China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

before his eyes. Yes. Yes, it could be done. More than that. It was destiny. He felt it with a certainty he could not explain. It was meant to be.

So he’d left the safe mediocrity of Calcutta and gone for broke in China—chosen the high seas and the storms and the sharp rocks, if he failed. Death, if need be, like so many thousand adventurers before him. He had to. It was his nature. And even now, faced with ruin, a little voice told him that, given the choice, he’d do it all again.

But as he stared at those bleak figures in the middle of the night, he was still afraid. And he slept only fitfully in his dark room until the sound of Tully Odstock stirring told him that, outside, it must be morning.

—

“Time to introduce you around,” Tully had said as they’d set out after breakfast. He’d said it briskly, as though there was nothing to be alarmed about.

John still wasn’t sure what to make of Tully. He supposed he was a solid old merchant like his brother. But had the two brothers accepted his money and given him a partnership just a bit too quickly? If he himself had concealed the extent of his borrowings, had they in turn been less than entirely forthcoming with him about the state of the business?

And when Tully said the trouble would all blow over, was he trying to fool a new partner or, perhaps worse, was he fooling himself? For one thing was sure—Trader could almost smell it—Tully Odstock was afraid.

Yet nobody else seemed to be alarmed at all. By noon, they’d been to every factory. He’d met French and Swedish merchants, Danish, Spanish, Dutch. Almost everyone agreed: “This is just Lin’s opening bid. We’ll refuse it. Then he’ll negotiate.”

“He needs to make a show to impress the emperor so he can get his promotion and move on to somewhere else,” one of the Dutch merchants assured them. “That’s how these mandarins play the game.”

And if this sounded heartening, still further encouragement came when they got to the American factory.

Warren Delano was only thirty, a handsome fellow with a fine mustache and sideburns and a friendly smile—though John did not fail to notice a pair of steely eyes—who’d already made a fortune in the opium trade. He was everything that John hoped to be. And he dismissed Lin’s demand easily.

“All the opium I sell is on consignment,” he told them. “Way I see it, I can’t surrender goods that belong to other people. Don’t have the legal right. Simple as that.”

“Damn good point,” Tully said. “A third of our opium’s on consignment, too. Belongs to Parsee merchants in Bombay.”

“There you go, then,” said Delano.

By the time they left, it seemed to Trader that his plump partner was covering the ground with a new confidence. “We’ll go back this way,” Tully said, leading him into Old China Street.

Behind their facades, which looked across the waterfront, each of the factories went back, in a series of tiny courts and stairways, for over a hundred yards to a Cantonese thoroughfare known as Thirteen Factory Street, which formed the boundary between the factories’ enclosure and the Chinese suburb. Three lanes ran from this thoroughfare through the factory block to the waterfront: Hog Lane, which ran down beside the English factory; Old China Street, beside the Americans’ factory; and another between the Spanish and Danish factories. And although they lay within the factory quarter, these lanes were lined with little Chinese stalls selling every delicacy or household good that their owners imagined the Fan Kuei might buy.

As they walked past the stalls and came out into Thirteen Factory Street, Tully jerked his thumb contemptuously to the left, towards a handsome old Chinese mansion a short distance away. “That’s where Commissioner Lin has based himself.” He snorted. “Suppose he thinks he can keep an eye on us from there.”

After a brief walk up the bustling street, they turned right into Hog Lane. Tully pointed to a doorway. “That’s our hospital, in case you get sick. There’s an excellent doctor, an American missionary called Parker. Nice fella.” He nodded. “Well, that’s given you the lie of the land. Time for lunch, I’d say.”

—

The English factory had been built in the eighteenth century by the East India Company. At the front on the upper floor, its spacious dining room, flanked by a library on one side and a billiard room on the other, looked out over an English walled garden that extended almost to the waterfront. Oil paintings on the walls, handsome chairs, and a platoon of well-trained waiters combined to reproduce all the solid comfort and stability of a London club.

Not all the English merchants resided at the English factory, large though it was. A number lodged in other factories with extra space. But the handsome English factory was their clubhouse, and over a dozen men had gathered there for lunch that day. Jardine himself, the greatest opium trader of them all, had sailed for England not long ago, and so his partner Matheson presided. Several of the men were smaller merchants, one of whom in particular, a fellow named Dent, looked distinctly like a pirate to Trader. By contrast, one of Jardine’s nephews had brought along the eminently respectable Dr. Parker.

Missionary or buccaneer, they all seemed genial and ready to give good advice. Matheson indicated Trader should sit next to him. Encased between well-tamed whiskers, like a pair of bookends, Matheson’s face had a pleasant, rather intellectual look, more like a bookseller, Trader thought, than a ruthless opium merchant.

“The secret to life here, Trader,” he said cordially, “is to have a first-rate comprador. He’s the man who deals with the locals, finds you good Chinese servants, food supplies, anything you want. We’ve got an excellent man.”

“The servants are all local?”

“Pretty much. They don’t give any trouble. The Cantonese are practical people.”

“Should I learn to speak Chinese?” John asked.

“I’d advise not,” his host replied. “The