Читать книгу Nightsong - V.J. Banis - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

They traveled for more than six weeks, covering what she guessed to be twenty miles or so a day. The scenery grew monotonous, each day the same little rounded hills, the same bamboo groves, the same little farmhouses nestled in the hollows.

Each night was the same, too. Always there was the Chinese inn, one hardly distinguishable from the next, each night the silk-lined bed prepared for her, and then the visit from her husband, to sate his lust.

Repetition had dulled her senses, so that she no longer writhed in agony nor sobbed herself to sleep afterward, but lay passive and numb until he had finished. Once or twice her lack of response had angered him and he had gone so far as to swear at her in Chinese—she hadn’t been sure of the words, but their intent was unmistakable. He had even threatened her with the rope whip, but the threat held no terror for her. He could cause her no more pain that way than what he inflicted upon her in his ardor. He could beat her to death, but that would only provide release from her misery.

It seemed as if their journey would never end. Then, soon after they had set out one morning, she became aware of a commotion in the train of bearers and the coolies began to shout to one another in a dialect that she couldn’t understand.

Unexpectedly they came to a stop, though they had been traveling less than an hour, and the chair was set down. The sun had not yet penetrated the thick morning mists, and the countryside had an ethereal, otherworldly look. She stepped out from the chair, slowly realizing that they were speaking to her, watching her with excited expressions as if there were some great surprise in store for her. They were calling her attention to something, and she turned, following the direction of their pointing fingers—and gave a gasp of astonishment.

It seemed to rise from the very mist, awesome, frightening, incredibly majestic—the Great Wall of China.

Everything that she’d ever read or heard came rushing back to her—the greatest, the largest structure ever made; a million lives had been forfeit in its building; each stone was stained with bloody tears. It stretched in splendid solitude from the farthest reaches of Asia, up mountains and down dark valleys, as mysterious and terrible as the empire it protected.

She stood for a long time, staring in an awe that penetrated even through her misery. The coolies grew restless, and at length an order came from Ke Loo’s chair, and they prepared to set out again.

It was only later in the day that she came to realize, from things she observed and overheard, that Ke Loo had himself arranged for her glimpse of the wall. He had taken them several days’ journey out of their way in order that she might view the country’s most spectacular sight. It was impossible to guess why. He might have wanted to impress upon her that China was not without her marvels, perhaps to ease her fears at being forced to make her home here.

Whatever his reasons, it gave her cause for reflection. However odious and repulsive Ke Loo might be to her, he was a man, and he was her husband, in deed if not in name. However real her dream of escape might be, it was still only a dream. She would be at Ke Loo’s mercy for many years, dependent upon him for her every need—possibly forever. If she meant to escape at all, she must first survive, and in order to do that, she must somehow make the best of the situation.

When Ke Loo came to her room that night, he did not find her clothed, as was usually the case. Instead, she had undressed, and swathed herself in one of the silk cloths used to cover the bed, wrapping it round and round herself, like a sarong. Unlike her full-skirted, high-necked gown, this makeshift garment revealed as much as it concealed, her budding breasts standing out in elegant relief.

The mandarin paused in the middle of the room, staring first in surprise, then in pleasure. She was reclining on the bed, provocatively posed, and she waited, motionless, while he quickly shed his clothes. She was so nervous that her breath came hard, but she managed to smile at him for the first time ever.

He smiled in reply, and she saw his member rise up from the thick tangle of hair at his loins, growing with his delight.

She wanted to shut her eyes to the sight, to block the experience from her mind as she had learned to do in the preceding days, but she resisted the urge. She wanted to live, to survive; she could not do that without Ke Loo’s support. She had no weapons, no strength to match his, no means to resist or escape him.

But she had her wiles, and with those, perhaps, she could conquer.

Perhaps she could even live to see Peter MacNair again, and have the satisfaction of seeing him suffer.

Ke Loo came to the bed, crouching over her, tearing hungrily at the cloth covering her body. To his amazement, she slapped at his hand. He stopped, glowering angrily, but his anger turned to bewilderment when he saw that she was smiling seductively at him.

She took his wrist and brought his hand to her breast, moving his hand upon it, but slowly, softly.

“Gently, my lord,” she told him in his native tongue.

He smiled again, delighted at her new attitude. No Chinese woman would have dared to instruct a man in lovemaking, nor resist whatever he desired. He fondled her breast gently, as she had indicated.

She lifted her arms about his neck and parted her lips to welcome his. As she felt his weight upon her, she closed her mind to what was happening.

I will live, she thought, feeling his touch, newly tender, upon her thighs.

I will survive.

I will have my revenge.

* * * * * * *

While they were still on their journey, Lydia missed her monthly, and by the time they had arrived at their destination, she was certain that she was with child.

Her feelings were a mass of contradictions. Some motherly instinct within her filled her with joy at the thought of her own child, a darling baby to hold and cuddle. In the wake of losing her parents, she welcomed the hope of someone to love, someone who loved her in return.

But a half-Chinese child? Her feelings recoiled at the thought that Ke Loo was the child’s father, and it made her sick in the pit of her stomach to think of the child being conceived with him on one of those nights in the dreadful inns.

A new idea occurred to her: what if Ke Loo weren’t the father of the child? What if it were Peter MacNair?

Her immediate reaction was a feeling of relief that the baby would not be of mixed blood, but no sooner had that idea crossed her mind than she was filled with anger at the prospect that she might be carrying the child of the one man she hated most in all the world. She would rather die!

Of course, she really didn’t want to die. She had survived so much already. And then she would think of eyes the color of sable, long-lashed and shining; what a lovely child she would be, the daughter of Peter MacNair; and little she would know of her father’s perfidy.

Yet another thought sobered her: would Ke Loo welcome a child who looked like Peter MacNair? Surely not. And as for a daughter, she well knew they were not welcomed in China.

During the journey, they had stopped for a rest near a hillside covered with graves and, with her guards and the nurse following her, she had made her way up the hill to a stumpy little tower, cone-shaped and made of rough-hewn stone. It had struck her as quaint and picturesque, and she had thought it some sort of memorial.

There were a number of baskets strewn about on the ground, and on one side of the structure a rope extended from an opening. A sickening odor escaped from the opening, and in an instant she had realized the nauseating truth: it was a baby tower, and the rope was used to gently lower the babies into the deep pit beneath the tower.

It had left her shaken and ill. She was filled with horror at the thought of her child, her very own daughter, suffering so cruel and ignominious a fate.

A boy, then—she would pray for a son. And she must pray too that he was Ke Loo’s son; else, his gender notwithstanding, he was little likely to escape the mandarin’s displeasure.

No matter who the father, though, no matter what the color of his skin or the shape of his eyes, he would be hers, and she would love him.

And no one would take him from her.

* * * * * * *

It was with such thoughts as these that she arrived in Kalgan, Ke Loo’s city. It lay not far from the Great Wall itself, on the route of the caravans that wound across the vast Gobi desert on their way to Peking.

Summer was waning, and the bleak Chinese winter would soon be upon them. The last straggling caravans, laden with goods of every imaginable sort, hurried southward, and soon the desert route would be closed until spring.

At the moment, however, the city was teeming, even by Chinese standards. Everywhere that they had been, Lydia had been an object of great curiosity, but nowhere more so than here. The amah whom Ke Loo had assigned to attend to her told her that no white woman had ever before ventured into this region of China. Here too, Ke Loo was a great lord, and as such great interest attached to his doings. The news that he had brought with him a foreign devil as a bride had somehow preceded them.

“I don’t see how,” Lydia complained. “We’ve only just gotten here ourselves, and they’ve no trains or telegraph, or anything like that.”

“Men travel on foot,” the amah replied, grinning at the girl’s naiveté. “News travels on the wind.”

Despite her predicament, Lydia could not help feeling a certain excitement at knowing she would be living in a palace. Like most Chinese palaces, Ke Loo’s was in fact a series of separate buildings, joined by numerous gardens and courtyards, the whole contained within a high wall that afforded them quiet and privacy though they were actually in the very heart of the city.

She was to live in a little house of her own, surrounded by a garden with ornamental pools and almond trees. There were only two rooms, a sort of sitting-dining room, and a large bedroom.

“Evidently my lord expects me to do nothing but eat and sleep,” Lydia said when she had explored her quarters.

The amah, who shared the house with her, giggled. She found her new charge shockingly outspoken. It was not a woman’s place after all, to question such matters.

Lydia’s facetious remark, however, proved closer to the mark then she had expected. Immediately upon their arrival, a brief wedding ceremony had been performed, making her Ke Loo’s wife in fact as well as in deed, but she considered this of little consequence. What did that matter, in view of the fact that she was really a slave?

From the moment that her condition had been confirmed, however, the mandarin ceased his nocturnal visits to her, though he came every day and studied her briefly, as if weighing her in the balance.

“I wish for a son,” he declared at the beginning.

“As if I had any choice in the matter,” Lydia complained privately, but she too hoped for a son. She could not bear to think of what might happen if the child were a girl. It would be horrible to have a child for a few minutes, only to have it snatched from her arms and put to death.

At first it had been a great relief not to see Ke Loo except for a few minutes each day, and she was certainly grateful that he had foregone his nightly assaults on her. She reveled in her privacy.

She soon decided, however, that privacy could be a curse as well as a blessing, for excepting the amah and the women servants who came in and out to care for her needs, and who only giggled and averted their eyes when she tried to make conversation with them, she saw no one. Chinese women, especially wives of noblemen, lived in a purdah as complete as that of a princess in a Turkish harem.

Summer became winter, with scarcely a day of autumn, or so it seemed to Lydia. The last caravans had made their noisy way through and a relative serenity settled upon the isolated city. The winds blowing from the desert swept across the garden, leaving a fine sifting of sand on everything. The trees were barren, the earth had turned brown, and the ornamental pools lay as still and black as sheets of polished marble.

She was lonely and bored. She closed her mind to memories of her parents, and the life she had once known. She would not dwell upon such things, nor upon the repugnance she felt for the man who was now her husband. That way lay madness and she could not undo what had been done. She had made up her mind, lying with Ke Loo in one of those inns, that her only hope to survive, and to retain her sanity, was to take each day as it came. The yesterdays were gone, and tomorrow too far away to do her any good.

Still, she longed for conversation in her own language with her own kind of people. She would happily have worked in the palace, but she quickly learned that this was unheard of for the wife of a Chinese prince. The long nails that she had observed on aristocratic Chinese women, often covered with elaborate nail guards, were a visible symbol of their wealth and leisure, for anyone could see at a glance that they did not have to lift a hand in any sort of labor. For her to be seen at household work would cause Ke Loo to lose face, and to a Chinese, losing face was the worst thing that could happen.

“But what do these women do with their time?” Lydia demanded of the amah.

“Time is a luxury,” the amah said.

“Well, I can’t just sit all day contemplating the mountains,” Lydia said, indicating the snow-capped range that could be seen from the garden.

The amah only smiled. She had concluded very quickly that the foreign woman was peculiar. They were, she had been told, a primitive people.

To fill her time, Lydia worked to improve her knowledge of the Chinese language, and even the amah was pleased at how quickly she learned.

Even this left her with time on her hands, however, and she often paced restlessly from one of the palace’s many gardens to the next. At the amah’s suggestion, she attempted to learn the intricate embroidery with which many of the women entertained themselves, but she soon found that she had no aptitude for such work, and she grew tired of constantly pricking her fingers.

It was while strolling through the gardens that Lydia one day came upon one of the servant women kneeling at a low table. She had spread before her an array of dishes and containers, and she was carefully measuring ingredients from one to another. She might have been preparing a recipe, except that she was far from the kitchen.

To Lydia’s further puzzlement, the servant shook one of the rose bushes close at hand, sending a shower of petals to the ground; she then collected the fallen petals putting them into one of the containers. When she saw Lydia, however, she paused in her efforts and made a low obeisance.

“What are you making?” Lydia asked.

Smiling shyly, the woman handed her a small vial. Thinking she was to taste its contents, Lydia raised it to her lips, which earned her a startled look and a giggle.

“No, no, this,” the woman said; taking the vial, she brought it to her nose and sniffed deeply, then handed it once again to Lydia.

It was perfume. Lydia was reminded at once of Peter MacNair and the cosmetics he had been collecting to take back to America with him. She knew that Chinese women used a great many such things; even the servant women here in the palace whitened their faces with powder. She had been curious, but this was the first time she had actually seen their manufacture.

She looked down at the table at which the woman was working and saw that various containers held a variety of such items. There was the white face powder, made, she had been told, from rice, and a satiny cream that smelled of almond blossoms, and yet another vial in which she could see flower petals floating.

“Will you teach me to make these?” she asked.

The servant giggled again, until she saw that the foreigner was indeed serious; properly chastened, she nodded in mute compliance.

* * * * * * *

Lydia was grateful at last to have a hobby to occupy her time, and one which would not cause Ke Loo to lose face, for the making of lotions and perfumes was one of the few pastimes practiced by women of the aristocratic class. It was an ancient art, and though there were certain basic procedures and ingredients, each woman had her own secret formulas, which were jealously guarded, and often handed down as treasures from mother to daughter. The royal perfume maker, she was told, was one of the most favored in the Empress’s retinue, but one hapless maid had been put to death for merely mentioning the name of one of the secret ingredients.

As her pregnancy advanced, Lydia found herself more and more absorbed in creating her own special scents and creams. The gardens of the palace were filled with myriad blossoms, each of which could be used for a scent, or blended with others in infinite variations.

Her hours were now filled with the scents of almond and myrrh, lemon and tangerine, patchouli and sandalwood. With the first tentative approach of spring came new blossoms and new variations.

And with spring, too, came her child. The warm fragrant breezes of April were wafting through her little house when she felt the first of the pains.

“Send to my husband to say that my time has come,” she directed the nurse, putting aside a perfume that she had been blending. “And then fetch the midwife.”

For a brief moment she allowed herself the luxury of wishing for her mother. How comforting it would be to have her here now, to hold her hand and listen to her reassuring voice. It was the first time she had thought of her parents in weeks.

“I mustn’t dwell on such things,” she thought, stubbornly thrusting the thought from her.

* * * * * * *

Her labor was prolonged and severe. It was as if her child well knew what difficult circumstances awaited, and resisted being thrust into so harsh a world.

It was done at last. Lydia lay in a semi-stupor induced by some drug the midwife had given her, and heard the first angry cries. She opened her eyes, willing away the effects of the drug.

“Bring him to me,” she said, struggling to lift her head from the pillow.

The midwife and the amah exchanged glances. Lydia’s heart skipped a beat.

“What is it?” she asked, fear making her voice shrill. “Is something wrong with him?”

The amah bent over the bed to wipe her brow with a wet cloth. “You must rest,” she said.

Lydia slapped her hand away. “No. I want to see my baby. Bring him to me.”

The Chinese women looked at one another again. The amah nodded her head. The midwife wrapped the baby in cloth and came to the bed.

Lydia took the child in her arms, her eyes wide with fright as she looked him over. He was Chinese, that was her first thought, seeing the straight black hair, the slightly tilted eyes, squeezed shut now, the mouth wide with his cries.

“Why, there’s nothing wrong with him at all,” she said, breaking into a grin. “He’s as sound as a dollar.”

The amah bent and pulled open the cloth wrapping the baby. Lydia glanced down. His hands were balled into fists, his little legs were kicking furiously....

Her heart sank. “A girl,” she said. She could hardly credit her eyes. She’d prayed so much, she’d been so certain. “It’s a girl.”

In the next moment she was overcome by a wave of shame. She had been so long with the Chinese that she had begun to think like them. As if it mattered to her! It was a baby, her baby, and she loved it.

As for Ke Loo, she’d make him see, it couldn’t matter that much to him. After all, when the peasants put their daughters out to die, it was because they couldn’t afford to feed and raise a girl, just to see her go off to work for someone else, but Ke Loo had no worries over money. He could afford a girl child just as well as a boy. She’d make him understand.

She wrapped the blanket around her daughter again, and hugged her close.

My daughter, she thought, my own child. For the first time since she had been betrayed by Peter MacNair, she felt joy in her heart, and was glad to be alive.

“I shall call you...,” she said aloud, and paused. She had been about to call her Sarah, after her mother; but she couldn’t, not a child fathered by Ke Loo, who had left her mother to die.

A gentle breeze brushed her cheek. “I shall call you April,” she said, laughing with delight. “April, my child of the spring.”

There was a noise in the garden, and Ke Loo came in. Lydia’s joy faded as she saw his face; he knew already.

He barked a command and the amah fairly snatched the baby from Lydia’s arms, rushing to take it to the father. Ke Loo threw the blanket to the floor, holding the infant up for his inspection.

He swore aloud and shoved the baby back at the amah. “Drown it,” he said.

“No,” Lydia cried, struggling up from her bed.

Ke Loo ignored her, signaling the amah to carry out his instructions. She started for the garden with the screaming baby.

Lydia staggered after her for a few steps but she was too weak to run, and even should she reach her, the amah had no choice but to obey Ke Loo.

“Stop it,” Lydia cried. She looked around and saw the midwife’s knife lying on a table near the bed. Without pausing to consider, she snatched it up and held it to her throat.

“Stop it, I say, or I’ll kill myself!”

The amah stopped in her tracks, looking from Lydia to Ke Loo. The midwife gasped with horror.

“I mean it,” Lydia said, speaking to her husband in Chinese. “If the baby dies, I shall die too.”

She had no way of weighing the effect of her threat. Ke Loo had not visited her bed in months, because she was pregnant, and she had no way of knowing whether she was anything more than a novelty to him, whose appeal might already have faded. He glowered angrily at her. The knife point cut into the flesh of her trembling throat.

At last, with a dismissive gesture, Ke Loo swore aloud again. “Give her the child,” he barked, turning on his heel and striding angrily from the room.

The Chinese women broke into excited chatter, laughing nervously as they discussed the marvel of a woman defying her husband’s direct orders.

Lydia went to the amah and took her daughter in her arms. Almost at once April ceased her shrill screams.

“That’s better, my darling,” Lydia murmured, holding her close. “You need have no fears. Your mother will take care of everything, wait and see.”

And she would take care of everything too, she vowed it. Before, the only thing she had had to live for had been her oath of revenge upon Peter MacNair. Now, however, she had something else that mattered, something that mattered more to her than anything else.

She had her daughter. And her daughter would not grow up a slave, a prisoner in a Chinese harem. She had defied Ke Loo to save the child. She would defy anyone, anything, to ensure her daughter’s wellbeing.

“You shall be rich and beautiful,” she murmured, touching her daughter’s chin with the tip of one gentle finger. “You shall have everything your heart desires, the finest clothes, the finest jewels, the finest perfumes. Your mother swears it.”

She strolled into the garden, averting her eyes from the pool in which April had nearly been drowned. Beyond the wall towered the great mountain range of northern China; and there, far, far to the east, lay America.

“Someday,” she said, hugging the baby still closer, “somehow, I swear it, we shall go home.”

“Home.” She repeated the word in a whisper, and felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

Her own land, her own people, so very far away. It would soon be a year since she had been betrayed by Peter MacNair; already it was difficult to recall exactly her parents’ faces. She ate and lived and spoke Chinese.

She must see that her daughter spoke English as well as Chinese. She must see that her beloved April grew up knowing who and what she was. It would not do for the child to feel like a foreigner when at last they reached America.

When. She would not say, “if.” She would not even let herself think “if.”

Always, it must be “when.”