Virgin Star (5 page)

Who was he? Was he the source of her danger?

Her gaze swung around the spacious room, past the enormous marble hearth, the rich carpet, and three chests of drawers. She looked up at the magnificent oil Brittania on the wall. The depiction of China and India kneeling to an Imperial Britannia pricked a spark of anger.

So like the English! Puffed-up cocks in a chicken coop, the British were, preening, full of self importance and grandiose notions and utterly blind to the sly Oriental fox that sat waiting on its haunches, watching, ready to pounce ...

She turned away. She spotted the dark blue chair. A pair of trousers, a thick black belt, and a shirt were draped over it. Boots had been placed neatly beneath. Her eyes darted to the nightstand nearby. A fruit bowl, pitcher, and goblet, and a folded letter alongside a jeweled dagger.

She did not need a dagger but no one would know that. She picked the knife up before taking the letter. She unfolded it and read past the formal preamble, names that meant nothing to her, except that apparently this man held a family relationship to an English lordship. She began reading:

August tenth, the year of our Lord, Eighteen twenty-three.

My dear brother:

I try to imagine your surprise at finding Lord Clives in your house delivering this carefully penned and sealed letter from me. I can only say desperate times call for desperate measures. These are suddenly desperate times. By the time you receive these words we will be somewhere mid-Atlantic, sailing to Boston, and from there to Washington, where I will at last assume the position of ambassador. Seanessy, suddenly the quaint provincial society and bucolic setting of Washington seem a welcome and much-needed respite from the hot sun, the tangled web of intrigues of the tea and opium wars.

For Joy is threatened and I will not have that.

Two of our house servants were found dead, throats slit, the bodies placed in a queer kneeling position on the garden path where Joy is in the habit of walking. I do not have to describe the effect of this on Joy; you can easily imagine, knowing Joy's mindless dismissal of the conventions of her class and the intimacy she inspires from all people, especially her servants. She not only knew the man and woman well, but she knew their families and gave language lessons to their children in the mornings. At first, I assumed the murders the result of some secret family feud: the kind of incomprehensible Oriental barbarism we British cannot hope to fathom. I put my men on it of course and alerted the British counsel, but not wanting to take the chance, I made immediate plans to take Joy and our children away a full two months sooner than we had planned.

The day we were to hoist sail, even as our trunks were being packed, the North Star was blown up by Chinese dynamite, killing two of our men and injuring another five. No warning. No threat. Sean, the explosions occurred only minutes after Joy, holding little Sean's and Joshua's hands, stepped down the plank.

I cannot say who is responsible for this, or those persons would be lying in a pool of their own blood. As you will quickly deduce, the threat could be from literally any one of a hundred different players in the opium and tea trade: any one of the major tea merchants in China, any of the ten Ho Cong families. Sean, it could be the Emperor of China himself for all I know. As I am certain Clives is raving at this very moment, it might also be one French Duke de la Armanac.

The Duke de la Armanac. She read the name twice, then again. This name meant nothing to her, though she knew both Lord Clives and many of the Ho Cong families. All of China and the China Seas knew the Ho Cong families. Chang Ki Pien might be Emperor of China, but only because the Ho Cong families did not want the ancient title. The ten families ran every aspect of China; one could not so much as pass a passel of cold dirt without their approval, which came with a pretty price.

Searching for another clue, she continued reading:

Of this last possibility, I can only relate the details of our brief connection with the man and his island. As you might remember, I discussed with you that rumors circulated last February regarding a shift in the opium trade to a man of French aristocracy: the Duke de la Armanac. Over the last five years the duke has bought huge quantities of Indian opium, then the Turkish Opium fields, bit by bit, finally securing the largest acreage in Erzurum Hills and importing the patent seed to an island called the Isle of Blue Caverns. Rumors began claiming he was undercutting the company's choice opium again and again, and that the Ho Cong families, who feed the precious rot into the Chinamen's blood, preferred to deal with this French duke.

Rumors also claim he now has enough opium m reserve to dump it onto the market until the price drops out. If true, he can continue long enough to cause the collapse of the opium market and our very own honorable company. The company, as I'm sure Lord Clives will be telling you, claims the duke convinced the Ho Cong families to deal with him by playing their own games of ruthless, murderous intimidation. I never believed it. I was imagining Clives dreamed these wild schemes and rumors while under the influence himself, desperate as he was for anything to maintain the company's opium monopolies in this region.

Of course, when these rumors first surfaced I had made our own discreet inquiries into the family name. Our agents discovered nothing of interest to me: de la Armanac is an old titled name of France, referring to an area near the Italian and Swiss borders before Napoleon. Apparently, the family lost most of their vast lands in the Napoleonic purges. (I discovered this land is currently being considered for restoration, including the family title—they have high connections to the scoundrels of France's Chamber of Deputies, and a familial relationship to none other than Louis XVIII.) And it was during the bloody purges of the revolution that the family had purchased the Isle of Blue Caverns as a refuge from the blade of the guillotine, while initiating the Turkey opium production.

So when I received an invitation to the Isle of Blue Caverns, I accepted, naively thinking it was no more than a request for civilized society so wanting in this region. Last month we sailed into the isle's small port. It is an island of haunting natural beauty: calm bays on the leeward, a mountainous range covered in lush tropical foliage and violent seas on the windward. Inexplicably, much of the windward side of the island has been destroyed by fire, and tree cutting, which the duke dismissed as malaria control—destroying "stagnant ponds, no more." Of course, this explanation is ridiculous; we learned the man uses his slave population in a quixotic quest for treasure—a long-ago lost Chinese pirate treasure rumored to be buried on his island. You are no doubt laughing at this, pleased as it is an indication of the kind of intelligence we are dealing with here.

I cannot relate all of our strange impressions of this man, his lovely wife, and their island. The important facts are that he maintains a standing army of two thousand men, a slave population of at least a thousand. Nor can I attempt to describe all that happened during our short visit. The duke was cordial, urbane, and, like so many others of his kind, grandiose with the absurd pretensions of a dying aristocracy. We finally reached a point in our conversations—conversations already a bit strained by the duke's conventional response to my wife's well-exercised intelligence and its articulation-—where he began inquiring into our Malacca trade operations, the number of our ships, agents, and merchants, and the outrageous tariffs we endure, a conversation that traveled to our increasingly potent attack in the China Black tea war in England, how the Chinese were beginning to reap rather severe repercussions of the new competition for the rich prize of the insatiable English tea palate.

I didn't see where the pointed conversation was leading until he at last made an offer—a shockingly blunt offer to buy us out. At first, I imagined it was a poor attempt at humor but then actual numbers fell from his mouth. Five hundred thousand pounds for our Malacca shipping trade and routes: Of course, I laughed rather too long and hard at his arrogance. He gave ho sign whatsoever of any hostility when, still amused and wishing like hell you were with me to enjoy this spectacle, I declined. I put the whole matter down to poor breeding and the endless delusions of French aristocracy.

Until the murders and the explosion.

While I do not have proof that they were the ruthless conceit of one Duke de la Armanac, he is well-known for employing these persuasive tactics. Joy and I discussed certain impressions and encounters that left us—and indeed all my crew—with the idea that the island hides a dark secret. I know you, Sean: you will want to shoot him first and wonder about his guilt later. If you do manage to discover some small measure of prudence and determine his guilt—an enormous if, I know—I leave it to you to demonstrate the consequences of threatening us. We can take no chances with Joy's life.

If, indeed, the duke is responsible for the murders and explosion, the next task will neatly complement Clives's and the Earl's request for assistance, assistance only you can provide. The Earl has offered us four years' shipping free of British tariffs in return for destroying the opium stockpile on the island—one good explosion should do the job. Conveniently, the duke intends on spending the fall season in London, and he will be there by the time you read this. A small amount of ingenuity should land an invitation to the island. Our dear friend Clives will be able to tell you more.

In consideration of the wealth of your love for Joy and our children: as you will need to be assured, the girl who loves freedom has lost hers; she does not leave the reach of my arms, and as her enthusiastic guard, I will not leave her side, or place her in a position of danger until the matter is completely, wholly resolved.

To the tradition of our toss, you win the pleasure.

Yours, Ram

She set down the disquieting letter. The South China Seas. Malacca. Malay. Penang, where the British fought the Dutch for control of the ports, while the Orientals quietly went about their lives and business. Tea plantations. Aye, she knew these places. She knew of the opium trade. She knew Malacca. She knew the English outpost there, the Tampin River, the dangers and beauty of the jungle, washed for months in a deluge brought by the monsoons. 'Twas where she was from—so maybe there was a reason for her being in this house. She had lived there, but—

When? What was she doing here in London?

Malacca. In her mind's eye she saw the mountain range rising from the crystal-blue lagoons, crescent bays and swamps, the island covered by an impenetrable jungle populated by deadly snakes, screaming monkeys, and spiders the size of fists. She knew the beautiful English settlement made of rain-washed white stucco buildings and mansions, and the native township of Tunku Hamzah alongside. 'Twas where she had to return. Somehow, she knew she had to get back to Malacca.

She felt the swift racing of her heart; she must get on with it. She examined the clothes over the chair. Too large. Curse it! She stepped quietly into the room-sized clothes closet. Boots lined the floor. The man had enormous feet! She searched through the finely tailored clothes: cotton and silk shirts, a number of coats, short sack and formal, a riding cape, and dozens of trousers, all of them huge. Nothing she might wear without drawing more attention than if she were bare-skinned.

Had the degenerate undressed her, then hid her clothes?

Her hands went clammy, her legs went numb. Panic stole her breath. She closed her eyes, feeling feverish with confusion. For the love of God, what was happening to her?

She steadied her pulse and breathing. She needed answers even more than she needed clothes. With no choice, she abandoned the clothes closet and returned to the bed. She climbed a top. Light as a whisper, not touching him at all, she straddled the sleeping giant. She held her small weight poised as the razor-sharp edge of the blade rested a hairline from his jugular vein. She knew the exact point to cut and with how much force.

She knew it from experience.

The same hard-earned experience guided a keen intelligent assessment of her victim. Unusually tall for a man—he would be awkward and slow. Sleeping on his back with his hands behind his head as if he had not a care in the world. As if he might wake whistling. He had impressive biceps, and the telling display of athletic veins beneath sun-washed skin said these muscles were well exercised. The uncommon strength could only be got by simple hard labor. No doubt he was dull-witted to boot.

No matter. The numerous scars on his upper arms and shoulders suggested that while he might be a veteran fighter, he had been frequently wounded. Long blond hair as straight as straw seemed to indicate he was indolent and slatternly. The stranger's rugged features were handsome and striking: a broad forehead, a long face, thick bushy brows, and high cheekbones, prominent large nose, strong square-cut jaw, and generous mouth. This was of no import. Only his answers mattered.

Seanessy's dreams filled with images of the girl he treasured, Ram, his much-loved brother, and his nephews, little Sean and Joshua. They swam in the sea as Chinese junks filled with dark-skinned people surrounded them, shooting poisoned pellets from blowguns while laughing at their frantic struggle. The laughter sounded louder than a wailing wind.