Chapter 2925: Tianjin Wei (4)

The road was uneventful, and Li Luoyou fell into easy conversation with him.

"What does the Erudite oversee at the cannon bureau? From the look of the Erudite's hands, they have kept company with iron and fire a good many years."

Chen Yujie raised his own hands and considered them — black and chapped, thick with callus and split seams — and smiled, unbothered. "The venerable sir has a sharp eye. At the bureau there is nothing — melting the iron, casting the guns, hammer-forging, proof-firing — that I have not handled with my own person. Casting cannon is not like reading and writing, a thing you can manage sitting in a study. How many degrees the molten iron stands at, how the furnace heat is governed, whether the bore has come smooth, whether the powder chamber runs true — with matters like these, unless you have touched and seen for yourself, and merely take the artisans' reports on faith, the heart is never easy."

Li Luoyou nodded, and his regard for this ninth-rank nonentity gained a few degrees more.

By roundabout ways he sounded him out about Grand Secretary Xu's present state. Chen Yujie was nothing loath to speak of it: the Grand Secretary was far on in years, but his spirits held; every day he still put a great stack of official papers under his brush, and every third or fifth day he went out to walk the works. Only, the funds the court released were limited; much that he wanted to do could not be done, and he could but pick out the most pressing matters and see to those first.

"In years past his health was poor, and he was forever convalescing. Then, a few years ago, Father Furtado, a co-religionist of his, sent him several medicines from Hangzhou, wonderfully suited to his complaint. On these he has slowly nourished himself back to his feet."

Li Luoyou understood perfectly well — the medicine, need it be said, was the Australians'.

He mentioned, as if in passing, a few of the terms from the Shorn-hairs' books and papers — meaning to sound out Chen Yujie's attitude toward the Australians — and with that one touch the man's box of talk flew open.

"The venerable sir has read the Shorn-hairs' books too?" Chen Yujie's eyes kindled, his voice warming. "Their books and papers, I have gone through some few myself. Never mind the rest — take only that set, the One Hundred Thousand Whys: the principles of things it lays out are truly humbling."

And off he went, discoursing in a torrent. Of burning seepweed and seaweed to ash and mixing it with powdered oyster shell to charge into the melting furnace, and so drawing the sulfur out of coal-smelted pig iron; of how high the furnace heat must climb before the iron ran pure; of how in casting a gun the mold must be preheated first, or bubbles and cracks would find their way in — matter upon matter, item upon item, all laid out in perfect order, recounted like the treasures of his own family chest.

"I have tried the methods the Shorn-hairs' books describe, several times now, and they answer," said Chen Yujie, and there was no small complacence in his tone. "Our Divine Might General cannon, cast as heavy as eighteen pounds, takes a charge of one and a half times without cracking — the iron is far sounder than anything we ever made before. In the old days, with an eighteen-pounder, a man held his breath loading seven- or eight-tenths of a charge, in terror of a burst barrel maiming his own people."

Li Luoyou listened with a stealthy shudder of the heart. It was not that he had never heard of the Australians' One Hundred Thousand Whys — but that the thing should serve for casting cannon, and to such startling effect, he had never dreamed. If even Grand Secretary Xu's nephew extolled the Shorn-hairs' books so, then how deep, in the end, did the Shorn-hair Thieves' learning run?

He was turning this over when another matter suddenly came back to him.

"Some days ago Zheng Shengyi of Fujian demonstrated a Nanyang cannon of his own casting in the capital; the greatest solid shot it fired weighed a full twenty-four pounds by the Western scale." Li Luoyou's voice had dropped very low, as though he feared being overheard. "The watchers at court stood wall upon wall, clicking their tongues at the marvel. Several of the bureau chiefs of the Ministry of War said on the spot that this gun's power outmatched every firearm the court had ever cast for itself."

Chen Yujie's brow creased faintly, and he did not take up the thread.

Li Luoyou could not help worrying. The fresh sting of the second defeat at Namhansanseong was still in every eye; the court had lost face up and down, and was now all eagerness to win the round back. The speaking-official sort who understood firearms could be counted on one hand; they only lifted their cries for lavish use of Western guns and cannon. They looked at results alone, never the road there — only at whose gun was bigger and shot farther, never at where the iron came from or where the silver did. If some man of that kidney made an essay of the Divine Might General cannon's falling short of the Nanyang Great Folangji, and impeached Grand Secretary Xu for "laxity in the making of arms and squandering of the treasury's substance" — that would bring this old Grand Secretary no little trouble.

"The venerable sir knows how it has always been," Chen Yujie said at last, after a silence, a thread of bitterness in his voice. "For casting guns the first choices have ever been Guangdong iron and Fujian iron — Guangdong iron sound, Fujian iron tough, both the finest of materials. But now the Shorn-hair army holds Guangdong, and Guangdong iron is past getting — never mind Guangdong iron; out of Guangdong not so much as a single iron nail will cross the line these days. And the Fujian iron has all gone into the Zheng family's purses; they cannot cast enough guns for themselves — what would they sell?"

He paused, and sighed.

"The iron our bureau buys is Shanxi stock, Huguang stock. The iron of Shanxi, of Hunan and Hubei, runs a degree short in quality. By the Shorn-hairs' books, it is all sulfur-heavy iron, brittle and crack-prone; it will serve for a small gun, but with the great guns it invites trouble. That we have used the Australians' sulfur-drawing arts and cast an eighteen-pounder at all — that is the last reach of everything this ignoramus ever learned, watching the furnace fire day and night without cease, until my eyes are nearly blinded with the watching."

The dark came down deeper and deeper; a thin fog rose off the river. The lantern light bloomed wide and soft in the mist, too dim to make out Chen Yujie's face — only his voice came through the fog, wearing a weariness and helplessness there were no words for.

"A Western scholar once told me that in the Far West, for casting cannon, copper is held ten times better than iron — and costs ten times an iron gun's price. If the court's purchasing were equal to it, and enough copper could be bought to stand in for iron — never mind twenty-four pounds; a great Folangji of forty-two pounds would not be past casting."

Li Luoyou did not take up that thread either.

Copper? The court could not even gather its iron — and he was to hope for copper? The copper quotas owed to the capital by the provinces ran behind year upon year, and the Ministry of Revenue had dunned them time and again without moving them. And even had the copper been there to buy, the price of it was past the means of a treasury already scraping elbow against elbow. As for those four words, "purchasing equal to it" — light enough to say, and ten times harder than casting the cannon.

Whether it was "purchasing not equal to it," or no funds to purchase with at all, both men understood perfectly.

The carrying chair moved slowly forward through the night fog. The bearers' steps held steady, the bamboo poles trembling faintly on their shoulders, creak-creak, creak-creak. Retainers and servants thronged before and behind; the lantern light swayed in the mist, laying open one small ring of dim yellow world.

Chen Yujie fell silent too, walking wordless beside the chair. The fog had dampened his official robe, and the coal-smoke color of it deepened in the wet air until it all but melted into the sunk night.

Far off, the lamps of Tianjin Wei came and went in the fog like a few grains of firefly light floating on water. Li Luoyou sat in the chair with his eyes shut, the things Chen Yujie had just said turning over and over in his head. Shanxi and Huguang iron, the price of copper, the twenty-four-pound Nanyang gun, the eighteen-pound Divine Might General... The words sawed back and forth through his mind like so many blunt knives.

He bethought himself suddenly of those years in Guangdong, casting cannon for Wang Zunde. In those days Guangdong iron had been easy enough to buy, Fujian iron could still be shipped over, and the Red Barbarian cannon they cast — the biggest threw a twelve-pound ball — was already the prize weapon every coastal province scrambled and bid for. Now Grand Secretary Xu's nephew had cast an eighteen-pounder in Tianjin, which by rights should be a happy thing — yet from the sound of him, he might have been doing something that could not bear the light, in constant terror of being outshone.

This age of ours — it grows stranger to read by the year, Li Luoyou thought.

The chair swayed; he opened his eyes, and before them a gate tower stood up out of the fog: the city of Tianjin Wei itself, dressed in blue brick to a height of several zhang, the crenellations running unbroken. They came to the moat, and the timber drawbridge was not yet drawn up.

"Venerable sir, we are arrived." Chen Yujie's voice came from beside the chair. "Rest first; in a few days I shall come and conduct the venerable sir to pay his call on the Grand Secretary."

Li Luoyou stepped down from the chair, worked the stiffness out of his limbs, and bowed to Chen Yujie with clasped hands. "Today has put the Erudite to much labor. Without the Erudite's help, an old man might have been stuck on that riverbank for Heaven knows how long."

"The venerable sir is too courteous." Chen Yujie returned the bow. "I must get back to the cannon bureau this very night — the furnace fires cannot go without a man. May the venerable sir rest early."

And there the parties parted with their farewells. Li Luoyou gave thanks upon thanks; thanks to Chen Yujie, he had at least made the city before the night watch shut the gates, and would not have to go hunting a lodging outside the walls. He directed Saoye to hand out reward money to the bearers and the retainers, and master and servant, making legs do the work of horses, walked into the city on foot.

The gate arch ran high and deep; above it the stone plaque "Anxi" could just be made out. Two soldiers of the Tianjin garrison stood spear in hand, faces heavy, giving the passers-through a cursory check; now and then a cart or horse went by, or garrison men and porters shouldered through with sacks of grain and salt. At the mouth of the gate several yellowed notices were pasted up — papers mostly dun-ning for pay, guarding against thieves, and disciplining the troops — their corners lifting faintly in the wind.

This was, after all, a city born of a garrison post, and standing in the front line against "the Japanese" and now "the Shorn-hairs" besides; the watch kept at its gates was not yet altogether slack. And yet Tianjin's prosperity had long since burst past anything a garrison town's station could confine: beyond the walls on all four sides the shops and trading houses blazed with lamplight, throwing the outline of the walls Grand Secretary Xu had directed to be rebuilt into a dim relief against the sky. The great acute-angled gun platforms added at the city's four corners crouched in the night like beasts in ambush, and often enough drew cries of astonishment from idle passersby. Li Luoyou thought little of them: it was only the pattern of Fort São Paulo, and from his early years of going to and from Macau he had long since looked his fill.

Through the gate, one came straight onto West Gate Street. The roadway was laid with blue stone, worn over long years into shallow ruts by wheel and hoof. The street was not broad; lining it were mostly garrison barracks and the homes of small households, walls of rammed earth for the most part, with here and there a compound of brick and stone — the dwellings, by the look of them, of garrison officers. Small shopfronts opened at intervals, selling dry rations, liquor, ironware, and fodder: the plain, rough grain of a soldier town, with none of Jiangnan's polish and flourish.

Those abroad on the street were mostly soldiers in short jackets, artisan households, and canal porters; now and then a scholar or a petty clerk in a long gown went hurrying past, and the voices on the air came from all five quarters of the realm. The lanes ran narrow, the houses stood in ranks trim and regular, laid out by the Ming garrison code; one glance down them showed more of the garrison's discipline than of the market's smoke and warmth.

Being in its bones only a garrison post, the city was no great thing: nine li around, and the little space within it was three-quarters eaten up by yamen offices, armories, temples, and the canal granaries; what remained was housing for the old military households and, latterly, the families of the camp soldiers, with a beggarly scattering of shops. Master and servant rounded the Drum Tower and turned up North Gate Street toward the Gongbei Gate. Kong Youde's mutiny, in its day, had wiped the Liaohai Trading House's Dengzhou branch off the board entirely; in the alarm of that hour Li Luoyou had resolved to rebuild the branch in Tianjin instead — Tianjin, being the starting point of the sea-borne grain route to Liaodong — and winning the piece of ground fronting North Gate Street alone had cost him no end of maneuvering.

(End of chapter)