a second?”

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Horatio replied, conscience-stricken over the tea seeds he had arranged for Longstaff. Is this the way to repay a lifetime of help and friendship? The Tai-Pan sent you word about Mary and gave you a lorcha to come to Macao. He’s been like a father to you and her, and now you knife him in the back. Yes—but you’re nothing to him. You’re only destroying a great evil. If you can do that, then that will make up for your own evil when you face God, as you will.

“I’d be honored to be your other second, Tai-Pan,” Masterson was saying.

“Then perhaps you’ll come with me, gentlemen.” Struan wiped the trickle of blood from his chin and threw the cat over the bar and headed for the door.

“You be a dead man!” Gorth shouted after him, confident again. “Hurry it up, you bastard-whorebitch-whelp!”

Struan did not stop until he was outside the club and safely on the

pra

ça. “I choose fighting irons.”

“Good Lord, Tai-Pan, that’s not—not usual,” Horatio said. “He’s very strong and, well, you’ve . . . you’re . . . the last week’s taken more out of you than you realize.”

“I quite agree,” Masterson said. “A bullet between the eyes is wiser. Oh yes, Tai-Pan.”

“Go back and tell him now. Dinna argue. My mind’s firm!”

“Where—where will you . . . well, surely this must be kept quiet? Perhaps the Portuguese’ll try to stop you.”

“Aye. Hire a junk. You two, me, Gorth and his seconds’ll leave at sunup. I want witnesses and a fair duel. There’ll be more than enough room on the deck of a junk.”

I’m na going to kill you, Gorth, Struan exulted to himself. Oh, no, that’s too easy. But by the Lord God, from tomorrow on you’ll never walk again, you’ll never feed yoursel’ again, you’ll never see again, you’ll never bed again. I’ll show you what vengeance is.

By nightfall the news of the duel had flown from mouth to mouth, and with the news the betting began. Many favored Gorth: He was in the full flush of strength and, after all, had good reason to challenge the Tai-Pan if there was truth to the rumor that Culum was poxed and that, knowing this, the Tai-Pan had sent Tess and Culum to sea with a captain who could marry them beyond the three-mile limit.

Those who put money on the Tai-Pan did so because they hoped, not believed, he would win. Everyone knew of his frantic anxiety over the cinchona and that his legendary mistress was dying. And everyone could see the havoc this had caused in him. Only Lo Chum, Chen Sheng, Ah Sam and Yin-hsi borrowed every penny they could and bet on the Tai-Pan confidently and petitioned the gods to watch over them. Without the Tai-Pan they were lost anyway.

No one mentioned the duel to May-may. Struan left her early and went back to his residence. He wanted to sleep soundly. The duel did not trouble him; he was sure that he could handle Gorth. But in the process he did not care to be mutilated, and he knew that he would have to be very strong and very fast.

Calmly he walked the quiet streets in the warmth of another beautiful, starlit night.

Lo Chum opened the door. “Night, Mass’er.” He motioned blandly to the anteroom. Liza Brock was waiting.

“Evening,” Struan said.

“Be Culum poxed?”

“Of course he’s na poxed! God’s blood, we dinna even know if they’re married yet. Perhaps they just went for a secret trip.”

“But he beed to house—who knowed where? That night with the highwaymen.”

“Culum’s na got the pox, Liza.”

“Then why dost others sayed it?”

“Ask Gorth.”

“I did an’ he sayed he were told it.”

“I’ll say it again, Liza. Culum does na have the pox.”

Liza’s huge shoulders shook with sobs. “Oh, God, wot’ve we done?” She wished that she could stop the duel. She liked Gorth even though he was not her own son. She knew that her hands also were guilty with the blood that would be spilled—Gorth’s or the Tai-Pan’s or Culum’s or her man’s. If she hadn’t forced Tyler to let Tess go to the ball, then all this might never have happened.

“Dinna worry, Liza,” Struan said kindly. “Tess’s all right, I’m sure. If they’re wed, then you’ve na anything to fear.”

“When be

China Cloud comin’ back?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Thee be letting our’n doctor examine him?”

“That’s up to Culum. But I’ll na forbid him. He does na have the pox, Liza. If he had, you think I’d allow the marriage?”

“Yes, I do,” Liza said, tormented. “You be a devil and only the Devil knowed wot be in thy mind, Dirk Struan. But I swear to God, if thee be lying, I be killing thee if my men doan.”

She groped for the door. Lo Chum opened it and closed it after her.

“Mass’er, best slep-slep,” Lo Chum said cheerfully. “Tomollow soon, heya?”

“Go to hell.”

The iron front door knocker sent a dull reverberation through the sleeping residence. Struan listened keenly in the warm, airy darkness of his bedroom and then heard Lo Chum’s soft footsteps. He slipped out of bed, knife in hand, and grabbed his silk robe. He went out onto the landing quickly and silently, and peered over the balustrade. Two floors below, Lo Chum put down the lantern and unbolted the door. The grandfather clock chimed 1:15.

Father Sebastian stood on the threshold.

“Tai-Pan see me can?”

Lo Chum nodded and put away the cleaver that he had been carrying behind his back. He started up the staircase but stopped as Struan called out.

“Aye?”

Father Sebastian craned up into the darkness, the hackles of his neck crawling from the suddenness of the cry. “Mr. Struan?”

“Aye?” Struan said, his voice strangled.

“His Grace sent me. We’ve got the cinchona bark.”

“Where is it?”

The monk held up a small, soiled bag. “Here. His Grace said you’d be expecting someone.”

“And the price?”

“I know nothing about that, Mr. Struan,” Father Sebastian called out weakly. “His Grace simply said to treat whomsoever you’d take me to. That’s all.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” Struan shouted, charging back into the room.

He threw on his clothes, fought into his boots, rushed for the door and stopped. After thinking a second, he picked up the fighting iron and came down the stairs four at a time.

Father Sebastian saw the fighting iron and flinched.

“Morning, Father,” Struan said. He hid his disgust at the monk’s filthy habit, and hated all doctors anew. “Lo Chum, wen Mass’er Sinclair here—you fetch, savvy?”

“Savvy, Mass’er.”

“Come on, Father Sebastian!”

“Just a moment, Mr. Struan! Before we go I must explain something. I’ve never used cinchona before— none of us have.”

“Well, that does na matter, does it?”

“Of course it matters!” the gaunt monk exclaimed. “All I know is that I’ve to make a ‘tea’ of this bark by boiling it. The trouble is we don’t know for certain how long to boil it or how strong to make it. Or how much the patient should have. Or how often the patient should be dosed. The only medical treatise we have on cinchona is archaic Latin—and vague!”

“The bishop said he’d had the malaria. How much did he take?”

“His Grace doesn’t remember. Only that it tasted very bitter and revolted him. He drank it for four days, he thinks. His Grace told me to make it quite clear that we treat her at your own risk.”

“Aye. I understand very well. Come on!” Struan dashed out of the door, Father Sebastian beside him. They followed the

pra

ça for a little way and started up a silent, tree-lined avenue.

“Please, Mr. Struan, not so fast,” Father Sebastian said, out of breath.

“A fever’s due tomorrow. We’ve to hurry.” Struan crossed the Praca de Sao Paulo and headed impatiently into another street. Suddenly his instincts warned him and he stopped and darted to one side. A musket ball smashed into the wall beside him. He pulled down the terrified priest. Another shot. The ball nicked Struan’s shoulder, and he cursed himself for not bringing pistols. “Run for your life!” He pulled the monk up and shoved him across the road into the safety of a doorway. Lights were going on in the houses.

“This way!” he hissed, and rushed out. Abruptly he changed direction and another shot missed by a fraction of an inch as he reached the safety of an alley, Father Sebastian panting alongside.

“You’ve still the cinchona?” Struan asked. “Yes. For the love of God, what’s going on?”

“Highwaymen!” Struan took the frightened monk’s arm and ran through the depths of the alley and up onto the open space of the fort of Sao Paulo do Monte.

In the shadows of the fort he took a breather. “Where’s the cinchona?”

Father Sebastian held up the bag limply. The moonlight touched the livid whip sear on Struan’s chin and flickered in the eyes and seemed to make him more huge and more devilish. “Who was that? Who was firing at us?” he asked.

“Highwaymen,” Struan repeated. He knew that actually Gorth’s men—or Gorth—must have been in ambush. He wondered for a moment if Father Sebastian had been sent as a decoy. Unlikely—na by the bishop and na wi’ cinchona. Well, I’ll know soon enough, he thought. And if he is, I’ll cut a few Papist throats.

He studied the darkness warily. He slipped his knife out of his boot and eased the fighting-iron thong around his wrist. When Father Sebastian was breathing less heavily, he led the way across the crest, past the Church of Sao Antonio and down the hill a street to the outer wall of May-may’s house. A door was set into the high, thick granite wall.

He rapped harshly with the knocker. In a few moments Lim Din peered through the spy hole. The door swung open. They went into the forecourt and the door was bolted behind them.

“We’re safe now,” Struan said. “Lim Din, tea—drink plentee quick-quick!” He motioned Father Sebastian to a seat and laid the fighting iron on the table. “Catch your breath first.”

The monk took his hand off the crucifix he had been clutching and mopped his brow. “Was someone really trying to kill us?”

“It felt that way to me,” Struan said. He took off his coat and looked at his shoulder. The ball had burned the flesh.

“Let me look at that,” the monk said.

“It’s nothing.” Struan put his coat on. “Dinna worry, Father. You treat her at my risk. You’re all right?”

“Yes.” The monk’s lips were parched and his mouth tasted rancid. “First I’ll prepare the cinchona tea.”

“Good. But before we begin, swear by the cross that you’ll never talk to anyone about this house or who’s in it or what happens here.”

“That’s not necessary, surely. There’s nothing that—”

“Aye, there is! I like my privacy! If you’ll na swear, then I’ll treat her mysel’. Seems that I know as much as you about how to use cinchona. Make up your mind.”

The monk was distressed by his lack of knowledge, and longed desperately to heal in the name of God. “Very well. I swear by the cross my lips are sealed.”

“Thank you.” Struan led the way through the front door and down a corridor. Ah Sam came out of her room and bowed tentatively, pulling her green pajamas closer to her. Her hair was tousled and her face still puffed with sleep. She followed them into the kitchen with the lantern.

The cooking room was small, with a fireplace and a charcoal brazier, and adjoining the cluttered back garden. It was filled with pots and pans and teakettles. Hundreds of bunches of dried herbs and mushrooms, vegetables, entrails, sausages, hung on the smoke-grimed walls. Rattan sacks of rice littered the filth-stained floor.

Two sleep-doped cook amahs were half upright in untidy bunks, staring groggily at Struan. But when he carelessly swept a mess of pans and dirty plates off the table to make a space, they leaped out of their beds and fled out of the house.

“Tea, Mass’er?” Ah Sam asked, bewildered.

Struan shook his head. He took the sweat-stained cloth bag from the nervous monk and opened it. The bark was brown and ordinary and broken into tiny pieces. He sniffed it but it had no odor. “What now?”

“We’ll need something to cook the brew in.” Father Sebastian picked up a fairly clean pan.

“First, will you please wash your hands?” Struan pointed to a small barrel and the nearby soap.

“What?”

“First wash your hands. Please.” Struan dipped into the barrel and offered the soap. “You’ll na do anything till you’ve washed your hands.”

“Why is that necessary?”

“I dinna ken. An old Chinese superstition. Please—go on, Father, please.”

While Struan washed out the pan and put it on the table, Ah Sam watched, bright-eyed, as Father Sebastian scrubbed his hands with soap, rinsed them off, and dried them on a clean towel.

Then he closed his eyes and steepled his hands and breathed a silent prayer. “Now something to measure with,” he said, coming back to earth, and selecting a small cup at random, filled it to the brim with cinchona. He tipped the bark into the pan and then, slowly and methodically, added ten equal measures of water. He set the pan to cook on the charcoal brazier. “Ten to one to start with,” he said in a parched voice. He wiped his hands nervously on the sides of his habit. “Now I’d like to see the patient.”

Struan beckoned to Ah Sam and indicated the pan. “No touchee!”

“No touchee, Mass’er!” Ah Sam said vigorously. Now that she was over her initial shock of the sudden awakening, she was beginning to enjoy all these strange proceedings. “No touchee, Mass’er, never mind!”

Struan and the monk left the kitchen, and went into May-may’s bedroom. Ah Sam followed.

A lantern splashed pockets of light in the darkness. Yin-hsi was brushing her tousled hair in front of the mirror. She stopped and bowed hastily. Her mattress bed was on the floor to one side of May-may’s vast four-poster.

May-may was shivering feebly under the weight of blankets.

“Hello, lassie. We’ve the cinchona,” Struan said, coming close to her. “At long last. All’s well now!”

“I’m so cold, Tai-Pan,” she said helplessly. “I’m so cold. What have you done to your face?”

“Nothing, lass.”

“You’ve cut yourself.” She shivered and closed her eyes and fell back into the blizzard that was engulfing her. “It’s so cold.”

Struan turned and looked at Father Sebastian. He saw the shock on his stretched face.

“What’s amiss?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” The monk set a tiny sand-timer on a table, and kneeling beside the bed, took May-may’s wrist and began to count her heartbeats. How can a Chinese girl speak English? he asked himself. Is the other girl a second mistress? Am I in a harem of the devil? Oh God, protect me, and give me the power of Thy healing and let me be Thy instrument this night.

May-may’s pulse was so slow and soft that he had great difficulty in feeling it. With extreme gentleness he turned her face around and peered into her eyes. “Do not be afraid,” he said. “There’s nothing to afraid of. You are in God’s hands. I must look at your eyes. Don’t be afraid, you’re in His hands.”

Defenseless, and petrified, May-may did as she was told. Yin-hsi and Ah Sam stood in the background and watched apprehensively.

“What’s he doing? Who is he?” Yin-hsi whispered.

“A barbarian devil witch doctor,” Ah Sam whispered back. “He’s a monk. One of the longskirt priests of the naked God-man they nailed to a cross.”

“Oh!” Yin-hsi shuddered. “I’ve heard about them. How absolutely dreadful to do such a thing! They really are devils! Why don’t you bring Father some tea? That’s always good for anxiety.”

“Lim Din’s getting it, Second Mother,” Ah Sam whispered, swearing that not for anything would she move, for then she might miss something of great import. “I wish I could understand their dreadful tongue.”

The monk put May-may’s wrist on the coverlet, and looked up at Struan. “His Grace said the malaria caused an abortion. I must examine her.”

“Go on, then.”

When the monk moved the blankets and sheets aside, May-may tried to stop him and Yin-hsi and Ah Sam anxiously hurried to help her.

“No!” Struan snapped. “Stay-ah!” He sat beside May-may and held her hands. “It’s all right, m’ lassie. Go on,” he said to the priest.

Father Sebastian examined May-may, and then settled her comfortably again. “The hemorrhage has almost stopped. That is very good.”

He put his long fingers on the base of her skull and probed carefully.

May-may felt the fingers smooth away some of her pain. But the ice was forming in her again and her teeth began chattering. “Tai-Pan. I’m so cold. Can I have warm bottle or blankets? Please. I’m so cold.”

“Aye, lass, just a moment.” There was a hot bottle at her back. She lay under four down quilts.

“Have you a watch, Mr. Struan?” Father Sebastian asked.

“Aye.”

“Please go to the kitchen. As soon as the water boils, note the time. When it has simmered one hour . . .” Father Sebastian’s eyes mirrored his awful desperation. “Two? Half an hour? How much? Oh God, please help me in this hour of need.”

“One hour,” Struan said firmly, confidently. “We’ll set the same amount to simmer for two hours. If the first’s nae good we’ll try the second lot.”

“Yes. Yes.”

Struan checked his watch under the lantern’s light in the kitchen. He took the brew off the brazier and set it to cool in a bucket of water. The second pan was already simmering.

“How is she?” he asked as the priest came in, Ah Sam and Yin-hsi close behind.

“The chills are severe. Her heart is very weak. Can you remember how long she shivered before the heat came?”

“Four hours, perhaps five. I dinna ken.” Struan poured some of the hot liquor into a tiny teacup, and tasted it. “God’s blood, it’s horribly bitter!”

The priest took a sip, and he grimaced too. “Well. Let’s begin. I only hope she can keep it down. A teacupful every hour.” He selected a cup at random from a smoke-stained shelf, and picked up a dirty scrap of rag from the table.

“What’s that for?” Struan asked.

“I’ll have to strain the bark out of the brew. This’ll be fine. The mesh is coarse enough.”

“I’ll do it,” Struan said. He took out the silver tea strainer that he had ready and wiped it clean again with a clean handkerchief.

“Why’re you doing that?”

“The Chinese are always very careful to keep the teapot and cups clean. They say it makes the tea more wholesome.” He began to pour the foul-smelling bark tea into an immaculate porcelain teapot. He willed the strength of the liquor to be correct. “Why na the same with this, eh?”

He carried the pot and the cup into the bedroom.

May-may vomited the first cup. And the second.

In spite of her pathetic pleadings Struan forced her to drink again. May-may held it down—anything not to have to swallow another.

Still nothing happened. Except that her chills grew more severe.

An hour later Struan made her drink again. She retained this cupful, but the chills continued to worsen.

“We’ll make it two cups,” Struan said, fighting his panic. And he forced her to consume the double measure.

Hour after hour the process was repeated. Now it was dawn.

Struan looked at his watch. Six o’clock. No improvement. The rigors made May-may flutter like a twig in a fall wind.

“For the love of Christ,” Struan burst out, “it’s got to work!”

“With the love of Christ, it

is working, Mr. Struan,” Father Sebastian said. He was holding May-may’s wrist. “The fever heat was due two hours ago. If it doesn’t begin, she has a chance. Her pulse is imperceptible, yes, but the cinchona

is working.”

“Hold on, lassie,” Struan said, gripping May-may’s hand. “A few more hours. Hold on!”

Later there was a knock at the gate in the garden wall.

Struan walked Wearily out of the house and unbolted the door. “Hello, Horatio. Heya, Lo Chum.”

“Is she dead?”

“Nay, lad. I think she’s cured, by the grace of God.”

“You got the cinchona?”

“Aye.”

“Masterson’s at the junk. It’s time for Gorth. I’ll ask them—his seconds—to postpone until tomorrow. You’re in no state to fight anyone.”

“There’s nae need for you to worry. There’re more ways of killing a snake than stamping its godrotting head off. I’ll be there in an hour.”

“All right, Tai-Pan.” Horatio left in a hurry, Lo Chum with him.

Struan bolted the door and returned to May-may.

She was lying perfectly still in the bed.

And Father Sebastian was taking her pulse. His face was stiff with anxiety. He bent down and listened to her heartbeat. Seconds passed. He raised his head and looked searchingly at Struan. “For a moment I thought . . . but she’s all right. Her heartbeat is terribly slow, but, well, she’s young. With the grace of God . . . the fever’s dead, Mr. Struan. Peruvian cinchona will cure the fever of Happy Valley. How marvelous are the ways of God!”

Struan felt weirdly detached. “Will the fever return?” he asked.

“Perhaps. From time to time. But more cinchona will arrest it—there’s nothing to worry about now. This fever’s

dead. Don’t you understand? She’s cured of malaria.”

“Will she live? You say her heart’s very weak. Will she live?”

“God willing, the chance is good. Very good. But I don’t know for certain.”

“I’ve got to go now,” Struan said, rising. “Would you please stay here till I get back?”

“Yes.” Father Sebastian was going to make the sign of the cross over him, but decided against it. “I cannot bless your departure, Mr. Struan. You’re going to a killing, aren’t you?”

“Man is born to die, Father. I just try to protect mysel’ and mine as best I know how and to choose the time of my dying, that’s all.”

He picked up the fighting iron and tied it to his wrist, then left the house.

As he walked the streets, he felt eyes watching him but paid them no heed. He drew strength from the morning and from the sun, and from the sight and smell of the sea.

It’s a good day to stamp out a snake, he thought. But you’re the one that’s dead. You’ve na the strength to go against Gorth with a fighting iron. Na today.