The Concubine's Daughter (65 page)

Often the
dai-fong
passed them by, Po-Lok had informed them, or lashed its tail across the island and left the valley in peace. But this was coming directly for them, rearing over the valley like a rising bear. The gusts increased in sudden blasts heavy with the chill of rain.

Sing had become separated from Ruby; she heard her slashing the cane grass nearby but could not see her. Sing called her name, telling her to start down the slope. Before she could shoulder the bundle of grass, the first deluge arrived, fat drops thudding on the brim of her hat and smacking her shoulders with stinging force.

She had taken no more than a dozen steps before hail sliced across the slopes in icy sheets. Again she told herself she had seen such storms sweep the lake before moving on, but she could remember nothing that felt like this. From where she stood, the gray expanse of Tolo Harbor was lost in a blanket of rain driving in from the sea. There was no time to descend the slopes and reach the safety of the mill house. Leaving the bundle of grass on the path and calling out to Ruby again, urging her to take shelter, she waded into the thickest growth on hands and knees, burrowing into the densely packed roots until they protected her like a cage. She wormed herself farther into the dense jungle of stalks, still calling Ruby’s name, as winds slammed frozen sleet into the hillside with the impact of bullets.

She entwined her hands and feet into the mesh of roots, clinging to the earth. Flattened by the gale, the grass formed a thatch, deflecting the wind, absorbing the onslaught, holding off the full impact of the slashing rains that followed in wave after drenching wave.

She lost all sense of time as the storm swamped the hillside, penetrating
the matted tiger grass and beginning its steep downward run. What started as a trickle quickly became a gushing torrent, finding its way from the higher slopes through the tangled roots in a flash flood, loosening the earth beneath her.

The harder she clung to the grass for safety, the more its roots came away, the cascade of mud and stones growing stronger with each moment. Chilled to the marrow, Sing fought against the downward rush, grasping for an anchor, feeling it torn away from her icy fingers. As one handhold was lost, she grabbed another, dragged from her hiding place by the gathering mudslide. The high, stony ground above the grassline began to crumble with the rush of yellow mud.

Boulders came free—first the smaller ones, bouncing ahead of the landslide, somersaulting high and wide as the hillside began its rapid collapse with the sound of a steam train torn from its rails. Trees that had stood for a hundred years were ripped from the peaks and flung into the valley below.

Over the shriek of wind, she heard her name called, uncertain at first, then definite and closer. Ruby’s mud-caked body rolled toward her from above, blood streaking her face. Sing snatched her arm and clung to it with all of her strength, but felt it slipping slowly from her grasp. Ruby was below her now, her grip feeble and her hand slick with mud. Sing called for her to hold on.

Ruby looked straight up into her face, as though she knew her weight was dragging them both down, her lips moving with words Sing would never hear. Her grip suddenly released, Ruby slipped away and disappeared into the cataract that yawned beneath them. Sing cried her name, as wind roared in her ears and she hurtled downward to the flooded valley and into darkness.

The blackness stayed with Sing, wrapping her in a clammy tomb. In place of howling wind and battering rain there was a deathly silence, broken only by the slow drip of water and faint sounds like those of a fast-beating heart. When she moved, pain shot through her like a white-hot blade. The sound persisted—the
tick-tick-tick
of a fast-running clock, rising and falling, coming closer and then receding.

She thought she heard a voice carried over a great distance, calling her name. She tried to answer, her lips numb. She fought against the darkness closing in, forcing it back like a deadly presence. Slowly it circled her, like a stealthy opponent looking for an opening in her defense. Then came an unearthly light and a glimpse of Ah-Keung staring down at her. She closed her eyes to rid the blackness of this apparition; when she looked again, it was the gentle face of the goddess Tien-Hau.

Toby had hardly slept in the twenty-four hours since the typhoon. Standing at the tiller of the naval cutter he had commandeered the moment he had come off duty, he could see the roofs of buildings on Po-Lok’s farm. The farmer and his family had reached safe ground moments before the storm had struck, but Kam-Yang said that Sing and Ruby had not come down in time from the hillside.

The boat glided through scenes of devastation that filled him with fear for Sing’s safety. The dense, steamy heat that had preceded the typhoon had settled over the desolation in a vaporous mist. Clouds of insects gathered in the suffocating stench that lay trapped across the valley floor. He could see no signs of life on the flat roofs that showed above the floodwaters. The trees, he saw through his field glasses, were still filled with birds, who shared the branches with the rotting carcasses of livestock.

He searched the floating debris of planks and lengths of broken fence. Complete wooden outbuildings drifted by, and waterlogged bales of cattle fodder had formed islands for ducks and small farm animals. There was no sign or sound of survivors; her name merely echoed in the eerie stillness when he called out to her.

The farm of Po-Lok was several miles from Tai-Po village, where the wall of water had rolled up the channel and followed the course of the river as far as a neighboring village before it had spent its full force. Hundreds of junks, sampans, and vessels had washed up as far as two kilometers inland. He had seen a junk high on a hill, rotting fish still
hanging from its nets. More than ten thousand people had been reported drowned.

Toby fought against despair as he scanned the deserted buildings, the silent trees still half submerged. The floodwaters had raged through the valley, breaking over the rice terraces before being stopped by the surrounding hills.

Circling the deserted mill house, he called Sing’s name many times with no answer. He swept the devastated hillsides with the field glasses, hoping for a sign she had made for higher ground. He leaned on the tiller, steering the cutter in a wide arc, its bow headed toward the nearest dry ground.

He searched the lower slopes for an hour, calling her name, picking his way over the tides of drying mud and shale. The whole side of the valley seemed to have shifted. The clump of oaks that had sheltered the Temple of Tien-Hau had disappeared, leaving only broken ground, jagged stumps, ancient roots exposed like the rotting bones of a dinosaur. His last hope was that she might have somehow reached the middle ground safely and found shelter there… .

In the first terrible moment of finding Sing half submerged in the bed of silt on the temple floor, Toby thought she was dead. There was no sign of blood, but the mud had claimed her body like a grave, settling around her until only her face and hands showed above its silken surface.

She was unconscious, but he felt a definite, if sluggish, pulse. Frantically, he scooped away the compacted mud to reveal extensive bruising and a broken leg. He fashioned a splint from broken branches, binding it tightly with strips torn from his shirt, talking to her softly, unceasingly, certain she could hear him. Her flesh was ice cold; he cursed himself for not bringing blankets.

As though by magic, the ceiling of cloud over the valley peeled away, allowing a burst of brilliant sunshine to chase across the floodwater and brush the ravaged slopes. A single shaft of pure light penetrated the broken roof, illuminating the figure of Tien-Hau and, for fleeting seconds, the skin of the Last Tiger stretched upon the wall. He reached for it, to
find it miraculously dry. It had been well cured and was reasonably soft. As he rolled her in it and carried her down to the boat, his heart thumped painfully with the thought of losing her.

The Royal Military Hospital was a rarefied enclave reserved for those who lived in the foreign embassies or the grand homes of British government officials and giants of Hong Kong commerce and industry. It was shrouded in mist when Toby pulled up outside the emergency entrance.

As he carried Sing up its wide tiled steps two at a time, a male orderly came from behind the reception desk with one of the wheelchairs lined against the wall. When he saw that the patient was a woman in the mud-caked tunic and trousers of a Chinese peasant, wrapped in the skin of a tiger, he stopped dead.

“It’s a woman, sir,” he said. “A Chinese woman … in a tiger’s skin.” He shook his head emphatically. “We can’t admit a Chinese civilian, not wrapped up in a tiger skin, sir.”

Toby ignored his protest, pushing past him through the door.

“Get me the matron,” he snapped, lifting Sing gently onto an examination bench.

“But, sir—,” the orderly stuttered. “It’s against the rules, sir …”

“The matron. Now!” Toby’s bark sent him scurrying away.

Sing was admitted under the name of Devereaux, signed in by Captain Hyde-Wilkins, remaining in intensive care for several days for a fractured shinbone, which was healing well due to immediate and expert attention, and for extensive bruising and abrasions, with a risk of minor organ damage and signs of fluid on the lungs.

On the fifth day, when she had been moved to a small room of her own through Toby’s machinations, he arrived bearing a huge bunch of pink, white, and red roses, along with the excellent news that Miss Winifred Bramble would be honored if the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Devereaux would complete her recuperation at her residence on Stonecutters Island, as soon as she was released.

“Or,” he offered with a grin, “you could marry me and I could take care of you. Or is it too soon to think of that?”

Her heart was too full to answer for a moment, but then she looked at her bandages ruefully. “I think it is not quite the right time.”

Toby nodded and kissed her gently on the top of her head. “I understand. And I’m afraid there is something else I must tell you.” He held her hand as he gave her the news that could not be avoided: Ruby’s body had not been found, but there was still a chance that she would be identified among the casualties. Sing had been right: The Indian driver, Raj, had been so taken with the little pipe-maker that he was heading the search party with the thoroughness of a military exercise.

If there were tears, he did not see them. She was clearly tired, though; he left quietly, thankful that she was in the best of care.

When he had gone, Sing allowed herself to think of the little pipe-maker with the passionate heart that had been so badly broken. For many sleepless hours she told herself that Ruby’s grip had weakened and she simply slipped away; that for all her training and the hidden powers she possessed, there was nothing she could have done to save her. Master To had said nothing on how to fight the storm … only that it would come.

Sing could have wept like a child, but knew that Ruby would not wish her to.

When Sing Devereaux was released from the hospital three weeks later, she insisted on being taken directly to Tai-Po village to see for herself.