by Y. S. Lee
Shock and disbelief passed slowly into anger. “You went to sea in 1848 or 1849. On an important mission. You left your pregnant wife and your daughter. And a box of documents in the care of a Mr. Chen, to be opened in the event you did not return.” Her voice was shaking now, but still he refused to turn. To look at her. His only child. “Do you deny this, Lang Jin Hai?”
An excruciating pause. Then, so softly she scarcely heard the syllable: “Yes.”
“You deny it?”
Silence.
“You unspeakable coward,” said Mary, her voice low and trembling. “Have you anything more to lose by telling the truth?”
The man on the bed remained still and mute. Outside the cell, Mary heard the ravens screaming. Perhaps they were being fed.
Time passed. Her anger did not abate, but it was cold and corrosive rather than hot and fierce. She didn’t want a reconciliation — not with this lying shell of a man. But she did want answers. “Very well,” she said at last, after a full five minutes’ silence. “You don’t want to answer questions. But I can compel you to do so.” She reached into her handbag, fingers closing round the slim, stoppered vial. The guard hadn’t seemed to notice it when he peered into her reticule. Even if he had, a small amount of laudanum required no explanation; half the ladies in London seemed to rely upon its restorative effects. Deliberately, she let the glass clink softly against a flagstone.
The effect on Lang was instantaneous, transformative. He rolled to face her with a swiftness that surprised even Mary, his expression intent, alert — if not quite alive. “Give me that.”
She whisked it out of range but let it dangle enticingly. “Answer my questions.”
“I need it, you devil! I need it!” His voice crescendoed to a shriek, and Mary suddenly questioned her wisdom in forcing his hand like this.
But it was much too late to turn back. “Quiet,” she said with authority. “If you scream, the guard will come back, and you certainly won’t get any laudanum then.”
He subsided then, but his eyes remained fixed on the bottle. “Please . . .”
Mary’s mouth twisted. “Are you that Lang Jin Hai?”
“Yes, yes.” But he was too eager now. He would agree to anything she asked, just for a taste of laudanum.
“Prove it. What else was in that box of documents you left before your last voyage?”
His frantic gaze wandered to her face. Returned to the bottle. Came back to her, as he tried to marshal a modicum of self-discipline. “So long ago . . .”
Mary waited, poised for flight, for combat, for any surprise she could imagine.
He swallowed hard. “A map.”
“What else?”
“A letter to my daughter.”
These were too generic, things anybody might guess. “Anything else?”
“A — a pendant.”
Her knees buckled, despite — she told herself — her lack of surprise. “What did it look like?”
“Jade. A gourd.”
She frowned. “A what?” She’d always thought it a pear or a stylized figure eight.
He made an impatient gesture. “Why does it matter? A bottle gourd. Very symbolic. A vegetable.”
She’d never heard of such a thing, but she was cut off from her Chinese heritage. Why mightn’t the small, seed-shaped object be a gourd? “Very well.” She measured out a dropperful of laudanum and passed it to Lang’s eager, shaking hands.
He downed it greedily — the first thing in days to willingly cross his lips — and immediately said, “More.”
She gave him a second dropperful.
“More.” This was strong stuff, the most highly concentrated tincture of opium she could procure from an apothecary, yet it seemed he could swallow the entire bottle without harm.
“I have more questions.”
His eyes flicked between her and the vial, brightening slightly as the drug took effect. “Ask.”
Heavy footsteps toward the cell. Mary whisked the vial back into her handbag, looked innocent as the jailer’s head appeared in the doorway. He was visibly surprised to see Lang sitting up in bed, acknowledging her presence, and gaped for a moment.
“Is something the matter?” asked Mary, looking down her nose at the man.
“Beg your pardon, miss; I’d have fetched you a chair, only I never thought you’d stay this long.”
“It’s of no concern,” said Mary, as patiently as she could manage. “I prefer to stand.”
“I’m to give you ten minutes’ warning, miss.”
“Please — a quarter of an hour?”
He glanced about as though searching the air for permission. “Quarter of an hour, but no more. Regulations, I’m afraid.”
“Thank you kindly.” She waited until the footsteps had receded into silence, then looked once more at her unacknowledged, unacknowledging father. Their personal history would have to wait. “What happened in the opium den on Saturday night?”
He blinked at the change in subject. “With the toffs, you mean?”
“What else?”
He focused pleading eyes on the laudanum bottle. “I need more. You don’t understand — it’s like tiny drops of water to a man in the desert. Give me the bottle, and I’ll tell you anything you ask.”
Mary looked at him. She knew better than to believe a drug addict, of course. He was lying. Saying whatever was necessary to feed the demon. And yet. And yet.
She held the bottle toward him, and he snatched it with eager fingers, pouring the liquid down his throat with such frantic haste that he nearly swallowed the vial, too. Coughing, spluttering, panting. He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes that were, nevertheless, alive in a way they’d not been before. Eyes that were halfway human. “Thank you.”
Mary was touched, despite herself, and then angry again. How pathetic he was — and she in turn, for giving in to him. “Saturday night.”
He nodded. Wiped his lips. Licked round the mouth of the vial with hope and regret. “I don’t remember the start — I’d been smoking. But there wasn’t enough in my hookah to keep me away properly. I heard shouting — a drunken lad’s voice. Screaming and swearing. Filth. You know. The lad was falling-down drunk, but it didn’t stop him from trying to kick over the hookahs — and the men lying beside them. And Sayed tried to see him off nicely.”
“That’s the proprietor?”
Lang nodded. “Didn’t see why, at the time. First sign of trouble, Sayed’s vicious at turning them out. Then I saw their clothes: toffs. And then the main one sees me, and comes staggering at me, and swipes at my hookah.” Lang’s breathing became louder, faster. Mary noticed that his shivering had all but subsided. He looked at her steadily. “Don’t suppose you’d believe it, an old bag of skin and bones like me fighting a young man.”
She met his gaze. “I suppose it depends on your level of skill. And his intoxication.”
He nodded. “And the drugs. They fill you, somehow, make you theirs. You might be floating on a cloud, warm as blood, blind and deaf to all around you. This time, I was —” He stopped to consider. “I wanted him to vanish. To make him into nothing.”
Mary’s stomach churned. “To make him leave?”
“No. To destroy him.” He looked at her again, his eyes cold but without malice. “Not what you wanted to hear? You should know better than to ask, then.”
“I want the truth.” And she meant it.
“You understand, I couldn’t think. Felt no pain. I was in a rage, but I was numb, too.”
“You couldn’t reason, then.” Or understand the consequences of his actions.
He seemed almost amused by the question. “In an opium dream, there is no reason.”
She drew a deep breath. “So you attacked the young man. Do you remember how?”
He looked surprised. “With my hands.” He held out a pair of age-spotted claws: fingers twisted, knuckles pulpy, the nails ragged and filthy. They were purple with cold, although he seemed not to mind. “The opium agai
n. It takes strength, then gives. There were two men. A foolish one, who stood in my way — but I didn’t want him. I wanted the real swine. I flew at him, knocked him down. I choked him, there on the floor.” He looked down almost reminiscently, as though Beaulieu-Buckworth’s supine body were there on the cell floor. “He was so weak, for such a large body.”
Mary wondered. Beaulieu-Buckworth may well have been weak in every sense of the word, but a man in a drug-fueled rage could be superhumanly strong. There was a reason insane asylums kept burly warders to hand and iron rings embedded in their walls. She looked again at Lang’s hands, which had fallen to his lap, palms upturned. What she saw made her gorge rise: a long, wide, dark gash that began midpalm and extended across his first two fingers. It was a dark, suppurating mess — a rank note in the fetid fragrance of this dank room — and despite her long experience of filth and stench, she recoiled. When she could speak, she said, “When did you injure yourself?”
Lang blinked, looked blank. The shivering was beginning again, and he said, in a half-pleading, half-scolding tone, “I need more.”
“I haven’t got any more.”
“More.”
“Answer my question, then: what happened to your hand?”
He was silent for a minute — sulking. Then, “He had a knife.”
Mary’s scalp tingled. “The second young man attacked you with a knife. How did you get it away from him?”
He collapsed into himself, a sudden deflation. “He was weak. I took the knife.”
She already knew the answer but had to ask. “And then —”
“I stabbed him. I stabbed him until he stopped flopping. Until he wasn’t.” He sighed, resettled himself as though for sleep. “Laudanum.”
She hadn’t any more. What would he say when she told him? Would he fly into a rage, beat her to a pulp as he had Beaulieu-Buckworth? At this point, looking at the stinking, disheveled form of the father she’d so long worshipped, she almost didn’t care.
A clomping of boots saved her. A moment later, the guard’s long face appeared. “That’s your quarter hour and then some, miss.”
“You’ve been very kind,” said Mary. She looked down at the matted head. “Mr. Lang, I shall call again.”
For an answer, the skeleton on the bed lay down once more and pulled the coarse blanket over its head. It was neither more nor less than she expected.
“He needs a physician,” she said to the turnkey as he locked the cell. “As quickly as possible.”
The jailer looked dubious. “I’ll ask the warden.”
“Have you seen that filthy cut on his hand?” asked Mary. “Tell the warden to take a look. It needs to be seen to, if you want the prisoner to survive his trial.”
“I’ll tell him,” said the jailer, without much conviction.
“If it’s a question of money,” said Mary, “our charity will pay.” Perhaps that offer was too far out of character, but the guard seemed not to notice.
“I’ll tell him,” he repeated in a tone that bordered now on irritation.
There was nothing else to be said. Mary had found her father at last: Lascar. Drug addict. Murderer. And as she followed the jailer down the stairs and out of the Tower, she discovered that the opium’s numbing powers seemed to have affected her, too.
For the better, she thought.
Mary walked back to the palace at a brisk pace, deaf and blind to the world about her but feeling otherwise her usual self — or perhaps merely frozen. It was impossible to comprehend the full import of what she’d just seen and heard. At some point, she would have to think it through. Perhaps. But for now, it was enough to know a few basic facts: Lang Jin Hai had admitted killing Ralph Beaulieu-Buckworth. Lang Jin Hai had acted in a drug-induced frenzy, without conscious intent. Lang Jin Hai had not produced the knife.
No matter who might plead for him, it was a poor defense. Lang would still pay for the murder of a young aristocrat. But a defense of temporary insanity was infinitely better than no defense at all. Mary wondered about Queen Victoria’s devotion to truth and how far it might extend. Could she conceive of justice for a foreign-born opium addict? Or did her sense of fair play begin and end with respectable English subjects?
There was, too, the problem of Honoria Dalrymple. Her biases, at least, were perfectly clear. She wanted to whiten the reputation of her ne’er-do-well relation at any price — even the sacrifice of an innocent parlor maid. She would never tolerate any suggestion that Lang had not murdered Beaulieu-Buckworth in cold blood.
Finally, there was the difficulty of what would happen to Lang if, by some miracle, he failed to hang for the killing of Beaulieu-Buckworth. They no longer transported convicts to Australia. But for a man so old and frail, imprisonment on a prison hulk — a ship permanently moored along the coast, packed tight with the most desperate convicts — was still tantamount to death. Mary thought of that festering wound in his palm: four days Lang had been imprisoned at the Tower, and he’d received no treatment. Such justice was no justice at all.
She was so deeply immersed in her thoughts that the gentleman might have been following her for any amount of time. She realized this only when he finally presented himself before her and made a sarcastic bow. “My dear Miss Quinn.”
“Mr. Jones.” She was too startled for disdain.
“How charming to meet you in the afternoon, when you must normally be so very busy catering to Her Majesty’s every whim.”
The urge to slap him grew with every encounter. “What is it you want, Mr. Jones?”
“Why must you always assume I want something of you? How very vulgar.” This was typical Jonesian nonsense, but there was something forced about his performance today.
She stopped in the street. “Out with it.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere more comfortable?” One look at her expression, however, and he sighed. “Fine. Er . . . it’s about Amy.”
“I assumed that much.”
“Oh. Well, then. It’s like this.” As he spoke, Jones kept glancing over his shoulder in a hunted fashion. “She, er, seems to have certain expectations of me. Now that she’s been sacked, she thinks the logical thing to do would be for me to, er, step in, as it were.”
“That’s rational enough: you are courting.”
Jones’s eyes bulged, and he yelped, right there in the middle of the Strand. “No, no — that’s precisely where the confusion started! Why, d’you really imagine I’d be courting a domestic servant?”
Mary tilted her head to one side. “Amy certainly believed it.”
“Damn, damn, damn! Can’t you see, Mary?”
“Miss Quinn.”
“I beg your pardon: Miss Quinn.” Jones took a few steadying breaths. “I realize that Amy may have been under the impression that my intentions were serious. But surely a lady like you — an educated woman, a journalist, a woman of the world — understands just how preposterous her expectations are. It could never be. It would be a — an inappropriate mixing of entirely mismatched parties!”
“Not merely a personal disaster but a social one as well,” said Mary.
Jones seemed not to notice her tone. “Precisely! Like the Prince of Wales eloping with a barmaid — the mind boggles! You understand me!”
“Oh, I understand you perfectly, Mr. Jones.”
“Then you’ll help me: only a woman could persuade Amy that her expectations are absurd.”
“I thought you were the persuasive one.”
“The stubborn little ass won’t listen!”
“But if her expectations are so absurd, why did you consummate the relationship?”
Jones hesitated. “Oh. That. Well, she was just so damn keen, y’know. It felt ungentlemanly to refuse.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment. I was the one who told you of the plan. That would have been the time to decline.”
“You have me there.” A sheepish grin crept onto his face, and he did his best to look appealing. “Come, now, Miss
Quinn — I’m a healthy, vigorous man in his prime. D’you really expect me to refuse such a brazen offer? I assure you, Amy enjoyed herself just as much as I did.”
“That is entirely beside the point, Mr. Jones. You consider yourself a man of the world. How could you not understand what such an invitation meant?”
He looked sulky. “I thought you understood me.”
“I do; it doesn’t mean I agree with you.”
“So you won’t help me.” He made an angry, chopping gesture. “Damn it, I won’t be caught this way. Look, if you can’t convince Amy that it was all in good fun but I’m not the man for her, you’ll regret it.”
Ah. The real Octavius Jones showed himself at last. “An impotent threat, Mr. Jones. Are you really so desperate?”
“I could tell the housekeeper what you’re really up to.”
Mary pretended to consider. “You could, I suppose. Assuming she’d believe a word of it. And providing you could get to her before I did.”
“What d’you mean?”
“All I need do is go back to the palace and explain to her why you pretended to court Amy. I’m sure she’d be fascinated to know that a scandal-seeking journalist was attempting to prize secrets out of a palace domestic.” She paused. “However clumsily it was attempted.” Twin spots of color appeared in Jones’s cheeks, but she didn’t relent. “As for the breach-of-promise suit, it would be easy to find witnesses. All the female servants saw your valentine, and I was party to your seduction of the sheltered, innocent Miss Tranter. I expect there’s even the evidence of the bedsheets. . . . D’you know, Jones, I can’t think of a jury who wouldn’t sympathize with poor Amy.”
With visible effort, he mastered his temper. It was a minute before he could speak, however, and when he did his voice was hoarse. “You’re a reasonable woman, Miss Quinn. D’you think I’d make a good husband?”
“Of course not. But that’s hardly the point. Amy would get substantial damages from a breach-of-promise settlement. Certainly enough to live on until she found new work.”
“Then I may as well pay her off directly. Cut out the middleman, so to speak.”
His attempt to sound jovial was utterly unconvincing. Mary smiled pleasantly. “Then why are you badgering me?”