Jade Dragon Mountain (32 page)

At first it seemed as if they were too late. Hamza's body was racked by new shudders, and his mouth opened in helpless agony. Then his clutching fingers went still, the muscles of his face relaxed, and his head fell to one side. For one terrible moment it appeared that the life had gone out of him. Then his chest rose once, fell, and rose again. The horrible, rattling wheeze was gone, and Hamza was breathing normally. He was alive.

At that moment Doctor Yang arrived, his thin cheeks bright from running and his beard spread across his chest in wispy disarray. His entrance brought a comforting waft of dried angelica into the room. After one glance at Hamza he began to issue orders. He told the frightened maids to stop gawking and to bring him hot water, cold water, clean towels, and clean robes. They scurried away. While he spoke he was simultaneously examining Hamza, preparing poultices, and mixing herbs. Li Du saw that his hands were gentle, his wrinkled fingers pressing softly, ascertaining temperature and pulse.

Hugh Ashton had stood up and retreated to a corner as soon as the doctor had arrived. Li Du remained on his knees, watching Hamza's face for signs of recovery and waiting for Doctor Yang to say something. But the doctor's words were reserved for giving commands, and when he did address Li Du it was only to ask him to pour more hot water into the cup that the doctor had prepared. Li Du reached for the fresh pot that had just been delivered by a maid, and started at the sight of his own blackened hand. Remembering the spilled ink, he frowned as he poured the water. He had not left ink in the ink stone—he was certain of it. As he gazed around the room, without really looking, he noticed a dim corner of white that looked like a piece of paper. It was far enough under the bed so as not to be visible to anyone who was not crouched, as he was, on the floor. But he hardly had time to remark on its presence when the doctor finally leaned back and hummed with a little sound of satisfaction. The maids had cleaned the floor around them, and Hamza had been undressed and clothed again quickly in warm, thick robes.

“He will recover,” said Doctor Yang, with assurance. “He can be carried to his own room. I have given him an herb to make him sleep, now that the poison has been countered.” He looked up at Hugh Ashton with pride, and said to Li Du, “You may tell the young foreigner that the nightshade root certainly kept this man's heart beating. He paid good attention to what I taught him. I told you he was not an imbecile, however poor his communication skills.”

Li Du repeated this to Hugh Ashton, who stammered that he had not done very much, and that he was only relieved that there had not been another death. He bowed awkwardly.

“Where was the poison?” asked the doctor, turning to Li Du.

“In my wine,” said Li Du, and brought the bottle to the doctor.

“You did not drink it?”

“I was about to. Hamza drank first.”

Doctor Yang reached for the wine and sniffed it. He nodded, and said something in the local tongue that expressed in growling vowels and guttural consonants his opinions on the corruption of wine with poison. “You know that you must be very careful now.
This
was obviously no accident.” Li Du heard the emphasis and understood that the doctor was referring to Tulishen's attempt to cover up Pieter's murder.

“The same poison?” asked Li Du.

“No. Blackhood leaves are my guess. And I see by the way your face falls that you know this will not help you catch the villain—this plant grows on all the mountain slopes in the province.” Doctor Yang looked at Hamza's drawn face. “Your friend was lucky,” he said. “He is young and strong, and had a little time in which to fight for his life. Very lucky. A bigger sip, even, and his soul would be gone from his body even as we speak.”

“Will he be well soon?”

“After rest. But here is the innkeeper. I think that if we all work together we can move him easily. He will be more comfortable, I think, in his own room.”

Hoh stood at the door, wringing his hands and speaking in breathless phrases. “In my inn,” he said, “in my own establishment. I don't know how it could have happened. Poison! It is evil. It is treachery. But I am responsible. I am responsible. Everyone will think so. The guests rely on me. They put faith in their host … an ancient trust…”

“He lives,” said Li Du, reassuringly. “He lives and now you must help us make him comfortable and safe.”

The distraught Hoh put his hands to his face and shook his head. “It just cannot be. Someone must have come and poisoned—but where was the poison?” He saw the bottle and the crushed wine cup. “In your own wine?” he cried. “In your wine that you kept in your room? But you might both have died. I keep a good place. I work very hard. I never—I would never…”

“Be calm, old friend,” chided Doctor Yang. “Wolves howl and ghosts weep, but innkeepers must be calm. Now we must get this poor man to his room.”

“Yes—yes, of course,” Hoh sniffed and dried his eyes. “But only allow me to ask—is there a way to stop the rumors that will spread now? Is there a way to keep my guests from leaving? He did not die, after all.…” Hoh stopped.

“Well, then,” he said to the answering silence, “what will happen will happen. I'm the first one to say there's no stopping a rumor. But please”—he turned a pleading face to Li Du—“you must find this madman quickly. I do not know what will befall this city if you don't. I just don't know.”

As soon as Hoh had collected himself, he sent for two strong servants to bring an extra door panel from the storage rooms. They lifted Hamza gently onto the panel and carried him through two courtyards to the door of his own room, where maids had been sent ahead to add warm fur blankets to those already on the bed. In addition, stone foot warmers had been placed, hot from the stove, at the end of the mattress.

“He will be better soon. Let him rest for a while now. Leave a maid here to call for you if there is some problem, and if his condition worsens at all, send for me immediately.”

Li Du's own pulse and breathing were beginning to return to normal, and a thought occurred to him. He put out a hand to stop Hoh from turning away. “You said that you do not want this rumor to spread,” he said to Hoh, addressing also Doctor Yang.

“I would do anything,” said Hoh, pathetically. He raised his hand to rub away the sweat gleaming on his forehead, and his thumb left a faint white trail of flour across his brow.

“In that case,” said Li Du, “use your authority over your staff to keep this quiet. Doctor, did you tell anyone what had happened on your way here?”

“I told no one.”

“Then only a few of us know.”

“But the secret cannot be kept for long,” said the doctor. “Hoh is right. Rumors can't be controlled in a crowd like this.”

“Not for long, no,” agreed Li Du. “But it was my wine that was poisoned. The Emperor comes tomorrow. Why, then, would the killer risk murdering me when tomorrow my investigation will be over? I think—I hope—that it means I am close to an answer. If I can just have some time, without the magistrate becoming involved, I feel that I am very close now to the truth.”

“You will have as much time as we can give you,” said Hoh. “I will speak to my servants.”

They were just about to leave when Hamza awoke and requested, groggily, that Li Du remain behind so that they might speak alone. After receiving instructions from the doctor on when to drink each of the herbal medicines arranged on the table beside him, Hamza and Li Du were left alone.

Hamza's voice was raspy, and he directed his words to the ceiling: “There was once,” he said, then swallowed uncomfortably and ran his tongue over dry lips. Li Du brought him the ginger infusion, and Hamza sipped it. “A merchant of Bukhara.”

“You must rest,” said Li Du, alarmed. “This is no time for a story.”

Hamza pursed his lips and directed at Li Du a look of regal affront. He was about to continue, but Li Du stopped him with a firm shake of his head. “You may tell me of this merchant of Bukhara when you are well.”

After assuring himself that the maids would not cease their watch over Hamza, or waste any time coming to him should there be any cause for worry, Li Du took his leave.

Back at his room, he took the wine bottle and the one unbroken bowl, his own, into the courtyard and poured the remaining liquid into the dirt among the bamboo stalks. He returned to his room, pulled the doors and windows tight shut, and fastened the metal bolts in place. Finally, sure that he was alone, he knelt on the floor and looked under the bed.

As he had thought, there was a sheet of paper there. He flattened his shoulder as best he could against the floor, and reached his ink-stained hand under as far as he could. His fingers just reached the corner of the paper, and he edged it toward him. It was not dusty, as he had expected it to be. And it was not blank.

It was a letter addressed to the magistrate, using the magistrate's old name. He stared at it, unable at first to comprehend what he saw. Finding suddenly that his legs had become weak, he sank to the edge of the bed and sat there, his back curved forward over the crisp sheet of paper. He read:

Honorable Cousin Li Erfeng,

My thoughts dissolve like rotting leaves in a deep pond. I do not remember who I am. Perhaps I am just a ghost. The unbearable moaning in the stone caves grows louder in my mind. I always thought, alone in those cold places, that it was the sound of the mountain winds. But I begin to fear that it is my own silent voice.

Five years I have wandered. I know that I will never be allowed to return home. There remains one simple task. I hope that in death I will find the path of stars to the celestial dragon. Or am I doomed to the crooked way of demons? I accept my fate with the little dignity that is left to me.

Before I go into the darkness, I offer my confession. I killed the Jesuit. In my hatred and envy I wished him dead, and so I poisoned him as he and his kind would poison the empire. I do not regret this act.

I am no more.

Li Du

 

Chapter 18

He read the letter again. Then he stood up, went to the desk, and wrote neatly at the top of the page:
The following letter is a forgery. I, Li Du, am not the author.
He opened a drawer, put the letter inside, and shut it. As soon as it was out of sight, he felt better.

A forgery. As a librarian he had encountered hundreds of forged documents. He had always enjoyed looking for the small indications that separated the authentic pages from the counterfeits. It was gentle work: feeling the weight of the paper, studying the color of the ink, and searching for anachronistic vocabulary.

But the letter he had just found was more than just an imitation of his handwriting. It was a forged reality. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to follow the lie it conjured. Li Du, the dishonored exile, had lost his mind somewhere in the wild darkness of the mountains. He had come to Dayan, where his insanity had been sharpened by bitter resentment of his cousin's success. The prattling Jesuit, a reminder of the capital, had become the object of his malice, and soon, the victim of it.

Once the Jesuit was dead, Li Du's guilt had consumed him, and he had cast himself with pathetic delusion into the role of the detective. Now, on the eve of the Emperor's arrival, his illness had risen to a fever and, unable to escape his demons, he had chosen suicide. A maid would have found him dead in his room, and a search would have revealed the letter where it lay under the bed, fallen from his lifeless hand. In the morning the magistrate, with proper grief and shame, would have told the Emperor the sad ending. The Emperor would have nodded, the festival would have begun, and the tale would have been absorbed and diluted among the crowds.

It was the killer's third suggestion. The first was that an old traveler had died naturally after a long journey. The second was that the same traveler had been brutally and senselessly poisoned by bandits too far away to pursue.

The features that had eluded Li Du were becoming more clear. It was a forger who waited in the shadows, a forger not only of ink and paper, but of worlds. Like painted screens placed in front of a real landscape, these altered realities were moved softly, silently into place.

They were convincing worlds, each tailored to an audience that would not look closely for the hallmarks of illusion. Those who had supported the idea of Li Du as the exiled detective might as easily and with as much titillation see him as the murderer, the scholar driven mad by rejection and solitude. And then the festival, liberated from the anxiety of an unresolved mystery, could proceed with all the beautiful decadence that had lured the thousands of people to Dayan. The killer had arranged his realities with a reverence for the desires of others. Behind this care lurked a certain pride, and the satisfaction of skilled craftsmanship.

Li Du stood up, noticing as he did the ink that still stained his hand. He knew now why the ink stone had been full. It had been turned into a prop. He opened the drawer, removed the letter, and kept it folded in one hand. Then he pushed open his door and ventured out across the courtyards toward Hamza's room.

When he arrived, he found the storyteller propped up on pillows, looking disconsolate. He brightened when he saw Li Du.

“So you have come back,” he said, “because you wish to know what happened to the merchant of Bukhara?” His voice, usually strong and clear, was a croak.

Li Du told the maids that they were dismissed, then sat down on a chair beside Hamza's bed. Hamza looked at him curiously. “Give me some of that brew I am supposed to be drinking,” said Hamza, “and I will tell you.” Li Du handed him the cup. Hamza sipped the tonic, winced, and handed it back to Li Du. He was still very pale. But he swallowed and drew himself up a little straighter.

“The merchant had a—a servant that he trusted. One day the merchant was sitting on silk cushions in the sunlight waiting for his servant to bring him a pastry … oh…” Hamza's face grew drawn and tense, and he shook his head in frustration.