Merline Lovelace by The Tiger's Bride Page B

drifted to Sarah’s secluded corner, as did their voices. She listened in some nervousness as the mandarin inquired by means of an official interpreter as to why the Phoenix had anchored at Namoa, since no foreign ship might enter any port but Canton.
    “I would not have come to Namoa,” Straithe replied gravely, “had not contrary winds driven me from my course. I beg Your Excellency’s indulgence and request permission to replenish my water and provisions.”
    The mandarin blew a fragrant cloud of smoke from his cheroot. A wave of a languid hand brought the translator to attention. The lesser official pulled a red scroll from his sleeve, unrolled it, and read the contents in a high-pitched, singsong English.
    “By Imperial Edict dated Guo-Dong, twelfth year, third moon, second sun! Outer Barbarians may trade only at the port of Canton, or suffer immediate separation of their heads from their bodies.”
    Sarah gulped. Knowing the penalty for sailing withStraithe was one thing. Hearing it read aloud was another matter altogether.
    “His Majesty, however, possesses a heavenly compassion even to Barbarians who are not worthy of it,” the translator continued. “He does not deny aid to a ship in distress. Such ship shall be supplied with necessary provisions, but shall be directed to put out to sea again on the next tide and make immediately for Canton. So it is decreed. So it shall be done!”
    “And so you are directed,” the mandarin informed Straithe through the interpreter.
    “And so we shall sail,” the captain replied.
    The scribe rolled up the red scroll with a flourish and bowed. Another languid wave from his superior sent him and the other attendants back to the scow. The two principals then lapsed into Pidgin and got down to the real business at hand.
    “All same custom, last time we come?” Straithe asked politely.
    His Excellency smiled benignly. “All same.”
    The captain had the bribe ready. He passed a heavy bag to his guest. The sound of metal clinking against metal carried across the deck.
    “Does he pay in coin?” Sarah whispered to Hardesty.
    “Small silver ingots. Spanish tears, we calls ‘em. That’s all the buggers…beggin’ your pardon, miss…will take exceptin’ opium, and the capt’n, he won’t deal in that.”
    She eyed Straithe with grudging respect. A breeze off the shore ruffled his black hair and lifted the ends of the snowy white stock he’d tied around his neck in anticipation of his meeting with the port official. His green frock coat fit superbly across his broad shoulders.If she didn’t know him for a libertine and a scoundrel, she might have mistaken him for a proper English gentleman.
    Yet Straithe hadn’t sunk totally beyond reproach, she had to admit. Unlike a good many of his contemporaries, he refused to deal in opium, the product that formed the dark underpinning of the China trade.
    Sadly, the European nations had little to offer the Chinese in the way of trade goods. The residents of the Celestial Kingdom had no use for heavy woolens or tin, so Chinese merchants would accept only hard silver in exchange for the spices and tea and precious porcelains so prized in the West. Over time, members of the English Parliament had become seriously alarmed at the drain on the nation’s silver reserves. So alarmed, in fact, that these otherwise upstanding and righteous men had encouraged the East India Company to begin shipping in the one product that assured a ready market the next time English ships sailed into Chinese ports—the so-addictive opium.
    The Reverend Mr. Abernathy had thundered from his pulpit against this abominable practice, first in India, where the poppies were harvested and milked of their juices, then in China, where the millions of tons of opium shipped in by foreigners over the decades were slowly causing an addiction of epidemic proportions. The Presbyterian minister was not alone in his crusade. By Imperial Edict, the sentence for any