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Chapter Sixteen
It appears quite certain that the Chinese, a money-making and money-loving people, are as much addicted to trade, and as anxious as any nation on earth to court a commercial intercourse with strangers.
JOHN CRAWFURD, ‘Chinese Empire and Trade’
Morning came. Robin rose, washed, and dressed for class. He met Ramy outside the house. Neither said a word; they walked in silence to the tower door, which, despite Robin’s sudden fear, opened to let them in. They were late; Professor Craft was already lecturing when they took their seats. Letty shot them an irritated glare. Victoire gave Robin a nod, her face inscrutable.
Professor Craft continued as if she hadn’t seen them; this was how she always dealt with tardiness. They pulled out their pens and began taking down notes on Tacitus and his thorny ablative absolutes.
The room seemed at once both mundane and heartbreakingly beautiful: the morning light streaming through stained-glass windows, casting colourful patterns on the polished wooden desks; the clean scratch of chalk against the blackboard; and the sweet, woody smell of old books. A dream; this was an impossible dream, this fragile, lovely world in which, for the price of his convictions, he had been allowed to remain.
That afternoon they received notices in their pidges to prepare to depart for Canton by way of London by the eleventh of October – the day after next.
They would spend three weeks in China – two in Canton, and one in Macau – and then stop in Mauritius for ten days on the way home.
Your destinations are temperate, but the sea voyage can be chilly, read the notice. Bring a thick coat.
‘Isn’t this a bit early?’ asked Letty. ‘I thought we weren’t going until after our exams.’ ‘It explains here.’ Ramy tapped the bottom of the page. ‘Special circumstances in Canton – they’re short on Chinese translators and want Babblers to fill in the gap, so they’ve pushed our voyage up ahead.’ ‘Well, that’s exciting!’ Letty beamed. ‘It’ll be our first chance to go out in the world and do something.’ Robin, Ramy, and Victoire exchanged glances with one another. They all shared the same suspicion – that this sudden departure was somehow linked to Friday night. But they couldn’t know what that meant for Ramy’s and Victoire’s presumed innocence, or what this voyage held in store for them all.
The final day before they left was torture. The only one among them who felt any excitement was Letty, who took it upon herself to march into their rooms that night and make sure their trunks were properly packed. ‘You don’t realize how cold it gets at sea in the mornings,’ she said, folding Ramy’s shirts into a neat pile on his bed. ‘You’ll need more than just a linen shirt, Ramy, you’ll want two layers at least.’ ‘Please, Letitia.’ Ramy swatted her hand away before she could get at his socks. ‘We’ve all been at sea before.’ ‘Well, I’ve travelled regularly,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘I ought to know.
And we should keep a little bag of remedies – sleeping tinctures, ginger – I’m not sure there’s time to run to a shop, we might have to do so in London —’ ‘It’s a long time on a little ship,’ snapped Ramy. ‘It’s not the Crusades.’ Letty turned stiffly to sort through Robin’s trunk. Victoire cast Robin and Ramy a helpless look. They couldn’t speak freely in Letty’s presence, so they could only sit simmering in anxiety. The same unanswered questions bedevilled them all. What was happening? Had they been forgiven, or was the axe still waiting to drop? Would they naively board the ship to Canton, only to be abandoned on the other side?
Most importantly – how was it possible they’d been recruited separately to the Hermes Society without knowledge of the others? Ramy and Victoire at least had some excuse – they were new to Hermes; they might have been too frightened by the society’s demands for silence to say anything to Robin yet.
But Robin had known about Hermes for over three years now, and he’d never
spoken of it once, not even to Ramy. He’d done a marvellous job hiding his greatest secret from friends who, he’d proclaimed, owned his heart.
This, Robin suspected, had greatly rattled Ramy. After they’d walked the girls north to their lodgings that night, Robin tried to broach the subject, but Ramy shook his head. ‘Not now, Birdie.’ Robin’s heart ached. ‘But I only wanted to explain—’ ‘Then I think we ought to wait for Victoire,’ Ramy said curtly. ‘Don’t you?’
They headed to London the next afternoon with Professor Lovell, who was to be their supervisor throughout the voyage. The trip was, thankfully, much shorter than the ten-hour stagecoach ride that had brought Robin to Oxford three years ago. The railway line between Oxford and Paddington Station had finally been completed over the previous summer, its opening commemorated with the installation of silver bars under the platform of the * newly constructed Oxford Station,and so the journey took them only an hour and a half, during which Robin managed not to meet Professor Lovell’s eyes once.
Their ship did not depart until tomorrow; they would lodge overnight at an inn on New Bond Street. Letty insisted they go out and explore London for a bit, so they ended up going to see the sitting room show of someone who called herself Princess Caraboo. Princess Caraboo was notorious among Babel students. Once a humble cobbler’s daughter, she had persuaded several people into believing she was exotic royalty from the island of Javasu. But it was now nearly a decade since Princess Caraboo had been unmasked as Mary Willcocks of North Devon, and her show – which consisted of a strange hopping dance, several very emphatic utterances in a made-up tongue, and prayers to a god she called Allah-Tallah (here Ramy wrinkled his nose), came off as more pathetic than funny. The display put a bad taste in their mouths; they left early and returned to the inn, tired and laconic.
The next morning, they boarded an East India Company clipper named the Merope heading straight for Canton. These ships were built for speed, for they had to ferry perishable goods back and forth as quickly as possible, and were thus fitted out with state-of-the-art silver bars to hasten their voyage.
Robin vaguely remembered that his first journey from Canton to London, ten
years ago, had taken close to four months. These clippers could make that journey a mere six weeks. ‘Excited?’ Letty asked him as the Merope made its way out from the Port of London over the Thames towards open water.
Robin wasn’t sure. He’d felt funny ever since they’d boarded, though he couldn’t quite give a name to his discomfort. It didn’t seem real that he was headed back. Ten years ago he’d been thrilled as he sailed towards London, head spinning with dreams of the world on the other side of the ocean. This time, he thought he knew what to expect. That scared him. He imagined his homecoming with a dreadful anticipation; the fear of not recognizing one’s own mother in a crowd. Would he recognize what he saw? Would he remember it at all? At the same time, the prospect of seeing Canton again seemed so sudden and unbelievable; he found himself with the strange conviction that by the time they reached it, it would have disappeared clean off the globe.
Still more frightening was the possibility that once he arrived, he’d be made to stay; that Lovell had lied and this whole trip was contrived to get him out of England; that he would be exiled from Oxford, and all that he knew, forever.
Meanwhile, there were six weeks at sea to suffer through. These proved torturous from the start. Ramy and Victoire were like dead men walking, pale-faced and jumpy, flinching at the slightest noises, and unable to engage in the simplest small talk without assuming expressions of utter terror.
Neither of them had been punished by the university. Neither of them had even been called in for questioning. But surely, Robin thought, Professor Lovell at least suspected their involvement. The guilt was written all over their faces. How much, then, did Babel know? How much did Hermes know?
And what had happened to Griffin’s safe room?
Robin wanted nothing more than to discuss things with Ramy and Victoire, but they never had the opportunity. Letty was always there. Even at night, when they retreated into their separate cabins, there was no chance that Victoire could sneak away to join the boys without Letty growing suspicious.
They had no choice but to pretend everything was normal, but they were dreadful at this. They were all clammy, fidgety, and irritable. None of them could drum up enthusiasm for what ought to have been the most exciting chapter of their careers. And they couldn’t make conversation about anything
else; none of their old jokes or inconsequential debates came easily to mind, and whenever they did, they sounded heavy and forced. Letty – pushy, chatty, and oblivious – was grating on them all, and though they tried to conceal their irritation, for it wasn’t her fault, they couldn’t help snapping at her when she asked their thoughts on Cantonese cuisine for the dozenth time.
Finally she caught wind that something was going on. Three nights in, after Professor Lovell had departed the mess, she slammed down her fork at dinner and demanded, ‘What is wrong with everyone?’ Ramy gave her a wooden stare. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ ‘Don’t pretend,’ Letty snapped. ‘You’re all acting bizarre. You won’t touch your food, you’re mangling your lessons – I don’t think you’ve even touched your phrasebook, Ramy, which is funny because you’ve been saying for months that you bet you could imitate a better Chinese accent than Robin —’ ‘We’re seasick,’ Victoire blurted. ‘All right? Not all of us grew up summering up and down the Mediterranean like you.’ ‘And I suppose you were seasick in London, too?’ Letty asked archly. ‘No, just tired of your voice,’ Ramy said viciously.
Letty reeled.
Robin pushed his chair back and stood. ‘I need air.’ Victoire called after him, but he pretended not to hear. He felt guilty abandoning her and Ramy to Letty, for fleeing the catastrophic fallout, but he couldn’t bear to be at that table for another moment. He felt very hot and agitated, as if a thousand ants were crawling around under his clothes. If he didn’t get away, walk around, move, then he was sure he would explode.
Outside, it was cold and quickly turning dark. The deck was empty except for Professor Lovell, who was having a smoke by the prow. Robin almost turned back around when he saw him – they had not uttered a word to each other except for pleasantries since the morning after he’d been caught – but Professor Lovell had already seen him. He lowered his pipe and beckoned Robin to join him. Heart pounding, Robin approached. ‘I remember the last time you made this voyage.’ Professor Lovell nodded at the black, rolling waves. ‘You were so small.’ Robin didn’t know how to respond, so he merely stared at him, waiting for him to continue. To his great surprise, Professor Lovell reached out then and placed a hand on Robin’s shoulder. But the touch felt awkward, forced;
the angles off, the pressure too heavy. They stood, strained and baffled, like two actors before a daguerreotype, holding their positions just until the light flashed. ‘I believe in fresh starts,’ said Professor Lovell. He seemed to have rehearsed these words; they came out as stilted and awkward as his touch. ‘What I mean to say, Robin, is that you’re very talented. We’d be sorry to lose you.’ ‘Thank you’ was all Robin said, for he still had no idea where this was going.
Professor Lovell cleared his throat, then waved his pipe around a bit before he spoke, as if coaxing his own words out of his chest. ‘Anyhow, what I really wish to say is – which I perhaps ought to have said before – I can understand if you were feeling . . . disappointed by me.’ Robin blinked. ‘Sir?’ ‘I should have been more sympathetic to your situation.’ Professor Lovell glanced back out at the ocean. He seemed to have trouble looking Robin in the eye and speaking at the same time. ‘Growing up outside your country, leaving everything you knew behind, adapting to a new environment where I’m sure you received – well, less than the amount of care and affection you likely needed . . . Those were all things that affected Griffin as well, and I can’t say I’ve handled things better the second time. You are responsible for your own poor decisions, but I confess I do in part blame myself.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘I’d like for us to start anew. A clean slate for you, a renewed commitment on my part to be a better guardian. We’ll pretend the past few days never happened. We’ll put the Hermes Society, and Griffin, behind us. We’ll think only of the future, and all the glorious and brilliant things you will achieve at Babel. Is that fair?’ Robin was momentarily struck dumb. To be honest, this was not a very large concession. Professor Lovell had only apologized for being, occasionally, somewhat distant. He hadn’t apologized for refusing to claim Robin as a son. He hadn’t apologized for letting his mother die.
Still, he’d made a greater acknowledgment of Robin’s feelings than he’d ever done, and for the first time since they’d boarded the Merope, Robin felt that he could breathe. ‘Yes, sir,’ Robin murmured, for there was nothing else to say.
‘Very good, then.’ Professor Lovell patted him on the shoulder, a gesture so awkward that Robin cringed, and headed past him for the stairs. ‘Good night.’ Robin turned back to the waves. He took another breath and closed his eyes, trying to imagine how he might feel if he really could erase the past week. He’d be exhilarated, wouldn’t he? He’d be gazing over the horizon, hurtling into the future he’d been training for. And what an exciting future – a successful Canton trip, a gruelling fourth year, and then graduation into a post at the Foreign Office or a fellowship in the tower. Repeat voyages to Canton, Macau, and Peking. A long and glorious career translating on behalf of the Crown. There were so very few qualified Sinologists in England. He could be so many firsts. He could chart so much territory.
Shouldn’t he want it? Shouldn’t that thrill him?
He could still have it. That was what Professor Lovell had been trying to tell him – that history was malleable, that all that mattered were decisions of the present. That they could bury Griffin and the Hermes Society into the recesses of the untouched past – he wouldn’t even need to betray them, simply ignore them – just like they’d buried everything else they’d agreed was better left unmentioned.
Robin opened his eyes, stared out over the rolling waves until he lost focus, until he was staring at nothing at all, and tried to convince himself that if he was not happy, he was at least content.
It was a week into the voyage before Robin, Ramy, and Victoire had a private moment to themselves. Halfway through their morning stroll, Letty went back below deck, claiming an upset stomach. Victoire offered half- heartedly to go with her, but Letty waved her off – she was still annoyed with them all, and clearly wanted to be alone. ‘All right.’ Victoire stepped closer to Robin and Ramy as soon as Letty had gone, closing off the gap made by her absence so that the three of them stood tight, an impenetrable silo against the wind. ‘What in God’s name—’
They all started talking at once.
‘Why didn’t—’
‘Do you think Lovell—’ ‘When did you first—’
They fell silent. Victoire tried again. ‘So who recruited you?’ she asked Robin. ‘It wouldn’t have been Anthony, he would have told us.’ ‘But isn’t Anthony—’ ‘No, he’s very much alive,’ said Ramy. ‘Faked his death abroad. But answer the question, Birdie.’ ‘Griffin,’ Robin said, still reeling from this revelation. ‘I told you.
Griffin Lovell.’ ‘Who’s that?’ Victoire asked, at the same time that Ramy said, ‘Lovell?’ ‘A former Babel student. I think he’s also – I mean, he said he’s my half- brother. He looks just like me, we think Lovell – I mean, our father––’ Robin was tripping over his words. The Chinese character meant both ‘cloth’ and ‘to relate, to tell’. The truth was embroidered on a cloth tapestry, spread out to display its contents. But Robin, coming clean to his friends at last, had no idea where to start. The image he displayed was a jumbled and confused one, warped no matter how he told it by its complexity, and by his own confusion. ‘He left Babel several years ago, and then went underground right around Evie Brooke’s – I mean, ah, I think he killed Evie Brooke.’ ‘Good heavens,’ Victoire said. ‘Really? Why?’ ‘Because she caught him on Hermes business,’ said Robin. ‘I didn’t
know until Professor Lovell told me.’ ‘And you believe him?’ asked Ramy. ‘Yes,’ said Robin. ‘Yes, I think Griffin would – Griffin is absolutely the kind of person who would have . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Listen, the important thing is that Lovell thinks I was acting alone. Has he talked to
either one of you?’ ‘Not me,’ said Victoire. ‘Nor I,’ said Ramy. ‘No one’s approached us at all.’ ‘That’s good!’ Robin exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it?’ There was an awkward silence. Ramy and Victoire did not look half as relieved as Robin expected. ‘That’s good?’ Ramy said finally. ‘That’s all you’ve got to say?’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Robin. ‘What do you think I mean?’ demanded Ramy. ‘Don’t avoid the subject.
How long were you with Hermes?’ There was nothing to do but be honest. ‘Since I started here. Since the very first week.’
‘Are you joking?’ Victoire touched his arm. ‘Ramy, don’t—’ ‘Don’t tell me that doesn’t infuriate you,’ Ramy snapped at her. ‘That’s over three years. Three years he never told us what he was up to.’ ‘Hold on,’ said Robin. ‘Are you angry with me?’ ‘Very good, Birdie, you noticed.’ ‘I don’t understand – Ramy, what did I do wrong?’ Victoire sighed and glanced out over the water. Ramy gave him a hard glare, and then burst out, ‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’ Robin was stunned by his vehemence. ‘Are you serious?’ ‘You’d known Griffin for years,’ said Ramy. ‘Years. And you never thought to tell us about it? You never thought we might like to join up as well?’ Robin could not believe how unfair this was. ‘But you never told me—’ ‘I wanted to,’ said Ramy. ‘We were going to,’ said Victoire. ‘We begged Anthony, we almost let it slip so many times – he kept telling us not to, but we decided we would break it to you ourselves, we were going to do it that Sunday—’ ‘But you didn’t even ask Griffin, did you?’ Ramy demanded. ‘Three years. Lord, Birdie.’ ‘I was trying to protect you,’ Robin said helplessly.
Ramy scoffed. ‘From what? Precisely the community we wanted?’ ‘I didn’t want to put you at risk—’ ‘Why didn’t you let me decide that for myself?’ ‘Because I knew you’d say yes,’ Robin said. ‘Because you’d join up with them on the spot and abdicate everything at Babel, everything you’ve worked for—’ ‘Everything I’ve worked for is this!’ Ramy exclaimed. ‘What, you think I came to Babel because I want to be a translator for the Queen? Birdie, I hate it in this country. I hate the way they look at me, I hate being passed around at their wine parties like an animal on display. I hate knowing that my very presence at Oxford is a betrayal of my race and religion, because I am becoming just that class of person Macaulay hoped to create. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like Hermes since I got here—’ ‘But that’s just it,’ said Robin. ‘That’s precisely why it was too risky for you—’
‘And it’s not for you?’ ‘No,’ Robin said, suddenly angry. ‘It wasn’t.’ He didn’t have to say why. Robin, whose father was on the faculty, who could pass for white under the right lighting, at the right angles, was shielded in a way Ramy and Victoire were not. If Ramy or Victoire had faced the police that night, they wouldn’t have been on this ship, they would have been
behind bars, or worse.
Ramy’s throat pulsed. ‘Damn it, Robin.’ ‘I’m sure it wasn’t easy,’ Victoire said, trying valiantly to broker a peace. ‘They’re so strict with their secrecy, you remember—’ ‘Yes, but we know each other.’ Ramy shot Robin a glare. ‘Or at least I thought we did.’ ‘Hermes is messy,’ Robin insisted. ‘They’ve ignored my warnings, they hang their members out to dry, and it wouldn’t have done you any good to be sent down your first year—’ ‘I would have been careful,’ Ramy scoffed. ‘I’m not like you, I’m not scared of my own shadow—’ ‘But you’re not careful,’ Robin said, exasperated. So they were trading insults now. So they were being frank now. ‘You were caught, weren’t you?
You’re impulsive, you don’t think – the moment anyone insults your pride
you lash out—’ ‘Then what about Victoire?’ ‘Victoire’s . . .’ Robin trailed off. He had no defence. He hadn’t told Victoire about Hermes because he’d assumed she had too much to lose, but there was no good way to say this out loud, or to justify its logic.
She knew what he meant. She would not meet his pleading look. ‘Thank God for Anthony’ was all she said. ‘I’ve just one more question,’ Ramy said abruptly. He was really, truly furious, Robin realized. This was not merely a burst of Ramy-esque passion.
This was something they perhaps could not come back from. ‘What did you say to make it go away? What’d you give up?’ Robin couldn’t lie to Ramy’s face. He wanted to; he was so afraid of the truth, and of the way Ramy would look at him when he heard it, but this he could not hide. It would rip him apart. ‘He wanted information.’
‘And so?’ ‘So I gave him information.’
Victoire touched a hand to her mouth. ‘Everything?’ ‘Just what I knew,’ Robin said. ‘Which wasn’t much, Griffin made sure of it – I never even knew what he did with the books I took out for him. All I told Lovell about was one safe room at St Aldate’s.’ It didn’t help. She still looked at him as if he’d kicked a puppy. ‘Are you mad?’ Ramy asked. ‘It didn’t matter,’ Robin insisted. ‘Griffin’s never there, he told me himself – and I bet they haven’t even caught him, he’s so incredibly paranoid; I bet he’s already out of the country by now.’ Ramy shook his head in amazement. ‘But you still betrayed them.’ This was profoundly unfair, Robin thought. He’d saved them – he’d done the only thing he could think of to minimize the damage – which was more than Hermes had ever done for him. Why was he now under siege? ‘I was only trying to save you—’ Ramy was unmoved. ‘You were saving yourself.’ ‘Look,’ Robin snapped. ‘I don’t have a family. I have a contract, a guardian, and a house in Canton full of dead relatives that for all I know could still be rotting in their beds. That’s what we’re sailing home to. You have Calcutta. Without Babel, I have nothing.’ Ramy crossed his arms and set his jaw.
Victoire cast Robin a sympathetic look, but said nothing in his defence. ‘I’m not a traitor,’ Robin pleaded. ‘I’m just trying to survive.’ ‘Survival’s not that difficult, Birdie.’ Ramy’s eyes were very hard. ‘But you’ve got to maintain some dignity while you’re at it.’
The rest of the voyage was decidedly miserable. Ramy, it seemed, had said all he wanted to say. He and Robin passed all the hours they spent in their shared cabin in desperately uncomfortable silence. Mealtimes weren’t much better. Victoire was polite but distant; there was little she could say in Letty’s presence, and she didn’t make much effort to seek Robin out otherwise. And Letty was still angry with all of them, which made small talk nigh impossible.
Things would have been better if they had had a single other soul for company, but they were the only passengers on a trade ship where the sailors seemed interested in anything but befriending Oxford scholars, whom they considered an unwanted and ill-timed burden. Robin spent most of his days
either alone above deck or alone in his cabin. Under any other circumstances, the voyage would have been a fascinating chance to examine the unique linguistics of nautical environments, which blended the necessary multilingualism brought about by foreign crews and foreign destinations with the highly technical vocabulary of seacraft. What was a banian day? What was marling? Was the anchor attached to the better end, or the bitter end?
Normally he would have delighted in finding out. But he was busy sulking, still both baffled and resentful at how he’d lost his friends in the process of trying to save them.
Letty, poor thing, was the most confused of all. The rest of them at least understood the cause for the hostilities. Letty hadn’t a clue what was going on. She was the only innocent here, unfairly caught in the crossfire. All she knew was that things were wrong and sour, and she was driving herself up the wall trying to figure out what the reason was. Someone else might have grown withdrawn and sullen, resentful at being shut out by their closest friends. But Letty was as pigheaded as ever, determined to resolve problems through brute force. When none of them would give her a concrete answer to the question ‘What’s happened?’ she decided to try conquering them one by one, to pry out their secrets through oversolicitous kindness.
But this had the opposite of her intended effect. Ramy began leaving the room every time she came in. Victoire, who as Letty’s roommate could not escape her, started showing up at breakfast looking haggard and exasperated.
When Letty asked her for the salt, Victoire snapped so viciously at her to get it herself that Letty reeled back, wounded.
Undaunted, she began broaching startlingly personal topics every time she was alone with one of them, like a dentist prodding teeth to see where it hurt most, to find what needed fixing. ‘It can’t be easy,’ she said to Robin one day. ‘You and him.’ Robin, who thought at first she was talking about Ramy, stiffened. ‘I don’t – how do you mean?’ ‘It’s just so obvious,’ she said. ‘I mean, you look so much like him.
Everyone can see it, it’s not like anyone suspects otherwise.’ She meant Professor Lovell, Robin realized. Not Ramy. He was so relieved that he found himself engaging in the conversation. ‘It’s a strange arrangement,’ he admitted. ‘Only I’ve grown so used to it that I’ve stopped wondering why it isn’t otherwise.’
‘Why won’t he publicly acknowledge you?’ she asked. ‘Is it because of his family, do you think? The wife?’ ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I’m really not bothered. I wouldn’t know what to do if he did declare himself my father, to be honest. I’m not sure I want to be
a Lovell.’
‘But doesn’t it kill you?’ ‘Why would it?’ ‘Well, my father—’ she started, then broke off and coughed primly. ‘I mean. You all know. My father won’t speak to me, hasn’t looked me in the eyes and spoken to me after Lincoln, and . . . I just wanted to say, I know a bit what it’s like. That’s all.’ ‘I’m sorry, Letty.’ He patted her hand and immediately felt guilty for doing it; it seemed so fake.
But she took the gesture at face value. She, too, must have been starved for familiar contact, for some indication that her friends still liked her. ‘And I just wanted to say, I’m here for you.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘I hope this isn’t too forward, but it’s just that I’ve noticed, he’s not treating you the same, not the way he used to. He won’t look you in the eyes, and he won’t speak to you directly. And I don’t know what happened, but it’s not right, and it’s very unfair what he’s done to you. And I want you to know that if you want to talk, Birdie, I’m here.’ She never called him Birdie. That’s Ramy’s word, Robin almost uttered, before realizing that would be the absolute worst thing to say. He tried to remind himself to be kind. She was, after all, only attempting her version of comfort. Letty was bull-headed and overbearing, but she did care. ‘Thank you.’ He gave her fingers a squeeze, hoping that if he did not elaborate, then this might force the end of the conversation. ‘I appreciate that.’
At least there was work to distract. Babel’s practice of sending entire cohorts, all of whom specialized in different languages, on the same graduation voyages was a testament to the reach and connectedness of the British trading companies. The colonial trade had its claws in dozens of countries across the world, and its labour, consumers, and producers spoke scores of tongues. During the voyage, Ramy was often asked to translate for the Urdu- and Bengali-speaking lascars; never mind that his Bengali was
now rudimentary at best. Letty and Victoire were put to work looking over shipping manifests for their next leg to Mauritius, and translating stolen correspondences from French missionaries and French trading companies out of China – the Napoleonic Wars had ended, but the competition for empire had not.
Every afternoon, Professor Lovell tutored Ramy, Letty, and Victoire in Mandarin from two to five. No one expected they would be fluent by the time they docked in Canton, but the point was to force-feed them enough vocabulary that they would understand basic salutations, directions, and common nouns. There was also, Professor Lovell argued, a great pedagogical benefit to learning a wholly new language in a very short amount of time; it forced the mind to stretch and build rapid connections, to contrast unfamiliar language structures with what one already knew. ‘Chinese is awful,’ Victoire complained to Robin one night after class. ‘There are no conjugations, no tenses, no declensions – how do you ever know the meaning of a sentence? And don’t get me started on tones. I simply can’t hear them. Perhaps I’m just not very musical, but I really can’t tell the difference. I’m starting to think they’re a hoax.’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Robin assured her. He was mostly glad she was talking to him at all. After three weeks Ramy had finally deigned to exchange basic civilities, but Victoire – though she still held him at arm’s length – had forgiven him enough to speak to him like a friend. ‘They don’t speak Mandarin in Canton anyway. You’d need Cantonese to actually get around.’ ‘And Lovell doesn’t speak it?’ ‘No,’ Robin said. ‘No, that’s why he needs me.’ In the evenings, Professor Lovell primed them for the purpose of their mission in Canton. They were going to help negotiate on behalf of several private trading companies, foremost among them Jardine, Matheson & Company. This would be more difficult than it sounded, for trade relations with the Qing court had been marked by mutual misunderstanding and suspicion since the end of the past century. The Chinese, wary of foreign influences, preferred to keep the British contained with other foreign traders at Canton and Macau. But British merchants wanted free trade – open ports, market access past the islands, and the lifting of restrictions on particular imports such as opium.
The three previous attempts by the British to negotiate broader trading rights had ended in abject failure. In 1793, the Macartney embassy became a global punchline when Lord George Macartney refused to kowtow to the Qianlong Emperor and came away with nothing. The Amherst embassy of 1816 went very much the same way when Lord William Amherst similarly refused to kowtow to the Jiaqing Emperor and was subsequently refused admission to Peking at all. There was also, of course, the disastrous Napier affair of 1834, which climaxed in a pointless exchange of cannon fire and Lord William Napier’s ignoble death of fever in Macau.
Theirs would be the fourth such delegation. ‘It’ll be different this time,’ vowed Professor Lovell, ‘because at last they’ve called on Babel translators to lead the talks. No more fiascoes of cultural miscommunication.’ ‘Had they not consulted you before?’ Letty asked. ‘That’s quite amazing.’ ‘You’d be surprised how often traders think they shouldn’t need our help,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘They tend to assume everyone should naturally just learn to speak and behave like the English. They’ve done a fairly good job at provoking local animosity with that attitude, if the Canton papers aren’t exaggerating. Expect some less-than-friendly natives.’ They all had a good idea of the kind of tension they would see in China.
They’d read more and more coverage of Canton in London’s newspapers of late, which mostly reported the kinds of ignominies British merchants were suffering at the hands of brutal local barbarians. Chinese forces, according to The Times, were intimidating merchants, attempting to expel them from their homes and factories, and publishing insulting things about them in their own press.
Professor Lovell opined strongly that, though the traders could have been more delicate, such heightened tensions were fundamentally the fault of the Chinese. ‘The problem is that the Chinese have convinced themselves that they are the most superior nation in the world,’ he said. ‘They insist on using the word yi to describe Europeans in their official memos, though we’ve asked them time and time again to use something more respectful, as yi is a designation for barbarians. And they take this attitude into all trade and legal negotiations. They recognize no laws except their own, and they don’t regard foreign trade as an opportunity, but as a pesky incursion to be dealt with.’ ‘You’d be in favour of violence, then?’ Letty asked.
‘It might be the best thing for them,’ said Professor Lovell with surprising vehemence. ‘It’d do well to teach them a lesson. China is a nation of semi- barbarous people in the grips of backward Manchu rulers, and it would do them good to be forcibly opened to commercial enterprise and progress. No, I wouldn’t oppose a bit of a shake-up. Sometimes a crying child must be spanked.’ Here Ramy glanced sideways at Robin, who looked away. What more was there to say?
Six weeks at last came to an end. Professor Lovell informed them at dinner one night that they could expect to dock at Canton by noon the next day. Prior to disembarking, Victoire and Letty were requested to bind their chests and to clip their hair, which they’d grown long during their years as upperclassmen, above their ears. ‘The Chinese are strict about barring foreign women in Canton,’ explained Professor Lovell. ‘They don’t like it when traders bring their families in; it makes it seem like they’re here to stay.’ ‘Surely they don’t actually enforce that,’ protested Letty. ‘What about the wives? And the maidservants?’ ‘The expats here hire local servants, and they keep their wives in Macau.
They’re quite serious about enforcing these laws. The last time a British man tried to bring his wife to Canton – William Baynes, I believe it was – the * local authorities threatened to send in soldiers to remove her.Anyhow, it’s for your own benefit. The Chinese treat women very badly. They have no conceptions of chivalry. They hold their women in low esteem and, in some cases, do not even permit them to leave the house. You’ll be better off if they think you are young men. You’ll learn that Chinese society remains quite backwards and unjust.’ ‘I wonder what that’s like,’ Victoire said drily, accepting the cap.
The next morning they spent the sunrise hour above deck, milling about the prow, occasionally leaning over the railing as if those inches of difference would help them spot what navigational science claimed they were fast approaching. The thick dawn mists had just given way to blue sky when the horizon revealed a thin strip of green and grey. Slowly this acquired detail, like a dream materializing; the blurred colours became a
coast, became a silhouette of buildings behind a mass of ships docking at the tiny point where the Middle Kingdom encountered the world.
For the first time in a decade, Robin found himself gazing at the shores of his motherland. ‘What are you thinking?’ Ramy asked him quietly.
This was the first time they’d spoken directly to each other in weeks. It was not a truce – Ramy still refused to look him in the eyes. But it was an opening, a grudging acknowledgment that despite everything, Ramy still cared, and for that Robin was grateful. ‘I’m thinking about the Chinese character for dawn,’ he said truthfully. He couldn’t let himself dwell on the larger magnitude of it all. His thoughts threatened to spiral to places he feared he could not control unless he brought them down to the familiar distraction of language. ‘Dàn. It looks like this.’ He drew the character in the air: . ‘Up top is the radical for the sun – rì.’ He drew . ‘And under that, a line. And I’m just thinking about how it’s beautiful because it’s so simple. It’s the most direct use of pictography, see.
Because dawn is just the sun coming up over the horizon.’
