Jade Dragon Mountain (6 page)

“Behind the stage?”

Pieter smiled. “Ah, Li Du, I am old and foolish. It is time for the younger ones, who understand this world better, to manage things. Have you met the young Jesuit? Apparently he is a botanist. Perhaps when he is better he will wish to consult Boym's
Flora Sinensis.
I have a copy with me.”

Li Du shook his head. “I have not met him. The magistrate told me that he is unwell, and confined to his room at the inn.”

“That is so. I spoke with him only briefly, before he was taken by a fit of nausea and forced to end our conversation. I pity his suffering. And yet, it is a strange thing. He called himself Walpole, Brother Martin Walpole.… But it is nothing. A coincidence. I should rest in these hours before the evening begins. You see that even I become tired when I talk too much.”

 

Chapter 4

“In the palace of the capital of China, there ruled a Sultan.”

“There are no sultans in China!” This declaration came from a salt merchant with plump cheeks. As he spoke he flung up his arm, spilling wine onto the scarlet silk sleeve of his robe.

The audience cheered and laughed. Servants scurried among them, refilling wine cups and replacing picked-over dishes with fresh ones. The lantern light gleamed on peeled lychees and caught on droplets of steam rising from rice cakes stuffed with pine nuts and minced yak tongue. At the edges of the courtyard, prostitutes with red lips tilted their shoulders in dainty postures, and watched without seeming to the expressions of the noblemen and the soldiers. Warmed by wine, furs, and glowing brazier fires, the magistrate's guests were relaxing after a sumptuous meal.

Hamza was the sole figure on the covered outdoor stage. In front of him, tiered rows of potted camellias burst with pink and red petals. The roof above him was supported by lacquered blue columns. From the courtyard tables where the audience sat, it was just possible to glimpse the back wall of the stage, across which mosaic dragons, whiskered and serpentine, stretched from floor to ceiling. They grinned and spread their claws, appearing in the flickering light to float in weightless revelry behind the seated figure of the storyteller.

He was dressed in gold and crimson, and a turquoise coat embroidered with flowers. A dark jewel suspended from a blue cap glinted on his forehead. His black beard was sculpted and sleek, and his eyes were in deep shadow. The only indication that he was cold was the faint cloud of his breath as he spoke into the chilly night.

“Allow me to clarify,” he said. “I am not speaking of
this
China.
This
China is in the thrice tenth world. The story I am going to tell now takes place in the thrice seventh world, where there exists another China. I once met a blind fortune-teller who knew the way to that land. She told me of the peach trees that blossom in the morning and bear fruit the same evening. She also told me that in that place, the rivers are made of tiny jewels that tumble over each other until they chip away to nothing and fill the air with rainbow mists. The mountains in that world are lodestones that draw nails from the hulls of sinking ships and wear them like bristling armor.”

Li Du glanced over his shoulder at Tulishen, curious. No storyteller in the capital would ever tell a tale of another China, certainly not at a formal function in the home of a magistrate. To suggest that there were other versions of the empire was to invite unhealthy memories of past rulers and dangerous speculation about the figure. An alternate China, more beautiful even than this one? The idea would not be tolerated.

But Tulishen was not attuned to that kind of threat. He sat on a platform heaped with silk cushions and the skins of bears and tigers, surveying the audience with puffed-up pride. His guests were enjoying themselves, and would compliment his hospitality. The Emperor would notice his popularity among the elite and his success in fostering powerful relationships. A magistrate's effectiveness was determined by the list of people who owed him favors, and Tulishen's list was growing by the day with the approach of the festival. Lady Chen sat beside him.

As for the guests, they were drunk and charmed by Hamza's impudence. Each small irreverence they accepted increased their appetite for another, and with delighted giggles or exaggerated gasps of shock they encouraged him. It was as if they were darting their fingers over a scorpion, holding their hands in danger a little longer each time before snatching them away in excitement. The Emperor was six days away, but in the courtyard, inhaling the smoke of exotic incense and drinking cups of warming wine, they had forgotten all but their present surroundings. The bright moon was a slice in the black sky overhead, and the morning seemed far away.

Li Du was not so completely distracted, and his mind drifted to the conversation at the banquet that had preceded Hamza's performance. After a welcome rest in his room, he had followed the sound of the gongs to the grand hall, and had been introduced to Brother Martin. The young Jesuit had emerged from his sickroom at the magistrate's insistence, and had greeted Li Du in halting Chinese with a look of ashamed apology. Like Pieter, he wore black robes. His black hat was perched on top of unruly, golden red hair. His face was very gaunt, his hollow cheeks softened by a short beard. He had large, ocean green eyes framed by almost invisible lashes. When Li Du had addressed him in Latin, his expression had transformed from embarrassment to haggard relief.

They had just sat down in their appointed places when Pieter arrived and apologized for his lateness. “I have been occupied,” he said breathlessly to Li Du, “most agreeably since you and I parted in the library.” He turned to Brother Martin. “Ah, good. I am pleased to see you are better. Let me serve you plain rice. It will settle your insides.” Brother Martin had been looking with trepidation at a skinned bear paw arranged over a whole fish in a pool of red oil, and he accepted the rice gratefully.

“Occupied,” Pieter continued, “by an item of such wonder I never anticipated its invention. And yet, now that I have seen it, I cannot think why it has not been thought of before. We have our clockwork and our star charts. But I am getting ahead of myself. It is called a tellurion.”

Li Du did not recognize the word. “I apologize,” he said, “but I have not heard—”

“But that is just it,” Pieter interrupted. “No one has. It is a new invention. I found it in the Company's tribute. Ah, but it puts all the other heavy baubles to shame.”

He was so excited that his hands shook as he served rice to Li Du, impatiently waving away the maid who tried to serve it for him. “It is a model of the heavens that moves by clockwork,” he continued, “just as the planets move. An astronomer can use it to tell how the planets and stars will align tomorrow, months, or even years from the present moment. Difficult to understand—I was unable to master it in such a short time—but extraordinary. I do not like the Company, but I must admit that this is a worthy gift.” He sighed, and looked expectantly from Li Du to Brother Martin.

“But how did you come to see it?” asked Li Du, remembering the merchant's refusal to allow inspection of his cargo at the gate.

“Ah,” said Pieter, with a twinkle in his eyes. “It required subtlety. But after I overheard a discussion of the inventory and the mention of clockwork suns, how could I restrain my curiosity?”

“This Sultan had a trusted old vizier, whose two sons, Shamsaldin and Nuraldin, were inseparable as children, youths, and young men. And when their father died, they decided to share the post of vizier between them. Sitting together one night, the brothers drank wine and planned their future. Together, they said, they would find a pair of sisters, marry them, and, if it were the will of Allah, get them with child on the same night. They then agreed that, if it were the will of Allah that one union should produce a daughter and the other a son, these two children should in their own time marry
.

“But as the two brothers discussed the details of their plan, they began to argue. Shamsaldin, the older brother, said that if it were the will of Allah for him to have the daughter and Nuraldin the son, then surely Nuraldin's son should offer a gift of at least three pleasure gardens to Shamsaldin in exchange for the daughter's hand in marriage. Nuraldin was shocked. ‘Surely,' he said, ‘it is through our son that our memory will be preserved. Why should he have to give you anything when all you have is a daughter?' Shamsaldin grew very angry and declared that he would never marry his daughter to his brother's son, not for her weight in gold. And Nuraldin replied that he would not marry his son to his brother's daughter even to save himself from death
.”

Li Du glanced at Brother Martin, who was sitting in the audience on a low stone stool. He looked uncomfortable, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and he seemed aware of the curious looks he was receiving from the other guests. With his shoulders hunched as if to repel the attention, he studied the shell of a lychee that he was picking apart nervously between his pale fingers. Without Chinese, he could not understand the performance.

Sir Nicholas Gray, the merchant, sat at a low table designed for a chess game—the lines of the playing board were etched into the stone. He was almost outside the reach of the light, in a corner close to the stage. Like Tulishen, he was focused more on the audience than on the storyteller, and at the moment his gaze was resting on the women of pleasure arranged nearby. He had a silver coin, which he moved deftly across his knuckles and from one hand to the other. It seemed to skip across his fingers, melt into the stone of the table, and reappear soundlessly in his hand.

Li Du was distracted from the flashing disk by a brief, whispered exchange between Tulishen and Lady Chen. She rose with a rustle of silk, walked to the edge of the lantern-lit courtyard, and disappeared down a path enclosed by dense rhododendron trees.

A moment later, Jia Huan entered the courtyard through the same gate. Careful not to interrupt the story, he spoke quietly to Tulishen, who grunted softly in affirmation of his secretary's questions. Li Du had seen Jia Huan throughout the evening issuing instructions to servants and performing various errands for the magistrate. If the young man was tired, he did not show it. His step was light and purposeful as he departed the garden once more.

“The brothers were still fuming the next day, when the Sultan announced that Shamsaldin would be married to the Sultan's beautiful daughter (for he had only one daughter, and the brothers could not share her as they did the office of vizier). ‘You see,' said Shamsaldin to his brother, ‘I am the favorite. You have always been the less important brother.' Nuraldin, feeling that there was nothing for him in the capital, and that travel was the only way to find new friends to replace those who had deserted him, quit the city forever.

“Nuraldin traveled far, across the whole kingdom, through Kashgar and Tashkent and Samarqand and Shiraz, and had many adventures along the way. Finally, he stopped in Bassorah. There he met an old man, an astronomer and adviser to the magistrate of that place. The astronomer was so impressed by Nuraldin's fine bearing and handsome speech that he immediately liked him, and invited him to his house.

“Now, the astronomer had a young daughter who was no less impressed than her father with the newcomer. The next day, the astronomer told the magistrate that Nuraldin was his brother's son, and that he had promised this brother, now dead, that he would marry their children. So Nuraldin married the astronomer's daughter and before very long, they had a son, whom they named Hassan
.”

Lady Chen returned with two servants in tow, each carrying large clay jars with bright wax paper seals.

“I know those jars,” whispered a drunk man close to Li Du. “That's the finest wine in the entire province she's carrying. The Lady Chen's family wine is famous. Plums … tasting of poetry. Nothing like it in all the province, did I mention?”

The jars were opened, and Lady Chen herself moved through the crowd, pouring it into cups. Her dark blue robes skimmed the ground like spreading ink.

Li Du accepted a cup of the wine, and sipped. The clear liquid was infused with the tannic pull of plum skins and softened by the full, sweet taste of the fruit. A hint of flowery honey turned the sip into a reminder of sunshine on mountain limestone. Warmth spread through Li Du's chest. It was a remarkable wine.

A gust of wind blew through the courtyard, extinguishing several of the lanterns. The servants began to relight them, but Tulishen gestured for them to stop. It was late, and the darkening courtyard would help draw the entertainment to a close.

“But even as Bassorah brought fortune to Nuraldin, back in the capital of China Shamsaldin grieved his brother's disappearance and wished they had never quarreled. And yet, despite his grief and regret, he fell deeply in love with his betrothed, the Sultan's daughter. They married, and had a daughter, so lovely that they called her Beauty.”

Brother Pieter was listening intently to the story. When his turn came to be offered wine he waved his hand in polite refusal. Lady Chen offered again and, almost impatiently, Pieter accepted. He had not been drinking wine, and had no cup, so she summoned a maid to bring a fresh one. This done, she filled it.

Li Du saw Pieter sip the wine, but as he reached down to set the cup on the table before him, his hand trembled so violently that some of the wine splashed onto the hem of Lady Chen's dress. There was a quick exchange between them, Pieter apologizing, Lady Chen insisting that it was nothing. Lady Chen refilled the cup, but Pieter simply stared at it, and did not drink. Tulishen, who had noticed the upset, was frowning. Lady Chen, her mouth set in a tense line, handed the wine jar to a servant, and returned to her place at the magistrate's side.

“Perhaps you, wise audience, know what I am about to tell you. Yes, Hassan and Beauty were indeed born on the exact same day, though the estranged brothers did not know it, and Hassan and Beauty knew nothing of the plan their fathers had conceived so many years before.