Gai-Jin (91 page)

“Yes, yes. Don’t worry, I’ll—”

A knock on the door startled them. Hastily she scooped up the two bottles and packet of herbs and put them in her bag. “Come in,” André said.

Dr. Babcott dwarfed the doorway. “Ah, Angelique, the servant told me you were here. I just popped in on the off chance of seeing you a moment. ’Evening, André.”

“’Evening, Monsieur.”

“Ah, Doctor, I’m really all right,” she said, a sudden twinge of disquiet under his penetrating gaze. “No need t—”

“Just wanted to take your temperature, count your pulse and see if you
needed a sedative. Always best to check.” When she began to protest he added firmly and kindly, “Best to check, Angelique, always safer to check, won’t take a minute.”

“Come along then.” She said good night to André and led the way down the corridor to her suite. Ah Soh was waiting in her boudoir. “Ah Soh,” Babcott said politely in Cantonese, “please come back when I call you.”

“Certainly, Honorable Doctor.” Obediently she left.

“I didn’t know you spoke Chinese, George,” Angelique said as he sat beside her and began to count her pulse rate.

“That was Cantonese, Chinese don’t have one language, Angelique, but hundreds of different languages, though only one form of writing they can all understand. Curious, what?”

How stupid to tell me what I already know, she thought impatiently, wanting to scream at him, Do hurry up! As if I haven’t been in Hong Kong, as if Malcolm, and everyone else hasn’t told me a hundred times—as if I’ve forgotten you’re the cause of all my misfortune.

“I picked it up while I was in Hong Kong,” he continued absently, feeling her brow and the pulse in her wrist, noting that her heart was racing and there was the slightest sheen of perspiration on her forehead—nothing to worry about considering her ordeal. “A few words here and there. Spent a couple of years at the General Hospital—we could certainly use such a fine place here.” He kept his fingertips lightly on her pulse. “Chinese doctors believe there are seven levels of heartbeats, or pulses. They say they can sense them probing deeper and deeper. It’s their main diagnostic method.”

“And what do you hear from my seven hearts?” she asked impulsively, enjoying the warmth of his healing hands and, in spite of her hatred, wishing she could trust him. She had never felt such hands or the good sensation that seemed to radiate from them to calm her.

“I hear nothing but good health,” he said, wondering if there was any truth to the seven pulses theory. In his years in Asia he had witnessed remarkable insights and cures by Chinese doctors—along with an abundance of superstitious nonsense. The world’s strange, but people are more strange. He looked back at her. His eyes were grey and very direct and kind. But there were shadows there and she saw them.

“Then … then what troubles you?” she asked, suddenly frightened that he had diagnosed her real condition.

He hesitated, then reached into his pocket and brought out a piece of tissue paper. Inside the tissue was her little gold cross. “This is yours, I think.”

In violent turmoil she stared at it, her lips dry and not moving though her head had conjured up an immediate denial and shrug that were replaced in the same nauseating instant with: “I—I certainly … lost one like it. Are you sure it’s mine? Where did you find it?”

“Around the neck of the would-be interloper.”

“His neck? How … how odd,” she heard herself say, watching herself as though she were another person, her voice another person’s, forcing herself to be controlled even though she wanted to screech aloud for she knew she was again in the vise—her brain frenzied to concoct a plausible reason. “Around his neck?”

“Yes, I took it off the body. Thought nothing of it at the time, except that the man was a Catholic convert. Quite by chance, I saw the inscription—it’s hardly noticeable.” A short nervous laugh. “My eyesight is better than Hoag’s. ‘To Angelique from Mama. 1844.’”

Her mouth said, “Poor Mama, she died birthing my brother just four years later.” She saw her fingers pick up the crucifix and examine it, squinting in the oil light, unable to read the tiny writing clearly—cursing the writing. Then her instinct committed her and she said, “I lost it, or thought I lost it at—at the Tokaidō, perhaps at Kanagawa, the night I went to see Malcolm, remember?”

“Oh, yes. Bad night, very bad … bad day too.” Babcott got up hesitantly. “I, er, I thought you should have it.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, I’m glad to have it back. So very glad, but please sit down, don’t go yet,” she said, much as she wanted him to go. “Who was he, that man, and how would he have found it? And where?”

“We’ll never know, not now.” Babcott watched her. “Did Malcolm tell you we think he was one of the Tokaidō murdering devils, though neither he nor Phillip are sure?”

In spite of her dread as she squirmed in this new trap, she had an overwhelming impulse to laugh hysterically and say. He wasn’t a devil, not to me, not the first time, he left me alive the first time, and not a devil after I changed him. He didn’t kill me though I know he was going to, I know he was going to just before I made him leave…. Devil, no, but even so he deserved to die, had to die….

Mon Dieu
, I still don’t even know his name, I was so enmeshed I forgot to ask … I must be going mad to think such things. “Who was he?”

“No one knows. Yet. The Satsuma king could name him now that he’s dead, but it would probably be a false name. They’re such liars—that’s not quite true, it’s just that what we call lying seems to be a way of life with them. Probably the man found the cross at Kanagawa. You don’t remember exactly when you discovered it had gone?”

“No, I don’t. It was only when I got back here …” Again she saw his probing, questioning eyes and her mind screamed: Did my pulse or pulses tell him my real condition? “It’s found. Good, thank God. I can’t thank you enough but why should he wear it or keep it, that’s what I can’t understand.”

“I agree, very odd.”

The silence grew. “What does Dr. Hoag think?”

Babcott looked at her but she could not read what he was really thinking. “I didn’t ask him,” he said, “didn’t discuss it with him, or with Malcolm.” His eyes went back to hers and seemed to take on a deeper color. “Hoag’s a Struan man and he, well … his rice bowl is with Tess Struan. I don’t know why, but I thought I should talk to you first.”

Again a silence. She looked away, not trusting herself, wishing she could truly trust him, wanting to trust someone other than André—his knowing was bad enough—but sure beyond sure it was impossible. She had to keep to the plan: she was alone, she must save herself alone.

“Perhaps …” she said, “no, surely he must have found my crucifix at Kanagawa, must have seen me there and—and perhaps …” She stopped then hurried on, leading him on, inventing as she continued, “perhaps he kept it to remind him of me, to … I don’t really know, to what?”

He said awkwardly, “To obviously do you harm, my dear, to possess you, one way or another, kill you. Sorry, but that must be the truth. At first I thought, like everyone else, that he was just one of these outlaws called ronin, but your crucifix changed all that. The moment I discovered it was yours … It must be as you say, he saw you at the Tokaidō, he and the other man must have followed Malcolm and Phillip Tyrer to Kanagawa to finish them off, probably to avoid identification. Then he saw you again, found the crucifix and kept it because it was
yours
, pursued you here and tried to break in to, sorry again, to possess you, whatever the cost. Don’t forget it would be easy for such a man to be infatuated by such a person as you, to be, to be obsessed.”

The way he said it made it clearer than ever he too was within her spell. Good, and good that he’s realized the truth, she thought, faint with relief that another hazard had been eliminated. Her mind strayed to the little bottles and to tomorrow when she would be cleansed, to start her new life, the future wonderful.

“Japanese are a curious people,” he was saying. “Different. But different in one major way, they’re not afraid to die. They almost seem to seek it. You were lucky, so lucky to escape. Well, I’ll be off.”

“Yes, and thank you, thank you.” She caught his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “You’ll tell Malcolm and Dr. Hoag? Then that will end it.”

“I’ll leave Malcolm to you.” For a second he considered asking her help with Malcolm’s opium addiction but decided it was not yet urgent, and anyway it was his own responsibility, not hers. Poor Angelique, she has enough to deal with. “As to Hoag, what does it matter to him, or to busybodies and wagging tongues in Yokohama? None of their affair, or mine, eh?”

He saw her clear eyes in the radiant face smiling up at him, pellucid skin, all of her emanating youth and health together with the magnetic, unconscious sensuality perpetually surrounding her that had, against all
medical expectation, increased in power. Astonishing, he thought, filled with wonder at her resilience. I only wish I knew her secret and why some people thrive on adversities that would break most others.

Abruptly the doctor part of him fell away. I can’t blame that ronin, or Malcolm, or anyone being mad for her, I want her too. “Curious about your cross,” he said throatily, not a little ashamed. “But then, life’s a collection of curiosities, isn’t it? ’Night, my dear. Sleep well.”

The first cramp clawed her out of a crooked sleep that was sated with prison hulks and sloe-eyed, raving demons, the women bloated with child, the men horned and grasping her away from Tess Struan, who stood guard over Malcolm like a malevolent ghoul. A second cramp followed quickly and brought her awake to reality and what was happening.

Relief that it had begun obliterated the previous hours of trepidation, for it had seemed an eternity before she had slept. Now it was just past 4
A.M.
The last time she looked at her clock it was almost 2:30. Another cramp, rougher than before, went through her and concentrated her on the sequence.

Trembling fingers uncorked the second bottle. Again she gagged on the putrid taste and almost brought the liquid up but managed to keep it down with a spoon of honey, all the while her stomach churning with revulsion.

She lay back gasping. Fire seemed to spread from her stomach. In moments sweat poured out of her. Then the sweating passed leaving her limp, soaked and hardly breathing.

Waiting. As before, nothing. Just a bilious, sweet-sick disquiet that had, after hours of anxiety, drifted into troubled sleep. Her dismay crested. “Blessed Mother, let it work, let it work,” she murmured through her tears.

More waiting. Still nothing. The minutes passed.

Then, unlike before, a startlingly different cramp almost doubled her up. Another. Just bearable. More, still bearable. She remembered the second half of the infusion and she sat up and began to sip it. The taste was bad but not as bad as the liquid in the bottles. “Thank God I don’t have to take more of that,” she muttered, and sipped again. Another sip. After each sip a taste of chocolate …

More cramps, stronger now. An increasing rhythm to them. Don’t worry, everything’s happening, she thought, just as André forecast. Her stomach muscles were beginning to feel stretched and angry. More sips and more cramps and then the last drop was down. Honey jar almost empty-last of the chocolate but now even its sweetness could not mask the bilious aftertaste. A draft from under the boudoir door swayed the flame of the lamp on the side table, making the wall shadows change and dance.
Stoically she lay back and watched them, her hands holding her belly against the shafts of pain, the muscles tightening and loosening, becoming more tight, knotting under her fingers.

“Watch the shadows, think good thoughts,” she whispered. “What do you see?”

Ships and sails and the roofs of Paris and brambles and, look, there’s the guillotine, no, not the guillotine but a bower covered with climbing roses, why it’s our country cottage near Versailles where we would go in the spring and summer growing up, my brother and I, darling Maman dead so long ago, Father gone only God knows where, Aunt and Uncle loving us but no substitute for darlin—

“Oh,
Mon Dieu!”
she gasped as the first of the violent spasms slashed her, then cried out at the next, frantically crammed part of the sheet into her mouth to stop the shrieks that burst out of her and would have brought all the Legation pounding on her bolted door.

Then the chills began. Ice picks into her guts. And more violence, twenty times worse than the worst monthly cramps. Her body heaved against the strain, limbs twitching in time with the waves of torment that ripped from her loins and into her head. “I’m going to die … I’m going to die,” she moaned, her teeth grinding on the sheet, muffling the screams that followed with more spasms and chills and more, on and on and on and then stopping. Quite suddenly.

At first she thought she had truly died but soon her senses focused and she saw that the room had ceased spinning, the flame of the lamp was low but still burning and she heard the tick of the clock. The hands of the clock pointed to 5:42.

She struggled up in the bed, feeling awful. A glance in her hand mirror frightened her. Ashen features, hair lank with sweat, lips discolored by the medicine. She rinsed her mouth with some of the green tea and spat into the chamber pot and pushed it back under the bed again. Grimly she fought out of her soiled nightdress, used a damp towel to clean her face and neck as best she could, combed her hair and lay back exhausted but feeling better for the toil. It was only then that she noticed the red smear on her nightdress, thrown carelessly onto the threadbare carpet.

A quick examination confirmed that blood was seeping. She arranged a clean towel between her legs and, in the dawn, lay back once more, almost sinking into the mattress with fatigue. Warmth spread through her tired limbs. The flow increased.

SUNDAY, 9TH NOVEMBER
:

“Illustrious Chen said to tell you anything that might affect the tai-pan, Elder Sister,” Ah Soh began uneasily. “The night before last Golden Pubics started her monthly and sh—”