The King's Privateer Page 19

  Feeling naked without a pistol, sword or even a clasp knife, they made the best of their time ashore. First stop was at the Chun Qua Factory, third building east of China Street, to their far left, where they’d established headquarters. Conveniently right next door to the French Compagnie des Indies factory!

  “Ah, welcome ashore at last,” Tom Wythy grated, sounding anything but welcoming, as he sorted through packets of tea on a table. “Have an ale. Chinee muck, but not as bad as some.”

  He had a large tub near his feet, filled with ice and rice chaff, from which he drew two stone bottles and proferred them.

  “Cold ale?” Alan frowned.

  “Aye, ice comes all the way from Siberia, far’s I know, run by some poor coolies, an’ God help ’em if it melts on the way. The way they like it.” Wythy belched. “No accountin’ fer taste among savages. Refreshin’ on a hot day, though, I must admit.”

  “Mm, not bad at that,” Alan commented after an appreciative eructation of his own. “Close enough to home-brewed.”

  “Mm, if the inn’s common-rooms’r chilly as most back in England. Let it stand awhile if it’s too cold fer ye, Mister McTaggart.”

  “What are you doing, sir?” McTaggart asked.

  “Gradin’ tea, such as I may. Sit ye down to see.”

  As they quaffed their ales, Wythy laid out samples, explaining their grades and desirability. The smaller the leaves, the better the tea. There was coarse black Bohea, from late in the growing season, worth something in trade but not much: a poor man’s tea. Another black tea was Congou, what the East India Company bought in quantity. The best black teas were Souchong, scented with flowers, and Pekoe, which was only of the best young spring buds, delicate and very dear.

  Then there were the green teas: Gunpowder and Pearl Tea, and Yu Tsien, which were the choicest spring pickings, and in descending order, Hyson skin, and Twankay, which was mostly used to adulterate batches of the better pickings.

  “Yes, I’ve always found the younger the bud, the more fun to pick as well, sir,” Alan grinned, unable to contain himself as the lecture ran on, and on, and on.

  “More like deflowerin’, Mister Lewrie?” Wythy rasped. “Ye’d be the best judge o’ that, I’m sure. Ye mind my warnin’ about the local lasses, both o’ ye? ’Twas Macao’r nothin’. No women in the factories, ye know.”

  “Yet there are women in Hog Lane, sir, for the sailors?” Alan inquired. “Do the Chinese mean no foreign women, or no women at all?”

  “Aye, fer a whiff o’ silver, ye may find custom, though I warn ye both, they’re sure to be poxed so bad even the surgeon’s mercury cure’d only slow it down,” Wythy allowed.

  “But something more discreet … uhm, more select for senior traders, sir?” Alan pressed softly, and was pleased that Wythy gave him a shrug and a sly wink. So the man’s not a total lout, he thought!

  “A tai pan, head of a trading house, well, there are places …” Wythy grunted. “Not at this time of day. The Chinee is a hard-workin’ bugger. The day’s fer making profit. If the humor’s on ye so devilish hard, Mister Lewrie, I’ll give ye the fairest wind to steer y’er course by, but ’pon y’er head be it, mind.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan agreed. “I’d expect nothing less.”

  “Well, be off with ye. I’ve work to do. Sup here with us at seven o’ the evening. In the meantime, enjoy the sights. Take a peek about. Go visiting,” Wythy enjoined, winking once more and jerking his head over his shoulder to indicate the French hong next door. “I spotted some nice bargains along China Street.”

  They finished their ales and went outside into the heat of the day. After a couple of cold ones, it didn’t seem that bad any longer, and there was a decent breeze to keep the hordes of flies at bay and cool the air. At least it wasn’t Calcutta, or the Equator.

  “I despair o’ your immortal soul, Mister Lewrie,” McTaggart sighed with a long-put-upon air. “Wenching. Is that all ya hae on your mind, sir?”

  “If left to my own devices, yes,” Alan confessed willingly.

  “You’re as much a heathen as een o’ these yellow fellas! A bluidy … pagan!” McTaggart spat. “I doan know why I abide your comp’ny!”

  “Church of England, actually, not pagan,” Alan corrected.

  “Same bluidy thing,” McTaggart sighed.

  They shopped in China Street, running into Burgess Chiswick, who was out browzing in company with his native orderly Nandu, both wearing civilian clothes. Burgess was loaded down with packages—or at least his orderly was.

  “The most unbelievable things, Alan!” Burgess enthused. “Laces as good as any from Flanders or Holland, and damnall cheap, too. A whole tablecloth for the price of a man’s shirt, can you credit it?”

  “Hollo, what’s this? In need of fanning, Burge?” Alan teased.

  “For mother. And for Caroline. Even one for Mammy.”

  “Your grand-mither?” McTaggart inquired, somewhat confused.

  “Family slave. Been with us for years,” Burge informed him off-handedly. “Couldn’t bear to sell her off at Charleston, so she crossed to England with us. Practically raised me. Those smaller bundles are silk shawls for all. Can’t go to a drum or dance without a fancy shawl and a Chinese fan, now can they?”

  “Slavery.” McTaggart shivered, and wandered off on his own.

  “What the devil did he mean by that?” Chiswick huffed. “By God, if he’s slurring my family because we …”

  “No reason to take offense, Burge,” Alan said, grinning. “Between my morals, and you a slave-owning Carolinian, he’s having a hellish hard day of it.”

  “The devil take him, then, him and his blue-stocking airs.”

  “My dear Burgess, the devil wouldn’t dare!” Alan drawled.

  After plunging into the market, Alan was entranced all over again, just as he had been in Calcutta. There was so much to see, so many new aromas to savor, so many goods in so many shops that would have gathered mobs of oglers back in London, though most of them could never afford most of it, as novel as any raree-show on earth. And once more, he was glad he’d sailed halfway round the world to see it, hard as the sailing was between ports. This experience was something he’d never forget.

  As mementoes, he bought a fiery-red silk dressing gown for himself, all figured with dragons in green and iridescent blue that leaped off the cloth. A small carved ivory junk. Some marble models of temple dogs for his mantel, wherever that would be once he was home. And, with mention of the lovely and gentle Caroline Chiswick, he purchased a pair of earrings and a necklace made of jade, ivory and silver beads, to go home to her on the first Indiaman clearing port for England.

  They loaded Nandu down like a pack-pony and sent him trotting off to the Chun Qua Factory, while they took a stand-up repast of hot soup and noodles from an open-air vendor, and strolled the square. Most particularly that part of the square behind the French Factory.

  “Now what the devil … ?” Alan mused aloud as they saw some of the items being carted up to the factory from the docks and customs house on the quay. “Can you tell me what these are, sir?”

  Alan had inquired of a man dressed as a European seaman.

  “M’seur?” the man replied, turning to face them.

  “Parle vous l’Anglais, m’seur? Can you tell me …”

  “Ah, mais oui. Zose, m’seur? Ze shark feens,” the man said.

  “Well, now I’ve heard just about everything,” Burgess griped.

  “Whatever are they for?”

  “Pour ze potage, m’seur,” the sailor explained. “Pardon, j’sui Marcel Monnot. Notre ship La Malouine. Et vous?” After they had introduced themselves, Monnot went on. “Ze shark feen soup, m’seurs. Zese Chinetoque, zey manger zese potage … mak zem …” He could not think of the English word, so he rammed an expressive fist at them, grasping his arm at the elbow. “Pour ze old homme wiz ze fair jeune fille, n’est-ce pas? Mak ‘l’verge’ formidable, ha ha!”

  “Like oysters!” Burges
s cried in delight. “For renewed vigor with the ladies. God, as many sharks as we saw on the voyage here, I wish we’d known of it. Do they pay dear for them, then?”

  “Ah, mais oui, m’seur!” Monnot agreed heartily. “Un feen, zey pay trois, quatre livres!” he told them with an expansive Gallic shrug. “Vee ’ave beaucoup feen, mak beaucoup livres, hah! Bon!”

  “Well, damme,” Alan commented. “Merci, M’seur Monnot.”

  “Vee ’ave also ze ginseng, m’seurs. Vair good. Same, aussi.”

  “Monnot, allez vite! Revenir aux travaille!” some petty officer barked, and the man bowed his departure, leaving Chiswick and Lewrie to stroll among the boxes and crates as he went back to work.

  “I never heard that ginseng was a restorative in the Carolinas,” Burgess said. “Made a good, healthful tea, was all we used it for. Mother swears by it, but it’s hard to find. Maybe I should buy her some and ship it home. Well, there were some slaves who said it was an aphrodisiac, but you couldn’t put much stock in some of their tales.”

  “And furs,” Alan pointed out.

  “Oh, yes. Mister Twigg said the Chinese don’t have many good furs. Have to come from Russia or somewhere. Ermine, sable, glutton, mink or such’ll sell dear here in Canton. I met one of those Yankee Doodle skippers this morning. Said he’d been to the Nootka Sound on the Bering Sea. He was trading furs. Quite profitable, he told me.”

  “My, you have been busy this morning,” Alan snickered.

  “Them that had a little English,” Burgess allowed with a shrug as they idled against a stack of crates to watch the coolies and the French crew unload a junk that had lightered their cargo up from Whampoa Reach. “Rest of it was way over my head. Never thought I’d have to learn anything more than a little Cherokee back home. I’m lucky I can savvy just enough Hindee so Nandu and my subadar don’t cock their heads and look at me queer. I say … good pelts, those. That Yankee captain didn’t have better.”

  “What do they sell for?” Alan asked idly, finding the spying business a dead bore as the hot afternoon wore on.

  “He told me he’d get almost one hundred of their dollars for a pelt,” Burgess informed him.

  “Hmm, wonder what that is in real money?” Alan mused aloud.

  “I think it’s somewhere between five and six pounds sterling. But here’s the profitable part, Alan. The Nootka Sound Indians’ll swap you a prime pelt for one four-a-penny board nail!”

  “S’truth!”

  “Can you credit it? ’Course, you were among the Creeks and the Seminolee.”

  “Well, we weren’t doing much trading. ’Cept for my wife.”

  “Your what?”

  And on their way back to the Chun Qua Factory, Alan regaled Chiswick with the tale of impregnating the Cherokee slave-girl Rabbit and being forced to purchase her from her owner for a dragoon pistol, a cartouche pouch, a shirt and a pair of deer hides.

  “And there you are, paying court to my sister Caroline, and you a married man,” Burgess japed. “I should write and warn her how fickle your enthusiasms are!”

  Chapter 4

  Their supper that evening at the factory was another of those marvels to a palate ruined by ship’s rations. Or by the blandness of English cooking, Alan thought, except in the rarest instances. Oh, there was lots of rice, but, like the supper at Sir Hugo’s bungalow in Calcutta, it seemed that hundreds of dishes made their appearances as removes. Some fiery hot, some crunchy and only mildly spiced, some almost recognizable and some that could only be identified by comparing them to puppy-spew, or one of William Pitt’s hairballs. The lone Chinese table-servant announced the name of each dish, with Wythy translating—pork, chicken, beef, lobster bits, shrimp, oil-fried omelets and such. Lewrie decided they could call ’em devil’s turds, ’long as they kept them coming.

  Wythy alone of their company ate with chopsticks in the native manner, and put away as much as two of them together with a frantic neatness. Not a wasted motion when he was at table.

  “Ah!” Wythy said at last when the final dish, and the gigantic bowl of rice, had been removed. “Perfection from the soup to the nuts!”

  “Speaking of soup, Mister Wythy,” Alan asked, attention fixed on the port decanter that the servant placed by Twigg’s elbow. “Do these Chinese really eat soups made out of bird’s nests and shark fins?”

  “Oh, aye they do. Daft on ’em, they are,” Wythy rumbled with a laugh. “Bird’s nests … well, that’s the mandarin’s style. Eat such exotic shite such’s their Emperor’s court can obtain. Like the old Romans. Lark’s tongues, mouse cheeks an’ such.”

  “To show off how wealthy they are,” Twigg commented. “The rarer the victuals, the better show they put on for their guests, to flaunt their wealth.”

  “An’ ye’ll have noted, no doubt, how most o’ the really nabob-rich Chinese traders’r fatter’n Falstaff,” Wythy added.

  Alan hadn’t noted any such thing, but he gave the comment a sage nod of agreement. Wythy had fed himself into such a good mood, and Alan wanted nothing to upset him. Wythy hadn’t told him where the safer brothels were yet.

  “Peasants in the countryside are one crop away from famine,” Twigg said. “And it’s short commons for most of ’em. Just take a look at the people who live on all those sampans we passed on the way up-river for comparison. Poor as Irish crofters, and about as starved, most of the time. It’s a virtue to the Chinese to get rich, and set a table such as a duke could afford back home.”

  “Er … about the shark fins, though,” Burgess pressed. “Does this soup really restore an old man’s vigor?”

  “Well, I’m nowhere near needin’ restoration yet, sir,” Wythy boomed with amusement like a thumped barrel, “but there’s more wonders in this world’n ye could shake a stick at. I’ve heard tell it works. Mind ye, that was from Chun Qua himself. Who knows? Where’d ye hear o’ shark fin soup?”

  “Oh, there was a French mate on the customs dock this afternoon,” Alan replied, finally getting his hands on the port and pouring himself a full bumper. “They were unloading bales of the damned things. Strung together like fish on twine. Must have had thousands, and getting three or four livres apiece for ’em, too, he told us.”

  “A French ship,” Twigg commented, raising his eyebrows to Alan to start the decanter leftward down the table to his empty glass.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And what else did they land on the docks?” Twigg inquired.

  “Furs, sir,” Burgess supplied. “Nootka Sound pelts. Quite a lot of ’em. Uhm … bird’s nests. All sorts of stuff. Right, Alan?”

  “Well, most of it was crated or bundled. I did see the furs, and the shark fins, though,” Alan allowed. “I’d have to take your word on the bird’s nests, Burge. That, and the ginseng.”

  “Ginseng!” Twigg barked, and set the decanter down on the table with a loud thump. “Ginseng, d’you say, sir?”

  “Oh, yes.” Burgess bubbled on. “Their mate … what was his name, Mon-something … no matter. Said they had ginseng aboard. I believe he said it’s about as good as shark fins to aid old men in passion. Our old slaves back home in North Carolina said …”

  “Mister Wythy,” Twigg interrupted, almost shushing Chiswick to silence, “correct me if I err, but ginseng is primarily a Chinese herb, is it not, sir?”

  “Aye, ’tis,” Wythy agreed.

  “But is there not another source in this world for ginseng?” Twigg pressed. “I speak of another member of the Araliaceae family, the Panax quinquefolius, which produces the same five leaves, scarlet berries and succulent root. And is not North America, the Colonies … former colonies, now … the only other known source of ginseng?”

  “Ah ha,” Wythy grinned slowly in confirmation.

  “Tell me more about this ship, sirs,” Twigg demanded.

  “Well, she’s the La Malouine, sir,” Alan stated.

  “Ah ha,” Wythy said once more, maddeningly obtuse to them.

  “Do you think she mig
ht be the Frog privateer we seek, sir?” Chiswick asked.

  “She very well might be,” Twigg replied, nodding grimly.

  “Well, she stands out, compared to those ships we’ve snooped around so far,” Wythy informed them. “Most of ’em seem fairly innocent, see. Sailin’ outa Pondichery’r Chandernargore. Isle of France, or all the way from L’Orient or Nantes on the French Biscay coast. May not signify, but …”

  “Yes, but for several intriguing ‘buts,’ Tom,” Twigg rasped.

  “Such as, sir?” Alan inquired, by then totally mystified.

  “To have furs, a ship must sail to the Bering Sea to trade in Nootka Sound,” Twigg said, beginning to tick points off on his long, knobbly fingers. “Then trade among the Sandwich Islands, Cook Isles, Otaheiti and all to get the bird’s nest, sandalwood and shark fins. But for even the smallest crew to sail that far and live among the Polynesians for the duration of that voyage, they would have to forego much cargo on the way outward for supplies to keep the hands fit. Now tell me, young sirs, were they landing anything else? Indian goods, perhaps?”

  “Aye, sir. Cotton bales, brassware, spices. Crates of silver.”

  “Well, now, that’s an extremely odd mix of cargo. Far out of the ordinary for most French Indiamen, or country ships,” Twigg mused, tenting his fingers under his cadaverous chin and gazing at the ceiling. “And I need hardly tell a seafarer such as yourself the near impossibility of that, do I, Mister Lewrie?”

  “Uhm,” Lewrie commented, stalling for time and wondering what in hell Twigg was talking about. Twigg dropped his gaze from the rafters to Alan’s face, like a tutor expecting him to recite.

  “Have to go to Nootka Sound early in summer, late spring, sir,” he began, grasping for ideas. All the plum wine he’d put down with supper didn’t help that process. “That means they’d have to leave Pondichery or wherever even earlier, in the … oh!”