Fragrant Flower (16 page)

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 the 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.”

Yet however consoling this might be, Mr. Chang’s junk had certainly been attacked, and the cargo which had been loaded from the Island had obviously been the attraction.

It was clear the pirates had not expected to find women aboard, but Kai Yin’s fear that they would be sold was obviously a possibility and Azalea felt herself tremble at the thought.

How could they possibly escape? And more important, where were they being taken?

Azalea could feel the satin of her tunic being soaked with Kai Yin’s tears, but she was not crying as violently as she had at first.

“Try to be brave,” Azalea pleaded, “and I want you to tell me all that you know about women being kidnapped. I would rather be prepared for what might happen than to be shocked when it does.”

With what was clearly a tremendous effort, Kai Yin raised her head from Azalea’s shoulder and wiped her eyes with a minute silk handkerchief which she took from the wide sleeves of her tunic.

Although she seemed a typically helpless and subservient Chinese woman, Kai Yin was quite intelligent.

It took Azalea a little time to understand what she was saying, especially as she was too agitated to speak in anything but Chinese.

Gradually she pieced together a picture of the kidnapping of women and girls which had raised an acute conflict between the British law and Chinese customs.

According to Kai Yin the number of kidnappers coming before the Courts was increasing every year, and kidnapping was becoming more popular because the girls were bought to be sent overseas where the price of sale might be as high as $350.00.

“In Hong Kong price only $45.00,” she said scornfully. Because the trading was advantageous women were lured into Hong Kong on completely false promises.

But, as the General had said, attempts to stop the kidnapping brought the authorities up against the deeply rooted Chinese custom of the purchase of children for adoption and particularly of girls as domestic servants.

This was called
Mui Tsai
.

The situation so worried the authorities that Kai Yin had heard from her husband that the English and Chinese together were considering setting up an anti-kidnapping society.

This in fact would become the Society for the Protection of Virtue, or in Chinese words
Po Leung Kuk.

“Honourable husband think good idea,” Kai Yin said. “He support British, tell Governor he give money.”

Azalea longed to say that she wished the Society had started already, but she was well aware that she must not show her fear too obviously or Kai Yin would start to cry again.

“Do you think it would be wise for me to tell the pirates that I am English?” Azalea asked.

Kai Yin gave a scream of protest.

“No, no! Very dangerous!” she exclaimed. “Some pirates spare Chinese but kill British. You pretend be Chinese.”

It certainly made sense, Azalea thought, but she wondered how long she could keep up the deception, seeing that her Chinese was halting and she very often used the wrong words.

“I talk,” Kai Yin said. “You say nothing.”

It seemed, however, at the moment there was no chance of either of them saying anything.

The ship in which they were imprisoned was now moving and the reason the cabin had been dark, Azalea realised, was that the one small port-hole in their prison had been against the side of the junk.

Seeing that the sunshine was now coming in through the dirty, salt-stained glass, Azalea rose to look out and when she did so gave an exclamation of horror.

“What matter? What wrong?” Kai Yin cried. “What you see?”

For a moment Azalea did not answer, then she decided not to tell Kai Yin the truth!

They were already perhaps fifty yards from Mr. Chang’s junk and the pirates had set it on fire!

She could see the flames licking at the base of the sails and there was thick black smoke coming from the Saloon. She remembered now she had heard that the pirates would strip their prey and then burn it so that there would be no evidence against them.

The wanton destruction of shipping seemed to her terrible, especially of a junk as beautiful and as expensive as Mr. Chang’s. But even more important was the anxiety as to whether anyone had been left on board alive.

There was no sign of any movement, and yet Azalea could not help wondering what the pirates had done with the sailors whose hands they had tied behind their backs.

It would have been easy, she thought, to murder them by throwing them overboard, knowing they would be unable to swim – or perhaps they had been placed below decks where they would burn to death.

“What you see?” Kai Yin asked again and Azalea turned towards her to say quietly,

“Nothing. I was only upset because we are sailing in the opposite direction to Hong Kong.”

There was nothing either of them could do, she thought to herself, and what was the point of upsetting Kai Yin who, even if her husband was dead, as she feared, would not wish his body to be burned at sea.

She sat down once again on the pile of sacking to say,

“We must be very brave. There is nothing to be gained by making scenes or antagonising our captors. Where do you think they will take us?”

Kai Yin shrugged her shoulders.

“Many places. All give big money superior Chinese girls.”

“They will know I am not superior when they see my feet,” Azalea said.

“Then you be servant,” Kai Yin replied.

Azalea thought this might in fact be preferable to the other fate which might await her, but she was not certain. She only knew that she was frightened, desperately frightened, of what the future might hold, but there was no point in expressing her feelings.

She could only pray in her heart that it might not be as bad as she anticipated.

Now that the ship was at sea there was a great deal of bumping and banging and it sounded as if the crates that had been taken from the junk were being carried below and stacked outside their cabin.

But there were no longer loud voices or harsh orders and perhaps, Azalea thought, the silence, except for the noise of the crates being handled, was even more frightening than if the men had sworn or shouted at one another.

She heard their feet padding above them, a sound very different from that made by European sailors, and now the ship was moving there was the creak the masts made, the slap of the sails and the beating of the waves against the wooden sides.

Kai Yin had been silent for some minutes then suddenly she said in a quiet firm voice: “No man touch wife of Honourable Husband – I die!”

Azalea looked at her in consternation.

“You must not do that!”

“I kill myself!” Kai Yin said firmly. “Much worse be defamed, insulted, then lose face!”

“It is not a question of losing face,” Azalea said, knowing how much this meant to the Chinese. “It would mean that you had given up hope of being rescued, and in England we say, ‘While there is life there is hope.’”

“No hope,” Kai Yin said firmly. “I wife of Honourable man – Mr. Chang wish me die.”

“You cannot be sure of that,” Azalea protested.

As she spoke she realised how much the humiliation of losing face meant.

She had heard so many stories of men who would starve rather than take a job which they thought would degrade them – of Chinese who had cut their throats because of some quite minor dispute in which they had been the loser.

She had always thought these were tales invented about the Chinese because they were an enigmatic race.

Now she was not sure.

There was a dignity about Kai Yin that had not been noticeable before, but it was always difficult to interpret her emotions because her face could be so impassive.

She sat with her back very straight and her eyes were narrow slits.

“Please, Kai Yin,” Azalea begged, “do not think of anything so horrible. Besides you cannot leave me! I should be so frightened without you!”

“We separated when sold,” Kai Yin answered. “Where I go there be knife. Easy die by knife.”

“No, no!” Azalea pleaded. “You cannot talk like that. It is wrong – and very wicked to take one’s own life.”

“Chinese gods not angry,” Kai Yin replied. “They understand.”

Azalea used every possible argument she could think of, but she knew it was to no avail.

It seemed to her as if Kai Yin had grown up suddenly. From being the soft, sweet, pampered young wife of an older man she had suddenly become a woman with principles, with an ideal of honour from which she would not be diverted.

Despairingly Azalea knew that if Kai Yin said she would kill herself, then that was what she would do. Life was always cheap to the Chinese and especially with regard to women. Girl babies were lucky to survive. There were even places, Azalea had heard, on the outskirts of towns in China where there were notices saying ‘Girls must not be drowned here’.

Too many girls in a family was a financial disaster, to avoid which the baby was left out in the sun to die or, more mercifully, smothered and buried hastily so that no one would notice the shame of having another daughter.

It seemed a horrifying thought that Kai Yin, who had lived only for seventeen years, should die by her own hand. Yet Azalea could not help wondering, as she thought of what lay ahead, whether it was not perhaps the wiser course.

Would she be able to stand the terror of being sold to a Chinese master who could treat her as a slave? Or worse still, forced into an immoral life, the details of which she did not entirely understand?

Azalea was innocent, as were all English girls of her age. At the same time she had read a great deal and lived in foreign countries.