The Russian Concubine Read Online Free PDF

bickering neighbours? The windows of the houses were draped with oiled strips of paper, cheaper than glass, so where was the sound of pots and pans? Just the squeal, over and over, of the barrow’s wheel and the whine of black flies around her ears. She drew a long breath and was shocked to find her palms slick with sweat. She turned to run.
    But from nowhere a scrawny figure in black stood in her path. ‘Ni zhege yochou yochun de ji!’ he shouted in her face.
    Lydia couldn’t understand his words but when he spat on the ground and hissed at her, their meaning was only too clear. He was very thin and despite the oppressive heat he wore a fur cap with ear flaps, below which hung wisps of grey hair. But his eyes were bright and fierce. He shook a tattooed fist in her face. Stupidly her eyes focused only on the dirt beneath his torn fingernails. She tried to think straight, but the thudding of her heart in her chest was getting in the way.
    ‘Let me pass, boy,’ she managed to say. It was meant to be sharp. In control. Like Sir Edward Carlisle. But it didn’t come out right.
    ‘Wo zhishi yao nide qian , fanqui.’
    Again that word. Fanqui. Foreign Devil.
    She tried to step around him but he was too fast. He blocked her way. Behind her the squeal of the wheelbarrow stopped, and when she glanced over her shoulder the woman and the wheelbarrow man were now standing together in the middle of the alleyway, swathed in dark shadows, watching her every move with hard eyes.
    A thin hand suddenly clamped like a wire noose around her wrist.
    She panicked and started to scream. Then the demons of hell itself seemed to let loose. The street filled with noise and shouts as the woman ran forward, shrieking, on hobbled feet, and the man abandoned his barrow and hurled himself with a growl toward Lydia, a long curved scythe at his side. And all the time the old devil’s grip on her wrist tightened, his nails sinking like teeth into her flesh the more she struggled.
    With no sound a fourth person stepped into the street. He was a young man, not much older than Lydia herself but tall for a Chinese, with a long pale neck and close-cropped hair and wearing a black V-neck tunic over loose trousers that flowed when he moved. His eyes were quick and decisive but there was a stillness to his face as he took in the situation. Anger flared in his dark eyes as he stared at the old leech hanging on to her wrist, and it gave Lydia a flicker of hope. She started to shout for help, but before the words were out of her mouth the world seemed to blur with movement. A whirling foot crashed full into the centre of the old man’s chest. Lydia clearly heard ribs splintering, and her tormentor was sent sprawling onto the ground with a yelp of pain.
    She stumbled as he fell, then caught herself, but instead of fleeing, she remained where she stood, eyes wide with astonishment. Entranced by the movements of the young Chinese man. He seemed to float in the air, hover there, and then swing out an arm or a leg as fast as a cobra strike. It reminded her of the Russian ballet that Madame Medinsky had taken her to at the Victoria Theatre last year. She’d heard about such fighting skills but never seen them in action before. The speed of it made her head swim. She watched him approach the man with the scythe and swing backward with elbows raised and hand outstretched, like a bird about to take flight, and then his whole body twisted and turned and became airborne. His arm shot out and crashed down on the back of the man’s neck before the scythe could even begin its swing. The Chinese woman’s red mouth opened in a wide scream of terror.
    The young man turned to face Lydia. His black eyes were deep-set, long and almond-shaped, and as Lydia looked into them an old memory stirred inside her. She’d seen that look before, that exact expression of concern on a face looking down at her in the snow, but so long ago she’d almost forgotten it. She was so used to