by Ann Moore
Mei Ling slipped around to the front of the counter and withdrew a clean handkerchief from the sleeve of her tunic, silently handing it to the weeping woman. Grace looked at her then, eyes red and swollen and infinitely sad, and accepted the cloth with grateful stoicism despite the trembling of her chin. Mei Ling watched as the woman dried her eyes, then smoothed her hair, took a deep breath and—collecting herself—replaced the sorrow in her eyes with calm acceptance before she turned around to face the men.
“There is no other stone,” Grace acknowledged, her voice low. “’Twas our only hope, this. And now I’ll let it go.”
“Very brave of you, Missus Donnelly,” Wakefield commended softly.
“Ah no, doctor.” Grace shook her head, thinking of the old people on the ship from Ireland, the young families in their wagons on the trail. “Bravery is something else altogether. I’m only being reasonable. ’Tis only things I’ve lost. Things are nothing next to people.”
“Well, I know, but …” Wakefield wished he had something more to say, something to take away the pain of this woman he admired so greatly, to offer her comfort, to apologize for having unwittingly involved her in something that turned out to have such great personal cost.
“I think we’ve done all we can this morning. Shall we go, then?” Reinders put his hand on Grace’s elbow, ready to escort her.
Grace looked through him as if she had not heard, then turned back to Mei Ling, quietly studying the girl, seeing now the bits of light—not much larger than motes—that hovered around her. She took Mei Ling’s hand and held it for a moment, peering deeply into the young woman’s eyes until the room around them dissolved.
“I’m sorry for you, Mei Ling,” Grace told her softly. “You’ve lost children. But God will bless you with others.” She pressed the young woman’s hand gently. “Do you understand me?”
Mei Ling repeated the words in her head, and then suddenly they were as clear as if spoken in her own tongue. Mei Ling, who had not shed tears since the loss of her first unborn child, felt one now as it ran down her cheek, and in her heart she felt the shifting of the stone that had blocked its entrance for so very long.
“Come,” Mei Ling whispered, leading Grace by the hand across the room and behind the counter, hesitating for a moment, ashamed of not having returned such treasure the moment its owner had been revealed, though determined to do so now. She knelt on the floor, reaching far back on the lowest shelf, to the furthest corner, until her fingers brushed the worn wood of the box, which she withdrew and offered humbly to Grace. “Maa maa,” she said, her head bowed.
“By God!” Wakefield exclaimed, coming to look. “Is that the box?”
Grace held it tightly to her chest with one hand, helping Mei Ling to her feet with the other. “Thank you.” She kissed the young woman tenderly on the cheek. “Thank you, Mei Ling.”
“Look inside,” Reinders urged.
Grace set the box on the counter and carefully lifted the lid. She saw immediately that Dugan’s picture was still there and, beneath it, the envelope that held Morgan’s letter. On top were Mary Kate’s ring, the earrings, and Lord Evans’ signet ring.
“Everything there?” Reinders asked.
Grace nodded, then tipped the box to show its contents.
“Well, this is wonderful!” Wakefield rubbed his hands together in delight. “How on earth did you get her to understand you?”
Grace looked at Mei Ling, whose fingertips were tracing the letters on the lid one last time. “We are both mothers,” she said quietly. “Doctor, do you have a calling card?”
Wakefield felt in his pocket for the case, then pulled out a card and handed it to her. Grace turned it over on the counter, took the pen from its well, and wrote her name and the house number on the back.
“I’m Grace Donnelly.” She handed the card to Mei Ling. “And this is where I live. If you should ever need anything.”
“And this is my card.” Reinders slipped his on top of Wakefield’s. “For when she’s my wife.”
As Mei Ling examined both cards, she heard the faint creak of the cot in the back room and knew that Mister Sung had come in. She looked up at Grace and thought how similar they were—the woman and Mister Sung—though perhaps it was only in the way they held themselves, the way in which they spoke, or perhaps it was the way in which they both held her attention.
“Come drink tea,” Mei Ling decided, bravely issuing her first personal invitation. “Mei Ling prepare for honored guest.”
“Thank you.” Grace touched the young woman’s shoulder. “I will. And I’ll bring my children to meet you. Good-bye for now, Mei Ling.”
Mei Ling escorted them to the door and held it open, bowing as they left the shop, watching as the woman was helped into a waiting carriage and driven away, though not before she had turned around one last time to lift her hand in farewell, to show Mei Ling her eyes. Happy, Mei Ling came back into the shop and closed the door, the sound of which drew Sean from the back room.
“Did I actually hear you inviting someone to tea, Mei Ling?” He grinned, though his voice was hoarse and his face ashy from the long night before. “Soon you’ll be the toast of San Francisco’s finest. Who’s your new friend, then?”
Mei Ling smiled shyly and offered the calling cards to him, unsure of her ability to pronounce the names properly.
“Doctor Rowen Wakefield,” Sean read out loud. “Captain Peter Reinders.” He looked up, even more pale than before. “I know Captain Reinders. What did he want here?”
Haltingly, Mei Ling related the information that these were the employers of the woman she and Mister Sung knew as Missus Smith, and that they had come to retrieve what had been stolen from them. The men had paid for their things, she assured Mister Sung, but since no money had been loaned for the box in the first place, Mei Ling had simply returned it to the woman.
“What box?” Sean demanded, more harshly than he’d intended. “What woman?”
A box of personal things, Mei Ling told him, with no monetary value. Then she turned over Doctor Wakefield’s card so he could read the name on the back. “Belong this woman. Mei Ling new friend.”
Sean stared at the name on the card, and his knees began to give way. Mei Ling moved quickly to support him and, his arm over her shoulder, helped him to a chair in the corner of the shop, where he sat, dazed, until she brought him a cup of water.
“Mei Ling.” He looked up at her when he’d finished. “What did she look like? Did she have hair this color?” He put his hand on the dark red wood of the counter. “And eyes like that?” He pointed to a bottle of green glass.
Mei Ling nodded, brightening at once. “Same talk Mister Sung!”
“Oh my God.” Sean’s face was a mixture of joy and anguish. “It’s my sister, Mei Ling—the one I thought died in the fire! Meimei.” He hoped it was the right word. “Meimei is Grace Donnelly.”
This woman of today was Mister Sung’s dead sister? Mei Ling sank to her knees beside Sean’s chair, baffled. Mister Sung had said once that he and Mei Ling were alike, alone in the world with no family; he had unfolded the worn piece of newspaper he carried in his wallet and read to her about the fire and the people who died in it. How could it be that he had not known his sister had survived? Mei Ling wondered. How could he have simply accepted what was written by men who wanted only to sell papers? Didn’t he look for himself?
“Go now!” Mei Ling ordered in a tone that was foreign even to her. “See meimei now!”
Startled, Sean turned to her at once, but remained seated.
“Go!” Mei Ling got to her feet and pointed at the door.
Sean struggled to his feet now, too, but then all the color drained from his face again and he sank back into the chair.
“Why didn’t she ever answer my letters, if she’s been alive all this time?” he asked. “Why didn’t she come looking for me? Maybe she gave up on me, Mei Ling—I abandoned her, after all. Maybe she doesn’t care whether I’m alive or
not! And why is she living with this Wakefield? Why isn’t she married to Captain Reinders? It doesn’t make any sense.”
It was Mister Sung who was not making any sense, and Mei Ling waved away his questions like so many irritating flies.
“No say to Mei Ling, ‘why.’ Say to meimei.”
“Oh my God!” Sean sat upright and wondered aloud. “Is Mary Kate alive, then? Her daughter?”
Mei Ling nodded enthusiastically and told him about the portrait that hung in the gallery, about Grace with her son and daughter.
Sean frowned. “No boy,” he corrected. “Only girl. Can’t be boy if she’s not married to Reinders,” he speculated quietly. “Maybe it’s not Grace after all.”
Mei Ling felt her face go red with exasperation. “Mei Ling show Mister Sung. Go now.” She didn’t wait for a reply but got the key from the hook and locked up the front door, then pulled him to his feet and led him out to the alley, leaving him leaning against the wall while she hailed a jinriksha; it wasn’t so very far, and Mei Ling could have easily walked the distance, but Mister Sung was clearly not well.
She got him into the jinriksha and directed the runner to the gallery. They stopped once for Sean to vomit over the side—whether from poison in his body or turmoil in his head, Mei Ling did not know—but finally pulled up in front of William Shew’s. Mei Ling ordered the driver to wait, then helped Sean out of the cart and up to the window, pointing out the portrait of the mother and children. His body went rigid as he looked first at the face of his sister, and then at the face of his beloved niece, but when he looked at the face of the little boy, his limbs turned to rubber. “Morgan,” he gasped, and then he passed out.
Thirty-five
Morgan and Quinn had been glad to get off the steamer—glad to leave behind the cramped accommodations, beweeviled pilot bread and navy biscuit, dried beef and salt pork, greasy dandy funk, and bad water. It would have been much worse had they been forced to sail around South America, however; salt pork and biscuit, they’d been told, gradually became a nasty hash called “lobscouse,” and foul drinking water, diluted with liberal quantities of molasses and vinegar in order to make it potable, became “switchel”. Seasickness would have been rampant and the endless days at sea—in light of the men’s urgency—would’ve been unbearable. And so they’d been glad to get off the steamer, glad to leave the discomfort behind, but had felt no need to voice their complaints, as others in the party had done, as they began making arrangements for the next leg of the journey.
They had disembarked on the Caribbean side, at the mouth of the Chagres River, a fever-plagued region of swamps with but one slight elevation, upon which stood the ruined fortress of San Lorenzo, where three hundred men had been killed in an attack nearly two hundred years before by the dread pirate Morgan. Quinn, brightening for the first time since they’d left New York, had nudged Morgan and commented that it was probably no coincidence that both he and Grace had pirates in their pasts. Morgan arranged for the two of them to join a party of four young men from their steamer; Powell, Jeffers, Merriman, and Downey had already hired a bungo and the native boatmen necessary to pole the dugout across to the Cruces. Ortiz and Pascal appeared to be men of mixed Spanish and Indian descent, while Juan was almost certainly of African descent; they were also young men, though far stronger and clearly better natured than the four East Coasters, whose sense of adventure seemed to wither by the hour.
For four days, their party had worked its way along the sharply curving Chagres, avoiding treacherous rocks upon which hung the wreckage of less fortunate canoes, and hoping to avoid the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that hung thick above the stream and the jungle on either side. Morgan and Quinn had bought bottles of local rum and brandy to dole out to the boatsmen but drank little themselves, though the other men in their party were usually drunk by midafternoon. Merriman and Powell were wealthy dandies from the Northeast, and Jeffers and Downey were from the wealthy South; they’d met at Harvard University and had made a pact to seek adventure and pleasure in the West before assuming careers in banking, law, politics, and real estate. Soon enough they would be wed to social calendars and proper wives, but for now they fancied themselves daring young men, their waistbands bristling with too many pistols and brand-new bowie knives. They were loud and boisterous, amusing themselves by drinking copious amounts of brandy and shooting off their guns at the alligators, iguanas, parrots, and anything else that moved upon the crumbling red banks. Quinn was wary of them and said little in their company; Morgan followed suit, though he spoke up when two of them fired randomly toward a small group of thatched huts, scattering Indian women and children into the jungle. The dandies had not appreciated Morgan’s interference, but the boatmen showed their approval in small ways—at night, Morgan and Quinn were shown to bamboo huts with wooden floors and given larger portions of the monkey or iguana meat that Pascal had roasted. When the brandy was passed around, Juan offered Morgan and Quinn cocoa shells with which to dip up a chaser of river water.
As the days passed and the heat became paralyzing, the dandies grew more and more irritated by the boatsmen’s habit of overcoming fatigue with frequent siestas, or by simply disappearing into the jungle for hours, after which they’d return ebullient with rum and singing passe American songs such as “Old Susanna” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Again Morgan and Quinn came to the defense of their guides, pointing out that they were in the middle of a country none of them knew anything about, and there was nothing to be gained by bullying the natives, who could simply decide not to return to their bungo charges—ever. They were almost to Cruces, Morgan reasoned. Why rock the boat now?
“We would have been there yesterday,” Merriman declared from where he stood in the bow, “if they didn’t like their drink so much. No thanks to you.”
“’Tis custom.” Morgan eyed him warily. “You were told, as well as us.”
“Never met an Irishman didn’t like his drink, either,” Powell snorted.
Beside him on the box, Morgan felt Quinn tense. “You’re Irish, then, are you, Mister Powell?” He glanced at the bottle Powell had been swigging from all morning.
“One hundred percent American!” Powell raised his bottle good-naturedly. “All the way back to the Mayflower.”
“Mayflower’s a pub, then, is it?” Morgan asked with seeming innocence.
Jeffers and Downing were sitting up now, watching the drama unfold from beneath the brims of matching straw hats.
“If you’re looking for trouble”—Merriman pulled his bowie knife out of its sheath—“look over here.”
“Oh, I say. Good show, Merriman!” Downing applauded.
“You swing that knife round plenty enough.” Morgan stood up. “But I’ve yet to see you use it.”
“Take a notch out of him,” Powell urged drunkenly. “Show him he’s no match for a trained gentleman.”
“Trained, are you?” Morgan took a step closer. “In notch taking, no less.”
Behind him, Quinn rose to his full height and moved forward; the boat, pulled only halfway up on the bank, rocked slightly in the murky water. An alligator slid off the bank on the far side, its splash launching a cloud of screaming parrots from the tree canopy above.
Merriman stood his ground, but the sweat on his forehead had begun to drip down along his sideburns and was heavy on his upper lip; he touched the tip of his tongue to it, nervously.
“You don’t want to fight me,” Morgan said evenly, not taking his eyes off the man. “Nor I, you. Put the knife down, and we’ll forget it.”
Unsure, Merriman glanced at Powell, and in that second, Morgan moved quickly forward and slapped the knife out of the young man’s hand, then picked it up and threw it overboard. Merriman lurched to the side as if to go after it, but Morgan grabbed his arm.
“Don’t.” He pointed out the alligator. “’Tis over and done with. Forget it.”
Angrily, Merriman jerked his arm away and returned to the bow of the canoe, where he tu
rned his back on the Irishmen and awaited the return of their guides, his bottle by his side, his pistol now tucked awkwardly down the front of his trousers.
“Loaded, do you think?” Quinn asked quietly from the shade in the back of the boat.
“Oh, aye. He’s just the sort shoots himself in the ballocks.” Morgan grinned wryly. “Best stay clear of him ’til Cruces. One more day is all. How you holding up?”
“I’m enjoying the change,” Quinn replied dryly. “Nice to see close up how the better half lives.”
Morgan laughed quietly and handed him a piece of chewy white meat.
“Fish of some kind, is it, then?” Quinn turned it over to examine the other side.
“Didn’t ask. Must be nourishing, though, if it stays down.”
“True enough.” Quinn took a bite and chewed contentedly beside his friend.
The guides returned—rested, fed, and well oiled—and they made a few more miles before settling in for the night, though Morgan did not sleep, aware of the heightened tension in the little boat. The four dandies were not awake when Juan and Ortiz pushed off again at dawn, and so they did not realize how many hours had passed when the boatsmen decided to stop again for a rest.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Powell complained bitterly, his hand to his aching head, dried spittle in the corners of his mouth. “Not again! Absolutely not. I won’t stand for it.”
“Quite right!” Jeffers joined in. “Don’t let them off.” He stood up and blocked the front of the boat, as did Downey.
Pascal put down his pole, shrugged good-naturedly, and dove overboard, swimming a few strokes around the boat to the beach. Ortiz and Juan laughed and were about to follow suit when Merriman grabbed Juan by the arm and shoved the pistol up against his temple.
“No!” he shouted at the boatsman, shaking his head for added emphasis. “Stay on board! Keep going!”
“Get back here, you!” Powell brandished his own pistol at the man on shore.
“Well done!” Downey stood up and patted the weapon in his belt.
