Not Yet Drown'd Read online

  He murmured that the full extent of his little knowledge was entirely at her service.

  “What is that boat that just went away from us, and our pilot with it?” she asked. “Have we finished already with our pilot?”

  “Oh, by no means. That boat has brought us another pilot. Look, there, you can see him on the quarterdeck with Captain Mainwaring.”

  “The large man, smoking like a—like a Dutchman?”

  “Yes, that is he. He will bring us up through the locks into the harbour.”

  “But why not the first pilot? Is it usual to change pilots at this point?”

  “Oh, no. No, it is not just the usual thing. It was necessary in this case, however, because the first pilot was found to be drunk. Quite drunk. So he has been sent away, and a sober man brought in his place.”

  Catherine considered this explanation, and found it wanting in several respects. Even as improvisation, it fell short. On the whole, she thought, Captain Mainwaring’s voluble indiscretion was to be preferred. “Oh, quite. That explains everything,” she said blandly, and he excused himself and went on his way. Catherine returned to her cabin, and her sofa bed, and gazed into the blank mist from her big window in the stern.

  Later, after breakfast, Sharada came to help Catherine dress. Catherine sat in front of the tiny rectangle of looking glass mounted on the bulkhead to have her hair unplaited and combed. Sharada was humming under her breath, a slow tune, a tune timed to the stately motion of the ship. Was she even aware of breathing music all the time?

  “I wonder,” said Catherine, “what was the spice in that sauce for the leg of mutton at dinner yesterday? It was a most unusual flavor, most savory. I don’t know if I have had it before.”

  “Were you enjoying it, ma’am?” asked Sharada.

  “Yes, it was delicious. Do you know what spice was in it?”

  “Many spices: dar cheeni, zeera, elaichi. You are calling it, ah, cinnamon, cumin, cardamom. Also black pepper, cloves, and nutmeg. These are the heating spices, so very necessary in this cold misty climate.”

  “Oh!” said Catherine. “But how can you tell which spice was in it? Merely by the taste of it?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I made it. I was toasting the spices myself, and grinding them, and making the sauce.”

  “Is that where you spend your day, then? In the galley with the cook?”

  “He is a countryman of mine, from the great city of Patna.”

  “I see,” said Catherine; she felt her thick unruly hair smoothed again, as Sharada hummed. Catherine found herself thinking of Sandy, remembering times when the two of them would venture out on the sea loch below the house in a little flat-bottomed skiff that belonged to their father. Once, a sudden mist had descended on them, as thick, as opaque as a sheep’s fleece. They promptly had lost their bearings. Which way was land, and which was the open sea? The gray flat water, windless and waveless, gave no clues. Stilling their rising panic, they had held their breath and listened. Distant voices pierced the mist; they heard the old songs of the old women herding cows upon the faraway hill; and these songs were their beacon, drawing them safe through the blank mist, back to the solid rocky shore. Our own Hebridean sirens, Sandy had called them, adding ungratefully, but why must they be so old and ugly?

  As this reverie receded, Catherine became gradually aware again of the tune that Sharada was softly humming under her breath. Its tempo had quickened. It was familiar, intimately known; it was shockingly, stunningly, personally familiar. Catherine listened hard to be certain, expecting to find herself mistaken. But it was no mistake; she knew it well. No wonder she had been thinking of Sandy. Sharada had finished combing and was now pinning the heavy coils of hair at Catherine’s prickling nape.

  With a feeling that she was plunging headlong, Catherine laid firm hold of her courage and asked, “What is that tune you are humming?”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, ma’am, was I humming? It is an old habit. I will try not to do it.”

  “But what is the tune? Where did you hear it?”

  “It is…I cannot say, ma’am. It must be a tune I have heard sometime. Tunes come into my ears and remain forever after. Always there is music sounding in my head, always. I beg your kind pardon.” She smoothed pomade into the curly short hair at Catherine’s temples. Catherine could not see Sharada’s face in the small mirror, only her deft hands and her arms, the undersides marked by fading white and pink scars.

  Presently Catherine said, “Mrs Todd asked me yesterday if it was true that you intend to go on when I stop in Antwerp. She hoped to engage you for the remainder of the passage to Calcutta.”

  Sharada’s nimble fingers stopped. After a moment she said, “And what was your answer to Mrs Todd? If I may be asking, ma’am.”

  “I told her that my destination was not yet fixed with complete certainty, and that you might remain with me after all.”

  “Oh, indeed, ma’am?” Sharada’s note of inquiry hung in the air for a long moment.

  Then Catherine said, “But now, this morning, I find that my mind is made up. I shall tell Mrs Todd that I am not stopping in Antwerp after all, that I intend to remain with the ship for the entire passage. I shall tell her that I am going on to India.”

  Sharada’s hands fell away from Catherine’s head, and Catherine heard her deep intake of breath, her great sigh. “Yes, certainly, ma’am,” said Sharada at last. “I was sure of it. I said, you will go to India.” After a moment she resumed dressing Catherine’s hair, threading a pale green ribbon around the heavy coil at her nape, and finishing with a neat bow on the left. There—coiffed, at last.

  The tune Sharada had been humming was known to only a few people in the world. Catherine knew it; and so did Hector.

  This maid knew it.

  And so did Sandy, whose tune it was. But Sandy was drown’d.

  Or else he was not. Not yet.

  9

  A very agreeable Vicissitude or Variation

  “Ha ha!” laughed Captain Mainwaring. “A drunken pilot! You are most observant, Mrs MacDonald; we must teach you to go aloft so we can post you in the foretop to keep lookout for us, eh? So tell me then; if you could not believe in Mr Fleming’s drunken pilot, what did you make of what you saw? What explanation did you contrive for yourself to account for what you had observed?”

  “I concluded that you were unloading the steam looms, the last cargo you loaded in Leith—Scottish looms that are not permitted into the Netherlands. And I supposed that my brother has gone to see them properly installed and working.”

  “Did I speak of steam looms at Leith? I don’t remember it. But if you say so, I suppose I must have let a word or two slip.”

  “You said half a dozen steam looms, for Liège.”

  “Did I? I said as much as that? Fancy your remembering it. Well, you are quite right, perfectly correct. Your brother and the looms are in Liège by now, or so they ought to be. It is not like smuggling, you know. It is just, just—trade, and brings nothing but good to all involved. Why should the Netherlanders not have the best looms they can get? No harm is done…. Your brother will rejoin us at Antwerp, at the port itself, so you shall see him again there before we sail. Never fear, we will be in time for you to take a proper leave of each other.”

  “Hmm. That is the other matter. Captain Mainwaring, I have decided not to stop in Antwerp. I wish to remain aboard your ship for the entire voyage to India. To Calcutta.”

  “Do you, by Jove? To India, after all? Well, no one will pursue you so far as that, to be sure! So you have had a taste of shipboard life and find that it suits you, eh? It is splendid, is it not? I find I am never better than when I am at sea. Some ladies do not like it, but then some do, many do. Captain Hunter’s wife has gone to sea with him every voyage these last twenty years. I believe that by now she could command his ship as well as he can. Or, being a wife and accustomed therefore to command, rather better! Well! Of course I shall be very happy to have you—you and your little party
. You are comfortable in the big stern cabin, I suppose? You are most welcome to it. How fortunate that no other party had engaged it from Antwerp. We are very well thus, eh? Very well thus.”

  Early in the afternoon, as Increase made her way up the wide Westerschelde, the steward brought to Catherine in her cabin a small folded note:

  Mr Fleming begs that Mrs MacDonald will honour him with her company after dinner; that she will give her opinion of his Wuyi tea; and that she will allow him to apologise for his reserve in replying to her inquiry of this morning.

  Catherine accepted this invitation; how was it to be refused?

  When the time came, after dinner, Sharada smoothed Catherine’s unruly hair once again. “Are you wanting your shawl, ma’am?” she asked.

  “Yes, just the light India one will do,” said Catherine, and Sharada turned to fetch it. Catherine waited, rubbing the rough edge of her fingernail. For a long moment she waited; then she turned to see Sharada standing quite still in front of the open press, holding the forgotten shawl against her breast.

  “Oh! I beg your pardon, ma’am!” Sharada said, suddenly coming back to the present moment. “Here is the Kashmiri shawl. But these other things—shall I put away those papers in a safe place?”

  “What papers? Oh, all that bagpipe music? It is safe enough where it is, with that caddy of tea. Now, where is Grace? With Annie? She has had her dinner and her tea, I suppose? Very well. So, then.” And with a little trepidation, she went to Mr Fleming’s cabin, thirty feet away, to drink his tea and receive his apology.

  “I might as well admit to you at once, Mr Fleming,” said Catherine, “that my opinion of your tea, or of any tea, is little worth having. I am sure it is very good tea because it is yours, and because you say so. And even if I thought it were not—supposing I were qualified to form any opinion about it—well, I must not say so.”

  He smiled and said, “Well, then, Mrs MacDonald, I will frankly tell you at once that my opinion of any tea is considered well worth having. Furthermore, the oolong which I will give you this evening is the best you have ever tasted, so you may just enjoy it in complete confidence.”

  “So I shall.”

  “Here, you see, in this specially fitted cabinet, are my stores of teas. This is Yun Wu, which means ‘clouds and mist’ and ought to appeal to Highland Scots in particular. Here is a splendid Qihong, which the Chinese think fit only for western barbarians. And here is some very fine Lung Ching, the famous ‘dragon well.’ This is the Wuyi Dahongpao which we are to drink this evening. And then here, in this next cabinet, are my stores of water, my own bottles filled at particular springs noted for the excellence of their water, especially for the brewing of my tea.”

  Catherine noted the contents of this cabinet: dozens of tall rectangular stoneware bottles fitted snugly into their racks. Each was stopped with a cork, and each cork was covered with a wax seal, and labeled with a date and the name of a spring.

  “But is not Captain Mainwaring’s water satisfactory? I had thought it very good indeed,” said Catherine.

  “Oh, yes, very good and perfectly wholesome; he pays particular attention to the ship’s water. But I always get in my own stores of water and of tea. This particular tea is plucked from some venerable old bushes grown on the steep red-soil slopes above a famous spring high in the Wuyi mountains. And the water just now coming to the boil is from that same spring.” A small spirit stove hissed; it was suspended in a gimbeled stand at Mr Fleming’s elbow, and the water in the kettle above it was just beginning to send up steam.

  How precious! And faintly absurd; Catherine felt slightly embarrassed for him as she took her seat.

  The steward came in and laid out the tea equipment: a tiny melon-shaped red clay teapot and two tiny red clay bowls on a bamboo tray. The vessels were unembellished and unglazed. “But this is tiny, fit for dolls!” she exclaimed. “Is this miniature bowl meant for a cup?”

  “It is. This evening we shall have our tea in the true Mandarin style,” said Mr Fleming. “These pieces are made by venerated potters near Yixing.”

  “The Chinese tea sets I have seen were quite different from this, much larger,” said Catherine. “They were white-glazed porcelain and painted with oriental scenes, and the cups had handles. My sister-in-law has been yearning for one particular set, painted with red and blue dragons, which she saw displayed in an Edinburgh shop. She took me there to admire it at least three times. I daresay she has made my brother promise to bring her just such a set.”

  “Ah, yes, that would be export ware. It is made for the European taste—very different from what the celestials consider elegant enough for their own use and refined enough for their own taste.”

  As he spoke, he deftly removed the neat calyx-shaped lid and filled the teapot—nay, overfilled it—with boiling water. It overflowed into the bamboo tray, which, Catherine now saw, was fitted with a rack, so that the spilled water ran into a hidden catch basin below. He did the same with the two cups. Then, opening the tea caddy, he reached in, frowning, and pinched a finely judged quantity of the long twisted black-edged leaves between his thumb and his first three fingers. With his free hand he emptied the hot water from the now-warm teapot, dropped the leaves into the pot, replaced the lid, and shook the pot. Then he paused for a moment. “To allow the leaves to expand,” he explained, noticing Catherine’s quizzical look.

  She nodded, and waited. Removing the lid again, he passed the teapot under his nose, sniffing first the leaves inside the pot, then the inside of the lid. He reached across the table without a word and passed the leaves under Catherine’s nose, too. She inhaled the aroma, as he had done: two deep breaths through her nostrils. It was like…like what? Like roasted chestnuts coming out of the shell. Certain lilies at night. New hay in a stone barn.

  He filled the pot with steaming water, put the lid on, swirled the pot once—then quickly poured out the pale liquor into a waste basin. Then he immediately filled the pot again and placed the lid on it. “It is best to rinse these oolongs,” he said. “Yes! Where were we? Your brother can order an entire tea set for his wife, with her name or her initials on it, or dragons or anything she likes, at Canton. It can be completed in a week or two if it is nothing very unusual.”

  “But I don’t suppose my brother will have any occasion to go as far as Canton,” said Catherine.

  “I beg your pardon; he certainly will go to Canton,” said Mr Fleming. “Would we sail without our engineer on our maiden voyage with his new steam engines? Oh, he certainly will be aboard, I assure you, on the first voyage from Calcutta to Canton.”

  “I had supposed that Hector’s steam engines were destined for riverboats in India,” said Catherine.

  “They will run their trials on the rivers, no doubt, and will be certainly very useful there, because they can go up against the current as easily as down. But their true superiority will be in the country trade, on the fast coastal runs between Calcutta and the China ports. That is, after all, the one really profitable route for independent traders such as ourselves.”

  “Oh, I did not know!” said Catherine, feeling that she should have known.

  Mr Fleming emptied the hot water from the two little tea bowls and filled them with tea from his tiny pot. Immediately he refilled the pot with more hot water, covered it, and set it aside to steep again. The liquor in the cups was thin, pale, sparkling; each cup sent up a twisting plume of fragrant steam.

  Following his example, Catherine took up her tiny cup, cradling it between her two palms, enjoying its heat, its smoothness, and the aroma of the tea. She tasted it. It spread over her tongue, simultaneously wet and astringent. She held a few drops cupped in the center of her tongue for a moment, drawing air over it to inhale its full fragrance. Then, after she swallowed, a sweet flowery aftertaste spread across her mouth and throat. “Ah,” she said, quite involuntarily; and Mr Fleming smiled. “It is not like my sister-in-law’s tea,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “But not eve
ryone can appreciate the difference.”

  “It needs no sugar, nor milk.”

  “No indeed!” They both drank again.

  “And is there adequate fuel for steam-powered boats on the coastal run between Calcutta and China?” asked Catherine, setting down her cup.

  “The tropical forests furnish an inexhaustible supply of wood; the only difficulty is in maintaining a reliable labor force to cut it,” said Mr Fleming.

  “Yet the wind costs nothing,” observed Catherine. “Is steam power really so superior as to justify so much expense and trouble?”

  “Oh, but you see, Mrs MacDonald, it is a perilous run to China, and our cargo is exceedingly subject to seizure. Not only would the Malay pirates like to relieve us of it, but so would the Chinese customs officers, who are charged with preventing this particular trade, despite the fact that they make their private fortunes by allowing it, clandestinely. But with the superior maneuverability of steam power at our command, we shall have a great advantage, upwind, downwind, or no wind at all.”

  “But what is your valuable cargo, so subject to seizure?” asked Catherine, feeling once again that she ought already to know the answer to this question.

  Mr Fleming refilled their two cups, and then refilled the tiny teapot for a third infusion before replying. “It is the best Patna opium.”

  “Oh!” said Catherine, and drank her tea. This second cup was more flavourful than the first, and more distinctly astringent. She said, “I had supposed that the East India Company controlled all the Indian opium trade.”

  “So they do. Only the Company may produce it and sell it. But as the emperor of China forbids the introduction of the pernicious drug into his empire, and as the Honourable Company is loathe to incur the emperor’s wrath, the Company takes no official part in the import—or some might say smuggling—of the article into his domains. No; they only grow it; and manufacture it; and sell it at auction to independent merchants such as ourselves. The terms of the auction require payment in silver, you understand. Then it is up to us, the independent merchants, to run the risks associated with carrying the forbidden article to China. If we are caught, the Company simply shrugs its Honourable shoulders and disclaims any responsibility.” He shrugged, elegantly expressing the Company’s superb unnotice, and continued. “Meanwhile, the Company takes this silver—the silver we’ve paid them for their opium—and carries it to China, where they buy tea with it, for the Chinese, you understand, will take nothing but silver for their tea. And as the Chinese, in their turn, have a monopoly on tea, they may impose what terms they please. So that is how Indian opium is transformed into Chinese tea—by the alchemic virtue of silver—and carried thence to all the good housewives in Europe.”