Manchu by Elegant Robert;

Author:Elegant, Robert;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

Francis was astonished again by their reception on the flagship of a flotilla of some four hundred junks. The admiral of the fleet was a youthful Mandarin of the Second Grade with a dense black beard and flowing hair. On his insignia-square a pheasant soared, its golden hue repeated in the filigree insets on his black horsehair hat. He clasped his hands before his chest to greet Francis and Joseph, but dropped to his knees before the Jesuit.

“Shen-fu, wo bi-hsing …,” the Mandarin said. “Father, I am called Ignatius Chin. I ask your blessing.”

When the priest had blessed him, the Mandarin added: “All is prepared for Holy Mass.”

Admiral Ignatius Chin himself served Father Giulio di Giaccomo’s Mass on the capacious poop of the flagship. Afterward, the priest blessed the fleet’s banners of yellow silk emblazoned with red crosses. The flotilla slipped the hempen snares that had bound it to the wharves of Hangchow, sped by farewells in every dialect of China. At nightfall, it was bearing northeast on favorable winds toward Suchow some one hundred thirty miles away, where it would load cargo from Shanghai.

The pace was stately, for the Grand Canal tortuously followed existing rivers linked by manmade channels before entering the great lakes of the Yangtze Delta. When the wind failed, the ponderous craft were towed by mules and oxen whipped by foul-mouthed drovers. Having left Suchow behind, the fleet was approaching Chinchiang, where it would cross the Yangtze. It had, Giulio di Giaccomo calculated, taken nearly eight days to cover two hundred sixty miles, a speed of less than a mile and a half an hour.

In the early afternoon of the eighth day, August 23, 1642, the flotilla left Chinchiang to move under bellying sails into the muddy stream of the Yangtze. The golden late-summer sun had just dispelled a squall, and the gulls diving for refuse mewed raucously. The breeze whipped the banners of the Holy Cross, and the elongated sails strained at their rope tethers.

“The Emperor himself couldn’t travel more comfortably.” Joseph King looked up from his book. “If this is decadence, then I like decadence.”

“I, too. The most luxurious travel the world affords … and it rests my wound. Pity we can’t forever …” Struck by Father Giulio di Giaccomo’s attitude, Francis broke off his idle remarks.

One hand grasping the red-painted poop rail, the other pointing rigidly north, the Jesuit stood immobile. His long sleeves streamed like somber pennants, and tears trickled down his plump cheeks. His teeth flashed within the thicket of his brown beard in a rictus of joyous astonishment.

“Look! Look! To the north!” he shouted. “Look, Francis, Joseph! As far as the eye can see—and beyond! A veritable miracle!”

A squadron of sleek war junks, escorting several hundred deep-bellied cargo junks, was debouching from the northern branch of the Grand Canal onto the wide Yangtze. Francis saw sails too numerous to count. Remarkable, truly, that multitude, but what had moved Giulio di Giaccomo to tears?

Then he saw. Every junk carried a square yellow foresail under its bowsprit.

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