"Thank you, Mother," he said, in Cantonese, using the customary honorific for such a special person who had cherished and carried and guarded him when defenseless.

"Bad news, my son," Ah Tok said--the tidings had rushed through the Chinese community.

"Bad news." He sipped the tea. It tasted very good.

"After you have bathed you will feel better and then we can talk. Your Honorable Father was overdue his appointment with the gods. He's there now and you are tai-pan so the bad has become good. Later this morning I'll bring some extra-special tea I've bought for you that will cure all your ills."

"Thank you."

"You owe me a tael of silver for the medicine."

"A fiftieth part."

"Ayeeyah, at least half."

"Ayeeyah, a twentieth part, Mother." With hardly any thought he bargained automatically, but not unkindly, "and if you argue I'll remind you you owe me six months wages paid in advance for your grandmother's funeral--her second."

One of the servants chortled behind her but she feigned not to notice. "If you say so, Tai-pan." She used the title delicately, the first time she had ever said it to him, watching him, missing nothing, then snapped at the two men sponging and cleaning him carefully and efficiently: "Hurry up with your work. Does my son, the tai-pan, have to endure your clumsy ministrations all day?"

"Ayeeyah," one of them unwisely muttered back.

"Take care, you motherless fornicator," she said sweetly in a dialect Struan did not understand.

"Just get on with it and if you nick my son while shaving I'll put the Evil Eye on you.

Treat my son like Imperial jade or your fruit will be pulverized--and don't listen to your betters!"

"Betters? Ayeeyah, old woman, you come from Ning Tok, a turtle dung village famous only for farts."

"A tael of silver says this civilized person can whip you five out of seven times at mahjong this evening."

"Done!" the man said truculently even though Ah Tok was an accomplished player.

"What's all that about?" Struan said.

"Servants talk, nothing important, my son."

When they had finished they gave him a fresh crisp night shirt. "Thank you," Struan said to them, greatly refreshed. They bowed politely and were gone.

"Ah Tok, bolt her door, quietly."

She obeyed. Her sharp ears heard the rustle of skirts in the adjoining room and she resolved to increase her vigilance. Nosey, foreign devil toad belly whore with her Jade Gate so hungry for the Master a civilized person can almost hear it salivating...

"Light the candle for me please."

"Eh? Are your eyes hurting you, my son?"

"No, nothing like that. There are safety matches in the bureau." Safety matches, the recent Swedish patent, were usually kept locked away as they were highly sought after, therefore had a ready sale and therefore had a habit of disappearing.

Petty theft was endemic in Asia. Uneasily she used one, not understanding why they would not light unless the side of their special box was struck.

He had explained why but she only muttered about more foreign devil magic.

"Where do you want the candle, my son?"

He pointed at the bedside table within easy reach. "Here. Now leave me for a little while."

"But, ayeeyah, we should talk, there is much to plan."

"I know. Just wait outside the door and keep everyone away until I call."

Grumbling she walked out. So much talk and bad news had exhausted him. Nonetheless, painfully he balanced the candle on the side of the bed, then lay back a moment.

Four years ago on his sixteenth birthday his mother had taken him to the Peak to speak privately: "Now you are old enough to learn some secrets of the Noble House. There will always be secrets. Some your father and I keep from you until you become tai-pan. Some I keep from him, and some from you.

Some I will now share with you and not with him, or your brothers and sisters. Under no circumstances are these secrets to be shared with anyone. Anyone. You promise before God."

"Yes Mother, I swear it."

"First: perhaps one day we may need to give each other personal or dangerous information in a private letter--never forget anything in writing may be read by alien eyes. Whenever I write to you I will always add, P.s. I love you. You will do the same, always, without fail. But if there is no P.s. I love you, then the letter contains important and secret information, from me to you or you to me only. Watch!" Shielding the paper she had prepared, she lit some safety matches and held them under the paper, not to fire it but to almost scorch it, line by line.

Miraculously, the hidden message appeared: Happy Birthday, under your pillow there's a sight draft for ten thousand pounds. Keep it secretly, spend it wisely.

"Oh Mother, there is? There really is, ten thousand?"' "Yes."

"Ayeeyah! But how do you do it? The writing?"' "Take a clean quill or pen and write your message carefully in a liquid I will give you, or milk, and let it dry. When you heat the paper as I did, the writing will appear." She used another match and gravely lit a corner of the paper. In silence they watched it burn. She ground the ashes to dust under her tiny high-booted foot. "When you're tai-pan, trust no one," adding strangely, "even me."

Now, Struan held her sad letter over the candle's flame. The words came into view, no mistaking her handwriting: Sorry to tell your father died raving, besotted with whisky. He must have bribed a servant to sneak it in again. Much more to tell in person. Thank God he's out of his misery but it was the Brocks, my cursed father and my brother Morgan, who give us no peace and caused his strokes--the final one came just after you left when we discovered details, too late, of their secret Hawaiian coup against us. Jamie has a few details.

For a moment he stopped reading, sick with rage.

Soon there'll be a reckoning, he promised himself then read on: Beware of our friend, Dmitri Syborodin.

We discover he's a secret agent for that revolutionary, President Lincoln, not the South as he pretends. Beware of Angelique Richaud...

His heart twisted with sudden fright: Our Paris agents write that her uncle Michel Richaud went bankrupt shortly after she left and is now in Debtor's Prison. More facts: her father keeps very poor company, has very substantial gambling debts, and secretly boasts to intimates he'll soon represent all our French interests--received your letter of the 4th recommending this, presume at her instigation--he won't, he's insolvent. Another of his "secrets": you'll be his son-in-law within a year. Of course, ridiculous, you are far too young for marriage, and I could not conceive of a worse connection. Singly or together they are out to snare you, my son. Be circumspect and beware of feminine guile.

For the first time in his life he was furious with his mother. Shakily, he shoved the paper into the flame, held it while it burned then pulverized the ash to nothingness, smashed the flame out and sent the candle skittering and lay back nauseated, heart pounding, all the time his mind shouting; how dare she investigate Angelique and her family without asking me! How dare she be so wrong! Whatever sins they committed Angelique is not to blame.

Mother of all people should know the sins of the fathers are not to be blamed on the children! Wasn't my beloved grandfather much worse, wasn't he a killer and not much more than a pirate, as her father still is? She's a bloody hypocrite! It's none of her business who I marry. It's my life and if I want to marry Angelique next year I will. Mother knows nothing about Angelique--and when she knows the truth she'll love her as I do--or else by God! She...

"Oh Christ," he gasped as pain ripped him apart.

McFay looked up from the piles of letters, documents and journals littering his desk. "How is he?" he asked anxiously as Dr.Babcott came in and closed the door. The office was spacious, facing the High Street and the sea.