The Limehouse Text

by Will Thomas

  26

  THE NEXT MORNING BEING THE SABBATH, I CROSSED the street to the Baptist Tabernacle with Barker to hear Charles Haddon Spurgeon preach. The topic of his sermon was grace, which to me is always a cheerier subject than damnation. Along with the sermon came the hymns, which included “Amazing Grace,” Barker’s favorite, perhaps because it had been written by a sea captain.

  After the service was over and we had shaken the pastor’s hand, we walked back to the house that we were no longer sharing and ate a solid English lunch of beef and mash and Yorkshire pudding, like a million other people in London. It must gall Etienne to cook such fare, without the chance to toss in a bit of garlic here, a bit of truffle there, but I would back his roast beef against any Englishman’s in the country.

  Barker did not dawdle over tea but went upstairs to change his Sunday morning coat into a more serviceable cutaway. He came down a few moments later shooting his cuffs and adjusting his cufflinks.

  “Are you ready, lad?” Barker called up the staircase to me. One always tries to dress appropriately, but what does one wear to a Chinese New Year celebration? Given the circumstances, I decided to err on the side of caution and wear my overcoat with the lead-lined padding and built-in holster. After all, we were looking for a killer, not merely taking in the sights.

  My employer stuffed a finger and thumb under his mustache and emitted a shrill whistle that brought a hansom cab to our curb. We climbed aboard and were soon on our way.

  “Are you armed?” he asked.

  “One pistol. I couldn’t use the other one, so I did not bring it. Do you think tonight shall be important?”

  “Yes, I do,” he responded. “New Year’s is a time to finish old business and begin the new. Alliances are made or broken. Everyone hopes for health and prosperity during the coming year, but I’ve known more than one life to be snuffed out on such a night and more than one business financially ruined.”

  After we crossed London Bridge and were in Commercial Street, he went on. “I imagine much of the East End shall be there tonight to enjoy the spectacle. There shall be the usual food merchants and trinkets for sale. There shall also be pickpockets, confidence tricksters, drunken sailors, and brawls. Several West Enders will be slumming, looking for their first taste of opium. Street musicians will abound, as will beggars. Limehouse shall be rouged like an old tart, looking to divert the public, while the merchants of the quarter cosh them and take their money.”

  We were reaching West India Dock Road when I heard a sound and tensed.

  “Gunfire, sir!” I cried, reaching for my pistol.

  “No, lad. Firecrackers. They shall be going on all day, I’m afraid. The Chinese have a fascination with fireworks. They believe they ward off evil spirits.”

  The driver let us down and turned his cab before his horse could panic. One could hear firecrackers going off in every street. We were immediately assaulted by beggar children asking for ha’pennies for a ha’penny dinner. I was reaching for my pocket when Barker stopped me.

  “It’s a trick, lad,” he said. “Off with you! They shall be begging all day from any prosperous-looking person and passing ha’pennies to their parents in the alleyways. They’ll earn several shillings by night’s end, I’ll wager.”

  Rows of makeshift tables were set up in the street, fluttering with red crepe and silk in the cool afternoon breeze. I stopped to look over a table full of small Buddhas and other Chinese gods of all descriptions, some lacquered red and others a pale green.

  “Jade?” I asked Barker.

  “Plaster,” he corrected. “Probably made from molds and painted not three streets from here.”

  Long strings of fireworks were suspended from balconies overhead, dancing in the air as they exploded one by one. Envelopes covered in gold leaf hung near the top, safely out of reach but tantalizing to the throng of people below. One Oriental sat at a corner, playing upon a kind of Chinese violin with a bow, his cap in front of him. Half the people of Limehouse seemed to have become food merchants.

  Barker was looking around at the crowd, and I knew what he was thinking. It was the perfect time for Quong’s and Bainbridge’s killer to drill us with a bullet through the forehead from some balcony. I suddenly felt very exposed.

  We looked about as we walked through West India Dock Road while hawkers tried to tempt us with games of chance and vendors to sell us things at twice the price they went for on shop shelves the morning before: Oriental dolls, incense, carved dragons, pearls whose authenticity I doubted, silk wallets and scarves, scrolls painted with the symbol for prosperity, novelties, and clothing. The English merchants were not above using the festival to make a few bob themselves, and there were stands selling beer, pork pies, jellied eels, and toffee. A sailor came out of a shop with his sleeves rolled up and a new tattoo on his forearm, the skin raw and red from the needle. He and his comrades were obviously drunk. He would regret today’s romp. I hoped I wouldn’t, as well.

  I felt a hand dip into my pocket and recoil when it came in contact with the handle of my pistol. I spun ’round in time to see a Chinese boy run off, who could not have been more than eleven.

  “Quite a to-do,” I said to Barker over the firecrackers.

  “Yes, it is the only time of the year the district kicks up its heels.”

  There was the steady clamor of a gong ahead, and Barker and I pushed our way through the crowd to a large intersection. Everyone was milling about expectantly.

  The crowd parted as Bok Fu Ying stepped forward into the street. She was without her veil and the plait she wore was down to her waist. She wore a suit of Chinese clothing made of red silk and a pair of embroidered slippers. In her hand was a long broadsword with a red sash. Somewhere off to the right, a band of Chinese musicians began to play a low melancholy tune and she began to move.

  The crowd of mostly foreign men watched this representative of their homeland with rapt attention as she spun. The sword in her hand scythed the air left and right, the trailing sash popping like the string of a kite. The blade was extremely thin, though as broad as a pirate’s cutlass, and it bent and shivered to and fro as she moved from position to position. It looked like a beautiful dance, or so I would have said a year earlier. Now my eye recognized one deadly technique after another. She could have cut a man to ribbons with that sword, and I could personally attest that she kicked like a Surrey mule.

  Finally, she came to a standstill in the center and settled down into a cross-legged position. The music changed and became lower and more eerie. I heard a woman give a short scream of surprise, which set us all craning our necks. The crowd parted and a creature came bounding out, heading straight for Bok Fu Ying.

  It was a lion, or at least it was supposed to be. In fact, it was two very agile dancers in a lion costume, a multicolored Chinese fantasy with a huge head, blinking eyes, and a snapping jaw. It looked more like Harm than an actual lion, but then I realized Pekingese are called lion dogs in China, or more exotic still, butterfly lions. The creature charged toward Bok Fu Ying and skidded to a stop. The maiden feigned fear, keeping him at bay with her sword. It pranced about her like a tiger circling its prey. Sometimes both dancers inside would squat down, so that the long fabric of the body touched the ground on both sides. At others, the lead dancer raised the head as high as his arms would reach, the jaws chomping and the eyes rolling all the while. The crowd was enthralled.

  Bok Fu Ying dipped, and the lion dipped. She stood and it stood. She turned in a circle, waving her sword, and the lion pranced about her. When it came too close, she smote the lion’s foot with the flat of her sword, which made it hop about with a paw in the air while the crowd laughed. The giant head shivered as if the lion were crying. It staggered and lunged toward the crowd as if asking solace, but everyone backed away. Finally, it limped back to Bok Fu Ying and made an elaborate bow in front of the courageous maiden, admitting defeat. In a moment, she had rolled it over on its back and was rubbing its belly as its feet kicked
in the air. Everyone, even Barker, seemed to be enjoying the show.

  Suddenly, there was an explosion of fireworks from the other side of the street. A new green and red creature appeared then and began to move toward them. This time, it was a dragon. The head was the size of the lion’s, but inside the long body, there must have been close to twenty dancers. It took up half the street, zigzagging and curling in a huge circle around Bok Fu Ying and the lion, as it attempted to catch its tail.

  The dancers growled in unison as they attacked Bok Fu Ying and the lion. She slashed at its body, but the sword could not penetrate its scaly hide. With one sweep of its tail, it sent the lion sprawling. I could almost believe it real. Bok Fu Ying kept waving her sword at its face, which was vulnerable. The lion attacked, biting the tail of the dragon, which hopped around, trying to get it off.

  The finale came when the lion was sent sprawling a second time and the dragon rushed upon the maiden. It reared up as the dancers inside mounted each other’s shoulders until the head was a full fifteen feet from the ground.

  Quick as lightning, Bok Fu Ying struck. Her sword was thrust into the dragon’s breast, using the old theater trick of holding it between a dancer’s side and his arm. The creature reared in the throes of death. It danced about like an old tragedian, not having the decency to die until it had milked every last emotion from the crowd. Finally, it reared up and fell forward on top of Bok Fu Ying and there it lay, as if dead.

  The lion, acting like a lapdog, revived. It pranced ’round the slain dragon, looking for its maiden. Finally, it seized the tail in its jaws and with a rough shake, rolled the row of dancers onto their backs one by one. I and everyone in the crowd craned our necks. Bok Fu Ying had vanished.

  Barker put his head down as if he were listening, then slowly he nodded. I looked behind us and saw four Chinese men in the long quilted coats they favored. My first thought, foolhardy as it may have been, was that we could take them. There were but four, and even if I bested only one, that left three and Barker could easily take twice that many on an average day. Then I felt the barrel of a pistol in my side and realized we had been jugged as neatly as a hare. I put my hands up.

  “That is not necessary,” one of them said. “Please step this way.”

  We were herded through an empty-looking warehouse to a spiral staircase going down a floor. After that we were ordered through a grate into a sewer tunnel. A feeling of dread came over me. Nothing would prevent them from shooting us in this godforsaken spot if something we had done had given them reason. I didn’t want to end my life in a sewer.

  The tunnel, I noted, was dry and must have been blocked up and bricked over some time in the City’s past. It had been given a new life, however, as I noticed when we reached the end. Suddenly, the tunnel turned into a hallway, and I took in the incongruous sight of a floor rug and a table containing a small painting of a Chinese scene. It lent an aura of domesticity not in keeping with sewers and pistol-wielding Chinamen. We were waved down the corridor and I felt as if I were walking into someone’s home. We passed a room in which four elderly men, like sages come to life from an old painting, were playing mah-jongg. I only got a glimpse before I was prodded in the kidney with the pistol.

  “Keep moving,” the Chinaman said.

  Barker opened the door at the far end, and we followed him inside. A creature screeched as we entered and for a moment I was more afraid of it than the man behind me. I gasped, which must have frightened it, for the animal ran for its cage and flung itself inside. It was a monkey of some sort, with white tufts over each ear like an old Scotsman.

  “You have frightened my marmoset,” the occupant of the room complained in an abstract way, as if it mattered little to him. I did not have to even look to realize both the voice and the monkey belonged to Mr. K’ing. His face was thin and intelligent, his narrow eyebrows complementing his mustache. He seemed completely at ease. He raised his silk-clad arms and the gunmen searched us and took possession of our weapons.

  “My ward,” Barker dared command. “Produce her at once.”

  “She is my guest until this matter is resolved,” K’ing answered. “I wanted to show you how vulnerable you are, sir.” He turned his cool eyes my way. “So this is the fellow who has caused all this trouble. Did I not see you staggering out of the Inn of Double Happiness with a friend a few nights ago? You are English?”

  “I am Welsh,” I said, wondering what he meant about my causing all of the trouble.

  “English, Welsh, whatever you are, you are not Chinese. I can produce a dozen witnesses who saw you display certain knowledge in Limehouse you could only have obtained in China or have learned from a master, such as the great Shi Shi Ji. I believe the incident involved a dog. Several residents were injured. He is your student, is he not, Mr. Barker?”

  “He is,” Barker said. “The art I have taught him is not Chinese, however. It is Japanese.”

  “Oh, come,” chided the unofficial leader of Limehouse, “are you telling me a dozen people could not tell a Chinese art from the inferior styles of the Japanese?”

  “I do. The two arts are similar to a layman, and the fact that Mr. Llewelyn beat them all handily is proof that they were laymen. He is not yet advanced.”

  “You make a good point,” Mr. K’ing conceded. “We shall come back to that later. I have a more important question to put to you, Mr. Barker.”

  “I know the question. It is why you have brought me here.”

  “May I ask it, then?”

  Barker nodded his head.

  “Thank you, Mr. Barker—Shi Shi Ji. Are you Chinese, are you a barbarian, or are you in fact of mixed parentage?”

  The Guv did not reply but waited stoically, like Christ before Pilate.

  “You will not answer?”

  “Certainly not,” Barker said. “Having already said I am this lad’s teacher, if I admitted to being Chinese, I would be placing a death sentence on my own head. We both know is forbidden to teach the arts to ‘foreign devils.’ However, were I to admit to being either of the other two, I would thereby dishonor those living masters who have taught me in the past and likely place a death sentence upon their heads in place of my own. That I will not do.”

  “So, we are at a…Forgive me, my English sometimes fails me.”

  “An impasse.”

  “Precisely. Thank you. We are at an impasse. Of course, the answer is very simple to find out. I will have my servants remove your spectacles.”

  “More powerful men than you have tried to do so in the past, Mr. K’ing. I would consider the attempt an extreme insult and should be forced to defend myself. If you attempt to remove my spectacles, I can promise that at least five of us shall be dead in two minutes. I shall, of course, be one of them, but you, sir, shall be the first to go.”

  “I see. Another impasse. You are leaving me with few alternatives.”

  “I fail to see why this matter has become your responsibility, if I am not speaking inappropriately.”

  “You have good manners, sir, whatever your nationality. I am speaking not as a subject of the imperial government but as the leader of a triad. One of my associates has informed me that you displayed the triad tattoo upon your arm the same day your assistant first visited this area. You are, therefore, under my jurisdiction. Before you object on the grounds that it was not the Blue Dragon Triad, I would remind you that the triads are one when rules have been transgressed.”

  Barker bowed his head formally. “I would not think of contradicting you.”

  “Very well,” K’ing said, leaning forward. “You see, I am trying to be fair. I hope for your sake that you actually are British. I do not wish to take your life or to see it taken, which is the same thing. I am giving you a chance to choose, rather than forcing an answer upon you and causing bloodshed. Which shall it be, Mr. Barker? Are you Chinese or English?”

  “I think you know my answer, Mr. K’ing. You’ve known it for days. I choose the third option. I choose…trial by
combat.”

  The Chinese criminal leader gave a wolfish smile. “How do you know that is possible?”

  “Of course it is possible,” Barker insisted. “It is my right as a member of the triads. The White Lotus Triad, the Green Dragons, and all of the other organizations accept such a trial. Surely the Blue Dragon must do so as well.”

  “Are you certain this is the way you wish to proceed?”

  “Of course,” Barker responded. “My other options are death and dishonor. But I am Shi Shi Ji. Can you locate a man on short notice who would stand in the ring with me?”

  “I believe I have such a man. Very well, the matter is settled. Trial by combat it is. I shall need time to make arrangements.”

  “And I, to prepare. May I be free to move about the city?”

  “Yes, but I am afraid Bok Fu Ying and your associate must stay here as my guests to ensure your return.”

  Guests? I thought, looking at Barker. He meant that we were prisoners.

  “Agreed,” my employer said. “What time shall the trial begin?”

  “Let us say midnight.”

  “Very well. I shall return at eleven thirty.”

  “Yes.” Mr. K’ing paused in thought. “As I recall the rules, we are talking about a fight to the death, are we not?”

  Barker gave one of his chilling smiles. “Certainly.”

  “I shall, of course, release Bok Fu Ying regardless of the outcome, but what shall I do with this young fellow, should you lose the fight?”

  “That would be left to your discretion, sir.”

  “Ah,” K’ing said, looking at me as if I were a bug to be trod underfoot.

  “Until eleven thirty, then, Mr. Barker. It has been a pleasure to meet the great Shi Shi Ji face-to-face.”

  Barker stood, which set off the marmoset again. I turned in my chair with a sense of dread. Barker was going, leaving me here to languish in a cell at K’ing’s discretion. The Guv went so far as to lay a hand upon my shoulder, a rarity, indeed. No doubt he sensed my trepidation.