Captive Bride (2 page)

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand you. Do you speak Wu? Mandarin?”

The woman only spoke faster and louder in her native dialect.

Huiann shook her head in frustration. “I don’t understand. Can I get you something? Water?” The word was echoed back to her from someone farther down the line. “Water!”

“Hello?” Huiann headed toward the sound, the acrid stench of ammonia forcing her to cover her nose with her sleeve. “Water?”

“Water,” the voice responded. There was a flurry of movement inside one of the pens as the speaker pushed the other prisoners aside and moved toward Huiann. “Food. Water.” The Mandarin words were interspersed with more regional dialect.

“I don’t have anything.” She held her hands wide open. “But I will try to bring something if you can wait.” She was struck by the foolishness of her words.

Of course they would wait. They had no choice. But how could she help them? Surely their captors must feed them. They’d be no good as slaves without receiving sufficient nourishment during the journey.

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What kind of work were they bound for—working on farms and in factories or maybe as servants in wealthy homes? Huiann realized how little she knew about life in the foreign land that was soon to become her home.

She studied the pale face and single black eye staring at her from between the slats. This girl looked very young, surely no older than Huiann’s little cousin Min. The lump in her throat nearly choked her and tears welled in her eyes. She touched the slender fingers that reached out for her.

“When we land, somehow I’ll find a way to free you. My new husband is a great man in America, a rich man. When I tell him, he will fix this.” She squeezed the girl’s fingers then stood as the clamor of voices begging for help rose in a cacophony. “I’m sorry. I have to go now. I don’t belong down here.” Huiann felt guilty at her relief in leaving the shrill clamor and the horrid smells behind as she retraced her steps along the dark passage, past the noisy engine room and up the stairs to the middeck. There she drew a deep breath. Sweat rolled down her face and her stomach felt as if she’d eaten a bad piece of fish. She went to the rail and leaned over as far as she dared.

She retched up the contents of her stomach, which swirled away in the gray waves far below.

How could she take water down to the women, let alone food? And if someone caught her interfering what would they do to her? A feeling of hopelessness swelled through her, but she fought it off. Since when had she allowed circumstances to stop her once she had a goal in mind? Her mother had often bemoaned 12

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her stubbornness and likened her to a thistle among peonies in comparison with her older sisters.

Huiann pushed away from the railing and went to her cabin, where Madam Teng lay on her berth, whimpering. Huiann offered her a dipper full of water from the small metal cistern allotted to their room.

After Madam stopped grumbling and subsided into a doze, Huiann heaved the half-empty cask in her arms.

She was barely able to clasp her arms around the slippery cylinder. It was awkward to carry and she feared discovery at any moment on this busy ship, but she made her way back down to the hold and the prisoners.

The cacophony of whispering, whining voices truly did sound like ghosts, and even though Huiann now knew they were flesh-and-blood women, a shiver still ran up her spine. She dipped water from the cistern and offered the tin cup to the grasping hands reaching through the bars. The cup was jerked from her and passed from one thirsty woman to another.

“Slowly or you’ll spill it,” she warned.

She refilled the cup several times before pulling out the tin of crackers she’d placed in the inner pocket of her loose-fitting
qípáo
gown. “I wish had more to offer.

Maybe I can get food for you tomorrow.” Already her mind was busily at work like a mouse worrying a piece of cheese from a trap as she tried to figure out a way to secure extra food from the galley.

She scraped the last of the water from the cistern and offered it to the woman who spoke a little Mandarin. The girl returned the empty cup to Huiann and then clasped her hand, her skin as cool as river Bonnie Dee

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water. “Thank you. Thank you,” she repeated her gratitude over and over, mixed with foreign words.

Huiann bobbed her head. “You’re most welcome,” she answered formally. “May the gods bestow only good fortune on you and your family.”

“Great blessings come from heaven but small blessings come from man. Thank
you,
kind sister.” The woman’s accent was atrocious but the old proverb was clear enough. The gods could only be counted on for so much help. The rest was up to one’s fellow man.

Huiann squeezed the cold hand then let go. “I must leave now. Tomorrow,” she promised.

Once more she scurried upstairs, heart pounding as the passed the noisy boiler room, and returned the cask to her cabin where Madam Teng still slept. Huiann couldn’t bear the thought of staying in the stuffy room for the rest of the night. She returned to the deck and her spot at the railing, which had become her true home on the ship.

The scent of brine replaced the ghastly odors from below, and the fresh air cooled Huiann’s heated cheeks.

She stared at the horizon where for weeks there’d been nothing to see but the union of ocean and sky. But as the sun emerged from clouds just long enough to set behind the fast-moving ship, its golden shafts illuminated a thin dark line bisecting ocean and sky in the east.

Land! By tomorrow they might reach it. She imagined meeting her husband for the first time and how he’d listen with concern when she told him about the miserable women imprisoned on the ship, even as he scolded her for going where she wasn’t allowed.

She fantasized about a handsome, bold man, 14

Captive Bride

confronting the ship’s captain, freeing the women and finding them jobs in one of his factories where they could earn money for passage home. What happened after that, she couldn’t quite picture. Her wedding night was a mystery and the life she would live as the wife of an important American businessman would not come into focus.

She remained on deck until the sky turned gray and the first stars twinkled above. Only when the wind grew cold enough to steal her breath did she retreat below to her cabin where Madam Teng berated her for being gone so long.

When Huiann woke in the morning, the ship was steaming into the harbor. Her new life in America was about to begin.

Hands reached out for Alan, bony fingers waving like seaweed, grasping at him, entreating him to help. But he could do nothing for them. He was a skeleton himself, barely able to stand upright, only a burning core of stubbornness keeping him alive from one second to the next. The feeling of helplessness was worse than the ravenous hunger that had become a part of him, so he hardly noticed it any more than he would his hand or foot. He stared vacantly at a hawk circling far overhead—or maybe it was a vulture—and dreamed of his mother’s drawing room filled with ladies in rustling silk dresses.

And then he was there in the overheated room filled with the smell of too many warm bodies covered by too much perfume. Stifling. He was choking from the heat and the cloying odor of decay, drowning with Bonnie Dee

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lungs full of mud while hands grabbed hold of him and dragged him down.

Alan jerked awake, gasping and drenched in sweat, the blankets twisted around his body like coils of rope tying him to the bed. Another dream of the prison camp. He’d spent more nights in Andersonville in his mind than he had in reality. Was he condemned to suffer the rest of his life in that hell?

He rose and splashed his face with water from the basin. Drawing back the curtain, he looked through the warped, wavy glass at the street below bustling with traffic. Fog shrouded the carts and horses, carriages and pedestrians, stray dogs and homeless beggars that jostled for space. Another San Francisco morning had begun, the war was five years past and he was a shopkeeper not a soldier. He must concentrate on making the rest of his life productive and put the horrors to rest at last.

He stripped off his nightshirt, washed and dressed in a shirt, vest and jacket and woolen trousers probably too warm for the day ahead but fine for the early-morning chill. Then he went downstairs and entered the store below his rooms.

“Morning, Taylor. I’m going to the docks. I’ll leave you to open.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Sommers.” Jeremy Taylor was as eager to please as a puppy that piddled on the floor every time a visitor patted its head. The young man’s eyes were magnified by round spectacles and his slicked-back hair only emphasized his moon face. But he was a loyal employee, compulsive about tidying the stock and extremely punctual. Alan couldn’t ask for a better clerk.

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Captive Bride

The weak sun burned through the fog as Alan walked down Sansome Street to the wharf. The bay smelled of brine and rotting fish mingled with the pall of coal smoke and the ripe scent of horse dung. From ocean liners to tugs, steamships to sailing vessels, the harbor was alive with motion. Alan felt energized by the activity and the sense that a man could board a ship and sail away across the vast ocean. If he hadn’t already bought a store, maybe he would’ve become a sailor and traveled to foreign lands. But then he was already the breadth of a continent away from where he’d been born and maybe that was far enough. No matter how far he went, a man couldn’t outrun bad dreams.

The pier was packed with people scurrying about their business like rats crawling over a garbage heap.

There were tradesmen like Alan, buyers and sellers of the goods that came into port. Taverns lined the street and prostitutes lingered in front of them, luring sailors on shore leave. Most men were dressed in suits like Alan’s, but some wore clothes from their native countries—Slavic boots and embroidered vests, Oriental robes or loose-fitting smocks and trousers.

Foreign languages and regional English dialects spiced the flow of exchange. Hand signs were often the only way to haggle with importers from the Russian or Chinese ships.

Alan stopped in front of a docked steamer. Workers were unloading crates, kegs, burlap bags and boxes from the hold and piling them on the wharf. Local wholesaler Dong Li had already begun selling bolts of fabric, and a cluster of storeowners gathered around him, claiming them for exorbitant prices. Alan ordered Bonnie Dee

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several dozen bolts of fabrics in a rainbow of colors and prints. Since more women were arriving in San Francisco from back east, the mercantile’s supply of material and sewing notions vanished almost as soon as Alan restocked it. He made arrangements to have the fabric delivered to the store then stayed to talk to Dong Li.

“Who’s your contact for imports? I’m interested in learning more about how the shipping business works.” Even if he could only afford a small share in a steamship, it would be the beginning of cutting out the middleman, as goods coming into the harbor were growing more expensive every day.

Dong Li gazed at him with hawk eyes. “You want to invest?” He snorted. “You might as well dive into a pit of rattlesnakes.”

“That bad, eh?” Alan refrained from saying more, knowing Li would rattle on for a while. Forget the aphorism about the Chinese being close-lipped. Dong Li was a gossipy old woman.

“So you don’t like my new prices? Trust me, my margin grows smaller every day. Palms have to be greased and the port authority is only a part of it.

Lately the tongs require an extra slathering of bacon fat and I still have to make a living.”

“I know you do,” Alan soothed him.

“Even if you own an entire ship, you still have to handle the snakes. See that ship over there?” Li pointed to another vessel being unloaded. “Xie Fuhua, head of the most powerful of the tongs, has a large share in it, but even he must pay off the right people or have his goods seized or the right to offload them at this port refused.”

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Captive Bride

A slow burn of righteous anger churned in Alan’s gut. San Francisco politics was a hotbed of corruption.

Everyone knew it. The newspapers trumpeted it. But no one seemed able to do anything about it. Hell, maybe it was time to stop complaining and consider running for local office. He’d licked his wounds after the war for long enough. It was time to join the living.

“Thank you for the advice. I’ll consider it.” He trusted Dong Li, who’d been a native of this city all his life and knew how things worked. The man was worth listening to. And Dong Li seemed to enjoy the respect Alan showed him, which was in short supply from the other storekeepers, who treated Li like a glorified laundry boy.

With his business completed, Alan purchased a cup of coffee and fried flatbread from a vendor, leaned against a wood post and watched the bustling waterfront. The crew of the tong boss’s steamer unloaded cargo from the hold and passengers disembarked.

Alan stopped chewing and stared as a Chinese woman swathed in a robe of gold walked down the gangplank. Although the fabric concealed her body from neck to toes, it only served to emphasize how petite she was and made a man want to see her hidden shape all the more. Her black hair was so glossy it caught the sunlight and gleamed like satin. Pulled away from her face, it was fastened by glittering jeweled pins. The high-piled style made her neck appear long and slender like a stalk supporting a beautiful flower. Her features were as delicate as a porcelain doll’s. She looked like royalty, and he wondered what lucky man was expecting a lovely Bonnie Dee

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bride from back home. Accompanying her was a sour-faced older woman in black who gripped the young woman’s arm and talked nonstop.

The bride’s lips were tight and Alan guessed she was biting her tongue at whatever the other woman was saying. She frowned and her dark eyes looked troubled. Was she nervous about meeting her husband?

Sad to be so far from home? He’d like to smooth that wrinkle from between her brows with his thumb.

Her beauty stole his breath, and her wide expressive eyes seemed as changeable as the sky, cloudy one second and clear the next. He swore he could see hope, despair, curiosity, excitement and fear flash one by one across their dark surface even from this distance. He pushed off from the post as if he would walk toward her, his body reacting without conscious direction from his mind. Of course he couldn’t really go over and introduce himself to her, but he stayed poised with his gaze riveted on the vision of a golden lotus flower in the swamp of the waterfront.