The Cloud Leopard's Daughter

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘I’ve asked Pierre to do a reading for Amber and Bao. You know, with his bits and pieces.’

  Mick crossed himself.

  Rian eyed her, chewing slowly. He swallowed and took a sip of ale. ‘You know what I think of all that.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’m not having any snakes on this ship.’ Rian turned to Pierre. ‘You’ve not brought any aboard, have you?’

  Pierre shook his head so violently his plait flicked from side to side. ‘With the cats? I think not!’

  ‘Hmmph.’

  And that was all Rian said.

  Mick muttered, ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God.’

  ‘You don’t have to watch,’ Haunui said. ‘You big lily-liver.’

  ‘Don’t you call me lily-livered! I’m not scared of a few stones and tatty old bones, so I’m not!’

  ‘Good. You can sit right next to Pierre then, eh?’

  ‘I bloody well will!’

  ‘Settle down,’ Rian warned.

  Pierre stuffed a last forkful of pork into his mouth and rose. ‘The table can someone else clear her, please. And the dishwashing. I must prepare.’ And off he went to his cabin.

  An hour later they were ready, sitting around a freshly scrubbed mess table. The overhead lanterns were all lit and another sat on the table itself. From a velvet bag Pierre took out a carved marble rooster, a string of multi-coloured beads, a small statue of a monkey, a dried chicken’s foot (which Kitty was sure she could smell) and a handful of dark red polished stones. After arranging these items very carefully in a large square, he placed a crude doll dressed in a silk robe and with a long black plait hanging from its head in the top left corner.

  ‘This be Bao’s reading,’ he said.

  He took a second small velvet bag, loosened the ties and blew a long, steady breath inside it, shook the contents energetically so that they rattled, then tipped them onto the table, exactly in the middle of the square. Out came a cascade of dry, brown bones from a human hand.

  Once again Mick crossed himself.

  ‘Hmm,’ Pierre said as he studied the pile.

  ‘What do they say?’ Kitty asked.

  Pierre held up a finger to silence her. Then, he moved the Bao doll from the top left corner to the bottom right, squinted with one eye, and said, ‘Ah.’

  ‘What?’ Kitty demanded.

  ‘She be near, and she be joining us soon.’

  Rian frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I say.’

  ‘Do you mean she’ll escape from Yip, or we’ll rescue her?’

  ‘Dunno. The bones just say she be with us soon. They not be a book, you know.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’ Simon declared, grinning. The most formally religious of them all, strangely he had no trouble accepting the rituals and predictive powers of Pierre’s gris-gris.

  ‘Do Amber now,’ Kitty said, desperate for news. ‘Please.’

  Pierre carefully set the Bao doll aside, collected the bones and dropped them back into their bag. Producing another little doll, this one wearing tiny cloth trousers and a shirt and with long, very realistic hair, he placed it inside the square.

  ‘That hair looks just like Amber’s,’ Tahi said, astonished. ‘How did you do that?’

  Which is exactly what Kitty was thinking. The doll didn’t particularly look like Amber but the hair rendered it . . . macabre.

  ‘I pick it out of her hairbrush,’ Pierre said. ‘It make the divination work better.’

  Tahi reached out towards the doll, then snatched his hand back. ‘Can I have it, Pierre? The doll? When you’ve finished?’

  Mick gave a great, theatrical shudder. ‘Holy Jesus, are you sure, there? I wouldn’t be touching it with a barge pole.’

  ‘Non, I pull it apart after this. It be . . .’ Pierre screwed up his face as he sought the right word. ‘Tainted.’

  ‘The hair, then?’ Tahi asked, sounding close to desperation. ‘Can I just have the hair?’

  Feeling near tears herself, Kitty patted his hand. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll find her. We will, really.’

  Pierre blew into the bag of bones again, gave them a vigorous shake, and decanted them into the centre of the square. Squinting, he studied them for a long moment, leant to the left, then the right.

  ‘What?’ Kitty almost shrieked. ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Hush, ma chérie. I am looking.’

  Pierre placed the Amber doll in the bottom right corner of the square, removed a small bone from the middle of the pile, nodded once and sat back. ‘Oui, Pierre thinks he understands.’

  ‘Well?’ Rian prompted sharply.

  ‘The lwa show me the Dragon. He hate the British.’ Pierre cocked an eyebrow. ‘Ha. Who do not?’

  ‘What the hell is a lwa?’ Mick muttered.

  ‘Keep quiet,’ Rian snapped. ‘What else?’

  ‘The Dragon use Amber so the British swallow all the opium in China.’

  A short, confused silence. Then, from Simon: ‘Surely that can’t be meant literally?’

  ‘You got all that from a pile of old bones and a dried up chicken’s foot?’ Israel scoffed.

  Pierre gave him a dirty look. ‘Pierre’s bones and beads and little precious things, they are symbols, and only the voodoo priest – that be moi – knows their secrets. This be a riddle. The lwa like the riddle.’

  ‘The lwa are voodoo spirits,’ Hawk explained to Mick.

  ‘But you could have just made that up,’ Israel insisted.

  Pierre sat back and crossed his arms. ‘Oui, but why? Tell me that.’

  ‘Ae, why would he make it up?’ Haunui demanded, fixing Israel with a very hard look.

  Kitty watched Israel gazing back at Haunui, and wondered what had got into him. Whatever it was seemed suddenly to have captured his tongue because he remained silent.

  Haunui set his beefy forearms on the table and leant forwards, the lantern light picking out the moko on his face. ‘Come on, boy, explain yourself. Why would he make it up?’

  ‘I . . .’ Israel swallowed. ‘That’s not what I really meant to say.’

  ‘Well, what did you mean?’ Rian asked.

  ‘I meant that maybe he just read the signs wrong.’ Israel waved a hand towards the bones. ‘It seemed a funny thing to say. You know, the British eating all the opium in China.’

  ‘I just pass on the message,’ Pierre remarked.

  Kitty glanced around the table and saw that no one else believed Israel, either.

  ‘And Pierre, I mean the bones,’ Israel went on, ‘well, they didn’t tell us anything about Amber, did they?’

  ‘Was there nothing else?’ Tahi asked Pierre.

  ‘Oui, there was but someone they butted in while I was doing the telling.’

  Everyone was suddenly alert again, staring at Pierre expectantly.

  ‘I think on the Dragon’s junk. The bones they say a ship.’

  Kitty’s sense of disappointment was so overwhelming she could taste it.

  ‘We already know that,’ Hawk said.

  ‘But where?’ Tahi persisted. ‘Where is she?’

  Pierre just shook his head, looking as distressed as Tahi obviously felt.

  ‘And was that all?’ Kitty asked. ‘Will we get her back? You saw we’d get Bao back.’

  ‘Oh, oui, Amber, she come back.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say that at the start?’ Rian barked. ‘For God’s sake, Pierre!’

  ‘But somebody die.’

  ‘Who?’

  Pierre said, ‘The lwa they don’t see that bit.’

  But they all knew he was lying.

  *

  Tahi went up on deck for some fresh air, not really aware he was being followed until Israel joined him as he leant on the gunwale and stared down into the murky waters of the harbour, moonlight picking out the clumps of rubbish bobbing against the ship’s hull and the warm air intensifying the stink of sewage, seaweed and rotting fish.

  ‘That w
as a bit unkind, what you said to Pierre,’ he remarked.

  Israel rubbed his face wearily. ‘I know. I wish I hadn’t now.’

  ‘Well, why did you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose . . . I just don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo.’

  ‘It isn’t mumbo jumbo. It’s a . . . craft.’

  ‘Pretty strange one.’

  ‘Well, he’s usually right with his predictions. I suppose you don’t believe in my visions, either.’

  Israel shrugged and said nothing. A dead and bloated dog – possibly – floated slowly past in the water below.

  Eventually Israel said, ‘Look, I’m sorry.’

  Tahi eyed him. Israel looked as bad as he felt – as though he hadn’t slept for a month. ‘What for?’ He knew, though. He knew very well.

  ‘For being an arsehole. For blaming you when Amber got taken at Cebu, and for suggesting we forget about Bao, and for . . . for generally just being an idiot. You don’t need that, you need a mate.’

  Tahi grunted, not willing to let Israel off the hook quite so easily. ‘It hasn’t helped.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I honestly am sorry.’

  Staring down at the water again, Tahi let a minute tick by before he asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why are you so angry?’

  ‘Well, isn’t it obvious?’ Israel sounded perplexed. ‘First that bastard Lo Fang snatches her, then some bloody pirate! ’Course I’m angry! We all are, aren’t we?’

  Tahi turned to face him. It was about time he said this outright. ‘Amber, you mean? My wife? My wife, not yours.’

  Israel’s head jerked back, just a fraction, but it was there – Tahi thought he might as well have slapped him.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Israel looked horrified. ‘Of course she’s your wife. But we’re mates, aren’t we, the three of us? I’m just worried. I’m worried sick. I’m worried for her and for you. Jesus, Tahi, look what it’s doing to you. You look like a man on his way to the gallows.’

  Relenting slightly, Tahi said, ‘So do you.’

  Israel ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up like a cockatoo’s. ‘Well, I bet none of us are getting much sleep.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. That I’m sorry for being such an arsehole. You’re my best mate and, well, whatever I can do to help, I will.’ He stuck out a hand. ‘Friends?’

  Tahi looked at it for a second, remembering the quote ‘Know thine enemy.’ Was that from the Bible or somewhere else? And was Israel really his enemy? Then he shook. ‘Friends.’

  *

  Lai Wing Yan paused at the door of her apartment, opened her parasol and arranged it low over her head to keep the autumn sun off her face. She was off to the Central Marketplace to do some shopping and wore good town clothes, a long skirt of embroidered duck egg blue silk with a matching high-collared short robe, silk shoes with six-inch wooden soles, and carried two embroidered cloth purses, one for money and one for her fan. Her hair was arranged into a large, smooth knot at the back of her head and her face was heavily made up with white powder, rouge and brow pencil and lip stain, as was customary when a woman of standing went out in public.

  As she headed off across the courtyard with her servant, Ka, hurrying along behind her, she encountered Tan, taking the morning air.

  ‘Good morning, Wing.’

  Wing bowed a greeting, but didn’t stop to talk.

  ‘Off into town?’

  ‘We are going shopping,’ Ka said.

  ‘More silk for costumes, I expect,’ Tan replied acidly. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’

  Ka exchanged a long-suffering glance with Tan’s servant and hurried on after Wing.

  At the front gate Tsang Ho Fai sat on a stool, peeling a piece of fruit. The gate was always guarded, as though Yip Chun Kit were frightened of being attacked, which was not out of the question given his unsavoury business practices, or perhaps that his women or servants might abscond.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked as Wing and Ka approached.

  ‘The Central Marketplace to do some shopping,’ Ka replied.

  ‘I was not talking to you. I was asking Princess Pretty Feet here.’

  Wing altered her stance so that the hem of her skirt fell over her shoes, and lowered her parasol even further. ‘Shopping, as Ka said.’

  ‘Hmph. As if you do not already have enough fripperies.’

  Wing ignored him.

  Groaning as if it were the most almighty effort, Ho got to his feet and unlocked the gate. ‘Am I calling the chairs?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wing replied as she stepped out onto the street.

  Ho shouted to a houseboy, who ran off to alert the bearers. In no time at all two sedan chairs and four liveried bearers appeared. Wing settled herself into a chair and gripped the arms as the bearers lifted it and balanced the poles on their shoulders. She looked behind to make sure Ka was ready in the second chair, gave Ho a little wave, commanded, ‘Central Marketplace,’ and off they went.

  The trip seemed, to Wing, to take forever, travelling as they were at a snail’s pace, but they finally arrived at the marketplace, which had been busy and crowded with shoppers since just after dawn. The bearers parked their sedan chairs outside the market and went off in search of food – which the market had in abundance – while Wing and Ka made their way towards the rendezvous point.

  She was there, waiting for them, the real Wing. Bao breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  ‘Did you have any trouble getting away?’ Wing asked.

  ‘No, everything went smoothly, even when I had to speak in your voice,’ Bao replied. ‘Although I do not know how you can wear this powder on your face all the time. It feels disgusting.’

  She’d spent several hours that morning with paints and powders disguising her face to look like Wing’s, and using ash from burned incense to recontour the shape of her nose. Even her hands had had to be whitened to match Wing’s delicate pale skin. If that girl had done half a day’s manual work in her life, Bao would be astounded. She had also borrowed a costume of Wing’s, very similar to the one Wing was wearing now. And Wing’s shoes! They were far too small and killing her! Wing never wore flat shoes, so Bao hadn’t been able to today, either.

  ‘Only barbarian women go about with a naked face,’ Wing said sniffily.

  ‘You do, in Yip’s house.’

  ‘In public, I mean.’

  Bao bent down and prised off the murderous shoes. ‘You can keep these, too. They were so tight I would not be surprised if my toes fell off.’

  Examining one, Wing said, ‘Look, you have burst the stitching. This is my second best pair!’

  ‘Sorry. I will have to pay you back one day. And for the costume.’

  ‘I do not want paying back,’ Wing said. ‘I just want you gone.’

  ‘And I am very happy to oblige. You are sure no one saw you leave the house this morning?’

  ‘I am positive. I crept out before dawn when there was no one on the gate and I hired a sedan chair. I did not use ours. You disposed of the powder and rouge you did not use?’

  Bao patted her purse. ‘It is in here. I will take it back to the ship with me. And I cleaned up after myself very well.’

  The plan was for Wing to return to the compound with Ka. With luck, Bao’s means of escape would remain a mystery.

  ‘Thank you for your help, Wing. And you too, Ka.’

  Ka smiled nervously, but Wing just nodded.

  ‘And if something does go wrong when you get back—’

  ‘I will blame it all on you,’ Wing said.

  ‘I am sure you will. But if you need help, and you can get away, come down to Pedder’s Wharf. My friends’ ship is called the Katipo. You will be safe with us. Both of you.’

  Wing gave her a disconcerted look. ‘But you do not like me. Why would you help me?’

  ‘Because I can.’

  Bao made her way out of the marketplace and headed for the waterfront. She was hu
ngry but too impatient to reach the Katipo to stop and buy something to eat. What if, for some reason, they’d gone? What if they’d believed Chun when he’d told them she wasn’t at his house? She had other choices – she could work her passage back to New Zealand on another ship – but even just the thought of the Katipo having departed left a bitter tang of disappointment in her mouth.

  She most certainly could not stay in Hong Kong, not while her father was so ill in Dunedin. She must get back there to be with him in what were likely to be his final days. She would never forgive herself if he died there alone, in a country that had never welcomed him and in which his bones could never rest in peace. And she would not return to her village in Kwangtung Province without him, either.

  Her mother had passed some years earlier and she was the only child her father had chosen to take to the goldfields with him. Possibly because she was the next in line to be Cloud Leopard, but also, she liked to think, because he loved her so much. He had taught her everything, to read and to write in Cantonese, and the Mandarin language of governemt, as well as English, to calculate, and to read the heavens – not the traditional arts of the Chinese scholar, but skills that would help her build a comfortable and honourable life for herself.

  And, of course, there had been Kai. He had taught her the martial arts so that she might keep herself safe, and she’d proved a very capable pupil. On one hand she found Kai’s contribution to her education ironic, given that he had no intention of allowing her to become Cloud Leopard, a role he so passionately coveted for himself, but on the other she understood his reasoning because she knew he cared for her wellbeing. Of course he was in the main working in his own interests, and to fulfil his most cherished ambition, but he genuinely believed he was doing a good thing, sending her off to marry a man like Yip Chun Kit. Chun was rich, he would provide for her and give her children, and she’d never have to worry about anything.

  But it wasn’t what she wanted, and it wasn’t what her father wanted, either.

  Bao glanced down at her feet: they were filthy now and looked incongruous sticking out from beneath the hem of her silk skirt. She was dying to wash her face. She looked around. Where was she? She didn’t know Hong Kong very well at all. She couldn’t see the sea but she could smell it and see and hear gulls.