The Concubine's Daughter

by null

  Ah-Keung mouthed a vicious curse, his left hand blocking her strike too late to deflect its impact. She sensed his crippling snap-kick to her upper shin before it reached her, lifting easily from its path. Her left hand flew in a wide arc, her arm supple as the neck of the crane, her fingers bunched and rigid as the lethal beak, under Ah-Keung’s attacking arm, driving upward with the force of a sword point to a spot slightly below the armpit, allowing for the shifting of the pressure points, letting her senses guide her. Every ounce of her willpower and every second of her training went into the lethal strike of di-muk, the death touch she had practiced ten thousand times for this moment of truth.

  She drove through vulnerable flesh between the muscles, penetrating tissue between corded cartilage, piercing taut sinew to reach the nerve juncture slightly above and behind the diaphragm, plunging with the force of a battle axe to the root of his lung; so finely tuned to his savage vibrations that she felt the electric spasm run up her arm like the ringing of steel upon steel. No sound escaped Ah-Keung’s gaping jaws as he fought for his next breath, his damaged, blood-filled eyes staring at the burning sun.

  In that splinter of time the voice of her si-fu spoke again: Yan-jing-shi is unforgiving. We must strike him before he strikes us. But she also heard him say in a quieter voice beneath the pear tree: It is not easy to take a life and carry this forever in your heart. It is the heaviest of all burdens and leaves no place for happiness. To kill another is the end of freedom… . Sometimes it is the loser that wins.

  The aim of her blow shifted, avoiding by a hair’s breadth the lethal spot deep behind the rib cage that separates the heart and lung from the liver and the gut, deflecting its full power from the lethal point of entry. Ah-Keung bent backward like a tautened spring, the bloodstained face of the tiger bared to a livid sky as he fought for breath. Every muscle in his body quivered, his hands flapping helplessly at his sides. One violent convulsion bucked him like a lightning bolt; blood flowed freely from his broken nose, seeping from his mouth where he had bitten through his tongue. Sing stepped back as he dropped to his knees, suspended by the shock of disbelief, to pitch forward at her feet.

  Such a strike would have instantly killed any ordinary man, stopping any normal heart like a shaft of steel. She had spared his life, but the deflected blow had taken its toll; even a hardened warrior like Ah-Keung could not survive without lasting internal damage.

  Sing Devereaux felt the spirit of Red Lotus leave her on the wings of the crane, along with all thoughts of violence and a threatened past. Turning her back on Ah-Keung the Forceful One, she saw only the herb gatherer who had swum the lake and roamed the hills in search of himself. She would never know if the decision to spare him came from her master’s wish to save her from a deadly karma, or from her own sorrow for one who had faced an uncaring world with nothing but his strength and his courage to sustain him. She shed silent tears of regret for the abandoned boy whose cries to the gods had gone unheard.

  Siu-Sing walked to the rock’s farthest edge. Looking out over the clean colors of the sea at the glittering spray shattering like walls of green glass on the rocks far below, she felt the bond between her and the Rock of Great Strength part like a broken thread. The voice of Old To no longer whispered to her. Although Ah-Keung’s injuries would improve with time, the strengths and passions of the warrior would never return to him … and never again would he threaten her or those she loved.

  Lu, the nun, appeared beside her with a bamboo dipper of strong herbal tea. Her face said nothing and she did not speak, yet her gentle presence was like a calming hand. The threads of cloud had dissolved and the sun was clear of the sea, the keening of gulls unchanged. No word was spoken as Sing rose and took the steep path down toward the Temple of the Precious Lotus. There was no sign of Ah-Keung’s body or of his blood. It was as though he had never been there. Monks worked silently side by side in the gardens … as though nothing had taken place in the shadow of the Pearl Pagoda.

  Abbot Xoom-Sai had accepted the eighth scroll, along with the jade amulet, eight strands of Sing’s hair plaited into its gleaming chain. Red Lotus was no more. It had taken one hundred days. “You were wise to spare the life of one so lost to reason; his is a karma that is heavy with hate.”

  The abbot’s words were spoken in comfort, but Sing replied with a bitterness she could not hide. “I too was lost and belonged nowhere until I took his place upon the rock. He is not to blame. He has a right to hate me. It was I who entered the world of yan-jing-shi and stole from him his only dream.”

  The abbot shook his head. “It was the hand of To-Tze, the word of his si-fu that barred his way.” He fluttered a frail hand. “This was decided before the soul of your ancestors had entered your body. You knew nothing of this world or its trickery.” He sighed heavily. “Evil had claimed him before your feet had found the earth. His own heart is his greatest enemy. It is you who survives this ku-ma-tai. The eye of the tiger is forever closed and the venom of the snake is no more.”

  Abbot Xoom-Sai placed his hand upon Sing’s head. “Go without regret, siu-jeh. He has many brothers here. Perhaps his troubled mind will find peace in stillness until he is laid to rest as one of us.”

  The skin of his hands seemed transparent, yet were surprisingly warm as he folded something in her palm no larger than a pebble. “Wear this in peace and harmony. The Precious Set of Eight and the jade amulet will be kept in sanctity and safety until the day you return for them.” Four novice monks in bright saffron robes lifted the temple’s palanquin as though it carried a child and the slap of their sandaled feet became a rhythm as Sing Devereaux descended from the heights of Lantau. Halfway down, she opened her palm to find a tiny golden Buddha glittering in the sun.

  CHAPTER 36

  Angel’s Garden

  In the Pavilion of Joyful Moments, Sing Devereaux sat in quiet contemplation. Her life seemed almost complete and the way ahead soon clear. Toby’s duties kept him on the border or in the briefing room of Government House, but she had spoken with him on the telephone. The regiment, he had said soberly, was preparing to defend its territory.

  Both he and Winifed begged her to leave Hong Kong to live with his parents in Surrey. She had laughed at the thought, but loved them both for their concern.

  On the table before her was a file that had come with a note from Angus Grant.

  I’ll not ask where you’ve been, only thank the Lord that you’re back. I have found one more lead in the search for news of your father. These papers include a bill of sale for a block of land on the Whangpoo River in Shanghai. The site is occupied by the Flying Angel Mission to Seamen, and the deed is cosigned with the name Agnes Gertrude Gates.

  I will be with you tomorrow. It is time to visit the English garden.

  There were photographs of her father beside a stout woman with a shock of white hair framing a face wreathed in smiles. There were also letters suggesting great warmth, humor, and trust between them. The official documents dealing with the property were stamped with the seal of the international organization of the Flying Angel Mission to Seamen.

  Angus arrived after lunch on the following day, moments ahead of a delivery van. He supervised the unloading of a large flat item encased in a linen sheet, which two men carried carefully into the dining room. “I’ve a bit of a surprise for you, but first we’ll take a look at the English garden. You’d best prepare yourself, but I think you’re ready.”

  The overgrown gate was heavily chained and padlocked. Angus battled with the rust of years, finally opening it with a large iron key, handing it to Sing. “It’s the only one. Ben made me swear that no one would know of this place but myself, Indie Da Silva, and you if you were ever found.”

  He forced a space for them to squeeze through. What was once a pathway through the spinney of birch and larch trees was knee-deep in weeds and undergrowth. On the edge of the treeline, overlooking the sea, was a mound smothered in wild violets. He crouched to pull away the growth of many years
concealing the face of the tomb, wiping the rose-colored quartz face with his handkerchief and standing back for her to see the the deeply chiseled words inlaid with gold:

  HERE LIES A SCHOLAR.

  HER NAME IS LI-XIA DEVEREAUX.

  1906–1924

  She ran from no one and hid from nothing.

  They stayed long enough to make some order of its surroundings. There were no tears, but Sing thanked Angus with quiet words and asked to be left alone for a while.

  “Take your time, lassie. I’ll be in the dining room when you’re good and ready.” Sing Devereaux sat beside her mother’s grave until the sun had dipped behind the far horizon. No one would ever know what it was they talked about.

  When she entered the dining room, she stopped at the French doors open to the terrace. At the far end of the long room, taking up most of the wall it was intended for and lit from above, hung the life-size portrait of Li-Xia and Captain Devereaux. “I had it cleaned and restored by experts. It’s by Sir George Chinnery himself, painted just outside the door you’re standing in.”

  Sing could scarcely find the words to thank him. When he had left, she sat at the shining table beneath the portrait of her parents and lost no time in writing to the English headquarters of the Flying Angel Mission to Seamen in England seeking information about Agnes Gates.

  The response, when it came weeks later, was what Sing had been hoping for. The Shanghai branch of the organization was still an active mission, and Miss Agnes G. Gates had been its superintendent for the past thirty years. Sing wrote to her at once, and received an immediate reply urging Sing to visit her as soon as possible, indicating that she had important things to tell her of an extremely confidential nature.

  She telephoned Angus immediately. “I must go to Shanghai. I believe this lady may be able to tell me what really happened to my father. Can you arrange a flight as quickly as possible?”

  He sounded worried. Shanghai was in Japanese hands; even though the officials were easily bribed to arrange such a flight, her father had played very dangerous games with very dangerous people. Privately wondering what he would think if he knew of her battle with Ah-Keung, Sing thanked him for his concern but insisted that she must go.

  There was a brief silence, after which he said, “Well, I suppose you could not be in safer hands; Aggie Gates was like a mother to him. If anyone knows of Ben’s true fate, she will.”

  Sing was thilled by her first flight in an airplane. The Catalina flying boat swept in low over the East China Sea, over the old treaty port of Ningpo to the vast mouth of the Yangtze, its crowded waters littered with Japanese warships. It circled the patchwork of rice fields and mangrove swamps that skirted the industrial enclave of Pudong, skimming the choppy brown surface of the Whangpoo River to the commercial canal of Soochow Creek.

  Sing found the the mission little changed from the old glass-plate photographs in her father’s files: a large, rambling, two-story structure, made of concrete with timber add-ons, and a corrugated iron roof, on which the emblem of the Flying Angel spread its rusted wings and raised its battered trumpet.

  If the building was unlovely, the grounds made up for it, including several acres of thriving vegetable plots, where satisfied goats grazed among chicken coops and duck ponds. An abundant orchard spilled down to the water’s edge; a jetty poked into the whirling currents of the broad commercial river where cormorants and gannets perched to dry their ragged wings.

  Moments after she arrived at the mission, Sing found herself sinking into a cavernous armchair in Aggie Gates’s upstairs parlor. “I hope you don’t mind condensed milk. We’re short of fresh cow’s milk in Shanghai—we had a cow, but our Japanese friends ate it rather quickly.” Aggie poured strong tea from a very large pot crowned with a knitted cosy. She turned her wonderful smile on Sing, unscrewing a half bottle of gin and adding a generous slug to her tea, offering the same to Sing with a raised eyebrow.

  “Not for you, I don’t imagine … but a blessing for old bones, believe me.” She handed Sing a brimming mug and raised her own. “I am glad you were able to come; Shanghai is not an easy place to be these days. Fortunately, they tend to leave me alone.” She smiled again. “I don’t think they quite know what to do with me.”

  Aggie was as large and lumpy as her easy chairs and just as inviting. Her round ruddy face looked freshly scrubbed, and white wisps of hair were braided at her ears like a Swedish milkmaid. With her leg-of-mutton arms folded comfortably across a formidable bosom, she looked, Sing couldn’t help thinkng, like a very large steamed pudding freshly liberated from its cloth.

  “I had to see your face … look into your eyes to know you are truly his child. I see that you are, and it lifts my heart to say so. You stand as he stood, straight as a jack-staff and proud as his house flag.”

  She heaved herself from the chair to fold Sing into her motherly arms and to kiss her cheek. “God bless you … this is a day I thought would never come.”

  “My father was lucky to have such a friend as you,” Sing replied with heartfelt respect. “I would be grateful for the chance to speak of him and to hear what you know of his death, and perhaps where he rests… .”

  Aggie raised a hand to stop her. “I will not ask where you have been for these many years, or how you got to be here. You’re here, and that itself is a miracle.” She turned a beaming smile upon her visitor. “But then, everything about your old man is a blessed miracle …

  “I want you to brace yourself, my child. There is something I have to tell you that no living soul can know but you.” Sing looked patiently at her father’s old friend.

  “They said the river was alight that night—a tide of flame that spread from shore to shore. Under Japanese fire, Golden Sky and her cargo of munitions were split into matchwood and every man aboard went with it.”

  She shook her head at the memory. “Any other man would have died that night, but not Ben Devereaux—somehow he swam clear of that field of flames. They hauled him out of the creek at dawn, floating with the rubbish at low tide. There was enough left of him to give them my name, so they dumped him here more dead than alive.”

  Sing listened to the words as though in a dream. “He had burns like I’ve never seen on a living creature. Hospital? They’d have let him die—put him out of his misery. Lucky I know a thing or two about burns. Trouble was, gangrene set in. There was a Chinese doctor I knew took care of that the best he could.”

  Aggie faltered, as though losing track of thoughts that were too hard to bear. “We took care of him in there, in a tub of oil, for three months, then on a bed of cotton wool for the best part of a year.” She nodded toward an adjoining room, its doorway hung with a curtain of threaded bamboo. “Couldn’t touch him for most of that time … he just survived. A hundred times I thought he was gone. The pain he was suffering … forgive me, dearie, I prayed for the Lord to take him.” She sniffled hard. “Every time, he would open his eye, to let me know he wasn’t ready yet.”

  Aggie suddenly sat forward, one work-reddened hand on each knee. “Well, he never was ready. He looked the Almighty in the eye and said no … not yet. I have a child to live for.”

  Sing could barely frame the question. “Do you mean … ?” “That’s right, dearie, your father is still alive … no more than spitting distance from where you’re sitting now.” She reached out to stop Sing from rising.

  “Easy now, I’m not finished yet. We have to think about this. It was two years before he could leave that room. He didn’t want anyone to see what was left of him, and made me give him my solemn oath that I’d tell no one that he still lives. No one but you, that is, not even his partner, Indie Da Silva.”

  Aggie’s warm hands cupped Sing’s face as though it were a precious flower. “I don’t think he ever gave up waiting for you … he said that your mother spoke to him, told him you would come. So go to him gentle-like, but be ready … his body has failed him and he was terrible hurt.”

  Sing could no longer figh
t the tears she had denied for so long, whether of happiness or grief she could not tell. Aggie took her gently by the hand, drawing her to the window and pushing aside the chintz curtain.

  “Down there, by the old jetty, there’s a seat facing the river. He made it for me when he was a boy and it still stands strong. It’s where he spends his time, listening to the voices of the river and feeding the birds.” She ushered Sing to the door with another firm hug, her voice little more than a whisper. “I have to tell you he cannot see, but his spirit is still strong. All the fires in Hades couldn’t burn that.”

  Descending the stairs alone, Sing was truly afraid for the first time in her life. Afraid of what she would see, what she would say, how she would say it, afraid of what he would think of her.

  The hunched figure with its back to her sat motionless, except for a slight movement every now and again as he threw crumbs to a gang of marauding gulls. Wearing a faded oilskin jacket, the hood pulled up to cover his head, he half turned at the flurry of wings, as though sensing her presence.

  “That you, Aggie? God’s teeth, you know how to creep up on a man, for one who’s built like a tugboat.”

  As suddenly as it had descended, Sing’s uncertainty lifted. She saw his hand, with the top joints of his Angers missing, making a clean job of tossing crumbs to the birds. Light dancing off the water showed a glimpse of his face, so disfigured it made her catch her breath. She spoke with great tenderness.

  “It is I, Father, your daughter. My name is Siu-Sing … it means Little Star.” She took his hand, placing the Anger jade in its palm, closing the crippled Angers around it.