She and Amber stood about stamping their feet while the wagon owner, whose name was Henry Turner, went off to harness up his horses, then, when he returned, watched as the men loaded the bags, and climbed into the wagon themselves.
‘I’m starving,’ Amber said.
Kitty was, too. ‘I’m sure Fu will feed us.’
Mr Turner flicked the reins and the wagon set off. Within a minute those sitting in the back, which was everyone except Rian and Hawk, perched beside Mr Turner on the high front seat, discovered that the wagon’s suspension was the same as that of the Cobb and Co’s ‘unique’ Concord, except that the side boards of the wagon were only a foot high.
‘For God’s sake,’ Kitty muttered, hanging on with a vice-like grip as she was tossed this way and that.
‘All right back there?’ Mr Turner called over his shoulder.
‘Good, eh,’ Haunui shouted as he slid off his bag and hit his head on the back of the driver’s seat.
The road out to the camp was atrocious, the short trip not aided by the fact that the wagon’s pair of carriage lamps illuminated barely more than ten feet ahead, snow swirling down through the weak beams of yellow light. The horses, however, were steadfast, plodding onwards and never losing their footing on the rough and slippery surface.
‘You have a good team there,’ Hawk remarked.
‘Haven’t let me down yet,’ Mr Turner replied, shrugging deeper into his sheepskin coat. ‘Camp should be coming up in a minute.’
And so it did, a cluster of low buildings shrouded in white divided by a rough street. Henry Turner brought the wagon to a halt.
‘Will you wait?’ Rian asked him. ‘I want to make sure our friend’s here before you leave.’
Mr Turner nodded and dug a pipe and a silver match safe out of his pocket.
‘Stay here,’ Rian said to everyone else.
Sore, and with a hideous earache from the cold, and profoundly grumpy, Kitty thought angrily, Don’t you order me around as though I’m a lackey, but in truth she was frozen almost stiff and wasn’t sure she could move anyway.
Rian disappeared into the snow-dusted camp, reappearing again ten minutes later. ‘He’s here. Down you hop.’
With much grunting and groaning everyone disembarked, farewelled Henry Turner after arranging with him to pick them up the following day, and walked into the little village. Wong Fu appeared halfway down the empty street, a slight yet surprisingly tall figure wrapped in a heavy coat, the snow whipping around him and lending him the insubstantial appearance of a ghost. Quickly he beckoned them in through the doorway of a small house. They followed, all grateful to at last be out of the snow and wind.
Inside, the room was lit by several lamps, and a hearty fire burned in a brick hearth flanked by a pair of wooden chairs. But Kitty ignored the fire, too shocked by the sight of Fu, who was wiping melted snow from his shaved forehead with a cloth and wringing out his long queue.
He looked sick and as though he’d aged twenty-five years since their last meeting, not nine. She believed he was somewhere in his forties now, younger than Rian anyway, but he could easily pass for sixty. She shot a look at Rian, who raised a concerned eyebrow back, then she stepped forwards and embraced Fu tightly.
‘You poor man. We’ve been so worried since we got your letter. Have you heard anything about Bao?’
‘I have heard nothing,’ Fu said bleakly. ‘Thank you so much for coming here, all of you. Amber, my child, you have grown so, just like my Bao.’
He looked, then, as though he might burst into tears, so Kitty indicated the fire and said, ‘Why don’t you sit down and warm your feet? They must be like blocks of ice.’
All Fu wore on his feet was a pair of embroidered slippers, now soaking wet. He took a single step towards the fire, then stopped. ‘Forgive me, please. You must think me very rude. Did you eat at Lawrence? Can I offer you refreshment? You will of course stay at our village tonight.’
‘Er . . .’ Rian began.
‘It is no trouble and we have plenty of food. Excuse me while I make the arrangements.’ Fu opened the door and shuffled out into the cold.
‘What’s happened to him?’ Haunui asked, clearly horrified.
‘He looks so old,’ Amber said. ‘He must be so upset about Bao.’
Rian said slowly, ‘I suspect he might actually be ill.’
They all stared at one another: this was news no one had expected.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Kitty said.
‘He’ll tell us if he wants us to know.’
Fu returned. ‘A meal will be ready in half an hour. We shall dine in my house tonight, rather than in the eating hall. In the meantime, shall we talk?’ He indicated a table on one side of the room.
They seated themselves, grumbling about thawing feet and hands, while Fu fussed about moving a kerosene lamp onto the table and setting out tumblers and a bottle of brandy.
Then he sat down himself. ‘I will start the story at the most appropriate place, which is, of course, at the beginning.
‘You know that after what happened at Ballarat I sent Bao to stay with my brother, Kai. She remained with him in Melbourne and then Sydney for three years, then returned to me when she was seventeen, much recovered. I could have sent her home to Kwangtung Province, but there is a reason I did not, which I shall come to later. I believe she suffered a deep sickness of the spirit after the incident at Ballarat, exacerbated by the enmity we suffered at the hands of the white miners at Sovereign Hill.’ Fu sighed. ‘I also believe she experienced some guilt after the deaths of Tuttle and Searle.’
‘Why?’ Rian asked. ‘She wasn’t responsible for that.’
‘No, you are right,’ Fu said shortly. ‘But as I say, she was much recovered when she returned to me. My brother is an ambitious, sometimes cruel and often ruthless man, but he does care for Bao. Whatever he did for her was to her benefit. We stayed on at Ballarat until last year, when we were alerted to an invitation in a Melbourne newspaper inviting Chinese nationals to come to Otago. We were wary about this, as we did not want to find the same unpleasant situation awaiting us in Otago that we were experiencing in Victoria, so we asked for certain conditions to be met. We received a written guarantee, the invitation was issued again, and we came. Our job, we discovered on arrival, was to pick over old diggings, as we did in Victoria, and we have been successful. The white miners have moved on from the Tuapeka to diggings farther up in the high country, believing that the gold here has been depleted, but we are still finding plenty.’
‘And is the situation here as unpleasant as it was in Victoria?’ Rian asked, pouring himself a second brandy.
‘So far, less so, although the Lawrence Town Council did pass a bylaw prohibiting us from living and doing business in the town, though a handful of us do have businesses there. They gave us this block of swampy land beside the creek to live on instead. In the winter it freezes to icy mud and in the summer it seethes with mosquitoes.’ Fu sighed again, but whether it was from frustration, sadness or fatigue it was hard to know. ‘But to return to the story of Bao, early in January I received a letter from Kai asking me to send Bao to him in Sydney for a holiday. She did not want to go, so I wrote back to him at the end of that month and told him of her decision. I heard nothing back from him. One day four weeks later, while we were all out at the diggings, she went down to the creek, which is not far from here, to launder clothes, and did not come back. We searched and searched, and went into the town to ask if she had been seen there, and sought the assistance of our Chinese constable-interpreter, and placed advertisements in the newspapers and offered rewards, but could not find her. I, of course, feared the worst. She has grown into a very beautiful and gracious young woman. I thought she had been assaulted and killed, and her body hidden.’ He fell silent, rubbing at a spot of spilled brandy on the table top. ‘I cursed myself for bringing her here.’
Kitty knew Bao hadn’t been assaulted and killed, but she felt his pain all the same. She l
aid a hand over his. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself. You’re not responsible for what other people choose to do.’
‘I am responsible for my daughter’s welfare and safety, and I have failed her. Twice.’
‘Don’t torture yourself, man,’ Rian said gruffly. ‘How did you find out who took her?’
‘Late in March I received a letter informing me that she had been kidnapped by Kai’s men, taken briefly to Sydney, then spirited away somewhere to participate in a marriage arranged by Kai. I am assuming to China, but China is a very big place.’
‘Who wrote this letter?’ Pierre asked. ‘And it came from where?’
‘Sydney, I expect, and it was not signed. Perhaps it was penned by an enemy of Kai’s, hoping to cause trouble between us.’
Rian’s eyebrows went up.
‘How do you know the letter is not a hoax?’ Hawk asked.
‘Whoever wrote it must have seen Bao at some point. He, or she, describes the earrings Bao was wearing when she disappeared. Pearl and jade drops. I gave them to her when she turned nineteen.’
‘Perhaps they were concerned for Bao, and wanted to tell you what had happened to her,’ Simon said. ‘Not everyone’s out to cause mischief.’
‘That is true,’ Fu agreed.
‘But why would Kai do such a thing?’ Amber blurted. ‘What a . . . pig. He’s her uncle. He’s supposed to look out for her, not kidnap her and marry her off just to settle some business deal.’
‘I’m afraid, love, he can do what he likes,’ Rian said. Turning to Fu, he asked, ‘Can’t he? Is he still the headman of your tong?’
At that moment the door opened, letting in a blast of cold air, and three men entered carrying trays of food, setting them on the table along with bowls and chopsticks. Presented were pork and fresh vegetables, duck with cress, some sort of preserved shellfish with pickled vegetables, and plain rice, and Kitty’s stomach growled.
Fu waited until the men had gone, urged everyone to help themselves, placed a small piece of duck in his own bowl, and sat gazing down at it.
Finally, he said, ‘Kai is not the master of my family’s tong. He never was.’
Kitty stared at him, and so did everyone else. She was sure he’d told them that Kai was head of the Wong family association. Apparently it was usually someone of considerable social standing and wealth, and Wong Kai was certainly that. He’d controlled his own little empire in Melbourne, and no doubt was doing exactly the same in Sydney, probably on an even grander scale.
‘Then who the hell is?’ Rian asked.
‘In our family the master is known as the Cloud Leopard,’ Fu replied. ‘And that is me. I am the Cloud Leopard.’
Astonished, Kitty put down her chopsticks. She glanced at Rian, who looked equally startled. Fu, the headman of his family’s tong? But he was so gentle, and gracious, and, well, unassuming. On the other hand, they both knew he’d been responsible for Josiah Searle and Albert Tuttle burning to death after they’d abducted Amber and Bao at Ballarat, so he wasn’t quite as benign as he seemed. And there was the fact that he led his men with such easy authority and they, in turn, seemed to have followed him without hesitation.
‘No offence intended, Fu,’ Rian said, ‘but I understood that the master is traditionally a man of wealth.’
‘Our association has wealth,’ Fu replied. ‘We have gold. But we send as much home to our families as we can.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘And that is part of the problem. Please, eat before the food grows cold.’
While they struggled with their chopsticks, Fu picked at his piece of duck and talked on.
‘Kai has always been bitter because our father, Chi-Ping, passed the office of Cloud Leopard to me rather than him. Chi-Ping has never really trusted Kai, believing he has a propensity for corruption that is not in the best interests of the family.’
Well, that’s certainly true, Kitty thought, chasing a piece of pork around her bowl with a chopstick.
‘Where is your father these days?’ Rian asked.
‘My grandfather, Kwok-Po, died in Ballarat several years ago, and my father accompanied his remains home to Kwangtung Province and has not returned. Over the past few years Kai has been agitating for change in the family, believing he should assume the role of master. He considers me too parsimonious and says I should pay our men here and in Ballarat more and send less gold back to the family in China. He also believes I should purchase land here and in New South Wales and Victoria. But we do not belong here. We are not wanted and we will not be staying. Once the gold has been mined we will return home.’ Fu pushed his bowl away. ‘Unfortunately, some of my men have been tempted by Kai’s exhortations for higher pay and, I suspect, are no longer loyal to me.’
‘But what’s this got to do with Bao?’ Kitty asked.
‘You’ll hand over the reins if he returns her,’ Rian said. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
Fu shook his head. ‘No, it is more complicated than that. I am unwell. In fact, I am dying. And when I do, Bao will become the next Cloud Leopard.’
Kitty was speechless, at both Fu’s bad news and his revelation about Bao. Eventually she managed to say, ‘Oh, Fu, I’m so sorry. Are you sure? Have you seen a doctor?’
‘I have not consulted a European doctor, but I do not need to. I have a cancer of the stomach. I have been taking Chinese medicines and treatments but they are no longer effective.’
‘It wouldn’t do any harm to see a European doctor, surely?’ Rian asked.
‘It would not cause harm, but it would be a waste of time. What could a white man’s doctor do for me that a Chinese doctor cannot?’
‘Very little,’ Hawk agreed, who wasn’t keen on European medical practitioners himself.
‘But . . . Bao?’ Amber said. ‘A tong master? How can she be the next Cloud Leopard?’
‘I don’t understand either,’ Kitty said. ‘Has Kai always known she’s next in line after you?’
Fu said, ‘Yes. She was chosen when she was born and named accordingly. Her full name is Wong Bao Wan, Bao Wan meaning Cloud Leopard.’
‘Yet you said he looked after her very well when she went to live with him.’ Kitty frowned. ‘Why would he do that if he knew he’d be overlooked again in favour of her? You’d think, with Kai being the way he is, he’d do his best to stop her becoming the next master.’
Fu said, ‘Kai has always been fond of Bao, and I believe he would not deliberately hurt her.’ He shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘I expect that nine years ago, when she went to stay with him, he assumed that he would have deposed me by now. But of course he could not tell Bao that, so was compelled to school her in the arts in which a master must be proficient. He was always in a better position to offer her such knowledge.’ Fu hung his head. ‘I have been remiss. I am afraid I have dedicated too much of my own time and energy to searching for gold to attend to the needs and education of my own daughter.’
Amber said, ‘What arts?’
‘A high level of pecuniary acumen to manage the family’s finances, although Bao has always been very clever with numbers and is a fine scribe and linguist. She speaks Cantonese and English, of course, some of my countrymen’s other dialects and now also quite passable Hindi, Bangla and French. She has also been schooled in politics at the family, village and provincial levels, and also the martial arts, at which every master must be adept.’
‘You mean fighting?’ Kitty was astounded. She’d seen exhibitions in Macau and in Shanghai, both bare-handed and involving weapons, and could not imagine Bao having anything remotely to do with either.
‘Yes,’ Fu said. ‘I myself was considered an expert with the staff in my younger days.’
They all stared at him, a skinny, pale, extremely ill-looking man who could barely wield his chopsticks, never mind a fighting staff.
Fu went on. ‘And Kai will prevent Bao from becoming the next Cloud Leopard if he marries her off. When I die the wealth of the family, currently held in my name as master, will convert to Bao’
s name for her to safeguard and manage. Providing, that is, that she does not marry, and she both understands and has agreed to this. Should she marry another tong master, however, our family’s wealth will automatically be transferred to him and she will lose her status as head of our family, although you can be sure that Kai will have arranged with this man that he himself retain a significant proportion of our family’s assets. My wife and I have no other children, so the office of Cloud Leopard will finally become Kai’s, and Bao will be left with nothing at all.’
Sitting silently now, Fu closed his papery eyelids. He was so thin that the flickering lamplight rendered his face a death’s head.
‘Are you sure of all this?’ Rian asked.
Wearily, Fu opened his eyes again. ‘Not entirely, but I do know my brother. And his ambitions.’ Then he said, ‘Family is at the heart of everything in Chinese life, but I am dying, I am too weak to travel and I do not know how much time I have. I no longer care much about digging for gold, or wealth, or even my responsibilities as a master. My foremost priority now is my daughter. I want her back.’ He paused, then, gripping his hands together so tightly that his knuckles showed white through the skin, he said, ‘Rian, I am asking you to find her.’
‘Of course we will,’ Amber said immediately. ‘Pa? Won’t we?’
Kitty crossed her fingers. Rian glanced at his men. Hawk, his right-hand man, stared back, the tiniest lift of an eyebrow indicating his approval.
Pierre, garrulous as usual, exclaimed, ‘Oui, of course we do it!’ He grabbed his chopsticks, dug them into a bowl of rice and theatrically flicked a scattering of grains into the air. ‘We sail to China, rescue the mademoiselle and be back before the dinner it gets cold!’
Rolling his eyes, Rian looked at Simon.
Simon gave a nod. ‘I think we should.’
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