by null
“Who are they? What in God’s teeth are they doing?” Ben asked.
“They are sau-hai—women without men.” Indie laughed, turning back, not wanting to miss a moment of the eerie spectacle.
“In the basket is one who has disgraced or insulted them in some way. If she has offended the code of sau-hai, they will drown her. She is no longer mui-mui, little sister, but hah-dung-gai—low-class whore. The priests have been brought to contain the demon until it is drowned. That is hell money they are burning, to appease the evil spirits who might interfere on her behalf.” Indie shook his head. “They are very unforgiving, these grim sisters. But I warn you, this is none of our business.” Ben watched in silence as the grotesque bundle was hauled down the muddy riverbank, almost under the swoop of Golden Sky’s stern.
No sound came from the pig basket, and he wondered if the victim was already dead. He frowned; he did not share his partner’s casual interest in the scene before them, nor could he approve of the excitement of his crew … but he knew better than to show his disapproval. Indie had spent his life in the China trade and taught Ben all he knew. His father, so he proudly claimed, was a Chinese pirate and his mother a Portuguese barmaid from Macao. The sailing master spoke a half-dozen dialects and was more China Seas than Mediterranean. “Confounded heathens … is there no law against this kind of thing?”
Ben knew the emptiness of his question before Indie could answer. “How much justice was there in the ducking stool and the drowning of witches in your own country and half of Europe, not that long ago? None, I think.” Indie Da Silva expertly rolled his cheroot from one side of his wide-jawed mouth to the other. “Many a twelve-year-old was set alight because some landlord’s prize bull couldn’t get it up or his cows ran dry … or just for the damned fun of it. Out here in the backwaters they are a little slow in changing such things. If there is no warlord to lay down laws, they are free to make their own. This puffed-up merchant, Ming-Chou, answers to no one but Lu-Hsing, the god of affluence. I don’t think such gods have a conscience.”
As they came closer to the water’s edge, the hissings and mutterings of the sau-hai sisters grew quieter, then stopped. In eerie silence, a large rock was fastened to one end of the bundle before it was rolled down the last stretch of riverbank, where it splashed into the shallows with a billowing of yellow mud. It bobbed grotesquely in the whirling current, to slowly sink in a welter of murky bubbles. As if he read his partner’s mind, Indie spoke, his tone becoming more urgent.
“Do not think of interfering in this, Ben. The crew will lose face if they see their captain stooping to help one of the mui-mui by defying a priest. They will see you as a fool. The ship cursed and themselves with it for serving such a madman.” He laughed easily, to make light of it. “Especially a known baby-eater such as Di-Fo-Lo, the mad gwai-lo of the mudflats. I know how you feel about injustice and cruelty, Ben, but it’s like spitting in the eye of one of their gods… . Best go below if it bothers you. We’re here to buy silk, not play god, remember?”
Indie’s voice took on a note of alarm as Ben stripped off his shirt and kicked off his boots, unsheathing the deck knife from his belt and jamming it between his teeth. “For pity’s sake—think, man! If you save the life of one condemned by the sau-hai, you pay for her sins as they see them. That life belongs to you and becomes your responsibility for eternity; your ancestors are her ancestors. If you discard her, you are cursed to perdition by the elders and forever hounded by her ghost. Is this what we want?”
Indie would never be sure if Ben heard him before he dived from the stern of Golden Sky. He entered the water cleanly, swimming down the slope of the bank, sheering steeply into green depths thick with dense beds of drifting weed. Following the mud trail left by the weighted basket bumping its way to the bottom, he saw the awful bulk of it rolling in the current, a chain of bubbles belching from inside.
The large stone roped to its bottom allowed it to rise and stand upright among clinging blades of leathery weed. His knife ripped away at the binding; the sodden casing came apart in his powerful hands. A howl of fury from the shore greeted him as he surfaced with the girl’s inert body in his arms, quickly joined by a babble of protest from the crew. Their nattering voices no longer controlled, the sau-hai sisters waded into the water to meet him as he lifted the unconscious figure from the river, falling upon him from all sides as he tried to rise and carry her clear of the shallows. Some clawed at him, while others tried to force him back, to drag the limp body from his arms and into the swiftly moving current. The women backed off only when Ben made wide sweeps with the knife, calling for Indie to bring help.
The ugly spectacle was over but the crew still jabbered angrily at the sight of their captain, legendary dock fighter Di-Fo-Lo, fending off a horde of hysterical women and a pack of skinny yellow dogs. Indie took the companionway in a stride or two, entering the water, cursing the thick yellow mud and his white doeskin breeches, herding the vicious gang of women back up the riverbank and into the mill compound with a string of ferocious threats of his own.
Ben laid the unconscious girl on the bank, pumped the river water from her lungs, and breathed life into her from his own powerful chest. His anger had been made the blacker when he found the body in the pig basket to be that of a child, her feet badly disfigured, her mud-caked body smothered with wheals and cuts, half choked from the sodden rag stuffed in her mouth.
“She’s still alive,” he said aloud as Indie waded over to help him. “She must have put up one hell of a fight.”
“It would have been easier if she hadn’t.” Indie sighed ruefully. “Better for you, better for me, and a damn sight better for her. Now we need to face old Ming and his hoodlums. The old man won’t be too happy about your blasted gallantry, and I don’t blame him.” Indie spat the soggy stub of his cheroot into the water.
“This is bad joss. Foreigners are not exactly popular at the moment, or haven’t you noticed? I mean it, Ben; this is no time for heroics. We may be a long way from Shanghai, but the warlords are already in Canton; we can’t hide under the double dragon forever.” He retrieved the bedraggled remains of his hat, then helped Ben lift and carry the unconscious girl up the gangway and aboard Golden Sky. From the window of her quarters, Ah-Jeh had watched the proceedings with mounting fury, calling down bitter curses upon the head of this interfering foreign devil and all his kind.
Although Ben was no stranger to haggling over the price of anything from a sack of rice to a Ming vase, he was amazed at how little he had to pay for the life of a human being. He guessed the girl to be in her early teens, and she cost him less than he would pay for a good pair of boots. Ming-Chou and his comprador showed little interest in the fate of the girl in the pig basket, being more concerned with the time that was lost in the weaving sheds. Since Ben had chosen to pull her out and to cause much annoyance and great loss of face among his people, the girl was his for the price asked plus additional costs for the trouble caused.
The sum was paid and the sung-tip and all her meager belongings handed to Captain Devereaux with a minimum of ceremony. He was told her name—“Lee Sheeah,” to his ear—and that she was thought to be thirteen years old. Now that she was his legal property, more dead than alive, reeking of river mud and swathed in weed, it was clear that Ming-Chou and his fat superintendent were anxious to be rid of her.
Beside him, Indie Da Silva tried to keep the impatience from his voice. “Well done, Ben; you are a hero, the owner of a half-dead Chinese chippie, probably riddled with disease. By the look of her, she may never walk normally again. Good for nothing but feeding silkworms and stealing the gold from your back teeth while you are sleeping”—he bowed with a sweep of his panama hat—“yours to do with what you will.”
The river was still with her as consciousness slowly returned to Li. Aware of movement, a lazy rise and fall to a gently creaking rhythm, she was afraid to open her eyes. Light had been cut off so suddenly, replaced by increasing darkness and cold in
a silent world of yellows and greens, columns of rising bubbles, that she had thought the muddy taste of river water would take her final breath—until the foreign devil suddenly appeared before her, a silver-hilted knife between his teeth.
Her eyes flickered open, afraid of what she would see. The searing pain of her feet told her she was alive, but the stink that had been so much a part of her was gone completely. Everything around her was pleasing to the eye and soothing to the heart: a large table covered with maps and papers, a spoke-backed swivel chair, a polished brass lamp, shelves full of books, and pictures of ships. Portholes opened to a warm salty breeze, throwing moving circles of sunlight onto richly colored wooden paneling and showing glimpses of pale blue sky.
She did not know who had bathed her and dressed her feet, only that she was clean and wearing clothes too big for her that smelled fresh as a breeze off the water. There was another fragrance in this strange room; neither incense nor opium, it hung in the air with a mysterious sweetness. She lay in a wonderfully soft bed so large it could hold six others, and her head rested as on thistledown. When her eyes closed, the phantoms of her ordeal returned to mock her, but they were distant and indistinct, her terror cushioned by a sense of comfort and well-being greater than she had ever known.
She knew she must have been taken from the river by the barbarian Ah-Jeh had called Di-Fo-Lo, but could not find fear among her scattered senses. She tried to raise herself but could not move, remembering nothing but the welcome certainty of death, the knife-edged shrieks of the sau-hai, and the bellowing of the gwai-lo captain as he waded to shore with her held fast by one strong arm, while wielding a blade in the other.
Although she still saw danger, the cloud she floated upon grew softer. This time the gentle voice of Pai-Ling did not come to her. It was as though she had finally embarked on the journey that had begun in the rice shed—an old life for a new. With her eyes still closed, she yielded to the surge and gurgle of a fast ship driving hard through a lively sea.
She woke with a start of alarm as a blunt finger was pressed gently against the pulse of her throat. The foreign devil himself was bending over her. All that she had heard of him and his kind welled within her, but was tempered by a face that said nothing of hate. He did not prod and poke her to guess her weight and value. She was reassured too by the broad, friendly features of a Chinese man leaning closely over his shoulder.
The barbarian’s face was serious but not at all menacing. His eyes were not the eyes of a monster; they were kinder and less questioning than she could have hoped for. The hair that curled on his head and chin looked cleaner and neater than she had expected, and did not seem to be alive with vermin as she had been told it would be. Neither was the smell of him as odious as she had been led to believe; he smelled of fresh salt air and something sweet—opium perhaps, of the finest quality. He lightly placed the back of his hand across her forehead. It seemed huge to her, and she shrank from its touch.
“Keep still; I will not hurt you.” He shifted his hand to her cheek, first one and then the other, then gently pulled down her lower eyelids and asked her to open her mouth and stick out her tongue. “You have no more fever. How do you feel?” She was stunned to hear his deep voice speaking confidently in her language. At first she could not answer, then whispered, “Ho, ho,” indicating she did not feel unwell, but, looking down at her bandaged feet, “gurk-tong … my feet hurt.” He nodded his understanding. “Your feet are badly injured but will soon be strong again.” The barbarian allowed a smile to light in his strange gray eyes.
“You are safe now, aboard my ship, Golden Sky. You have been here for three days and two nights. There is nothing for you to fear. You need only to eat something, then rest if you can. When you are well enough, you may come on deck to breathe some air.” He straightened to what seemed to Li an impossible height. Behind him, the small Chinese man stepped forward with a tray. “This is Wang, my steward; he will look after you until we arrive in Macao. Then we will get you well again and find you something to do. There is nothing to be afraid of; no one can hurt you now.”
He was quickly gone, and Wang set a tray of food beside the bed, chattering as he helped her to sit up. “Captain Devereaux is a good master, siu-jeh. You need have no fear of him. He does not eat babies like other gwai-los. He has paid and signed your sung-tip. You belong to him now… . You are very lucky.” He chuckled happily. “Very, very lucky, siu-jeh.”
The hot rice porridge was delicious, smooth as silk and spiced with hundred-year egg. A large mug of orange-colored tea was set on the tray in a special place to keep it from spilling. Wang giggled at her expression. “Gnow-lie-cha,” he said proudly. “Cow’s-milk tea. Master Ben only drinks gnow-lie-cha.” He was delighted to see her sip the hot, sweet tea and give a nod of approval. “I will play healing music for siu-jeh,” he said, taking a small bamboo flute from his pocket. It was the first time Li had been properly addressed as “little miss,” and it pleased her in the strangest way.
She allowed the gentle movement of the ship to rock her in its arms, and watched the circle of light sweeping the walls and ceiling until her eyes were closed in a peaceful slumber. With no idea of how many hours she had slept, Li was roused for the second time by the looming presence of the barbarian. He filled the doorway as he spoke.
“I think it is time you breathed some fresh air… . But first, we shall look again at your feet.”
He stepped aside to allow Wang to enter with a bowl of steaming water and a tray of bottles and bandages. She saw that he carried a pipe of polished wood between his teeth, from which sweet smoke whirled about him. It told her that this room was his, that the clothes she wore had known his skin and the bed she lay in was where he slept.
“Wang is the ship’s doctor as well as an excellent cook and a clever entertainer, as you have discovered. It was he who cleaned you up and tended your feet. He will change the dressings and attend to you. If you are well enough, I will bring you topside.”
A half hour later, her feet soaked and dressed with another herbal poultice, Li was lifted in the captain’s arms and carried up a set of brass-bound steps out onto the deck. The midmorning sun hung in a sky of duck-egg blue. Li had never seen the ocean except in her imagination, from the middle of the wooden bridge, when the tide was high and the river was at its widest. The open sea stretched away to the horizon on every side. The wind whipped a thousand white horses from ink-blue waves and filled the booming sails that flew above her like the wings of heaven.
The captain set her in a deck chair and Wang tucked a blanket warmly around her. Breezes sang in the rigging at her side, and a cloud of gulls wheeled and dived upon unseen schools of fish. As the wind drove Golden Sky through sheets of sparkling spray, the dark green mountains of southern China came steadily closer. Nestled at their feet, spread like a child’s plaything, was the Portuguese enclave of Macao.
Macao did not have the splendid temples and palaces of Hangchow or Peking, the bustle and commerce of Shanghai or Hong Kong, or the picturesque tranquility of the river ports. Macao was said to be like an exciting woman who, deserted by her lover, cast out by her family, and rejected by her friends, had turned thoroughly bad.
Its maze of cobbled streets and alleys were lined with opium dens, fan-tan and other gambling parlors, chop houses, and brothels that never closed. Its people were a mixture of Chinese, Portuguese, Macanese, Indian, a sprinkling of Arabs, and natives of the Cameroons. Among these, connected like the backbone of a snake, a murderous fraternity of renegade Europeans vied with the triad-protected Chinese taipans and their warlords for control of the gambling and vice dens.
There was a seductive beauty in the old Portuguese-styled houses lining the inner harbor, famously known as the Praia Grande—pastel pinks, blues, and yellows of the Mediterranean set against the curling gray tiles of Chinese rooftops. Taoist and Buddhist temples and joss houses stood side by side with the Dominican church, Catholic cathedral, and Christian monastery. Overlooki
ng the bay, the stately buildings of the East India Company dominated the boulevard leading to the governor’s palace and other grand villas and mansions of the city’s foreign embassies. On the promontory at the mouth of the Pearl and West rivers, overlooking the city and the outer bay, Ben Devereaux had built his mansion. As grand in every way as the ships he built, it dominated the headland with its size and splendor.
Golden Sky sailed into the bay and closed with the dock of the Double Dragon Shipyard and Trading Company. Strangely—but then everything now was strange to her—Li felt no great apprehension as she was carried down the gangway in Ben’s arms, the scent of him no longer strange but close and comforting. A young Chinese man in the smart pearl-gray uniform and cap of a driver stood beside a waiting motorcar, the first she had seen, as astonishing as everything would be to her from this moment on. When the driver was ordered to help her into a backseat, he did so instantly, leaning in to make her comfortable. His face remained blank, but the eyes that held hers for a fraction of a second showed resentment. They drove through busy streets, along the wide and crowded boulevard and up the winding coastal road to the promontory. There, great iron gates emblazoned with a pair of golden dragons opened before them, as stone lions glared down from either side.