The Cloud Leopard's Daughter

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘If he doesn’t have her, why did he run off?’

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care, but whatever the reason, he’s deserted and won’t be welcome back aboard this ship.’

  Below them Wing and Ka, who was carrying a sizable bundle of wet laundry, appeared on deck. As Rian watched in growing amazement, Wing pointed out to her servant where she wanted her clothes hung on the rigging to dry.

  ‘For God’s sake, Kitty,’ Rian exploded, ‘get them below. And their bloody washing. We’re not on a bloody day trip up the Thames!’

  The Katipo was fast approaching the headland that concealed Hung Shing Yeh Bay. They’d be a laughing stock if they arrived with women’s clothing flapping all over the place.

  He watched sourly as Kitty shooed the women below again, Wing as usual going with bad grace. Although the servant girl was a pleasant young thing, Wing was a pain in the arse and he couldn’t wait to be rid of her. Possibly the only person aboard the Katipo who might be sorry to see her go would be Mick, who’d taken quite a shine to her. But then Mick took a shine to every woman who wasn’t outright ugly, and Lai Wing Yan definitely wasn’t that.

  Hawk appeared at his side, his watch in his hand. ‘We have made good time with the wind behind us.’

  ‘Means a slower trip back, though,’ Rian said.

  He shouted instructions as the Katipo rounded the headland and sailed in a graceful arc into the wide mouth of Hung Shing Yeh Bay.

  Which was empty.

  Lee Longwei and his squadron had gone.

  *

  The Katipo returned to Hong Kong, the entire crew bitterly disappointed and angry, Kitty in tears. At Lamma Island, on discovering that Longwei had weighed anchor, Bao had told Wing and Ka to go to their cabin and stay there until she informed them they could come out. For once Wing, unnerved by the crew’s mood, obeyed without an argument.

  Having moored this time in the harbour to avoid Yip Chun Kit discovering that they were hiding Bao, his runaway primary concubine and her servant, they gathered around the mess table to talk about what to do. Wing had condescended to hang out her own laundry while Ka worked in the galley washing the supper dishes so Pierre could sit in on the meeting.

  At first he’d insisted she wasn’t allowed. ‘The lovely shiny pots, she will scratch them.’ He mimed vigorously scrubbing a pot then staring at it in abject horror. ‘See? Ruined!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Pierre, she’s a servant,’ Rian said. ‘She knows how to clean a bloody pot.’

  ‘Non, she is the lady servant, not the scullery servant.’

  Ka put her small hand on Pierre’s arm, looked into his eyes – which she could do quite comfortably as he wasn’t much taller than her – and said something in her own language.

  ‘She be saying?’ Pierre demanded of Bao.

  ‘She says she will wash your pots with the same love and attention that you would employ bathing your first-born grandchild.’

  Pierre’s hand flew to his mouth. ‘Oh! Beautiful!’ He took Ka gently by the elbow, led her to the washing-up bowl, pointed to the kettle on the galley stove and showed her where the soap was kept. ‘My apologies, ma chérie.’

  Rian rolled his eyes. ‘Can we get started now?’

  Finally everyone was seated.

  ‘As you all know, I think Longwei still has Amber,’ Rian said.

  ‘And I don’t,’ Haunui interrupted.

  ‘And we can’t find out who actually does have her because Longwei and Israel have both disappeared,’ Rian went on. ‘Now, I’m not prepared to sit here on my backside and do nothing, so which one of them are we most likely to track down?’

  ‘Israel,’ Hawk said. ‘Haunui has seen him here in Hong Kong, or he thinks he has seen him, and Longwei could be anywhere at sea by now.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Kitty said.

  ‘I am sorry, Kitty, but it is true.’

  Haunui said, ‘We should go back to where I saw Israel, and I’m sure it was him . . .’ His finger shot up. ‘And don’t forget Lily, the little bar girl at the Red Lantern. She definitely saw him, eh? We should go back to where I last saw him, spread ourselves out and start knocking on doors. Or knocking them down. I reckon he’s got lodgings round there somewhere.’

  Rian gave him a look. ‘Do you know how many doors there are in that area? Only about a third of Hong Kong’s Chinese live there.’

  ‘Rian!’ Kitty snapped. ‘Do you want to find Amber or not?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Well, stop being such a damned doom-monger and do as Haunui says. At least listen to him. You have been sitting on your backside. All you’ve done to get Amber back is talk to that bloody Cixi woman, and what a waste of time that was.’

  ‘That’s not true. I—’

  Kitty slammed her hand on the table so hard it hurt. ‘It is true. You’ve been dithering around for days. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.’

  Rian stared at her. Everyone else stared at anything but Kitty and Rian.

  ‘Well?’ Kitty prompted. She was shaming Rian, her precious, beloved husband, in front of his crew and friends, but she didn’t care. In her opinion he’d been prevaricating, refusing to listen and generally wasting precious time, and it was worrying and scaring her.

  Sighing hugely, Rian rubbed his face with his hands. ‘I was worried that if I pushed Longwei too hard, or defied him, he’d hurt Amber. Or kill her. He was civil to us when we met him but he’s a ruthless bastard. I’ve asked around. That reputation of his is deserved. So I’ve been trying to tread gently and humour him. And as for Israel, I really can’t believe he’d have the brains to convince Longwei to let Amber go. I really can’t.’

  ‘Tahi,’ Kitty said. ‘Would Amber go with Israel?’

  He nodded. ‘They’re friends, as far as Amber’s concerned. She’d want to get away from Longwei, too, of course.’

  ‘Does she have any idea about how he feels about her?’

  ‘If she does she’s never said anything to me about it.’

  Wing appeared then, her elegant little shoes silent on the companionway steps. Mick leapt to his feet to help her down the last few.

  ‘Where is Ka?’ Wing asked.

  ‘In the galley washing pots,’ Bao replied. ‘She might need some help.’

  Pierre cringed but Wing ignored Bao and disappeared towards her cabin.

  ‘Anyway,’ Haunui boomed, making everyone jump. ‘About trying to find Israel. We could start with lodging houses.’

  ‘There are dozens down that end of the city,’ Simon said. ‘It’s where a lot of the sailors stay, and some of the less well paid British civil servants.’

  ‘But dozens isn’t hundreds,’ Haunui said. ‘So that’s all right.’

  ‘You’re all forgetting something rather obvious,’ Kitty said. ‘If Amber’s staying at a lodging house with Israel—’

  ‘She won’t be with him,’ Tahi said fiercely. ‘She’d never do that.’

  ‘Oh, love, you know what I mean,’ Kitty said soothingly. ‘I know she wouldn’t. But if she’s at a lodging house here in Hong Kong, why hasn’t she just come here, to the Katipo? So perhaps Longwei does still have her.’

  Haunui drew a small circle on the table with his tumbler of brandy. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe she can’t come.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kitty asked. A nasty little finger of dread crept up her spine.

  ‘She doesn’t know where we’re berthed,’ Simon pointed out. ‘There are hundreds of ships tied up along these wharves, and three times as many at anchor in the harbour. Perhaps she couldn’t find us. And we’ve moved twice now.’

  ‘But only once from Pedder’s Wharf,’ Kitty pointed out.

  ‘Maybe Israel is keeping her prisoner,’ Haunui said.

  ‘Why?’ Kitty asked, baffled. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘To stop her from coming to us.’

  They all thought about that for a moment.

  ‘That means he’s either
planning to stay here with her,’ Simon said, ‘which is unlikely because Victoria’s not a big city and he must know we’d find them eventually, or he plans for them to leave for some other destination.’

  Rian said, ‘He’d never be able to keep Amber prisoner, not somewhere like a boarding house. Can you imagine it? She’d be a nightmare.’

  Haunui glanced at the ship’s clock on the wall. ‘Time for less thinking and more doing. We’ve done enough thinking. Do we start tonight or tomorrow?’

  Rian looked at Kitty. Her desire was to tear straight out and start banging on doors now, but her instinct told her they’d be more successful with a planned approach tomorrow after a good night’s sleep, if such a thing were possible. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, ‘but early.’

  Ka stepped out of the galley then and said something to Bao, which was followed by a short conversation between the two.

  Bao said, ‘Ka says she grew up in the west end and knows quite a lot of the families living there. If you will allow her, she would like to help tomorrow.’

  Smiling properly for what felt like the first time in days, Kitty said, ‘Tell her yes, thank you, we’d appreciate that very much.’

  *

  Mick knocked on the door of Wing’s cabin. Ka opened it.

  ‘Er, evening. Can I talk to Miss Wing, please?’

  He could see her sitting on her bunk, her glorious, shining hair falling like a waterfall down her back.

  Ka didn’t answer, probably because she didn’t have a clue what he was saying, he thought, and then they were both staring, with him standing at the door like a mutton-head.

  He looked over the top of Ka. ‘Miss Wing? Can I talk to you?’

  She frowned slightly, her pretty lips pursing, and he thought she was going to say no. The disappointment settled like a great rock in his chest.

  Finally she said, ‘Yes, Mr Doyle, you may.’

  His heart soared. Victory! ‘In private?’

  Again her porcelain-smooth brow wrinkled slightly. She wasn’t wearing any of that white stuff on her face tonight. He liked her better without it. It looked like confectioners’ sugar but he bet it didn’t taste like it.

  She said something to Ka, who flitted next door to visit Bao in what was Israel’s cabin.

  Again that tremendous leap of his heart. This was ridiculous; he hadn’t felt like this since he was about fifteen and didn’t know any better. She beckoned and his feet moved into the cabin of their own accord, then she patted the bunk’s mattress, but had to lean to do it which meant he wasn’t sitting as close to her as he would’ve liked. Still, early days.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Shite. Now he was here he felt tongue-tied. He cast about, grappling for something intelligent to say. ‘D’you like your cabin?’

  ‘My cabin? No. It is far too small. I am accustomed to much bigger accommodations than this. And far more luxurious. My apartment at the house of Yip Chun Kit had two-hundred-year-old wall-hangings of silk velvet embroidered with gold thread.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Do you have such luxuries in your home?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Where is your home?’

  ‘You’re sitting in it.’

  ‘You do not own property ashore?’

  ‘Me mam and me own a lot of houses in Sydney, Australia, ’cos we’re in business together,’ Mick lied. ‘We’re landlords, so we are.’

  His mother, Biddy, owned the property – he slept on her sofa when he was on shore leave.

  ‘How many houses?’

  Mick waved a dismissive hand. ‘Can’t remember off the top of me head. Me mam’s always buying houses. I’d have to consult the books.’

  Unlikely. Biddy never let him anywhere near her ledgers, and kept an even tighter rein on her purse strings.

  Wing leant towards him. Her hair slid over her shoulder and he could smell her perfume, something lovely and flowery, just like her. She was like . . . an exotic orchid. God, he was getting poetic in his middle age.

  ‘And does your wife help your mother run the business, Mr Doyle?’

  ‘Me wife? I’m not married. Never have been.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Never found the right lady, I suppose,’ Mick said. And why should I buy the cow when I can have the milk for free?

  ‘What would constitute the right lady?’

  Mick hesitated. What the hell did ‘constitute’ mean? What if he gave a stupid answer and made a fool of himself? ‘In what way?’ he asked.

  He loved ‘in what way’. It got him out of all sorts of shite – ignorance of words, not listening, needing more time to think.

  ‘What would her personality be like, I suppose,’ Wing said. ‘Her attributes.’

  Fuck. He wasn’t entirely confident about ‘attributes’ either, and he couldn’t say ‘in what way’ again. But ‘personality’ was easy.

  ‘Well, I’d want, I mean I’d like her to be pleasant, happy, kind, generous. Willing to please her husband. You know, all those things that make a good wife. Things that every man wants.’

  ‘Of course,’ Wing said. She laid a pale hand on his knee, her touch electrifying him. ‘I am sad that you have not yet found marital happiness. You are a handsome man, Mr Doyle, and obviously kind and generous. Who knows? Perhaps the woman you seek is closer than you realise?’

  Ah God, Mick thought with a wild surge of hope, does she mean her?

  *

  Israel popped another small spoonful of rice into Amber’s mouth, thinking, This must be what it’s like feeding a baby. He’d never done that. There was only him, though he suspected his mother might have had children in England before she was transported.

  Amber had eaten rice yesterday as well, the day he’d talked to Longwei and then been chased by him, so that was two meals she’d had now, last night and this morning. He’d waited until she was waking up from the opium and was sure she wouldn’t choke, then hand fed her. She’d talked a little, well, mumbled and said words that didn’t make sense, and he’d told her what he’d said right at the beginning – that she was unwell. She definitely looked unwell now. She had big dark shadows under her eyes and her face was really quite pale, and halfway through last night’s rice she’d been sick, but he’d caught it all in the bowl, which he’d been quite proud of, and had simply served her another lot in the other bowl. Then, when it seemed like she’d had enough, he’d given her more opium and off she’d gone. This morning, though, she wasn’t showing any signs of wanting to be sick and had eaten nearly all her rice. He might even give her a drink, she’d been so good not wetting the bed in the night.

  He’d left the jug of ale in his room so he shot next door and was just pouring a little into a tumbler when someone knocked on the door. He stopped dead, hardly even breathing. Mrs Whittle? No one else knew they were here. He put the ale and the tumbler down and went to the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  No reply but he could tell someone was outside. He could . . . feel them.

  ‘Mrs Whittle?’

  Nothing.

  He put the chain on, which he’d stupidly left off, carefully slid open the bolt and cracked the door an inch. It flew open, breaking the chain, and hit him full in the face.

  Staggering backwards, he fell over a chair and scrambled to his knees, Ip To looming over him. He raised his hands to ward off the blows he knew were coming. Instead, a note was shoved at him: he clutched at it with a shaking hand and stared in terror up at Ip To, who turned and left.

  Israel remained on his knees for a moment, then collapsed forward onto the palms of his hands like a dog, watching as drops of bright blood from his battered nose dripped onto Mrs Whittle’s carpet. His face felt as though it were on fire and he wanted to lie down and cry. But he bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t: anyone worthy of marrying a girl like Amber didn’t cry just because they’d banged the
ir face and things were going a bit wrong.

  He reached for his old, grubby shirt, held it to his face and tipped back his head. After a while the flow of blood slowed, then finally stopped. He wondered if he’d have black eyes tomorrow.

  Opening the note and leaving bloody fingerprints all over it, he smoothed it against his knee. It said:

  Monday, the 26th of October, 1863

  To Israel Mitchell,

  I have decided that I wish to accompany you and the girl to your meeting with William Eastwood. However, Tuesday evening is not convenient for me. Please consult with Mr Eastwood and change the meeting time to this evening, at eight o’clock at the Lotus Pond Gardens. I am sure, if he is as eager for the meeting as you have implied, he will agree.

  Failure to make the above arrangements will be taken by me as confirmation that you have reneged on our contract. You are aware of the consequences.

  Your Obedient Servant

  Lee Longwei

  My obedient servant? Israel thought in dismay. You rotten bloody bastard. This was going to ruin everything!

  He clambered to his feet, feeling dizzy and hoping his nose wouldn’t start bleeding again, and crept to the door, peeping out to make sure Ip To really had gone. No sign of him.

  Shit, shit, shit. What was he going to do?

  He went next door, gave Amber a drink, half of which ended up running down her chin, and sat on the end of her bed to think.

  Chapter Twelve

  By midday, Rian, Kitty and the crew had knocked on possibly three hundred random doors and talked to the proprietors of seven lodging houses. It was an interesting exercise but not a fruitful one: nobody who cared to answer either the door or the crew’s questions had seen a couple answering to Amber’s and Israel’s descriptions. Ka, Simon and Pierre had even gone to the Lotus Pond Gardens, an edge of which was bordered by Queen’s Road, and approached people there – Chinese and a few British women enjoying the beautiful, peaceful surrounds and the autumn sun – until a pair of sour-faced soldiers from the 31st Regiment told them to move on.

  They all met at twelve-thirty for a meal at an eating house and to regroup before they began again in the afternoon. The last section to be searched was the most heavily populated, a warren of houses packed together over a square mile and threaded with narrow lanes and thoroughfares that could only be accessed on foot. It would take them hours if they were to try every address and there was no reason to think that would be of use anyway. It hadn’t been this morning. So they decided to limit their questioning to the lodging houses, markets, shops and hotels.