Jade Dragon Mountain (21 page)

Mu Gao slid one of the drawers open. Inside, neatly arranged, were several whole roots, wiped clean and dried, a small stone mortar and pestle, and a shallow bowl filled with fine powder. Li Du touched a fingertip gently to the powder and raised his hand to examine it closely.

“Careful with that!” exclaimed Mu Gao. “I wrap my hands when I use it.”

“That is wise. Do you keep this drawer locked?”

“No.”

“And have you seen anyone taking powder from it?”

Mu Gao shook his head. “Haven't seen anyone touch it. But they come for the things in the other drawers. There's the paste—there—and paperweights, thread, brushes, and ink here. Lady Chen accounts for all of it in her inventories. She's stingy with the paper and ink.”

“Then someone may have taken the powder without you noticing?”

Mu Gao sucked at his lips and shrugged. “Sometimes I fall asleep. You think the poisoner is in the mansion?”

“I don't think that anyone outside the mansion would have known to find jewelvine here in this drawer. Can it be purchased in the market?”

“No. I told you, it's my recipe. Never seen it in the market. But I didn't kill him.”

“On the evening he died, after the argument you recounted to me, there was a banquet. I did not see you there.”

Mu Gao's answer was gruff. “I don't go to the banquets. I was in town drinking with my friend.”

“You were there in the afternoon, and again in the evening?”

Mu Gao's lips spread into a gaping smile. “In the afternoon we drink tea. And in the evening we drink alcohol.”

“I see. And what is your friend's name?”

“Old Mu.”

“A relative?”

“Cousin. Used to be a lot of us in Dayan. We drink together and talk about old times.”

“And when did you return to the mansion that night?”

“It was late. The guard at the gate told me the old foreigner was dead. I went to my room and lit incense. I'd talked to him that same day—thought of his spirit wandering the mansion made me nervous. But why are you questioning me? I didn't kill him.”

A step on the marble floor made them look up. Silhouetted in the door of the library was the tall figure of Brother Martin, his hair golden in the sun. He came forward, and his green eyes flicked nervously from Mu Gao's face to Li Du's. Then with a look of determination he launched into a spate of nonsense Chinese, repeating and attempting to correct himself as his cheeks turned feverish, uneven red.

“His Chinese is very bad,” said Mu Gao.

Brother Martin stuttered into silence, then said in Latin to Li Du, “I am so sorry. I am trying to learn but I cannot remember the tones.”

“It is good that you are practicing,” said Li Du, “and you are doing very well. Are you here to speak to me?”

“To speak to you?”

“You may not have heard that I am investigating the death of Brother Pieter.”

“I—What? I thought Brother Pieter—I thought that he was poisoned by the men he traveled with. Sir Gray told me that they were bandits.”

“They were suspected at first, but now we know that they were not responsible.”

“Ah—Well, if I can be of any use—of course. But I—In fact I came in search of a book. The
Ben Cao Gang Mu
.” He pronounced the words slowly and looked anxiously at Li Du for affirmation. Li Du, eyebrows raised, said, “Of course I know that book. And I am sure that the magistrate has a copy of it here. Mu Gao will help us find it in the catalogue.”

“Oh, thank you—you are very kind. Doctor Yang recommended it to me for help in my plant identifications. He is taking me with him today to collect herbs, and I thought I would consult the book first.”

“But how do you communicate with him?”

Brother Martin gave a self-deprecating smile. “He is very patient. And his knowledge of the plants here puts me in awe. I—I have my own modest understanding of certain species. As long as we restrict our discussion to flowers and berries and trees we can speak together. He taught me to say the title of the compendium.”

They located the book on a shelf carved with the constellation called
net
, and carried its ten volumes, bound in faintly yellowed white, to the round center table. Brother Martin opened to a page, and Li Du saw his face transform. His expressions had always fallen along a spectrum of shame, discomfort, anxiety, and confusion. The man Li Du saw now was intelligent, focused. His fingers moved across the page deftly, tapping specific parts of the colored illustrations—a root, a petal, a fruit—and nodding slightly in understanding and affirmation of what he saw.

“This is exquisite,” Brother Martin said. “This text—what does it say?”

Li Du read: “
Grows in wet ground; strong and bitter; cures swelling boils and is to be drunk hot
.” The words were printed beside a picture of a pink and white flower with dark green leaves and white, clawlike roots.

“And this one?”

“
Grows in the south of Tiger Leaping Gorge. Is sweet, cures thirst, and is to be eaten raw
.”

“This one”—Brother Martin pointed to another illustration—“this is the one I want to see. Kaempfer saw it in Japan—he calls it gingko. It is a tree that the botanists in England say has not grown on earth since before the flood, many thousands of years ago. Explorers have found stone impressions of ancient gingko leaves in Europe, but the doctor says he will show me a living one here. I am—I just can't believe it.” His eyes pleaded for his enthusiasm to be understood and shared.

“That silverplum?” asked Li Du. “But it is common here. They grow in the courtyards of the temples. The doctor is going to take you to see one?”

“I am to meet him when the water clocks strikes nine chimes. I have some time still to study.”

Li Du considered how to speak to the nervous young man. He decided to wait to mention the letter, and instead to take a more subtle approach. He still had very little sense of who the man was. “I have not had the opportunity,” he said, “to speak to you since the night that Brother Pieter died. These must have been difficult days.”

Brother Martin kept his gaze on the book that was open before him, but Li Du saw that his eyes were fixed, no longer scanning the illustrations.

“You are very young to have traveled so far on your own,” Li Du went on. “Did your superiors not think it wise to send you here in the company of someone more experienced with the ways of this country?”

“I—I am from a small house,” said Brother Martin. “I was the only brother among us with the will and ability to make the journey.”

“And where did you travel from? You did not come from the north.”

“No. I traveled overland from Calcutta. I did hire guides along the way.”

“And have you come with some particular purpose? To see the Emperor?”

Brother Martin's reply was quick. “No. I have nothing to say to the Emperor. That is”—he struggled to make himself clear—“nothing to say that is worth his time to hear. I came because I have always wanted to see China. That is, to see its plants. I—I study plants. Their medicinal uses.” He indicated the book in front of him. “In England,” he went on, “where I am from, originally, there are many scholars and—and other brothers of my order, who have heard of the wondrous plants in the mountains of China. But no one is allowed to come in. I have waited a long time in Calcutta, just hoping…” He trailed off.

“And then the invitation from the Emperor arrived.”

“Yes. The word spread. I think that it was the East India Company ships that first brought the news. I heard of it, and began to make plans immediately. I thought that such an opportunity could not be missed, even if I had to travel alone. I—I do not care much for Calcutta. The Christian orders—the other ones, you know, the Dominicans and the Capuchins, they are very competitive with each other, and with us. And then there are the crowds, and the disease. It inspires awe. Hindu pagodas across from Mughal minarets and even cathedrals, now. People from every empire, every country I know in the world. But it is not a friendly place.”

Brother Martin turned his attention studiously back to the open books, while Li Du considered what he had just been told.

Mu Gao had been observing the interaction with a sleepy expression. Li Du said to him, “I would like to see the item that Brother Pieter examined on the day he died. Will you open the door for me?”

“Won't get me in trouble, will it?”

“The magistrate said that I would be given access to anything I needed.”

“All right, then—no bother for me to do it.”

They walked slowly between the shelves to the twin doors at the back of the library. As before, the book sunning room was open, the hall of treasures closed. The bright dragons coiled down the wood like hanging vines, white painted pearls clasped firmly in their jaws.

Brother Martin had risen from his seat and followed them. “Are you leaving?” he asked.

Li Du quickly considered the factors and decided that Brother Martin's presence could be helpful. “This is where the tribute from the English East India Company is being kept—you recall that Pieter spoke of it at the banquet.”

Brother Martin glanced toward the window. “I only just heard the eighth chime. May I come with you? I am curious to see that device—the tellurion.” Li Du nodded. Mu Gao withdrew his key ring from where it hung amid the folds of his coat. He unlocked the door.

The room was cooler and much darker than the rest of the library. It was a cavernous space, the ceiling high enough that the tops of the shelves lining the walls were lost in the dim upper corners. The windows were thin rectangles in one wall, too narrow for anyone to pass through, admitting only narrow beams of light into the room.

On and around a table in one corner was a mass of crates of various sizes, perhaps fifteen or twenty in total, made from rough wooden boards and stamped with the black seal of the Company. A few of the ornate boxes had been removed from the protective crates, and sat on the table, treasures in and of themselves. One was inlaid with mother of pearl. Another was painted with Arabic script surrounded by gold and silver flowers. Another was carved with elephants wearing jewel-studded saddles.

The largest of these was a box of obsidian black lacquered wood. It was a cube with sides a little more than the width of a large man's shoulders. Affixed to each of the four sides was a dragon of hammered gold. The four dragons appeared to claw their way up the sides of the box, and their tails formed hooks that fastened the top of the box to the base. Their arching backs were handles by which the box could be lifted away from its contents, and the mouths of the dragons were open in hisses, the muscles of their bodies tensed to defend the treasure inside.

“This one,” said Mu Gao, “After he'd opened this box, he had no more interest in the others. Not that I saw when I glanced in at him.”

Carefully, Li Du slipped the dragon tail hooks from their clasps. He gripped the dragon handles on two sides of the box and lifted it straight up and away. He was just tall enough to raise the cover higher than the contents. He set the lid down carefully, then stood back to look at what he had uncovered. Mu Gao looked from Li Du's to Brother Martin's faces with the smug, possessive expression of one who has seen a wondrous sight already and feels ownership over it.

The bottom of the box was the foundation for a cylindrical golden base. From the golden disk rose the empire of China. Li Du's gaze traversed mosaic fields of jade and lapis lazuli, crossed dark quartz mountains, and descended along sapphire rivers to the sea, on which sailed a tiny golden ship with red silk sails the size of a fly's wing.

These glittering imitations of the natural world circumscribed the miniature walls and gates and towers of the great capital itself. He saw the tiered roofs of the drum towers, the obsidian gates of the Forbidden City. He saw gardens of diamond and sapphire flowers, moonstone and tiger's-eye ponds, cherry trees laden with opal snow, silver and blue and red roof tiles, and there, nestled close to the west wall, a tiny replica of the royal library, his library.

But all of this was, incredibly, only decoration. The tellurion itself rose from the center of the Forbidden City in a chaotic skeleton of jointed rods and spoked disks. Five of these rods were fixed at the end with polished metal spheres of varied size and hue. From deep within the gears and spokes Li Du could hear the soft clicks of mechanical movement. In the center a sixth orb, the largest, rose above the other spheres. It was made of red glass encased in a net of yellow gold as thin as thread, and it was gently, inexplicably glowing.

This tellurion was a treasure to mesmerize kings and poets, an object of art, of science, of magic. Looking at it, Li Du became aware of a prickling at his nape. He imagined the metal spokes unfolding into the legs of a clockwork monster that would crack and crush the mountains and towers of the jeweled empire.

He thought of the nights he had passed alone with the stars, when he had found comfort in the incomprehensible eternity of the heavens. He had felt in those moments, as when he had stood in the cloud on the mountain, that he was removed from the cycle of endings and beginnings. The tellurion had the opposite effect. To him it seemed a faceted prison, forcing all the energy, all of the infinite power of the world into the clicking movements of a cold thing.

“That must be phosphorus,” said Brother Martin, intrigued.

“I have not heard that word before,” said Li Du.

Brother Martin explained. “They call it the ‘fiery noctiluca' as well—the chemical that glows. It is very new—I have seen it at demonstrations.”

Li Du leaned closer to the orb. “And it just emits light indefinitely?”

“They say its inner fire is fed with air—a stoppered bottle will dim after some time, but—look here, their little sun has tiny holes—the clockwork must somehow allow a steady stream of air inside. They must have planned it carefully, though—too little air and its fires will dim, too much … Well, at one of the demonstrations the alchemist wiped his knife on his apron, and minutes later we saw the cloth burst into flame.”