The Concubine's Secret

56

Lydia rested her head on Chang An Lo’s shoulder and concentrated on forcing her legs to function. He was tracking back and forth across the city, his arm tight around her waist, keeping her on her feet until he was certain no watchful shadows were padding behind them in the snow.

When finally he brought her to their secret hideaway, the one which had replaced the crucifix room, she stumbled through the door and released her grip on him for the first time. She took a slow, deep breath to keep the pain in her side at bay and pulled off her hat, but when she glanced in the mirror on the wall and saw her hair for the first time since the fire, she blushed lobster-red. It was appalling. One whole chunk was burned away and the rest was shrivelled and charred. With the blisters on her forehead, she looked like a badly made scarecrow.

‘Cut it.’

‘Rest first,’ Chang had urged. ‘You’re exhausted.’

‘Please, cut it. Short as a boy’s. Get rid of the… damage.’

His black eyes had looked at her reflection for no more than a moment, but she realised in that flicker of time that he’d seen all the damage right down into the heart of her. He’d seen the void and the guilt and the fear, and she felt ashamed. Lightly he kissed the side of her singed hair, pulled the sharp knife from his boot and sliced off the first handful.

‘Better?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘It’s only hair. It’s not my limbs.’

But as he continued to cut and the locks of hair fluttered to the floor like dead leaves, Chang’s mouth curved down in a half moon of sorrow. He bent and gathered the charred copper curls and cradled them in his hands like a gift of flames for his gods. A memory of her mother hacking off her own long dark waves with a pair of blunt kitchen scissors stamped into Lydia ’s mind, and for the first time she understood. That terrible need to punish oneself. The sense of relief it brought, that same relief she’d seen on Antonina’s face the first day they met in the hotel bathroom.

‘Chang An Lo,’ she whispered as she swung round to face him, ‘tell me where you hurt.’

His pupils widened as thoughts seemed to ripple through him, creating purple flecks in his eyes. ‘My shoulders.’

That wasn’t what she meant and he knew it. ‘Show me.’

He settled the flock of curls carefully on a chair and removed his padded jacket. It had brown holes scorched into it and his tunic underneath was no better. He stripped it off and turned his naked back to her.

‘That’s colourful,’ she said. Her hand covered her mouth to seal in all other sounds that were battering to get out.

‘Are you any good with ointment?’ he asked.

‘I’m an expert. Fingers light as feathers. Don’t you remember? ’

He twisted round. ‘Yes, I remember. As if I could forget.’

‘In the garden shed in Junchow when you were wounded and-’

He swung her up in his arms and laid her on the bed. ‘Hush, my love, don’t hide back in the past again.’

With infinite gentleness he removed all her clothes, just leaving the bandage round her waist where the bullet had entered her side. But despite Elena’s stitches it was stained the colours of rotting fruit, reds and browns and oranges. He kissed the soft skin of her stomach, then wrapped her in the quilt.

‘Come here and talk to me,’ she murmured.

‘Sleep first and then we’ll talk.’ From the battered old leather satchel Lydia had given him long ago in China, he drew a tiny bottle of muddy liquid and poured a drop on to her tongue. ‘Sleep now.’

But she forced herself into a sitting position. ‘Ointment first.’ She held out her hand.

He didn’t resist. A ceramic pot appeared from the satchel and she sat him down on the bed, knelt behind him and smeared the creamy substance on to her fingers. With her touch as light as the promised feathers, she massaged it into the raw flesh of his shoulders. She didn’t ask what caused the wound. A burning timber crashing down? A blast of white-hot flames? It didn’t matter now. The ointment smelled strange, of herbs that made her eyes sting and she felt her lids growing heavy. She kissed the good clean healthy skin in the centre of his back, but when she opened her mouth to tell him that he was the bravest man on God’s earth, before the words could form on her tongue she was fast asleep.

When she woke it was dark. The night sky clung to the windowpane, rattling it, trying to get in. Lydia felt Chang’s warmth curled around her but knew instantly that he was awake. She felt stronger after the rest and allowed her lungs to breathe in a shallow steady rhythm, clinging to the pretence of sleep because she was not ready for what lay ahead. The loss of her father had buckled something inside her and she grieved for him, and for the dream that was gone. It came as a shock to find her cheeks were wet. Had she been crying in her sleep? She lay like that, nestled against him, for a long time. An hour, maybe more. Unwilling to give him up. She clutched each second to her and memorised the exact feel of his hand on her hip and his breath on her neck, the way it made the delicate nerves of her skin ripple with pleasure.

‘When do you leave?’ she asked at last in the darkness.

He didn’t respond, except to tighten his grip on her.

‘When?’ she asked again.

He sat up and lit the candle that stood on the table next to the bed. Shadows, black and twisted, leapt round the room, as ugly as her fears. He rested his head back against the greasy wall and focused on the door. Not on her.

‘You can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘Now that they’re searching for you, you must leave.’

‘I know. Though I suppose,’ she smiled up at his profile, ‘with my short hair I could become a street rat like Edik, and work for the vory. I’m good at stealing.’

She felt a shiver in his chest. He touched her cropped hair. ‘It looks like rats have already been at it.’

She laughed and saw it pleased him.

‘Is the pain bad? Do you need more-?’

‘Hush.’ She put a finger to his lips. ‘It’s not bad.’

He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘More herbs?’

‘No, I need a clear head. I want us to talk.’

Gently he drew her to him, cradling her against his naked chest, and for a while both let the moment linger, knowing that things were about to change.

‘You can’t stay here,’ Chang said again.

‘So let’s talk about what we do next. It’s what I’ve been thinking about and working for, a future for us together.’

A little snort escaped from his nostrils. ‘Yet you risked it all for your father.’

She said nothing, just stroked his chin.

‘Ask me,’ he said.

‘Ask you what?’ But she knew.

‘Ask me.’ He lifted her chin and made her look into his eyes. ‘Ask me again.’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll ask it myself. Am I willing to go to America with you?’

She didn’t breathe.

‘Lydia, my sweetest love, the answer is no.’

She didn’t gasp or cry out or try to cram the words back into his mouth, all of which she wanted to do. She studied his face in silence before asking, ‘What did he say to you?’

‘Who?’

‘Alexei, of course. You and he were together in the courtyard and I can just imagine what-’

She stopped because she felt him tense, heard his quick intake of breath. He was halfway out of the bed with his knife suddenly in his hand when the door burst open and crashed against its hinges. Five men crowded into the small room. They were all Chinese and all carried guns.

‘Get out!’ Lydia yelled at them. She threw a quilt over her naked body.

The one in the front of the pack was young with a long face and dressed in a military padded jacket. The others looked to her like professional killers, all clothed in black with hard eyes. Lydia leapt from the bed but Chang stepped between her and the intruders, and she was terrified he was going to attack.

‘No!’ she screamed.

But he didn’t move. He remained frozen. Instead a torrent of words in rapid Chinese flowed from him and the young man in blue answered in quick bursts, clearly unhappy. At one point the young man gestured at Lydia and her heart kicked under her ribs, but when the words stopped, Chang grew very still.

Without turning he said in measured English, ‘This man is Biao. He is… he was my friend, a member of the delegation.’

Her limbs shivered.

Chang’s eyes were still fixed on Biao. ‘He is the person whom I trusted to find this room for us, the only person who knew where it was.’

‘Why is he here?’

She wished he’d turn. Wished he’d look at her.

‘Biao has come with his companions to ensure that I return to the Hotel Triumfal immediately.’

‘Why? What has happened?’

At last he turned and the look in his dark eyes drew all the shadows in the room to him. ‘Biao said that I should ask you.’

They waited outside the door. Chang forced Biao to agree to it while he spoke to Lydia. He was tempted to slit Biao’s worthless throat in payment for betrayal, regardless of the consequences for himself, but he was not willing to risk Lydia ’s life as well. As soon as the door closed he held her by the arms and refused to let her look away.

‘Tell me,’ he sought out the truth in her eyes, ‘tell me what you have done.’

Her chopped hair stuck out at strange angles and her pale face looked wretched. But far worse was the fear in her eyes. What was she so frightened of? He eased his grip on her thin arms and saw his thumbprints remain on her white skin as though they’d rather be with her than with him.

‘Tell me,’ he said more gently.

The words, when they came, rushed out of her. ‘The delegation is leaving Russia today and you haven’t even told me. So go to them. Go. Go back to your China and to your Communists. Even though you despise their leader.’ Sudden fury made the amber of her eyes look as burned as her hair.

‘Lydia,’ Chang said sharply, ‘how do you know that the delegation is leaving today?’

She had been breathing hard but stopped abruptly. He saw her fox teeth bite down. How was it possible to love someone so much and yet not know the secrets hidden under their tongue? The blisters on her forehead glistened golden in the uncertain light from the candle and his heart jolted for her. He wrapped his arms around her quivering frame and folded her to his chest. He kissed her smoky hair and felt her melt into him, so that all the fury and the questions were gone. Just a stillness remained at the heart of them.

A rap on the door made Lydia jump.

‘Quickly, my love,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘tell me. Tell me everything.’

She rested her head against his neck for a brief moment, then broke free and went over to the window. She pulled on her blouse but remained there, gazing out, as though what lay behind her was too painful to look at.

‘How did you know,’ he asked, ‘that the delegation was leaving today?’

‘Li Min told me.’

‘Li Min? Our delegation leader? How do you know him?’

She drew in a deep breath, as if she were drowning. ‘Listen to what I have to say, Chang An Lo, and then you can leave. Last year in China when I was about to set off for Russia to search for my father, a group of your people came to me.’

‘My people?’

‘Yes, your Chinese Communists. They’d heard I was travelling to Siberia. Maybe they had informers in the railway ticket office, I don’t know. But they came anyway. They knew from Kuan, who found out from you, that Jens Friis was my father, and they told me he had designed a secret project to help the Soviet military. Obviously they must have their spies in the heart of the Soviet system, even in the Red Army, but they didn’t know what it was he’d created or where he was being held – in a prison or one of those godforsaken labour camps. Not even whether he was dead or alive. Chang, you have to understand, he was my father and I-’ She stopped herself, snatched a breath and finished quietly, ‘So they asked me to find out.’

Anger, heavy and unwieldy, was churning in his gut.

‘And in return?’ he demanded. ‘What did they offer you?’

‘I asked for you.’

‘Me.’

‘Yes. I asked for you to be kept out of the civil war in China, far away from the Kuomintang army.’ She swallowed and he thought she would look round, but she didn’t. ‘I wanted you safe. I had no idea they would send you here to Moscow, I swear. That came as a surprise.’ She twitched the buttons of her blouse. ‘A welcome surprise. It proved they were sticking to their side of the bargain.’

He moved silently across the room until he was standing right behind her and could hear the catch in her every breath. ‘So that’s why you went into the prison that day to get the letter? The one from Jens about the construction of the project. So that you could give it to Li Min.’

She jumped at the sound of his voice so close but remained with her back to him. She nodded.

‘ Lydia.’

‘I know you’re angry. That you feel I betrayed you and did a dirty deal behind your back. But the thought of losing your life to a Kuomintang bullet was… too much. I couldn’t bear it. And now your Chinese friends have what they wanted, they are leaving and taking you with them.’

She leaned back till her head was touching his cheek and just that simple, intimate movement was enough to break his resolve to give her up. The immensity of what she’d done for him took his breath away. That she’d bargained her own life and that of her father… for his. His arms encircled her injured waist and drew her close against him, fighting to keep from crushing her into his own bones where she would be safe.

‘You’re right, I am angry, Lydia, but not with you, my love. With them.’ He smelled the blood on her and it made his heart weep. ‘I should have realised it wasn’t your past you were protecting. ’

‘No,’ she whispered, ‘it was our future. Yours and mine. But… Chang, we are both created by our past.’

Another knock shook the door and Biao shouted for them to hurry.

Chang spoke urgently. ‘ Lydia, you must decide now. If it’s America you want, we can-’

She spun round, her eyes wide and intent on his. ‘No, not America.’

‘My heart cannot beat without yours beside it.’

‘Is that what Alexei told you to do? To give me up?’

‘He said that with me you would be an outsider.’

She laughed, making the air in the room come alive. In the middle of all the fear and the pain and the danger she laughed, tossing her shorn curls, and the sound of it mended something inside him that was broken. ‘Oh Chang An Lo, I have been an outsider all my life. I used to fight against it, thinking I wanted to belong, but not now. It’s being an outsider that has brought me you.’

He took her face in his hands. ‘Your brother believes you must stay here in Russia, and when I see you here, I know this country is a part of your soul.’

‘Forget what Alexei says. He is not my brother.’

‘What?’

‘Jens told me. He said that Alexei is not his son. That my mother got it all wrong and even Alexei’s own mother lied about it.’ The sorrow on her face flickered like the shadow of a night spirit in the candlelight.

‘Oh my Lydia, in that fire you lost your brother as well as your father.’

She smiled at him, a fragile twist of her mouth. ‘Your gods exacted a high price,’ she said. ‘And now they’re stealing you from me again.’

‘Come with me.’

Her eyes widened. ‘To China?’

‘Yes.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten? We decided long ago that while you are fighting for the Communists there is no place for a Western girl dragging at your heels. No world in which I could find a place.’

‘There is one.’

‘Where?’

‘Hong Kong.’