Shanghai (3 page)

Q'in She Huang continued, “It is your families' responsibility, when the Age of White Birds on Water begins, to make the darkness come. There will be great resistance. There will be efforts all around you to prevent the darkness, but you must complete your task. The darkness must come or there will be no light. You must force the darkness to come or a more subtle, much more dangerous darkness—a contagion—will creep upon our land, and if it does, it will never end. We will be enslaved to others, forever, and the Age of the Seventy Pagodas will never arrive.”

The First Emperor stood and looked down at his Chosen Three. “Each of you must pass down to your succeeding generations the secret of the Ivory Tusk—of the compact you will enter into on this day on this Holy Mountain. Each family is to give the responsibility of carrying on the commitment to one family member only. That family member is to pass it on to another as age takes him—and so on through time. If any of them fail, then we, the Black-Haired people, will be swept away. China will be no more.

“The period of darkness will be long, but we will find our way through the darkness to the light. To a rebirth the likes of which the world has never seen. One that will dwarf even my achievements—the Age of the Seventy Pagodas.”

All three of the Chosen noted that Q'in She Huang had passed by the centre of the Tusk.

The First Emperor looked at them and said, “There is a middle window, but it can be opened only when the Age of White Birds on Water is upon the land. Those who experience the darkness will know how to open that portal.” He shifted to watch the final rays of the final sun that he would ever see. When the last of the last rays were no more, he said, “Keep the Tusk a secret from all others. It is sacred. These are either the words of a madman or a seer—that is up to you.” Q'in She Huang looked back the way they had come up the mountain. “Remember that guile is your greatest weapon. People want to believe in whimsy—and madness. I let it be known that I sought the stone of eternal life. I screamed for it night after night from my bedchamber. I sent messengers to the far reaches of our kingdom to find it. I executed hundreds when they failed to bring me the stone of eternal life. I allowed the people to believe me mad to give the Carver time to complete my visions in the Tusk—which I now commit to you. You are here to lead, not follow. Use your insight, endurance, and will.” He took a deep, wheezing breath, then said, “Now put your hands on the Narwhal Tusk.”

Each of the Three did. The blood on the Tusk was still thick and warm.

“And bind you one to the other—and the leaders of your families one to the other—until the Age of the Seventy Pagodas arrives, when the rebirth will be complete.”

Murmurs of assent rose in the throats of all three.

“Now take the Tusk and go. The Carver will lead you down through the caves. Once you are across the river, look for the black trail in the sky to lead you.”

“But Emperor …”

“My voyage is finished. I bound this country together. I united it with canals and laws and language. Now it is yours to see that China enters the darkness so that it will one day see the light. I have been granted a glimpse of the future—it is in the Tusk. Make this happen and China will be great. Fail and we will be picked apart by carrion birds, never to taste greatness again.” He let out a long, heavy sigh, then said, “Now go.”

With that the most powerful man the world had ever known, or very possibly would ever know, turned from his Chosen Three, removed his clothing, knelt in the cold, and awaited his death—like a great slab of rock ready to accept the first snows of winter.

And that is how the rebel general and his troops found Q'in She Huang. A naked, kneeling, frozen figure alone on the high plateau of the Holy Mountain.

—

Shortly, exhausted runners from the east side of the mountain reported to the General that no one had been seen coming down the mountain. Everyone on that desolate mountaintop understood that the First Emperor's Chosen Three had managed to escape. The night quickly took on a tension that loosed icy tendrils of chaos into the air. A leaderless Middle Kingdom was the worst of all possible outcomes.

The rebel general ordered a huge bonfire built. When the fire had pushed back the darkness, he ordered the First Emperor's body thrown on the blaze. The smell of sizzling flesh entered every nostril. It calmed the mountaintop—the First Emperor was truly gone, the new emperor in control.

The rebel general, for the first time that day, allowed himself a moment of calm. Then his teary left eye widened in horror as the First Emperor's head turned on the embers and faced him. Q'in She Huang's dead eyes held the rebel general's until flames engulfed the head in an intense blaze, seemingly of its own making.

A chill ran through the rebel general. “Cut down every tree, burn everything. Build a fire to drive away the night and obliterate for all time what happened here.” His voice was thin, girlish. It infuriated him.

* * *

THE CHOSEN THREE and the Carver sat on the far bank of the river and looked east. The first rays of the cold sun announced a new day—a new, dangerous world. The Narwhal Tusk lay at their feet.

“What should we do now?” asked the Body Guard.

“Q'in She Huang is no more, hence …” began the Confucian, but he stopped when he saw Jiang stand and move up the bank, away from the river's edge.

For a long moment she stood completely immobile. Then she pointed west, over their heads, toward the Holy Mountain. They turned to see what had drawn her attention. And there, coming from the Hua Shan, was a dense cloud of dark smoke. As Q'in She Huang had promised, there was a black trail in the sky. It was showing the way, eastward, toward the sea and the bend in the river—to a place that would eventually be called Shanghai.

North China Sea October 1841

Richard Hordoon holds the pipe in both hands. Its polished cane stem, a dense black from years of use, is silken to his touch; its turned water buffalo horn mouthpiece a pleasure on his tongue; the six inches of silver inlaid with copper at the far end a magical thing in the flickering brazier light. Just past the midway point of the foot-and-a-half-long tube, in a three-inch-wide cavity, sits a turnip-shaped porcelain bowl. The bottom of the bowl is intricately patterned with a series of tiny holes, perfectly placed to convey the smoke to the smoker.

A long needle pierces, then plucks a sticky ball of opium from the bronze tray and holds it over the spirit
lamp. The black resin pales, softens, then sputters. The needle deposits the bubbling ball in the bowl of the pipe.

A puff, a second, a third, then the process is repeated with the next molten orb from the bronze tray, and the next—until time shimmers, then slips. Rancour crystallizes, then opens and blooms roses and hydrangeas. Richard's neck elongates and his head swivels. His mouth opens and he catches a fine tendril of the far-off scent of desert air. It swirls round and round his teeth, then plunges down his throat.

And his being turns and spirals after it, down and down as a soft wind whispers up into his face and he floats on the gentle draught from the bottom of nowhere.

And the pipe is in his hands again, a cool, sensual smoothness, a swan's neck.

“
Zhangzui,
” the voice says in Mandarin. It is the wrong word. The speaker means “
Xiqi,
” breathe, not “
zhangzui,
” which means open your mouth. But Richard knows what is meant. He opens the two large holes in the bottom of his back and draws the serpent smoke down deeper.

Wings sprout from his sides and, filling with air, the skin that joins his ribs and his arms rounds and pulls taut. And he rises.

He is gliding up a river delta with the majesty of a four-master in full sail, riding with God's breath at his back. He recognizes the waterway. It's the Bogue, the access channel to Canton. The familiar cliffs of Linten Island approach fast. He speeds past the British bark, the
Red Rover,
and the American clipper, the
Water Witch,
at anchor, their sides teeming with pyjama-bottomed Chinamen carrying mango-wood caskets from the English ships to their native bumboats, since no
Fan Kuei
is allowed to set foot on the sacred soil of the Celestial Kingdom.

He holds up a hand—or at least in his mind he holds up a hand—and stares at his palm. For a moment he is lost in the lines of his life.

“Turn your foolish mitt, damn you,” he snarls, surprised how quickly his English has taken on a cockney twist. His hand slowly turns to face the other way—and so does he. Now the
Water Witch
and the
Red Rover
are behind him, the deep, navigable passage to Canton straight ahead.

“Up!” he commands, and his palm turns skyward—and so does he.

And the smoke purrs and seeks and finds the hidden entrance within him. His death and the haunting cry of a young girl beckon him to go deeper and deeper into the opium tunnel.

“
Zhangzui!
” The wrong word again.

The smoke turns. It is suddenly angry, liquid fury. Thick leather straps slap across his chest and thighs as iron buckles cinch tight.

“Breathe!” A voice. A different voice. Not in Mandarin. Farsi this time.

“Breathe!”

This time insistent. Calling him back, back from the tunnel. From the cool depths of himself and his search.

“Breathe! Richard, we've turned north toward the bloody Yangtze, brother mine. No more time for dreaming.”

And he was there. Maxi. And it was fading—the secret access to the tunnel lost until the next time the pipe is in his hands … and he is brave enough to search again.

* * *

THE SOUTHERN CROSS was just visible on the western horizon as Richard carefully stepped up onto the midship deck of the flagship of Queen Victoria's Expeditionary Force, HMS
Cornwallis
. His red-haired, white-skinned brother disappeared down a grapple line and boarded the two-man Chinese junk that awaited him there. He tied a red kerchief around his neck, waved goodbye to Richard, then loosed the junk's moorings and headed toward the British steamer HMS
Nemesis
, a mile or so off the port side.

Richard took a deep breath, allowing the salt air to expand his lungs.
Fifteen years in China,
he thought,
and finally it is all about to really begin.
He watched Maxi's junk catch the wind and bolt shoreward and he laughed aloud. Who would have thought it possible? Richard and Maxi Hordoon in the employ of the British Expeditionary Force, heading toward the mouth of the mighty Yangtze River! Who would believe such a story? Who would dare dream the dream that he and his brother were now living?

On board, mariners scrambled up the rigging to secure the single topgallants, the royals, and even the skysails on the three towering mainmasts. The anchor was secured to the forecastle cleats, the gantry cranes pulled on deck and tied down. As Admiral Gough emerged from the coach house and mounted the steps to the raised quarterdeck, the jib, outer jib, and flying jib were hoisted in the bow and the boat completed its turn into the wind. The men all around Richard worked with a vigour he had not seen before. They all knew that if they could make it to, then up, the Yangtze River to Nanking, there would be riches for one and all. The seamen and soldiers aboard the ships of the armada had already spent more than a year with little to show for
their labours. They had seen comrades die in hideous, shrieking agony, poisoned by Chinese cooks; watched helplessly as kidnapped shipmates were executed in public squares as the Manchus led the throngs in cheers and song; stood by while hundreds died from suppurating wounds that would not heal in the tropical heat; and could do nothing as many more shat themselves to death with the dysentery or burned up with the malaria, or both. These seven hundred soldiers and mariners in the Expeditionary Force were battle tested and disease hardened. And despite the Queen's personally appointed diminutive idiot politician, Governor General Robert Pottinger, who had nominal command of the entire enterprise, they still believed in their military commander, Admiral Hugh Gough.

The mariners looked up as the sails momentarily luffed while the ship headed into the wind. Then they passed by the headwind and the sails bloated, the mighty man-o'-war heeled to starboard, and the ship headed due north toward the Yangtze. The men smiled. They were ready for a reward.

London November 1841

More than two thousand miles to the west, the patriarch of the powerful Vrassoon family, the Duke of Warwickshire—Eliazar Vrassoon by name—sat in his London study overlooking the Mall. He, too, was thinking about rewards. “Just rewards for very hard work” is the way he would have put it, had he been inclined to speak his mind aloud—but he wasn't so inclined, and had never been.

Runners were constantly in and out of the enormous outer office carrying messages from the far-flung ends of his vast mercantile empire. But it was one specific message that he awaited.

The eldest of his four sons, Ari, an elegant, perfumed man in his late twenties, entered and assumed his position over his father's left shoulder, his embossed notepad in his immaculately manicured hand. He hoped that this business could be completed quickly, as his man had informed him that a certain young—very young—beauty awaited his pleasure in the room above the Southwark Inn. Just another kind of reward for a hard day's labour. Ari wanted to smile, but wisely chose to keep his lightly powdered face neutral.