Heart of the West (40 page)

The fire woman was smiling as she came up to her, two tiny crescent moons deepening her cheeks. "My name is Hannah, and this is Clementine."

Erlan bowed and touched her chest with her fingertips. "Erlan... It means Day Lily in your language."

"Day Lily. My, what a pretty name that is." She took Erlan's hand and led her to the bed, easing her down so they were sitting side by side. The woman's touch was gentle yet strong. Erlan could see the blueness of her veins beneath the milky skin.

Clementine, too, crossed the room and settled on the bed. Even with her unbound feet she moved with the grace and elegance of a dragon boat. Her eyes were a dark frothing green, like the, sea, and when they focused on her face Erlan saw deep currents stirring.

"Why did that man put a leash around your neck?"

Erlan blushed with shame and looked away. "To teach me obedience," she answered in a small, tight voice.

"Then it is not your will to marry Sam Woo?"

Her will? It had been her father's will to sell her. Her duty was to obey. Destiny, he had once told her, had four feet, eight hands, and sixteen eyes. How, then, could one worthless daughter with only two of each hope to escape?

"I don't understand," she said. She met the moon woman's gaze, and she saw deep emotions hiding behind a mask of serenity.

"You are not a slave, Erlan. No one can force you to marry Mr. Woo."

"But if I do not marry, what will become of me?"

"There are ships that sail east as well as west."

A vast longing swelled in Erlan's chest. She could see herself being carried in a litter along the tall walls of her lao chia until she came to the gate. There, her father would be waiting. His gold-embroidered dragon robe would shine in the sun, but no brighter than his smile. "My daughter," he would say, "how my heart has grieved. I should never have sent you away..." But it was only a dream, and like all dreams, it was destined to disappear like dew in the morning sun. She was a dishonored daughter, disowned by her clan. There would be no red banners hung on the moon gate to welcome her home.

"There is nothing for me there," she said, and the truth of this hurt so she nearly gasped aloud.

Hannah squeezed her hand. "You don't have to go back to China, honey. But you needn't marry Sam Woo, either. You could run a laundry, maybe. That doesn't take much money to start up. Or a vegetable garden. There's a Chinese man who works a plot of land across the river, and he claims he could sell twice what he's able to grow."

Erlan shook her head, pain sticking like a fish bone in her throat. "I must marry the merchant Woo."

Once she would have gone with joy and virtuous obedience to wed the man chosen by her elders. She mustn't weep now because the gods had laid down a different path. To defy her destiny would be to dishonor herself, and she could bear no more dishonor. Already it was going to take Erlan a thousand lifetimes to atone for her mother's shame.

"If you're sure...?" Hannah said.

"Yes. I will marry the merchant Woo."

Her head jerked up at a knock on the door. Hannah went to answer it. The merchant Woo stood at the threshold, a red satin chang-fu embroidered with flying yellow cranes folded over his arm. He said something to Hannah, too low for Erlan to hear, but the answer brought a look of relief to his face. The
bock tow doy
hovered behind him, his scowl threatening dire consequences if Erlan did not yield.

"Look here," Hannah was saying as she came back into the room. "Sam's brought you a new gown for the wedding." Hannah laid the red robe on the bed and took up a pitcher off the washstand. Erlan watched her pour hot water from a covered tin container that sat on a trivet. The merchant Woo and the master stared at Erlan until Hannah shut the door in their faces.

"The circuit judge is only in town for the afternoon," she said. "He's holding court in the hotel bar. We've already told Sam he's got to marry you legally, in the American way. You won't be his slave, honey, no matter what that shifty-eyed bastard out in the hall says. You'll be Sam's wife, which ain't the same thing as his owning you. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand," she lied.

Her gaze was pulled back to the moon woman, who sat in stillness beside her. Whose sea green eyes were wide and deep and restless as she rubbed a hand over the gentle swell of her belly.

Erlan wondered about the father of the moon woman's baby. If she was not a daughter of joy after all, if she had a husband, then had the marriage broker chosen someone kind, a man who was young and handsome? But perhaps there were no marriage brokers in this fon-kwei land. Perhaps the choice had been all hers.

Their gazes met and Erlan thought she saw sadness now in those ocean eyes. Perhaps even here the fates ruled and choice was only an illusion.

"Would you like to wash up in privacy?" Clementine asked softly.

Erlan swallowed, nodded. "Please."

She waited until she was alone before she touched the wedding robe. The red satin was smooth and cool beneath her fingertips. The cranes had been embroidered with gold silk thread using tiny, intricate stitches. Red and gold, the colors of happiness and good fortune.

But there would be no fortune teller to determine the luckiest day for this wedding, no moon cakes to feast on, no firecrackers to frighten away evil spirits.

She went to the washstand. Steam wafted into the air from the water in the pitcher. She poured a little into the bowl and, glancing up, caught her reflection in the small rust-spotted mirror tacked to the wall.

She hadn't looked at her face in a mirror since she had left her lao chia. She was herself, yet she was not. She touched the glass, expecting her image to shatter and disappear like a reflection in a pool.

She had no rice powder to whiten her skin, but then, she was pale enough, except for the bruise the master had put on her cheek. Her hair was dressed in a maiden's coils. She should put it in a matron's knot for the wedding, but there was no maidservant to help her with it, and no jasmine oil to make it glisten.

She wore brass earrings worth no more than a small string of
cash
in place of the jade ones the slave trader had ripped, from her earlobes. The loss of the earrings still pained her so much that she couldn't bear to think of it without tears welling up in her eyes. Yet he had also taken her gold phoenix combs, which were much more valuable. And her virginity, which was beyond price.

She pressed her hands hard to her face, her shoulders hunching. She wanted to shed tears of blood.

"Then it is not your will to marry Sam Woo... Your will
..." The words echoed in her mind like stones dropped into a well. Until now her whole life had been dedicated to making herself a credit to her ancestors, obeying her father, preparing for the day when she would obey and please her husband and serve her mother-in-law. She had thought of nothing but how she might please, how she might serve.

Your will... your will...
What would it be like to serve herself, please only herself? It was a novel thought and it frightened her, and so she buried it deep inside her heart.

She washed the dust of travel off as best she could and replaced the tong's rough blue cotton chang-fu with her satin wedding robe of red and gold. The high collar hid the marks left on her neck by the leash.

The master was waiting for her in the hall. He looked her over, gave a sharp nod, and gestured for her to precede him. Perhaps he, too, feared that without the leash to anchor her, her golden lilies would pull free of the earth and she would float up and away from him, into the bottomless Montana sky.

A commotion of voices spilled out of the foyer. Hannah's and Clementine's and another, deeper, one. She stepped from the shadows of the hall into the light that came through the open double doors, and the fonkwei giant was suddenly before her.

"I'll be hearing it out of her own mouth," he said.

Truly he was the largest man she had ever seen. Her gaze began with the brass buttons on his blue-striped shirt and went up and up. A dark flush stained his high, flat cheekbones. The hair on his face and head was the rich brown of freshly tilled earth. He had the most beautiful eyes. Soft and gentle as rainwater.

He fixed them on her now and she felt a sudden surge in her heartbeat. "'Tes your desire to marry Sam Woo?" he asked.

Her mouth was as dry as a millet cake. She had to swallow twice before she could speak, and the words nearly choked her. "It is my desire," she finally managed in a voice she did not recognize. And the word echoed back at her, like more stones falling into the deep well of her heart:
desire... desire... desire...

"It is my desire," she said again, as if by saying it twice the lie would somehow become a truth.

Another man stepped up to them. He was younger and slighter than the giant, his face sharp like a hawk's. His eyes were the same dense gray, but harder, like stones seen through a pool of clear water.

He laid a hand on the giant's arm. "Come, then, Jere. We're late for work as 'tes, and you've heard her. She be doing it of her own free will."

The giant shook off the other man's hand. Anger darkened his face. For all his gentle ways, Erlan thought, he had a temper that lashed like a dragon's tail. "I'll not be leaving till I'm sure of it."

"Please," she said. "You are shaming me."

She jerked away from him with such force she nearly slipped on her tiny bound feet. She saw the merchant Woo standing in a doorway, waiting for her. He had removed his barbarian hat, and his shaven crown was not insignificant but tall and smooth and strong. He had a black silk ribbon braided neatly through his queue, which was tucked into his vest pocket. His eyes glinted at her from behind his thick spectacles. She did not think she could ever come to love him.

The room they entered was crowded with men standing before a long wooden counter, tipping glasses of foamy ale up to their mouths. The pine floorboards shone wet beneath the men's feet and emitted a malty smell. Erlan saw everything through a blur of tears she blamed on the thick tobacco smoke.

The merchant Woo led her up to a man who was lounging in a chair on his tailbone, his feet propped up on a table. He put down his glass and wiped his mouth with his wrist. His head was as round and bald as a rice pot, but hair grew like a foxtail along his upper lip.

"Well, hell, Chinaman," he said, and shot a stream of spittle into a wooden box filled with sawdust. The floor around the box was slimy and stained brown. "I see you've decided on gettin' yer spurs tangled up in holy wedlock after all."

He lumbered to his feet and took up a book. Erlan didn't listen to the words he spoke. "Say yes," he said at one point.

"Yes," she repeated obediently, although her cheeks felt stiff and oddly cold.

He ended by proclaiming loudly: "You may kiss the bride."

It was not a thing a Chinese would ever do—touch his wife, even his new wife, in public. But the merchant Woo took her arms and pulled her against him and pressed his mouth to hers.

The foreign devils clapped their hands, making enough noise to chase away an army of evil spirits without the help of firecrackers. Erlan's gaze fell to the hem of her red silk wedding robe. A furious trembling was going on inside her, a frothing, like waves being whipped by the mighty winds of a
tai-fung.

This pressing of mouth to mouth was truly a disgusting thing. And his lips were as dry as rice paper.

The wind was starting to tatter the pall of smoke that hung over the butte as the Scully brothers climbed the road toward the Four Jacks silver mine. They had been in Rainbow Springs less than a month, fresh off the boat from England and ready to mine the golden land of opportunity. Thus far, though, the only digging they'd done was for three dollars a day working a ten-hour shift at the Four Jacks.

The brothers didn't usually talk much between them, both being quiet men. Jere's was the silence of a man content and easy within himself, Drew's the silence of a man too proud to show himself.

But the arrival of the noon stage had shattered Jere Scully's contentment. "She didn't want to marry him, Drew," he said, the brogue of their native Cornwall thick on his tongue. "You could see she didn't."

His brother heaved a sigh thick with exasperation. "My blessed life, she as much as told you to go scratch yourself. She walked in there and said her 'I do's' before the justice, and nobody was putting a gun to her head that I could see. You think she would choose to go off with you rather than stick with them of her own kind? Were you going to be marrying her yourself, then?"

"Mebbe."

Drew swung the gunnysack that held his work clothes at his brother's head. "You've gone daft, you have, to even think of marrying a Celestial. And tedn't like you know the chit. The two of you've barely passed the time of day."

"Did you hear her voice? It had a lilt to it. Like she was warming up to sing."

Drew shook his head, although he had to admit the girl was pretty. Her eyes were as dark and smooth as river stones, her mouth shaped like those perfect red bows they painted on candy boxes. But Drew preferred a flashier sort of woman himself. The sort of woman with crimson hair and rainbow petticoats, come-hither eyes and a throaty laugh. A woman who loved hard and lived dangerously.

A woman like Mrs. Hannah Yorke.

He thought of the way she had pulled that derringer out of her pocket and threatened to shoot off the Celestial's nose with it. God's life, she was beautiful and she was bad. And he wanted her.

Thus far, though, Mrs. Hannah Yorke was having none of him.

Usually he and Jere and most of the other miners frequented the Gandy Dancer, an Irishman's saloon tucked in the shadow of the butte. But one night last week they'd gone to the Best in the West for the hell of it, and that was when he'd first seen her. But he hadn't gotten beyond a simple "Pleased to be making your acquaintance, lady." Not that night or since.

It was said she'd worked in a hookshop not too long back, and owning the Best in the West Casino hardly put her in the ranks of the respectable. But she also owned the town's main hotel and a couple of boardinghouses, including the one they flopped in, which had to mean she was in the chips. So having her wasn't going to be as simple a matter as laying down three dollars for her time.