Fragrant Flower Read online

  As in his house, Mr. Chang’s taste was impeccable – the soft yellow of the panelled walls, the painted furniture with its carved corners and the scroll-like pictures hanging on the walls, were unlike the furnishings of any other ship.

  Quickly Azalea took off her clothes and put on the comfortable tunic which Kai Yin had brought her.

  This time it was of peony red embroidered with bunches of apple-blossom, lined and piped with pink of the same shade, while the buttons at the neck and under the arm were of pink quartz.

  The trousers were also pink, turned up with peony red, and Kai Yin had brought Azalea not only hairpins with tops of pink quartz but also earrings and a bracelet to match them.

  “How pretty!” Azalea exclaimed and then admired Kai Yin’s tunic of jade green embroidered in shades of yellow and orange.

  When she had arranged her hair, Kai Yin picked up a little brush from her dressing-table and a cake of the black kohl with which she outlined her own eyes.

  She applied it to Azalea’s and very gently turned up the corners.

  “Now you look Chinese,” she said.

  It did, in fact, Azalea thought, make all the difference to her appearance.

  She looked mysterious and enigmatic, and she could not help wondering if in Lord Sheldon’s eyes she would appear even more secretive than usual.

  “Honourable aunt not know you!” Kai Yin cried gleefully, and Azalea was smiling when they went up on deck to find the junk moving out of harbour.

  They passed several English gunboats and even a battleship, and although the sailors were leaning over the side to watch them go by she was quite certain that none of them guessed that she was of the same nationality as themselves.

  But what delighted her more than the English vessels, the stately junks, and the clumsy dhows, were the sampans with their families.

  She saw women leaning over the sides to do their washing, one was seated in the prow feeding her baby, another was plucking a chicken. There was a large coop of them attached to the side of the sampan.

  It was all so fascinating and Kai Yin made her speak Chinese as she asked questions or pointed out things that amused or interested her.

  Soon Azalea could look back and see Hong Kong harbour behind them and Kowloon on their left.

  There was a good breeze and now the sails were fully out and they were running before the wind.

  Far in the distance were the high mountains of China, some of them reaching up into the clouds. The sun was very hot and soon Azalea was glad of the shade of the awnings which were erected for them on deck.

  When Mr. Chang, who had been standing on the bridge directing the junk out of harbour, came to join them, Azalea at last had the opportunity she wanted to ask him about his treasures.

  He told her about the ‘celestial horses’, and the figures of tomb guardians he had collected, the winged cups of the Han period in lacquered wood and the ceramic images of the Buddhist deities he possessed.

  He also explained to Azalea some of the legends and stories of the Gods.

  “Tien How was the Queen of Heaven. When she was born a strange light appeared in the sky and her room was filled with fragrance. After her death at an early age, the Sung Emperor had a narrow escape from a storm in the Yellow Sea. It was found his ship was the only one carrying an image of the Goddess.”

  There was also Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, to whom every Chinese prayed at some time or another.

  Kuan Yin was the kind and gentle goddess to whom women brought their pleas for a male child and who loved the white and palest pink lotus flowers which were also, Azalea learnt, the favourite blossoms of Buddha.

  Mr. Chang managed to make what he told her not only interesting but also exciting and stimulating to the mind. Everything Chinese, Azalea began to realise, had a history that came from their past, and each had a special esoteric meaning for those who searched for it.

  She could understand that the poor Chinese, living in sampans with no other possessions except what floated with them, felt the need for help and succour from the Gods who, they believed, lived on the heights of the great mountains within sight, but out of reach.

  Azalea said this to Mr. Chang and he replied,

  “You are right! The Chinese believe that Kuan Yin looks down on them from the mountain-peaks and hears the cries of the world.”

  They sailed on for what seemed to Azalea to be a long way, and at noon they ate a delicious meal which was her first taste of genuine Chinese food.

  On a round table prepared by the servants there were chopsticks and several little saucers containing oysters, soya beans, tomato sauce and vinegar.

  Hot, damp cloths moistened with rose-water were presented on a tray and Azalea lifted hers with the pair of silver tongs provided.

  The meal began with a tiny, handle-less cup of jasmine scented China tea. After this there were small cockles dipped in sauce, slices of abalone or haliotis shells, pieces of ginger, prawns and stuffed olives.

  Next came ducks and chickens cooked with lotus seeds, chestnuts and walnuts, meatballs wrapped in dough as light as thistledown, fledgling birds with tiny mushrooms and a sucking pig, little bigger than a baby rabbit, with its crackling as fine as glass.

  Azalea was beginning to feel she could eat no more, but the soup, Kai Yin told her, was ‘shark’s fin’ and a great ‘speciality.’

  “At big party,” she told Azalea in Chinese, “after soup you toast your host saying ‘Yam Seng’.”

  Blushing a little Azalea raised her soup cup to Mr. Chang and bowing said,

  “Yam Seng!”

  “I thank you, Honourable Heung-Far,” Mr. Chang replied.

  Azalea looked surprised and Kai Yin explained that it was the Cantonese for ‘Fragrant Flower’.

  A fish dish followed – a whole carp covered in sweet-sour sauce, and after that came several sweetmeats. Then thin slices of orange in syrup were dipped in iced water to become a kind of toffee.

  To drink there was a sweet, warm wine distilled from rice and drunk from small porcelain cups.

  It was all new and unusual to Azalea and the only trouble was that when the meal ended, she knew she had eaten too much!

  While they ate, Azalea learnt there were a great number of other gods and goddesses whom the Chinese worshipped.

  There was Pei Ti, Supreme God of Profound Heaven, and Tam Kung, who had powers over the weather which he derived from the Nine Dragons of Kowloon.

  “He provoke typhoon by throwing handfuls peas into air and put out fire with cup water,” Kai Yin related, but her eyes were twinkling as she said it, and Azalea wondered if she really believed it was true.

  “We have much feasting on Tam Kung’s birthday,” Mr. Chang continued, “feasting, sacrificing roast pigs and lion dancing, but the lucky thing to do to take joss-sticks from the Temple and bring them home still smouldering to place before household gods.”

  Azalea had seen the little shrine in Kai Yin’s apartments which was dedicated to the Gods, and she learnt that it was lucky for joss-sticks to be in threes and candles to be in twos.

  “We believe it is very important,” Mr. Chang told her, “to placate Tso Kwan, the Kitchen God. You will find him in almost every Chinese home and his shrine is usually in a niche near the stove, represented by gold characters on a red tablet.”

  “If it is due to Tso Kwan that we have delicious food like this,” Azalea smiled, “I am prepared to light any number of joss-sticks to him.”

  “He is supposed to be very fat and jovial as a result of such good living,” Mr. Chang said, “but he is also of great importance because once every year he visits other Gods and reports on the behaviour of all the members of the household.”

  Azalea laughed.

  “What an awful thought that he is making a list of all your failings and misdeeds!”

  “It is very frightening,” Mr. Chang agreed, “so before he sets out on New Year’s Eve the family give him a feast when large quantities of honey ar
e produced for him. This is to try to seal his lips, or at least to make him utter only honeyed words.”

  “I do hope the honey is successful!” Azalea exclaimed. “Crackers are fired to drive away the demons,” Mr. Chang continued, “and on his return four days later he is welcomed with an abundance of good things. His tablet, or picture, is reinstated in the shrine with bowings and burning of incense.”

  After luncheon Mr. Chang went on deck. But because it had now become very hot Azalea and Kai Yin rested on soft couches talking until Azalea, because she was tired after having lain awake the night before thinking of Lord Sheldon, fell asleep for a little while.

  When she awoke it was to find that the junk was tied up to the jetty of an island.

  “Can we go ashore?” she asked.

  Kai Yin shook her head.

  “No. Honourable husband say stay here while load cargo.”

  Azalea was surprised, but when she looked over the side she saw that a great number of large chests were being carried along the very narrow wooden jetty by coolies who balanced them on their heads.

  She was not sure, but she had an idea that the chests contained opium.

  She had learnt that on the Praya in Hong Kong large, square packets of Indian opium each weighing a hundredweight arrived in their thousands every week and were worth, when the crude drug had been prepared, £140 a packet.

  The opium trade, one of the Aides-de-Camp had told her, was chiefly in the hands of Parsees who wore high, stiff black hats and held the monopoly for selling and preparing opium.

  Azalea longed to ask Mr. Chang if he was in fact taking opium on board, but as he did not volunteer what his cargo contained, she felt shy of appearing curious.

  It was soon loaded, and as the junk turned for home, Azalea knew with a sinking of her heart that her day of delight was nearly over.

  There was so much more she wanted to know, so much she wanted to learn, and she hoped that Mr. Chang would come to the cabin so that she would have a chance to question him further.

  In the meantime she stood on deck watching the small islands fade away into insignificance, and saw another view of the high Chinese mountains and watched the sails of junks like great fluttering birds move across the blue sea.

  It was still very hot, and after a little while Kai Yin said she must go down to the Saloon and, rather reluctantly, Azalea followed her.

  “We must go on deck as we near Hong Kong,” she said. “I want to see the harbour and the ships. It is very romantic with the great peak towering above the town.”

  “I glad you like Hong Kong,” Kai Yin said. “Very happy place. I glad I Hong Kong wife!”

  Azalea was just going to say she thought she was a very beautiful one when suddenly there was the noise of gunfire! It was followed by voices shouting, and again the rattle of shots followed by a piercing scream.

  Azalea jumped to her feet.

  “What is happening?” she asked, and would have run across the cabin to the door if Kai Yin had not stopped her by putting her arms round her.

  “No! No!” she cried. “It dangerous!”

  “But what is it? What is happening?” Azalea asked.

  “Pirates!” Kai Yin replied.

  She pulled Azalea down onto a couch and they sat there with their arms round each other, listening to the sounds overhead.

  The gunfire had ceased but there were raucous and offensive shouts which sounded like men giving orders, but there were no further screams.

  They waited, trembling, for what seemed a long time. Then the cabin door burst open and Azalea saw what she knew at first glance must indeed be pirates.

  They were dressed roughly in conventional Chinese garb but round their waists they wore wide leather belts into which were stuck pistols and knives.

  They had a rough, ferocious look which was very frightening.

  The leading pirate, and there were about half-a-dozen of them behind him, stared at Azalea and Kai Yin as if in surprise. Then he gave an order over his shoulder to the men who were following him. Two of them walked through the Saloon to fling open the door of the bedroom.

  Azalea followed them with her eyes and then she gave a cry of surprise and terror as another man picked her up in his arms.

  Kai Yin was also lifted from the couch and as Azalea tried to struggle he threw her over his shoulder and with her head hanging down his back, climbed up the companionway and onto the deck.

  There she saw a scene of utter confusion.

  One of the masts had been torn down and the sail had fallen partly over the bridge.

  A man was lying on deck with a crimson spot on his chest, and she thought he must be dead.

  Other sailors were having their hands tied behind their backs but as far as Azalea could see there was no sign of Mr. Chang.

  It was difficult to take in everything as she hung head downwards while her feet and body were held tightly by the man who carried her.

  She saw Kai Yin was following, which in itself was some comfort, as she was carried over the side of the junk and onto another smaller ship that was lying alongside it.

  She had a quick glimpse of the deck on which articles removed from the junk were being piled, including the chests which they had taken aboard at the island and other objects such as pails, brushes, cooking utensils and a number of unidentifiable objects which were laid round the centre mast.

  Then Azalea was carried down a narrow companionway and into a very small, dirty cabin which seemed almost dark.

  She was flung roughly onto a pile of sacking and before she had time to recover her breath, Kai Yin was thrown down beside her.

  The men looked at them both and it seemed to Azalea that their faces were quite expressionless. Then they left the cabin closing the door behind them and Azalea heard a bolt shoot into place.

  She turned despairingly to Kai Yin.

  “What is happening? Where will they take us?” she asked.

  Kai Yin put her hands up to her face and Azalea knew that she was crying.

  “They kill Honourable husband,” she wept. “I not see him. I sure he dead!”

  Azalea put her arms round her.

  “You cannot be sure of that,” she said comfortingly.

  “And we be sold!” Kai Yin cried.

  “Sold?” Azalea ejaculated. “What do you mean?”

  She remembered as she spoke the conversation her uncle had had at luncheon about the women who were kidnapped and sold either as household slaves or – frighteningly – for immoral purposes.

  ‘It cannot be true!’ she thought.

  It must be a nightmare that this should happen, and yet she knew there was nothing either Kai Yin or she could do about it.

  Chapter Six

  For a moment Azalea felt as if her brain was filled with wool and she could not think.

  She only knew that her breath seemed still to be knocked out of her as it had been when she was thrown down on the sacking.

  Then she realised that Kai Yin was sobbing uncontrollably, and she knew she must somehow comfort her.

  “Perhaps Mr. Chang is safe,” she said. “They may not have killed him, but only taken him prisoner.”

  “If prisoner, I see on deck,” Kai Yin replied and continued to cry against Azalea’s shoulder.

  “I thought the pirates were finished,” Azalea said after a minute, almost as if she spoke to herself.

  “Always pirates,” Kai Yin muttered.

  Azalea tried to remember what she had read about pirates in the book on Hong Kong she had found in the Library on the Orissa.

  It was a history of the Colony and she had gathered quite a lot of facts from it.

  One thing that had been described fully was the overwhelming damage done by pirates to trading vessels at the beginning of the British occupation. But Azalea was sure it was claimed that in recent years, the Navy had dispersed the pirate fleets.

  She had a good memory and now she concentrated on recalling how the peaceful trading junks in th
e early 1850s had to be heavily armed because the pirates were waiting for them as soon as they were clear of the harbour.

  It was thought then that the private fleets made Hong Kong their headquarters and that native marine store-keepers not only supplied them with arms and ammunition but also helped them to dispose of their booty.

  There had been suspicion, she remembered, that well-paid spies in mercantile offices and Government departments gave them information concerning the shipments of valuable cargo, and – even more important – the movements of the Police and the British gunboats.

  Now, frighteningly, Azalea recalled there had been a battle between the Navy and sixty-four pirate junks manned by over three thousand men, in which the majority were destroyed.

  There had even been an encounter in Aberdeen Bay, which was not far from Victoria, between pirate junks and eight Chinese gunboats.

  One case heard in the Hong Kong courts in the year 1852 was particularly shocking because it concerned the murder of the Captain, the officers and the passengers of a British steamship.

  “I am sure the book said things were better now,” Azalea muttered to herself.

  She remembered that in one battle the British Navy had burned twenty-three pirate junks and killed twelve hundred men at Sherifoo with the loss of only one Commander and with only nineteen men wounded.

  “Perhaps we are mistaken,” she told herself, “and these pirates will not kill and murder as they did in the old days.”

  But she could not help recalling the shots, the man lying on the deck, the crimson stain of blood on his chest, and knew that, however optimistic she might try to be, there had undoubtedly been casualties when the junk was boarded.

  Kai Yin went on crying and Azalea continued to try to remember all that had been said in the book she had read. Unfortunately, she had been so interested in reading about the beauties of Hong Kong, the Chinese customs and the development of the Colony that she had not been particularly interested in what was said about the pirates. And yet she was almost certain in her mind that the position was said to have improved considerably under Governor Sir Richard MacDonnell.

  He established a combination of Harbour Office and Police Office duties, after which he had reported, “Not a single trial for piracy took place during the years 1869 and 1870.”