The Concubine's Daughter (16 page)

That night, as she prepared to lie down among strangers, Li found something buried in the turban of her hair—a hook of sharpened steel mounted in a fingerhold of polished horn.

L
i quickly learned the
art of “tasting the cocoon,” telling from its sweet or sour flavor the nectar fed upon by the moth, and grading the endless threads of silk. In less than a month, she graduated to the spinning shed. Five spinners sat at six wheels, and she joined them to perfect the art of “spinning the golden web”: teasing out the elusive end and unraveling the softened cocoons—hundreds of yards of single unbroken thread, delicate as the finest strand of a spider’s web. She learned how the silkworm wound its cocoon into a ball so tight that only the sharpest eyes and nimblest fingers could find the end of precious thread and wind it onto the spindle without breaking it.

Few could master this skill and few were chosen to try, but Li-Xia learned fast and found each cocoon a challenge of speed and skill. She grew accustomed to twisting the delicate fibers onto the big treadle-operated spools. At first, it demanded a constant focus that suited her, giving her no time to miss Little Pebble or her bed beneath the willows.

The spinning shed also brought her closer to the weavers and gave her a different view of what it meant to be a sister of
sau-hai.
Serenity lay upon them like a drug, their voices never raised, their laughter never heard. They wore the stiff black
tzou
like a uniform, she thought, and their hair would never be washed in the river and dried by the wind. Every day would begin and end at the weaver’s loom until they could no longer see or feel to work the shuttles.

Each of them seemed content with this—that there would never be
the touch of a man, or children to carry on their name, no hope of anything more than the toleration of Ming-Chou and the favor of Ah-Jeh. Li asked herself in her heart if Pai-Ling would be proud of a daughter who accepted such a life without a voice—and decided she would not.

The year passed quickly. Food was better in the spinning shed: The congee was hot and plentiful and sprinkled with chopped chives, and there was
mien-bow
—steamed dumpling filled with minced pork—fish of all kinds, and a glass of tea beside her work place kept fresh by an amah. Her bed space was larger and she shared the small house with only five others. The spinning shed overlooked the loading wharf, where trading boats tied up to load the bales of silk.

Li had become increasingly adept at the spinning of silk, learning to grade the cocoons with speed and accuracy, to avoid breaks and joins and eliminate knots until the glistening thread was fine as a spiderweb. The days seemed long without the chatter of the
mung-cha-cha
among the mulberry groves, or the stories of Giant Yun. Most of all, she missed Pebble and the moon stories read by lamplight.

No longer was she the little Crabapple of the
mung-cha-cha
. “There will be no idiotic names in the spinning shed and certainly not in my mill,” Ah-Jeh had announced. “You are spinner number five and your name is Li.”

Li became so absorbed in the fast unwinding of cocoons that the chopsticks used to separate them in the bowl of hot water seemed to fly between her fingers, and the golden thread so deftly found and perfectly withdrawn gave her the coveted distinction of having hummingbird hands, fast as the flicker of the bird’s rainbow wings.

The day of the miracle broke in spectacular glory, a dawn of apple green flushed mauve to burning orange, reaching across the river to creep beneath the willows and steal away the shadows. These were always precious moments for Li, when the light was of softest gold and the day not quite begun. Ducklings paddled bravely from the safety of tall rushes and faced the open water as she lit a joss stick and placed flowers
at one of the little shrines beside the huts—then dipped briefly in the cold, brackish waters to wash herself, combing her long hair, the early morning air still cool upon her skin.

There was no one to observe these private moments. She had chosen a spot apart from others, farther downriver, below the spinning shed divided by a buttress of rock. Still farther downstream, the
mui-mui
briefly wallowed and spat, giggled and shoved, churning the shallows to swirling clouds of yellow mud. Here, the surface was smooth, unhurried, undisturbed. In these quiet moments Li was able to see herself as in a pale green mirror.

She looked upon her body and was startled by how much she had grown. The girl she saw was long legged and already well formed; when she stooped to see her face, it was a pleasing one that showed nothing of hardship or unhappiness. Her eyes, she saw, were larger, more round than most. Her nose was small and straight, not the wide, wrinkled nub of Little Pebble; her mouth also small and neatly shaped, showing even white teeth when she smiled at herself.

She slid hip-deep into the river, using a sliver of coarse soap to clean herself, the points of her softly swelling breast stiffening from the sudden cold that gripped her. Once, not long ago, she had seen blood coming from her as she waded in the water. It was as though a hand had reached inside to squeeze her entrails, and she was sure that she would die. Defying the rules, she had sought out Pebble, who had grinned and given her clean rags to stem the flow, and told her the story of becoming a woman and bearing a child.

Li smiled at the recollection, splashing the soap from her breast and shoulders. At this moment, the river was set ablaze with the sun’s full strength. She shielded her eyes, conscious that with this sudden burst of golden light came something more—something grand and majestic—something, she felt with a sharp pang of wonderment, from another world. As though a dazzling pathway had been laid before it, a magnificent sailing ship glided into view.

The white tips of its three masts towered high above the tallest willows, long ribbons of pennants unfurling between them—twin dragons
of scarlet and yellow, floating like the wings of a phoenix riding the morning air. Swanlike in its gracefulness, the ship sailed slowly past the curtain of trailing leaves, its glossy white hull reflecting shards of light that brushed its sleek bows, cleaving the mirrored surface with scarcely a ripple. It was so close, she could hear coarse Cantonese voices on her decks making ready to dock, and smell the cooking from her galley.

The naked backs of half a dozen deckhands stood ready to cast the mooring ropes ashore, while an unfamiliar and frightening figure stood at the stern rail. It was a white foreign devil—a baby-eater—whose sudden appearance troubled her strangely. He paced like a tiger, stopping to look at the narrowing distance between the ship’s side and the dock. She caught her breath, lowering her nakedness into the water with a thumping heart as the ship lowered her jibsails and drifted closer.

As he shouted orders in perfect Cantonese, she shivered to hear riverfront slang coming from the mouth of such a creature. Some of the things she had heard were true, others not, she thought with a curiosity she could not ignore. He was easier to look upon than the black-haired Portagee. She could not properly see the
gwai-lo
’s eyes through gaps in the willow, but they did not seem ablaze with the fires of hell. His strong teeth were not yellow as a dog’s and did not appear ready to tear at the raw and bloodied flesh the Western barbarian was said to feast upon. His thick hair was the color of a copper pot freshly scrubbed, tied back to reveal a face that, from a distance, did not threaten injustice or brutality. The color of his skin was fairer than she had imagined.

He held no whip or cudgel, nor wore any weapon that she could see except a silver-hilted knife, sheathed at his hip. The loose white shirt he wore was open at the neck and caught at his waist by a belt studded with silver; tight, fitted breeches the color of cream were strapped into polished brown knee boots. These impressions were formed in a fleeting moment, yet they struck like a stinging slap to awaken her to an unimagined world.

Li had not completed her bathing and had thought herself to be alone. Suddenly aware of her nakedness, her long, thick hair still slung uncombed across her shoulders, she moved to hide herself. In that
instant, the
gwai-lo
found her with eyes alert to any movement. She felt his gaze, warm and strong as hands placed upon her body, yet still she could not see him clearly—only glimpses passing slowly through the tracery of green, the distance between the ship’s side and the rope fenders of the dock closing fast.

She saw that the ship’s towering stern was deeply carved in sun-bright gilt with the same twin dragons that flew proudly on its flag. Between their outstretched claws they held a flowing crest bearing the words golden sky in Chinese characters and below these the word macao.

Finding that she could read the name of this great vessel brought a pang of joy. Yet the sudden appearance of this foreign devil, so unlike the vile barbarian she had been taught to fear and hate, unsettled her with many questions. He must have traveled far from the land of the foreign barbarians, descended perhaps from the radiant morning sky.

Goo-Mah and the wives of Yik-Munn had told many legends of these devils:

“They are the foulest of all creatures, more beast than human.”

“You can smell them before you can see them; then you must run and hide or they will steal you away aboard their devil ship, eat you, and throw your bones to the fishes.”

“They are ghosts and not of our world. The gods will curse those who call them friend. They are sent to do business and this is all they are good for… . No money—no talk.”

“Soon they will be driven from China forever; the empress has ordained it. We shall defeat them with the righ teous fist of the Boxer braves.”

She wondered how those warnings applied to the barbarian who had appeared as if by magic with the dazzling sun.

An hour later, from her place in the spinning shed, Li could see the splendid ship tied up at the wharf, its hull longer than two river junks tied end to end. It dwarfed the sampans moored alongside, whose deckhands haggled with the crew over fresh fish, fruit, and vegetables. Watching the barbarian striding down the gangway, she could not deny the strength and dignity in his step.

His dark blue jacket gleamed with golden braid, its cuffs and collar and the peak of his cap also encrusted with gold. His hair extended like the tail of a wild horse between his shoulders, and curled thickly on his cheeks and chin.

Fetched in his magnificent palanquin by uniformed bearers and surrounded by his bodyguard, Ming-Chou himself had come down to meet the
gwai-lo
captain and his phantom ship. Only his robe of orange silk was visible beneath the canopy, the sun already too strong for a nobleman to bear.

A sudden bolt of raw pain sliced across Li’s shoulders.

“Do not stop your work to stare at this foreign oaf!” Ah-Jeh hissed. “He is an abomination to eyes such as ours! Have you nothing more important to do? Does the golden thread unwind itself?” Li started in pain and guilt. Nothing had ever taken her mind from her work until this moment. Elder Sister sliced the air with her cane. Li felt as though hot coals had been laid across her back. “Do you think that a sister of
sau-hai
would gawp like a fish at this lumbering brute! Does the sight of him not turn your stomach?”

Li could only nod in hurried agreement, ashamed of her distraction. But she wondered how such grandeur could be so shameful, something so breathtaking of such low esteem.

Ah-Jeh continued to rant. “He is said to be the maddest of all
gwai-los
, to have built his first ship with his bare hands while still a boy. He is called Di-Fo-Lo, because his name is impossible to say in our language. Like all mad foreign devils he is said to have eaten the flesh of Chinese babies … he is Di-Fo-Lo, the baby-eater. The mad barbarian of the Macao mudflats.”

Ah-Jeh spat her disdain. “He is said to be legendary among his kind, to have faced the black society and survived. They say he gambles like a warlord and is the richest foreign taipan in Macao and Hong Kong, and soon to be in Shanghai. That his ships carry twice the cargo of any junk and sail at three times the speed. That he carries such weapons on board that no pirate junk dares to approach within a mile of him. That is why the great master, Ming-Chou, welcomes this scum of a honey bucket.
Why else would any of us tolerate a moment of his stinking presence? It is business,” she snapped. “It is all any
gwai-lo
is good for—only business.”

Li tried to stir the depths of such feelings, but could not find them within her. She dared to speak, bowing low, her eyes cast down. “It is the ship that I find of interest. I have never dreamed of such a beautiful ship; where does it come from and where will it go?”

Elder Sister’s reply was instant, her pale cheeks flushed with anger. “That is no business of yours—remember your place or be thrashed for your insolence.” She was silent, her breath short and paced by her hatred. “It comes from that shit-hole called Macao,” she grumbled at length, unable to turn away. “The piece of China the empress has leased to the Portagee for a hundred years, allowing them to trade in return for defeating the pirate king Koxinga. This ‘beautiful’ ship you find so interesting was built with money taken from poor Chinese and the strength of their backs … while Koxinga sails his war junks, raping and plundering where he will.”