Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

T o Aihan’s shock, Col didn’t appear for lunch, and she fretted about where he was and if he was alright. She needed to talk to him. She had upset him this morning. She needed to offer some plausible explanation for her own distress. She supposed she owed him the truth. That she needed to leave him and the boys and go in search of her brother.

Would he volunteer to come with her? She thought he might, but he needed to stay because of the boys. They needed him here, not off with her. England was a big place. Not as big as China, but big enough to make it difficult to find one man. It might take her quite a while. And when she found Liang, then what? Would she come back to Mac and the boys? Or leave with Liang, go home?

Liang is gone! The persistent voice in her head insisted that this was true. She pushed it away. She refused to believe that. But it made it more imperative that she go now, before any more time elapsed. She had delayed too long already.

The post had arrived that morning with two letters. She set them on his desk and returned to cleaning out the hearth, preparatory to laying a new fire. The dogs sprawled around her as she worked, refusing to move, so she was forced to work around somnolent doggy bodies. She smiled affectionately as they whuffled in their sleep. She would miss them too.

She sighed, sitting back on her heels. There was no way round the heartache she was facing and the heartache she was going to cause. To Mac and the boys and Fergus, but especially Mac. She couldn’t mistake what had passed between them last night. It had been magical, like something from a myth. So beautiful and fragile, she was afraid to name it for fear of making it evaporate like mist or a dream. He hadn’t said the words, but they were there in his touch and his expression.

But could something with this intensity of feeling be real, or was it an illusion? A form of infatuation? Could she trust her own feelings and his? He had loved his wife deeply. Could he love another? Could he love her?

She sighed again and resumed her sweeping out of the hearth. Having removed the ashes, she laid the heavier logs at the bottom and began building the kindling and paper up on top. Then she set to work with the flint to light the paper and hopefully catch the kindling. The spark she sought eluded her, but then remembering her training, she centred herself, closed her eyes, breathed, and visualised the flame igniting. Opening them, she tried again, this time with calmness and certainty in her heart.

The tinder sparked and the paper caught, and a flame licked up and caught the kindling. She fed it some more and, in a few moments, she had a nice blaze going. It was a timely reminder to not lose sight of her training. It was easy to do, surrounded by people who were blind to the chi that lived in all things, objects, people, trees, rocks, animals. Even houses. She was surrounded by the living essence of life everywhere, yet because it was invisible it was easy to forget it.

Focus on your chi, Aihan, and you can do anything you set your mind to. Liang’s voice reverberated in her head. He was right. Oh, Liang, I miss you!

A pang hit her chest, and that sliver of doubt that she would ever see him again widened. She clamped down on it ruthlessly. She would see him. She must, for how could she live in a world where he was no longer? He had been the sun and the moon to her for so long. Her mentor, her father, her brother, and her friend. She must see him; she must find him.

With renewed determination, she rose and, taking the ash can with her, she went to the kitchens and out to the midden to dump the ashes. Thus, she was crossing the courtyard to return to the house when Mac appeared. She stopped dead at the sight of him, relief washing through her that he was alright. Not that she had seriously thought anything had happened to him, but she hadn’t been able to stifle a niggling worry.

“Mac, ye missed lunch.”

“Aye, I went further than I meant to.”

An awkward silence fell, and she moved towards the house. “Would ye like something to eat? I can make ye a sandwich.”

“Nae, I stopped at the Speckled Hen and had a bite. I also learned something ye might want to know.”

The note in his voice had her turning back to him, her heart rate lifting. “About Liang?” she burst out.

“Aye. Bobby Farrell’s back. He was the fellow tracking the Chinese.”

“Aye,” she nodded, recalling what Angus had told her.

“Apparently your brother went south with the English government courier who was looking for my brother. He visited me to ask after Merlow, and I told him he had gone to London. I’m trying to recall his name. P-something—Percival! That was his name. Farrell said the pair of them tracked my brother south from Carlisle to Oxford.”

“Where?” she asked.

“I’ll show ye on a map,” he offered as they moved into the house and towards his study, where he drew out a map and showed her the route they had taken. She traced it with her finger, trying to visualise the journey. Which was impossible, of course, as she had no knowledge of the places on the map, or even the kind of terrain they were situated in.

“What is this Oxford?” she asked.

“It is a University town, a place where men study.”

She nodded slowly, adding this new word to her vocabulary. “How long to get there?”

“At least two weeks, if travelling quickly.”

Col noticed the letters she had left on his desk and pounced on one of them. “At last! I thought he would never reply!”

She looked up from the map.

He smiled. “From Merlow!” He broke the seal on the letter and spread out the pages. It was a long letter.

Dear Col,

Firstly, let me apologise for the very delayed nature of my reply. I have made numerous attempts to pen this letter and failed multiple times.

My second apology is for not telling you any of this when I was home, either the first or second time. I confess I didn’t think you would understand. I’m still not sure if you will, but given that you have this lass of Ming Liang’s on your hands I feel that I must offer some explanation.

I mentioned, I believe, that I had stayed in China to study under a master of Chinese medicine after the man saved my life from a virulent fever. He was also a master of a Chinese fighting art called Tai Chi. You seem to have had a taste of this from the lass in your care. This martial art also forms part of a religious practice called the Bagua Dao or just Tao, which translates as “the Way”.

My master taught me not only Chinese medicine and Tai Chi, but inculcated me into the religion of the Tao. In the months preceding my leaving China, my master became embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Government. Yes, I know it sounds crazy! It was prompted by religious zeal; the Qing Government is opposed to the religion of the Tao and determined to stamp it out. Predictably the attempt failed, and my master, to my great sorrow, was killed.

In the event of this happening, he had extracted a promise from me. That I would protect the sacred text (it is called the Neidan, which means “the elixir;” I will explain more about this below) and sword of the Eight Trigrams Sect, to which my master belonged. These items are ancient. Few if any copies of the text are known to exist and the sword is purported to have magical capabilities. Before you throw my letter in the fire and declare I have taken leave of my senses, let me reassure you that I have detected no magical capabilities in the sword, even when using it. And I have been forced to use it to protect myself. But I’m getting ahead of my tale.

The text is purported to contain the secret to immortality. Yes, I know what you are thinking! It seems fantastical. I can tell you that if it does hold such a secret, I have not penetrated it, and indeed neither had my master. The text is written in very obscure terms in an ancient form of the Chinese language and constitutes a guide to achieving the level of enlightenment that can lead to a transmutation of the soul into eternal life.

And at this point you may have some comprehension of why it has taken me so long to pen this letter to you. I doubt if my words will make sense to you, but I have tried numerous ways to convey these ideas, and this is the best that I can do. I do not fully comprehend it myself.

To return to the rest of my tale. As you may have apprehended from the above, the promise I made to my master resolved itself in my bringing the text and the sword home with me when I fled China, in fear of my life. The Qing Government are determined, as I noted above, to stamp out the (to them), heretical religion of the Bagua Dao, and as I wear the symbol of my religion upon my person in the form of a tattoo, I was a target.

I believed that once I left China and returned home, I would be safe. I did not bargain on the persistence of the Qing. I was followed. General Ming Liang was a commander of the Imperial Guard in the Forbidden City. He pursued me with a small force of loyal soldiers and, as I have learned from you, this lass that you speak of.

When the soldiers attempted to attack me that afternoon in the Glen, returning to Sceacháin House, I realised that I had brought danger to your door. I made the decision to leave and draw that danger away from you and the boys.

The soldiers followed me as I hoped they would, but then I couldn’t escape them. They dogged my trail all the way to Oxford. It was there on the road just outside of Oxford that the confrontation came. It pains me deeply to tell you this, but I was forced to protect myself from the attack of three men at once and used the sword. To good effect. I injured one man who fled, and of his fate I was, at the time, uncertain. The other two, having suffered defeat at my hands, to my deep sorrow, elected to expunge this humiliation by seeking to take their own lives by ingesting some form of poison. There was nothing I could do but watch them die.

I am a doctor; all my training is directed towards the preservation of life. To be the cause, however indirectly, of the death of others, is deeply painful to me. I suffered great pangs of guilt over it, and in fact that was probably one of the reasons I chose not to tell you any of this. I was ashamed.

Believing that I had eliminated the threat to my person, I ended up accepting an offer to take up the post of physician in Pinner where, as you know, I met Hetty and was immediately smitten.

Caught up in the life of Pinner and my courtship of Hetty, I tried to forget the men who died in that ditch because of me and get on with the new life that beckoned to me. But when Ming Liang appeared, I realised my error. The General had followed the trail of his men, learned of their deaths, and sought to avenge them. The third fellow had returned to Dysart and informed him of my treachery, and died of his wounds. Thus, I had the deaths of three men on my conscience.

Ming Liang had tagged along with the fellow from the British Government whom you met, Durand Percival.

Which brings me to the most painful part of my confession. Ming Liang appeared and demanded that I hand over the text and the sword to him. He used Hetty as a means to coerce me, and the end of it was that we fought: I with a knife and he with the sword. He had me at his mercy with the sword, about to decapitate me, when Hetty threw the text at him. It was evident then that he understood the value of the text, for he clutched it to his chest with tears upon his cheeks.

But it seemed that the exertions of the past hours had taken their toll upon him, for he suffered an apoplexy and, despite all my attempts to revive him, he died.

Thus, I have in the end to atone for the deaths of four men.

That is the tale, in essence. My sincerest condolences to the lass, who is, I gather, some kind of relative of Ming.

I remain, ever your affectionate brother

Merlow