Here Punhyqua broke in and addressed Bahram directly. ‘That-time Lin Zexu, he Governor Kiangsi. He savvy allo this-thing. Maybe he thinkee, English-fellow speakee too muchi lie, allo time.’

Bahram laughed. ‘Is tooroo,’ he said. ‘England-fellow speakee plenty lie. But he just like us: he likee cash.’

In any event, the matter of the Lord Amherst had evidently made a deep impression on Lin Zexu. On taking up his next post, in Hukwang, he had launched a massive campaign to eradicate opium – and being the man he was, his efforts had met with far greater success than any before. Indeed he had become such an expert on opium-trafficking that he was one of the select few to be asked to submit reports on opium to the Son of Heaven – and his memorial on the subject had proved to be the most comprehensive ever written.

Now, once again, Punhyqua leant forward. ‘Mr Moddie, Lin Zexu, he savvy allo,’ he said. ‘Allo, allo. He have got too muchi spy. He sabbi how cargo come, who bringee, where it go. Allo he savvy. If he come Governor Canton too muchi bad day for trade.’

‘But nothing has been decided yet, no?’

‘No. Not yet,’ said the linkister. ‘But Emperor meet Governor Lin many time already. He give him permission ride horse in Beijing. Is big sign. People say, Emperor has told that he cannot face shadow of ancestor until opium business is rooted from China.’

‘But others have tried before, no?’ said Bahram. ‘Even the present Governor is trying: raids, executions, searches – all the time we hear. But still it goes on.’

Punhyqua leant forward again and tapped Bahram’s knee with a fingernail. ‘Governor Lin not like other mandarin,’ he said. ‘If he come to Canton, too muchi trouble Mr Moddie. If cargo have got, better sell now, jaldi chop-chop.’

*

‘Why,’ said Fitcher, scratching his chin, ‘it must be Billy Kerr they were speaking of.’

Paulette looked up from Robin’s letter. ‘But sir, surely the man who introduced the world to the Tiger Lily and the Chinese Juniper and Christmas Camellia was not a smoker of opium?’

‘Oh he had his share of troubles, did poor Billy Kerr …’

Kerr had been in China a couple of years already when Fitcher met him for the first time, in Canton, in the winter of 1806. He was in his mid-twenties then, a little younger than Fitcher: a tall, strapping Scotsman, he had more energy and ambition than he could put to good use. He had arrived in Canton bearing the gaudy title of ‘Royal Gardener’ but only to find that it carried no weight in the British Factory, which was as starchy in its own way as a manor house. A gardener was, after all, just a servant and was expected to comport himself as such, remaining below stairs and refraining from intruding upon his superiors.

It was true certainly that Billy had been born with dirt beneath his fingernails – his father had been a gardener before him, and probably his grandfather too. But Billy was a sharp, hard-working fellow who had applied himself to his books and his botany with a mind to bettering himself. His position in the British Factory didn’t jibe with his idea of his own consequence and he was a little bit forward at times: as a result, instead of finding a place at the high table, he was fed a steady diet of snubs and slights. Nor did it help that his salary, which, at a hundred English pounds a year, would have been perfectly adequate elsewhere, was a trifling sum in Canton: Billy could not even afford to pay for his own washing.