The Russian Concubine (54 page)

‘You are so wrong, Alexei.’

He shrugged. ‘I think we must agree to differ on that point.’

His voice was once again crisp, no nonsense. He had good powers of recovery. She knew she had lost him. A cold numbness swirled inside her chest. Breathing grew hard. Her mind reached out to Chang An Lo, but all she could feel was a fragile heartbeat. The rest was as black as Liev Popkov’s beard. With a sudden urgency she reached up and gripped Alexei’s shoulder, swung him around to face her. Her hands seized his. Her fingers dug into his bones.

‘Alexei Serov Friis,’ she said fiercely, ‘I am your sister, Lydia Ivanova Friis. You cannot deny me this.’

64

All day long Lydia waited in the shed. She wrapped herself in her quilt. Alfred had gone off to his newspaper office and in her mind she admired the way he kept himself functioning as if life had not cracked open to a burning hell-pit under his feet. But at the same time a part of her heart wanted him to scream. To rage. To rant through the streets in sackcloth and ashes, to show the world that life without Valentina was unbearable. But no. He was English. Englishmen didn’t believe in sackcloth and ashes. A dark suit. A black armband. That sufficed.

Lydia had chosen to wear one of her mother’s white dresses. It was plain with a long row of jet buttons down the front and a large white lace collar. It looked all wrong on her, she knew, but she didn’t care. It soothed a small part of the ache.

As she sat in the shed she made herself study the dried bloodstains on the wooden walls and floor, and thought about scrubbing them but decided against it. It would be like washing away Sun Yat-sen, and she wasn’t willing to do that. But she did lay out the same blankets as before on the floor and sat down in the middle of them, gazing up at the skylight above her head. Though the hours crawled by and nothing happened, except the day grew darker, she kept calling his name softly.

‘Chang An Lo, Chang An Lo, Chang An Lo.’

If she stopped, something inside her knew he’d die. It was that simple.

The hairs on her arms began to prickle and she knew he was near. Above her the skylight was black as a grave while beside her a single candle burned with a flame that flickered and leaped, sending shadows careening around the walls.

She told herself it was the wind outside stealing through the shed’s cracks and under the door. She wanted to believe it. But she could hear their breathing. The spirits.

Gathering.

He was there. In the doorway. His black hair tousled by the wind, an air of wildness about him, a grubby green blanket thrown over his shoulders in place of a coat. His eyes wanting her.

‘Chang An Lo,’ she breathed and leaped into his arms.

He laughed, kicked the door shut, and carried her to the blankets. They didn’t need words. No hows or whens or what ifs. They just needed each other. Their bodies so hungry they ached with the pain of it. Lips tasted each other again, sought out the hollows and sweet places that made moans of pleasure slip from their throats as their limbs entwined.

Her hands came alive as they explored Chang An Lo’s lean frame once more, delighting in the long lines of his thighs and the broad planes of his chest. Her fingertips traced the familiar burn scars, as well as the vicious new bruises that sickened her stomach, so that she called down curses on Po Chu’s name and that of the Kuomintang. So vehemently, he laughed. Until he saw her breast. Then the words that poured from him were unintelligible to her, in harsh Mandarin, and behind the fury in his black eyes was something hard and vengeful, something that had not been there before.

‘I regret you shot Po Chu’s face off, Lydia.’ He kept one hand cupped protectively over her damaged breast.

‘But why? The bastard deserved it, Devil rot him.’

‘Because I longed to do it myself,’ he said angrily. ‘But only after I sliced off his seedless balls and stuffed them into his maggot mouth.’

She kissed his chest and felt his heart beating strongly under her lips. Ran a hand over the sharp bones of his hips and down into the dense black bush of pubic hair. He bent his head and trailed his tongue over her pale stomach to the soft crease where it met the tender white skin of her thigh. Her body arched against his as he caressed and cradled, touched and teased, so that when he finally entered her the fire inside them forged them into one person. A perfect whole. Two halves moulded into one. They lay locked together for a long time afterward, the warmth of their breath brushing their naked skin, their hearts finding a rhythm in time with each other.

‘Lydia.’

She smiled. Just to hear his voice say her name. But at the same time a sharp pain was starting in her chest. She curled herself up in the curve of his arm, her head resting on his collarbone, her leg entangled with his, breathing his breath, smelling his skin, and shut her eyes for a long minute. Imprinting the moment forever in her head.

She opened her eyes. ‘I know, my love. I know what you must say.’

‘I have to leave Junchow.’

‘Yes.’

He held her tight to him, a shiver running through his veins. ‘I must leave you here, the light of my soul. Leave you safe.’

‘I know.’

He kissed her forehead, his lips lingering on her skin. ‘I cannot take you with me, my love.’

‘I know.’ Her throat tightened and the pain in her chest was worse than a knife. ‘When I was captured by that snake Po Chu, I understood. The men there would be no different from a camp of Communist fighters. To them I would always be alien, a poisonous reminder of everything they were struggling to defeat. And as long as I was by your side, you would be in danger. I couldn’t bear that. The enemy could use me to cripple you.’

His hand touched her face, his fingers gently sealing her lips.

She forced the words out of her mouth. ‘I would be worse than shackles to you. So I know you must go alone.’

‘The only thing you shackle is my heart. And I swear I will return for it.’

His eyes were brilliant in the candlelight. Free of fever. She saw in them the truth of the promise he’d just made but saw also the eagerness for what lay ahead of him, and the blade in her chest twisted a little.

‘You’d better return,’ she laughed and tipped her head back, showing her teeth, ‘or I’ll come charging up into the mountains to get you.’

He kissed her throat. ‘The Communists and the Kuomintang would both flee screaming in terror at the fury of such a fox spirit.’

‘I’ve made up a pack for you.’ She pointed to a bulging leather bag with a buckle and long shoulder strap propped against the heap of sacks by the wall. ‘Food and clothing. There’s money in there too.’

‘A knife?’

‘Of course. A good one.’

He nodded his satisfaction. ‘I thank you, my love. Your father has grown more generous?’

‘My father . . .’ She heard the raw edge to her voice, swallowed, and started again. ‘My stepfather has other things on his mind.’ That was when she told him. About her mother. About the letter. And Alexei Serov. He held her close and she let hot tears flow for the first time since her mother’s death. Something hard and knotted loosened inside her.

‘Will they come after you again, the Kuomintang troops?’ she asked at last.

‘Like wolves scenting fresh blood.’

‘And Alexei?’

‘When they find out he gave the order for my release, the Russian will have to answer to them.’

She nodded.

For a moment his gaze fixed on her in silence, and then his eyes widened. He rolled up onto his elbow in one fluid movement and took her chin in his hand. He shook it in jerky little sweeps. She noticed that the wound where his finger had been was almost healed.

‘You planned it well,’ he said. ‘And in a way that helps the Communist cause.’

She nodded.

‘The Kuomintang will lose their military adviser here in Junchow.’ His voice was calm but his face was very pale. ‘And you . . . No, Lydia. No. You will step into the dragon’s jaws.’

She smiled up into his intense black eyes and ran a finger along the sharp line of his cheekbone. ‘My love, it was from you I learned how to tweak the dragon’s tail.’

He stroked her hair urgently, as though he would stroke the thoughts from her mind. ‘You’re returning to Russia.’

‘Yes.’

‘To seek out your father.’

‘Yes.’

‘It will be dangerous.’

‘I’ll be well prepared, I promise.’

‘By the gods, yours will be a harder journey than mine. But I swear you’ll travel with my soul in your pocket.’

She felt a surge of exhilaration and kissed his eyelids. ‘Thank you, my love, for understanding. Just as you have to fight for what you believe in, so I have to do this.’

‘I hear your words, but fear chews at my bones.’

‘Don’t. We’ll get through this, you and I. I used to think survival was everything. All my life I’ve fought to eat and breathe in this stinking world, like the alley cat my mother always called me. But I’ve learned. From you. From dull old Alfred. Even from all that savagery in the Box. You have to survive for a reason.’

Chang An Lo sat up and wrapped her in his arms, brushed his lips over the skin of her shoulder as if he would devour her. ‘Oh my Lydia, the wind of life blows strong inside you.’

‘Love,’ she said. ‘And loyalty. They’re my reasons. Worth surviving for. He’s my father, Chang An Lo. I want to know what reason has kept him alive for ten long years in a wretched Russian prison camp.’

‘The iron in a man’s heart comes from his mind.’

‘In a woman’s too.’

Chang smiled, but not lightly. He reached to where his discarded clothes lay in a bundle on the floor. ‘I have something for you.’

He pulled out a leather pouch and from it he drew a small pink pendant, which he placed in the palm of her hand.

‘This is a powerful Chinese symbol. Of love.’

She studied it carefully. ‘A dragon.’ It was exquisitely shaped, curled up like a kitten.

‘Yes. Carved of rose quartz. Wear it always. It will protect you and ward off evil spirits until I return.’

‘It’s beautiful, thank you.’

She kissed him and they made love again, slow and lingering, savouring every touch and every taste, and then fierce in those final moments when they became a part of each other. It was at the point of her final shuddering release that something changed in him, she felt it, some instinct made him clamp a hand over her mouth and whisper close in her ear.

‘Listen.’

She listened. Heard nothing. Except the wind tearing at the trees. But her heart and stomach seemed to collide. ‘You’ll need that knife.’

The door was kicked open. It shrieked on its hinges and rebounded against the wall with a slam as a British army officer strode into the musty shed, his eyes quick and sharp. Behind him the grey uniforms of the Kuomintang hovered like leashed hounds on the trail.

Lydia leaped to her feet, wrapped in a blanket. ‘Get out! How dare you burst in here? This is private property.’

‘A warrant.’ The officer waved a piece of paper rudely in her face. ‘Don’t play innocent, miss. Where is he?’

Already hands were rummaging through the blankets, among the boxes and cobwebs and old cans as if their prey might be hiding in one. It was when they yanked the sacks away from the back wall that the Chinese captain with the stone-hard face swore and yelled at his men to search outside. Where the sacks had stood was a gaping hole. The bottom of two planks had been carefully sawn through and removed. Lydia’s afternoon of waiting had not been completely without purpose.

‘Where is he, miss?’ the English officer snapped.

‘Gone,’ she said. And again softly to herself. ‘Gone.’

65

The time following that night was fractured time for Lydia. The days passed but didn’t exist. Images flashing by, blurred and meaningless. Only the meeting with Polly stood out and held her attention.

‘Lydia, I’m sorry.’ Polly had turned up on the doorstep, bearing a gift of macaroons tied up in silk with a lavender ribbon. ‘Forgive me, Lyd. I only meant to do what seemed best for you.’

It was hard. To let go of the anger. But Lydia told herself that if Polly’s words had not drawn Po Chu’s men to her in the shed that day, they’d only have found her some other day. Some other place. It would have turned out the same in the end. The Box. The water jammed in her throat. The iron-toothed tweezers on her breast. Nothing would have changed all that.

So she smiled into Polly’s worried blue eyes and hugged her close. ‘It’s okay, I understand. Really I do. You thought you were looking after me but it didn’t go quite right.’

‘You see, my father . . .’

‘Hush, Polly, hush. Forget it. It wasn’t your fault. Your father does things sometimes that aren’t always right.’

But not anymore. Christopher Mason would not be doing things that weren’t right with his daughter anymore. So Lydia kissed her friend’s pale cheek and told her she would be leaving Junchow. Polly had cried, and they had clung to each other and promised to meet up again one day in London, in Trafalgar Square with the pigeons. Nothing else during those days was clear in Lydia’s mind. Until the morning that she was standing on the railway platform with Alfred, clutching a net of oranges under her arm and a ticket to Vladivostok in her hand. Then everything came into focus. Pin-sharp. So bright it hurt her mind.

The oily belch of the steam engine excited her. All around them crowds jostled, travellers shouted to each other, carriage doors banged. A porter heaved bags. Vendors pushed trays of
baos
and hot roasted peanuts in her face, rang their bells, and yelled their wares. Interweaving through it all like a yellow river drifted five Buddhist monks in saffron robes, murmuring prayers and scattering incense. Lydia put a coin in their begging bowls. To please Chang An Lo’s gods.

‘I’ll miss you,’ she said to Alfred.

‘My dear girl, can I not persuade you? Even now?’

‘No, Alfred. But I am grateful, really I am.’

She meant it. He had been astonishing. When he realised he couldn’t shift her from her decision, he pulled every string he could get his hands on and had turned Sir Edward Carlisle’s neat bureaucracy inside out to acquire a visa and passport for her so fast. Both were in a name that still sat strangely on her tongue.
Lydia Parker
.

‘A good British passport,’ Alfred had insisted. ‘That’s what gets you places in this world. It will protect you. The might of the British Empire, you know, right there behind you.’

He had a point. No doubting that. But she had more faith in herself than in his empire, so, unknown to her stepfather, another passport was hitched inside her waistband. A Russian one. Forged, of course. Name of
Lydia Ivanova
. Just in case. Part of the survival kit.

‘I’ll send you a wire, Alfred, I promise. As soon as I can.’

‘Do that, my girl. You know I’ll worry.’

She looked at his face and couldn’t understand how it had grown so dear to her. He had lost a few pounds and his brown eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into his head than . . . before. How had she once thought them pompous? She leaned forward and hugged him.

‘Sure you have enough money?’ he asked.

‘If I had any more golden guineas sewn into my clothes and glued inside the soles of my shoes, the train would need an extra engine to cart me over the mountains.’

He laughed. ‘Well, you’ve got my solicitor’s address in London, so you can always reach me and I can wire you money for a steamer ticket to England. I won’t stay much longer. Not now. Not here in China.’

She held on to his hand for a moment, trying to find the right words and failing. In the end she said with a smile, ‘Be happy in England. She’d want you to be.’

‘I know.’ His lips tightened. He nodded. Patted her arm. ‘Keep yourself safe, my dear girl. God be with you.’

‘I have my bear with me.’

She glanced into the carriage. Liev Popkov was seated there. His great fist was stroking his beard and somehow managed to make even that simple gesture threatening rather than thoughtful. Her own small leather suitcase rested beside him on the bench seat, safe as the Bank of England. Probably safer. Even Alfred laughed when he saw two men back quickly out of the compartment when they encountered Liev’s single black eye and outstretched legs, as if a buffalo had snorted in their faces.

The train guard started slamming doors. The smell of hot metal stung Lydia’s nostrils as another belch of steam sent black smut swirling up the platform. The engine heaved itself into life. Whistles shrieked. This was it. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but at the same time something was tearing apart in there and she couldn’t quite hold it together. She jumped up on the carriage step, and it was then that she saw the tall figure with the silk scarf, short brown hair, and lazy stride ambling along the platform, as if he had all the time in the world. He strolled up to her carriage and doffed his smart new fur cap to her.

‘Alexei.’ She grinned at him. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

‘Changed my mind. Not keen on this place anymore, a bit too chilly for me.’ He glanced over his shoulder toward the station entrance and though he kept it casual, she could spot the unease in his green eyes.

‘Too hot, I think you mean. Come on, Papa will be glad to see you,’ she said and stepped to one side.

Alexei gave her a look that she couldn’t read, but it didn’t matter. Her brother was here. He shook hands with Alfred, who muttered, ‘Good man, look after her,’ and then Alexei leaped easily into the carriage beside her.

‘We have company, I see,’ he drawled and stared suspiciously at the big greasy Russian.

Lydia laughed. This could get interesting. It was going to be a long journey.

The clouds overhead were moody and silver-edged as she took her seat. She leaned her head against the juddering window, drew in a deep breath, and released it slowly as Chang An Lo had taught her, watching the pane of glass mist up and obscure what was out there. What lay ahead terrified her. And thrilled her. She knew she could survive it. She’d said so many times. That was the one thing she was good at. Surviving. Hadn’t she proved it? Well, now she was going to help her father survive.

She wiped a hand over the window. Cleared a swathe of glass.

Because now she knew that you didn’t survive on your own. Everyone who touched your life sent a ripple effect through you, and all the ripples interconnected. She could sense them inside her, surging and flowing, doubling back and overlapping, all the way back to the beginning. And at the centre of them all was Chang An Lo. She wrapped her hand tight around the quartz dragon pendant. He and she would survive this and would be together again when all the turmoil was over, of that she was sure. She stared intently up at the low ridge of hills ahead where rumour had it that the Communists camped out, as if she could keep him safe by sheer force of will alone. She sent out a ripple of her own.

The train growled to a start.