by Elsa Hart
There was no indication that Sun was present. A quick consultation with the dense agenda printed neatly in Li Du’s own hand informed him that the chief inspector was scheduled to meet that afternoon with merchants from Shanxi about expanding their temple to the horse god. The addition would necessitate the demolition of an adjacent temple that, they argued, was so neglected that it had become more of an insult than an honor to the god for whom it had been built. The merchants wanted Sun to take their proposal to the Ministry of Rites. This meant they would be treating him to an afternoon of Shanxi delicacies and entertainment. Li Du returned the agenda to its shelf. It seemed the murders at the Black Tile Factory had not affected daily operations. He took a deep breath and went to his desk.
As he had done almost daily for the past two years, he deposited his satchel on a wobbly stool in the corner and perused the stack of papers that had made their way from Sun’s office to his own. Today, he found a collection of invitations awaiting the chief inspector’s reply, a request from a local temple for a poem that would lend official consequence to a commemorative plaque, and a letter from a retired scholar asking for any available information on the history of the North Borough’s oldest trees, to be used in his forthcoming Guide to the Ancient Sights of the Capital.
By the time Li Du had finished, the last of the phoenix-printed ink cake was gone, his ink stone was covered in a drying coat of black, and his fingers were stiff. He had completed in two hours enough paperwork to account for two days, which meant he could devote what remained of the afternoon to the question that never stopped pulling at the edges of his mind. It was the question that had kept him in the capital as lonely days turned to lonely weeks and months.
He stood up, went to a cabinet, and opened one of its numerous black-lacquered drawers. From its deepest recess, he withdrew the thin sheaf of documents he had taken from the Ministry of Punishments a week earlier and had not yet made time to read. If he didn’t return it to the ministry soon, he risked the discovery of its absence from a cobwebbed corner of the Hall of Records, or worse, the discovery of its presence in his office. He had just taken a seat and set the papers in front of him when there was a knock on his door. Before he could speak, or move, it opened.
“Are those the notes from the Black Tile Factory? May I look?” The question came from Yuan, a round-faced clerk with perpetually flushed cheeks and buoyant affect. Yuan had failed his first attempt at the examinations, but had upheld his reputation as the lighthearted joker of the office by confidently asserting that he had done it on purpose. The questions, he insisted, had not given him the opportunity to demonstrate the full range of his intellect, and he could only hope this year’s prompts would meet his high standard. He liked to brag that he was not even studying, but Li Du had noted the dark circles beneath the young clerk’s eyes, and the persistent flutter that had recently manifested in his right eyelid.
“They are not,” Li Du replied, quickly placing a book on top of the pages in front of him. “I haven’t started to write the report. The chief inspector has barely begun his investigation.”
As Yuan approached the desk, Li Du saw that he was not alone. Mi was behind him. Li Du kept his expression blank, but couldn’t help resting a hand protectively on the book he had placed over the ministry documents. “But will there be much of an investigation?” asked Yuan, with cheerful curiosity. “Everyone is saying Hong Wenbin is guilty. Didn’t he confess when the chief inspector interviewed him?”
Li Du shook his head. “He confessed to being inebriated, not to committing murder. He insists he didn’t kill them.”
“That’s probably because he hasn’t yet realized that the law protects him,” said Mi, in a condescending tone. “As soon as someone explains Article Two-Eighty-Five, and he understands that he is safe, I doubt it will take him long to admit to everything. He may even enjoy confessing.”
“Enjoy it?” asked Yuan, raising his brows inquiringly.
Mi shrugged. “It would give him back some of the pride he lost when he found his wife with a lover.”
Yuan considered this, then shook his head. “If Hong is clever, he won’t confess too hastily. Think about the parties involved. His wife’s family won’t be able to make a case against him, not when there is such clear evidence of her disloyalty. But her lover’s family—that’s different. I hear he was a high-ranking ministry official. His family could say that the law should not protect a drunkard who murdered their son. If they do, Magistrate Yin will have to find a way to appease them.” He turned to Li Du. “What was it like to be there in the room with the bodies? Is it true that they died in a lovers’ embrace, and that she didn’t have her robes on? Was she as beautiful as they say?”
Li Du had listened to the exchange between Mi and Yuan with growing anxiety. Unwilling to remove his hand from where it rested between the incriminating documents and the curious clerks, he had kept it where it was. He imagined he saw Mi’s eyes flick down to the corner of the page peeking out from the book that covered it. Now, Yuan’s question drew him unwillingly back to the blood-spattered room at the Black Tile Factory. He saw the still body of the woman on the floor, helpless to resist a city that would dismiss her death as the deserved fate of an adulteress. “There was no embrace,” he said, with quiet condemnation. “It is not even certain that they were lovers.”
“Whether it’s a simple case or a complicated one,” said Mi, “I would not want to be chosen to write the report. I hope, for the sake of our office, that Magistrate Yin takes the case away quickly.”
Yuan nodded in fervent agreement. “A wise clerk stays far away from murders,” he said. “Think of Xi.”
Li Du understood the reference. Xi, who had been employed as a clerk at the North Borough Office before Li Du’s return to the capital, had attained almost legendary status among the clerks as a cautionary tale, and was still a frequent topic of conversation. Ambitious and envied, Xi had passed the examinations with a high score and received a coveted assignment as an assistant to a provincial magistrate in Guangzhou. Wanting to prove himself, Xi had volunteered to write the report of a case involving the murder of an incense seller outside a temple. But Xi had made several small clerical errors in his assembly of the evidence, which would likely have gone unnoticed, had not the murderer been sentenced to death.
The Emperor required every case resulting in a sentence of execution to be sent to him for review, whether the crime occurred in an elite neighborhood of the capital, or in a province on the other side of the empire. Xi’s report had been duly sent to the capital, where the Emperor had personally identified the mistakes, and chastised Xi for laziness and incompetence. The incident had ended Xi’s career, and his former coworkers still cringed whenever they remembered how, prior to his downfall, they had coveted his position.
Sensing that Yuan was about to renew his questions, Li Du spoke quickly. “If neither of you is busy,” he said, indicating the uneven piles on his desk, “I have several assignments I could easily relinquish. I’m sure Scholar Lao would appreciate additional information about these trees of historical interest, and—” He stopped, seeing that he had achieved the desired effect. Both clerks were retreating to the door with muttered references to the numerous assignments awaiting them at their own desks.
When they had gone, Li Du exhaled slowly, and removed a damp palm from where it had pressed down on the book he had used to conceal the ministry records. He spent the ensuing hours reading, only faintly aware of the rattle of the outer door as the clerks went home. When he finally looked up, he could hear the servants in the courtyard preparing to sweep the offices. The sky was lavender and the air through the window was cool. He looked at the pages. They contained nothing of use to him. The information was as broken as the strands of cobweb that clung to the edges of the paper. With a sigh, he cleaned his brushes, blinking to keep his eyelids from closing.
As he picked up his satchel, he hesitated, aware of the heavy exhaustion that had fallen over him. T
wice he started out the door, and twice he stopped. Finally, he set down his satchel again and went into Sun’s office. There, he opened the box of evidence retrieved from the Black Tile Factory and took out a small envelope made of oilcloth. He removed the paper it protected and smoothed it out on Sun’s empty desk. It was the note that had been found near the body of Madam Hong.
After reading it again, he returned it to its place and went back to his office. He took from his bag the book he had purchased from Wu’s store. Holding the cover to the last of the light from the window, he read the title embossed in gold. The Bitter Plum. He opened it and began to skim the elegant lines of text, his finger hovering just above the words. Time went by, and he turned the pages. He removed his spectacles and rubbed the backs of his ears, where the smooth metal bit into his skin. Finally, just as it had become almost too dark to see, he lowered his finger and touched a sentence. He tapped it several times. He had been right. Well, he thought, as he gathered his belongings, put on his hat, and left the office with a rattle and scrape of the old door, that changes the situation.
* * *
Twilight had fallen, and the stone walls of the city were turning black against the dimming sky. Li Du walked briskly through narrow lanes that echoed with the clatter of hooves. Riders emerged without warning from connecting alleys, their features indistinct in the gathering gloom. They passed without acknowledgment, hurrying to their destinations.
There was a reason for the urgency shared each evening by noble and commoner alike. With the coming of night, the city closed. The thirteen great doors of the outer wall were hauled shut by straining soldiers, sealing the capital from external threats. But danger from without was not the only concern. There were also walls to separate the Inner City from the Outer City and divide the boroughs. Hundreds of wooden doors, guarded by soldiers, barred the alleys. Citizens and residents who wished to spend the night in their own beds had until the drum towers announced the first watch of night to reach their neighborhoods. After that, movement was almost impossible. Anonymous movement was the prerogative only of gods and ghosts.
Li Du followed his usual path up through the center of the North Borough, which required him to cross only one wide, busy intersection. In a city that discouraged public gatherings, street intersections were among the few public spaces expansive enough to accommodate groups. Caishikou was one of the largest. It was the site of a regular vegetable market, but that was not its only purpose. In the early days of winter, when frost began to creep at the edges of ponds, Caishikou became the execution ground, where crowds roared with approbation as the executioners swung their heavy swords.
The space was bordered on one side by a canal. A group of mounted soldiers occupied the bridge. Li Du waited for them to cross, looking down at the water. There had been no executions since the previous winter, but small ripples, restless spirits, capped with lantern light, lapped sadly against white stone. When the riders were gone, he crossed into the wide-open space. A group of young men exited the courtyard of a nearby tavern. Their voices were loud, animated by social competition and liberated by wine.
“They won’t ask that question.”
“But the fortune-teller said—”
“The fortune-teller can’t tell you what will be on the test. What a stupid thing to ask!”
“Shh. Which way is the inn?”
This was met with laughter, sharp and aggressive. “Look at this country man who has come to the city.”
“I’ll wager a coin he gets lost in the examination yard.”
“Shh. Hurry, before the drums.”
Li Du watched them cross the square and alight like birds around a street vendor on the other side of it. After his return to Beijing, Li Du had learned that, during his exile, a group of candidates had accused the examination officials of corruption. Sleepless, furious, impassioned, they had fashioned effigies of examiners, marched from the book market to Caishikou, and beheaded the dolls in mock executions. For this act of defiance they had themselves been put to death.
A sedan chair passed so close that Li Du could smell the musk and incense that perfumed its inhabitant. The bearers were breathing hard in their effort to deliver their charge in time to return home themselves. Reminded of the advancing hour, Li Du continued on across the intersection and into an area of dense, narrow alleys. The doors of the homes on either side of him were all shut.
He reached the final sentry post before Water Moon Temple, aware of the silent attention of the soldiers preparing to close the alley door. During the day, ministry and palace officials reigned, their robes proclaiming their status as the decision makers of the empire. But at night, the soldiers were in power. Their judgments decided the fate of nocturnal wanderers. That night, Li Du was in time to avoid an extended negotiation. He had only just passed between the guards and turned onto the temple alley when he heard the first beat of the drums.
As their final strike faded, Li Du discerned a different sound that made him stop and turn. The alley was divided by lanterns into pools of light and dark. He was certain he had heard a footstep, but he saw no one. He stood still, searching for movement. He could turn now and hurry to the door of the temple, but he was unwilling to put his back toward the presence that waited and watched from the shadows.
“Who is there?”
A figure detached itself from the dark recesses of an old, unused shrine to an obscure deity, and stepped forward into the light. Dark, voluminous clothing obscured his build, but his face was as Li Du remembered it.
“Your street is too quiet in the evening,” said Hamza. “I’ve had only cats for company, and I’ve heard all their stories before.”
Chapter 11
In the second courtyard of Water Moon Temple, outside the hall of Guanyin, stood a modest stage used for performances on holidays. Li Du and Hamza occupied one corner, a bottle of wine and a small lantern between them. It was an old lantern. Candlelight shone through the torn silk, casting ladder-like shadows across the bamboo mat that covered the stage. The courtyard was empty, as were the halls, but for the day’s lingering incense.
Hamza was sitting comfortably with his back against a painted column, his legs stretched out in front of him. “And after Sera-tsering and I saw the lost Capuchin back to Lhasa, and set him safely on his journey home to his olive trees, we two traveled together, until she chose to apprentice herself to a Tungus shamaness. We plan to meet again in three years on Turtle Mountain, which, you understand, is not a real turtle, but merely the remains of one that turned to stone an eon ago. After I parted from her, I journeyed for a time with a caravan of Russian traders. Perhaps you have noticed my costume?”
Li Du assessed his friend critically. Hamza was attired in a brown, belted tunic that fell to the tops of high leather boots. A voluminous gray hat rested at a jaunty angle across his forehead. It was easy to believe he had journeyed the long miles from Nerchinsk to Beijing, protecting carts piled high with pelts, and was now preparing to return, having traded them for Chinese silks. “The Russians have their own lodge and church in the Inner City,” said Li Du. “You would fit in very well there.”
Hamza looked pleased. “I have never told you that my mother’s family hails from the mountains between the Black and the Caspian seas. I explained this to the guards at your city gates, when they asked me.”
Li Du accepted Hamza’s statement with gently lifted eyebrows. Since he had met Hamza three years earlier, in a trading town at the border of the empire, Li Du had heard him assert at least twenty versions of his past. Hamza’s appearance offered little indication of his ancestry, or of the number of years he had lived in the world. His name, he had admitted once to Li Du, was borrowed, and age seemed, for him, to be a collection of mannerisms that he could command so as to appear closer to twenty or to forty, as he wanted. His bright, dark eyes took in their surroundings with restless interest, and he wore a short beard, which he kept meticulously groomed. He was, by profession, a storyteller.
&
nbsp; “Then you are introducing yourself as a trader from Russia?” asked Li Du.
“For the present,” said Hamza.
“I was not even aware that you spoke Russian.”
Hamza took a sip of wine. “A teacher might, perhaps, point out a fault or two in my accent, but I have always found that it is not so important to speak a language well when no one near you speaks it at all. In any case, you Chinese and Manchu don’t listen very closely to tongues other than your own.”
Unruffled by the criticism, though he himself had a good command of Manchu, Latin, French, and the Tibetan languages of the tea trade routes, Li Du nodded. “You make a reasonable point,” he acknowledged. “In fact, the Jesuits had to help broker a treaty between—” He paused deliberately. “Between your country and ours. They were the only ones who spoke all the languages required to write it.”
“Is there a treaty?” asked Hamza mildly. “That is very good to know. I have been counting on the assumption that we are not at war.”
Li Du refilled their cups. “Let me be sure I understand. You chose to enter Beijing under the assumed identity of a Russian trader, knowing neither the language of that land, nor whether it is currently at war with this one?”
Hamza was unruffled. “A storyteller must have some skill at improvisation,” he said. “I was simply taking advantage of an opportunity to practice. But aren’t you pleased that I have come? Your letter nearly failed to reach me. The courier found me just as I was preparing to depart Ordos.”
“I am pleased indeed, and grateful to you for making the journey. Did you—”
Hamza interrupted. “I did.” He straightened his shoulders and affected a lofty expression. “But do not rush my tale. As I was saying, I received your letter as I was preparing to leave Ordos, and devoted myself at once to the task you set me. After making provisions for a desert journey, I set out west across the Shamo, those indifferent and sand-choked wastes that lurk just outside the reach of your Great Wall. On the first day, I met herders and cattle. On the second, I met traders and camels. By the third, I met only a few wild asses, who clung to the shade of a dry pinewood. And by the ninth day of my journey, I met only a single falcon with feathers of white and rose gold, the color of a pale sunset reflected in a mirror.
