The Concubine's Daughter (41 page)

“Do not worry, dog bones has not been harmed, nor your demon offspring. To take their unworthy lives would see revenge too quickly ended. The fool Di-Fo-Lo you have so enchanted will be allowed to grieve and continue with his tortured life. The box made of shells was too heavy for such hands as hers, so I have lightened her load and taken these … to remind me of the slut that was dragged from the riverbed and thought herself a scholar.”

From the darkness, Ah-Ho’s breath was hot upon Li’s face. “Because of you, the New Year will not be a fortunate one for me,” she crooned. “Because of you, the great Di-Fo-Lo will never know the joss of his brat; he will spend his life in search of it or the place that hides its bones. Peace will never again walk beside him, nor happiness reside in his broken heart. You alone have brought this curse upon him. Now the choice is yours: Wait for him and let him care for what is left of you for the rest of his miserable life”—the amah chuckled with the mirth of darkest evil—“or give him freedom at least from that.”

The layers of cloud drifted apart like silk banners. Beneath them she saw the tall masts and gleaming hull of the
Golden Sky
against the bluest of blue skies. She saw Ben tossing back his hair and blowing like a porpoise as she climbed upon the rail poised above a crystal sea of turquoise. The sound of Wang’s flute mingled with the chortling of a
thrush, as Ben’s voice came to her on an offshore breeze: “Don’t be afraid, Lee Sheeah; I am here to catch you. I will teach you to swim like a mermaid.”

The cloud passed, the terrace illumined by a flood of brightness. Ah-Ho was gone, or perhaps had never been there. Ben was calling, beckoning her. “Dive, Lee Sheeah—you can do it. I am here beside you.”

The waters claimed her and took away her pain. She plunged through dancing halls of moonlight, all movement stopped and all sound forever ceased, as she drifted down on a chain of silver bubbles. Li-Xia was in the ginger field, where butterflies lifted like petals at her passing, wading through white blossoms, to where Pai-Ling waited with wide-open arms to swing her high against a sky of duck-egg blue.

Indie Da Silva was half conscious when Ben arrived at the Double Dragon shipyard. The knife wound in his side was not serious, but had bled profusely. A single blow from behind had robbed his limbs of all movement. “The fist that did this knew exactly what it was doing and why.” Indie tried to grin, fumbling for a cheroot. “It was the hand of a Boxer.” He choked on the rum Ben held to his lips, grimacing through his pain as he lit the chewed nub of a Burmese cheroot, sucking smoke deep into his lungs.

“Someone paid the gang to set this fire. They knifed the gatekeeper and took me by surprise.” He winced with pain. “I saw the face of that cocky little bastard Ah-Geet among them. I’m sorry, Ben; I should have dealt with this alone.”

Ben drove him to the hospital at a speed that raised curses and horn blasts from those he passed. Sudden fear had sprung within him like a lighted flame.

The fire had been started with a drum of spilled tar, the same thing that had all but burned Chiang-Wah alive. Was it coincidence, or did it have the touch of ritual about it?

The sabotage attempt had been easily contained, with little serious damage and nothing stolen. This was not like them… .

Kidnap
—the word suddenly screamed aloud in his mind. Could this have been a distraction to get him away from Repulse Bay? The word rang in his ears like the echo of a triad gong struck by the Incense Master to seal a prophecy.
Kidnap. Kidnap. Kidnap . .
.

He sped back to the yard to call the Villa Formosa, letting the telephone ring as his thoughts kept racing. It could take two hours to return to Hong Kong. The pinnace was capable of eighteen knots with throttles open. His mind searched frantically for a faster way. There was none.

He leaped aboard and took the wheel as the coxwain cast off the lines. He opened up both engines and kept the throttles wide, the pinnace’s bows surging forward with a throaty roar. When the engineer poked his head from the hatchway to warn him of the pressure such high speed was creating, Ben waved him back.

He could not shake his sense of dread. He prayed it would turn out to be a simple robbery; they could empty the house for all he cared, burn it to the ground, so long as Li was safe.
Ransom
: the word was a comfort. He would pay anything to get her back; he’d leave Hong Kong and sail with her around the world on
Golden Sky
.

He had turned on the powerful searchlights that warned other craft to give way. Through the spray-flecked windows of the wheel house, the face of Li-Xia seemed to rise from the sheets of spume flung across the bows.

The sun had hauled well clear of the sea when Ben leaped the fast-closing gap from the deck to the jetty and bounded up the steep stone steps that led to the gardens of the Villa Formosa. He prayed he would find her in the Pavilion of Joyful Moments, seated with the Fish over a pot of mimosa tea, with Yin and Yang disturbed from their cushions to growl at the disturbance. His stomach lurched as he found the pavilion empty, its table bare.

It was early, he told himself, vaulting the balustrade, bursting through the French doors of her bedroom; she was sleeping late. It was empty, the bedclothes rumpled. Yin and Yang were nowhere to be seen, the snuffling and yapping that greeted every visitor eerily absent. He rushed from room to room, bellowing for the Fish, his heart thumping as he found her room deserted. The study too was empty, deathly silent but
for the steady ticking of the clock. It chimed the hour of six, bringing a fresh wave of horror; the balcony doors were ajar, the security system linked to the gate house switched off.

She must be walking. The gardens … of course, this was the time for her stroll. He would find her feeding the fan tailed fish from the middle of a hidden bridge, the dogs chasing dragonflies. Ah-Kin came running from his cottage as Ben called Li’s name, striding from one solitary haven to another to find only fragrant emptiness and the careless chatter of moving waters. Her name echoed in every hidden corner of the grounds, over the five-bar gate and through the birch wood.

“Missy Li has not been to the gardens this morning. I fed the fish without her.”

Ah-Kin was frightened by the wild-eyed look on the master’s face, the frantic urgency in his voice. The gardener’s wife and son appeared at the compound gate, confused by such uncommon disruption of peace and quietude. Ah-Kin assured him they had neither seen nor heard anything to concern them. The Sikh guards heard his calling and arrived quickly with their excited dogs. There was no disturbance during the night, the gatekeeper assured Ben; the walls were patrolled without incident; the dogs had been quiet. Ben dismissed them with orders to search the grounds, and told Ah-Kin and his son to cover every inch of the estate.

A fresh hope jolted his racing mind; he almost cursed himself for allowing his imagination to play such tricks. Of course, of course—the Temple of Pai-Ling. This was the time of prayer; she had walked the gardens and gathered the night’s crop of fallen frangipani for the altar. Crossing the ocean terrace, he wanted to call her name, but checked his haste for an instant when he saw the temple doors ajar.

There was something about the little shrine that had always been off-limits to him. Although she had invited him inside to witness the lighting of joss sticks, the burning of paper prayers and offerings at the feet of Kuan-Yin, he had felt himself to be an intruder. He realized there was not enough Chinese in him to share such a sacred place with her.

He approached silently, afraid to speak her name, merely praying to
see her kneeling before the goddess, sticks of smoking incense in her hand. He would never leave her side again. A shaft of daylight lay across the prayer mat, bathing the goddess in its beam.

He softly called Li’s name, but met only silence. In the strengthening light, Kuan-Yin was ablaze with glory, the bloodied snow-white fur of Yin and Yang hanging before her on their bright red leads. On the floor, in trampled, scattered shards, were the faded faces and forgotten names that Li had treasured, and the broken pieces of a laughing Buddha. The unmistakable stench of human excrement and urine left no air to breathe.

The body of Li-Xia Devereaux was pulled from the waters by Hokklo fishermen returning home at daybreak with their catch. They laid her on the jetty and fled when they saw Di-Fo-Lo taking the narrow steps of rock as though he could fly. They looked at each other in fear; they had no wish to witness the cries of a mad
gwai-lo
who perhaps would blame them for the horror they had dredged from their fishing spot close to the rocks.

Ben had refused help in carrying Li’s body to her room, ordering Ah-Kin and the guards to keep to their places and let no one into the grounds. When he had laid her gently on the rumpled bed, her body still well covered, Ben felt reason slipping from his grasp. The fire in his gut turned to the solid stone of despair, dragging him into a pit of howling darkness that had no bottom and no light. He lurched, on legs that threatened to fail him, into the study to find brandy. In the center of the fir desk, a page of paper was neatly laid before his chair. With a sinking heart, he recognized her writing, though the scrawl was barely readable.

Ah-Kin looked anxiously at his wife and son as a bellow of despair came from the house:
“My child. Where is my child?”
The agony of Di-Fo-Lo’s cry rent the serenity of the Ti-Yuan gardens, echoing through the moon gates and the empty perfumed screens of the pavilion. It carried out to sea, causing fishermen to shake their heads. Raising a hand to keep his family seated, Ah-Kin quickly stood and left the table.

He returned moments later, his face a study in fear and anguish. “Di-Fo-Lo has been to the Temple of Pai-Ling,” he said. “He has torn down the shrine with his bare hands. He has taken the goddess of mercy and flung her far into the sea.”

Indie Da Silva left the hospital in Macao to be at his partner’s side. The only other witnesses were Hamish McCallum and Ben’s friend and lawyer, Alistair Pidcock. The tomb was located on the edge of the birch wood, facing the sea and the sunrise; it rose in a gently rounded mound, thickly planted with wild violets and deep-blue periwinkles, to become part of the earth around it. Great bunches of yellow iris surrounded the low arched entrance, sealed with rose-colored quartz. Carved on its face, first in Chinese characters and then in English, were these words: