Ruddy Gore (21 page)

You need not be concerned.’

‘I am concerned, Mr Lin. I have been followed and I have been watched ever since. What is going on? You owe me an explanation.’

‘Tell me first, Silver Lady,’ said Lin Chung, ‘how do you feel about us?’

She could not read the black eyes, but the voice was urgent.

‘I like you,’ she said, ‘if you are pleasant, and I dislike you if you are not. Just as I would judge anyone. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes, I believe it is,’ Lin Chung smiled again.

‘My grandmother, once convinced that you were not a spirit, said you were a courtesan, Miss 207

Fisher. By that she meant no disrespect. They were the only independent educated women in China, the only ones with freedom of action and their own honour. Then when I looked up your name in a classical dictionary I found that Grandmother was right. Grandmother is always right. It is one of her most irritating qualities. Phryne, who offered to reconstruct the walls of Thebes if she could carve on them, ‘‘The walls of Thebes, ruined by time, rebuilt by Phryne the courtesan.’’

And they preferred their ruins!’ he laughed gently.

‘So. I trust in your honour not to reveal what I am about to tell you. It is like this. There are two families who have both been here from the beginning, that is, 1845 – Hu and Lin. We have never been friends, always rivals. We have long memories, Miss Fisher. We remember that the Hu family carried off a shipment of gold, and the bearers of that gold were never seen again. They remember that one of the Lin uncles seduced a Hu woman and she drowned herself. There are many injuries but at last my father and grandfather said ‘‘Enough.’’ They went to the Elders of the Hu family and said, ‘‘We all came long ago from Five Dragons village in the south. We speak the Cantonese tongue. We should be brothers.’’

To this truce, after long discussion, the Hu family agreed.’

‘I see. What went wrong?’

Mr Butler removed the plates and brought in apple crumble and cream, which Phryne ate without tasting.

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‘How did you know that something went wrong?’ Lin Chung countered.

‘It must have. I know enough about China to know that old people are honoured. It must have taken something really serious to cause that mob to beat your grandmother.’

‘Serious, yes.’ He ate some apple crumble and glanced to both sides, as if someone might be listening.

‘After dinner we will go up to my apartments and you can speak freely,’ she offered. ‘Meanwhile, tell me about yourself. What is your profession?’

‘I am a trader, though I trained as a stage magician – tradition in my family. I was one of the strong men, trained in the temple of the War God in Canton. By long meditation and constant practice, we can do many things which the West considers marvellous – dance on eggshells, for example, and perform feats of strength. I was only there for a couple of years and did not reach mastery, but it is a useful skill.’ Lin seemed relieved at not having to talk about his family.

His voice was light and pleasant, with a honey-coloured undertone which promised sensuality.

Phryne noticed that he had an entrancing profile, high cheekboned, with a long nose and winged eyebrows. ‘But when I came home I found that the stage was too precarious a life for the son of the Lin family, and I became a merchant. I trade in silk. This used to yield a good living, but recently the market has crashed. The price of silk has plummeted because of the invention of art 209

silk – artificial silk. It is washable and very cheap and looks – vaguely – like real silk. Now bolts of top-grade, fine-quality brocade, or corded silk like the gown that Grandmother sent your friend Miss Ross, will fetch only half the previous price.’

‘Is this disastrous?’

‘No, Miss Fisher, we will sell other things. Though not bananas. I do not like bananas. Furniture, I think. The
art decoratif
uses many Chinese forms.

We will adapt. We always have. If it gets really bad, perhaps I will go back on to the stage. Acrobats and strong men and magicians are always employed, especially if they have trained in Canton.’

‘What sort of tricks do Chinese magicians do?’

‘Oh, there is the one where I catch a bullet in my teeth. That’s dangerous – it killed the most famous of all Chinese masters, Ching Lin Soo.

There is the one where I pour milk into a bowl and change it to water with gold fish swimming in it. There is the one where I call up spirits, though that takes a lot of preparation.’

Phryne was impressed. ‘Does, it, by Jove?’

The young man smiled modestly, ‘It is all tricks, Miss Fisher . . . Phryne.’ He used her name for the first time with becoming modesty. ‘I will show you some of them, if you please.’

‘Could you call up a spirit for me? I’ve been trying to find one lately and she is very difficult to locate.’

Phryne told him about Dorothea while he finished the apple crumble and sipped at one glass of wine – he had refused more.

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‘Well, what do you think?’ she asked, in conclusion.

‘It is . . . difficult to say. Although my family are Christians, there is a lot of traditional lore about ghosts. They are always seeking something.

Indeed, one way of gaining final revenge on someone is to commit suicide on their doorstep, so that your ghost will haunt them forever.’

‘That’s a very final revenge.’

‘Yes, but Chinese belief says that you will be around to see it, free of the bonds of flesh. If she was Chinese, I would say that Dorothea has returned to wreak vengeance on her murderer. She cannot kill him – ghosts are not believed to be able to affect the material world which they have left –

but she would drive him into death, into suicide, in his turn. Or she may have been a fox-spirit.’

‘A fox-spirit?’

‘ ‘‘Do not give your heart to a fox, or she will bite it in two,’’ ’ quoted Lin Chung, finishing the wine. ‘A fox-spirit is a pretty young woman with a beautiful smile and the heart of a demon. She will take your property and waste it, and then when you try to make love to her, she will turn and bite – then resume her fox-form and leap out the window, never to return.’ He looked at Phryne’s solemn face and laughed. ‘It is only a tale, Phryne. Just a fairy tale.’

‘Fairy tale or not, there was a lot of fox in Dorothea. What did you call to me, when you saw me in the street that night?’

‘I said ‘‘Run!’’ in Cantonese. I thought you were 211

one of us. Grandmother addressed you in Chinese because she thought that you were an ancestral ghost. Then I realised that you were a woman, the image of the Taoist Lady of the Moon, all silver.’

‘The silver lady,’ mused Phryne. ‘And tonight?’

she gestured to her sombre magnificence.

‘Tonight you are the moon eclipsed,’ he said softly, taking her hand and kissing it. This seemed to be a declaration, and Phryne was not going to waste it.

She led him up the stairs to her boudoir, set down the tray of coffee and champagne, then locked the door and sat down on the sofa.

‘Drink with me,’ she said, and supplied him with Veuve Clicquot in a long-stemmed glass. ‘And tell me all, Mr Lin.’

‘Silver Lady, it is not a romantic tale.’ He paused, then went on. ‘There is a way of cement-ing an alliance such as the Elders have suggested.’

‘A marriage?’ Phryne’s mind reverted instantly to the sullen girl called Annie in the room hung with brocade.

‘As you say.’ The young man looked away, into the wreathed mirror. His skin was almost brazen in Phryne’s pink light and his eyes were black.

Small cuts, rapidly healing, were all that remained of the damage inflicted on him in that affray.

‘The bride is that pretty girl called Annie,’ she prompted, putting her hand on his.

‘And the groom is me,’ he made a comical grimace. ‘Neither of us wish to marry the other. I do not wish to marry at all and poor Annie has 212

fallen in love with another. Because she has told her family this and defied them, they do not wish to take her back and I don’t want to marry her.’

‘That doesn’t explain that attack on your grandmother.’ Phryne pointed out.

He said reluctantly, ‘No, well, there is another faction, the Li family, who wish San-niang, Annie, to marry their son. They were hoping to kidnap Grandmother and hold her for ransom. They know that we would do anything to get her back.’

‘Why does everyone want poor San-niang?’

‘Because she is the only heir of her father, and he is very rich.’

‘But this is Australia – she can’t be married to you or anyone against her will.’

‘There are ways to persuade,’ said the young man, his hand sliding slowly over Phryne’s. ‘But I will not have her forced and neither will Grandmother, so it is insoluble unless she changes her mind, or I change my mind, or she is kidnapped, or . . . ’

‘She runs away.’ The caress was sending pleasant tingles up Phryne’s arm. ‘Then who has been watching me?’ she asked.

‘Some of them are sent by Grandmother and are of the Lin family; they are there because she fears some attack on you and she owes you a debt.

Some may be Hu and some may be Li. Until this problem is solved it might be best to avoid Little Bourke Street, Phryne.’

‘Can’t, I’m investigating the Maj – His Majesty’s Theatre. I’ll just have to be alert.’

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Phryne leaned across and unfastened his tie, opening the collar and unbuttoning the shirt. A perfectly bare chest was warm under her palm, and his hand came up to caress her cheek, moving down to the hollow of her throat.

‘What is the Chinese phrase for making love?’

she asked and he replied on a gasp, ‘The play of clouds and rain.’

‘Show me,’ she requested.

They shed clothes and lay down on the moss-green sheets. He was slender and beautiful as he lay beside her and kissed very gently down the length of her body, sweeping his fingers in precise arcs across her flesh which seemed to leave sparks in their wake, electrifing each delicate place with a touch as light as a falling leaf.

‘This is butterfly touch,’ he whispered into her navel, ‘Silver Lady, you are as white as white jade, and this,’ his mouth touched and Phryne’s hands came down to stroke his head ‘is the jade gate.’

Phryne was unfamilar with a sexuality which did not entirely depend on penetration. Her body glowed under his touch. His face was mask-like, concentrated, as beautiful as a carving, but he shivered under her fingers as she smoothed her hands down long flanks and scented, muscular chest.

When he finally drew her up into his embrace, half lying across her bed, she wreathed her arms around his smooth back and the warmth contracted to a fiery bead which burst and bloomed like a firework.

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Phryne woke slowly and dreamily. Someone was kissing her, soft fast kisses in the curve of her shoulder, which moved gradually down to her breast. This brought her fully awake. She opened her eyes on the dark. There was a naked man beside her, lying close and warm.

‘There remains yet some of the night, Silver Lady,’ suggested the light voice and she turned into his arms. ‘And the moon is not yet down.’

Phryne found, as the hands and mouth became more urgent, that this was true.

Lin Chung woke again and looked at the face lying on the pillow beside him. Strands of night-black hair strayed across her face. Chinese but not Chinese, he thought, like but not like. He saw their reflection in the large mirror which was tilted to reveal the bed. A pillow-book etching, the woman naked and white as ivory, and himself lying beside her, covers cast off to reveal the lovers to the illustrator. He lazily enjoyed the artful asymmetry of their pose; her outflung hand curled empty on his chest, his arms around her, the bulge of muscle in one of his shoulders, the flat plane of the other.

The golden-beige of his torso against the stark paleness of her thigh made a pleasing contrast.

One of her small high-arched feet was shamelessly visible to make the picture unfit for general exhibition.

He regretted that there was no one to draw them, to make a delicately tinted, hand-coloured 215

plate for a deluxe edition of
The Carnal Prayer-mat
or
The Golden Lotus
.

She stirred and the picture dissolved. The ivory woman stretched and rubbed one hand across her face. Lin Chung brushed away the silky hair.

‘Lin?’ she asked, then full remembrance flooded back and she smiled sensously and stroked the hand cupping her cheek. ‘Ah, yes.’

‘Yes indeed, Silver Lady.’

‘Is it morning?’ Phryne was never at her best in the mornings. ‘Damnation. I have to get up. I’ve got to find out what is happening in that theatre.’

She looked at her lover. ‘Am I mistaken, or was that one of the most wonderful nights of my life?

Ring the bell, Lin, I must bathe and dress,’ she demanded crossly, sitting up.

He did as he was ordered, a little disconcerted.

‘It was the most wonderful night of my life,’ he agreed softly. ‘Was I just an experiment, Silver Lady, Moon Goddess?’

‘If so, you were remarkably successful.’ Phryne found her feet with a flash of pale skin which made him wish even more for an artist. ‘You were absolutely lovely,’ she added from the bathroom, then he lost her voice over the roar of taps.

He joined her at the bathroom door, and she handed him a silk robe figured with dragons and pulled on a peacock garment which the Lin family must have imported. He recognised the embroidery of Tai-nan. Another link between us, thought Lin Chung.

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‘Will you dine with me tonight?’ he asked diffidently. He had encountered experimental ladies before, ones who wanted to ‘find out what a Chow was like’ and was hurt to think that he could have made such an error regarding Phryne. The door was unlocked and the plain young woman came in without knocking, setting down a loaded tray on the small table in the main room.

‘Yes. Of course. Where?’ she asked. ‘Dot, I’m going to need climbing-around-the-set clothes. A sturdy garment of some sort, thick stockings and flat-heeled shoes. I’ve got an idea, which is strange considering the hour. My God, it’s afternoon. Ah, coffee,’ she commented, breathing in the steam of a small cup evidently containing concentrated caffeine.