Moonflower Madness

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘We’ll stop now,’ he said to her relief. ‘No point in entering Fu-tu Kwan. It’s a filthy place.’

  ‘The river is only a little way off the trail to the right,’ she said, in fervent agreement with him. ‘Can you stay mounted for just a little while longer, until we reach it?’

  He gave her a weary grin. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course I can. Lead on, MacDuff.’

  Twenty minutes later she had found a camp site with grazing and water for the ponies and mules. The Chinese helped Charles from the saddle and he sagged against them weakly.

  ‘There’s only tomorrow to go,’ she said encouragingly.

  The Chinese lowered him to the ground, sitting him down with his back supported against the trunk of a tree.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said with heartfelt relief. ‘You know, Gianetta, I have the crazy feeling that Zac expected me to continue with the expedition, fractured arm or no fractured arm.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she lied soothingly. ‘You would only have been a handicap to him, wouldn’t you? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’

  He shook his head, looking pale and drawn. ‘No, nothing. The Chinese are being very good. They handle me with unbelievable gentleness.’

  The Chinese were busy making a fire and unpacking provisions for the evening meal.

  ‘Will Zachary have difficulty in finding men to replace them?’ she asked with a worried frown.

  ‘No.’ Charles’voice was confident. ‘Zac never does have those kind of difficulties. Men are always eager to work for him. I don’t know how he does it, but they always turn out to be not only hard workers, but blindingly honest into the bargain.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t expect them to be anything else,’ said Gianetta. She had been squatting down on her heels beside him; now she stood up. ‘Dinner looks as though it will be another twenty minutes or so. Do you mind if I go for a walk and try and find the potentilla? I know we’re in nearly the same place as I camped the other night.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ Charles said, closing his eyes. ‘Take my note-book and penknife with you. If you do find it, Zac will be delighted, and at least something will have been salvaged from this debacle.’

  He opened his eyes again. ‘You know what to put in the notes, don’t you? What the soil is like, where you found the plant, its position, whether it is facing north or south, whether the plant is solitary or in a group, how tall the scape is …’

  ‘The scape?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘The stem,’ he said. ‘How many flowers it carries, the width of the corolla …’

  ‘The corolla?’

  ‘The whorl of petals contained in the calyx.’

  She thought it best not to ask what the calyx was, in case he decided it was pointless her even looking for the plant.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, rising to her feet.

  ‘And take another cutting with my penknife,’ he said, closing his eyes once again. ‘Then we can press it.’

  Gianetta left him and walked away down the river bank. In the distance, the walls of Fu-tu Kwan looked just as they had done two evenings ago, neither nearer or farther. The landscape was very bare, the hills treeless apart for a few banyan trees. Poppies gave an occasional splash of colour, but apart from the poppies she could see no wild flowers and no grey-leafed, yellow-flowered shrub. The sound of the Kialing as it flowed strongly southwards was restful and she was glad that they were once more camping beside it. It would help her to sleep and not to lay awake, thinking of the dreams she had left behind her.

  She had gone as far as she dared and was just about to turn back when, in the deepening dusk, she saw the beaten earth where she had camped, and nearby, the inconsequential-looking shrub, its small yellow flowers closed but unmistakable.

  With an uprush of pleasure she knelt down beside it, taking a cutting, then she rested the note-book on her knee and regarded the shrub thoughtfully. She wouldn’t be able to tell how many petals there were until morning, when the flower opened, but she could make notes about its situation and the soil it was growing in.

  She looked at the soil and rubbed it with her fingers. It was very gritty. She somehow didn’t think that would be quite the kind of description that Zachary would deem as being sufficient. She took a handkerchief from the pocket of her jacket and scooped up as much soil as she could into it.

  Charles would be a far better judge of her find than she was. There were no similar plants around it, or any plants at all, so she wrote down the word ‘solitary’. Then she paused. She couldn’t measure the stem accurately without a ruler, so that task would also be best left until she returned to Charles, and she couldn’t make another drawing because it was too dark.

  Gianetta rose to her feet, her hands grubby. She would come back in the morning to sketch it, and Charles would be able to come and look at it and make any notes that were needed.

  ‘I found it,’ she called out to him as she walked back into the small camp. The fire was crackling merrily and the smell of beans and dried pork rose enticingly into the air.

  ‘Good girl.’ Charles was still propped against his banyan tree and she saw that one of the Chinese had poured him a restorative brandy.

  ‘It wasn’t very far away,’ she said, sitting down on the ground beside him. ‘You’ll be able to see it for yourself in the morning. However, I did my humble best for the field-notes. I’ve brought some of the surrounding soil back because I didn’t know how to describe it. It just looked gritty to me.’

  Charles grinned and she wondered whether it was the brandy or her news that had revived him. ‘Let’s have a look,’ he said, his grin deepening as he read the extent of her notes.

  ‘”Solitary” and “found near water” aren’t really enough, Gianetta. We’ll eat first and then I’ll show you what you should really have put.’

  They ate around the fire, and the same spirit of camaraderie that she had experienced the previous night enfolded her. She liked this life of the open air. She liked the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile, and surely finding a plant that in Europe was little known, or perhaps unknown entirely, was worthwhile?

  When one of the Chinese had taken their tin plates down to the river to wash, and the other had poured them hot mugs of tea, Charles said, ‘Now I’ll show you how to make proper field-notes. You have to remember that a gardener in England has to be able to grow the plant, so it is very important that he knows the conditions under which it grows here. This scraping of top soil isn’t of any use whatsoever. We have to know what the soil is like much deeper down. The Chinese will take care of that for us in the morning.

  She listened to him with keen attention, and when he had finished he said to her gently, ‘You really are serious about wanting to be a plant-hunter, aren’t you, Gianetta?’

  She nodded, hugging her knees with her arms. ‘Yes, it seems so wonderful. To perhaps be the first European to see a certain flower growing in the wild, and to bring the seeds of that flower back to England so that English gardeners can grow it. It seems such a marvellous, magical thing to do.’

  The flames from the fire had cast a rosy nimbus of light around Gianetta. Her face, with its fine-boned, delicate features, enormous dark eyes and gently curving mouth, looked as unbelievably beautiful that a lump rose in his throat.

  When he had taken advantage of her the previous night, kissing her so passionately, it had been nothing more than natural reaction at being faced with a girl he had already been attracted to, in inviting, unchaperoned circumstances. Now he knew that it could be far more. That if things were different …

  ‘Why are you looking so sombre?’ she asked him. ‘Is it your arm? Do you need to try and sleep?’

  ‘No, it isn’t that,’ he said, though his arm was hurting like the devil. ‘I was just bitterly regretting that I can’t make you an offer of marriage, Gianetta. I’m engaged already, you see.’

  ‘Oh!’ She didn’t know what to say. The sudden turn
in the conversation had taken her completely by surprise. They had been sitting, talking, in such easy friendliness that she had momentarily forgotten his disturbing kiss of the previous evening. She didn’t know whether to be shocked that he should have kissed her in such a manner when he was betrothed to another woman; flattered that he cared for her enough to wish he were free; or relieved that their relationship could only, after this admission, be one of friendship.

  At the troubled expression on her face he said sincerely, ‘I’m sorry if my behaviour yesterday evening led you to expect anything more honourable from me, Gianetta.’

  She shook her head, her hair tumbling in wild disarray around her shoulders. ‘No, I don’t think that it did. I was just surprised … and bewildered.’

  He remembered that she had no parents, and that her return to Chung King meant that, in a few weeks time, she would be returning to England and a lonely existence in a house occupied only by servants.

  ‘I can’t bear you to look so unhappy,’ he said, reaching out with his uninjured arm and taking her hand. ‘It will be devilishly difficult, but I’ll free myself, I’ll …’

  Her eyes flew wide. ‘No!’ she said with such obvious sincerity that his first instinct was to be offended. ‘I’m not in love with you, Charles. I thought at the Residency that perhaps I could be, just a little. But I know now that though I like you enormously, I’m not in love with you. So there’s no need for you to feel obliged towards me and for you to break off your engagement.’

  Charles didn’t know whether he felt relieved or shatteringly disappointed. ‘Then what is it?’ he persisted. ‘Why are you looking so sad?’

  She gave him a little smile. ‘Do I? I don’t mean to, but oh, Charles! I did so want to go to Kansu and search for blue Moonflowers!’

  He was silent for a minute and then he said, ‘Then why don’t you? You know what it’s like to ride on your own. Another two days of such riding and you could catch up with Zac. He won’t inconvenience himself by returning you to Chung King this time. He will have had enough of inconveniences.’

  His blue eyes were fierce as they held hers. ‘Follow your dream, Gianetta. Go to Kansu with Zac. Leave your uncle and the explanations to me.’

  ‘But your arm,’ she protested. ‘How will you manage? I can’t ride off and leave you.’

  ‘I’m in very good hands,’ he said, indicating the Chinese. ‘There’s only another day of riding ahead of us. I enjoy your company, Gianetta, but I don’t need it. I can survive without it. Take your opportunity, it may never come again. Go to Kansu!’

  Her eyes held his, excitement spiralling through her. She could still go. All she needed was the courage.

  ‘Set off in the morning,’ Charles said. ‘Zac won’t have travelled any further than the next town on the road north. He has to pick up the two replacement Chinese there, and it will take him at least a day to find suitable men, probably two. You’ll have no difficulty in catching up with him.’

  ‘Oh, Charles! Do you think I can? Do you think I should?’

  Despite his tiredness and his pain, he grinned. ‘Why the sudden doubts? You had none before, had you?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes glowing, her face radiant. ‘And I’ve none now! I’m going to Kansu and this time nothing, nothing at all, is going to stop me!’

  Chapter Five

  Gianetta slept soundly, comforted by Charles’ nearness and the deep friendliness that had been forged between them. In the morning he insisted that she take one of his pistols, patiently showing her how to load and fire it.

  She set off shortly after dawn, her heart beating fast and light. Charles standing by a grove of trees, waving goodbye to her with his uninjured arm until she was out of sight.

  It was the third time she had travelled the same stretch of countryside, and it was becoming reassuringly familiar. Ben cantered uncomplainingly and when the sun indicated that it was lunch-time she stopped, picnicking on the last of her bread and cheese and the melon-seeds, peanuts and candied orange-peel that the Chinese had generously insisted she take with her.

  After Ben had had time to rest she mounted him again, the road taking her through hills thick with pine and juniper, the Kialing never far from her left-hand side. She reached the spot where they had camped the previous night, a patch of still warm, blackened earth showing where their fire had been.

  From here on, the route she was to take was unknown to her. She knew only that Zachary had said he would be pausing at the next town to engage men to replace those returning to Chung King with Charles, and that he had said the town was some thirty li away, which was equivalent to ten English miles.

  ‘If we stay close to the river we can’t go far wrong,’ she said to Ben, with more confidence than she truly felt.

  The midday heat was uncomfortable, the increasingly undulating countryside eerily silent. A blue-jay darted low across the Kialing, disappearing into a narrow gully thick with poppies. The track she had been following and which had, in its earlier stages, been the road leading from Fu-tu Kwan, now disappeared altogether. She remembered her uncle once saying that roads, as Europeans understood them, did not exist in China. ‘Only narrow footpaths connect one town and village with another,’ he had said disparagingly, ‘and except by the waterways, nothing can be transported from place to place but on men’s backs.’

  ‘Which means the next town must be on the banks of the river,’ Gianetta said to Ben, determined not to be fazed by the increasingly difficult terrain.

  Ben’s attitude accorded perfectly with her own. As small chasms marred their way he leapt them with nimble alacrity, scrambling bravely down and up shallow gullies, only refusing to do so when she dismounted in order to make it easier for him.

  ‘Come on,’ she panted, after she had slithered to the base of one such gully more on her bottom than on her feet, ‘What are you waiting for?’

  He had stood at the edge of the gully eyeing her disapprovingly, making no effort whatsoever to follow her. In the end, she had had no choice but to scramble back up to him and take hold of his reins. Still he had refused to move. Only when she had reluctantly remounted him did he sedately continue.

  Despite all her efforts to keep the Kialing continually in sight, it proved to be impossible. The river entered a deep gorge, cliffs rising sheer from its banks. The only route it was possible to take led to the west, climbing upwards into scrubby pine-forest. Had Zachary, only a day earlier, taken the same route? Vainly she kept her eye out for hoof-prints or the blackened remains of a fire. There was nothing, not even a discarded peanut or melonseed-shell to indicate that she was riding in his wake.

  By early afternoon, as they climbed even higher, her apprehension began to deepen. How many li had they covered? Surely it was more than the thirty or so that Zachary had specified? If their route didn’t soon begin to wend downwards, she would have no alternative but to make camp for the night in the pine forest. And in the forest would be wolves, perhaps even leopards.

  They rounded the crest of the ravine they had been slowly traversing and there, far below them, was a glinting, shining loop of the Kialing.

  It was the most welcome sight she had ever seen. ‘And there are boats on it, Ben!’ she said exultantly. ‘Punts and sampans and even a junk!’

  Their way began to lead down-hill and, though the Kialing soon disappeared from view again, Gianetta was uncaring. She knew now that they were heading towards it, and she also knew that they were heading towards a town. Quite a large town, if the traffic on the river was anything to go by. In the town, they would find Zachary Cartwright.

  Light-heartedly she began to sing. Once she met up with Zachary Cartwright she would have nothing further to fear. He would be furious with her, but he had been furious with her before and she had survived the experience.

  ‘And Zachary Cartwright’s bad temper is far preferable to Lincolnshire,’ she said to Ben, leaning forward to give him an encouraging pat on his neck.

  Within a ve
ry little while the pine trees petered out altogether, to be replaced by minute paddy fields descending in steep terraces. They were now on a recognisable path and the next bend revealed a sizable walled town, a steep, slanting staircase of stone steps leading up to its main gate.

  A half-hour later, Ben was scaling the steps gallantly and Gianetta was again bombarded by stench and noise and an almost unbearable sense of claustrophobia. Just as in Fu-tu Kwan, the streets were unpaved, with open drains running down their centre, the houses pressing in higgledy-piggledy on either side.

  ‘We need to find an inn,’ she said to Ben, wondering how a Chinese inn made itself recognizable.

  Ben plodded stoically up first one narrow alley and down another. At last, Gianetta saw a painted wooden screen hanging over an uninvitingly dark doorway. The screen depicted an excessively large lady and she regarded it doubtfully, not sure whether it signified an inn or a house of ill-repute. A couple of mangy mules were tethered outside and Ben came to a halt beside them. Trusting his judgement she dismounted. There was no sign of Zachary Cartwright’s sleek and frisky pony. No sign of the pack-mules that had accompanied him.

  She adjusted her little round Chinese hat, took a deep breath and stepped towards the foetid, dark doorway. Once inside it took several seconds before her eyes adjusted to the gloom and she was able to discern people and shapes. Small rooms like hutches ran off at either side from the room she was standing in, which evidently served as the inn’s lobby. Half a dozen pairs of eyes stared at her with incredulity.

  Unable to single out anyone who was obviously the inn-keeper she said to the room at large, ‘Is there an Englishman staying here?’

  There was a murmur of incomprehension. All her audience were male, and all looked to be at least eighty years old.

  ‘An English-man,’ she said again. ‘He was hiring men to travel with him to Kansu.’

  At the word Kansu there were some encouraging nods and one of the wizened figures bravely approached her.