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

“When people have nightmares,” said Second Son, “it’s often just the worst thing they can think of. It’s natural. But it doesn’t make it true.”

“Everyone in the village thinks…”

“I know. It’s stupid. It’s just because they’re afraid of her.”

“So am I.”

Second Son put his arm protectively around her shoulders. “I won’t let anything happen to our baby. I promise. Go back to sleep.”

But she couldn’t.

June 1839

Read had a woman in Macao. That’s to say, he lodged in her house and there were no other lodgers. Her husband, a Dutch sea captain, had been dead for years.

Read had found his lodgings almost as soon as he arrived. After a while, he’d gone up the coast with McBride and Trader, returned to the widow, then left again to go to Canton. Of course, he hadn’t expected to be trapped in Canton for so long, but the widow had not taken any other lodgers, and his berth was still available when he got back.

Just before he’d gone to Canton, a well-meaning but nosy member of the community approached him in the street and suggested it was unseemly to be openly living in sin with a local woman. A moment later, he regretted his words.

Read turned on him. His voice was loud enough for other people in the street to hear. “Are you suggesting, sir, that an honest widow who to make ends meet lets lodgings to a respectable man is to be accused of lewdness? Do you say that about every landlady?”

“No indeed, sir,” the gentleman protested, “but you are her only lodger, and you must allow—”

“I allow nothing, sir! If she had six lodgers, would you go about the town saying she’d committed the act of fornication with all six of them?”

“By no means…”

“Are you aware of the laws of slander, sir? Must I go to law to defend an innocent woman’s name? Or shall I horsewhip you?” Read shouted fiercely.

At this, the well-meaning gentleman hastened away, and within the hour the whole of Macao was laughing. Nobody troubled Read about his woman after that.

Trader heard the story from Tully the very day he arrived on the island.

“All the time we were in Canton,” Trader remarked to Read the next morning, “you never told me you had a woman here.”

“A good man doesn’t talk about his women, Trader.” Read gave him a stern look. “A lady has to trust a man to be discreet.” Then he smiled. “You find yourself a good woman of your own. That’s what you need.”

The Portuguese island in the China Sea had a Mediterranean air. Tiny antique forts, more picturesque than threatening, dotted its modest hills.

The place had known glory. Two and a half centuries ago, in the shining days of the Ming dynasty, before even the great basilica of St. Peter in Rome was completed, the Jesuits had built the magnificent stone church of St. Paul on the top of Macao’s central hill, to proclaim the Catholic faith’s renewed might, even in Asia. It could be seen across the sea from twenty miles away—as could the Jesuit fort with its cannon, which stood just below.

But the glory of Macao was somewhat past. Just recently, the huge church had burned down—all except for its southern facade, which now stood alone on the hilltop like a stupendous stage set, gleaming at the rising and the setting of the sun, but empty nonetheless.

John Trader liked Macao. The lodgings he shared with Tully were in a side street, just behind the Avenue of the Praia Grande that curved along the waterfront of a wide bay. On his first day, he walked with Tully along the esplanade. The long terrace of handsome houses—mostly stuccoed in Portuguese style, some white, others gaily painted red or green or blue—looked cheerfully out across the flagstoned street, the sea wall, and a stony little beach towards the square-sailed junks plowing through the shallows and the masts of sleek European ships anchored out beyond. There was a smell of salt air and seaweed.

“Glad to have my quarters down here,” Tully explained. “I can take a brisk constitutional along the seafront every day, without puffing up and down hills.”

Above the seafront, covering the slopes, the Portuguese streets gave way to stuccoed villas and British colonial residences.

People still called it an island, though nowadays a narrow sandbar joined it to the mainland. It was an international port, but since its harbors needed dredging, only the shallow local junks could sail there; European vessels usually anchored out in the deeper waters known as the Roads.

What really mattered, however, was that although its Portuguese governors had run Macao for centuries, it still belonged to the emperor of China.

“You’ve got to understand,” Tully told him, “that this place is a typical Chinese compromise. If there’s opium trading on Macao—and there is a bit—the Portuguese governor keeps it discreet. The Portuguese are Roman Catholic, of course. But you can be damn sure the governor tells the Jesuit missionaries to be careful about preaching to the natives. The Chinese authorities don’t like conversions—even on Macao. Still,” he concluded, “as long as the governor uses a bit of common sense, the Chinese leave Macao alone. So far, it’s been a pretty safe haven for us.”

The monsoon season had officially begun, but the weather was still temperate and fine, like the best of an English summer. Trader was glad to enjoy the salty sea air and to be free again.

One small matter did remain, from Canton: the letter from Lin to Queen Victoria.

He’d wondered what he should do with it. Should he give it to Elliot? That would be the simplest thing. He doubted very much that Elliot would forward it, but his own responsibility would end. Of course, if he really meant to honor the spirit of his promise to the commissioner, he’d send it to someone he could trust in England. One of his professors at