The Cloud Leopard's Daughter

by Deborah Challinor

  They all trooped up on deck. The ‘fellow’ had made himself at home sitting on a crate and smoking a pipe. He wore traditional dress, plus an enormous bamboo hat, the like of which you usually saw on heads in market gardens or the goldfields, not in the city. It was jammed so low on his head no one could see his face.

  ‘Captain, Captain,’ he said in heavily accented English when Rian appeared, and bowed from the waist and extended a hand, though he didn’t bother to rise.

  Rian didn’t shake it. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  ‘I have information for you.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Your child. Your daughter?’

  Kitty stifled a hopeful gasp as Tahi demanded, ‘Where is she?’

  Rian shushed Tahi with a hand. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded. ‘And take that damned hat off.’

  ‘I have no name today. And I must remain a ghost. You will understand when you hear what I have to say.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  Kitty flinched, wishing that Rian would refrain from being quite so aggressive when he was upset. It brought out the worst in people.

  As it was, the man said nothing.

  They all stared at him. Or rather, at the brim of his hat.

  Simon suggested, ‘Perhaps some compensation might be in order?’

  Rian heaved out an almighty sigh and Kitty felt like slapping him. He should know by now that you didn’t get anything for nothing in this world, and in particular anything worth having.

  She said, ‘Mr Ghost, it would honour us if you would allow us to make a financial contribution towards the welfare of your family. What amount might you find satisfactory?’

  As if he’d been waiting for this offer all along, the man named a figure in Chinese currency that roughly equalled three guineas. It was a reasonable amount of money, but Kitty knew she – and Rian – would pay ten times that if the information led them to Amber.

  Rian nodded and Simon disappeared into the cabin to fetch the money from the ship’s safe.

  ‘The information?’ Rian prompted.

  ‘Financial contribution first.’

  A stony silence fell. Simon returned, the money was handed over, counted, and slipped into a pocket.

  Then Mr Ghost lifted his head, revealing his chin and nose, which looked like any Chinese man’s chin and nose. ‘I am a seaman, Lo Fang Yi is my captain. You are right. We did kidnap your daughter from the hotel at Cebu. She was well treated while she was with us—’

  ‘Was?’ Tahi interrupted. ‘Where the hell is she now?’

  ‘Tahi,’ Rian warned, though he too appeared badly startled.

  His hand shooting up briskly, the palm out, Mr Ghost declared, ‘I will finish. She was well treated while she was aboard our ship. As we approached Hong Kong, passing the west coast of Lamma Island, we were beset by Chinese pirates and she was taken from us.’

  Feeling as though she’d just been struck, Kitty folded her hands over her head and it took her a moment to realise that she was making a high, keening sound. White-faced, and apparently shocked out of his anger, Rian drew her arms gently down, enveloped her in a one-armed hug and murmured, ‘Don’t fret, mo ghrá. We’ll get her back.’

  Will we? she wondered. Will we really?

  ‘Who are these pirates?’ Hawk asked.

  Mr Ghost seemed to deflate slightly, as if overwhelmed by the task of having to describe them. ‘Their captain is rumoured to be great-grandson of the infamous pirate queen Cheng I Sao, who commanded a confederation of eight hundred armed war junks and many thousands of pirates, and went into battle with the heads of her enemies tied around her neck by their queues.’ He paused then said, ‘Fortunately, in these modern times, this no longer occurs.’

  ‘Does he have a name, this captain?’ Rian asked, the edge back in his voice.

  ‘He is Lee Longwei. Sometimes he is known as the Dragon.’

  Tahi breathed in with a sharp little hiss. Everyone looked at him. ‘My vision. The dragon?’

  Pierre said, ‘In the vision, where, the dragon, did he go with Amber?’

  ‘I don’t know! Just up in the sky.’

  Mr Ghost made a noise that might have been a chuckle, or it might not. ‘Lee Longwei does many remarkable things but he does not fly.’

  ‘What do you mean, remarkable?’ Hawk asked.

  ‘He is feared by all the other pirates in the China Sea, and by your Royal Navy.’

  ‘It’s not our Royal Navy,’ Rian said. ‘We don’t consider ourselves English.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Mr Ghost said, bowing his head in acknowledgment. ‘Lee Longwei also never loses a battle – of any kind. Possibly that is because he is ruthless, and fearless, and will never back down. He is young in age yet has the wit and authority to command over a thousand men and close to fifty war junks. But here is perhaps the strangest thing. He refuses to smuggle opium ashore from the country traders’ ships anchored out at sea. A pirate with morals – when the situation suits him.’

  ‘But don’t your pirates make half their money smuggling opium? Pirates, and these fellows paddling about in their little waka?’ Haunui asked, flapping a vague hand over the side of the Katipo.

  ‘Some do, some do not. Many Chinese do not agree with the importation of opium to our lands.’

  ‘Do you?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I do not and I curse the day tobacco and opium smoking were ever introduced to China, almost as much as I curse the day you English arrived.’

  ‘Don’t call me English,’ Haunui said.

  ‘Hush,’ Kitty urged. ‘Let him finish.’ She had a feeling that if Mr Ghost were allowed to say his piece, he might be better disposed to give an opinion on what he thought might happen to Amber.

  ‘We beg your pardon,’ Rian said. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘My people have been debased and ruined by the opium forced upon us: we have suffered and lost two wars and our great Qing dynasty has gone into irreversible decline, just so gweilo in England can drink our tea, from our porcelain, wearing gowns and waistcoats made from our silks. That is the rape and exploitation of a people of the highest order.’

  Shocked, Kitty stared at the man. That had been a brutal thing to say. But the more she thought about it, the more she realised that he’d summarised the situation very succinctly. Her cheeks burnt, even though she knew she wasn’t personally responsible for any of it and was uncomfortably familiar with the story of the East India Company’s exploits in China. In fact she agreed wholeheartedly with Mr Ghost. That was the trouble with guilt if you were inclined that way – you could feel shame for things that had nothing to do with you.

  ‘Why would Lee Longwei take our daughter from you?’ she asked. ‘What would he want with her?’ She dearly wished Mr bloody Ghost hadn’t used the word rape.

  Mr Ghost was still for a moment, his ridiculous hat casting a long shadow across the deck. Then he gave a small shrug and said, ‘Perhaps he will hold her for ransom.’

  ‘We’ve got money, we can pay,’ Rian said. ‘How do we find him?’

  Mr Ghost’s hat swivelled left and right and Kitty really wanted him to take it off. Something about the way he spoke – the schooled and grammatically correct words he used – reminded her of someone she couldn’t quite place. She realised he was shaking his head.

  ‘It may not be money he will want.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have anything else,’ she said, her own temper fraying now. ‘What do you mean?’

  Another shrug. ‘Not all ransoms concern money. But I am only speculating and I will say nothing else.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Rian snapped.

  Tahi took a step forwards, his fists clenched. Haunui settled a calming hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You can’t just not tell us anything more. Why won’t you?’ Kitty demanded.

  A sigh very close to impatience. ‘Because I do not know. I am making a guess, a supposition, a deduction, a prediction, a—’

  ‘You
most certainly are the human thesaurus, monsieur,’ Pierre interrupted. ‘Do you know the meaning of “a beating”?’

  Mr Ghost presented his hands, palms up. ‘I am merely offering my opinion based on what I know of Lee Longwei.’ He stood. ‘I have finished here.’

  ‘Wait!’ Rian said. ‘A man named Yip Chun Kit. Can you tell us where to find him?’

  A brief hesitation, then out came the hand again. ‘Another guinea. For the family.’

  Rian had that much in his pocket, and passed it over.

  ‘He has a large house here at the base of the mountain, near the racecourse. Ask anyone.’ He paused, then added, ‘My kinsman, So-Yee, sends his compliments. Good day.’

  ‘So-Yee?’ Rian echoed, as they watched the Chinese man walk down the gangway and disappear into the crowd milling along the pier.

  ‘I do not understand,’ Hawk said.

  ‘I think I do,’ Simon remarked thoughtfully.

  Kitty nodded. ‘So do I. So-Yee. I was racking my brains trying to work out who he reminded me of. Similar voice, same use of words. Perhaps So-Yee knew Kai ordered Lo Fang to abduct Amber on the voyage here. Perhaps the business with the sails was part of that.’

  ‘Well, it’s bloody lucky we didn’t end up in Davy Jones’s locker because of it,’ Rian said.

  ‘And maybe So-Yee asked his kinsman in the hat, whoever he is,’ Kitty went on, ‘to keep an eye on things and tell us what happened.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Tahi asked. ‘So-Yee is Bao’s secret . . . what’s the word?’

  ‘Advocate,’ Simon suggested.

  Tahi nodded. ‘Bao’s advocate, not Amber’s.’

  ‘I suspect he doesn’t want us to be distracted from what he considers to be our most important task,’ Kitty said, ‘which is rescuing Bao. In other words, the sooner we find Amber, the sooner we can focus on Bao.’

  Pierre whistled. ‘The man has the heart of ice!’

  ‘Well, yes and no,’ Kitty said. ‘He can’t be that hard-hearted to take such a risk for Bao and Amber.’

  An expression of dawning comprehension spread across Pierre’s weathered face. ‘Aah, So-Yee is in love with Bao!’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’s extremely fond of her but I think it’s more a matter of his undying loyalty to Fu.’

  ‘If he’s that loyal to Fu what’s he doing working for Kai?’ Rian asked.

  ‘Spying,’ Kitty said simply.

  Part Two

  THE FRAGRANT HARBOUR OCTOBER 1863

  My love is as a fever, longing still

  Chapter Seven

  Wong Bao Wan sat in a red sandalwood chair, her back supported by an embroidered silk velvet cushion, staring out of the window at the garden beyond. The stiff, oiled paper covering her windows was rolled up today – it was rumoured that only the Empress Dowager Cixi had glass in her palace, including an entire conservatory – but when Yip Chun Kit was angry with her, which was often, he forbade her from lifting the paper, so that her rooms were suffused all day with a sickly yellow light. Her apartment in his courtyard house was lavish, but it was still a prison. She’d only been permitted out to bathe, visit the privy, or walk in the confines of one of the house’s two beautiful gardens – and never on her own; her personal female servant, Po, even attended her on visits to the privy. And she was aware that her apartment was guarded at night.

  She knew very well why she was here and what her uncle, Kai, expected of her, but she would never submit to Yip Chun Kit. He was a domineering, unpleasant and physically unattractive man and she’d discovered not long after she’d arrived that his servants called him ‘The Frog’, but it wasn’t his flat head, bulging eyes and extraordinarily wide mouth that repelled her. In fact it wasn’t him at all: she simply didn’t want to be in Hong Kong, not while her father was so ill, and she was livid with Kai for having her abducted and brought here. She suspected her father was dying, though he hadn’t actually told her so – wanting, she presumed, to stop her from worrying, but she could see what was happening to him. If he did die before she returned home, Kai would very much regret his actions.

  The servants here lived in fear of Yip Chun Kit. She’d tried to befriend them but realised now if she made accomplices of them it would mean their certain death when she did manage to leave. No, she’d come to understand that quite possibly her greatest ally in this household was someone who, in theory, should be her worst enemy. Not Chun himself, but his primary concubine.

  Her name was Lai Wing Yan. She was stunningly beautiful and in her early twenties, with eyes almost as round as a European’s, which Chun prized, a mouth like a rosebud, silky black hair that fell to her waist and milky skin. Chun preferred all his women to possess a pale complexion and insisted they never venture outside without a parasol. She was tiny – Bao wondered how she fared beneath Chun’s bulk – and had very delicate feet, though they weren’t bound. Perhaps she was of Hakka or Manchurian origin: their women didn’t bind their feet, which possibly blighted her slightly in Chun’s eyes as a prospective wife. In which case he shouldn’t be physically interested in her, Bao, as her feet were in fact on the large side. But then, he wasn’t, was he? It was her authority and her family tong’s wealth that he wanted.

  Wing was terribly competitive and enjoyed nothing more than setting Chun’s wife, Yip Tan Ling, and the other concubines against one another. And now, of course, that included Bao. Wing was jealous because, according to servants’ gossip, so far she hadn’t been able to give Chun a child, and it was her one aim to become primary wife, which would never happen while she remained barren. Tan had provided three children, while the other two concubines, Yu Peijing and So Mei Yan, had popped out two apiece. And now she feared that Bao, who came with a very significant dowry courtesy of Kai and wasn’t unattractive herself, would prove to be a font of fertility and supplant Tan, ruining Wing’s chances of becoming favoured wife.

  Yu Peijing and So Mei Yan weren’t threats to her, Bao had decided. They were unlikely to achieve the status of Chun’s wife, not with Tan already firmly in place and Wing snapping at her heels and secretly trying every fertility treatment known to Chinese medicine, and they seemed content with their children, their luxurious accommodations in Chun’s compound, and happy to tolerate his attentions once a week.

  Tan was a problem, if not in the same direct fashion as Wing. She clearly knew that Bao was about to supplant her, disliked her intensely, and took every opportunity to demonstrate the fact. She glided about on her smelly pig-trotter feet, her face powdered white, her shaved eyebrows replaced by an alarmingly angled false pair drawn on higher up, and her rouged lips puckered in a sour moue. Bao suspected she actually loved Chun, and had no wish to upset the woman. Without Bao telling her directly, however, Tan couldn’t know that, and Tan refused to speak more than a few words to her. She wouldn’t believe Bao anyway, such was her apparent belief in Chun’s irresistibility to all women.

  Bao saw and spoke with the other women quite often during her visits to the gardens. Chun’s women were present so often when she was there that she had initially wondered if they, too, were prisoners. They weren’t, though. Yu Peijing told her that sometimes they went to the markets and to the shops on Queen’s Road and Wellington Street, and at other times they took the children, all under the age of ten and currently being raised in Chun’s compound but not destined to live there forever, to the public gardens or up to Victoria Peak if it was especially hot.

  Bao, however, was stuck in the house, and had been for months, and it was driving her mad. Chun was a tong master himself, and a very wealthy hong, and his courtyard house was large to accommodate his women and children, his parents, several other family members, and his servants. It was constructed in the traditional style: a walled compound with one entrance with two garden courtyards surrounded by single-storey buildings, like a capital H with the top and bottom closed in. It was built of the best timber and tile, well appointed, with plenty of bathing rooms and privies, lavishly furnished
, and the gardens were havens of serenity, but none of this meant anything to Bao. What were silk sheets, exquisite cloisonné vases and a lotus pond when her father was dying in a damp country at the bottom of the world?

  In any normal Chinese home she’d simply be able to walk out the door, but this wasn’t a normal home. Included among Chun’s servants were four bodyguards, big men who, judging from their size and facial features, were from the north. When Po wasn’t trailing around after her, one or other of these men was keeping a very close eye, which was unnerving and irritating. She had not even been able to send a letter to her father as Po had been too frightened to smuggle it out of the house for her. He would know where she was, though. So-Yee would have seen to that. He appeared loyal to Kai, but he was far more loyal to her and her father.

  Po appeared, flitting quietly across the polished wooden floor in her slippers.

  ‘Miss Wong, Mr Yip wishes to attend you.’

  Oh, go away, Bao thought. ‘What does he want?’ she snapped in Cantonese without turning around.

  Looking slightly aghast at, and frightened by, Bao’s rudeness concerning Yip Chun Kit, Po said, ‘He would not tell me such a thing, Miss Bao. He only asked me to tell you. He will be here in five minutes. Would you like me to comb your hair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will I prepare tea?’

  Bao turned around and gave her a big bright smile. ‘You can prepare what you like, Po. I could not care less.’ Then she felt mean. It wasn’t Po’s fault she worked for a crooked, pompous racketeer. She sighed. ‘Yes, make some tea. Please.’

  Po scurried off, her short indigo robe flapping and the cotton fabric of her trousers swishing.

  Bao stared out the window again, then lifted a cheek and deliberately farted. The previous evening’s meal had been duck gizzards with hoisin sauce, rice and hundred-year-old eggs, and she hoped the smell would linger until well after Kit arrived.

  It did but he didn’t seem to notice. He bustled in without knocking, by which time she’d moved from the window to the futon in her small private reception area, as she absolutely refused to receive him in her sleeping chamber.