“Norden!”
A few on the beach turned around, startled: Cooper and Horatio and another. They began to run toward them.
Then Norden’s brain snapped, and gibbering and foaming, he hurled himself at Struan and slashed at him viciously, but Struan sidestepped and waited without fear, knowing that he could kill Norden at will.
It seemed to Norden that he was surrounded by devil-giants all with the same face, but he could never touch one of them. He felt the air explode from his lungs and the beach smash into his face, and he seemed to be suspended in painless agony. Then there was blackness.
The master-at-arms rolled off Norden’s back and hacked down with his fist again. He grabbed Norden and shook him like a rag doll and threw him down again. “What the devil happened to him?” he said, getting up, his face mottled with rage. “You all right, Mr. Struan?”
“Yes.”
Cooper and Horatio and some of the merchants hurried up. “What’s the matter?”
Struan carefully turned Norden over with his foot. “The poor fool’s got woman sickness.”
“Christ!” the master-at-arms said, nauseated.
“Better get away from him, Tai-Pan,” Cooper said. “If you breathe his flux you could catch it.”
“The poor fool thought I’d had the disease and got cured. By the Cross, if I knew the cure for that I’d be the richest man on the earth.”
“I’ll have the bugger put in irons, Mr. Struan,” the master-at-arms said. “Cap’n Glessing’ll make him wisht he never been born.”
“Just get a spade,” Struan said. “He’s dead.”
Cooper broke the silence. “First day, first blood. Bad joss.”
“Not according to Chinese custom,” Horatio said absently, sickened. “Now his ghost will watch over this place.”
“Good omen or bad,” Struan said, “the poor lad’s dead.”
No one answered him.
“The Lord have mercy on his soul,” Struan said. Then he turned west along the foreshore toward the crest that came down from the mountain ridge and almost touched the sea. He was full of foreboding as he drank in the good clean air and smelled the tang of the spray. That’s bad joss, he told himself. Very bad.
As he neared the crest, his premonition intensified, and when at last he stood in the floor of the valley where he had decided the town would be built, he felt for the third time a vastness of hate surround him.
“Good sweet Christ,” he said aloud. “What’s the matter with me?” He had never known such terror before. Trying to hold it in check, he squinted up at the knoll where the Great House would be, and, abruptly, he realized why the island was hostile. He laughed aloud.
“If I were you, Island, I’d hate me too. You hate the plan! Well, I tell you, Island, the plan’s good, by God. Good, you hear? China needs the world and the world needs China. And you’re the key to unlock the gates of China, and you know it and I know it, and that’s what I’m going to do, and you’re going to help!”
Stop it, he said to himself. You’re acting like a madman. Aye, and they’d all think you mad if you told them that your secret purpose was not just to get rich on trade and to leave. But to use riches and power to open up China to the world and particularly to British culture and British law so that each could learn from the other and grow to the benefit of both. Aye. It’s a dream of a madman.
But he was certain that China had something special to offer the world. What it was, he did not know. One day perhaps he would find out.
“And we’ve something special to offer as well,” Struan continued aloud, “if you’ll take it. And if it’s na defiled in the giving. You’re British soil for better or worse. We’ll cherish you and make you the center of Asia—which is the world. I commit The Noble House to the plan. If you turn your back on us you’ll be what you are now—a nothing barren flyspeck of a stinking barren rock—and you’ll die. And last, if The Noble House ever turns its back on you—destroy it with my blessing.”
He hiked up the knoll and, unsheathing his dirk, cut two long branches. He cleaved one and thrust it into the ground and with the other formed a crude cross. He doused the cross with brandy and lit it.
Those in the fleet who could see into the valley, and who noticed the smoke and the flame, found their telescopes and saw the burning cross and the Tai-Pan beside it, and they shuddered to themselves superstitiously and wondered what devilment he was up to. The Scots knew that the burning of a cross was a summons to the clan, and to all the kinsmen of all kindred clans: a summons to rally to the cross for battle.
And the burning cross was raised only by the chief of the clan. By ancient law, once raised, the burning cross committed the clan to defend the land unto the end of the clan.
CHAPTER TWO
“Welcome aboard, Robb,” Captain Isaac Perry said. “Tea?”
“Thank you, Isaac.” Robb sat back gratefully in the deep leather sea chair, smelling its tangy perfume, and waited. No one could hurry Perry, not even the Tai-Pan.
Perry poured the tea into porcelain cups.
He was thin but incredibly strong. His hair was the color of old hemp, brown with threads of silver and black. His beard was grizzled and his face scarred, and he smelled of tarred hemp and salt spray.
“Good voyage?” Robb asked.
“Excellent.”
Robb was happy as always to be in the main cabin. It was large and luxurious like all the quarters. The fittings throughout the ship were brass and copper and mahogany, and the sails the finest canvas and the ropes always new. Cannon perfect. Best powder. It was the Tai-Pan’s policy throughout his fleet to give his officers—and men—the finest quarters and the best food and a share of the profits, and there was always a doctor aboard. And flogging was outlawed. There was only one punishment for cowardice or disobedience, officer or seaman: to be put ashore at the first port and never given a second chance. So seamen and officers fought to be part of the fleet and there was never a berth empty.
The Tai-Pan had never forgotten his first ships and the fo’c’sles or his floggings. Or the men that had ordered them. Some of the men had died before he found them. Those that he found he broke. Only Brock he had not touched.
Robb did not know why his brother had spared Brock. He shuddered, knowing that whatever the reason, one day there would be a reckoning.
Perry added a spoonful of sugar and condensed milk. He handed Robb a cup, then sat behind the mahogany sea desk and peered out from eyes that were deep-set under shaggy brows. “Mr. Struan’s in good health?”
“As always. You expected him to be sick?”
“No.”
There was a knock on the cabin door.
“Come in!”
The door opened and Robb gaped at the young man standing there. “Great God, Culum lad, where’d you come from?” He got up excitedly, knocking his cup over. “ ‘Very important dispatches’ indeed—and of course ‘Zenith’!” Culum Struan entered the cabin and shut the door. Robb held him affectionately by the shoulders, then noticed his pallor and sunken cheeks. “What’s amiss, lad?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m much better, thank you, Uncle,” Cullum said, the voice too thin.
“Better from what, laddie?”
“The plague, the Bengal plague,” Culum said, puzzled.