deep. “And I will simply learn the rest.”
Arthur screamed again and felt the icy sting of the blade slicing into his flesh.
His vision grew hazy and ethereal.
As if in a dream he saw the deadly club hover in the air above his head as Burleigh’s man took aim for the killing blow. It seemed to hang there for the longest moment…
And then… Arthur could not be certain, for his mental acuity was occupied wholly with clinging to the last shreds of consciousness. But it seemed to him as if, inexplicably, the crude weapon jerked in the attacker’s hand and struck its wielder in the face with a force strong enough to shatter bone. The cudgel, which appeared to have taken on a life of its own, then whirled in the air, striking the second thug a wallop across the nose and continuing on its arc, narrowly missing Burleigh, who dodged aside just in time to avoid a blow that, had it connected with his temple, would have cracked his skull.
The knife blade flashed in the dingy light-a cruel and cutting arc. Then, curiously, it halted in midflight, hovered, and spun, spent to the ground as an agonized cry split the warm evening air.
Arthur sensed, rather than saw, a rush of movement. Something-a hand perhaps or, more strangely, a foot- swinging lazily through the air to catch a forward-hurtling thug in the throat, crushing his windpipe; Burleigh’s man dropped heavily to the ground, clawing at his neck and gasping for air.
There was an incoherent shout.
The sound seemed to Arthur to come from a very great distance above, or possibly from somewhere deep inside him. Someone seemed to be calling on someone to stand and fight. Dutifully, Arthur struggled to rise, his head throbbing, his eyes bulging with the effort. The sound of his own blood surged in his ears with the roar of wild ocean surf.
Dizziness overwhelmed him, and he fell back… but not before he saw an angel.
The heavenly figure was swathed in glowing white silk and took the form of a young Chinese woman, tall and lithe, with long hair black as jet, braided to her slender waist. Her face was a smooth oval of absolute beauty and composure, and Arthur knew he had never seen anything so lovely in all his life. The angelic creature’s movements were performed with a calm, unhurried grace as, with an exquisite kick to the forehead of a charging attacker, she snapped the fellow’s neck, sending him crashing to the dust in a quivering heap of twisted limbs. Pirouetting with a dancer’s poise, she lightly turned to address pale-faced Burleigh, who was now backing away, stumbling, cursing, and cradling a loose and strengthless arm that appeared to have adopted a wholly unnatural bend.
Arthur, overcome at last by pain and shock, allowed himself to lie back and close his eyes. When he opened them again, the white-clad angel was bending over him, cradling his head in her lap. “Peace, my friend,” she breathed, and her voice was the soothing music of paradise.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and tried to lift his hand to her face. The effort brought pain in shimmering silver cascades that stole the breath from his lungs.
Laying a fingertip to his lips, she hushed him and smoothed back the hair from his forehead. “Rest now,” she said. “Help is coming.”
In that moment, the pain of his wounds receded, ebbing away on the dulcet notes of her low, whispered voice. Bliss enfolded him, and he lay gazing up into the most beautiful dark almond-shaped eyes he could conceive- and would happily have spent an eternity in such delightful repose. Then, wrapped in the warmth of the knowledge that he would live and not die, he felt himself lifted up and carried on light wings from the derelict yard that was to have been his pitiful grave.
He was roused again some while later to the sensation of being laid upon a bed of fragrant linen in a room aglow with candlelight. There were other figures floating around him now-more angels, perhaps?-and one of these was dabbing at his seeping wounds with a warm, damp cloth that smelled of camphor and stung him however gently applied. The pain caused him to cry out, whereupon another angel applied a folded cloth to his nose. He breathed in heavy, sick-sweet vapours, and the room with its heavenly beings grew dim and vanished into a realm of white and silence.
It was pain that brought him to his senses once more, to find himself in a dim room, covered by a thin sheet and shaking uncontrollably. The smell of burning spices and oil in a pan, mingled with the barking of a dog, made him heave violently, but his stomach was empty and nothing came up.
Arthur lay back, panting and sweating, his head and chest and side burning as if live coals had been placed beneath his skin. When he could open his eyes again, he looked around. The room was small and neat-bare wooden floors, grass matting on unadorned walls, a low three-legged stool, and a bed-the bed a simple straw-stuffed pallet; a roll of woven bamboo strips covered a wide door half open to a tiny garden. Through the slits of bamboo, he could see a plum tree and, beneath it, a large copper basin of water. In the shade of the tree sat his old friend, the master tattooist, Wu Chen Hu, his expressionless gaze fixed in meditation upon the surface of the water in the basin, where a plum leaf floated.
Arthur raised his hand to wave and made to call to his friend, but even that small exertion proved such a fierce and insistent agony that the effort lapsed as soon as it began. Instead, he drew a deep breath and held it until the pain subsided, then turned his attention to his wounds. He could see little, for they were covered with strips of cloth that had been soaked in some kind of aromatic liquid. Gingerly, and with the minimum of movement, he lifted the edge of one of the cloths and saw an ugly, ragged cut, its red, inflamed edges oozing blood and pus.
He had just replaced the cloth and was about to close his eyes against the throbbing in his head when there was a movement in the doorway. He turned on the pillow to see a young Chinese woman enter the room, carrying a steaming bowl. She was dressed all in white with long, black, braided hair, and he recognized her at once.
“You.” Arthur sighed. “You are the angel of my dream.”
Her perfect lips curved in a smile. “You are alive still. That is good.”
“It was you who saved me,” he continued, his voice an ineffectual whisper. “My angel.”
“Please,” she said, placing the bowl on the floor beside the bed. “What is ain-jel?”
“A creature sent by God,” replied Arthur, “to be a protector and helpmate of man.”
“Ah, anjo,” she said, then smiled and dipped her head. “For you, I am pleased to be ain-jel.” She drew the low stool close, seating herself primly on it. With the most graceful and gentle fingers, she peeled away the cloth covering his wounds, rolling the strips up and placing them into the hot liquid in the bowl.
“You speak English,” observed Arthur.
“Father sent me to Jesuit School. They teach me very well.”
Arthur’s eyes widened with surprise. “Xian-Li?”
The young woman smiled and dipped her head. “I am. And you are Master Arthur.”
“Xian-Li, the last time I saw you…” He fell silent looking at her, amazed at the transformation as if it had taken place before his very eyes. “You have grown into a beautiful woman, Xian-Li.”
“And you have been hit on the head,” she replied, carefully removing another strip of cloth. The bandage stuck to the skin and pulled at the wound, making Arthur wince. “So sorry.”
“No,” he said, “you continue. I am sure it is doing me a world of good.”
“So sorry, too, because I came so late.”
“So late?”
“To save you injury,” she said. “Father foresaw trouble. We went to inn and waited. When you did not come out, father went in. But you had gone. It was a little time to find you.”
“Yet, you found me,” replied Arthur. “For that I will be forever in your debt.”
She smiled.
“It is a service I must repay,” he told her. “I owe you my life.”
“You owe me new shoes,” she corrected lightly. She indicated her feet, and he saw that her blue silk slippers were soiled and stained with blood.
He smiled. “As soon as I am better, we will go out together, you and I, and we will buy you the best shoes in all Macau. On that, you have my sacred vow.”
CHAPTER 19
