The Eleventh Tiger

by David A. McIntee

  Vicki giggled. ‘They’re not man and wife. They’re just friends. Remember?’

  Fei-Hung looked sceptical. ‘I still think they are married, inside.’

  Vicki shook her head. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then they should be. And you should be thinking about marriage soon, too.’ Vicki nearly choked on her tea. She wondered if this was his idea of flirting. Or, if she was honest with herself, she hoped rather than wondered.

  ‘You’re not married yet, are you?’

  ‘Not yet. But I have a fiancée. Her name is Law.’

  His smile was a mix of desire and contentment, and Vicki found herself responding to it with a sinking feeling. Fei-Hung looked through the window again. ‘What happened this week makes me wonder. If I were injured like Ian - or worse -

  how would she feel?’

  Vicki tried to think of something practical to say. ‘If she loves you, I suppose she’d want to look after you.’

  ‘She does, and she would. It’s just... It would affect her life.

  The fear and worry... I’m not sure I could put her, or anyone, through that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Vicki said. ‘I think it just means you love her too.’

  ‘And you? Have you ever been in love?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Was this a boy on your ship? Or at home?’

  ‘There were no boys my age on the ship.’ She got up, a little red-faced. ‘I’d better go and see if the Doctor needs any help,’

  she said abruptly.

  Fei-Hung nodded politely.

  If the small fishing town had a name - and all towns did - the abbot had no idea what it was. Names of places didn’t matter, except to those who lived there and called them home. ‘Home’ was a name that could well be applied to everywhere.

  The sky was smeared with the aftertaste of smoke and ash, and the air was filled with the shouts of guards ordering raggedly dressed prisoners to work. Patrols of armoured men wearing black silk armbands and flattened basket-like hats moved through the streets.

  Most of the larger buildings were still standing, with armoured guards outside and off-duty troops inside, crashed out into exhausted sleep in their underwear. By the riverside the thin masts of small, flat-bottomed fishing boats stuck up from the waters. The boats were submerged and their masts, some broken or charred, were tilted at odd angles. A large junk was moored by the only jetty, guarded by troops with rifles.

  A monastery sat at the other end of the town. It was built of brick, plaster and tile, all raised on a sort of embankment of stones. Terraced gardens, exercise areas and stairways surrounded it. The walls were stained with scorch marks.

  Inside, all religious trappings had been removed. A statue stood in each of the four corners of the main hall. All four were life-sized and in the shape of a man in armour. Where a large smiling Buddha statue had once sat, the abbot now gazed down from a throne. He regretted the destruction of parts of the town but it had been necessary. Sometimes, he reflected, one had to cut away at infected tissue to preserve the whole. He was more relaxed than he had been on the junk; he preferred dry land under his feet. Land was solid and supported people. It didn’t swallow them the way the sea and rivers did.

  He could sense Zhao and Gao approaching, and was glad to receive them. Their service had been exemplary. The two men approached and saluted, right fist cupped in left palm.

  ‘My Lord,’ they said together.

  They exchanged a glance, each seeming to offer the other the chance to speak first.

  ‘We have brought the astrologers you require,’ Gao said.

  ‘There are but three, but they seem as competent as any.’

  ‘Bring them in, General.’

  Gao nodded to a guard waiting in the doorway, who immediately stepped aside. Three middle-aged men in the dark robes and skullcaps of court scholars shuffled fearfully in.

  Three guards flanked them.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ the abbot asked.

  ‘Leader of the Black Flag,’ one of them said. ‘Lei-Fang’s...

  replacement.’

  ‘Yes. Do you love China?’

  There was a chorus of affirmative replies from the astrologers.

  The abbot was pleased. It was good to know that patriotism hadn’t waned over the centuries. ‘Good. What I ask of you is for China. To restore it to its rightful rulers.’

  The astrologers all nodded understandingly.

  ‘Ask anything of us, my Lord,’ the first astrologer, the oldest of the three, said obsequiously, ‘and we shall not rest until it is completed.’

  The abbot nodded. It was rewarding to see his love for his people repaid this way. They would do anything for him. ‘An event will happen soon. In the heavens. A conjunction of several stars and planets will occur on the night of a lunar eclipse. You must calculate for me the exact moment that this conjunction will occur, in Earth date and time.’

  ‘In “Earth...”?’

  ‘Yes. I must know precisely how long it is until the alignment.’

  The astrologers looked at each other, each trying to guess what the other might say.

  ‘We will begin the observations and calculations at once,’

  the leader of the group said at last.

  At sundown Fei-Hung had found himself a quiet spot in the evening air to go through his jiao shi, which the Japanese called kata. It was a quart fa, an unarmed jiao shi routine. His father’s teacher, Luk Ah Choi, had taught him that jiao shi were best practised at either sunrise, sunset or midnight.

  Those were the best times to aid the circulation of chi throughout the body.

  Going through the motions of a quan fa routine by himself should have freed Fei-Hung’s mind from worrying about his father. It should have relaxed him and helped him to feel at one with his country, his people and himself.

  His body was so accustomed to the routine that it flowed smoothly from one stance to the next, shifting its balance perfectly without any conscious thought from him. His mind should have soared, but it remained weighed down by the bonds and chains that Fei-Hung was sure were wrapped around his father in the cell at Xamian.

  When he had finished, his arms and legs were shaking and he didn’t know why. Sadness and frustration took as many forms as fear, he supposed, and often took the same toll on the body.

  Punching and kicking at shadows and air, dodging only the breeze and the occasional moth, didn’t help to free his father, or even feel as satisfying as hitting his father’s jailers would be. Hoping the exertion would at least help him to sleep, Fei-Hung walked back to the main hall and up the steps to the door.

  He stopped, sensing his father’s former presence in the very wood of the doorframe. It taunted him, reminding him of Kei-Ying’s current absence. With a muttered curse, he turned back again and sat on the top step.

  Fei-Hung sensed movement behind him, but didn’t look round. It was the tread of the old man, the Doctor.

  ‘I trust I’m not disturbing you, young man?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, good.’ The Doctor leant on his cane and looked up into the clear night sky. ‘I really wish things hadn’t turned out this way, you know. In many ways, I suppose I feel it’s my fault. But I don’t think you need to worry too much.

  Master Wong will be released sooner or later.’

  Fei-Hung stared at the gates. ‘I can’t go and rescue him, yet I can’t stay in here and sleep, and not have at least tried to free him.’ He looked around, the courtyard suddenly alien to him, neither home as he had known it, nor a known destination. ‘I don’t belong any more.’

  ‘We all feel that way from time to time, young man,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Do we? Is that why you travel?’

  ‘Partly, my boy, yes. But at the same time, if you don’t belong in one place perhaps it’s because you belong everywhere. Did you ever consider that? Hmm?’
r />   Fei-Hung shook his head. ‘Are you suggesting I should run away?’ he spat. ‘Or hide?’

  ‘Not a bit of it, and don’t you take that tone with me, young man!’

  The Doctor’s anger was palpable, and Fei-Hung raised a hand involuntarily to soothe the sting he thought he felt at his cheek.

  ‘There are many journeys that are made with the mind, or the heart,’ the Doctor said. ‘The search for truth, or for right, for example.’

  ‘I always thought one travelled on foot, or on a horse, or a ship...’ Fei-Hung wasn’t sure what the Doctor meant by mental travel. ‘The mind goes with you, doesn’t it? You might as well say one could travel, oh, I don’t know, across the stars.’

  ‘And what would you say if I told you it was possible to travel among the stars, just as people travel on ships across the sea?’

  Fei-Hung laughed. ‘I’d say you and Wan Hu would have enjoyed each other’s company.’

  ‘Wan who?’

  ‘A scribe and astronomer who wanted to go up among the stars he loved to watch.’

  ‘Really? I wouldn’t mind meeting him some day.’

  ‘I fear you’re a bit late for that, Doctor. He lived nearly four hundred years ago.’

  ‘Did he? I see.’ The Doctor tutted. ‘Well, some day... And you know about this fellow?’

  Fei Hung nodded. ‘He thought rockets and gunpowder could be used to make man fly to the stars. So he fitted two kites to his best throne, and the forty-seven biggest rockets he could find.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Doctor prompted doubtfully.

  ‘When the flying chair was built Wan Hu dressed himself in robes fitting for the ascent into heaven. Then he had forty-seven servants each light one of the fuses simultaneously.

  Then there was a huge bang as all the rockets went off at once. When the smoke blew away there was no sign of Wan Hu or his flying chair. According to legend, the servants assumed this meant the chair had worked and Wan Hu had flown into the stars, never to return.’

  The Doctor listened with raised eyebrows. ‘Hmm. A some-what optimistic appraisal of his situation, don’t you think?’

  Fei-Hung smiled wistfully. ‘He followed the dream he believed in and, one way or the other, ascended to the heavens. I always liked him, and his story.’

  He relaxed, dreaming of his father walking free. He could see the cell in front of him as clearly as if he had gone to Xamian, and hear Kei-Ying’s voice.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor-sifu.’

  The Doctor merely smiled.

  4

  Cheng was frustrated by Anderson stringing him along about seeing Kei-Ying, a promise which he hadn’t yet made good on. Trying to get permission was like trying to see something with his glass eye - and he didn’t want to risk arrest by returning to Xamian Island. Nor did he want to get Anderson into trouble. In the end, he settled for waiting outside a brothel he had seen the Scotsman frequent. It was payday for the British soldiers, and this meant that those who engaged the services of the whores would be with them tonight.

  He steeled himself with half a bottle of rice wine, and leant against a wall across the street. He could simply have waited in the brothel’s entrance hall, but the day he could resist a woman would be the day he died, and he didn’t want to miss Anderson for the sake of a roll in bed.

  Eventually the pug-nosed Scot appeared looking a little flushed, but grinning like a dope fiend. Cheng hurried across.

  ‘Anderson...’ He didn’t look at the Scotsman; he couldn’t bear to. ‘I need to be able to talk to Wong-sifu.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Does that matter?’ Cheng knew it did, of course. The Europeans wouldn’t want people conspiring against them in their own cells. Nor would they be likely to believe he wasn’t doing so.

  ‘That depends on what ye need to talk about.’

  ‘An internal Guangzhou militia matter.’ He could feel Anderson’s eyes on the back of his head. He could hear the man’s suspicions as if he was shouting them from the roof top. ‘All right. An internal Black Flag matter,’ he said.

  He turned to Anderson. ‘Something is happening among the Black Flag. Something bad. Maybe even a threat to your people.’

  The sergeant major looked at him inscrutably. ‘Is that why ye’re suddenly so generous with your supplies, and wanting nae a thing in return? Perhaps ye ken something about where those cartridges are going to go, and ye dinnae like it?’

  ‘I don’t know anything!’ The anger Cheng felt at the accusation was fuelled by guilt. ‘I just suspect things. Worry about them.’

  Anderson kept a poker face. ‘Aye, well ye’re worrying me right enough as well. Maybe ye should have a chat, but to Captain Logan or the major.’

  ‘Logan wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Probably not, knowing him. But if he brings it to the major’s attention, the major is more likely to be the one to grant ye your request to visit Master Wong.’

  Cheng gritted his teeth, trying to refuse, or at least not accede to, Anderson’s demand. His fellow Chinese were too important to betray, but was betraying a betrayer really betraying his people? Wong would know, because he had the wisdom that Cheng knew he could never possess. Wong could make a decision like this. Wong, Cheng knew, in answer to this question, would say ‘Yes’.

  All right,’ he said at last.

  The relaxed mood Anderson had bought for himself in the White Tigers’ parlour had evaporated quickly, but he didn’t mind. It was just one of those things that happened to a professional.

  He wasn’t sure that taking Cheng to the major was the right thing to do, but he knew that not doing it, and then discovering there was a split among the local rabble-rousers, would be a big mistake.

  He took Cheng to the major’s office, knocked and was admitted.

  ‘This is Cheng. He’s one of the Black Flag, the militia, and the owner of that poor excuse for a slop house where you were supposedly beaten up this week.’

  Chesterton sat back and regarded the newcomer silently.

  Cheng’s jaw dropped. This was the man who had been attacked in the Hidden Panda right enough, but he had aged a dozen years since then.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Cheng?’ the major asked. ‘Has Captain Logan perhaps been attacked today?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Cheng said stiffly.

  Anderson could see in his eyes that he was already regretting starting this. He might start changing his story at any moment to get out of it. The sergeant major leant forward so that only Cheng could hear him. ‘Don’t be put off by the major. He really did get a bump on the head this week. He’s probably sick of the ache by now.’

  Cheng nodded, and continued. ‘There’s a man, he dresses like an abbot and used to be one. He’s taking over the local chapters of the Black Flag, but what he’s doing with them is nothing to do with the Black Flag’s aims. I think he is the warlord behind the attacks on random towns and villages.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘He told me, when he wanted me to follow him.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said “Yes, sir” because anyone who refuses him is killed.

  Then I packed my bags and wanted to leave.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Jiang, who holds the same rank as myself in the Black Flag... I don’t think he lied when he promised obedience. He and this abbot talked for a lot longer. And then he challenged the man Wong-sifu had entrusted with looking after the surgery, almost as soon as Wong-sifu was in your hands.’

  Once Cheng’s story was told, Chesterton sent him to the mess with Anderson to get something to eat. He didn’t know whether he could trust his story, or Jiang’s, or neither. The men were inscrutable Chinese, after all. To save face they’d tell you whatever you wanted to hear and think their lies were doing you a favour. Trusting any of them blindly was not an option.

  Chesterton also thought that mistrusting Cheng’s information out of hand would be equally foolish. The Chinese had a long
history of factional fighting, and there was no reason why there couldn’t be such a split in the Black Flag, or even in the semi-autonomous militias he was supposed to co-operate with. It was going to be a long night, but at least he would have something better to think about than his missing past.

  He summoned Captain Logan, who came running from his quarters still buttoning his tunic. Chesterton quickly recounted Cheng’s story, and Logan considered it. ‘A rum sort of tale,’ he opined. ‘If there really is a schism in the Black Flag, and especially if a group has gone rogue, I think perhaps Mr Wong ought to be told. Kei-Ying, I mean.’

  ‘You do? Why?’

  It wasn’t a challenge, but Chesterton was genuinely curious. Any thought might help him to make the right decision.

  ‘It could explain a lot. It certainly explains this chap Jiang’s accusation against Kei-Ying, if it was part of some sort of internal power struggle.’

  ‘So it was just a pack of lies.’ It wouldn’t surprise Chesterton if this were the case. What a tangled web we weave, eh, Logan? All right. We’ll see how our prisoner reacts to this.’

  Ko was too tired to work. The figures on the paper vibrated and danced under his gaze, when they were in focus at all. If he was to calculate the answers the abbot wanted, he needed to be fresh. It would maybe be better to rest first and blaze through the work in the morning.

  He couldn’t sleep either. He lay on a thin blanket in one of the monks’ bedchambers in a distant corner of the former monastery, and still saw the calculations dancing before his eyes, glowing slightly against the darkness of the ceiling. It was irritating, being caught between one state and the other.

  When he tried to work he wanted only to sleep, and vice versa. If someone could induce such a state in other men at will, he thought, it would make a fine torture for criminals.

  Eventually, driven by the occasional restless twitch in his calves, he decided that perhaps working through a sequence of t’ai chi moves in the open air would help. He had trained to be a martial monk when he was a child, and found that such a pattern smoothed out the balance of his energy and helped him sleep afterwards.