The Book of Bones

by Natasha Narayan

  “It’s all right,” he soothed.

  “GO! GO! GO!” she yelped. The whistle came again from between Yin’s lips and the needle began to chitter-chatter on the machine by her side. “Go way.”

  “Come on,” said Isaac, sounding frightened.

  “NO,” Rachel said. “We stay. We want to help you, Yin. Please be calm.”

  Yin wasn’t listening. The eerie whistling scream came from her lips, striking dread into my heart. I stood up and began to back toward the door.

  “Maybe we should listen to her,” I said.

  “No.” Suddenly Yin ceased whistling. “Too Late! Hide!” She was pointing at the large white cupboard in the corner of the room. “Now.”

  “We can’t all squeeze in there!” I exclaimed.

  “GO!”

  As one we dived toward the cupboard, opening the door and herding inside. It made no sense for there was no one about, no one outside as far as we could tell. I wouldn’t have obeyed Yin’s orders, but there was something so panicked in her voice I felt we had no choice. The cupboard was dusty and uncomfortably full of things we couldn’t see in the dark. But we could glimpse through the shutters back into the room. My heart almost stopped as a shadow appeared at the door. It swung open and a man carrying a powerful lamp was silhouetted against the stars.

  “I believe I’m becoming sloppy,” he drawled to himself. “I could’ve sworn I locked the door.”

  The well-bred voice belonged to a man wearing a white coat, which he’d hastily thrown over some striped pajamas.

  “What seems to be the problem, Yin? You’re whistling fit to bring the house down.”

  He stepped into the room, haloed by the lamp, and we saw him clearly, a stranger never before glimpsed in all our weeks of tedious voyage. He had blue eyes, sparse blond hair and lips so thin they almost disappeared into his skin, along with a very weak chin. An Englishman to the core. He was chattering to himself, a sound oddly like that of his dummy-like machine. Yin was slumped back against the pillows, lifeless as a marble statue.

  “Naughty girl, waking the doctor in the middle of the night.” He stood by the bed and gently smoothed her hairless scalp. “You know I’m preparing my paper, little Yin. It’s hard work, not like lounging about in bed all the time. I’m very angry with you. Better pull your socks up or else we’re not going to have much of a show in Shanghai!”

  As he talked to himself, he was preparing a syringe, filling it from a bottle he’d pulled out of a bureau. He tested the syringe by squirting some of the white liquid into the air, and then, satisfied, he plunged it into Yin’s arm. She moaned but lay still.

  “That should keep you quiet for a bit!” the doctor muttered. He picked up the calipers and began to measure Yin’s head, kneading and probing. He got out a pen and began to scribble something on her skull. All the while he kept up the steady stream of talk—drivel really.

  “You’ll do me proud, little Yinny,” he said. “No more nonsense about phrenology being a fake. Cooper will eat his hat and so will Portland. Lord Portland indeed. I’ll lord it over him when I’m done. It takes rare skill, it does, a case as complex as this. Perhaps they’ll ‘Lord’ me. No more doctor, I’ll be Lord Billings of Shanghai, fellow of the Royal College of Science, renowned from the banks of the Thames to the Soochow flats. Ha!”

  I had a powerful desire to burst out of the cupboard, to swat the doctor, if that was what he really was, with one of his own machines. Most probably, rather than a real doctor given to the healing of the sick, he was one of those quacks who haunt fairgrounds but are known sometimes to stalk the corridors of universities and hospitals. Still muttering, he opened a notebook and jotted down some of his readings. Flipping it shut, he reached out again and stroked Yin’s head, as if smoothing down imaginary hair. It made my flesh crawl. But there was a tenderness in the man’s gesture—so would a father pat his daughter’s head.

  I thought with a sudden pang of my own father, back in Oxford. He must be frantic, poor Father. Had he managed to pick up our trail at all?

  We all held our breath, scared to move a muscle though it was hot and cramped in the cupboard. The doctor straightened up and wished Yin goodnight. My heart stopped as he moved toward us. He was going to open the door. But at the last minute he veered off and my breathing returned to normal. His lamp cast a pool of bobbing light as he walked out of the laboratory.

  We stumbled out of the cupboard. I took Yin’s hand and tried to wake her. The injection had obviously dulled her for she was frighteningly unresponsive. Though her eyes briefly fluttered open, they quickly closed again. The brief glimpse I’d had of her eyeballs, swimming in a yellowish pus, chilled me.

  “We’d better go,” Rachel whispered.

  Through the tiny porthole window we could see the sea blushing pink, the first signs of the approaching dawn. The crew would be up and about soon. If we were found here, it would be all the worse for Yin.

  The machines were still as we left the girl. No more chattering, no more whining shrill. Only an underlying hum, like the breathing of a great mechanical beast, which I’d not noticed before. I was the last to leave the laboratory and the only one to hear Yin’s parting words. I turned round sharply to gaze upon her. But she was still mute and immobile—quite impossible that she’d spoken. Perhaps I had imagined the girl’s words. Or perhaps in some fantastical way she was speaking to me direct, thought to thought.

  “I’ll meet you in the belly of the dragon,” said the high voice, echoing in my mind as we tramped the silent steamer back to our cabins. Her words haunted me. Try as I might to unravel their meaning, I could make no sense of them.

  “I’ll meet you in the belly of the dragon.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  From dawn till dusk on the day following our discovery of Yin and the opium, we were kept busy with our Mandarin lessons. I am ashamed to say I was not a good student. Indeed I barely learned a word of that odd language. It was sundown before the four of us found the chance to grab a moment. The sea was choppy, making the Mandalay roll and tumble. Her sails had been furled as a precaution against the weather, but the gale still whistled through the rigging. The oily smoke pouring through her red funnels was whipped by the wind into fantastical shapes like ragged washing in the sky. Though we were all seasoned sailors by now, even I felt a little queasy. We talked in hushed, rapid voices, our words half swallowed by the swoosh of the propellers churning below us, making good time toward Shanghai harbor.

  “Enough,” hissed Rachel. “We have to take a stand.”

  “They’ll murder us,” Isaac murmured.

  Rachel persisted. “We can’t leave Yin to their mercy.”

  She was right, of course. We had to do something. But what?

  “What’s your bright idea then?” Isaac asked in a choking voice. I glanced at him. His face was yellowish and I realized he was very frightened.

  “This whole thing stinks,” Rachel said. “It’s evil. I want to get out.”

  “Jump overboard if you like!” Isaac snapped.

  “Oh, keep quiet, Isaac. It’s all very well for you geniuses. You live in a fantasy world full of wires and engines. But this isn’t about science. It is real life. That poor child is suffering.”

  “Truce,” I said, walking up to the rail between them. When brother and sister squabbled like this, amazingly enough it was up to me to play peacemaker. “We know the Bakers are evil. The question is what to do about it? We’re not free agents, they’ve snared us in their coils. We’ve only a couple of cards up our sleeve.”

  “Such as?” the others chorused.

  “One: the Baker Brothers need us. Without us they can’t get this Book of Bones thing.”

  “Maybe,” Rachel murmured. “What else?”

  “Look! We’re nearly at Shanghai—our first chance to escape from these thugs. We need to do something really important before we try to save Yin.”

  “What?”

  “Find a doctor. We must find medical
help in Shanghai or else one of us will die.”

  “How will we get away from Lips and his gang?” asked Rachel.

  “The hand of God?” I shrugged. “Look here, it is impossible to escape at sea—but once we’re on dry land, who knows?”

  Through the mist, the boulevards of Shanghai were beckoning us. This city was a legendary blend of East and West and I was desperate to reach it. But we couldn’t travel fast up Soochow Creek as we were stuck in a mess of waterborne traffic. What a lot of boats! Dutch traders, Imperial warships, Japanese junks and Chinese sampans. Ships of wood and others of iron, painted and unpainted, bearing scarlet sails or drab white masts. There were even craft decked in gorgeous flowers, like floating roof gardens. Among this motley assortment were the sleek shapes of the opium smugglers—the Fast Crabs and Scrambling Dragons.

  The iron flanks of our majestic steamer were pushing aside the wooden junks and sampans. I spied a lorcha with a dragon painted on her bow. Suddenly the boom of our klaxon cut our discussion short. We had finally arrived in Shanghai! Our trunks and valises were already laid out on deck, and as the gangway went down three Chinese porters appeared from nowhere to carry our loads. I was not surprised to see Mrs. Glee and Lips, the captain, in his full uniform, waiting for us on deck.

  “Goodbye,” Mrs. Glee said, extending a hand toward me.

  “What do you mean?!” I exclaimed, totally thrown. My friends were equally bewildered. Were we now on our own? Suddenly all my fantasies of escape were pointless.

  “Our instructions are to leave you in Shanghai,” Mrs. Glee said. Her eyes rested on me briefly. “Oh … I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said coldly. “You made your choices.”

  “Kit … Waldo … I never meant you any harm.”

  “You’re soft as a sponge, Vera,” Lips sneered. “They’ll be right as rain. Good riddance, say I.” He turned disgustedly away from us and leaning over the rail spat a wodge of chewing tobacco into the sea.

  Mrs. Glee was holding something out to me—a leather case. I opened it and saw that it was packed with documents and heavy silver coins.

  “What is this?” I asked stupidly.

  “Papers you need. Money. Imperial silver taels,” Mrs. Glee answered, not looking me in the eye. “We were told to leave you in Shanghai with plenty of money and, well, you would take care of the rest.”

  “But—” Waldo spluttered, indignantly. “The Baker Brothers—”

  “I know as little as you do,” she said, though she was still refusing to meet our eyes. “I’m a servant. I do as the Brothers instruct me. I know they’ve set you a task. ‘Those children will find their way to do it,’ they said. ‘They’re stubborn little devils.’”

  “But where will we stay?” Waldo spluttered. “What are we meant to—”

  “I can’t help. I really can’t … I’m … I’m so—”

  “Don’t say you’re sorry again,” I interrupted. “Hot air doesn’t mean a thing.”

  Mrs. Glee flashed me a hurt look, but at least it cut off another string of excuses. She turned her back on us and clipped away, her sharp heels clacking down the deck. For a moment I repressed a pang of pity; she looked so frail in her sea green blouse and jade beads. Even her walk was trembling. Then I thrust those feelings away.

  “Well—” Waldo whistled—“I expect that’s the last we’ll see of her.”

  “I shan’t regret it!” Rachel snapped.

  My mind was already on something far more important than Mrs. Glee. “I’ll meet you in the belly of the dragon,” Yin had said. China was a huge country; we couldn’t scour it looking for dragons’ bellies. Where was this odd-sounding place? In Shanghai? Peking? Or the wilds of the countryside?

  Chapter Fourteen

  We had scarcely landed at Shanghai before we were attacked. At least that’s what it felt like. “Ouch!” I growled at the coolie in the straw hat who was tugging me away from my friends toward his rickshaw. “I don’t need a haircut!”

  “Wha?” The coolie grinned.

  “That’s my hair you’re pulling.”

  I realized I had snapped at the wrong man—another coolie was tugging my hair. Such a mob of drivers, touts and most probably pickpockets had surrounded us as we disembarked that I felt I was losing my wits. All of them seemed to be clawing at me, jabbering, “Missy, Missy.” Rachel was lost from view in a jumble of plaits and hats, Isaac was flailing. It was so hot even the stones on the quay seemed to be steaming, covering everything in dense perspiration.

  Thankfully Waldo took charge, shoving people out of the way and barking commands. He had grown so much lately he towered over the sea of conical straw hats.

  Somehow we managed to select a rickshaw pulled by two strong but stick-thin coolies, who took us to a boarding house on Bubbling Well Road. Our rooms were clean, our beds dressed with heavily embroidered Chinese silks. Exhausted, we collapsed into sleep. But I woke in the night disoriented at missing the gentle motion of the steamship. I was deeply uneasy, with a sour taste in my mouth and a sickness in the pit of my stomach. The Bakers’ poison working its way through my veins? We must find Yin. But how? What chance did we have in this huge, teeming land where we had the advantage of neither language nor friends.

  I almost wished Aunt Hilda was with us.

  The next morning we breakfasted early on porridge laced with treacle and got directions to an English doctor from the Welsh lady who ran the boarding house. Rather puzzlingly Shanghai is divided into many “concessions,” with the English, Americans and French all owning portions of the booming port. What a city! Stately avenues, elegant boulevards, towering stone buildings that would have graced Piccadilly or the Champs Elysées. No wonder it was called the Paris of the Orient. It was as if some grand European metropolis had erupted, fully formed, in the middle of Asia.

  But Asia it was, no doubt about that. As we made our way on foot to the doctor, my eyes were drawn by a thousand wondrous sights. A purple pagoda in the shade of blossom trees. A fine Chinese lady with vermilion lips and black-lined eyes, wearing a traditional high-necked dress in pink satin. She surveyed the world like an empress from her gold sedan chair while her bearers puffed and sweated. Smoked ducks hanging in rows from their long necks. Sacks of rice piled high. Thousands of tiny bamboo cages, each one graced by a twittering songbird. An armless beggar rolled up in a doorway, his face grimed with sweat and dirt but wearing a once elegant silk tunic.

  Isaac stopped in wonder before one stall that was selling hundreds of colorful tubes and boxes. The seller was toothless with a long pigtail hidden behind a broad-brimmed straw hat. A sign engraved with gold letters hung above him.

  “You like?”

  “What are they?”

  “Fire,” the man explained. He pulled out a handful of something and threw it on the pavement. It exploded among us with deafening bangs and multicolored sparks.

  “Fireworks!” Isaac yelled with delight. “You know that the Chinese invented gunpowder and fireworks hundreds of years ago.”

  “Come on!” I tugged him along. “No time to waste.”

  “You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you. I just want to talk to this man for a minute.”

  “Hurry!”

  Leaving Isaac, we went on. Our destination was a stately stone house, which could have been in Oxford. Though, I must confess, in my own town it would have been blackened by coal dust. While we kicked our heels in the waiting room I told my friends that we must be very clear about what we said. We couldn’t confess to being poisoned. We must handle things more carefully. Isaac caught up with us just as we were ushered into Dr. Sheldrake’s room. The doctor himself, a bald man wearing wire-framed glasses, was sitting at a large ebony desk writing in a leather book. He barely looked up as we entered.

  “One of us has been poisoned,” Waldo announced, as soon as we were in. “We badly need your help.”

  I groaned inwardly. He never could keep his mouth shut.

  “Poisoned, you sa
y?” the doctor looked up, interested.

  “We believe so.”

  “What was it. Chinese food? Infected water? Poor sanitation?” The doctor was peering at us over his half-moon spectacles. “I must say, you all look the picture of health. How long have you been in Shanghai?”

  “We arrived yesterday.”

  “Hardly long enough to contract a bug.”

  “No,” I explained patiently. “We believe we were poisoned in England before we reached China.”

  “How extraordinary. Which one of you?”

  “That’s just it,” I replied. “We don’t know.”

  “How can you know one of you is poisoned if you don’t know who it is?”

  “Um … we were given reliable information,” I said, cutting off Rachel’s explanation with a glare.

  “A hopelessly muddled tale,” Dr. Sheldrake said. “Haven’t you got things rather mixed up?” He was gazing at us as if we were soft in the head.

  “We received a letter aboard ship that told us that one of us had definitely contracted food poisoning. Rather hard to explain, but definitely bona fide.”

  The doctor was looking us over, a searching examination. I wondered how we seemed to him, Waldo, blond and blue-eyed, Rachel and Isaac with their glossy dark curls and nut-brown eyes. And me, Kit Salter, with my wide boyish face, always a little tousled and sticky. We were sunburnt from our voyage but still clearly foreign. Did he wonder what we were doing here? As I went into my story the doctor seemed to grow less suspicious. I think I convinced him.

  “I suppose I should take a blood test from each of you then.”

  We rolled up our sleeves and the doctor took blood from each of us, his massive syringe filling up. My blood looked unnaturally dark. Well, at least to me it did.

  Then Dr. Sheldrake did something that dismayed me. He asked all of us to lie down. There wasn’t enough space on his consulting trolley, so he asked us to lie down on the floor.

  “Why?” I wondered.

  “Your craniums are fascinating.”