The Book of Bones

by Natasha Narayan

  “Kit,” Rachel whispered, her face the color of ash, “get me out of here. I think I’m going to be sick.”

  I turned but it was only our host’s small sons charging in and upsetting one of the servants carrying a salver. Our host turned to us wreathed in smiles.

  “My naughty son like eat,” he beamed. A look of deep sadness flashed over his face and he folded his hands. Turning to Aunt Hilda he bowed. “I must say my sorry, Mistah Salter. We not able to make for you live monkey brain.”

  My own brain heaved with relief. Thank goodness, no live monkeys’ brains! Then the penny dropped and I looked at my aunt in wonder. “Mistah Salter”! So it wasn’t a joke—the Chinese really believed my incredible, my outrageous, aunt was a man!

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Why Mister Salter?” I asked my aunt. “What’s wrong with plain old Hilda Salter? After all, you’re always telling us Hilda Salter is one of the most celebrated explorers in the world. Famous from the Limpopo to the Gobi desert.”

  My aunt wrinkled her pug nose, looking just like a stubby bulldog. The feast was over and we had all retired to our room. The five of us were huddled around my aunt as she sat in state in the one armchair.

  “You must have noticed,” she replied, “the Chinese do not think very highly of women.”

  “They’re awful to them,” I blurted. Yin caught my eye and looked away. She is very patriotic and becomes defensive at any criticism of her country. “All this foot binding and getting rid of girl babies,” I went on.

  “It’s barbarian,” Rachel agreed.

  Yin coughed. She stood up and slipped to the door.

  “Where are you off to?” I asked.

  “I must go. I come back later.”

  After she’d left the room there was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Rachel had reddened and was staring at the floor.

  “Do you think we offended her?” I asked.

  “We shouldn’t have said that about foot binding,” Rachel murmured. “I mean it is awful, but if Yin had said the English were barbarians—”

  “Poppycock, Rebecca,” Aunt Hilda interrupted, glaring at Rachel. “You all namby-pamby that child. She probably just had to answer the call of nature.”

  “Pardon?”

  “She had to use the commode. The lavatory, in plain English!” Aunt Hilda snapped. “Anyway, that Chinese child very thoughtlessly interrupted me. I was talking of my adventures. As I said, I thought my mission had a better chance of success if I traveled as a man. I had a false pigtail of the very best human hair made in London. A few local costumes, and hey presto, meet Mister Salter.” Aunt Hilda looked very pleased with herself. “I must say it’s been terrific fun. They’ve been surprisingly easy to fool.”

  “But does Mandarin Chao really think you’re Chinese?”

  “Course not. He thinks I am a high-born English gentlemen traveling as a Chinaman,” my aunt replied, as if that explained the whole muddle. She sat back and surveyed us. “Well, I’ve told you my tale. What about you? You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  We told my aunt the whole story of why we were here, down to the last details of the poisoning and how we’d rescued Yin. I’d hesitated a moment before doing this, for my aunt moves in mysterious ways, but we even told her about the Book of Bones. She’d been especially interested in how the Baker Brothers believed they could use the Book to make them even more perfect. The mere presence of my aunt had soothed me; she had reassured uy coms all, promising she would do everything to help find an antidote to the poison. But though we’d gabbled on, so far my aunt had skillfully avoided giving anything away.

  “How do you really come to be here, Aunt Hilda?” I finally asked her.

  “It’s a long, long story,” she replied, sinking back into the armchair. “Do you think I could have an extra cushion? My back’s a little achy.”

  Waldo handed her the cushion he was using to sit on the floor and then repeated my question. Sighing, Aunt Hilda said, “Do you recall a costume party at the Bakers’ castle about nine weeks ago?”

  The memory rushed back to me—my aunt, her stout body looking totally absurd in a fringed leather dress, her face painted and daubed with feathers.

  “You were a sort of squaw—Aunt Hilda, what were you thinking!” And then the thought hit me. “How did you know we were at the castle during the party! I never mentioned the party! Hilda, you’re not—”

  “Pish and tush,” she interrupted. “I knew you were there because we have spies in the Bakers’ castle.”

  “Who is we?” Waldo burst in. I noticed Isaac was watching Aunt Hilda intently, his gaze never straying from her face. “Who are you working for, Miss Salter?”

  “I’m not really free to reveal my—”

  “You’ll tell us!” Waldo snarled menacingly.

  “And tell the truth,” Isaac’s eyes were unwavering. “I’m watching you.”

  “Very well.” She sighed. “My employers are the British Government. Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

  I nodded. I could well believe this. Unknown to us at the time, Aunt Hilda had been a spy before, searching for gold in the snowy mountains of the Himalayas. This time I felt comforted by her mission, for she would have the might of the British Empire at her disposal. If it came to a fight with the Baker Brothers and unknown Chinese villains, it was comforting to have Her Majesty on your side.

  “What exactly is your mission in China?” I asked.

  “First off, I came to rescue you.” Her eyes dimmed. “Kit, you’re like a daughter to me. I couldn’t let you—”

  “I know,” I said awkwardly.

  “When I heard from my spy in the Bakers’ household that you’d been brought to China, I knew I had to follow, you. By the way, Kit, as you’ve not asked, your father believes you’re traveling with me. He is very angry that you left without permission!” She glanced at the others. “Your mother thinks the same thing, Waldo, as does your guardian, Rebecca and Israel.”

  “My name is Rachel,” my friend murmured. “My brother is called Isaac … Thank you anyway.”

  “Don’t mention it, Rebecca,” my aunt steamed on. “Anyway, rescuing you was my number-one priority.”

  “And your number-two priority?” I persisted.

  “My dears, the situation in China is very delicate. The conservative faction in the Imperial palace wants to kick out all foreigners. They want to go back to the good old days of the Manchu Empire. Death by a thousand cuts, disemboweling, all that sort of thing. They don’t want our fancy clocks and engines and trains—”

  “Or our opium,” Rachel interrupted.

  “As a matter of fact they do want our opium. From courtiers to peasants they’re mad for the poppy. But the more modern reforming nobles, like dear Mandarin Chao, want to learn from the world. These are matters of top secret international intrigue, I don’t expect you to understand them at all.”

  “So you’re here to promote the reformers. Is that right?” Isaac asked.

  “Mr. Chao is vital to my mission. I don’t want pea-brained children getting in the way. You must be polite at all times,” my aunt added hurriedly. She looked at her delicate gold wristwatch. Too pretty for a man, I would’ve said. “Nearly midnight. I don’t know about you night owls, but I need my beauty sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. I want to see about this poison, for a start.”

  After my aunt and the boys had departed I too was visited by a “call of nature.” I walked the corridors that stretched endlessly around the gorgeous courtyard, going over the day’s events in my mind. Aunt Hilda played a deep game—I knew she would never harm me, but there was no guarantee she was telling us the truth. Door after carved door stretched in front of me, but not the one I needed. I was becoming convinced that I had lost my way when something stopped me in my tracks.

  A child was crying.

  An awful sound. It reminded me of the sobbing we had heard on the steamship. And once before that, in the Baker Brothers’ fortr
ess castle. Who could be crying like that here? Without thinking, I pushed open the nearest door.

  A candle was burning by an immense bed that was carved, gilded and draped with silken hangings. It was a lovely room, decorated with gold and jade figurines. But I had no eyes for the beauty of the room, only for the two girls sitting on the bed. One I recognized as Yin’s sister. But the face paint, embroidered gowns and elaborate headdress were gone, taking with them the illusion of proud beauty. I saw she was really a child, her hair loose, tumbling thick and black down her shoulders. Her eyes were red from crying. She was heaving with dry sobs, her arms around the second girl’s neck, who had her back to me.

  I must have made some small noise for the other girl turned and I saw that it was Yin. She wasn’t sobbing, but her cheeks were wet. I didn’t know whether from her own or her sister’s tears. Of course I was going to go to them. I would comfort them, find out what I could do.

  Something forbidding in Yin’s mismatched eyes held me back. Green and gray, they glinted a warning. Uncertainly I took a step out of the room. I wasn’t wanted there. Yin didn’t want me. I had blundered into a private moment. The door swung back, blocking the two girls from view.

  I didn’t know what had caused these tears to fall—but I did now understand that Yin was not cold. However odd she appeared to me, she did love her sister. And deeply.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The “Forbidden City” was a fortress in the heart of Peking, strictly out of bounds to foreigners. Surrounded by a towering stone wall, it was said to be full of marvels—palaces crafted from jade and silver, flying bridges, dragon boats floating on turquoise lakes. This place, the home of the Imperial family, was spoken of in whispers as the finest flower of China. In the middle of the most populated city on earth, it had remained a mystery for centuries. The morning after the feast at Mandarin Chao’s, the six of us—for Aunt Hilda accompanied us—were about to sneak our way in.

  Our plan was madness, of course, sheer madness. But we had to see the famous healer who never ventured out of the Forbidden City. A life, one of our lives, depended on it. Yin was certain that only this doctor would be able to help us. More and more now, the girl was our guide, our only true friend here. I had come to respect her, almost be in awe of her. Something in her air held me back from asking her about the scene with her sister that I had witnessed last night. If she wanted to she would tell me, but I knew I didn’t dare intrude. I scarcely recalled why I had been so wary of her, so fluidly had Yin taken charge. I wouldn’t have let a mere snip of a child boss me in England. But we were in China, vast and bewildering, so I let it slide.

  We were dressed as servants, in shabby blue trousers and jackets, complete with false pigtails. The disguise wasn’t very convincing, for anyone on close examination might have seen that our eyes and noses were uncommonly large for Chinese.

  As we approached the magnificent moat which surrounded the city wall I was knotted up with fear. Tricking the Empress was a very dangerous thing to attempt. Behind the moat is a thirty-five-foot-high red wall, tiled at the top with yellow and green tiles, the gate guarded at all times. I was sure we would be unmasked as imposters. However, as servants of Mandarin Chao, we were waved through without much scrutiny. In China, mere menials are often not really seen. It helped that Waldo and Isaac, who were most likely to give us away, were huffing and puffing under the sedan chair, carrying the weight of the Mandarin. The first thing we came to was a wonderful courtyard dotted with flowerbeds and pines trained to form bowers, from which hung many golden birdcages. I couldn’t help thinking it a shame that the birds here couldn’t fly free.

  After some time in one of the waiting rooms around the courtyard we were allowed to walk through three more courtyards till we came to a building carved so heavily with beasts it looked as if it was writhing with life. Large horn lanterns hung from balconies covered with red silk and jade amulets. It was most wonderful—all of us were awestruck for we had never seen anything so exquisite in its man-made beauty before. I began to have an inkling of why the Chinese were so very proud of their ancient culture. These sights—gardens of frangipane and wisteria, golden pagodas, weeping willows trailing into brooks—were truly magnificent. To think that such wonders were created while us Britons were living in mud huts.

  “Still, you’ve caught up recently,” Waldo whispered to me with a smile, almost as if he could read my mind. I think he was overjoyed to have been released from his job as a chair bearer. “Give me one of the Great Brunel’s steam engines any day!”

  If China was one of the great civilizations of the past, no one could argue that my small island’s inventions were the new wonders of the world.

  While my eyes took in these splendid sights, my head was somewhere else altogether. Blood pounded before my eyes. We were lunatic to come here to the Imperial home, but even more terrifying was what we would learn.

  Soon a sentence of death would be pronounced. If it was Rachel, or Waldo, what could I do or say? If it was any of my friends. Underneath was the pulse of sheer terror—what if I was dying? What if I was dying?

  While Mandarin Chao and Aunt Hilda went away to await an audience with the Empress, we were shown by three eunuchs to yet another waiting room. Time, I could see, crawls in the Forbidden City. People think it a positive honor to be kept waiting for three or four hours for an audience with a great lord.

  We were lucky today. After an hour, during which Waldo and Isaac became terribly fidgety, another of those half-men known as eunuchs came to show us the way to the herb doctor’s rooms. The chamber was lined with shelves of glass jars, dried roots resembling strange contorted heads, mushrooms, herbs, stalks, mummified seahorses. Even stranger were those jars filled with viscous liquid, in which floated things indescribable. Those rubbery red slivers were perhaps tongues, over there dried crickets hung in yellow fluid. Remembering the extraordinary things on the menu at the feast—apes’ lips, camels’ humps—I shuddered. If the Chinese ate such things, the medicines they used were even odder—but perhaps no more strange than Dr. Billings’s phrenology.

  The healer was sitting bolt upright in a beautiful carved jade chair, his eyes closed, apparently asleep. He was an elderly man, with the same style of long pigtail and mustache as mandarin Chao, his face seamed and pitted. As he heard our footsteps his eyes opened. Irises like walnuts gleamed at us through layers of wrinkles.

  Instantly we all dropped down and banged our heads on the floor. We had been given the strictest instructions to kowtow when we met the healer. Even though it hurts and makes you a little dizzy, I had given up my objections to it and was not about to argue.

  We listened silently as Yin told the healer of our dilemma. I didn’t know if it was last night’s feast or the effect of the Baker Brothers’ poison that made me feel so terrible today—weak and slightly nauseous at the same time. My aches and pains had slightly subsided since we’d left the Mandalay, perhaps because we’d become entangled in so many adventures that I scarcely had time to feel my own heartbeat. Now, though, I could feel every inch of my flesh. Every tingle and itch had become magnified and dreadful.

  I prayed that the healer could help. The man in Shanghai had been a fool and a charlatan. Would this traditional Chinese herbalist be any better?

  You may notice that I am talking as if I am sure that it was me, Kit Salter, who was poisoned. Well, I was. I had this instinct. My aches had not been imaginary. Secretly, I think, all the others were the same. Each and every one of us convinced that he or she was the one doomed to fulfill the Bakers’ mission—or die.

  While Yin told the healer our story he puffed, letting out little popping noises. Then he selected Rachel. Accompanied by Yin, he took her behind a screen decorated with turquoise kingfishers and examined her. We listened to the noises coming from behind the screen—while we stared at the bottles and objects. One of the oddest was the life-size statue of a man, in dull bronze, which was impaled with hundreds of the thinnest needles. They
made him look like a hedgehog.

  “Urgh!” said Waldo, holding up a bottle of gray lumps floating in a yellowish liquid. “What do you imagine this is?”

  “Pig’s liver macerated in urine,” Isaac replied, grinning. “A very popular Chinese tonic.”

  “You don’t know that,” I replied uncertainly. “Anyway, I’m not going to drink that. Not after that feast.”

  “Apes’ lips.” Waldo shuddered in sympathy.

  “What if it’s the antidote?” Isaac asked, and abruptly our chatter ceased. The poisoning hung over us like a balloon full of lead, weighing down our spirits. We could not bring ourselves to talk about it more than absolutely necessary.

  After that I had to wait while Waldo and Isaac were examined, as I was to be last. Finally it was my turn to go behind the screen. The doctor stood up and through Yin asked me to stick out my tongue. While I did so, he circled, sniffing me. That’s right, sniffing, like a dog. He paid particular attention to my armpits. When I recoiled in disgust, Yin gave me such a ferocious look that I stayed as still as a lamb afterward.

  Then the doctor looked at my eyes, palpated my abdomen, felt my pulse, examined my hair and so on. Every inch of my body was poked and prodded. Strange as it was, he was so thorough and had such a remote look on his face that I felt reassured. Yin, who had obviously told him we were foreigners, though he would anyway have known it at once, trusted this man. He was related to Mandarin Chao and bound to Yin’s family by ties of blood and honor.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, the healer indicated a white cotton-covered bed and asked me to lie down.

  “No,” I said, backing away in alarm. “What for?”

  “Lie down, Kit,” Yin soothed. “Healer need make more test.”

  Reluctantly I did as bid, though I kept my eyes trained on the man. He was selecting a number of the long, thin needles and it dawned on me what he intended to do.