She hesitated, and looked around, her hands on her hips. She walked to the riverbank and knelt down next to a weedy-looking plant growing in the shingle. She tore a bit of it off and came over, sitting cross-legged next to me. “Now listen,” she said. “This is an herb my father taught me about, an ancient one from the Jin dynasty called ching-hao. Westerners call it wormwood. It’s known as an emergency prescription to keep up one’s sleeve. You can always find it growing by a river like this.” She handed me a sprig. A sweet aroma wafted from the yellow flowers and leaves. “A heat-clearing herb,” Ching Lan went on. “Good for ridding a body of fever. Take one bunch, soak in two sheng of water, squeeze the plant to get the juice, and then drink it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You said to your father you wanted to learn about herbal medicine from me, so I’m teaching you about herbal medicine.” She pulled some leaves from the branch she was holding and crushed them in her hands, releasing more of the sweet odor. She muttered something in Chinese under her breath and then tossed the plant into the water.
“And I’m the one with an angry face?” I said.
“Ai yah,” she said, scowling.
“There it is. The angry face.”
She smiled then, a tiny little quirk at the corner of her mouth, but it counted as a smile. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said. “I don’t know what to say to you. I’m afraid you’ll shout at me like you shout at your father.”
“I don’t shout at my father. How absurd!”
She drew up her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “In China if you aren’t filial, the mandarin will have you whipped and a cangue put around your neck so you can’t feed yourself. On the cangue are written the characters for not filial so everyone knows what you’ve done.”
“So you think I should be put in this cangue thing now? How happy that would make you.”
“Not my place to say if you should wear a cangue. I’m not your father. Or the mandarin.”
“My father isn’t always right,” I insisted, wishing she would go away, and indeed it was on the tip of my tongue to say so. “I have to stand up for myself with him or he doesn’t hear what I have to say. He needs my help for reasons you don’t know about.”
“Doesn’t this humiliate your father? Cause him to lose face?”
“I . . .” I had nothing to say to that. A cold rush of shame washed over me. In helping my father, had I diminished him in some way? But helping people was the only way I knew. It was who I was. Did Alex feel that way, too? Did I fuss over him like I fussed over Papa? “I don’t know.” I looked at Ching Lan, who was studying me carefully. “Maybe. Do you think so?”
She lifted her hands. “Maybe you should ask him. I know my own father wouldn’t take kindly to this standing up.”
“If I hadn’t argued with my father, neither of us would be on this journey right now,” I pointed out.
Ching Lan didn’t look convinced. “Perhaps not. But perhaps you could have spoken in a more respectful way.”
The Chinese were very direct, Alex had said. And he was right, at least when it came to Ching Lan. At least I knew what to expect with Ching Lan. If I didn’t know, all I had to do was to ask her.
“But I did the same thing to you, and I’m sorry for my behavior,” Ching Lan said. “I’m a devil sometimes, and I can’t stop myself.” She looked so remorseful, like Violetta did when she hurt me, that I couldn’t stay angry with her. “I embarrassed you in front of your husband and father, caused you to lose face, and I’m awful.”
“You aren’t awful.” I looked down at the wormwood plant and plucked one of the flowers, twirling it in my fingers. “And I didn’t lose face. Don’t speak of it further. It’s behind us.”
“I was mean to you because I’m jealous,” she blurted out.
I turned to look at her, astonished. “Of me? Why?”
She lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Because you have a life of your own. You can have adventures and marry whomever you like. I must spend my life as a concubine, a plaything for a man, unable to shape my own destiny.”
“In England it’s not much different,” I said. “Women who make mistakes wear an invisible cangue that only people who judge can see. That’s why Alex married me, because otherwise I would have been ruined. I stowed away to come to China, you see. Because Alex helped me, he had to leave the ship. You’ve nothing to be jealous of. It wasn’t easy for me at all.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “Elodie, I won’t be able to live in the Forbidden Palace. I’ll die inside.” She looked away toward the river. “Sometimes I think about killing myself. Other girls have done it to avoid the selection, but if you kill yourself, it’s considered a form of protest, and your family is blamed. I wouldn’t do that to them. I’d rather be unhappy for the whole of my life than hurt them.”
If Ching Lan and I needed to find common ground to stand on, then this was where we’d found it. That’s why I was here in the first place, after all: to help my family survive.
“I’m sorry, Ching Lan. I feel badly for reacting as I did at supper. It was childish and stupid.”
“It really was,” she said, wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her jacket. “What a tantrum. Throwing kuaizi on the ground like that.”
I sighed. “Can you show me some more medicinal plants?”
We took our shoes and stockings off and walked the edge of the riverbank for the next hour. Tiny fish darted around our ankles and the water felt cool and welcome on such a hot evening. The Chinese wilderness was a veritable chemist shop. Ching Lan pointed out plants for rheumatism and consumption, sleeplessness and fatigue. She looked so happy. She paused in the river for a moment, letting the water stream around her calves, her arms crossed over her body and her eyes closed. The breeze blew her long hair over her shoulders and I thought she looked like a water nymph come to life. I wished with all my heart that she were a water nymph; she could dive into the river and swim away to live her life as she wished. Then I pictured her living in the Forbidden Palace, sitting amongst the other concubines, waiting for the emperor to choose her for his evening’s entertainment, and then sending her back, discarded, until he remembered her again. It made my heart ache.
We were turning back, reluctant to return to the camp, when Ching Lan let out a cry and knelt down in the water to examine a plant growing in the mud on the river bank. She tugged and pulled at it, but it remained rooted into the ground.
I opened my billhook and handed it to her. She took the knife and touched the curve with her finger.
“Careful,” I said. “It’s sharp. That’s a billhook for collecting plants. Or at least it was for collecting plants.”
“Did you use this to cut that man’s face?”
I nodded.
She examined the knife again. “You were very brave to do that.” She sliced a bit of the plant off.
“Yes, well, I didn’t want to.”
“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want so we can make things better.” She touched the knife again and then handed it back to me. She stood and looked up into the cliffs overhead. “See there?” She pointed to a group of rectangular shaped boxes pegged onto the top of the sheer cliffs. “Those are the hanging coffins of the Guyue people. No one knows how they put them there. It’s impossible, people say. But how can it be impossible if the coffins are there?”
I shaded my eyes against the evening sun and looked at the coffins. “Extraordinary.”
“Do you ever wonder about how you fit into the world, Elodie?” Ching Lan asked. “If there’s a place for you? A place you can choose for yourself, no matter how impossible?”
“Always,” I said. “Every single day.”
She picked up two rocks and handed me one, tossing the other in her hand. “Let’s pretend these rocks are our troubles and we can throw them into
the river. Maybe the river goddess, Mazu, will hear us and carry our sadness away.”
We threw the rocks in the river as far as we could pitch them and watched as the ripples faded away.
“Do you think it worked?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “Well, only time will tell us.”
I put my hand on Ching Lan’s shoulder. “Pru wanted you to come on the trip so that you might have happy memories to hold you in good stead while you are in the palace. I think you should try very hard not to dwell on the selection. There will be time enough when we return.”
We waded back to where we started and stepped out of the river. We sat and stretched our feet out, letting the evening sun dry our legs.
“Thank you for forgiving me, Elodie,” she said, drawing out my name: El-oh-dee. “Your name sounds like the jingle of wind bells. What does it mean?”
“It’s a common name for a kind of wildflower,” I said. “All of my sisters are named for flowers.”
“My name is also a flower. It means beautiful orchid. I think it’s fated that we should meet—one flower to another. Come along, wildflower. We’ll get you a spoon, and you can finish your supper.”
“No, I’m going to master those sticks, Beautiful Orchid.” I pulled on my boots and brushed the twigs and dirt from my skirt. “No matter what. I’m not going to let you have the last laugh.”
“I have no doubt you will.” She threw a smile at me. “If you don’t starve first!”
Just then, one of the mules brayed and we heard someone shout. A few seconds later the clop of hooves echoed through the ravine as a horse galloped up the trail. Piggy came into view, his broken rope lead flying behind him, his eyes wide with terror. We dashed to the path, waving our arms until Piggy stopped short in front of us, his sides heaving and dripping with sweat. Ching Lan gathered up his lead.
“He didn’t just escape,” I said. “Something terrified him enough to break loose.” Round little Piggy was the calmest horse we had, usually content to fall asleep at the picket line, his eyes half closed, one leg cocked and tail swishing gently.
“Something at the camp? A tiger?” Ching Lan said.
We ran.
TWENTY-TWO
We had nearly made it back to the campsite when we heard male voices speaking in Chinese. I heard Alex answer them, his voice sounding desperate, pleading.
Ching Lan slowed her step, listening.
My heart began to thrum. “Bandits?” I whispered.
Ching Lan nodded.
We hid behind one of the large pines bordering our pitch and saw three men standing in a tight knot around Alex, one holding his arms behind his back. Another man searched Papa’s clothing as he lay, unmoving, on the ground, while another rifled through our packs near the mules. Ink, unsettled by the unfamiliar person near his hind legs, snorted and shied away.
Fear spiked through me. Where were our soldiers? Ching Lan and I exchanged looks of fear.
I reached in my pocket and felt my billhook and the sling next to it. I didn’t think I was good enough to hit someone, but perhaps I could do enough to scare them away. I gathered up a handful of stones, filling my pockets with them.
“Here,” Ching Lan whispered, holding out her cupped hands. “Give me some pebbles. I can climb the tree and throw rocks at them. Maybe they will leave us.”
The tree we’d sheltered behind looked perfect for climbing, with low branches and a strong fork high enough for her to perch. She filled her pockets with stones and began to climb. A sturdy limb stretched over the campsite, and I watched Ching Lan hold on to it with one hand and reach into her pocket for the first rock with the other.
The first rock landed clear of the men, and bounced into a pile of leaf litter.
I loaded my sling and let it fly. The stone hit poor Ink in the side. Already agitated, he brayed in protest and bucked. The man turned his head just as Ink’s hind legs kicked out, and I heard a loud clonk as one of his hooves struck the side of his face. The man dropped to the ground, a pool of blood blooming under his head. I flung another rock and hit one of the bandits square in the chest. He dropped to the ground, clutching his chest and crying out.
One of the thieves at the edge of the camp shouted to his comrades. He picked up a thick branch from our pile of firewood and stood over Papa, holding it over his head, and shouted.
“Stop firing rocks, Elodie,” Ching Lan said from her place in the tree. Her eyes were wide with fright. “They say they will kill your father if you don’t.”
Papa. Kill Papa.
Those words echoed round and round my head, and I don’t remember pulling my billhook from my pocket. I don’t remember how I moved across the camp. In a haze, in a blur I saw the other men’s astonished faces as I swept past them. I felt the breath leave my body as I threw myself on top of Papa’s attacker. I saw the branch whirl out of his hand and heard the womp his head made as it hit the ground.
I screamed into the man’s face, a savage, primitive shriek that came from the deepest part of me. I pressed the knife to his throat. The skin was so thin there that I could see the vein pulsing against the blade. My hands were steady and true on the handle. I was prepared to slice his neck to the bone if I had to. My hat had fallen back and dangled by its string, and the leather strap that held my hair back had broken, so my hair hung in a tangle to my shoulders. I must have looked a wild thing.
Alex shouted something at the men, and they ran. He grabbed the rifle and chased them down the path, screaming in Chinese. I removed my knife from the man’s throat and stood up. He threw his hands over his head, cowering, and fled, grabbing his wounded comrade by the arms and dragging him along with him into the forest.
I felt not one moment’s remorse. I knew I had it in me to defend Alex, my father, or anyone I loved. I could have taken someone’s life. I could have made that decision. And I would have lived with it.
THE SOLDIERS MYSTERIOUSLY RETURNED TO CAMP AFTER THE BANdits left, their faces innocent. The leader said they had heard a noise and gone off to investigate. Alex and Ching Lan screamed at them, but they didn’t seem to care. Papa vowed to tell the mandarin at the next village to report their negligence. But nothing was taken and no one was badly hurt, so the soldiers said Papa had no right to report them.
“I was nearly back to the camp when I saw the bandits hit your father,” Alex said. “Well done, you, with the rock sling. There’s no doubt now that you and Ching Lan can defend yourselves . . . and us.”
“It seems too much of a coincidence,” I said, thinking aloud, “that those bandits should strike when all three of us are away from camp as well as the soldiers.”
“Do you think this is the doing of the orchid thief? That he paid these men to terrorize your father?”
“I do,” I said.
We should have turned right around and taken Papa back to Pru’s. He wouldn’t hear of it, but he let me see to the bruise on his cheek. Afterward, he squeezed my fingers, a simple touch, but the first we’d shared in months.
The attack had left Papa anxious. He would not lie down on his cot that night. He sat by the fire, the rifle within reaching distance, feeding stick after stick of bamboo to the flames. Every time he heard a noise from the forest he stood and cocked the rifle, pointing it toward the noise. Between the bangs of the green bamboo exploding in the fire and Papa’s cocking the rifle, no one slept.
WE HAD BEEN RIDING FOR A WEEK WHEN THINGS STARTED TO GET worse. The mountain villagers were wary of us. The monks at the temples either didn’t want us to stay, refusing to come out when we appeared, or showed us to our sleeping area and left, moving as fast as they could, as though they were afraid. In the morning, they were nowhere to be found. It was the same situation at each temple or inn ahead of us. Even the mandarins watched us with fear and suspicion.
Our new soldiers the mandarin in the next village assigned us
were ridiculous. There was no other word for them. Their uniforms looked cobbled together as though they had thrown together fancy dress for a masquerade party five minutes before they left the house. Worse, they looked at us with contempt. The other soldiers had been armed, albeit with dubious-looking ancient matchlock rifles, more show than anything else, as none of them looked as though they could fire, but these soldiers each held a furled umbrella and made a great show of pretending to fire them, and then laughing. Papa complained to the mandarin in the village, but he was not like the kind official in Yen-Ping, and the man only pretended that he didn’t understand what Papa was telling him.
“He’s in Duffey’s employ,” Papa said to us. “I’m sure of it. He’s given us these soldiers to slow us down.”
Ching Lan took Alex and me aside. “Your father is telling you true, Elodie. No soldier would behave in such a way unless he’s had a reason to rise in the world and gain face. Something or someone has done that for him.”
This group of soldiers were to stay with us for four days. They couldn’t ride, or wouldn’t ride, and insisted on remaining on foot, which meant that we couldn’t move faster than a walk or else we’d leave the men behind. Papa grumbled that he’d be happy to do so. Each time we stopped, the men lit a fire to make their tea, and then one would either disappear into the forest, not reappearing for hours, or they would all lie down and take a nap. We made to leave them, but they seemed prepared for this and jumped up from their naps to block our path. The leader shouted, and the men behind us grabbed the bridles of our mules. Next to me, Papa’s eyes widened and I could hear his breathing grow rougher.
“It will be all right, Papa,” I said, my fingers clenching on Blossom’s reins. “They won’t hurt us.” But I wasn’t at all sure that was true. If only it weren’t so dangerous to travel at nighttime, we might have a better chance to leave the soldiers behind while they were sleeping. I was growing ever more anxious and fretful. In my mind I saw the bailiffs turning up at the house, this time with a Pantechnicon van drawn by two strong dray horses. My little sisters standing in a row watching as the men removed all of our goods and furniture from the house, leaving not so much as a rug to sit on. And where was Mamma in this scenario? Was she still lying abed or had she thrown off her melancholy along with Dr. Thumpston’s treatment? I wished I possessed some sort of magical looking glass where I could peer in and see them, talk to them, and know they were safe.
The Forbidden Orchid Page 25