The Forbidden Orchid

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It was half the size of the Queen’s Fancy, and perfect in every way. Like the Queen’s Fancy, it was a deep purple with a bulbous sack below and three petals above. But the petals were shot through with stripes of gold so vivid they were almost iridescent. So brilliant was the bloom that it made the Queen’s Fancy look dowdy by comparison. It was scented as well, but the perfume wasn’t so much raspberries and cream as something more exotic, spicy even. It reminded me of the Oriental scent I’d smelled in the perfumer’s shop in Foochow.

  I glanced up, shading my hand against the sun. The tree was laden with them, so many in bloom that I couldn’t count them. It looked as though it had been bedecked with joyful Christmas baubles. It was the same with the tree next to it and five more near that one. I turned in a slow circle and found a bloom on every tree in each direction. They sat cradled in the nooks and crannies of each one, the gold stripes shining in the sun, the scent heady. I inspected the orchid in front of me perched on its own roots, as though placed there, not connected to the tree in any way that I could tell. It was a simple thing to lift it off its perch like a songbird, to untangle the roots from the lichen and bark.

  From the edge of my eye, a large bumblebee darted into view, her wings beating so rapidly that I could hear them buzzing. Completely unafraid of me, she hovered in front of the blossom in my hand and climbed into the petals, disappearing into the crevice between the three petals and emerging from the sack, completely covered in pollen. I could see that the bloom was perfectly matched to the insect, its body fitting quite neatly inside of it, like a key in a lock. Here before me was evidence of what Mr. Darwin had written. Here was the flower’s pollinator, the one that had evolved alongside it.

  Sated, the insect turned, hovering for a moment, regarding me. And I regarded it.

  I made my way carefully to the top of the hill, and tied a strip of cloth around a tree limb to note where the orchids were. I had to leave the flowers to help Alex, and hope the orchid thief had left the area already. I would come back to collect the plants as soon as I could.

  Flush with triumph, I headed back to the camp. Perhaps Mr. Pringle would accept this orchid in the Queen’s Fancy’s stead, or perhaps Sir William could help me find a buyer for these, and we could pay Mr. Pringle off. I could still smell the spicy scent of the orchid, and the fragrant bundles of wormwood on my shoulder lifted my spirits even further.

  Back at camp, I dipped water into the pan and carried it to the fire, which was still smoldering. I poked it alight and settled the pot over the sputtering flames. Alex still hadn’t awoken. Hadn’t even shifted on the ground.

  I went over and knelt beside him. “Alex?” I shook him a little, and his head lolled to one side. His face had been pale last night, but now it was beginning to take on a yellowish tinge. My mouth went dry; fear nipped at my stomach. I laid my head to his chest, and I could hear his heart beating faintly. I sat up and shook him again. He did not respond. I pressed my hands to my mouth. Why didn’t he awaken?

  One of the mules brayed, calling out to someone or something coming up the path. I stood. The hatchet was close by, and I picked it up and stepped closer to Alex. The mule brayed again, and I heard the clop of hooves as horses approached.

  “Elodie?” I heard Papa’s voice call out, and then a moment later Ching Lan and Papa came into view. I dropped the hatchet and ran to them. Papa slid off his horse, and I threw my arms around him.

  “My darling girl,” he said, hugging me close to him. “I am so happy to see you. I’m surprised to see you camping here. I thought you might be farther up ahead by the orchid site.”

  But all I could do was shake my head and say “Alex, Alex,” over and over.

  “Elodie! What is the matter?” He looked around me and saw Alex lying prone on his pallet.

  “He told me it was malaria,” I said.

  Ching Lan cried out and ran to Alex, moving swiftly into action as I relayed his symptoms and what I’d done for him. She felt his forehead and laid her head against his chest as I had, listening to his heart. She straightened. “He sleeps, but it’s not a good sleep.”

  “Have you seen him like this before?” Papa asked.

  “When Pru and I first found him in Foochow, he was very unwell from malaria. We treated him with quinine, and he got better in a few days.”

  “I found that herb in the ravine,” I said. “The one you told me about, for clearing heat in the body. Will it work for malaria?”

  “Yes, perfectly!”

  I fetched the plants for Ching Lan, and she set to work. She took the wormwood and tore a bunch of it from the bundle, plunging it into a pan of hot water. After it had steeped for several minutes, she wrung the wilted plants out over a cup.

  Papa sat Alex up, propping his near lifeless body against him.

  “Alex, you have to drink this.” I held the cup to his mouth, desperately hoping that he would hear me and swallow the medicine. I tipped a little of the liquid into his mouth, and I saw his throat bob as he swallowed it. A little bit more and then a little more, and finally he’d finished the entire cup. I prayed that he’d keep it down and not vomit it up like he had with the water. Minutes went by, we held our breaths, and the medicine stayed down.

  “How quickly will the herb work?” Papa asked.

  Ching Lan began preparing another bundle. “Three to five days is the treatment. If he doesn’t get better during that time, then we’ll know the fever damaged his body. If he does respond, I’m afraid he’ll remain weak for a long while. When malaria takes people this strongly, it can be weeks or months before they recover.”

  Papa laid Alex back down, and I took his hand in mine. It felt dry and hot, the fingers lifeless. I chafed them, trying to bring some movement back to them, wishing to feel his fingers gripping mine to reassure me, as he always did. He didn’t move, he didn’t respond, not even a quiver. It was as though the illness had reduced him to a living corpse.

  I LEFT ALEX IN CHING LAN’S CARE AN HOUR LATER, AND I TOOK PAPA to the Queen’s Fancy site. The scene was as nightmarish as I’d remembered. It looked like a giant had passed his hand over the top of the forest, snapping off the treetops, shuffled through the undergrowth on his way out, burning what remained.

  Papa walked about, searching for any signs of life. “Collecting out, that’s what this is. Some hunters take everything, stripping out every orchid, leaving a path of destruction behind them. It’s easier to cut down the trees than to climb them to remove the orchids. Then they set fire to the habitat so no one else can find the plants. I’m afraid this sort of behavior is normal with Cleghorn’s men. They may as well have signed their name to this.” Papa sank down on a tree stump and braced his elbows on his legs. He stared dully out onto the destruction, shaking his head. “And after we came all this way,” he whispered.

  “I did find another orchid,” I offered. “I found it by chance when I was looking for the herbs for Alex. It’s similar to the Queen’s Fancy, so I was thinking Mr. Pringle would accept this one in its stead. I think it’s more beautiful than the Queen’s Fancy.”

  Papa lifted his head. “Another orchid? Where?”

  “It’s not far. I’ll take you there.”

  We left the forest, and I led Papa along the path toward the ravine. The strip of cloth was still tied to the tree, fluttering in the breeze, marking the way. Papa followed me down the ravine to the new orchid’s site.

  And there they were; exactly as I had left them. When Papa leaned close to the nearest one, a ray of sun chose to shine down through the forest at that very moment, touching the stripes with light and illuminating them into burnished gold. The flower’s exotic scent burst forth, lingered for a moment, and then disappeared as the light shifted.

  “Extraordinary,” Papa said. He removed it from the tree, holding it with reverence, inspecting the petals carefully. “It’s the Queen’s
Fancy dressed in a ball gown, my dear, perfumed with a Parisian scent. I’ve never seen one like it, and I don’t know anyone who has.” He looked delighted, his face more animated than I had ever seen it. The tension and fear I’d held on to for months, since I stowed away on board the Osprey, perhaps since the day when Mr. Pringle’s men first appeared in my conservatory, began to ebb away.

  “Do you think it will be enough? Do you think Mr. Pringle will accept it?”

  He touched the petals. “Perhaps. There’s nothing more we can do. This is plant collecting. Sometimes you are too late, and sometimes you are bang on time.”

  “I saw a bumblebee pollinate one. It fit perfectly into this little aperture and came out the bulb below. It was as Darwin said. Each plant has its own pollinator that evolved alongside it.” I was eager to tell him all about it because I knew he would share in my excitement, would approve of what I had seen and noted. “I think we should record its natural setting and take a sample of the medium it sits in, because maybe the orchid will live longer if we can duplicate its natural home.”

  “Hmm, I do agree.” He smiled. “What are you going to name it? The plant hunter, or in this case the plant huntress, who discovers the plant has the privilege of naming it.”

  I thought it very kind that Papa would allow me to name it, but I would feel a fraud if I did so. The expedition was his, not mine. “I’m not a plant huntress. I found this by mistake.”

  “That’s how most of us find our plants,” he said. “I would go so far to say that you are better than a plant hunter; you’re a collector. You have a reverence for plants that most hunters lack.” He examined the plant again in the fading light. “Genus is Paphiopedilum, like the Queen’s Fancy. But the species and common name are up to you.”

  Papa and I settled on Paphiopedilum elodiae. For its common name I chose “the Sister Orchid,” both for its relationship to the Queen’s Fancy and in honor of my own sisters.

  We returned to camp to fetch the Wardian cases. The sun was high in the sky when we returned, and the orchids’ scent was even stronger, the exotic scent spicier. The orchids’ pollinators swarmed around the orchids, flitting from one to the other. I couldn’t bear to deprive the bees of their food source, so for every two orchids I removed I left one behind. We made sure to leave the habitat intact, even smoothing over the loose bark where the former orchid had stood. To the casual observer, who hadn’t seen the plants before, nothing looked amiss.

  As we worked, we wrapped each plant in dampened moss, standing them up, side by side, in the Wardian cases draped over Ink, who stood still as a statue.

  We removed three hundred orchids in various stages of flowering—some were in bloom, some were in spike, and some were in bud. We took a sampling of the substance they sat in so as to duplicate it as best we could in England. We noted the type of trees they lived on, the disparity of temperature between the forest and the open land, that the plant lived in shade, and that it did not mind being buffeted about by the wind.

  “I’m going to remain in China with Alex,” I said. Papa looked astonished, as though I was telling him I’d decided to live on the moon. “He’ll need looking after . . . and . . . and I promised him I wouldn’t leave him. I’ll ask Pru if we may stay with her.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Papa said. “We don’t even know yet if Alex will live through this.”

  “Don’t say that!” I said. “He will!” Of course I worried that Alex would die, but I didn’t dare give voice to that. I had to believe that he would live.

  “I think it’s best you leave Alex to Pru. She knows him better than you, after all. He’ll return to the sea when he’s well, and then where will you be? Your marriage is in name only, isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you both told me?” Papa didn’t wait for my reply, he continued on: “The captain assured me he’d have a place on the Osprey in December. It’s your sisters and your mother who need you. It’s time to go home now.”

  “Oh, I . . .” The confidence I had gained by finding the orchid slipped away from me. I’d forgotten that Mamma and my sisters needed me. Papa would return to his life at Kew, and I must return to mine. This world I had stepped into and grown to love was not mine for the taking. My life was back in England. Back in Edencroft. For the rest of my life I would remain a kind of widow, unable to re-marry as long as Alex remained alive. Should he decide to divorce me or annul our marriage, I’d never be able to wed anyway because no one would marry a discarded woman.

  But Alex had said he loved me. Perhaps when he was well, he would come to Kent with me? But I couldn’t see Alex living in Edencroft. There was nothing for him there. What would he do? Go on my little plant hunting expeditions with me? What a fabulous idea. Lock Alex in the glasshouse alongside me. My stomach twisted. Alex was made for adventure, not for a staid existence. I had to let him go.

  “Of course, Papa,” I said. “What was I thinking?”

  He brushed my cheek with his fingers. “There’s my good girl. My steady Elodie.” He looked at my hand. “Easy there, watch what you’re doing.”

  Startled, I opened my hand; my palm was stained green. I had squeezed the orchid in my hand so tightly that I had crushed it.

  ON THE FOURTH DAY OF HIS ILLNESS, ALEX AWOKE. I WAS SITTING with his head in my lap, my hand resting on his shoulder and my eyes closed when I felt his hand on mine. Startled, I looked down to see his eyes open. Apart from the dark circles smudging the skin under them, his eyes were clear and alert.

  I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to tell him that I loved him and I would never leave him, but I couldn’t. It hurt too much to say those words. So instead, like a coward, I hardened my heart toward him.

  I called to Ching Lan and left him in her care.

  Within a few more days, Alex was able to sit up on his own, eat a little rice, and hold down a few cups of weak tea. It was time to take him back to Pru’s, where he could recover fully. Alex was not strong enough to manage a horse by himself, even for short distances, so Papa hired chair bearers from the nearest village. I nearly cried watching the coolies help Alex into the sedan chair. He looked so gaunt and weak, and I was terrified he wouldn’t survive the long journey back.

  I worried about Ching Lan, too. The closer we drew to Yen-Ping, the more subdued she became. She only had a handful of days before she was to depart with her parents for Peking. She stopped talking, stopped collecting plants, stopped noticing anything. She replied to my questions with short answers. Her time of freedom was growing short.

  We were one day out from Pru’s when I woke to the sound of someone crying. In the moonlight I saw Ching Lan kneeling on the ground, her long hair falling all around her, keening. It was the sound of utter heartbreak. The kind of weeping that is uncontrollable, where one can only wait until the grief completely passes. She was trying in vain to make it stop, the back of her hands dashing over and over at her eyes.

  I went to her and put my arms around her, just as I would any of my sisters. She resisted at first, her body stiffening, but then she laid her head on my shoulder and let herself cry.

  “I can’t go to the Forbidden City,” she said. “I won’t go.”

  I didn’t know what to do to help her. “Come with me to England,” I said, grasping at straws. “You can live with me and my sisters. You’ll be welcome there. And safe.”

  She shook her head. “Chinese women cannot travel. It’s illegal.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to her to comfort her. She had every right to her tears, and nothing I could do would help her.

  “Lend me your knife,” she said.

  I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Searching for plants at night?”

  She flipped open the knife and touched the blade again and again with the tip of her finger, almost as though she were testing herself. She kept on until the blade sliced through and a bead of blood appeared.

 
; “I told you to be careful with that, Ching Lan. It’s sharp.”

  I put out my hand to get the knife back, and she held it out of my reach, her expression defiant.

  A cold dread washed over me. I was stupid to give her the knife. “What are you doing, Ching Lan? If you think I’m going to let you kill yourself, you’re wrong!”

  “I’m not going to kill myself,” she said. “I’m going to cut my face, like you did the orchid thief’s. I’ll say it was a tiger that bit me.”

  “Give me the knife back. You’re mad!”

  “Girls who are ill or deformed aren’t accepted. Don’t you see? This is what I need to do to make things better. I should have done it when I was thirteen, and then maybe Pru wouldn’t have been sent away. Maybe Alex wouldn’t have turned to opium again if we were there to be his family. I should have done it then, but I was too scared.”

  “None of that is your fault.” But I understood how Ching Lan felt because I held myself to the same standards. Perhaps we were both wrong. Perhaps fault wasn’t as simple as blaming ourselves.

  “Elodie, this is my decision, not yours! If I become a concubine, I’ll a die a new death every day.”

  “There has to be something else we can do. I’ll ask Papa—”

  “You can’t fix everything! What else do you think you control? The ocean tides? The moon’s beams? You Westerners think you can change China, that it needs fixing. We are not yours to fix or to change.”

  “What about Pru? She’s a Westerner, and it seems to me that she taught you another life.”

  “Pru understands Chinese people. She knows she’s the same as us, not above us.”

  “I don’t think I’m above you.”

  “I know you don’t, but you will go home. Pru is not like the missionaries who live on a hill. She lives simply, alongside us. She never thinks she knows best. If you want to really help me, you can leave me be.”