The Hidden Blade (4 page)

She smiled at Leighton with a gladness that was polluted with guilt and nudged Marland forward. “It’s your big brother, darling.”

Marland’s hair was blond, almost Nordic, whereas Father’s hair and Leighton’s own were dark as pitch, and mother’s a coffee brown without any hint of gold.

Marland, only a half brother.

But then Leighton lifted Marland, Marland wrapped his arms around Leighton’s neck, and none of the grown-ups’ complicated choices mattered. He pressed a kiss to Marland’s forehead. “Welcome home, brother.”

Outside the railway station two carriages awaited them: one for Mother, Marland, and Leighton, the other for Mother’s maid and the luggage. They drove through the long twilight, Marland falling asleep with his head on Leighton’s lap.

Leighton touched Marland’s plump cheek—it was warm and just slightly sticky. On the opposite seat, Mother gazed at the two of them. She did not say anything.

It had been like this for a while, this silence filled with things they did not say to each other. Not that they didn’t speak to each other frequently—Mother took great interest in his well-being and his studies—but the most important subjects were never addressed.

Sometimes Leighton had a feeling that he lived in a dollhouse—there was such an ostensible outward perfection to their lives: the handsome family in the beautiful country manor; kind, caring parents; good, obedient children. An enviable existence all around.

And yet. And yet.

That silence would only grow greater, now that he at last understood why she did not take him with her—why she believed it futile to even explain: No matter what, Leighton would never be a son to the man she visited every month.

She had carved out another family for herself, and that family did not include him.

“Are you well, Leighton?” she asked softly, almost hesitantly.

She was still his mother and he wanted to confide in her.
No, I am not well. And neither is Father. Perhaps we will never be well again.

“I am very well, thank you,” he said. “And you, ma’am?”

She bit her lower lip. “Very well, too. Thank you.”

Chapter 3

Amah

A rattling of hand clappers, followed by a melodious half wail. Cold sour plum juice, no doubt about it. Ying-ying’s mouth watered like that of a puppy with a pork bun thrown before it.

Her home, a spacious residence of three interconnecting courtyards, was located in a quiet corner of the Chinese City, the half of Peking that was south of, and separated from by a wall twenty feet high, the Tartar City, where only Manchus were allowed to live.

But the quietness was relative: They might be far from the major thoroughfares and the markets, but roaming street vendors, selling everything from toys to a shave and an ear cleaning, did not neglect the tucked-away alleys of her neighborhood. Most of the time Ying-ying was oblivious to the muted clamor. Yet her ears perked up whenever some delicacies came by, be those candied haws on a skewer or bowls of wonton in a steaming broth, kept hot by an ingenious little stove.

Standing in her way, of course, were Amah’s strictures. Amah didn’t trust the hygienic practice of itinerant food sellers, and she was especially suspicious of those peddling beverages. “How do you know they boiled their water properly? Your hair could all fall out from drinking that filth,” was her usual objection.

But today, luckily for Ying-ying, was the sixteenth. On the sixth, the sixteenth, and the twenty-sixth of every month, Da-ren visited. And for some reason, Amah was more vulnerable to prolonged whining in the hours before his arrival.

One last batch of cough potion for Mother simmered on the stove in Amah’s storeroom. Amah herself was seated on the
kang
, stitching a pair of black trousers.

“The sour plum juice vendor is outside,” Ying-ying began. “It’s so hot today, and I’m so thirsty. Can I have one, please, please, good Amah?”

She settled in to await Amah’s usual objections. Even on a sixteenth, Amah could be counted on to hold out for a few minutes. But today the coins were instantly forthcoming. “Don’t drink too fast. The chill wouldn’t be good for your stomach,” was all the advice Amah gave.

It was odd, but Ying-ying was not about to question her good fortune. She slipped out of the red front gate and bargained with the vendor as if she knew what she was doing. When the vendor finished expressing his dismay at this too-clever girl who surely meant to cheat him out of his livelihood, he lifted a large narrow-mouthed jar and poured her a full bowl of his purple-black concoction.

She sat down on the doorstep. With every sip she smacked her lips and wiggled her tongue at the supreme tartness of the drink. In between—now that the negotiation was finished and the relationship between them most amicable—she chatted up the vendor and asked for news.

The outside world fascinated her. It was permitted to her only in the smallest doses. Two nights a year, on the occasions of the Lantern Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, she was allowed to venture as far as the nearest thoroughfare, accompanied by Amah, to admire the multitude of brightly lit lanterns. In spring, Mother took her on a three-day pilgrimage to Taoist temples in the hills outside the city. The rest of the time Ying-ying lived within the confines of the courtyards, rarely permitted out the front gate, and never beyond the end of the alley.

Merchants who came to call were her greatest source of news, their younger apprentices the only people she knew of her own age. But she did not speak to those boys. Confucius’s rules forbade fraternization between the sexes once beyond age seven. Not to mention that her embroidered silk blouse and expensive jade bangles acted as an additional barrier, keeping the apprentice boys in blue cotton tunics an awed distance away.

The sun angled lower in the sky. The alley, bordered on either side by courtyard walls, sat almost entirely in the shade. She was still extracting outrageous rumors the vendor had heard of intrigues in the Forbidden Palace when the sound of horse hooves reached her ears.

Da-ren was arriving.

She was strictly to be out of sight when he came. Hastily she poured the remainder of the juice down her throat and ran back. Once inside her own rooms, she closed the door and only then opened her window a crack to peek out.

Her row of rooms was in the same courtyard as Mother’s. Da-ren’s and his servant’s horses would be brought into the first courtyard. While the servant tended to the mounts, Da-ren would cross the second courtyard and enter the third, where Little Plum waited to take his hat.

Ying-ying kept hoping he’d show up in full court dress, with the kind of intricate embroidery that ruined the eyesight of ten men to complete. He never did. He wore everyday clothes—in silks and brocades, but everyday clothes nevertheless. And his black skullcap, with a rectangle of jade over the forehead, was no fancier than Boss Wu’s.

But he radiated an aura of authority. Little Plum, who was saucy and pert with the merchants, never spoke an inappropriate word while he was in residence. He wasn’t a particularly handsome man, yet Mother, who now appeared at the door of her suite, looked upon him as if she’d never seen a finer sight.

More than ever Ying-ying wished he had fathered her. It was no dishonor to be the child of such a powerful man via his acknowledged concubine.

Unlike being the child of a despised foreign devil.

In the evening Amah brought Ying-ying’s dinner: rice, a stir-fry of eggs and new tomatoes, a dish of tofu cooked with black mushrooms, and an enormous bowl of steaming peppery broth. She made sure Ying-ying drank all the soup. “It’s to counter the chill from the sour plum juice.”

The sky had not fully darkened when Amah put her to bed—it wasn’t as if Ying-ying were allowed to do anything else this evening. She kicked the silken sheet Amah had put over her, until her feet and calves were exposed. “Does the emperor have many uncles?”

“Some, but not as many as you might imagine,” Amah answered. “K’ang-hsi Emperor and Chien-lung Emperor had dozens and dozens of sons, but lately the emperors have not been prolific. It’s a sign of the times.”

So Da-ren wasn’t one of a swarm of uncles, but one of a few. The Han Chinese emperors never permitted their male siblings any political power. From her readings of history, Ying-ying knew that often the latter had to go out of their way to establish their disinclination toward the affairs of state. But the Manchus were less strict about it. Their princes were allowed as advisers in court.

She sat up. “Is Da-ren the emperor’s favorite uncle?”

Amah pushed her down gently. “I don’t know that. But the dowager empress seems to like him well enough.”

“Do you think he’ll have us live with him if his wife dies?” Da-ren’s wife was a spoiled woman who did not allow her husband to keep concubines at home. Not that most men paid attention to the opinion of their wives, but when that wife was a favored cousin of the dowager empress—one she loved as a sister—it was quite a different matter.

“No.” Amah firmly negated her fantasy. “He is Manchu; we are Han. Even if his wife passes away—and don’t talk like that—he’d still only take into his household Manchu concubines.”

But Ying-ying kept on thinking of Da-ren, hoping he’d like her better as she grew older. He commanded so much respect, honor, and prestige. If only a little of it would rub off on her. If only…

Unfortunately, even when she did fall asleep, it was no peaceful slumber. All the sour plum juice and all the soup in her stomach kept waking her up to use the chamber pot.

The first two times she practically sleepwalked, finding the pot by sheer force of habit, stumbling back to bed to immediately start dreaming again. But after the third time she stayed awake.

This nocturnal wakefulness happened to her from time to time. She hated lying alert in the middle of the night. Time advanced as if it had minuscule bound feet like Mother’s and could only totter along laboriously. She fiddled with the straw mat that covered her
kang
in summer. She adjusted a pillow and squeezed her eyes shut tight. She even tried to cover her head with her silk sheet, but that only suffocated her.

She sat up. A thin, pale light came through the windows, casting latticework shadows on the floor. But it was the kind of light that only emphasized the impenetrable darkness of the further recesses of the room, and illuminated objects just enough to make them murky and sinister. Her washstand looked a half-size, skeletal monster, the washbasin atop it a bulbous, poisonous head. A breeze blew, the willow tree in the courtyard swayed; shadows of its limp branches crawled across the floor like the tentacles of some strange, lurking beast.

She shrank and called out for Amah, who slept in the adjacent room, but no one answered. She called again, still no answer. Strange—Amah was a light sleeper who usually came to check on her at the least noise. Disgruntled, Ying-ying swung her legs over the side of the
kang
and went to wake her.

But there was no one on Amah’s
kang
, no one beneath the neatly laid out blanket.

She gasped, beginning to feel afraid. Then she remembered that on a different night a few months ago, when she had gotten up to use the chamber pot, she had looked out the window and seen Amah, fully dressed, returning from the next courtyard. Amah had told her that she had felt a gnawing hunger and had gone to the kitchen to eat something.

Perhaps Amah was in the kitchen again. Too afraid to stay in her rooms alone, Ying-ying decided to go look for her. She put a blouse over her kerchief-front chemise and padded out to the courtyard.

The moon was still full, shining bright and clear in a cloudless sky, its cool light silvering the stones in the courtyard and the gray tiles of the roof. The willow danced, pliant and yielding, a pretty yet ghostly sight.

She curled her toes. The walkway beneath the long eave was cold on her feet. Amah did not like her walking barefoot.

The sounds of drums beating rose in the distance. No, not drums—the night watchman’s clappers. At first she thought they were marking the passage of the hours. But the
tock-tocks
were urgent and without rhythm.