15
Lady Li felt completely content lying in Inspector Gong’s arms, arms that were smooth and muscular thanks to his years in the army. His chest and stomach were similarly chiseled, and she enjoyed running her fingers over every inch of his body.
She was not sure what had come over her. She was so worried about becoming a bitter old maid and he was there. She saw a chance to take something for herself and she did not look back. She had no regrets. She would have her maid prepare some liangyang soup to prevent any unwanted consequences.
She had been a little concerned that he would not want to sleep with her. After all, the situation, investigating a murder, was not the ideal time to be giving into their carnal desires. And she was not the ideal bedmate for a young, strong man like him. She wasn’t sure how old he was, but men were not considered old until they were into their graying years. They could marry and sire children until they died. She was a widow, a mother, considered old and used at only twenty-five. But when she offered herself to him, he did not hesitate, except to make sure it was what she really wanted to do. He seemed to have no qualms about her body. While they were making love, he seemed to worship her, taking and giving pleasure in equal measure. He was not as experienced as she had expected a man of his age to be, but he followed her gentle directions and she enjoyed teaching him, being in control a bit.
But all good things must come to an end, and he had to leave before they were caught.
“You should go,” she finally said, but neither made a move to do so.
Inspector Gong ran his fingers up and down her arm as he stared silently at the canopy over her bed.
“You will need to leave before first light. The guards won’t be able to turn a blind eye in the daytime.”
He sighed. “I know. I just…” He didn’t have to say it. Neither of them wanted this night to end. Was it for the same reasons? Soon, she would also have to leave the Forbidden City. Whether they found out who killed Suyi or not, she would have to return to her home. He would not be able to visit her there. Even if she did instruct Eunuch Bai to sneak him into her room after her daughters were asleep, what was the point? They could never be more than lovers. It was against the law for Han and Manchu to marry. Even if she did marry, her reputation would be tainted. If they somehow received permission to marry, Inspector Gong would then be in complete control of her money and property. No, they could not be together. Tonight was just…she just had needs that had not been met in many years. Taking a man to bed once in a while was one thing, but taking a lover or even considering marriage was not something she could do.
She sat up and pulled on her robe. “Do you know the way out?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “This place is like a maze.” He got up and put his clothes back on.
“What is next?” she asked as she dressed so she could show him the way out. “Where will your investigation take you?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “We know the killer is here. We know the murder weapon is here. I am not sure what I can do on the outside to find out who killed Lady Yun.”
“Did the doctor say anything else? Anything that could help us track down the killer?”
He shook his head. “She was being slowly poisoned over time. But then someone killed her in a fit of rage, stabbing her with a hairpin. Just keep doing what you are doing. Find out who hated her enough to want her to suffer. Then find out who she enraged enough that they would kill her in the heat of the moment. My money is still on the empress though.”
“I’m going to prove you wrong on that point,” Lady Li said with a smile.
“For your sake, Lady Li, I hope you are right.”
She started to open the door, but he blocked her way as he leaned in to kiss her once more. She let him. Oh, how she would love for him to be in her bed again.
“Maybe,” he whispered between kisses, “when this is over…”
“No,” she said, pulling away and looking down. “We can’t talk about this.”
He nodded and opened the door. She led him back to where they had met, across from the west gate. He slipped to the door in the darkness and then he was gone.
After the sun rose, Lady Li ordered Chu to prepare the liangyang soup. She only hoped the girl was too innocent to know what it was for. Lady Li then went to attend the empress. She wanted to talk to her about Te-hai. She didn’t want to reveal exactly what she knew, that would be too dangerous, but she wanted to get a better idea of just how much power and prestige the empress had bestowed on him.
When she arrived, the other ladies-in-waiting were just putting the finishing touches on the empress’s hair.
“Ah! Lady Li!” she exclaimed with a wide smile. “Please, come here. Go away, girls.” She dismissed the other ladies, who scowled at Lady Li as they passed. “Can you fix this pin to my hair? You know just how I like it.”
The empress held out a pin with a large jade butterfly on it. The empress loved butterflies. The robe she was wearing was embroidered with green and pink butterflies. From the butterfly on the pin, three long strands of pearls and gold beads dangled.
Lady Li took the pin in her hand and affixed it to the empress’s batou so that the strands would hang just to the right side of her face.
“Oh, perfect!” the empress said as she preened in the mirror, turning her face this way and that. The empress was still quite young and retained many of her girlish mannerisms, at least in private. Those who knew her personally would find it hard to believe that someone so young had staged a coup, overthrowing China’s most powerful ministers and becoming empress. Many people believed she was ruthless and cruel, and indeed she could be if the situation called for it. But here now, as she pursed her lips in the mirror and fussed over picking just the right necklace to wear, she seemed like any other young lady of means. One who should only be concerned with pretty clothes and giving orders to the maids who helped raise her children. Lady Li didn’t want to believe that this woman, her friend, the woman she had helped put on the throne, would murder Suyi.
The empress finally seemed to be satisfied with her appearance and stood to leave, but then she wobbled a bit. Lady Li stepped forward, taking her hand.
“Are you all right, my lady?” she asked.
“It’s nothing,” the empress said. “Just a little dizzy spell from standing up too quickly. Come, I’m famished.”
They went to the empress’s private dining hall. The long table was laid out with over one hundred plates of food: savory meats simmered in sauces, sweet pastries, fruits from the southern province of Canton, and even chocolates sent over from foreign diplomats. The empress sat at the head of the table and a eunuch put a few selections on a plate in front of her.
“I’ll take my leave for now, Your Majesty,” Lady Li said. The empress would typically eat alone. No one was allowed to eat in the empress’s presence, so it would be one of the few moments her maids and eunuchs had away from her demands, except those who served her food.
“Do stay,” she said. “I’m so lonely. I simply hate having all this food here and no one to share it with. And I have just had no appetite at all lately. I’m hungry, but once I start to eat, I can barely stomach a bite. Please join me.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Lady Li said as she stood about halfway down the table.
“No,” the empress said as she reached over and pushed a chair out. “Come here. Sit with me. Eat!”
Lady Li looked around the room. There was only one eunuch standing by, in case the empress called for anything, and he gave her a confused look. She walked up to the empress and sat precariously on the edge of the chair.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “It is most unusual.”
“I know,” the empress replied. “But I got so used to Lady Yun being here, I just can’t stand to eat alone anymore.”
“You would eat with Lady Yun?” Lady Li asked as she sat a little more comfortably in the chair and reached for a plum.
&n
bsp; “Oh, yes. Here, you must try this duck in a sweet red sauce. I don’t know what it is, but it is just marvelous.”
“How did that come about?” Lady Li asked. “Lady Yun eating with you? That is quite out of the ordinary. I never ate with you when I was here before.”
“You know, I’m not quite sure. We were just together so much, it just seemed natural for her to stay with me as we ate.”
“No wonder the other women were jealous,” Lady Li said.
“Were they?” the empress asked as she ladled sauce into a bowl for Lady Li. “I don’t pay attention to such idle gossip. I have a country to run. I was a lowly court lady once. I know how those snakes are. I have to ignore it or it would consume every minute of the day.”
“Do you also ignore the gossip about Te-hai?” she asked.
The empress froze and shot Lady Li a sharp look. She stopped smiling and put the ladle back in its bowl. “What do you mean?” she asked cautiously. “What gossip?”
Lady Li took a small bite of the duck that the empress had served her and replied casually, “Just that he is rather sure of himself, of his place. He doesn’t give the ladies and the ministers the respect he should.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the empress replied, her smile returning, obviously relieved. “Te-hai is a perfect representative of court etiquette.”
“Of course,” Lady Li replied.
After they finished eating, they went to the empress’s sitting room and chatted while they did some embroidery work. The other ladies-in-waiting joined them. There was Lady Song, the daughter of a court minister, Lady Deng, who was engaged to one of Prince Kung’s younger brothers, and Lady Bao, the daughter of a diplomat who was currently serving in Japan. They all sat amongst themselves, chatting away, practically ignoring the empress even though she should have been the main object of their attention. Lady Li thought that if any of these young women had killed Lady Yun out of jealousy, she would now be vying for the empress’s favor. But they all acted as if they couldn’t care less about the empress.
Lady Li tried to engage the girls in conversation, but they would only give curt, one-word answers in reply. The longer they all sat together, the more irritated the empress became.
“You see?” the empress finally whispered to Lady Li. “You wonder why I am so bored and lonely? You see how they ignore me?”
It was odd, but Lady Li did not have an explanation or a solution. She was about to suggest they all take a walk in the garden together when the three girls began to giggle loudly. At this, the empress’s head shot up, anger in her eyes. “Why don’t you all just…ah!” She screamed as she looked back down at her hand. In her anger, the empress had managed to stab herself in the hand with an embroidery needle. Lady Li pulled out a handkerchief and rushed to the empress’s side. She pressed the handkerchief to the wound. It was small, but it was bleeding enough for the empress to make a fuss. The other ladies also moved to her side and offered to help her. The empress’s face softened as she basked in their attention.
“I think I will just go have a rest,” she said. “Will one of you be a dear and have some calming tea sent to my bed chamber?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the girls all replied in unison.
Lady Li removed her handkerchief and saw that the small puncture wound had already stopped bleeding. She waited until the empress and the other ladies had left before going over to a water basin to rinse the blood out of the cloth. When she opened the handkerchief to place it in the water, she gasped.
The empress’s blood was black.
16
Inspector Gong felt like an idiot. He felt helpless. Lady Li was risking her life, putting herself on a collision course with a killer while he was trapped outside and he could do nothing about it.
Lady Li…In a way, she wasn’t helping. She was a distraction. A beautiful, sexy distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. He had to get his mind off that woman and on the case. Maybe he was relying on her too much. If he didn’t have Lady Li to help him, what would he do next?
Deep in one of the city’s hutongs, down a dark alley so narrow barely a small cart could pass, was an old Buddhist temple. Buddhism was a foreign import, and still enjoyed only dubious success in the country. Unlike Daoism and Confucianism, schools of thought founded by Chinese scholars, Buddhism came from India. Even though small pockets of the religion had existed in China since ancient times, it grew exponentially during the reign of Empress Wu. A devout Buddhist, she patroned Buddhist monks and nuns and their temples. She gave the religion a legitimacy it had never seen before. Buddhism was once again seeing a resurgence of favor under the rule of the current empress, also a Buddhist. The temple Inspector Gong was seeking was one built during the reign of Empress Wu.
The alley leading to the temple was lined with shops for the dead, places where people could buy incense, paper money, paper houses, paper horses and livestock, and many other items that could be burned to accompany the dead to the afterlife. Other shops held the large gray memorial stones that would be carved with the names of the dead and the names of their family members and ancestors and placed in the family temple. There were also stalls for fortunetellers and matchmakers. Down one particular passageway, there were men and women who dealt in something much darker.
Some of the women in this area didn’t even have stalls, they just sat on the street. There were some shops that were so dark, Inspector Gong wondered how anyone inside could see anything. If anyone wanted to buy a poison that bordered on the realm of black magic, it would be here. Unless the killer made it herself, but that wasn’t a lead Inspector Gong could follow.
“I know what you are looking for,” he heard a dry and cracked voice say.
He turned toward the voice and saw a little old woman, who was a hundred if she was a day, sitting on a low stool. “And how do you know that, laoma?” he asked, using the honorific yet familiar term for an older woman.
“Because it was only a matter of time. No one comes here looking for the most evil of poison who won’t leave a trail to follow.”
Inspector Gong crouched down next to the woman. “Can you tell me who it was?” he asked.
“Of course not, foolish boy,” she said. “He did his best to conceal his identity of course. But it was a man, a rich man, an important man.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?” he asked.
“Well, he dressed like a poor man that day, but I had seen him before, when he would accompany his wife to the temple. He would wear a dark blue chaofu with dragons embroidered on it.”
Inspector Gong let out a breath. A chaofu—ceremonial gown—embroidered with dragons would only be worn by a court official. That meant that whoever bought the gu was a court minister, one of the empress’s inner circle of advisors. But there were many of them. He had to narrow it down further.
“Do you remember anything else about his clothes? The insignia on the front of his chaofu?”
“It was a golden bird,” she said.
A golden bird? It had to be the golden pheasant. The emblem of a second-class court official. A second-class official was a high-ranking person indeed, just below the court princes such as Prince Kung. There were only three, maybe four men who held such a title now.
He handed the woman a few coins as thanks for the information. “Anything else you can tell me, laoma?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not about that man, but I can tell you that if you keep pursuing that woman, it will not end well.”
Inspector Gong, usually adept at hiding his emotions when conducting an interview, felt his face drop and his heart stop. “What…what do you mean?” he asked.
“She is not one of us,” she said, meaning Han. She was obviously Han since she had bound feet. “There is a reason they are separate from us. They think it is to keep themselves pure, but it is a protection for us from Heaven. They are just foreigners. Eventually, they will fall, and they will drag everyone they can down with them.”
&n
bsp; “Be careful, laoma,” Inspector Gong said. “To speak so of the emperor in such a way, it is treason.”
She waved him away and slowly stood, leaning on a crooked walking stick for support. “It is only truth,” she said. “What I say is true, of the Manchu and that woman. Leave her alone, Gong Anguo.”
“How do you know my name?” he asked. Just then, a small group of people made their way down the alley. Inspector Gong stepped back to let them pass. When the crowd cleared, Inspector Gong looked again, and the old woman was gone.
17
Lady Li retched into a bowl. She had eaten from the empress’s table. That had to be where the poison was coming from. She said Lady Yun had eaten with her as well. That must be how Lady Yun was poisoned. The poison wasn’t meant for Lady Yun. It was meant for the empress! But how? The empress’s food was prepared by her own cooks, people who didn’t prepare food for anyone else in the palace. And the food was tasted by several testers who all tried the food before it was sent to her table. But if the food only contained a small amount of poison, the testers, and the empress, wouldn’t get sick immediately after trying it. It could take days or weeks for the poison to build up in her system enough to kill her. How long had this been going on? Had Suyi discovered what was happening? Is that why she was murdered? Was she killed by the poisoner?
But what would Lady Li do now? She had to stop the empress from eating her food, that was certain. But how could she do that without revealing why she was there? And if the empress stopped eating, or if she ordered an investigation to find out who was poisoning the food, the killer could flee. She had to find a more covert way to find out who was behind the poisoning. She needed help.
Murder in the Forbidden City (Qing Dynasty Mysteries Book 1) Page 11
