“Please, please, please, Mumma. Please, please.”
“Use thy own legs, girl.” Even so, Liza swept her into her huge embrace and carried her below. Tess followed, and smiled at her father and self-consciously nodded to Nagrek.
“Are thee sure about Struan and Longstaff?” Brock asked again.
“Yes.” Nagrek turned to Brock, forcing his heated mind off the girl. “A golden guinea in a man’s hand makes his ears long. I’ve a bullyboy in the flagship.”
“Struan baint never agreeing to that. He couldn’t. It’d wreck him with the rest of us.”
“Well, it were said right enough. This morning.”
“Wot else were said, Nagrek?”
“That’s all the bullyboy heard.”
“Then it be trickery—more of his sodding devilment.”
“Yes. But what?”
Brock began churning possibilities. “Send word to the lorchas. Get every case of opium up the coast. Meantime send a purse with twenty guineas to our bullyboy aboard
China Cloud. Tell him there’s twenty more if he finds out wot be aback of it. Be careful, now. We baint wantin’ to lose him.”
“If Struan ever catched him he’d send us his tongue.”
“Along with his head. Fifty guineas says Struan’s got a man aboard us’n.”
“A hundred says you’re wrong,” Thumb said. “Every man aboard’s a trusty!”
“Better I never catched him alive afore thee, Nagrek.”
“But why should he fly ‘Zenith’?” Robb was saying. “Of course we’d come aboard at once.”
“I dinna ken,” Struan said. Zenith meant “Owner to come aboard—urgent.” He frowned at
Thunder Cloud. Bosun McKay was out of earshot down the beach, waiting patiently.
“You go aboard, Robb. Give Isaac my compliments and tell him to come ashore at once. Bring him to the valley.”
“Why?”
“Too many ears aboard. It might be very important.” Then he called out, “Bosun McKay!”
“Aye, aye, sorr.” McKay hurried up to him.
“Take Mr. Struan to
Thunder Cloud. Then go over to my ship. Get a tent and a bed and my things. I’ll be staying ashore tonight.”
“Aye, aye, sorr! Beggin’ your pardon, sorr,” Bosun McKay said awkwardly. “There’s a young lad. Ramsey. In H.M.S.
Mermaid, Glessing’s ship. The Ramseys’re kin to the McKays. The first mate’s got it in for the poor lad. Thirty lashes yesterday and more t’morrer. He were press-ganged out o’ Glasgow.”
“So?” Struan asked impatiently.
“I heard, sorr,” the bosun said carefully, “he’d like a berth somewheres.”
“God’s blood, are you simple in the head? We take no deserters aboard our ships. If we take one knowingly, we could lose our ship—and rightly!”
“S’truth! I thought you might buy him out,” McKay said quickly, “seeing as how Capt’n Glessing’s a friend o’ yorn. My prize money’ll go to help, sorr. He’s a gud lad and he’ll jump ship if he’s nothing ahead.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you, sorr.” The bosun touched his forelock and scuttled away.
“Robb, if you were Tai-Pan, what would you do?”
“Pressed men are always dangerous and never to be trusted,” Robb said instantly. “So I’d never buy him out. And now I’d watch McKay. Perhaps McKay’s now Brock’s man and put up to it. I’d put McKay to the test. I’d get intermediaries—probably McKay as part of the test, and also an enemy of McKay’s—and string Ramsey along and never trust his information.”
“You’ve told me what I’d do,” Struan said with a glint of humor. “I asked what you’d do.”
“I’m not Tai-Pan, so it’s not my problem. If I was, I probably wouldn’t tell you anyway. Or I might tell you and then do the opposite. To test you.” Robb was glad that he could hate his brother from time to time. That made liking him so much greater.
“Why’re you afraid, Robb?”
“I’ll tell you in a year.” Robb walked after the bosun.
For a time Struan mused about his brother and the future of The Noble House; then he picked up a bottle of brandy and began to walk along the cleft of rocks toward the valley.
The ranks of the merchants were thinning and some were already leaving in their longboats. Others were still eating and drinking, and there were gusts of laughter at some who were dancing a drunken eightsome reel.
“Sir!”
Struan stopped and stared at the young marine. “Aye?”
“I need your help, sir. Desperate,” Norden said, his eyes strange, his face gray.
“What help?” Struan was grimly conscious of the marine’s side arm, a bayonet.
“I’ve the pox—woman sickness. You can help. Give me the cure, sir. Anything, I’ll do anything.”
“I’m no doctor, lad,” Struan said, the hairs on his neck rising. “Should you na be at your boat?”
“You’ve had the same, sir. But you had the cure. All I wants is the cure. I’ll do anything.” Norden’s voice was a croak, and his lips were flecked with foam.
“I’ve never had it, lad.” Struan noticed the master-at-arms starting toward them, calling out something that sounded like a name.
“You’d better get to your boat, lad. They’re waiting for you.”
“The cure. Tell me how. I’ve me savings, sir.” Norden pulled out a filthy, knotted rag and offered it proudly, sweat streaking his face. “I’m thrifty and there be—there be five whole shillin’ an’ fourpence, sir, and it be all I have in the world, sir, and then there’s me pay, twenty shillin’ a month you can have. You can have it all, sir, I swear by the blessed Lord Jesus, sir!”
“I’ve never had the woman sickness, lad. Never,” Struan said again, his heart grinding at the memory of his childhood when wealth was pennies and shillings and half shillings and not bullion in tens of thousands of taels. And living again the never-to-be-forgotten horror of all his youth—of no-money and no-hope and no-food and no-warmth and no-roof and the bloated heaving stomachs of the children. Good sweet, Jesus, I can forget my own hunger, but never the children, never their cries on a starving wind in a cesspool of a street.
“I’ll do anything, anything, sir. Here. I can pay. I don’t want nuffink for nuffink. Here, sir.”
The master-at-arms was striding up the beach. “Norden!” he shouted angrily. “You’ll get fifty lashes for breaking ranks, by God!”
“Is your name Norden?”
“Yes, sir. Bert Norden. Please. I only want the cure. Help me, sir. Here. Take the money. It’s all yorn and there’ll be more. In Jesus Christ’s name, help me!”
“Norden!” the master-at-arms shouted from a hundred yards away, red with rage. “God’s blood, come here, you godrotting bastard!”
“Please, sir,” Norden said with growing desperation. “I heard you got cured by the heathen. You bought the cure from the heathen!”
“Then you heard a lie. There’s no Chinese cure that I know of. No cure. None. You’d better get back to your boat.”
“Course there’s a cure!” Norden shrieked. He jerked out his bayonet. “You tell me where to get it or I’ll cut your sodding gizzard open!”
The master-at-arms broke into a horrified run.