Jade Dragon Mountain (23 page)

“How do you know that?”

Li Du handed the older letter to Hamza. “See how the ink of the official's seal is pressed onto the paper?” He mimed the stamping of the seal. Then he handed Hamza the other page. “This one appears to have been stamped in the same way with the same seal. But if you look very closely you can see brush strokes. This seal was painted, not stamped.”

He peered at it again. “It was not poorly done. The forger probably patted it with crumpled paper to mimic the look of a stamp. But I have some experience in this area.”

“What experience?” asked Hamza, taking the papers from Li Du and looking from one to the other with a dubious expression.

A forgotten memory was returning to Li Du. “A man once came to the library in Beijing with a manuscript he claimed was written in Li Bai's own hand. The paper was the correct age. The commentary in the margins was appropriate to the period. But Li Bai had a quick hand, and I could see by the weight of the ink that the forger had made the strokes slowly, no doubt concentrating hard to produce them.” He gestured at the papers Hamza held and finished, “This is an amateur effort in comparison.”

Hamza looked at the papers again.“They still look the same to me,” he said, “but then again, I do not spend very much time with paper and ink. Does this explain what Brother Martin is hiding?”

“I am not sure, but I would say that this letter, the authentic one that grants Brother Martin permission to enter China, is at least ten years old.”

Hamza's face brightened with understanding. “Ah!” he said. “He cannot have been a traveling Jesuit ten years ago. Not unless he was an exceptional child.”

“My thought exactly.”

“So how did he come by the letter?”

“Either he stole it, or someone gave it to him.” Li Du was thoughtful, remembering Pieter's comment about Brother Martin's name. “Pieter noticed something strange about Martin Walpole when they were first introduced, but he chose not to say anything. I will likewise give the young man the benefit of the doubt until we have spoken to him.”

“But what if Brother Pieter's silence was his fatal mistake? What if he knew something about this forger and was killed before he could speak?”

“I intend to be careful.”

Hamza ran his finger over the dusty, pollen-coated tabletop and said, “There are more ways to kill a man than by poisoning his tea or stabbing him in the dark. Did you know that in the desert of Samara the sun is so hot that you can burn a man to ash simply by using a mirror to direct a sunbeam onto him?”

“I did not know that,” said Li Du, “but I did read once in a book that there is a stone taken from the stomach of a cow that can heal a dying man of any wound.”

“The
haranzi
,” said Hamza, delighted. “I myself held such a stone to the tail of an injured mermaid, and as thanks she rewarded me with one of her scales, harder than a diamond and possessed of more colors than exist between black and white. I gave this scale as a gift to one of the twelve princesses of Samarqand.”

“And do you still have the stone that healed the mermaid?”

“Alas, I do not. I wagered it on a game of
shatranj
, and was defeated. Should you meet a woman who calls herself Diloram and has an elephant tattooed on her left wrist, do not bet your possessions in a competition with her. It is a great shame—a healing stone would be a comfort in this city.”

Li Du acknowledged this with a nod. “I think that we have found all that we can in this room, and we cannot waste the time going after Brother Martin—we must assume that the doctor will bring him back this evening as promised. I will go to the festival field—the magistrate told me that Nicholas Gray will be there today.”

Hamza made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I cannot help you with him. Ambassadors. Trade. Diplomacy. These subjects make me feel that I have fallen into a swamp and am breathing mud. I will go to the mansion and eavesdrop on the servants.”

They agreed to meet again at the dinner hour, and Li Du set off again through the streets of Dayan. As he walked, he passed several of the ornate posted schedules of the festival events. He winced slightly at the reminder of the inevitability of the Kangxi's arrival. The date and hour were there, proudly emblazoned, marking the end of his investigation. Two days.

On a low wall in the eastern section of the city, he saw faint traces of gray against the newly painted white. He recognized the tacky streaks as paper glue, and wondered whether this was the site of one of the pieces of anti-Qing graffiti, or whether some eager tourist had stolen an official schedule as a memento.

As he neared the edge of the city, he began to hear the strikes and echoes of hammer blows, the whine of pulleys, and the staccato commands of guards and officials. At the apex of a steep cobbled road the city came to an abrupt end, and Li Du was confronted with the festival field in its last, frantic stages of construction.

Before he could take another step he was hailed by two bannermen wearing identical blue robes with high collars fastened at the neck with copper buttons. Their hats were black, decorated with single peacock feathers and held under their chins by thin silk cords. Each man had, slung across his back, a bow of mottled wood and a quiver of arrows with black and red feathers. Fixed to their slim, blue-and-gold belts were swords in green sheaths from which blue tassels dangled. Their sturdy black boots were slightly turned up at the toes, the white soles muddied from the field. They stood before him, blocking his further progress.

The bannerman on the left, a young man with high cheekbones and two thin tufts of a mustache drooping all the way down to frame his tiny, sharp chin, said, “Visitors are not permitted here until the first day of the festival. Return to the city center—there are entertainers in the market and in the teahouses.” His tone was impatient, as if he was tired of giving the same order.

“I am on an errand for the magistrate. Please tell me where I can find the foreign ambassador.”

The guard looked doubtfully at Li Du's patched robe, worn shoes, and faded coat. “You are the magistrate's investigator?”

“I am.”

The guards hesitated, but a moment later their attention was distracted by raised voices nearby. One construction worker was accusing another of laying down a crooked line of mosaic tiles, thus destroying the fountain pavilion. The other worker was defending himself, and their argument was on the brink of coming to blows. The guards started in the direction of the quarreling men, waving Li Du on toward the far end of the field.

“Go on,” one of them said, speaking over his shoulder. “The foreigner is there by the Emperor's podium. Watch where you step—the peasants toss bricks around like they're scattering seeds for planting. Almost had my head taken off yesterday.”

Li Du raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, and looked at the structure at the farthest end of the field from him. The ground sloped upward from the edge of the city, and the three-tiered edifice silhouetted against the sky appeared to sit on the horizon. Half of it was scaffolded in a clinging skeleton of ladders and ropes, and figures teemed over and around it like sparrows filling the branches of a tree.

Between him and the pavilion was an expanse of furrowed, upturned earth and nearly finished stages painted with bright clouds and dragons and birds. His progress was impeded by the curves of a narrow canal that wound down from the top of the field toward him. It was half decorated and would soon be a serpentine dragon, with gold and iron lantern hooks set on its banks in imitation of claws. Gardeners kneeled on both sides of the water, planting blooming camellias in the cold dirt to disguise the plowed earth and to outline the shape of the creature. Arching stone bridges paved with gleaming vermilion tiles crossed the canal at regular intervals.

It took him almost ten minutes to reach the base of the grand pavilion, and by the time he arrived there he was breathing hard from air thick with dust, smoke, and the smell of paint. He craned his head back to look at the building now rising straight above him, filling his vision, even taller than it had appeared from his vantage point at the edge of the city.

The emperor's pavilion was three levels high, with three broad gabled roofs turned up at the corners to reveal painted carvings in layer upon layer like the gills of a mushroom. On each corner ridge of the roofs paraded sculpted clay guardians: dragons, cats, dogs, lions, and phoenixes, each figure unique in color and pose. Li Du, standing at the base of the structure, was too close to see the top of it, where the Emperor would stand, but he saw the stairs leading up to that level, subtly built into the back of the structure so that the audience in the field would not see the Emperor climb them.

Nicholas Gray was standing with an official beside a stack of ornate wooden beams in an unusual spectrum of shades and textures, whorls and polishes. Next to the piled wood was the dirty, discarded cloth that had been used to protect the pieces from damage on the journey from Calcutta.

Gray had exchanged his gilded diplomat's robes for simple clothes and worn boots. His sunburned forehead was furrowed in concentration, and he was alternating his gaze between the beams beside him and the top tier of the pavilion. He was speaking in clipped Chinese, and the official was nodding obsequiously in response.

When Li Du spoke, Gray's expression was momentarily blank. Then recognition dawned. “Ah,” he said, “the magistrate's cousin. You speak Latin. What a relief. I have been struggling with your Chinese words all morning, and the exertion is draining my capacity for clear thinking. Will you help me explain to this man that the beams are to be placed on the top pavilion under my direction? I want the Emperor to be able to see them—they are for him, not for the crowd. I will show this man how they are to be fitted together once they are lifted to the top.” He spoke loudly, as if that made his words more likely to be understood, and performed an exaggerated series of movements, miming the process of fastening the wood to the end of a rope and wheeling it up with a pulley.

Li Du translated Gray's words for the official, who insisted that he understood and began issuing orders for the pieces to be tied up and wheeled to the top platform via the pulley, as Gray had indicated. Gray, preparing to help lift the wood, pushed the sleeves of his coat up above his forearms and kneeled to raise one end of a beam. But the official waved him away. The wood, he said, was very light, and they could lift it without assistance.

In the cold brightness of daylight, Li Du noticed for the first time that one of Gray's arms was hairless and traced with the puckered striations of burn scars. The wounds had healed long ago, but the injury when it happened must have been grave. The pull of ravaged skin looked painful even now, and Li Du averted his gaze.

Once Gray was assured that the beams were all being raised to the top level of the pavilion, he dusted off his hands and turned to Li Du. “This wood is very rare—our English elm is as fine as your famous pear tree. That is rosewood, and that one is mahogany. And this here is the finest—it is made from bog oak. Do you see the shine of purple deep in its whorls? Its color is unmatched in the natural world.”

“It is an odd shape,” said Li Du, scrutinizing the piece. It was a column as one would usually see made of marble in foreign architecture. The flat top of the capital had a large, round indentation in it, lined with velvet.

“Ah,” said Gray, with pride. “That was specially designed to display the tellurion. See how its base will fit there?” He pointed to the round indentation. “It keeps the tellurion at the proper height so that it may easily be admired. We want the Emperor to experience all of the treasures to their best advantage. I am grateful to you for serving as translator just now. It is my hope, before I leave your country, to master not only your language, but your strange version of the game of chess. Perhaps you might instruct me in both.”

“You wish to learn the rules of chess?”

Gray smiled. “I have always believed that it helps, when doing business with an empire, to understand the games played by its men. In my country, the pieces on the board are governed by different rules than they are in yours. They have different capabilities, and they have different limitations. You do play?”

“Of course.” Li Du hid his surprise. This was a different Gray than the one he had spoken to at the mansion on the night of the murder. Where that man had exuded a ruthless fixation on the Company's interests, this one, sunburned and energetic, gave the impression of efficiency and genuine enthusiasm. Li Du did not know what had cheered the man, but the change was disarming. He understood better why Gray had been chosen as an ambassador.

“Then perhaps,” said Gray, “you would honor me with a lesson before I leave the city.”

Li Du gave a slight nod. “Perhaps. Has the magistrate told you that I am making inquiries into the death of Brother Pieter?”

Gray nodded. “Of course I hope that you find the culprit soon. I have been assured that the Emperor's schedule will not be affected by your investigation. I trust that is still true?”

“The festival plans are unchanged,” said Li Du, and looked at the field. “But will this place be finished in time?”

Gray followed Li Du's gaze and smiled. “Your peasants are exceptional laborers. Their endurance is astonishing. Yes—it will be ready. The architects have timed it so that everything will be new and clean—nothing soiled by mud or trampling. The flowers have just arrived from the greenhouses today—the gardeners did not want to plant them too soon and risk an early spring frost.” Gray's smile broadened and he added, only half speaking to Li Du, “If I were not here to see it for myself, I would think this empire beyond the power of imagination to create.”

Unsure how to reply, Li Du continued to watch the scene on the field. To him it seemed a clanging, creaking union of devastation and creation. The people and the horses were working with exhausted intensity. The air sparkled with dry dust. The lunchtime millet bubbled from campfire pots. And at the edge of the field, where the space had been expanded to accommodate the expected crowds, he could see the raw stumps of hundreds of felled trees.