Jade Dragon Mountain (20 page)

Hamza whistled under his breath.

“You knew these women personally?” Li Du asked.

Bao blinked. “No—they were gone by the time I became a maid there. But Yue and Ming and Hua all say that they heard from Na, who married and went to her husband's village, that it happened that way.”

“And Lady Chen supports the magistrate in his pursuit of this opportunity in the capital?”

Bao shifted excitedly in her seat. “Lady Chen knows that if the magistrate is promoted to Beijing, he may decide not to take her with him. She is getting old, and has no sons, and he has two new wives, as well as his old ones—I hear they are very refined.”

“So Lady Chen does not want him to receive the advancement?”

Bao gave a noncommittal lift of her shoulders. “She does not want to be disgraced, or sent to live in a village. She has no family—she acts very high, but if he leaves her here she will have nothing. That is helpful information, isn't it?”

“It may be,” Li Du said. “I do not know.”

This seemed to make Bao anxious, and she said quickly, “But I know more. I saw something on the night of the murder. The magistrate said something to the doctor that the doctor did not like. It was just after the doctor looked at the body. The magistrate spoke to him very sternly. I did not hear what he said, but it looked as if he was commanding the doctor to do something that the doctor did not wish to do. What do you think that means?”

Li Du poked at the coals with a stick, recalling his impression, on the night of the murder, of a woman leaving the guesthouse just before he arrived there. “That is very interesting.”

Bao fidgeted. “I told these things to my uncle, and he told me to tell you. He said that his guests all want you to find the murderer, and that I should help you. Can I do anything else to be helpful? I can listen for you—at the mansion—and report what I hear? What do you know already?”

Her lips were set into a slight pout, and Hamza said gallantly, “You are as brave and helpful as you are lovely. You make me think of the sirens on the emerald islands of the invisible sea.”

Li Du directed a reproving look at Hamza, then said to Bao, “I am very grateful for the information you brought to us.”

“So you will talk about the case with me?”

Hamza opened his mouth to say something, but Li Du spoke first. “It is late,” he said. “My friend and I will drink some wine here by the fire. You should go back to the mansion before you are missed. And you are right to be cautious—there could be danger.”

Looking slightly crestfallen, Bao rose and departed, leaving them alone. They waited for several moments, listening to the swish of her skirts receding.

When she was gone, Hamza said, “We might have kept her here a little longer. She may have had more to say.”

“And,” said Li Du, “she would have done everything she could to encourage us to talk, so that she could report to her uncle.”

“Ah—so she was actually here to spy on us. What of the information she gave us about Lady Chen? Why did you not ask her to say more? A woman who could manipulate a servant into choking on jewels could easily poison a stranger.”

Li Du responded with a little smile. “She was lying—or one of the other maids lied to her.”

“Well,” muttered Hamza, “you are suddenly very sure of your ability to discern truth.”

Li Du smiled a little. “I apologize—I am not being clear. She did speak very convincingly. But I know that Lady Chen did not actually torment those maids because I have read the novel from which those stories were drawn. It is the
Dream of the Red Chamber
.”

Hamza, bested at his own art, grunted. “I see,” he said. “So did the little gossip help us at all? Or was she only here to creep into our conversation so that her uncle can exchange information for coin, and impress his eager guests?”

Li Du was debating that same question. “What she told us about the promotion gives me one idea. Tulishen wants the position of magistrate in Beijing. The death of a guest in his home threatens his attainment of that position. It is possible, then, that the murderer's goal was to prevent Tulishen from advancing.”

“Lady Chen?”

“I do not know.”

“And the doctor?”

“I will ask him what Tulishen said to him.”

Hamza withdrew into moody contemplation. Eventually he straightened and called into the darkness for a servant. When one arrived, he asked for more wine. It was brought to them, and they sipped it slowly in the warmth of the fire, each lost in his own thoughts as the inn quieted around them.

“One night,” said Hamza after a while, “Pieter woke up most of the caravan to give a lesson in astronomy.”

The image of Brother Pieter rustling through the camp, shaking the shoulders of sleeping horsemen, instructing them to rise and learn a lesson, took Li Du so by surprise that he laughed softly. Hamza, pleased by the response, went on: “Pieter lamented that he did not have his star charts and instruments with him, but insisted that he could explain to all our edification even without the charts. Instead of turning over and covering their heads to make him go away, the horsemen rose and hunched over the symbols that he made on a flat stone with the charcoal end of a stick in the fire. And he pointed up at the sky, where he said that the bright red star shining there was closer to the earth than it would be for another thousand years.

“Then, because we were all awake already, he said that he would tell us the story of the great competition of astronomers in the capital. Do you know what took place?”

Li Du did. The trouble had begun in 1659, before Li Du was born, but the final confrontation had occurred ten years later, when he was a child. Curious to know how Pieter had told it, he said that he did not remember it well. So Hamza began: “I tell you this tale as it was told to me by the black-robed holy man of Agra.

“Long ago, when China existed only in the pale space between night and sunrise, the first Emperor said that a golden light would appear in the east. His people looked to the horizon, and at the Emperor's command, a dragon with scales of liquid fire appeared there. And so the sun rose on the empire.

“From that time on, the emperors of China have foretold the nights on which the moon would shine full, the nights when it would slice the sky like the cut of a curved blade, and the nights that it would be absent from the firmament. They have announced the arrival of the stars of winter, and those of summer. And they have presided over eclipses.

“But many thousands of years have passed since the first Emperor invited the dragon to his sky. Yes, the dragon's flame still burns. And yes, the mountains have not moved. But there have been changes. Knowledge was gained, and knowledge was lost. The emperors forgot the language of the dragons, and could no longer speak with them. The astronomers discovered ancient patterns in the sky. And they described these patterns in new languages that only they could understand.

“And so it came to be that the emperors of China made their predictions according to calendars delivered annually by the astronomers. This was kept secret, so that the grandeur of the emperor was not diminished in the eyes of his people. The years continued to pass, and the work of the astronomers was disrupted by war and famine and rebellion.

“When the Kangxi's father became Emperor of China, neither the Chinese astronomers nor the Manchu shamans were certain of their knowledge. The calendars had become inaccurate. Months of study yielded incorrect predictions. The Emperor could not rely on them.

“To this court came a great astronomer, the Jesuit Father Schall von Bell. His predictions were so accurate that the Emperor was amazed. The Emperor began to rely on the foreign priest, and to honor him. Where others could not approach the Emperor, Father Schall sat in his company as an old friend. He presided over a new board of mathematics. He translated his books into Chinese. He taught young scholars.

“But the jealous astronomers and shamans hated the man who had supplanted them. When the Emperor died, and the regents assumed power, the old shamans saw their chance. They denounced the Jesuits as despisers of the gods, rebels against China, and teachers of evil. Father Schall was imprisoned and sentenced to death.

“When the moment came for his execution, a trembling rose from deep within the earth. It cracked the walls of the Forbidden City, and as the palace shook, a darkness came across the sky. A flaming dragon appeared in the heavens, and struck the room of the palace where the sentence had been delivered, exploding it to white and gray ash that whirled through the gardens and mixed with the falling plum blossom petals.

“Terrified, the regents delayed the execution. Then Father Verbiest arrived in Beijing. He was thrown into prison with his brothers, uncertain of his fate. But from his cell, weighted down by nine chains, Father Verbiest called out a challenge. ‘Let it be a competition,' he cried, ‘for there is coming upon the land an eclipse of the sun. Let your shamans and your astronomers predict the minute the earth will be dark. If I am more accurate than they, then pardon my brothers and accept me as your servant.'

“The challenge was set. There were three predictions: The Manchu shamans said that the eclipse would come at noon, the Muslim astrologer of the Chinese court said that the eclipse would come a quarter of an hour later, and Father Verbiest said the eclipse would not come until three quarters past midday.

“The day came, and the whole court came out to wait together in their finery. The noon hour approached, the water clock dripped its seconds into a lacquered bucket, and the sun blazed. Noon came and went. The quarter hour came and went. Still the sun blazed. Then, as the third quarter of the hour drew near, the crowd burst into noise as a curving, black emptiness bit the sun. At the exact minute that Father Verbiest had predicted, the two disks aligned, and a ring of white light flared around the black emptiness.

“Ever since then, the Jesuits have been responsible for the astronomical calendar. Their role is not publicly acknowledged. Once a year the calendar is delivered, quietly, to the Emperor's chambers. So it was that Brother Pieter came to serve Father Verbiest, and to aid him in the construction of the observatory whose astrolabes and steel measures rise against the northern sky beside the grinning pagodas and mosaic dragons.”

Hamza finished and they sat in silence, Hamza looking at the web of white and black and molten coals in the brazier, Li Du looking up through the lanterns at the stars.

“So that is how Pieter related the story to you?” asked Li Du.

Hamza nodded very sincerely. “I removed a few of the less interesting details.”

“And added the flaming dragons, perhaps?”

“Not at all—I was assured of the story's veracity on that point.”

Li Du smiled. “And how did the Khampa like the story?”

“Kalden Dorjee said that the shamans in his village are not like the Manchu shamans in the capital city. In Kalden's village the shamans are elders, grandfathers to all the children. They share butter tea around the fire, listening to the creaks and murmurs of the yaks in the barns below. They give the children their names—they give comfort. It is only in palaces where the shamans become like bureaucrats.”

“It is strange,” said Li Du. “In a few days the Emperor will preside over an eclipse here in this place. In order for that prediction to occur there were, as you say, bureaucrats, strategies, competitions and arguments and decisions and bribes. An entire year of these calculating little moments. But when it happens, no one will think of those things—of a calendar written by foreigners a year ago, or of the Kangxi's calculations about which province was most in need of renewed subjugation. The audience will see only magic, flowers of fire in the sky, dragon canals and acrobats. And when the Emperor appears to exert his power over the sun, they will revere him for it.”

“In two days he will be here,” said Hamza. “What will you do tomorrow?”

Li Du drank the last of his wine, stood up, and dusted the flecks of ash from his robes. “In the morning I will go to the mansion. I would like to know what Pieter was looking at on the day he died.”

 

2 Days

 

Chapter 12

Mu Gao was in the library, sweeping the marble floor with a broom woven of dried reeds. Using the broom in place of his cane, he shuffled and swept and shuffled and swept, and with each step the fine dust rose in a cloud. Behind him, most of it settled gently back to the floor.

Li Du cleared his throat quietly, not wanting to startle the old man. There was no reaction. Mu Gao continued to sweep, his eyes on the floor. Li Du moved to stand in front of him, until finally Mu Gao realized that someone was there.

He stopped sweeping and peered at Li Du. “Why didn't you say you were here?” he asked. “It's frightening, a person appearing from nowhere.” He squinted. “I've met you. You're the librarian from the big city.”

“We spoke yesterday evening.” They were standing in one of the seven rows of the philosophy section, surrounded by silk book boxes gleaming sapphire blue. Mu Gao squinted again.

“You told me about the argument between the man who died and the foreign merchant,” said Li Du.

“I remember,” said Mu Gao gruffly. “You think I don't remember. So you're still looking for the murderer. Well what do you want now? I'm sweeping.”

“I came to ask you about the jewelvine that you keep in the library.”

Mu Gao's watery eyes sharpened. “That's what killed him then? Jewelvine? You want to see where I keep it?”

Li Du followed Mu Gao to a cabinet against the wall near the main door of the library. It was almost as tall as Li Du, with drawers in a column down the center and two closed cabinets on either side. The dark, lacquered wood was inlaid with faint golden illustrations, the largest of which depicted a drunken poet holding up his bowl of wine and composing poetry for a seated prince.