The smoke is as thick as a hand; the stench in the stifling room is born of ale and sweat. Finn Fowler’s insides churn with the pure exuberance of what is sure to be a win.
It has only been a few months since Willa’s arrival and the peopling of the Fowler household is near completion.
Around the table in the house of Far East whores, unshaven men murmur at the scene in progress, set for a climax and perhaps a fight. The Chinese proprietor’s son perches on a tall stool with a knife in his hand. He scrapes away at a piece of wood and while he seems to be concentrating on the shape taking form, he also listens to the men who are carving the shape of another’s life – his.
‘Nothing left,’ Mr Ling says.
‘You have one asset.’ Finn raises a brow at the boy.
The two men lock eyes.
‘I need an apprentice,’ Finn says.
‘Premium?’ The Chinese man asks and looks away, as if he’s no longer interested.
Finn glances again at his cards.
‘Twenty pound.’
Someone coughs.
‘Count it,’ Another man says.
‘There ain’t twenty on there,’ says the man next to Finn, entirely drunk.
‘Whatever sits shiny and hard on the table, the premium is twenty pound,’ Finn says.
‘Terms?’ Mr Ling asks.
The men at the table groan. Their tough-skinned fingers impatiently strum the table and they adjust their itchy crotches.
‘Agree the twenty, finish the hand. If I win, we sort out the rest tonight and I go back to Three Colt Street with the boy. If my hand’s a crapper, well then, you keep the boy – for now.’
They lock eyes once again. The expression on Mr Ling’s face is blank. He agrees with a swift nod.
The boy’s knife stops its work. He reveals nothing. His stomach, however, churns at the events being played out before him. His future will be decided by a game of Put. His father prefers Fan-Tan, or Pak-ah-puh, but the rogues insisted on their English card game tonight and he was impotent against them.
‘Fer fuck’s sake, show yer cards,’ another brays.
This has never happened before. Mr Ling has never allowed the stakes to stack up so high that he could not meet them. But things have been bad for him lately. The parish is becoming more dangerous for those who operate below the law. He has no allies and there is no other Chinese man who resides within this parish. He could die quickly and quietly and no one would notice, and those who would, well, they would be grateful to his murderer. People owe him. People despise him. There are those who find this foreigner too foreign.
The boy is long ruined. Ling first noticed it after his mother crept out of the door late one night and never returned. He heard she’d hidden on a ship in the docks that sailed the next day for the East, but was discovered during the voyage and thrown overboard like a morsel, fed to the insatiable sea. What a good idea, Ling thought. He was tempted to drown the boy. He is meant to treasure a male child. But he does not, not this one who pines after his grandmother from some shitty little province full of Jurchens.
Jonesy’s mother had been running her entire life, first from an arranged marriage in Shanghai, then from the floating life of the canal brothels, and finally from him and his father. She had learned to travel light. Several of her tunics were left discarded in a sad pile on the floor, except for the green one that on an enlightening morning fell loosely from the boy’s naked shoulders. Ling dreamed of wrapping Jonesy in the green tunic and tossing him into the Thames. He consulted the oracle. When he threw the yarrow sticks for guidance the reading was unclear. He had no wish to anger the ancestors, so he let the boy live.
The more he thinks on it the more he hopes his cards are shit. He could then leave this rank, black cloud of a country and return to Shanghai. He’ll be hired to work his passage back, but has only enough money for one life when he arrives and he’ll be hanged if he’ll throw his savings in the mix tonight. Now that the circumstances are right in front of him, he prays to his ancestors to lose.
Finn needs only one more point to win and he holds a ‘3’. He has no need to bluff, but he allows the tension to build anyway.
‘Put.’ Finn says at long last.
All heads turn to Ling. He does not follow his opponent’s advice to throw, or ‘put’ his card in, rather, he forces Finn to lead with his card. His aim is for everyone to witness how squarely Finn will triumph. There must be no dispute.
Finn pauses again, which sends the other men into an aching moment of anticipation, then he flips his ‘3’ down in front of Ling. Unless Ling also holds a ‘3’ the boy is Finn’s.
A whoop goes up all around the table, and then another moment of complete silence prevails until the slow steady scraping commences when the boy takes up his knife again. He received his new name by means of his father’s casual glance at an English newspaper, Mr Jonesy Rawlins, who finished his apprenticeship on Tuesday … While he lay across his mother’s breast, blood gushing from the place of her recent delivery until she almost bled to death, or so the midwife said when she insisted on increasing her compensation, he was named Yun, ‘born in the clouds’.
Father and son have not exchanged glances during this game of ownership. Mr Ling places his card down as Jonesy’s shavings fall silently to the floor.
The King card shows his face. Ling has lost. The boy is lost. And then a great roar of voices and the pounding of fists on the table are too much for the small room as they celebrate the birth of Jonesy’s apprenticeship.
Three Colt Street is deserted at this late hour. The screeching sounds of fighting crows break the silence as they lay waste to a mound of discarded entrails the lazy butcher has tossed in an alley near his blood-splattered shop. A breeze carries the stench. The master and the apprentice walk in different forms of sobriety; Finn’s ale has worn off after the thrill of his victory, and Jonesy entertains a thoughtful terror of the unknown.
Finn wends his way along expertly in the fog that speedily rolls in from the river. He is a late-night creature, a man who is comfortable in and with the darkness. Jonesy notes this and how efficiently his master slips his key in the front door.
‘Follow me. I’ll get you sorted tomorrow. Tonight you’ll make do with a sleep in the scullery. At least you’ll be warm.’
Jonesy bows his head and begins to express his thanks when a figure advances and moves the air in the room like the shadow puppets of his childhood. She looks like midnight meeting the waning sun. Her gown is a blue so dark it seems it’s been dipped in a bottle of ink. He has never seen hair the colour of a Shanghai sunset, or the beauty of that sunset in a woman. It leaves him speechless. He is not aroused; the feeling is purer, as though he has stepped into a poem, her beauty encased in a couplet.
Clovis takes the measure of Jonesy with a vulture-like eye that seems to penetrate his deepest fears. She circles him; her nostrils flare at the clinging aroma of herbs and other men’s games. She steps back and surveys the delicate manner in which he allows the observations. His thick, dark lashes fall to his cheeks when he lowers his eyes. He cannot bear to be scrutinized so, but he endures it.
‘I have seen you skulking around the river front. You like to watch the ships. Yes?’
‘Yes, mistress.’
‘Hmm. What shall we do with that long plait hanging down your back?’
‘Whatever Mistress wishes.’
This makes her laugh.
His queue is thick at the top and gradually tapers out to a few thin strands below the back of his knees.
For a moment her gaze travels from Finn to Jonesy and then back again.
‘I think you can train him,’ she says to Finn. ‘But he won’t last long.’
She offers him no bedding, nor food or drink.
Finn cuts a piece of cheese and points to the bread and a slice of meat pie.
‘You look like a fuckin’ skeleton. If you’re gonna work for me, you need more flesh.’
No one has ever considered his strength, or lack of it. No one has ever considered him at all.
The stinking cheese tastes foul, but Jonesy scoffs it with the bread. He’s smart enough not to refuse the food. In the past, a simple statement such as ‘I do not care for cheese’ could bring a slap, or worse.
Finn has made a bowl of punch, and this Jonesy does like. His senses sharpen after the first few gulps. He will not speak until he is allowed, but he would like to say that he is very glad to be here and away from his father’s house where the walls never rest, where someone is always in need of extra care, where the days never end, they just turn darker. He’d like to say aloud to someone that already he breathes a larger share of the air than he ever has done in his life, but his English isn’t up to it yet. He will do whatever job Mr Fowler asks of him, whatever dirty and low thing his master has in mind, he’ll do it. And he vows to show the mistress who looks like a goddess that she is mistaken, that in her presence he will only grow stronger.
Shown into a small room, where short stacks of goods neatly line the walls, a bed is hastily made on the floor with fresh linen and a pile of some sort of packing cloth on which to lay his head. Jonesy slowly lies on his side – he never sleeps on his back – and extinguishes the tallow, closing the light on the stolen goods that he will soon learn to move around Limehouse and beyond with the speed of a flying dragon.
At the top of the house Willa tosses and turns in her bed. Change unsettles her. She finally puts her bare feet on the floor and from under the bed she retrieves her box, swinging it out and up between her legs and onto her lap. From it she scoops up a handkerchief, heavy with her calming charms, and selects the most precious of all, the small, velvet bag that holds a lock of her mother’s hair. She chews on the brown, matted hair until she is comforted and falls into a dreamless sleep.
The next morning while Willa completes her morning chores, her attic room is in the process of transformation. It sounds like hell is entering it. There is scraping and banging and cursing and all this because the new boy is moving in on her territory, a space that has become sacred to her. When she has the courage to climb the steps to the eaves of the house a wave of anger passes through her. A heavy damask curtain hangs from a wire suspended across the room. In an uncharacteristic flash of temper, she casts it aside with a strong jerk. Pushed up against the wall is another bed. The middle of it sinks with the weight of a wooden box similar to hers, though slightly larger. Drawn to the strange script engraved on the top of it, she hesitates, and before she is aware of what moves her to do so, she tries to open it. Locked.
‘I help?’
He stands in the doorframe, an angular silhouette. Willa is so astonished at the sight of him that she forgets to be embarrassed by her investigation.
‘I … I did not hear you.’
This morning he had wrapped his queue around the top of his head so that he appears to be wearing a hat made of hair. She gawks outright. The front of his head is shaved, presenting a dichotomous image that confuses her, though it is his clothes that intrigue her most: a loose blue collarless jacket falls just below his knees. Long wide-legged trousers trail down to a pair of black, cotton slippers with platform soles made of cotton cording, perhaps with leather as well, she cannot tell. He looks monkish, a porcelain version. Though she is slowly becoming accustomed to the world’s people who float in and out of Limehouse, this is a rare one.
Jonesy approaches his bed and Willa jumps back, startling them both when they crash into each other.
‘The door,’ he says, when he recovers. ‘I will tap?’
She adjusts her cap and straightens her apron. The door opens into her side of the room; a further loss of her cherished privacy.
‘Well. Mr – I do not know your name.’
‘Jonesy.’
She pauses. Such a ridiculous name.
‘Well, Mr Jonesy.’
‘Jonesy Ling.’
Even more ridiculous, she thinks.
Her moving fingers distract him. She smells of grease and fire. He has seen another like her; madness is next if she is not careful. He sits down beside his box and opens it with the key he retrieves from his deep trouser pocket.
‘Well, Mr Jonesy Ling, I been here a short time, but I’m much adjusted to my own company, in my own room. I am from a place that were crowded, where I slept in a room with many girls. But this, what we have here is different.’ She bites the tip of her tongue to curb her chattering but it does not help.
‘’Tis too bad for me then that the door opens into my side of the room. So, no. I dunno know how you plan to spend your evenings, but I retire early. Do not wake me by tappin’ on the door. And if you have any decency about you at all, when you open the door, focus your entire self on this curtain. And then close it tight. And be quiet about it, if you please.’
He didn’t understand much of what she said, but feels he needs to offer her something.
‘Move? I sleep there?’ He points to her bed.
She cannot move her things. She has her rituals, everything is in its place, and she has access to the window. She shakes her head and her fingers commence their tapping again. Her breathing is shallow.
She is so visibly disturbed that he assures her. ‘No! No move, no move.’
Jonesy opens his wooden box and rattles around in it until he produces a bright green silk pouch. He unties the black string and empties its contents into his palm.
‘Cicada.’ How can he explain it to her?
‘Oh what a beautiful piece, Jonesy Ling.’ Her defences fall, she is suddenly transfixed.
Then she squints at him as if he has done something very bad.
‘Where did you get such a thing?’
‘I carve. White jade. Cicada.’
‘You carve? It looks cool, like ice. And smooth as cream.’
‘For you.’
‘Oh no, Jonesy Ling.’ She drops it on the bed. ‘It were wrong. I do not take gifts.’ She recalls many occasions upon which Matron tried to tempt her with gifts. A gift is never without conditions.
‘No, I cannot.’ She’s hesitant, but moved, and weakening because she has never received a genuine gift.
‘Please.’
Well, she thinks, it is very beautiful. And she cannot quash her desire to touch it.
‘Got nothin’ for you but I can knit and sew.’
‘Nothing required.’ He bows low.
‘Well, all right then, thank you, Jonesy Ling.’
‘Jonesy, please.’ Before he gives it to her he strokes the outline of the wings that are carved to appear folded underneath the insect.
‘Cicada. Chinese symbol for, um, very long life. Survives underground for long time, then comes up and flies. Flies to the sky. Um, forever … Symbol for … undying.’ He struggles to find the word.
‘Immortal?,’ Willa says.
‘Immortal,’ Jonesy repeats.