“I beg you will allow me to remind you, Your Highness, we may confidently expect to reach Tien-sing in three weeks’ time, so you may consider whether to hold any communications for the capital.” Laurence meant only to save him some effort; the distance was certainly better than a thousand miles.
But Yongxing very energetically made clear that he viewed this suggestion as nearly scandalous in its neglect of due respect to the throne, and Laurence was forced to apologize for having made it, excusing himself by a lack of knowledge of local custom. Yongxing was not mollified; in the end Laurence was glad to pack him and the other two envoys off at the cost of the services of the barge, though it left him and Hammond only the jolly-boat to convey them to their own rendezvous ashore: the ship’s launch was already engaged in ferrying over fresh supplies of water and livestock.
“Is there anything I can bring you for your relief, Tom?” Laurence asked, putting his head into Riley’s cabin.
Riley lifted his head from the pillows where he lay before the windows and waved a weak, yellow-tinged hand. “I am a good deal better. But I would not say no to a good port, if you can find a decent bottle in the place; I think my mouth has been turned down forever from the godawful quinine.”
Reassured, Laurence went to take his leave of Temeraire, who had managed to coax the ensigns and runners into scrubbing him down, quite unnecessarily. The Chinese visitors were grown more ambitious, and had begun to throw gifts of flowers aboard, and other things also, less innocuous. Running up to Laurence very pale, Lieutenant Franks forgot to stutter in his alarm. “Sir, they are throwing burning incense onto the ship, pray, pray make them stop.”
Laurence climbed up to the dragondeck. “Temeraire, will you please tell them nothing lit can be thrown at the ship. Roland, Dyer, mind what they throw, and if you see anything else that may carry a risk of fire, throw it back over at once. I hope they have better sense than to try setting off crackers,” he added, without much confidence.
“I will stop them if they do,” Temeraire promised. “You will see if there is somewhere I can come ashore?”
“I will, but I cannot hold out much hope; the entire territory is scarcely four miles square, and thoroughly built-up,” Laurence said. “But at least we can fly over it, and perhaps even over Canton, if the mandarins do not object.”
The English Factory was built facing directly onto the main beach, so there was no difficulty in finding it; indeed, their attention drawn by the gathered crowd, the Company commissioners had sent a small welcoming party to await them on shore, led by a tall young man in the uniform of the East India Company’s private service, with aggressive sideburns and a prominent aquiline nose, giving him a predatory look rather increased than diminished by the alert light in his eyes. “Major Heretford, at your service,” he said, bowing. “And may I say, sir, we are damned glad to see you,” he added, with a soldier’s frankness, once they were indoors. “Sixteen months; we had begun to think no notice would be taken of it at all.”
With an unpleasant shock Laurence was recalled to the memory of the seizure of the East India merchant ships by the Chinese, all the long months ago: preoccupied by his own concerns over Temeraire’s status and distracted by the voyage, he had nearly forgotten the incident entirely; but of course it could hardly have been concealed from the men stationed here. They would have spent the intervening months on fire to answer the profound insult.
“No action has been taken, surely?” Hammond asked, with an anxiety that gave Laurence a fresh distaste for him; there was a quality of fear to it. “It would of all things be most prejudicial.”
Heretford eyed him sidelong. “No, the commissioners thought best under the circumstances to conciliate the Chinese, and await some more official word,” in a tone that left very little doubt of where his own inclinations would have led him.
Laurence could not but find him sympathetic, though in the ordinary course he did not think very highly of the Company’s private forces. But Heretford looked intelligent and competent, and the handful of men under his command showed signs of good discipline: their weapons well-kept, and their uniforms crisp despite the nearly sopping heat.
The boardroom was shuttered against the heat of the climbing sun, with fans laid ready at their places to stir the moist, stifling air. Glasses of claret punch, cooled with ice from the cellars, were brought once the introductions had been completed. The commissioners were happy enough to take the post which Laurence had brought, and promised to see it conveyed back to England; this concluding the exchange of pleasantries, they launched a delicate but pointed inquiry after the aims of the mission.
“Naturally we are pleased to hear that Government has compensated Captains Mestis and Holt and Gregg-son, and the Company, but I cannot possibly overstate the damage which the incident has done to our entire operations.” Sir George Staunton spoke quietly, but forcefully for all that; he was the chief of the commissioners despite his relative youth by virtue of his long experience of the nation. As a boy of twelve, he had accompanied the Macartney embassy itself in his father’s train, and was one of the few British men perfectly fluent in the language.
Staunton described for them several more instances of bad treatment, and went on to say, “These are entirely characteristic, I am sorry to say. The insolence and rapacity of the administration has markedly increased, and towards us only; the Dutch and the French meet with no such treatment. Our complaints, which previously they treated with some degree of respect, are now summarily dismissed, and in fact only draw worse down upon us.”
“We have been almost daily fearing to be ordered out entirely,” Mr. Grothing-Pyle added to this; he was a portly man, his white hair somewhat disordered by the vigorous action of his fan. “With no insult to Major Heretford or his men,” he nodded to the officer, “we would be hard-pressed to withstand such a demand, and you can be sure the French would be happy to help the Chinese enforce it.”
“And to take our establishments for their own once we were expelled,” Staunton added, to a circle of nodding heads. “The arrival of the Allegiance certainly puts us in a different position, vis-à-vis the possibility of resistance—”
Here Hammond stopped him. “Sir, I must beg leave to interrupt you. There is no contemplation of taking the Allegiance into action against the Chinese Empire: none; you must put such a thought out of your minds entirely.” He spoke very decidedly, though he was certainly the youngest man at the table, except for Heretford; a palpable coolness resulted. Hammond paid no attention. “Our first and foremost goal is to restore our nation to enough favor with the court to keep the Chinese from entering into an alliance with France. All other designs are insignificant by comparison.”
“Mr. Hammond,” Staunton said, “I cannot believe there is any possibility of such an alliance; nor that it can be so great a threat as you seem to imagine. The Chinese Empire is no Western military power, impressive as their size and their ranks of dragons may be to the inexperienced eye,” Hammond flushed at this small jab, perhaps not unintentional, “and they are militantly uninterested in European affairs. It is a matter of policy with them to affect even if not feel a lack of concern with what passes beyond their borders, ingrained over centuries.”
“Their having gone to the lengths of dispatching Prince Yongxing to Britain must surely weigh with you, sir, as showing that a change in policy may be achieved, if the impetus be sufficient,” Hammond said coolly.
They argued the point and many others with increasing politeness, over the course of several hours. Laurence had a struggle to keep his attention on the conversation, liberally laced as it was with references to names and incidents and concerns of which he knew nothing: some local unrest among the peasants and the state of affairs in Thibet, where apparently some sort of outright rebellion was in progress; the trade deficit and the necessity of opening more Chinese markets; difficulties with the Inca over the South American route.