“Let me help you, brother,” the hireling said.
Snatching the brush, he inked my thumb and pressed it onto the paper as if I’d not attended school for almost three years but was completely illiterate. Then he passed the contract to the giant for countersigning.
IN THE JUNK that ferried us from the quay to the devil-ship, we were locked below.
The spider had warned us that it would be necessary lest the unscrupulous among us disappear. “You’ll also have to walk to the quay shackled and guarded by soldiers with muskets.”
Skillfully, the hirelings had cut off protesters:
“That’s fair. We’ve been given a lot of money.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
One tipped his head meaningfully at the iron-faced giant. “Better shackles and armed guards than have Magistrate Bau catch us running.”
Many in the hall shuddered, grunted agreement.
“You can bet he’d turn a runaway over to his lieutenants for a lashing.”
“Or worse.”
The morose graybeard, no longer morose or bearded, rattled the silver coins in his pocket. “I’m glad for the soldiers and their muskets. They’ll protect our money from thieves.”
The biggest thieves, though, were our captors, who sold us supplies—everything from tobacco to blankets—at four, maybe five times their value.
My last taste of tobacco had been the morning I was kidnapped. Cradling my longstemmed pipe, I’d breathed in the delicate yet distinctive scent of Bo See along with the smoke’s fragrance, and as its heat had coursed through me, I’d savored again the red-hot pleasuring we’d shared on waking. Since then, I’d lost every trace of Bo See’s scent in the accumulated stink. My jacket and pants, crusted with filth, crackled, and I yearned for a wash and change of clothes as much as a smoke.
Even more, I longed for Bo See. So I made no purchases. Instead I vowed I’d spend every copper of my eight silver dollars on sacrifices to Fook Sing Gung if he’d come to my aid and show me a way home.
EMERGING ONTO THE junk’s deck, we were surrounded by foul-mouthed strongmen, ringed so tightly we couldn’t spread our legs for balance, and we teetered and rocked as the junk heaved in long swells. The soldiers that had been guarding us since we left the pigpen remained, their muskets at the ready. But the hirelings had melted away, and without their misleading patter, there was plenty of grousing, some of it black as the devil-ship alongside. Yet my own mood lightened. For the devil-ship’s hull rose much higher than the junk’s deck, and it seemed to me that any gangway between the two would have to be steeply raked, making it doubtful we’d be fettered together for the climb. Furthermore, the plank being set up looked barely wide enough for a pair of feet, too narrow for the unwilling to be dragged aboard.
Already I could see myself mounting the gangplank, studying my feet as if I intended climbing to the devil-ship with every care. A couple of small steps, and I’d feel hot sun on my crown, know I was leaving the gloomy shadow cast by the devil-ship’s hull. Another two or three, and I’d gulp a mouthful of moist, salt-laden air, buckle my knees, and tumble from the heat into the sea’s cool embrace.
A bellowed order for us to face the shore snapped me back. But I offered up a quick prayer of thanks as I turned towards the bellower: a short, powerfully built man with small, close-set eyes. Nor was I discouraged when Small Eyes, his voice dripping spite, pointed out how the stone buildings at the quay, although double-and-triple storied, seemed the size of huts because they were so far away. Yes, we were in the outer harbor, which was crowded with tall-masted foreign vessels, and it had been years since I’d been in water except to wash. But I’d swum great distances as a boy. Moreover, junks and sampans littered the glittering jade-green water. Surely they didn’t all serve man-stealers like the junk we were on. If I floundered during the swim, one with sympathetic boatmen would save me, perhaps even carry me home.
“Man-eating sharks live in these waters. What’s more, the devil-captains offer standing rewards for the return of anybody foolish enough to jump. The jumpers don’t have to be brought back alive or whole. A single limb will do.”
Determined not to fall victim to another hoax, I stopped listening to Small Eyes and began mapping a course to shore. If I took the most direct route, there’d be four foreign vessels in my path. Each had a garish foreign God or Goddess carved on its prow, and any one of them might be a devil-ship, but the heads, even the decks, rose high above the water, so neither their Gods nor their crews seemed likely to notice me. Butting up against their hulls, however, were sampans, their boatmen shouting offers of wares, rides to the quay. Junks, too, plied back and forth, some so weighed down by cargo that the large, all-seeing eyes painted on their prows almost touched the water. Perhaps I should avoid the risk of discovery by going underwater like a waterbrave.
The waterbraves who’d fought against the devil-foreigners in the first opium war had been renowned for their reckless courage in the face of danger, and they had among them astonishing divers who could walk on the seafloor for hours on end. As children, Moongirl and I had worked long and hard at emulating them, and we’d learned to keep our toes from stirring up a single thread of the streambed’s soft silt, to glide without moving our arms and legs or leaking a trace of air. . . .
“Piglet overboard!”
The alarm, repeated many times over, did not come from our junk or the devil-ship alongside. But our cordon of strongmen immediately tightened their noose; the soldiers stiffened; Small Eyes dashed to the side.
Pinched together, we trampled each other’s feet, our sweat-soaked clothes and skin melded as one. Worse, men were yelling instructions to pursuers from every direction, Small Eyes was taking wagers from the crew on whether the jumper would be caught dead or alive. Did a jumper have absolutely no chance of success?
Stretching my neck, I ogled over shoulders and between heads in search of someplace the jumper might seek refuge besides the faraway quay—saw a foreign vessel with a face as unadorned and compassionate as Gwoon Yum’s carved on its prow. If the jumper swam to this ship, perhaps the crew crowding its side would take pity on him.
There were no sampans around its hull that would block his way, no junks nearby, and from the few skiffs hovering close came haunting cries rather than shouted instructions from the chase. Or were the cries echoes from seabirds screeching at the black head bobbing in the shallow dip of a golden-green swell?
These traitorous birds, swooping low, were acting like a beacon to the boatmen in pursuit, and the jumper, despite frantic paddling, was making little progress. With a horrible sinking sensation, I realized there was every reason I’d fare as badly.
Moongirl and I had swum in a stream that was four or five feet at its deepest, and I’d never experienced a river’s current let alone a sea’s. Moreover, waterplay had ended for us at the age of seven, when I’d started school and Moongirl had begun laboring in earnest, so we’d never been hampered by clothing while swimming.
Watching the jumper, I felt his struggle as though it were my own, and as the sampans gained on him, I silently urged, Dive! Dive now!
His head did vanish. But was it intentional?
Maybe I’d just lost sight of him in the swells.
Or he could be hidden by the sampans that had converged.
If he was swimming underwater, was he deep enough to elude the tangle of grappling hooks and nets the boatmen were now hurling?
The answer came in a triumphant, “We’ve caught the piggy!”
“He’s a goner,” Small Eyes boomed.
So, it seemed, was I.
THE DAY MY husband disappeared in the market town, some Strongworm spinsters recognized our family skiff tied up near theirs, overheard Fourth Brother-in-law frantically seeking information about Ah Lung from people nearby.
Joining the search, these spinsters spread out along the riverbank. One of them came across eyewitnesses to a fight in which two strongmen had bested a victim fitting Ah Lung’s
description, and she readily agreed to return the family’s skiff to us and break the dreadful news while Fourth Brother-in-law caught a fastboat for Canton to inform Moongirl.
From what Moongirl had said about the city’s dangers, Fourth Brother-in-law could be kidnapped, too. Ma’s wrinkled face turned gray as her hair; Fourth Sister-in-law started wailing like a widow. I roiled within as though I were back in the cramped, windowless bridal sedan that had brought me to Ah Lung.
Merely looking at wares on a waterpeddler’s boat made me queasy, and since my bride escort had warned me that we’d have to cross a river to reach Strongworm, I’d knotted a salted plum into my hankerchief to settle my stomach during our passage. Almost immediately, however, the sedan’s rocking upset me. Or perhaps it was the smoke from the firecrackers that had blown into the sedan before my escort locked me in, the mounting stuffiness and heat, the oily heaviness of the traditional sticky rice I’d eaten at my final meal with my family.
In the dark, I fumbled for something to hang onto, found one hemp loop, then another, and clutched them so tightly my nails bit into my palms. Still, I jounced on the sedan’s narrow bench, and only chewing the plum’s salty meat quieted the churning within. By the time I heard the sedan bearers shout for a boatman, I was down to the pit.
Suddenly the bearer in front—despite my escort’s urgent admonitions to take care boarding the ferry—lost his footing, and I swung off the bench entirely, wrenching my shoulders.
To my relief, there was no splash of water and I regained my seat. In a confusing clamor of curses, accusations, and misdi-rections, though, I hurtled backwards, thwacking my head, knocking askew my headdress and veil.
Even after the sedan thumped onto the decking, it dipped alarmingly. I pressed the pit from the plum against the roof of my mouth with my tongue, and as the ferry rose, dipped, rose again, I sucked down so hard I tasted blood. But I could not stop my stomach from convulsing, shooting sour vomit into my mouth, and I’d had to rip my right hand from its loop of hemp and clap my hankerchief to my lips—like I did just moments ago, on learning kidnappers held my husband captive.
Now, forcing myself to swallow, I sought to calm all by turning the family’s attention from what we could not know for certain to what we did.
Moongirl combed her patrons’ hair with perfumed oils, secured their elaborate coifs with decorative pins of silver and gold. Sometimes she also plucked unwanted hairs from her patrons’ faces, painted their lips, colored their nails with a paste made from crushed red petals steeped in alum. And as she combed, plucked, and painted, Moongirl would offer appropriate pleasantries or commiseration in response to her patrons’ gossip and confidences. Pleased by her apparent interest and obvious skill, many of Moongirl’s patrons encouraged her to linger after she had finished by offering her snacks, some tea. They included her in banquets, invited her to accompany them on excursions to temples and theaters or moon-viewings from rivers and lakes. Some of these patrons were the wives of men in positions of power, and Moongirl would surely seek their help in finding and ransoming Ah Lung, bringing him home.
AS A SON, I’d always been assured of my place in family and village: Not only did I know all fifty-one families, but through my father, who’d known their fathers, I was as familiar with their ancestors as my own. Torn from them, I felt completely unmoored.
Moongirl, though, had been taught from infancy that daughters cannot remain at home. To prepare for her inevitable departure, she’d had to start passing her nights in a girls’ house when she was nine, and she’d been drilled in the weeping songs that brides chant to release their sorrow on leaving family and friends forever to live among strangers. Since Moongirl had chosen independent spinsterhood, she’d had no occasion to lament for herself. But she’d wailed on behalf of friends, and as I dragged my feet up the gangplank to the devil-ship, I could hear her chanting:
“Savages have taken you prisoner.
Once you . . .”
At the sound of her voice, a lump formed in my throat that I could neither raise nor swallow: The family knew I’d been kidnapped, and my sister had found me! By lamenting instead of calling my name, however, I understood Moongirl was warning that although she’d come to ransom me, my chances of rescue were as unlikely as those of an unwilling bride. My head became so heavy my chin sank onto my chest; the grime on my sandaled feet blurred with the planking. Stumbling on board, my head fell back. My eyes, slitted against the glare, swept up the masts until their tips vanished in a blaze of copper sky. Devil-foreigners swarmed across the spars, and I guessed from the intensity of their activity, the staccato footfalls on deck, sharply raised voices, shrill whistles, and clank of chains that the ship was about to get underway.
I scolded myself for not taking a chance and letting myself fall off the gangplank into the sea, swimming like mad until I found Moongirl. Now, hemming me in on both sides were devil-foreigners with gleaming swords threatening to scream across my skin, and I could do nothing except trudge between them.
When I came to a ladder, I mounted it. At the top, more devil-foreigners armed with muskets guarded the sides, the captives standing in three mute, disconsolate rows. My skin crawled with gooseflesh as I realized the muskets were fitted with bayonets. But I comforted myself with the hope that Moongirl, whom I could no longer hear, had gone to seek my release and, despite her warning, she’d secure my freedom. After all, on the boat this morning, Young Master’s father had won his.
“Get in line,” snapped a middle-aged Chinese devil in crisp, black-gummed silk.
This devil had a large black umbrella that shaded him from the brutal sun, yet his skin resembled melting wax. Having no umbrella nor hat, sweat ran down my face, chest, and back in rivers. As I walked across the hot deck, a disturbing rumble boiled up from below; pitch oozed from the planks’ seams, gripping the soles of my sandals.
“Only ten across! Start a new row. No talking.”
Obeying, I recognized the pointy ears of a scrawny, bare-chested fellow who’d refused to set foot on the gangplank. He hadn’t been the first. A few had pleaded dizziness from the movement of the junk, and Small Eyes— who’d demonstrated how we should ascend the gangplank—had thrown down ropes from the devil-ship and ordered these captives hoisted aboard as if they were, in truth, pigs.
This fellow had not begged but hawked gobs of spit at the strongmen, then raged at our captors. Even after he’d been bound by his wrists and ankles and the devils hoisting him had deliberately slammed him so hard against the hull that I’d recoiled from the crack, he hadn’t stopped shouting.
After he’d disappeared over the side, there’d been a single drawn-out cry, nothing more. And where there’d been some before him who keened or cursed their fate as they walked up the gangplank, those who followed, myself included, had been stone silent.
Now the pointy-eared resister, shackled at his wrists and ankles to a pair of iron rings bolted into the deck, had his head forcibly bowed. His back, badly shredded, was black with blood and swarms of mosquitoes and flies so sated they could scarcely crawl.
Clearly the devils had whipped him cruelly. Just as clearly, the devils had placed him in irons where we could see him for the same reason magistrates parade prisoners in heavy cangues: to add public humiliation to the punishment, and to frighten others into obedience.
What held my gaze, though, were the resister’s fingers doubled over into fists.
NO SOONER WERE we pigs assembled then six more devils crowded onto the stern deck. In the lead was a bloated sausage whose skin was almost as red as the hair bristling above his sea-green eyes, springing out of his oversized ears and nostrils, covering his head and jowls, the backs of his meaty hands. From the way this red devil swaggered, I thought he was the captain. But the interpreter, a muddy-faced mess of tics and twitches, told us the red devil was second-in-command of the ship. The colorless, clean-shaven reed with no neck and a head that listed to one side was the ship’s doctor, the three barefoot devils commo
n sailors, the Chinese in black-gummed silk our headman.
“Swineherd, you mean.”
Were it not for the puff of breath on the back of my neck from the man behind me and the muffled snorts of those nearby, I would have mistaken this comment, quiet as it was bitter, for my own imagining. There was no mistaking Red’s snarl though, and the interpreter, despite his tics and twitches, spoke distinctly, his translation in three dialects rising above birdcalls, the persistent eerie rumbling, the myriad noises from boat traffic and the devils clearing the main deck.
“Take off your clothes, including your hats and shoes, and put them on the deck. Those of you with belongings, place them on the deck as well. If you have your queue coiled around your head, release it so it hangs down your back.”
Stuffing my silver dollars into my mouth for safekeeping, I started unbuttoning my jacket. Around me, men shed their hats and jackets and uncoiled their queues. Those who’d made purchases in the pigpen set down their bundles.
None that I could see reached for his pants’ wide waistband. Nor would I. Since Moongirl and I had become too old for Ma to bathe us together in our courtyard, no one had seen me naked out in the open. Why would I degrade myself by stripping for this devil?
“Cooperate fully,” the interpreter urged. “Any man the doctor finds diseased, addicted to opium, crippled, or too young or too old for labor will be set free.”
A doctor—even one with a crooked head—could surely make those determinations while we were clothed! One glance at the morose graybeard’s withered skin revealed his age, and from my neighbor’s sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, it was obvious he was an addict.
Red, roaring so loud he shut out all else, clamped his meaty hands over the ears of the closest captive and lifted him into the air. Stunned by the devil’s strength, I almost choked on my silver dollars. The interpreter twitched over to the swineherd, who looked on expressionless as Red, still roaring like an angry bull, dashed the poor sod onto the deck, ripped off his pants.
God of Luck Page 4