The Concubine's Daughter (42 page)

Ben had insisted on personally dressing the body in the rich red silk and extravagantly embroidered finery of a bride of noble birth. He had
forced himself to look upon her mutilated face, then covered it with the bridal veil of spiderweb silk, crowning her hair with a single gardenia. A large and perfect pearl was placed on her tongue to show the gods that she came from a well-respected, wealthy family; a cicada carved in milky jade lay in her closed hand, fastened to the fingers by a ribbon so that it could not be lost or stolen. It was, she had once told him, the most powerful talisman against evil spirits in the afterlife.

In solitude, he had surrounded her with books, carefully choosing each one. By her side he placed a golden statue of Kuei-Hsing, the god of literature. To these he added the photographs retrieved from the temple floor, and the laughing Buddha that Ah-Kin’s wife had carefully restored. The maker of heavenly possessions had worked for a day and a night constructing a house like the one by the river in red and gold paper. In it Ben had placed the letters from Ah-Su and the
mung-cha-cha
. In a replica of the Lagonda in shining green paper, he had placed two toy dogs of fluffy white, with collars and leashes of red leather; then added a great deal of paper money. The smoke from these hung low across the sea, as though reluctant to break adrift from the Villa Formosa.

Ben Devereaux stayed alone in the Pavilion of Joyful Moments for a day and a night. Observed but undisturbed by Ah-Kin, he neither ate the food brought to him nor drank the tea. He made no movement and sat as silently as stone. On the third day, Ah-Kin awoke to find him gone.

O
n an oven-hot November
afternoon, the daughter of Ben and Li Devereaux sailed into the vast lake of Tung-Ting in the province of Hunan. Under leaden skies, a great marsh threaded with channels and hidden backwaters stretched along its endless foreshores. At the mouth of the lake, where the Yangtze joined the Yuan River, many of the passengers disembarked—laden with gifts, strings of live crabs, and squealing piglets—to be met with much backslapping, heaving of luggage, yapping dogs, and squalling children.

Those who needed to cross the lake transferred for the last time to a flat-bottomed sampan, stacked high with sheaves of tall reeds. Among them, with the baby quiet in her beaded sling after being fed for a copper coin from the full breast of a Tanka girl, sat the Fish, weary but certain that her gods had not deserted her.

No human hand could steer safe passage through the raging torrents of the Yangtze; through Wind Box Gorge, dodging river dragons through the canyons of Witch’s Mountain and Golden Helmet Pass. When they reached the white-water rapids at the mouth of the Yuan, where the aged planks of the sampan threatened to fall apart like a chicken crate, the Fish saw the spirit of Li-Tieh-Kuai, the crippled beggar, who always appeared to those in distress upon the water. She was certain that his iron staff and gourd of comfort would watch over her and the child until they were safe beneath the roof of her cousin, To-Tze.

On the far side of the lake, travelers dropped off along the way until
only the old woman and the infant remained. The boatman seemed reluctant to enter the shallows of the marsh, demanding the two remaining coins threaded around the Fish’s neck to complete the voyage. Switching the
yulow
, the long sculling oar, for the long punting pole, he nosed the flat boat into a narrow channel banked by a dense jungle of head-high reeds.

“There will be no difficulty in finding the one you are looking for,” he said in a voice hushed with caution. “Everyone knows of Old To, the barefoot doctor. The reed-cutters say he talks with ghosts and dances with demons.” He allowed the pole to slide effortlessly through his callused hands with a faint but rhythmic sound.

“Is the infant sick? Are you unwell? Old To is said to have saved many children brought to him, and made old people young again … even to have given life to the dying.” The boatman looked about him, lowering his words to a whisper. “He is one of great mystery and strange powers,” he muttered uneasily. “One who is Chinese but has eyes that are blue as the lake on a clear day.”

To the Fish, huddled in the stern too tired to speak, he seemed anxious to be rid of her. With his wide brown feet firmly planted on the bleached wood of the stern, the long pole slipping skillfully and more swiftly through his hands, the boatman asked no more about the old woman or the newborn child mewing from the Tanka baby sling upon her back. The infant was white as a maggot, he thought, with eyes as round and pale as pebbles in a pond. No longer comforted by the sound of his own voice, he fell quiet as they approached the shore.

Only the swish of the ferry pole and the croak of a disturbed frog broke the silence as the plank boat glided smoothly through dark green foliage and wandering roots of mangrove trees, where heron and spoonbill waded in the shallows. Goats grazed the gently sloping grasslands where clusters of bamboo climbed the foothills. Above these forests of tung and teak trees, ancient spires of rock rose from the mists like forgotten pagodas.

Ducks flurried from the water as the boatman put them ashore at a roughly cobbled jetty. Naked children squatted patiently over bamboo
fishing rods while others searched for oysters among the mangrove roots.

“Follow the goat track and you will find the hut of Old To,” the boatman said, glad to be rid of so strange a cargo. Then, emboldened by his departure, he raised his voice.

“This is a place of wizardry and restless spirits,” he called across the water when safely out of reach. “And I have carried a witch bearing the spawn of alchemy.” The muddy children dropped their fishing lines, the coarse hoot of the boatman’s laughter chasing them like rabbits startled by a fox.

The narrow track wound slowly upward through thickets of mimosa heavy with bees. A chorus of cicadas rose in the heat from groves of motionless bamboo, where bluecaps twittered a welcome. The sun was dipping into distant mountains as the Fish reached the hut set in the shade of fruit trees. Chickens pecked undisturbed among the neat furrows of a well-kept vegetable garden, and ducks cleaned their feathers beside a small pond fed by a spring. The energy that had brought her and her precious bundle safely along the China coast and through the gorges of the Yangtze Valley was slipping away, but her destination stood before her like the answer to a prayer.

The hut faced the lake, its doors wide open and rush mats rolled up to catch the last glow of sunset. Bronze light fell upon the figure of a man bent over a large table set out on the rustic veranda, a long-handled brush poised to dip and sweep in the broad and flowing strokes of a master calligrapher. The Fish hesitated, unsure if this could truly be her cousin—the brave, half-naked boy who had pulled her from the churning waters of Tung-Ting so long ago the memory was lost in dreams. He was old enough, but even from the distance of a dozen steps and in half shadow, he was clearly no ordinary man.

He was taller than most, upright as a youth, his movements fluid; he seemed surrounded by a mellow light as golden as the dying sun. He wore a simple ash-gray robe, bound at the waist with the faded saffron sash of a Taoist monk. His white hair was roughly plaited and loosely held with a thong, his long white beard fine as wild cotton and his face
brown as a fig. Only when the Fish stepped closer, casting a long shadow across his threshold, did he pause to look up. When the face of serenity turned toward her, with eyes as blue as endless springtime, she knew she had found him.

He did not recognize his distant cousin until she showed him the characters of their clan carved on the inside of the jade bangle that hung from her wrist. His calming presence acted like a soothing balm as he gently took the sling from her shoulders. “I had thought you’d gone to join our ancestors, that I was the last of our blood. Yet it is you, cousin Kwai. The gods that saved us as children have brought us together as the years grow shorter. Surely there must be purpose in such a wondrous thing.” His voice was as light and gentle as his smile.

“I have traveled from Hong Kong, cousin, from the house of a good master. There is much that I must tell you. But first, I bring a life for you to save.”

Gently, he opened the folds of cloth that surrounded the baby girl, examining her as if she were a wounded bird that had survived a storm. “You have brought her just in time. She would have been taken before another day.”

Moments later, liquid he had prepared stood cooling in a clay crock. When it was ready, he fed it patiently into the baby’s mouth with a porcelain spoon. “Last night, I saw a sign—a shooting star over the lake. It was closer and brighter than any I have seen, blazing with a purple light.” He chuckled. “There is such an aura around this child.”

“She was born in terror, many weeks too soon, on New Year’s Eve. So already she is one year old, one extra year of life.”

Her cousin smiled as a tiny fist closed over his finger. He lifted it to test its strength. “Her before-sky chi is great and her spirit is strong. She clings to life like a warrior. This is no ordinary girl child.”

The Fish nodded agreement. “Her mother was a fighter and her father fierce even among the Western barbarians. They found great love for each other … strong enough to face a world that sees only the sin of mixed blood. They did not care; they were protected by their pride and their courage. Only treachery could defeat them.”

The Fish could no longer fight against exhaustion. Through the long days and sleepless nights of her journey, she had thought only of the baby, clinging to the distant hope that they would find her cousin safely and that he would welcome her. Now, having placed her burden in his gentle hands, stamina deserted her. Old To reached for her arm, placing the tips of his fingers lightly upon her slender wrists, reading the silent pulses that told him of her life-force.

“You have done well, cousin; the chi of our clan still flows strongly within you. I will prepare food and a draught that will bring you comfort and rest. You have nothing more to fear.” He massaged her hands briskly. The Fish could feel his energy enter her, bringing new strength.

He busied himself with lighting the lamps and preparing food. “I spoke of a shooting star that blazed across the sky the night before you came, bright as a splinter from the moon.” He traced the air with a wide sweep of his fingertip. “In that fragment of time, the lake shone like a beacon. It was a sign this child was meant to cross the lake and enter this house. We will call her Siu-Sing—Little Star. If she lives, she will one day light the heavens.”

He placed a bowl of soup on the table. “You are entrusted with her heart and the guidance of her soul; I with her physical being and the ways of the spirit.”

The Fish tasted the soup and nodded her approval. When she was finished, she withdrew a tightly wrapped bundle from the beaded sling. “We must find a place of safety for this. It holds the child’s future. Many things were stolen from me; an old woman traveling alone on the Yangtze is easy prey. But I have kept this bundle safe at the bottom of the sling.”

She pushed aside the soup bowl with a chuckle. “No one would go near such a strange infant except the junk master’s daughter, who fed her milk in exchange for cash.”

He took the bundle from her, pulled a heavy wooden chest from beneath his bed, and kneeled to slip the three brass pin locks securing its heavy lid. “I made this chest from the keel of a wreck seasoned by a hundred years at the bottom of the lake. It is harder than stone. No hammer could smash it and no axe could split it … it is safe as a monastery crypt.”

One by one he twisted the pins until they clicked into place and were easily withdrawn. “The locks I made myself and are a puzzle to everyone but me.” He lifted the heavy lid to reveal an abundance of scrolls, bundles of papers, and small handmade books tightly packed.

“This box contains the work of my life and the work of sages who have gone before me. It holds the world as it is seen by the immortals, although few would recognize its true value.” He laughed with pleasure at a secret shared. “The fools who tell stories in the village believe that the chest is filled with silver from selling the wild mandrake root some call ginseng.” He took the bundle from her and found a place for it deep among the papers. “Few come near this place and none dare enter uninvited.” He shook his head, smiling. “I think they are afraid of me … no reed-cutter would steal from a sorcerer’s crucible and no woodsman come too close to a maker of magic. So, I am left in peace and my house is safe.”

Old To closed the chest and locked it, then led his cousin to a second cot, in the corner opposite his own. “Another sometimes sleeps here, a herd boy. He is young and strong as a mountain goat; he can spread his blanket in the herb shed.” When his cousin laid down, he gently covered her with a quilt made from rabbit pelts.