‘Yes. He was actually a Chinese Muslim whose family had fought with the Mongols, and he was taken captive and then castrated when still just a boy. It happened a lot back then. But he made a name for himself, become one of Zhu Di’s favourites.’ Lucia raised an eyebrow, making Knox laugh. ‘Not in that sense,’ he assured her. ‘Zhu Di liked the ladies. Koreans, for choice. But that was precisely why he trusted eunuchs: they wouldn’t cause mischief in his harem, and they had no dynastic ambitions of their own.’
‘Okay. So Mr Eternal Happiness commissions his favourite eunuch to go sailing. And there were multiple voyages, right?’
‘Seven in all, though the final one was much later, more an afterthought than anything. Mostly they visited the places you’d expect: Sumatra and Java and the other main Indonesian islands. Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaya, India. Places which were pretty well known to the Chinese. Their fourth voyage made it to Arabia and East Africa, but it’s the sixth that’s the most intriguing. Zheng He didn’t actually go very far himself, but various of his vice-admirals each led a contingent of their own, and we’re not entirely sure where they went, not least because there was a great fire in Beijing shortly after they set out, which the emperor interpreted as a divine admonishment against his treasure fleets, so all records of the voyage were destroyed.’
‘And this anchor of yours would have come from this sixth voyage, right?’
‘Most likely,’ agreed Knox. ‘Though Chinese ships were hopeless at sailing against the wind: they pretty much had to go wherever the weather took them. That was fine, most of the time, because the trade winds are very reliable between Africa and China. But if some Chinese ship from one of the other fleets had been blown off course at the wrong time, it might have had little choice except to end up here. And these armadas were huge. There were supposed to be three hundred and seventeen ships in the first voyage alone, carrying over twenty-eight thousand people. Even allowing for some exaggeration, that’s pretty damned impressive. The demand for wood was so intense that they deforested whole regions of China. Most of the ships were supply boats, troop transports, that kind of thing. Others were for cargo, for these were trading missions too, swapping Chinese silks and porcelain for highly prized goods like pearls, ivory and exotic woods. But each fleet also included a number of what were known as treasure ships. These were floating palaces, really; or perhaps more accurately embassies, designed specifically to impress and intimidate foreign powers. They were reputed to be over four hundred feet long and a hundred and eighty feet wide. That’s like floating a football stadium out to sea. This was ninety-odd years before Columbus, yet these beasts were more than twice as wide as the Santa Maria was long. They had nine masts, the tallest of which was said to have stood over three hundred feet high.’
‘Three hundred feet?’ Lucia pulled a face. ‘Is that even possible?’
‘A lot of historians and shipbuilders think not. They say the treasure ships were more likely to have been sixmasters, only about two hundred foot long.’ He gave a little grin, nodded over the side of the ship down towards the sea-bed. ‘But that’s what makes all this so exciting: we won’t know one way or the other until we—’ Cheers and hoots erupted at the stern. He looked around to see that the anchor had just breached the surface of the water, like some great whale coming up for air, streams of seawater cascading from it and the steel cable and the hoist straps at either end as it was slowly raised higher and higher.
‘Wow!’ murmured Lucia, producing a camera from her bag.
‘You want to go closer?’ asked Knox. She nodded eagerly, so he led her back down. The crane arm began to turn, bringing the black and rust-red anchor around over the deck, its cables and straps creaking loudly from the stress, everyone standing well clear. When the anchor was above the open hatches of the hold, the crane operator stopped it and gave it a few moments to come to rest. Crewmen gathered on every side, holding their hands out to stop the anchor from swinging, buffer it from banging against the sides as it was lowered into the hold, where the project’s conservators were already waiting.
‘It truly is something,’ said Lucia, snapping away. ‘I hadn’t imagined it would be—’ She jumped visibly at a loud bang from behind her, as though something electrical had blown. They all looked around. The ship listed a little to port, and the anchor began to swing again, like a gigantic pendulum nudged by a celestial finger. Knox glanced over at Miles and saw the anxiety on his face that he knew would be mirrored on his own.
One of their dynamic positioning thrusters had blown. And that meant trouble.
I
Kirkpatrick Films’ Head Office, Covent Garden, London
Rebecca Kirkpatrick was doing her best to concentrate on what Titch Osmond, her Chief Financial Officer, was telling her, but it was hard, what with Nicola’s scribbled note in her lap. She glanced surreptitiously down at it yet again.
Pierre Demullin (???) called. From Madagascar (!?!). Will call back later.
All those exclamation and question marks; they’d got beneath her skin. She was constantly getting calls from all over the world, and it was hardly a secret that her mother had been Malagasy, if only because of her own mix of Polynesian, African and European looks. So what about this particular message had made all those exclamation marks necessary? She breathed in deep, trying to maintain her calm. It wasn’t that surprising that Pierre should call. He was her childhood neighbour and her father’s closest friend, as well as her sister Emilia’s lover and the father of her infant son Michel. Yet Rebecca hadn’t spoken to him in eleven years, and the truth was she couldn’t imagine what would have prompted him to call her, not out of the blue like this.
‘Your mind’s not on it,’ said Titch. ‘Shall we do this later?’
Rebecca smiled with artificial brightness. It wasn’t as if there was anything she could do before Pierre rang back, after all. ‘It’s fine,’ she assured him. ‘You were telling me about our cash-flow.’
‘Yes,’ said Titch, flipping on through his ring-binder. ‘We need another sixty-seven to see us through to July.’
‘Sixty-seven?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Is that all?’
He gave a wry laugh. ‘Sixty-seven’s not nothing, you know.’
‘Can’t we borrow?’ She glanced down at Nicola’s note again. It wasn’t quite true that she couldn’t imagine why Pierre might call. That was the thing that was unnerving her. He’d certainly be the person to contact her in an emergency if neither Adam nor Emilia could get to a phone.
‘You think I haven’t tried?’ frowned Titch, as though she’d cast a slur upon his character. ‘No one will lend us any more.’
‘Why not? We’re profitable, aren’t we?’
‘On paper, yes.’ He looked up and momentarily caught her eye before hurriedly looking away again, his cheeks flaming. A couple of months before, out at a working dinner, he’d seized her hand in both of his and declared undying love. She’d put it down at the time to alcohol and the recent break-up of his marriage, but little moments like this made her wonder if it wasn’t more serious than that. She devoutly hoped not. She
