James Clavell - Gai-Jin

After he had left for the bath he had, regretfully, not seen her again. The maid had given him the money and scroll, both neatly wrapped, and the cask and told him her mistress would send a guide for him tomorrow morning and thanked him.

About her brother, now, he was ambivalent. The youth was just a patient, he was a doctor and wanted his work to succeed. "Never occurred to me the youth might have been one of the assassins.

It wouldn't have made any difference, not to the operation. At least now we know his name."

"A thousand oban to a bent button it was false, we don't even know if the youth was her brother. If he was shishi as the scroll said, it's bound to be false and anyway, being devious is an old Japanese custom." Babcott sighed. "I can't be certain either it was the Tokaido devil. Just a hunch. What are his chances?"

"The move wouldn't have helped." Hoag thought a moment, so squat and froglike against the immense height of Babcott, neither of them conscious of the difference. "I checked him just before I left. His pulse was weak but steady, I think I got most of the dead tissue away but..." He shrugged.

"You know how it is: "You pays your money and you takes your chances." I wouldn't bet much money he'll live. But then, who knows, eh? Now, now tell me about the attack, the details."

On the way back Babcott related all that had happened. And about Malcolm Struan. "He worries me, but Angelique's just about the best nurse he could have."

"Jamie said the same. I agree there's nothing like a beautiful young lady in a sickroom.

Malcolm's lost a devilish lot of weight-- and spirit--but he's young and he's always been the strong one in the family, after his mother. He should be all right so long as the stitches hold. I've every confidence in your work, George, though it'll be a long haul for him, poor lad. He's very taken with the girl, isn't he?"

"Yes. And reciprocated. Lucky fellow."

They walked in silence a moment. Hoag said hesitantly, "I, well I presume you know his mother is completely opposed to any form of liaison with the young lady."

"Yes, I've heard that. That creates a problem."

"Then you think Malcolm's serious?"

"Head-over-heels serious. She's quite a girl."

"You know her?"

"Angelique? Not really, not as a patient, not really, though, as said, I've seen her under terrible stress. You?"

Hoag shook his head. "Just at parties, the races, socially. Since she arrived three or four months ago she's been the toast of every ball and rightly. Never as a patient, there's a French doctor in Hong Kong now--imagine that! But I agree she's stunning. Not necessarily an ideal wife for Malcolm, if that's his bent."

"Because she's not English? And not wealthy?"

"Both of those and more. Sorry but I just can't trust the French, bad stock--it's in their makeup. Her father's a perfect example, charming, gallant on the surface and scallywag just below and through and through. Sorry but I wouldn't select his daughter for my son when he's of age."

Babcott wondered if Hoag knew that he was aware of the scandal: while young doctor Hoag was with the East India Company twenty-five odd years ago in Bengal, he had married an Indian girl, against convention and the open advice of his superiors and had consequently been dismissed and sent home in disgrace. They had had a daughter and a son and then she had died--the London cold and fog and damp almost a death sentence to someone of Indian heritage.

People are so strange, Babcott thought. Here's a fine, brave, upstanding Englishman, a great surgeon, with children who are half Indian--so socially not acceptable in England--complaining about Angelique's heritage. How stupid, and even more stupid to hide from the truth.

Yes, but don't you hide from it either. You're twenty-eight, lots of time to get married, but will you ever find a more exciting woman than Angelique anywhere, let alone in Asia where you will spend your working life?

I won't, I know. Fortunately Struan will probably marry her, so that's that. And I will support him, by God! "Perhaps Mrs. Struan is just being protective, like any mother," he said, knowing how important Hoag's influence was with the Struans, "and just opposed to him getting entangled too young. That's understandable. He's tai-pan now and that will take all of his energies. But don't mistake me, I think Angelique is quite a young lady, as courageous and fine a mate as anyone could want--and to do a good job Malcolm will need all the support he can get."

Hoag heard the underlying passion, docketed it and left the matter there, his mind suddenly back in London where his sister and her husband were bringing up his son and daughter, as always hating himself for leaving India, bowing to convention and so killing her, Arjumand the lovely.

I must have been mad to take my darling into those foul winters, dismissed, broke, with no job and having to start all over again. Christ, I should have stayed and battled the Company, eventually my surgical skills would have forced them, forced them to accept me and would have saved us...

The two sentries left on guard saluted as they passed. In the dining room dinner was laid for two. "Scotch or champagne?" Babcott asked, then called out, "Lun!"

"Champers. Shall I?"

"I've got it." Babcott opened the wine that waited in the Georgian silver ice bucket.

"Health! LUN!"

"And happiness!" They clinked glasses.

"Perfect! How's your chef?"

"Fair to awful but the quality of our seafood is good, shrimps, prawns, oysters and dozens of different kinds of fish. Where the devil's Lun?" Babcott sighed. "That bugger needs stick. Swear at him, will you?"

But the butler's pantry was empty. Lun was not in the kitchen. Eventually they found him in the garden beside a pathway. He had been decapitated, his head tossed aside. In its place was the head of a monkey.

"No, Lady," the mama-san said, very afraid. "You cannot leave Ori-san here tomorrow, you must leave at dawn."

Sumomo said, "So sorry, Ori-san will stay unt--"

"So sorry, since the attack on Chief Minister Anjo, the hunt for shishi is intense, rewards for information are to the sky, with death for anyone, anyone in a house harboring them."

"That order's for Yedo, not here in Kanagawa," Sumomo said.

"So sorry, someone has talked," the mama-san said, lips tight. Her name was Noriko and they were alone in her private quarters in her Inn of the Midnight Blossoms, both kneeling on purple cushions, the room candle-lit, a low table with tea on it between them and she had just returned from an angry meeting with the rice merchant moneylender who had raised the interest rate on her mortgage from thirty to thirty-five percent pleading the dangerous state of the realm. Motherless dog, she thought, seething, then compartmentalized that problem to deal with the more dangerous one before her. "This morning we heard that Enforcers are--"

"Who?"

"Enforcers? They're special, interrogating Bakufu patrols, men without mercy. They arrived in the night. I expect to be visited.

So sorry, at dawn he must go."

"So sorry, you will keep him until he is well."

"I-dare-not! Not after the Inn of the Forty-seven Ronin. Enforcers know no mercy. I don't want this head spiked."

"That was in Yedo, this is Kanagawa. This is the Inn of the Midnight Blossoms. So sorry, Hiraga-san would insist."

"No one insists here, Lady," Noriko said sharply. "Even Hiraga-san. I have my own son to think of, and my House."

"Correctly. And I have my brother's friend and Hiraga's ally to think of. Also the face of my brother to remember. I am empowered to settle his debts."

Noriko gaped at her. "All Shorin's debts?"

"Half now, half when sonno-joi rules."

"Done," Noriko said, so unbalanced with the windfall she never expected to collect that she failed to bargain. "But no gai-jin doctors, and only a week."