by Carol Jones
‘Do you have a background in farming, Mr Thomas?’ she asked.
‘I have a background in many things,’ he said with his slow grin. When he smiled, the light seemed to dance across his dark eyes like the gleam of polished onyx.
‘Including sheep?’ she said, with a nod towards the lakeshore where the children were throwing sticks for Ruby. A light rain had begun to fall but Violet determined to ignore it, and hope it went away.
‘You could say that. My family farmed for generations in Wales.’
‘But you’re a long way from the hills of Wales.’
‘New hills. New possibilities.’
She waited, but he said no more.
‘And what of your history? From where does the Hartley family hail?’
‘Oh, we are not very interesting,’ she said with a shrug. ‘My father was a navy man. My mother died when I was a child. And now he has gone too. So I must make my living where I can.’
‘I wonder that you didn’t seek a position closer to home. Robetown is a long way from London.’
‘We do what we must to make our fortunes. Perhaps, I too am seeking new possibilities.’ She shivered a little, becoming aware that the rain was setting in, dampening the sleeves of her bodice and wetting her face. ‘I’d better get the children home before the rain gets any heavier.’
Turning to the lakeshore, she saw Alice now petting the dog, but no sign of James. That boy was always running off. Chasing birds, following the small native rodents to their hide holes. In search of adventure. But how could he have disappeared in the blink of an eye? She scoured the scene more closely, scanning the scrub, the reeds, the choppy expanse of water, until she noticed a small, dark shape lying beside a clump of bulrushes at the water’s edge.
‘Oh my God. It’s James.’
Picking up her skirts she hurried towards the lakeshore, calling out to Alice as she ran. It wasn’t very far – perhaps one hundred yards – but hampered by her billowing petticoats, tight corset and fashionable boots, it seemed to take forever. By the time she reached James’s small form, Thomas had caught up with her. He scooped up the boy in one movement, holding him in his arms and looking down with a worried frown.
‘What’s wrong with James?’ asked Alice, coming to stand at Violet’s side, the dog following at her heels. ‘I thought he had returned to you.’
Violet put a hand to the boy’s forehead to find it hot and clammy. His eyes were closed, lashes fluttering as his eyes moved restlessly beneath their lids. His face was flushed and tendrils of hair stuck to his cheeks, whether by rain or fever, she could not tell. Seeing him lying forlornly in Thomas’s arms, she felt a pang of guilt, a tiny stab to her conscience, but she shook it off. If there was one thing she had learned in her short but eventful life, it was that regretting mistakes was futile. It did not undo them. It only made the going forward more arduous.
‘James is ill,’ she said to Alice. ‘We had better get him home to Noorla. Quickly.’
Before the rain worsened his fever. Before Mrs Wallace discovered that her children and their governess were no longer playing at quoits in the garden and had in fact embarked upon a poorly timed expedition to chaos.
15
Pearl River Delta, China, 1856
The path to Wu Village under the Mountain was long and winding. The Emperor expected landowners great and small to provide land and upkeep for village roads. Who could blame them if they obliged by providing narrow scraps of land at the borders of their plots so that their neighbours had to furnish the other half. Unfortunately this meant that the roads floundered between mulberry grove and rice paddy, fishpond and vegetable garden like a headless chicken. Young Wu did not blame the landowners for begrudging their land – not when it could be put to more profitable use – but it made his journey frustratingly slow. Especially when he wished to be finished as soon as possible so that he could return to Sandy Bottom Village.
He could not shake the feeling that he was needed. It nagged at him like the angry patch of skin behind his knee, which flared up every time his father grew displeased with him. He kept seeing Little Cat’s face, as she stood before his father, pale where she was usually tanned, expressionless where she was more often annoyed. There were those who made a habit of disrespect – discontented men who were always complaining to the magistrates, long-haired louts who fomented rebellion – but most of the village viewed his father with healthy respect. This was only natural, since the Wu lineage owned three-quarters of the surrounding land. But it did not explain Little Cat’s face. He could not escape the feeling that something had gone awry this morning. Yet what could he do? His father had ordered him to deliver these documents and he could not disobey.
By mid-morning he had reached the neighbouring village. He paused to make an offering at the Earth God’s shrine outside the village gate, then wandered through crooked alleys to await the ferry by the riverbank. There were few bridges in the district and many rivers. Everyone relied upon ferrymen to pole them from one bank to the other. Like most ferries in the district, this one was constructed from thick poles of bamboo lashed together to form a wide-bottomed boat, which was fashioned to carry people, produce and livestock.
Most of his fellow travellers were about the business of agriculture, burdened with baskets and barrels of vegetables, fish or mulberry leaves. One boy carried a load of chopped wood, while another laboured under a stem of bananas. Men and boys alike were garbed in cotton trousers and tunics in faded shades of lam cho blue, rolled to the knee. He was the only one wearing shoes.
Before he had taken ten steps the reason became apparent. With winter almost upon them the river was low, before the coming of the rains, so that waiting passengers had to navigate an expanse of mud to reach the ferry. He wasn’t too concerned. Planks of wood had been laid helpfully in a line leading to the river’s edge, and unlike his fellow passengers, he was weighed down by little more than his misgivings and two paper scrolls. Besides, he had practised the art of kung fu since he first grew out of his divided trousers. He thought little of balancing upon one foot to aim a sidekick with the other. Scaling a wall or leaping a ditch did not faze him. Balancing upon a narrow plank to cross a muddy river flat should have been a trifle.
He stepped out, keen to score a place on the ferry before he was squeezed between a barrel of fish and a bad-tempered donkey. However, several steps in he realised that the plank’s usefulness was deceptive. While the trail of planks suggested a jetty of sorts, in fact his path floated upon a sea of mud. And like any sea, it was subject to turbulence. He sensed the heavy-footed pedlar – yoked beneath twin baskets brimming with sweet potato – who stepped onto the plank behind him. As the plank wallowed deeper into the mud it rocked from side to side. And the pedlar, deciding that the mud was a more predictable option for himself and his wares, abruptly abandoned the plank to wade into the mud. Caught in mid-stride, Young Wu wobbled as he tried to recapture his balance. Despite all his years of kung fu, despite his lithe and athletic frame, he was pitched to the side by the yawing plank.
He landed on his hands and knees, deep in the mire, to a chorus of laughter from his fellow passengers. Any entertainment was appreciated to break the tedium of waiting for the ferry. And the fact that Young Wu’s shoes, crisp new tunic and rolled documents proclaimed him a landlord no doubt made it doubly amusing. Averting his face from their mirth, he collected the scattered scrolls now smeared in grime, and struggled to stand. His hands sank into the mud as he levered himself up, but with a little explosive power he pushed to his feet. He could feel the mud spattered upon his cheeks, see it plastered to his sleeves in thick grey cuffs.
Ignoring his audience, he straightened his spine, pulled back his shoulders, and righted his dignity. He set off for the ferry with a determined gait, except for the fact that he had to prise each foot from the wet earth. It sucked and slurped at his feet so that his swagger slowed to a shamble. On another day he might have been angry at this embarrassment but as he
lumbered towards the river, his thoughts churned in confusion. His father had ordered him to Wu Village under the Mountain and he rarely disputed his father’s will. That way lay the turbulence of family disharmony. That way lay shame. From the age of five, he had learned to recite the Sixteen Maxims of the Kangxi Emperor. He had been trained by the whiplash of his father’s tongue. For if a son did not obey his father, then a wife need not obey her husband. A servant need not obey his master. A subject need not obey his Emperor.
That way lay chaos.
Yet he could not help feeling that the gods were sending him a message. He could not help feeling that his life was about to change. And as he stared down at the swallowing mud, he realised that Grandfather Earth was telling him to turn back.
16
Little Cat did not know that a heart could beat so fast. It drummed at her ribs like a woodpecker so that she thought it must burst through her chest. She waited, tucked inside a large basket that smelled of cabbage, peeking out through the bamboo strips and praying to Weaver Girl that she would not be discovered. She waited until she heard Gatekeeper Wu shuffle across the courtyard then crawled from her hiding place, flitting like a shadow from one veranda post to another until she reached the gates.
They loomed, twice her height, barred by a narrow iron latch. All she had to do was lift the latch, open the doors and step over the sill. Yet she hesitated. What would happen when the old gatekeeper finally braved his master’s ire and investigated why he had not shouted for his dinner? Perhaps if she called for help, if she explained that she had feared for her life, they might bring her before the county magistrate and she could plead her cause. Then the magistrate would decide upon her punishment. If she were lucky he might choose only the second of the Five Punishments, a beating with heavy bamboo. At least there was a chance she might escape execution.
Then she thought of Big Wu, lying on the floor of his study, mired in his own blood, and she realised that she would not live to face a magistrate. The Wus would hunt her down. They would string her up. They would put her in a pig crate, weighed down by rocks, and throw her in the river. Young Wu would not rest until she was caught. He was his father’s son. And his father would see her in Hell.
Perhaps that was where she belonged for her crime. Perhaps she was destined to spend eternity wandering the Ten Courts of Hell, cut into pieces, deep-fried in oil and ground to a bloody pulp. But since the prospect of being drowned in a pig crate was a lot more immediate than the tortures of Hell, she lifted the latch, heaved open the doors and ran. She ran down the hill, past the Wu clan hall, over the irrigation ditch, through the alleys and along the river until she reached the Mo family fishponds, panting for her life. She did not care if she was seen, that would come later.
She ran to her brother. The boy who had shared her mother’s womb. The boy she grew up wanting to be. The boy she learned to fight alongside. The boy she always trusted to guard her back. If she imagined that she might endanger him, she thrust that thought aside. Never for a moment did she fear that he would turn her away. He was her twin. He was her other half.
At least he had been until he became a man.
She found him stripped to the waist, trousers rolled to the knee, shovelling silt from the bottom of the pond. He did not look like a man who was about to set out on the journey of a lifetime to New Gold Mountain, who despite his promises might never return to his home.
‘Goh Go.’ The words shivered in her throat, almost unrecognisable as her voice.
‘Little Cat? What’s wrong?’ he asked, staring up at her in alarm.
She stood several feet above him on the raised bank of the dyke, where mulberry groves stretched behind her in row upon row towards the horizon. Where fishponds and dykes had long ago carved order out of the chaos of torrential rains and surging rivers. Where an ancient emperor’s edict had brought order to the turbulence of village life. And she knew that her world would never be the same again either. She had become a harbinger of chaos.
‘Is that blood?’
For the first time she noticed her clothes. The faded black of her sam fu was spattered with rusty marks. She held hands to her face that were smeared crimson.
‘It’s not mine… I have done something.’
She curled her hand into a fist. She could still feel the heft of stone. Sealing Big Wu’s fate.
‘Done what?’
What was it she had done really? She had defied a clan elder. She had protected herself.
‘I think I have killed Big Wu.’
He blinked and shook his head, as if he could not believe what she was saying.
‘What?’
‘I hit him over the head.’ She did not tell him how many times. But in the moment she had not counted.
‘Where?’
Was it her imagination, or did he back away? The muddy water rippled around him, but it could have just been fish.
‘Up at the Wu house. In his study. He’s not moving.’
‘What were you doing up at Big Wu’s house?’ He clutched at detail as if to make fact disappear. She wished she could do the same, roll back time so that she had never trailed behind Young Wu to the house of the Recommended Man. Never ignored her misgivings and trusted him.
‘His son, your friend, brought me there. I don’t know why. But Big Wu sent him away. And when we were alone he attacked me and I…’ She gagged at the memory. ‘I fought back.’
Her brother stood knee deep in the pond, considering her words. She waited for him to splash towards her, place his hands upon her shoulders and tell her that everything would be all right. That together they would fix this. She waited for him to help her from the ground where he had tossed her during one of their sparring sessions. To brush stones from her knees where she had fallen from a tree they climbed. She waited for him to denounce the headman, to curse Wu and his ancestors to the thousandth generation.
‘I warned you to stop fighting. I warned you that it would bring trouble.’ His words hit her like a blow to the stomach. ‘The Wu lineage owns half our father’s land.’
‘You think I invited him to attack me? It is the Wus who have brought trouble upon me.’ Young Wu who had lured her into his father’s lair. Big Wu, who had tried to take the only thing that was hers. ‘They think they own everyone and everything!’
‘They do own everyone and everything! And if not them, then others like them. We can only accept this. Accept who we are.’
But who was she? She was daughter and sister. Her mother would have her be wife and mother. Big Wu would make her his concubine. Yet why couldn’t she be a scholar, or a warrior or a pedlar of trinkets? Why couldn’t she decide who she was and who she would become? She could comb up her hair like Ah Wei and vow to remain a spinster. She could be a woman, yet not a woman. Owe no obedience to husband or son. She could escape.
Her brother sighed, spearing his wooden shovel into the mud and clambering up the bank to stand several steps away. She wondered if, eighteen years ago, they had faced off like this, or if they had nestled close as a single babe in their mother’s womb, limbs entwined. She wondered what might have been if they had both been boys. Or girls.
‘You killed a man, little sister. There is no escaping that.’
‘They will come for me.’
‘I know.’
‘You are leaving for New Gold Mountain and I don’t know what to do without you.’
‘There is only one thing to do. Go to the mat shed and wait until I come for you.’
*
She slipped into the mat shed behind the wormhouse, hoping that Elder Brother would not notice her presence. If he discovered her, he would feel it his duty to tell their father, for he always did have an iron rod up his backside. And who knew what would happen then? Even now, the Wus might be searching for her, descending upon their house, questioning her mother, interrogating her grandfather. The fewer people who knew her whereabouts, the safer she and they would be.
She hid between rows of si
lkworm mats, the bamboo frames lining the room like expectant skeletons. Taller than a man, each frame awaited its crop of fat worms to be slotted into place, spinning their lives away. But this late in the year, the mat shed was silent and empty, apart from the ragged sound of her breathing. Rush mats formed the walls of the shed, so that in the sparse light her hands appeared to be covered in dark smudges. She clasped them together to stop them shaking, but nothing could halt her thoughts.
She didn’t know how long she waited for Second Brother but she never doubted that he would come. He was her other half. She was yin to his yang. And despite his efforts to deny it, to turn her into a traditional wife and perfect sister, a part of her would always be yang to his yin. They were twins and he would never abandon her.
Bare feet did not announce their presence, so when she saw the tall shape silhouetted in the entry she shrank back into the shadows in surprise. The Mo boys weren’t the only broad-shouldered, long, lean men in the village. Young Wu came close to them in height, and fancied himself broader.
‘Little Cat!’ hissed the intruder as he strode further into the hut so that she could make out his features. Long leaf-shaped eyes darted about the room, searching for her.
‘I’m here,’ she said, stepping out from between the rows of empty mats.
‘Come.’
He didn’t wait for her agreement, but turned and stepped back outside. She followed him into the late morning sunlight that streamed through low-lying clouds.
‘It looks like rain.’