His eyes focused on the jetty, on Angelique and others, all people he would probably never see again. Now Angelique waved a last time then strolled over to Maureen Ross who was waiting by the lamp. I hope they become friends, he thought, wondering about them. In a moment, they and the jetty became part of the night.

Angelique's correct to bend to Tess, he thought, not that she had any option. Absently his fingers made sure her affidavit was safe in his pocket.

Sad about Malcolm, tragic. Poor Malcolm, diligently working all his life for something he would never have, would never be. Malcolm Struan, the tai-pan who never truly was --all his life like a snow-blind man in a blizzard searching for a white tent that was never there.

"Sad about Malcolm, don't you think?" But Gornt was no longer beside him. He looked around and saw he had gone on deck and, his back to Yokohama, was watching the Belle ahead, hatless, the wind ruffling his hair.

Why the smile, and what's behind it? he asked himself. So hard and yet... Something strange about that young man. Is he a king in the making or a man bent on regicide?

Most people on the jetty had wandered off.

Angelique was beside Maureen near the lamp, watching the Belle and disappearing cutter. Soon they were alone but for Chen and Vargas who were talking quietly with one another, waiting to unload the cutter, should it be necessary and, unasked, to chaperone the two women.

"Maureen..." Angelique glanced at her. Her lovely smile faded, noticing how unhappy her newfound friend looked. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Well, no, it's... really, dinna concern yoursel'. It's, it's just that I haven't seen Jamie all day, he's been busy and, and I had something important..." The words trailed off.

"I'll wait with you if you like. Even better, Maureen, why not come with me? Let's wait in my suite and watch from my window.

We'll see the cutter in plenty of time to meet her."

"I think I'd... well, I think I'd rather wait here."

Angelique firmly took her arm. "What is it? What's the matter, can I help?"

"No, I din'na think so, dear Angelique. It's, it's just that, it's just that ..." Maureen hesitated again, then stammered, "oh God, I din'na want to burden you but his, Jamie's, his, his mistress, came to see me this afternoon."

"From the Yoshiwara?"

"Yes. She came to kowtow, to bow, she said, and tell me not to worry because she's looked after him perfectly and she wanted to ask in future should she present her bill to me monthly or yearly."

Angelique's mouth dropped open. "She did?"

"Yes." Maureen looked green under the oil light and stuttered, "She also said that if there was anything I wanted to know about... about, about "Jami" as she called him, ugh!, about his bed habits, pos--positions and so on, as I was a virgin and wouldn't know these things, she'd be happy to oblige in detail because she was a professional of Second Rank and promised to give me a picture book called a "pillow book" and she would mark his, his specialties but not to worry because Jami was well practiced and his ... his, she called it his One-eyed Monk was in perfect order. There, now you know it all!"

Angelique was flabbergasted. "Mon Dieu, you poor dear, how awful! But... but she speaks English too?" "No, an almost incoherent mixture of gibberish and pidgin and some of Jamie's words but I understood her key points perfectly well indeed. It it seems she's, she's been his doxy for a year or more. She was tiny, no' at all pretty, no' five foot and I said, I didn'a know what to say so I remarked on her size, how small she was and the huzzy, the huzzy guffawed and said, "P'renti big 'nuff, Jami tai-tai, on back fit awe' same, heya? You 'rucky womans."

"Oh, mon Dieu!"

"Q. What do I do?"

Angelique found her own head buzzing. "You could... no that wouldn't do..."

"Perhaps I could... no I canna'. It's too much..."

"What if you..." Angelique shook her head. Impotently she stared at her and at that moment Maureen looked at her, each seeing herself in the other, the same shock, revulsion, repugnance, contempt, fury written clearly on both faces. For a moment they were frozen, then Angelique snickered, in a second Maureen did the same and then they were choked with laughter.

Chen and Vargas peered across at them, the peals of laughter mixing with the waves on the shore and those that battered the pilings. Angelique wiped away these, the first, good, laughter tears she had had in such a long time. "His One-eyed..." Again they were convulsed, shrieking with laughter until their stomachs hurt and they hung on to one another.

As suddenly as the laughing fit arrived it went away. An ache remained. "It's funny, Maureen, but not funny at all."

"Yes. Not funny," Maureen said heavily.

"I feel... I want to go home now. I thought I could deal with the Yoshiwara--Jamie's no different from other men--but I canna', I know that now. I canna' face this life where, where the Yoshiwara is and will ever be and like it or no', Angelique, in a year or two the bairns, the children, arrive and a few years after he'll think us old, whoever he is--and we will be old, our hair will be grey and teeth fall out and whoever he is he will turn away. A woman's lot is no' a happy one. I wish I was aboard Atlanta Belle now, going home, no' here, no' here.

I'm going home anyway, soon as I can.

I've decided."

"Think about it, don't tell him tonight."

"It's better to say it tonight. That's... it's better."

Angelique hesitated. "I'll wait till we see the cutter, then I'll leave."

"Thank you. I'll be sorry to leave you, now that we've met. I've never had a real friend."

Maureen put her arm in hers, and looked back at Atlanta Belle.

"Ayeeyah," Chen was whispering disgustedly in Four Village dialect that he and Vargas spoke fluently. "Why can't those two whores be sensible and wait indoors until the cutter arrives, then we don't have to wait in the cold either."

"Jami won't be pleased to hear you call her that!"

"Fortunately he doesn't speak this dialect, or even Cantonese, and anyway I wouldn't call her whore in front of him or any foreign devil--though that's what we call all their women as you know--nor would I use such blunt words around them. I'd use "Morning Flower" or one of a thousand other names which we both know means "whore" but foreign devils think means "Morning Flower."" Chen chortled, warm in his long padded jacket. He looked up at the sky as the moon came briefly through the overcast. "That Morning Flower thinks she'll be Jami tai-tai." Again he chortled. "She never will be."

"No, not after today," Vargas said gloomily.

"She's the right size for him, time he was married and it would have been good to have children here." Vargas missed his own, six of them, that he had left with his two wives in Macao until he could afford a house of his own here. "What about Missee-tai-tai and this Shanghai Gornt? Will he increase her money?"

"If he does it will be for his benefit not hers.

What I want to know is what's in those papers?"

"What papers?"

"The ones Lun saw when Willum tai-pan was dozing by his fire. The ones from Long Pointed Nose. Dew neh loh moh that Lun can't read French. Willum tai-pan was in plenty shock so Lun said."

"What would Pointed Nose send Willum from the grave?"

Chen shrugged. "Trouble for Missee-tai-tai.

Perhaps it was about Dark of the Moon, eh?"

"That's only a rumor."

Chen said nothing, keeping that secret as Noble House Chen had ordered after Malcolm's death.

"Whatever happens, Tess tai-tai will grind Missee-tai-tai and the Shanghai foreign devil into dust."

"Oh? What have you heard?"

Chen rolled his eyes. "Tess tai-tai is tai-pan now, that's what Noble House Chen says--he told us in the last mail and to beware. Did you ever hear of an Empress giving away power once she's got it? Any woman for that matter? Never in all our five hundred centuries of history. She's tai-pan now according to Noble House Chen and he should know."