The Chinese Alchemist Read online

  The Chinese Alchemist

  Lyn Hamilton

  Prologue

  I used to believe that brigands lurked in the bamboo forests at the edge of our garden, and that a ghost haunted the well. It was Auntie Chang who told me about the brigands. I expect she said that to frighten me, to make sure I did not stray far from home. It may be, though, that she especially didn’t want me to go to that part of our property. The brigands didn’t worry me. When I grew up, I planned to be a brave soldier in the service of the emperor, just like Number Two Brother. Brigands would have cause to fear me.

  The ghost was a different matter. She was an ugly woman with disheveled hair and eyes that burned through you. I knew that because Auntie Chang had seen the ghost, and was very frightened. She said it is someone whose hun had escaped the body, and that the ghost could not rest until the proper rites were performed, and the corpse’s mouth sealed with jade so the hun could not escape.

  Sometimes I dreamed that Number One Sister had joined the makes as the wind blows through it was Number One Sister sending me a message. Number One Sister, you see, had simply vanished from my life. One day she was there, the next morning she was gone.

  If Number One Sister was not with the brigands, then she had run away to the Gay Quarter to become a dancer. I thought that would be exciting, too. I decided that when I was older and able to make my way about the city as I pleased, I’d look for her there. She would be wearing gowns of the finest silk in the latest fashion, with jade and pearls and kingfisher feathers, and all the men would cheer as she danced and sang. She sang and danced very well; that I knew, having watched her when she thought she was alone. When I found her, I would cheer, too.

  I missed my sister. She was the only one who would play in the gardens with me, and she also let me watch while she put her hair up in elaborate tall bindings. Her favorite styles were flower bindings, where she wove most favored peonies into her hair. When she was married, she told me, she would be able to go into the streets with her hair made up so. She was also the only member of the family who would play with me in the snow, the rest of them preferring to huddle behind screens to cut the drafts or hold their hands to braziers for warmth. I was grateful for these moments with my sister. Number One Brother was too busy studying for his civil service examinations to pay any attention to me. He was angry when I interrupted him. He told me his future depended on success in the examinations. I didn’t know why he would say that when he could be a brigand instead. Number Two Brother simply ignored me.

  The drums of the Imperial Palace are now sounding. Soon the drums of the city will do the same, and the doors of the wards will shut for the night. It was on one such night that Number One Sister did not return until dawn. Our father waited by the gates all the night long, afraid that she would be found outside and beaten by the Gold Bird Guard, twenty blows of the rod for remaining outside our ward during the night.

  It was shortly after that event that Number One Sister disappeared for good. I did not understand why she didn’t say good-bye.

  One

  THE FIRST SIGN THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING amiss came in the form of a phone call from someone suggesting he was ready to install fire detection equipment in my home. I said there must be some mistake, even though he had quite correctly asked for Lara McClintoch. He disagreed. He had my name, address, and phone number. I said I already had smoke detectors, thank you very much. The next day, another man called to say he wanted to book a time to pour the new concrete in my basement. I have rather lovely Mexican tiles, all in good repair, in my basement. Both men spoke with a foreign accent I couldn’t pinpoint, and sounded as if they had socks in their mouths. Within a few hours of casually, or perhaps not so casually, mentioning these calls to my partner, Rob Luczka, a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I found myself living in a hotel.

  It seems that Rob, of whom I am inordinately fond, had seriously annoyed members of a gang that was terrorizing the merchants of Chinatown. These thugs called themselves Golden Lotus, which just goes to prove you should never judge an organization by its name. I suppose that is his job, annoying bad guys. Still, I had never thought it would have much to do with me, other than the fact that I occasionally worry myself sick about him when he’s off on some assignment.

  “Why exactly am I here?” I said in a tone I seem to acquire when I’m unnerved. I was finding it a tad stressful, all that slapping stuff into a suitcase and running around the house to see that everything was turned off so that my smoke detectors would not have to be put to good use through some fault of my own, as opposed to malfeasance on the part of men with socks in their mouths.

  “You are here because some very nasty people have figured out that you are a person of some importance to me,” he said. “They probably know that because I live right next door and spend a lot of time going out my gate and in yours for sleepovers. Now if you’d let me knock down the wall between our two houses so I would not have to brave rain, snow, sleet, and hostile neighborhood dogs to pay a visit, they might not have known that.”

  “If this is a ploy to get me to move in with you, it isn’t exactly working.”

  “No? They were trying to tell you they are going to burn your house down with you in it. Either that or kill you by some other means and bury you in your own basement.”

  “Burn my house down!” I said. “They can’t do that. Our cottages were built in 1887 and are protected under the Ontario Heritage Act!”

  “The Heritage Act! I wonder why the brains at headquarters didn’t think of that. These lowlifes extort, rob, and kill on a whim, and so far we haven’t been able to stop them. But then, just like that, you come up with the Heritage Act.”

  I looked at him for a moment. Rob, unlike me, is hardly ever sarcastic. “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t want you to think I cared,” he said, looking away.

  “I’d never think that. Jennifer is safe, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t think these guys from Golden Lotus would go to Taiwan to find her, no. That at least is working in our favor.” Jennifer, Rob’s daughter, was teaching English in Taiwan for a year. We worried about her, of course, but right now Taiwan sounded better than Toronto where her personal safety was concerned.

  “Good. Everything will be fine. Now, what’s my name again?”

  “Charlyn Krahn,” he said. “We’re Herb and Charlyn Krahn. Please try to remember to sign all chits that way.”

  “Are the Krahns paying for this?” I said.

  “They are, indeed. Nice of them. I even have a credit card with Herb’s name on it, compliments of my employer.”

  “So what happens now? This is a short version of the witness protection program, right? Which is to say, how long do we get to lounge about in this hotel? I can go to work, even if you can’t?”

  “It is the considered opinion of my superiors that, no, as an undercover officer I am to stay out of sight, and yes, you can go into the shop. Someone will be keeping an eye on the place and if there’s any sign of trouble, then we’ll reassess. I know you don’t want to leave the redoubtable Clive in charge for too long.”

  Clive Swain is my ex-husband and my partner in an antiques business called McClintoch & Swain. And no, I don’t like to leave Clive alone in the shop for too long. I usually return from my buying trips to find the store completely rearranged, and not always, which is to say almost never, to my liking. “As for how long, it shouldn’t take long. My brothers in the force will take care of these people,” Rob said.

  “What does ‘take care of these people’ mean?”

  “Whatever it takes,” he said. “In the meantime, we’re having an all-expenses-paid holiday. Now let’
s see what’s on the room service menu.”

  As pleasant as an all-expenses-paid stay in a pretty nice hotel sounds, with someone cooking and cleaning and even making the bed every day, I can tell you it is amusing for about forty-eight hours. After that it gets a little claustrophobic, the room service fare starts to taste like prison food, assuming prison food tastes the way I think it does, and generally your roommate begins to get tiresome. I believe the feeling was mutual. If we ever move in together, the place will have to be very large, something on the scale of, say, Versailles.

  So it was that what I consider to be my acutely sensitive nose for dissimilitude was not working as it should, so eager was I to get out of the place. What I saw as a godsend, but was really a trap—which if not set for me, certainly caught me in its snare—came in the form of a call to the shop on a fine autumn day from one Dorothy Matthews, known to her friends as Dory.

  “I have a favor to ask,” she began.

  “Ask away,” I said.

  “It’s more of a proposal than a favor, although I would be exceedingly grateful if you would undertake it for me. I suppose I’m actually asking two favors. Would you consider having lunch with me at my home? I need to show you something, and my arthritis is acting up today. Taking it to you at McClintoch and Swain, no matter how much I might enjoy it once I got there, would be difficult. Would one o’clock work for you?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  The maid was setting out a plate of sandwiches and some fruit when I arrived shortly after one. Dory was in an armchair, a cane at her side, and she greeted me warmly. I first met Dory when I was researching Chinese bronzes for a client of McClintoch & Swain. At that time, Dory was the curator of the Cottingham Museum’s Asian galleries, having been lured there from her position at one of Canada’s most prestigious galleries by Major Cottingham when he first opened the museum to house his private collection. Within five years, the Cottingham’s Asian galleries had not only expanded, but had earned an international reputation, all thanks to Dory. Everything I know about Chinese art and antiquities, I learned from Dory Matthews.

  People who knew Dory by reputation only, as a preeminent scholar of Chinese history and art, were surprised to meet her in person, not expecting the Asian woman in front of them. She got Dory from her English mother, and Matthews from her husband, the industrialist George Norfolk Matthews. Born Dorothy Zhang, or more accurately Zhang Dorothy in 1944 in Beijing, she was taken to England by her mother in 1949 as the Communists took power, eventually settling in Canada. It was a harrowing experience, she told me, getting out of China. In the chaos of that time, with so many people trying to leave the country before the Communist forces of Mao Zedong took over, she and her mother became separated from her father. She never saw him again. She was led to believe that her father had survived, but had never joined them, choosing instead to become a part of the People’s Republic of China. She believed that at one time, at least, he held a senior position in the government of Mao’s Communist China, having been a loyal supporter of Mao, most notably having accompanied Mao on the Long March in 1934. This was one of the most famous strategic retreats in history, a five-thousand-mile march that took just over a year, but which enabled Mao to break through the Koumintang lines and eventually push the Koumintang, and their leader, Chiang Kai-Shek, off the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, then called Formosa. Dory thought she might even have had other siblings in China, a half-brother or sister, although she never tried to find them. Dory’s mother remarried, whether or not exactly legally, neither I nor perhaps Dory was ever entirely sure. I think she probably just said her Chinese union wasn’t legal, and carried on.

  Once we were alone, and I was tucking into my lunch— I noticed she wasn’t eating—she began to talk. “You are aware, I’m sure, that it is not really ethical for a curator to personally collect in the area in which he or she works. My husband has collected for some years, and I gave him advice as often as I could, but never when the object he wanted could be considered Asian art. But now that I am under no such restriction, I feel that I can get into the market, if I wish to do so. Would you agree?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Good,” she said. “I was worried what you would think about that.”

  “Why would you? I’m assuming you’re not trying to smuggle antiquities out of some country, or buy on the black market.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Do you know how my stepfather made his fortune?” she said at last.

  I decided I’d better stop stuffing my face with her lovely homemade sandwiches—such a nice change from hotel fare—and pay attention, as this conversation did not seem to be following a nicely logical path, and there were some undercurrents, possibly disturbing ones. “Didn’t you tell me he imported china and porcelain, some of it from Occupied Japan after the war? Or was it Hong Kong?”

  “Both,” she said. “That’s how he made his living. He made his fortune by importing very high-end Chinese antiquities, by which I mean very old imperial treasures, sometimes even older than that, a lot of them smuggled out of China and into Hong Kong, where they joined his regular shipments. He used a contact of my mother’s to do so, a high party official in Mao’s regime, someone I have come to believe was my father. If so, my father had no compunction feathering his nest by selling whatever he could get his hands on, and in his position that was quite a bit, and my stepfather had no compunction expediting its passage out of the country, and making a good deal of money for himself as well.”

  “I can understand why this would bother you for any number of reasons,” I said carefully. “I’m not sure, though, what you mean by ‘smuggled.” It really depends when the objects came out of China, as you know only too well. There was a period when a lot of antiques and antiquities were considered decadent imperialist trappings by the Communist Party, and nobody cared if they were taken out of the country or even destroyed.“

  “It may have been legally acceptable, but it was never morally acceptable,” Dory said. “So is what I am about to ask you to do legal? Of course it is. Ethical? I suppose that depends on what I propose to do with what you get for me—if, that is, you agree to do it. I promised to show you something. Would you mind going over to the walnut cabinet? On the lower left side there is something wrapped in cloth. I want you to bring it here so that we can look at it together.”

  “It” was an exquisite rectangular silver box with a hinged and rounded lid, of a shape sometimes referred to as a casket. Incised on the top was a bird, and a scene showing a number of women together in a garden wrapped around the four sides. “May I open it?” I asked. I believe I was whispering.

  Dory nodded. Inside, along the sides and bottom, were Chinese characters. I couldn’t read them, but I thought perhaps Dory could. I closed it carefully.

  “Beautiful,” I said. “Very old.” I waited for her to say something.

  “T’ang dynasty,” she said. “You know when that was, of course.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’ll remember. T’ang dynasty is, just a minute, 618 to 907. Capital was Chang’an, essentially where the city of Xi’an is now. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty, and followed by the Five Dynasties Era and then the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties in that order. How am I doing?”

  Dory smiled. “For a time I thought you would never learn! I know you regarded me as a stubborn old bat for making you memorize all the dynasties, but really, if you don’t know your dynasties, you don’t know your Chinese history, and for sure you don’t know your Chinese antiques.”

  “Not so. I never thought you were a stubborn old bat, and furthermore, I like to think I’m your most accomplished student,” I said, and she actually laughed, something I hadn’t heard her do much lately.

  “I think you may well be,” she said.

  I looked at it a little longer. “Beautiful workmanship,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. But what is it exactly you want me to do, Dory
?”

  Rather than answering me directly, she slowly and painfully reached for something in a magazine rack to one side of her chair, and set in front of me the catalog for the annual Oriental auction at Molesworth & Cox in New York. A yellow sticky marked a page on which was shown another silver box.

  “You’re selling it,” I said. “No, just a minute.” I eyed the box in front of me. It was about six inches long, four inches wide, and maybe six or seven inches high measured to the top of the domed lid. “The one for sale looks very similar, but I think it’s slightly smaller all ‘round.”

  “Very observant,” Dory said. “And you are quite right. They are almost identical, although I believe the text inside is different, the scene depicted on the outside is as well, and mine is larger. I think there is a series of boxes designed to fit inside each other, like those Russian dolls. There will be a third in silver even bigger than this one, and possibly a fourth box in wood rather than silver—the largest, at least that is what my stepfather said—but of course the wood is unlikely to have survived. The silver, in the proper circumstances, would have.”

  “You want me to go to New York next week to bid on this box for you,” I said. My heart soared. I’d still be staying in a hotel, of course, but it would be a different hotel. Even better, I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder for gangsters every time I left it, nor would I trip over Rob’s feet every time I turned around.