The Book of Bones

by Natasha Narayan

  “Quick!” Yin said, turning round. “Help me.”

  Swiftly we dragged the remaining guards behind the trees and stripped them of their uniforms, praying no one would see and raise the alarm. Mr. Chao had chosen the spot for his attack well, an isolated place a little away from the throng of eunuchs and servants that bustle through the Forbidden City.

  In a matter of minutes we were all dressed in the padded blue trousers and coats and yellow sashes of the Bannermen. Of course the uniforms were ill-fitting and ridiculous. Rachel and me, in particular, looked as if we were wearing clothes that belonged to our older brothers. But at least we were better off than the unfortunate guards. They sprawled higgledy-piggledy in their underclothes. They were nearly naked, poor things—as unaware of their fate as babes sleeping in the sun.

  “Do you think this will work?” Rachel asked, looking at me dubiously.

  “It has to,” I hissed fiercely. “Stand tall. Look confident. We must get out of here.”

  I rose to go, but Yin was frantically searching her pockets. “We need tally,” she muttered.

  “Tally?” I asked.

  “A guard’s identification tally has two halves. We must have matching half to one held by senior officer at gates. Otherwise we may not leave.”

  Mr. Chao Junior was holding something up and smiling. Something that glinted in the sun. He’d found the precious tally, the piece of twisted metal that would get us out of the Forbidden City. We trooped after him, joining a long queue that snaked up to the smallest gate. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Mandarin Chao, in his sedan chair, was queuing at the larger gate, the one for grander folk. All sorts of humble people were in our queue—vendors of chicken and silks, servants, guards, eunuchs. To onlookers we were just another group of guards, pleased to be ending their shift. As we got closer to the gate my heart began to thud painfully in my chest. The soldiers at the gates had been tripled and everyone leaving the Forbidden City was being thoroughly searched. The soldiers only had to ask us one simple question in Chinese and we would be sunk! We queued silently behind a man carrying a couple of squawking geese. Then it was our turn to go through the gates, but five burly Manchu Bannermen, with their yellow sashes, were barring the way.

  “Courage!” I mouthed to Rachel, but my hands were trembling.

  One of the guards was talking to Mr. Chao Junior, joking and smiling. Our savior handed the stolen identification tally to the officer. I noticed that he held his wounded left hand to his side, not revealing it to the soldiers. The officer barely glanced at us as he clicked the two halves together—thank heavens they matched.

  We were through. Free, at least for the time being.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Free, it turned out, was the last thing we were. The day after our escape from the Forbidden City, Yin and I ventured out into Peking to buy some provisions for our journey to Henan. We had scarcely made it to the next street when I saw a pen-and-ink drawing stuck on the bronze door of a magnificent hutong.

  It was a “Wanted” poster.

  The six of us stared out at the world, looking decidedly shifty. Waldo and Isaac looked mean, while Rachel was unfairly plain. Aunt Hilda and I were sketched snarling like bulldogs. All of us wore our Chinese disguises. None of us, except Yin who was also included, were very convincing as Orientals. To be honest, I didn’t recognize the people in the Wanted poster at all. But the sketch was still frightening in the way it pointed straight at us. There couldn’t be many foreigners disguised as natives wandering around Peking.

  Underneath the sketches was a description of our crimes in both Mandarin and English. We learned that we had invaded the Forbidden City and threatened to assassinate her Imperial Majesty the Empress Yehonala. Yes, that’s right, we had planned to kill Empress Orchid herself. Only the foresight of the Empress—who had spotted us as imposters—and the courage of her Manchu Bannerman had foiled our dastardly plans. Now we were hunted over the breadth of the Empire.

  Public enemy number one.

  We had already planned to journey to the legendary Shaolin temple in Henan. The poster hastened our departure. We left Peking immediately and began our trek to the Songshan mountains. This was where the Book was kept, guarded day and night by warrior monks. It would be very difficult to steal. But the clock was ticking on my illness. Besides, we would be safer in the wilds of China. Safer from the Imperial guards, those frightening Manchu Bannerman with their lethal sabers and bows.

  Now that we were fugitives, fleeing from the might of the Chinese Empire, we had little choice.

  The journey to Henan was dispiriting. We went past parched wheat fields, through decaying cotton plantations and along dusty roads dotted with shriveled villages. The broad, slow-moving Yellow River had turned to ochre sludge. Everywhere the pitiless sun beat down on us. Everywhere there was hunger and neglect. We saw groups of wretched people sitting by the roadside, just sitting, not bothering to do anything at all. And we heard the whispers. Fields lying untended as their owners smoked the juice of the poppy. Cruel mandarins taxing the clothes off the peasants’ backs. How famine had driven people to eat dogs and cats—and even the bark off trees.

  Finally we arrived at a rather humble Chinese country inn, at the foot of the towering Songshan mountains. It was not particularly clean and was full of bad smells. Still, here, hundreds of miles from Peking, at last we’d be safe from the Imperial army. We supped on meager fare: rice, dried fish and pickled cabbage. The feast at Mandarin Chao’s was a faint memory.

  I took five drops of Five Poisons Wine every morning. As I glugged it down I felt like a laudanum addict, like Mrs. Glee herself. How was she faring, I wondered, as I sipped the foul-tasting liquid. It had taken several days to train myself not to vomit when I took it. But now I was starting to become used to the brew. I almost liked it. You would realize just how strange that was, if you had tasted the stuff.

  Five Poisons Wine cleared some of the fog that rooted in my head. The others had treated me differently since the healer’s diagnosis in the Forbidden City. When they remembered, which thankfully was not all the time, they tiptoed round me. Even Waldo was considerate of my feelings. I realized that they now saw me as an invalid. While I was touched that they cared, that they were scared of losing me, part of me was tetchy with this treatment.

  I was still the same Kit Salter wasn’t I? Hasty, sometimes arrogant, but deeply loyal to her friends—and good in a fight!

  Except I wasn’t. The healer’s verdict had sped up the process that had begun on the Mandalay. At times I felt dizzy, at other times weak. But the most common feeling, a sense that haunted me all day—and sometimes when I woke covered with sweat in the night—was one of unreality. I felt I was dissolving, floating away from being Kit. I would look down on that girl and see her from a vast distance. I didn’t like or dislike her, my feelings were not particularly strong. But I was curious. The floating thing would wonder, Why was Kit so angry, so burning with rage? What was wrong with her?

  Then I would remember. I was Kit Salter.

  Rachel had found me that morning. Sitting down on the bed next to me she had taken my hand in her soft palm.

  “It will all come right,” she reassured me. “We’ll find the Book of Bones, take it back to the Bakers and you’ll have your antidote.”

  I nodded, not able to speak. Whatever happened, I did not imagine the happy future she’d sketched would come to pass.

  “Come out with us. Your aunt is going to the market to buy provisions for our trip to the Shaolin temple. We need presents for the monks and food for the journey. You shouldn’t just sit here brooding. Come on, Kit.”

  “No, Rachel. I’ll stay here.”

  “Please. It will do you good.”

  “I need a bit of time alone.”

  Throwing me a pitying look, Rachel left and I sank back onto the bed. It was placed right next to the window so I could look out on the teeming street below and at the fruit seller and hat makers opposite
. At the small boys playing their game of dice in the dust. Further off a group of elderly ladies played a game of mah-jong—I could hear the faint clack, clack of their tiles. I saw my friends assembling downstairs, armed with bags and baskets for their trip to the market. The mood of indifference was strong in me and after a minute of watching I sank back on the bed and just stared at the ceiling. There wasn’t anything of interest up there but it didn’t matter, I was in a living nightmare.

  “Wake up, Kit!” Hilda’s red face was about a millimeter from my nose, her strong breath made me want to gag. “You need all your wits about you for this journey. I’m not going to treat you like an invalid.”

  “That’s very civil of you.” I managed to smile up at her.

  “Never believed in namby-pambying people. No matter how ill they claim to be.”

  “Quite.”

  “You on your deathbed, girl?”

  “No … I am as you see me.”

  “So do the decent thing. Get up, I say.”

  “Aunt Hilda, listen to me. I’m not going to be bullied by you. Not now. I am staying here.”

  “Exasperating child!”

  Aunt Hilda flashed me a look and removed herself from my face. As she rose I saw something soft in her expression, pity diluting her disapproval. Things had come to a pretty pass when even my aunt couldn’t bring herself to properly bully me.

  Time passed. Minutes, hours. I enjoyed the silence, the fact that for once I was alone and not cocooned in my friends’ artificial gentleness. I was dozing when I was startled by a commotion downstairs. Loud banging. A deep growling voice and then the innkeeper’s falsetto. Heaving myself up on my elbows I sneaked a look out of the window.

  Down below I saw the conical felt hats of a brigade of Manchu Bannerman. A multitude of red banners, sabers and feathery arrows bristling out of quivers. I could see the commander of the soldiers arguing with the innkeeper. The man was protesting, gesturing in the opposite direction to the market. As I watched, the commander slapped the innkeeper across the face. Pushing him out of the way he marched through the doors, a horde of soldiers in his wake.

  With my heart thumping I stepped back from the window. I would have to disappear, quickly. But there was nothing in the room. Just four rickety beds and a red lacquer wardrobe. Where? My eyes flashed round the room for inspiration, while already I could hear boots clumping up the stairs. Luckily at the back of the room there was a casement window. It was a tiny opening, the drop to the alley, several stories below, terrifying.

  I had no choice. I had to reach the market before the soldiers did. Closing my eyes and holding my breath, I hunkered down on my knees and jumped.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “We have to run,” I gasped.

  “Eels,” Aunt Hilda said, ignoring me and plunging her hand into a vast bowl full of slimy wriggling things, “are both tasty and nutritious.”

  I had arrived at the market damp with sweat and out of breath to find my aunt transfixed by the live food stalls. Eels, crickets, snakes. The eels were particularly revolting, slithering around in a gray bundle.

  I hadn’t had much of an appetite for days, but these creatures were enough to put me off food altogether. Not so my aunt. In her love for the more outlandish Chinese food, she had gone native and barely gave me a glance.

  “The soldiers will be upon us!” I hissed, tugging at her sleeve. “Not a moment to lose.”

  “Pretty succulent, these eels,” Aunt Hilda mused, shaking me off. “Might need to take a cook with us. Can’t say we’ll be able to get much food in the Songshan mountains … Oh, hello, Kit, what’s the matter?”

  “The soldiers have been searching the inn. They’ll be here any moment.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “I did, Aunt Hilda. Where are the others?” I was struggling for breath in my desperation. “We’ve got to move—they’ll kill us.”

  “This way.” Now that I had her attention, Aunt Hilda was instantly alert.

  Gathering her eels, she briskly led the way to the very edge of the market, where I found all the others bargaining with a horse dealer. The dealer was a Tartar, one of the fierce tribesmen from the north, wearing a colorful embroidered jacket and cap. Waldo, Isaac, Rachel and Yin were already seated on fine China ponies. We swiftly chose two more horses, one for my aunt and one for me, and hoisted ourselves up on them. My aunt threw a pouch of coins at the dealer and we rode away.

  Our going was not unnoticed. Of course we had attracted attention in this small town. The usual whispers of “Foreign Devil” and “Red Bignose” had followed us. Now countless eyes clung to us, noted our passing. Already, at the other end of the market near the stall selling cotton bolts, there was uproar.

  “This way!” Yin commanded, trotting down a dark alley on her pony.

  Unquestioningly we followed her. Our saddlebags carried the few possessions Aunt Hilda had purchased, the rest of our things were at the inn. But this wasn’t what was troubling me. My heart was thudding painfully. The soldiers must have secured the road out of the town. We would be cut down easily as we tried to escape.

  But Yin was not taking us toward the road but to a small lane with raw sewage running down the center. Our horses galloped through sludge. At one stage a startled woman jumped out of the way, spilling mushrooms from her basket. We raced through the alley and out into rice fields shielded by papaya trees. There was no path, but Yin urged us onward and we followed her lead, our ponies stamping down the terraces between the slushy fields.

  Villagers in straw hats were toiling in the fields. As we sped past they shouted at us for trampling their crops, but we ignored their calls. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aunt Hilda scattering something in their direction, coins that flashed silver in the sun. The bribery was a wise move. These peasants were far removed from the capital, Peking, and their attitude to soldiers would be surly. When the soldiers came the peasants might be a little less willing to tell them about our flight.

  The paddy fields shaded at the edges into bamboo groves that gave way to a vast forest murmuring with cypresses and pines. The trees grew upward, carpeting the slopes of the mountain. Past a row of golden maidenhair we were plunged into another world, cut off from the villagers’ cries, the hustle of planting, and market day. The sun slanted down, dappling the ground. All around was dense vegetation. There was no path.

  We rode hard through bracken and fern, swishing fronds that splattered us with mud and through soil carpeted with pine needles and decaying leaf mold. Everything was hushed in here, with only the screech of birds and the rustle of prowling animals. Here and there was the chirrup of frogs. We were climbing swiftly upward and very soon a mist came down that obscured the trees and made it essential for us to dismount from our ponies. Walking through the forest was bone aching, as we had to crouch and creep to avoid thistles and fallen branches. After many hours of this, Yin, who was leading our convoy, came to an abrupt halt. We were walking through a small clearing, which let light and air into the forest. All about was a carpet of mossy stuff, speckled with nodding flowers on delicate stems.

  “We are tired,” Yin said, looking back at the parade of weary faces. “We stop.”

  Yin’s transformation was such that no one thought to challenge her leadership of our expedition. Even Aunt Hilda had the sense to realize that Yin was our best guide through these mountains. Among the provisions in our saddlebags were the eels, but we had no cooking pot. How were we to cook then? I dreaded to think. I was not going to eat raw eels. I would starve rather than eat raw eels. Yin seemed to read my mind.

  “Eel good.” She smiled at me.

  “A rare treat,” grunted Aunt Hilda.

  Waldo and Isaac went off to get firewood while the rest of us attended to the horses. Mine was a stubborn little thing, that I had named Orchid. She had something of the Empress Yehonala about her, with her queenly air. I fed her some leaves and gave her a glug of water. She was glad of a rest, as was I, f
or my thighs ached. Yin was hard at work. She grubbed under a tree trunk, pulling out a gnarled root, which she chopped into thin slices. By the time the boys had built a small fire, Yin had foraged several things, which she lay by the fire. A bunch of large green leaves, a handful of berries, even some sap. Curiously she had also collected a large lump of fresh mud.

  “Do you have a plan?” Rachel asked, nodding toward the glistening eel heap.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Because frankly, Yin, I’m already feeling a little sick.”

  Smiling, Yin picked up a handful of the eels, wrapped some large leaves around them while they wriggled in her grasp and dropped in a few roots and berries. Then she molded a thin layer of mud around the leaves and dried the package out in front of the fire. When it was dry and the eels had stopped squirming, she added another layer of mud, this time a thick one. She patted it firm and then dried it out by the fire, which by now had burned down to glowing embers. Then, using a stout stick, she created a hole in the ash and embers and buried the clay package.

  Waldo and Isaac created another two other similar packages, while Aunt Hilda shouted out orders and encouragement. These two were also buried in the embers, along with the original package. We waited for the end result impatiently. I must say I was dubious. Muddy eel didn’t sound much better than raw eel. After some time Yin removed the clay packages from the embers using her stick. They came out baked solid. She cracked the parcels open and there inside were the steaming eels. Amazingly, the eel’s silvery skin had stuck to the baked mud, leaving the juicy pink innards for us.

  I find it hard to admit this, but even in my sickness, the baked eel smelt good. Yin divided them up and we ate on large leaves—our only plates. It was tasty—delicious, even—pungent with the flavors of woodsmoke, juniper berries and forest.