Jade Dragon Mountain (30 page)

Mu Gao was still clutching his broom, but he set it aside, picked up his cane, and gestured for Li Du to follow. “Come. There is no one around and I have decided to show you something.”

Mu Gao limped through the shelves of the philosophy section, his cane tapping rhythmically on the floor. Li Du padded behind him. It was like following a crab along the floor of a silver pond, thought Li Du as he moved through the pale sheen of book boxes that rippled across a spectrum of azure and kingfisher blue. At the far end of the bookcase, a dragon was carved deeply into the wood, its outline filled with thick blue paint. Beneath it was etched the sign of the constellation
heart
.

At about the center of the aisle, Mu Gao stopped. Then, with a creaking of joints and muttered obscenities, he knelt on the floor beside the lowest shelf and beckoned for Li Du join him. Mu Gao surreptitiously squinted to his right and left, and through the gap between the shelves, assuring himself that no one was nearby. Then he pointed to a few books bound in the same blue silk as the others.

“I want to show you my collection. I know you're an exile. You're not like the other Chinese. And my friend likes you.” He looked directly into Li Du's eyes as he spoke. “And you're a librarian,” Mu Gao added, “so you care about the books.” He swept his calloused fingertips over the spines of seven books on the bottom shelf.

“I bound these myself,” he said proudly, “with extra silk from repairs. The blue dragon”—his voice wavered and he cleared his throat—“the old mountain dragon has slept beside this city from the beginning of time. When I was a child I used to think that maybe one day it would lift right up from the ground, shake off the trees and snow, up into the air…” He trailed off, lost.

“What are these volumes, Mu Gao? What have you taken such pains to preserve?” asked Li Du in a gentle voice.

“What's left of our books, of course. My family's books. My grandfather was the last Mu king. He was a man of our culture. He wrote poems and histories. Then the Qing came and almost all of them are gone now. Burned. Why? I don't understand. The Ming were not that way. Doesn't matter now. But these are the only books left, and I won't let them be thrown away like trash, like all the food they throw away every night.” His voice became a thin, raspy whisper. “I don't trust the magistrate.”

Mu Gao's rheumy eyes shone with tears, and his stare held a plea. He wiped his tears on his sleeve.

“You have done well to keep these safe,” said Li Du.

“You won't tell on an old man?” Mu Gao was tired, and the effort of showing his books to Li Du had drained him. He was beginning to look confused, and Li Du said firmly, “I will not tell anyone.”

Mu Gao smiled confidingly. Then his mood shifted, as quick as changing weather. “Well,” he said, irritated, “why are we crawling around on the floor? Aren't you supposed to be finding out who is the poisoner? I'm almost out of my own secret store of tea, and I'm not drinking the mansion leaves until the madman's been sent to join his ancestors.” With Li Du's help, Mu Gao rose to his feet. He muttered about a quick rest in the sunshine, and ambled in that direction.

Li Du paced slowly to the round table at the center of the library, then walked around it, reading the names of the constellations at the ends of each shelf:
willow
,
net
,
wall
,
wings
,
root
,
danger
,
three-stars
 … His eyes took in the rows and rows of books surrounding him. Within them, hidden and bound in silken uniformity, entire worlds rose and fell. Attackers climbed walls on ladders of arrows and nets. Traitors died by a thousand cuts. Dragons hunted pearls. Friends smoked pipes by willow gates. Emperors conversed with explorers. Cities were built and burned. Mountains slept or crumbled in rivers of dirt and rock. All this chaos, these contradictions, arguments, lies, and riddles, was quiet, confined by serene stitches and tranquil silk panels.

His thoughts turned to Beijing. The imperial library was a small building in the northeastern corner of the Forbidden City. Its walls were of black tile like a deep lake, watery to ward off thoughts of fire, and thereby, it was thought, fire itself. Inside, the rooms were separated by massive painted screens in muted golds and greens. And the books—they were as familiar to him as the memorized lines of a poem. He even remembered their scents. Some were musky from voyages in saddlebags. Others had become perfumed by the incense burned in the consorts' rooms where they had most recently been read. Others were peppery from the treatment used to deter bookworms, similar to Mu Gao's jewelvine.

He pulled himself from the memory as he arrived at the shelf he was looking for, one filled with books bound in black, under the sign of the tortoise. This was where, if he understood the filing system correctly, the book of Du Fu's poetry should be.

He had to kneel again, but he found the
Laments
easily and pulled the heavy box from its place. Behind it lay a second dark, square object, hidden in shadow and camouflaged by the surrounding black silk boxes. Li Du slid it out, and returned the
Laments
to its place.

It was bound in the Western style, with a cover that was worn, scuffed, and stained by water and the round imprints of hot cups of tea that had rested on it. He opened to a page at random. There, drawn by hand in dark lead, were six circles of equal size, each one marked with tiny black stars and pictograph symbols. There were titles in neat, slanting Latin:
Systema Ptolemaicum
, followed by
Systema Platonicum
,
Systema Egyptiacum
,
Systema Tychonicum
,
Systema Semi-Tychonicum
, and
Systema Copericanum.
He carefully turned the pages. They were filled with words and illustrations, all in the same confident hand. This was unmistakably Brother Pieter's journal.

Li Du carried it with a light step to the sun room. He heard a purring snore behind him, and saw that Mu Gao was already asleep on his cushioned bench at the far side of the library. Through the large windows of the sun room he could see the mansion paths crowded with activity. Guards and bannermen and secretaries hurried in every direction, while servants scrubbed the marble statues and beat the dust from pillows.

Open on the table in front of him, Pieter's journal looked like a tired, white moth resting its wings. The contents were devoted entirely to astronomical observations and calculations. Pieter had charted the trajectory of the moon with dotted lines surrounded by pinprick constellations. He had described the sky from various vantage points in the mountains. He had summarized the Tibetan understanding of the constellations. And he had mused on the construction of portable measuring devices. Li Du's eyes rested with pleasure on the accompanying drawings, which depicted several astrolabes in the Persian style, the sketches complete with the curling, dense flowers and vines incised into the layered faces of the instruments.

In the imperial library Li Du had seen original journals of famous travelers, and remembered their pages to be a patchwork of different inks and lead, scratched-out phrases and rejected words, reflecting the excitements and frustrations of the adventures. Pieter's journal was different. Nothing had been erased, crossed out, or altered. It was as if Pieter had simply written down what was already clear and perfected in his mind. Were it not for the chronological organization, lead pencil writing, and empty pages at the end, it might have been a published book.

On the second-to-last filled page there was a sketch of the tellurion, lightly, almost lovingly rendered. The kingdom of gems was indicated only by a few abstract lines for the purpose of showing its scale relative to the rest of the device. It was the planets and clockwork that had captivated Pieter.

Below the sketch and onto the page opposite ran a long trail of calculations, the result of each one serving as the starting point for the one that followed. In this section Pieter's work was not flawlessly executed. The handwriting was rushed and uneven, and Pieter had written numbers only to strike through them and replace them with others. A seven had been turned into a rough six, then crossed out and changed back to a seven. One equation had been repeated twice with different results, both scratched over with lead.

Li Du sighed and allowed his head to fall forward into his hands. The journal contained an astronomer's observations of the world. There was no mention of any name or circumstance that suggested a motive for murder. But how had it come to be in the library? And how had Lady Chen known that it was there? He tried to ignore the suggestion of a slant in the shadows on the floor. It was past noon.

The sound of footsteps jolted him from his thoughts. He closed the book, tucked it in a pocket of his robe, and followed the sound to the back of the library. He found Nicholas Gray struggling to open the hall of treasures. Gray was again in his ambassador's clothing, black velvet and heavy jeweled chains and rings. His sunburned skin was peeling white on his large nose, and he smelled of cloying tobacco and anxious sweat.

He swore as he rattled the key in the lock. “You,” he said, when he recognized Li Du.

“Do not push the key so far into the lock,” Li Du advised.

“So every damned person in the mansion knows how to get into this room except for me?” Gray hissed the question. “The magistrate assured me that the tribute would be kept behind a locked door, but he did not tell me who else had a key.”

Li Du glanced across the library. Mu Gao's bench was now empty and shadowed.

“I asked to be allowed in,” said Li Du. “The magistrate gave orders that I was to have access to any room I needed. The treasury included.”

Gray's nostrils quivered and he looked at Li Du with piercing eyes. “I should have been consulted.”

“I assure you, nothing was disarranged.”

“And you found nothing relevant to the death of the Jesuit. I know that you did not. There is nothing to find. Brother Pieter had no connection to the Company, to the tribute, or to me.”

“And yet he spent his final hours examining the tellurion.”

Gray shrugged. “He was an astronomer. Of course he was interested. There was no need for him to do it in secret. I would have let him admire it.”

“You and he quarreled the day you met.”

“A disagreement between intelligent men is not a quarrel, as I told you before. Are you telling me that I am still a suspect? I told you the truth in the field. His death has only caused me anxiety. The magistrate assures me that the Emperor has been informed of the situation and is not himself concerned by it. The murderer must have come from somewhere else, and left Dayan when the task was complete. It seems that you are the only one who still insists on pursuing the issue, but you cannot think that you will find the answer before tomorrow, if you do not know it by now.” The key turned finally in Gray's muscular hand and he swung the heavy door wide to let light into the dim room. The great, black box that fit in puzzle pieces around the tellurion rested solidly on the table.

“There is still time,” Li Du said.

“Of course,” Gray replied. He went inside, leaving Li Du standing in the doorway. Li Du watched as Gray leaned over the box and put a hand flat against its side. Gray was frozen, barely breathing, like a doctor taking a patient's pulse. After several seconds Gray relaxed and removed his hand. “Good,” he said. He removed a small panel to peer inside the box. “The gears still turn and the sun still glows,” he said quietly. “For one more day I must protect it. Then I am discharged of my duty. Now if you will excuse me, I will continue with my inventory. The magistrate has promised to meet me here tonight and review the exact order in which the items are to be presented. I will not have my audience cheapened by poor timing.”

Now to the inn
, thought Li Du as he left the library. He was almost out of the mansion when he saw Tulishen, Lady Chen, and Jia Huan walking in his direction. They were deep in conversation, but when Tulishen looked up and saw Li Du, he flushed slightly and stopped in the middle of his speech. He recovered quickly, and raised a hand in curt acknowledgement.

“What progress?” he asked.

Li Du was careful not to glance at Lady Chen. “I have found Brother Pieter's journal,” he said.

“Ah,” said Tulishen. “And does it tell you anything?”

“He does not name his killer, unless the name is encoded in astronomical calculations.” Li Du retrieved the journal from where he had tucked it in a pocket of his robe and held it up, open, so that they could see. “It is a record of planetary movements, not human ones,” he explained.

“Do you truly suspect a code? Or is it your fatigue that causes you to speak in this way?”

“Fatigue?” Li Du was looking at the pages.

“Yes,” Tulishen repeated, with a meaningful look at his companions. “You are being unclear,” he said to Li Du, in a louder, more deliberate voice.

Li Du closed the book and looked at his cousin. “The language of astronomy,” he said, half to himself. “Yes, yes, perhaps I am fatigued. You caught me lost in thought. I am afraid I am not very clear.”

“Well, Cousin, I will leave you to these wanderings.” Then, to Li Du's surprise, his cousin moved forward and, with one hand on Li Du's shoulder, ushered him away from Jia Huan and Lady Chen so that they could speak in private.

“Cousin,” said Tulishen, and his voice was almost kind. “You set yourself too ambitious a task. You should have been guided by me. Perhaps I should have been more protective of you. You are overburdened here in society after your years of solitude. The Emperor will understand. He has far more important matters on his mind than our domestic disturbance. You will be allowed to go on your way.”