Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

‘Couldn’t sleep. And these shifts are nonsense anyway, no one’s coming for us tonight.’ Ramy joined Robin behind Professor Lovell’s desk. ‘Digging around, are we?’

‘Look.’ Robin tapped the letters. ‘Read these.’

Ramy picked up a letter from the top of the pile, skimmed it, and then sat down across from Robin to take a closer look at the rest. ‘Good heavens.’

‘They’re war plans,’ said Robin. ‘Everyone’s in on it, everyone we met in Canton – look, here are letters from Reverends Morrison and Gützlaff – they’ve been using their covers as missionaries to spy on the Qing military. Gützlaff’s even been bribing informants to tell him particulars of Chinese troop deployment, which influential Chinese traders are against the British, and even which pawnshops would be good places to raid.’

‘Gützlaff?’ Ramy snorted. ‘Really? I didn’t know that German had it in him.’

‘There are also pamphlets to whip up public support for the war – look, here Matheson calls the Chinese “a people characterized by a marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit, and obstinacy”. And here someone called Goddard writes that deploying warships would be a “tranquil and judicious visit”. Imagine. A tranquil and judicious visit. What a way to describe a violent invasion.’

‘Incredible.’ Ramy’s eyes roved up and down the documents as he flipped through with increasing speed. ‘Makes you wonder why they sent us in the first place.’

‘Because they still needed a pretext,’ said Robin. It was falling into place now. It was all so clear, so ridiculously simple that he wanted to kick himself for not seeing it earlier. ‘Because they still needed something to take to Parliament to prove the only way they were going to get what they wanted was by sheer force. They wanted Baylis to humiliate Lin, not compromise with him. They wanted to bait Lin into declaring hostilities first.’

Ramy snorted. ‘Only they didn’t count on Lin blowing up all that opium in the harbour.’

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘But I suppose they’re getting the just cause they wanted anyway.’

‘There you are,’ said Victoire.

They both jumped, startled.

‘Who’s watching the door?’ asked Robin.

‘It’ll be fine, no one’s breaking in at three in the morning. And Letty’s out like a log.’ Victoire crossed the room and peered down at the stack of letters. ‘What are these?’

Ramy gestured for her to sit. ‘You’ll see.’

Victoire, like Ramy, started reading faster and faster when she realized what she was looking at. ‘Oh, goodness.’ She touched her fingers to her lips. ‘So you think – so they never even—’

‘Right,’ said Robin. ‘It was all for show. We weren’t meant to negotiate peace at all.’

She gave the papers a helpless shake. ‘Then what do we do with this?’

‘What do you mean?’ Robin asked.

She shot him a puzzled look. ‘These are war plans.’

‘And we’re students,’ he replied. ‘What can we do?’

There was a long silence.

‘Oh, Birdie.’ Ramy sighed. ‘What are we even doing here? What do we think we’re running back to?’

Oxford was the answer. Oxford, which was what they’d all agreed on, because when they’d been trapped on the Hellas, their professor’s corpse sinking into the depths of the ocean behind them, the promise of a return to the normal and familiar was what kept them calm, a shared delusion of stability that kept them from going mad. All their planning had always stopped at their safe arrival in England. But they couldn’t keep skirting the issue, couldn’t keep up the blind and ridiculous faith that if they just got back to Oxford, then everything would be all right.

There was no going back. They all knew it. There was no pretending anymore, no hiding in their supposedly safe corner of the world while unimaginable cruelty and exploitation carried on beyond. There was only the vast, frightening web of the colonial empire, and the demands of justice to resist it.

‘Then what?’ asked Robin. ‘Where do we go?’

‘Well,’ said Victoire, ‘the Hermes Society.’

It seemed so obvious when she said it. Only Hermes might know what to do with this. The Hermes Society, which Robin had betrayed, which might not even be willing to take them back, was the only entity they’d encountered that had ever professed to bother with the problem of colonialism. Here was a way out, a rare and undeserved second chance to make good on wrong choices – if only they could find Hermes before the police found them.

‘We’re agreed, then?’ Victoire glanced back and forth between them. ‘Oxford, then Hermes – and then whatever Hermes needs of us, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Ramy said firmly.

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘No, this is madness. I’ve got to turn myself in, I need to go to the police as soon as I can—’

Ramy scoffed. ‘We’ve been over this, over and over and over. You turn yourself in and what? Forget that Jardine and Matheson are trying to start a war? This is bigger than us now, Birdie. Bigger than you. You’ve got obligations.’