Jade Dragon Mountain (36 page)

A rouged woman in purple robes sighed loudly and said, “Is it possible for this festival to be more fine than it is now? Personally I do not think so. Have you seen how clear the sky is today? And I think I caught a hint of early osmanthus fragrance in the air. And the mountain is so picturesque!”

They all agreed that the view was very fine, and so the conversations continued. Everyone was speaking of the Emperor's encounter with the dragon and subsequent revision of the schedule. When eventually the subject was exhausted, the talk turned to the delicacies that were to be served at the upcoming banquets, the invitees to the most exclusive events, the operas and the lanterns and the luxurious promise of the festival. Li Du finished his dumplings and walked out into the square.

Children ran through the shifting maze of people and horses and shadows, chasing stray cats and shrieking with holiday abandon. The cats climbed easily to the rooftops, from which vantage points they could ignore their tormentors and search for fish left unwisely in upstairs kitchens. Old women sat in groups outside on stone benches, wrapped in shawls and watching the crowds with suspicion and satisfaction. From their ears hung heavy jade earrings, tiny disks polished so smooth they looked wet. All through the streets the travelers, noble and poor, milled and shopped and ate and spat and tried to catch glimpses of wealthy officials and their consorts.

At the Office of Records he found Mu Gao and Old Mu already in the clerk's little room, which was filled with dusty sunlight and the smell of dark tea.

“He has come!” cried Old Mu with a smile. He stood and came to the door, ushering Li Du inside. “Mu Gao has told me everything that happened last night. What a scandal. I can picture it all. It is delightful, and you have our respect, even if the magistrate will not give you the credit you deserve. What difference does it make when you, like us, are outside of the pecking order?”

Mu Gao was looking at Li Du from under his heavy, wrinkled eyelids. “Kept us all up late, though, with all the scurrying that followed. A dragon spoke to the Emperor. Bah. The usual nonsense.”

“Pay no attention to my old friend,” said Old Mu. “By now you know that he is a curmudgeon. Tell me—is your friend the storyteller recovered?”

“It is kind of you to ask. He is well, and insists that his conversation with Death was so illuminating that he would not have missed it.”

“Foolishness,” muttered Mu Gao.

“And,” Li Du went on, “he is planning to perform tonight at the banquet. He told me that if he had died he would have performed as a ghost.”

“Unnatural,” said Mu Gao, but Li Du saw grudging amusement in his eyes.

“And what will you do now?” asked Old Mu. “For a week you have been keeping your balance on the tiger's back. A dangerous situation, but more dangerous once you decide to get down.”

Li Du accepted a cup of tea and breathed deeply, enjoying its fragrance. He took a sip and said, “I have not spoken to the magistrate today, but I understand that as long as the Emperor is satisfied with the resolution, I am free to leave Dayan when I please.”

“Then why don't you leave now, while you have the chance? The magistrate cannot be happy that you've shown him to be a fool. All this time he thought you were chasing invisible assassins, and then it's his own secretary. He'll want to forget all of it as quickly as he can. Don't expect any commendation from the Emperor. That's not the way the magistrate will direct things.”

Li Du smiled. “I agree with all you have said. And I do not plan to remain here long. But I wished to speak to the two of you together before I left.”

“You honor us,” said Old Mu. “Let me pour more water into your tea. It is good tea—my own private store. I haven't trusted any of the other leaves, what with all these plots and schemes in the air. I tell you, I'll be relieved when the Emperor's gone and the crowds leave. My elbows are bruised just from walking down the street. Too many people.”

“I don't like it either,” said Mu Gao darkly, with a belligerent look at the multitude of dust motes in a sunbeam.

“I remember,” said Old Mu, “when I was a boy, my father told me that when the Emperor—the old Emperor—toured the eastern coast he sailed on a boat from one city to the next. And the performers sang and danced on stages built on the water. Very grand, he said.”

“Your father traveled to the east?”

Old Mu nodded. “The Mu was a strong family, and a curious one, before the Qing.”

He looked at Li Du, curiosity crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Now,” he said, “why did you want to speak to us?”

Li Du took another sip of tea. “I wanted to discuss,” he said, “what you two have been secretly doing ever since the arrival of hundreds of strangers to the city gave you the excuse to make mischief.”

Mu Gao fumbled his teacup, and several drops splattered across the desk, where they remained like jewels in the sunshine. Old Mu put his hand on his friend's arm. “I do not think he means us harm,” he said, but his fluffy white eyebrows were drawn together in concern.

“We're just old ghosts,” said Mu Gao. “Just old rotting books. Haven't done anything.”

“The two of you,” said Li Du, “have been spending your evenings pasting anti-Qing graffiti from one end of the city to the other.”

The old men became silent, their eyes cast down.

“You have taken advantage,” Li Du went on, “of the fact that the Chinese officials pay no attention to you, to wander through Dayan with your piles of papers. Even Jia Huan, who was so adept at knowing all that was happening in the dark alleys, did not think that you were the ones behind the vandalism.”

Old Mu drew in a deep breath. He raised his eyes to look at Li Du. “Then how did you know?”

“On the day I met you here, I saw Mu Gao leaving this building with a sheaf of blank paper under his arm. I asked myself why, when there was a good store of paper at the mansion, he was obtaining it from this office. The reason, I realized later, is that Lady Chen conducts strict inventories of all the valuable items in the mansion, including paper. You needed to get it from this office, where it is not so carefully counted.”

Mu Gao grunted and tapped his fingers on the table.

“Also,” Li Du went on, “you used tea to age the paper so that its fine quality would not call attention to this building, or to the mansion. I noticed stains on the table in the book sunning room in the magistrate's library. They are the same as the stains here on this desk.” Li Du pointed to the irregular dark patches on the wood. “Spilled tea would not make this stain. But damp tea leaves, rubbed against the surface, would.”

The two old friends looked at each other. Old Mu refilled Li Du's cup with water, and waited tensely for Li Du to break the silence.

“I did wonder,” said Li Du, “how it was possible that no one saw either of you, or heard the tap of Mu Gao's cane in the night. The magistrate had demanded information on who has been pasting the offensive words to the walls of the market. He was sure that someone would come forward with a description of some culprit.”

“We were lucky that no one saw us,” said Old Mu.

“It was not luck,” Li Du said, with a little shake of his head. “Of course you were seen. But the magistrate made an error. He thought it inevitable that anyone who saw the culprits would report what they saw. He did not consider that every local person in Dayan might choose to protect the vandals rather than betray them.”

There was no response, and Li Du went on. “The innkeeper Hoh was careful to tell me when I first met him that Mu Gao should not be considered a suspect in any crime. His family is as old as yours. The Qing may have reduced you to servitude, but the old families of this province would never send you into danger. You are the last of the Mu family in Dayan. This is your land.”

“We have stopped,” said Old Mu after a short silence. “We will not do it anymore.”

Li Du nodded. “I overheard your conversation with Hoh that night at the inn. I did not realize at first that it was you, but once I understood the subject of your argument, I knew. The stakes have become too high. The arrival of the Emperor and his soldiers puts you too much at risk, and if you were to be caught, there would be consequences for all the families here.”

“Yes,” said Old Mu. “The time has come for our little game to end. We wanted only to cause the magistrate some worry. Make it all less easy for him.”

“We weren't killing anyone,” said Mu Gao. “But what are you going to do? Turn us over to be locked up?” Suddenly he leaned forward. “They killed us,” he said, fiercely. “They sent that bloodthirsty traitor general to subdue us. And when he rose up against the boy Emperor, who was it who came to the aid of China? We did. We fought for the Emperor who cared nothing for us. And now we are called
uncooked
, uncivilized, uneducated. Turned our temples into their summer homes. Painted over our paintings. So we put our messages on their walls. You condemn us?”

“No.”

The two old men stared at him.

“I am beginning to understand,” said Old Mu, his face brightening, “why you were exiled.”

Li Du thought for a moment before he began to speak again. “Mu Gao showed me the seven remaining books of the Mu kings, and told me that the rest were destroyed. Why not write them again?”

Mu Gao made a gesture of dismissal. “We are not intellectuals,” he said. “We do not know how to write books.”

“Why not try? No one will bother you. That is clear. The bureaucrats and officials sent here from the capital keep their attention on their own careers. They do not notice quiet activities outside of their imaginations. If you write what you remember, it can be read and known by others.”

Old Mu hesitated. “I don't know,” he said finally.

Li Du sighed. “Consider,” he said, “that yesterday we apprehended a murderer at the mansion. Jia Huan had taken cruel action to protect a cruel purpose. He manipulated everyone around him with his lies.”

“And a good thing he's put away where he won't kill anyone else,” said Mu Gao. “I always thought that there was something wrong with him. Too calm. Too eager to do everything he was told.”

“But what has happened since then?” asked Li Du. “I woke up this morning to more lies. Jia Huan's actions have been concealed, as if they never happened. Brother Pieter might never have come to Dayan. Everyone's attention is fixed, as it always was, on the festival, on the schedule—” He stopped, newly aware of his sense of disappointment.

“Everyone worrying about how to protect the Emperor's vanity,” said Old Mu, quietly. “Yes, I see the contradiction.”

“I do too,” chimed in Mu Gao. “The problem is the whole stinking festival. The whole mess.”

“And that is why,” said Li Du, “I urge you to put your anger to a use that may, in time, be treasured by those not yet born. Write something that will be a counter to the other books—the ones written to preserve the deceptions and protect them through the passage of time. Write the truth. Or, at least, write your truth.”

Old Mu turned to his friend. “We could do it, you know. On those nights with the moon and our cups of wine, we could write. My wife is very clever. She could tell us what she remembers, too.”

“Well,” said Mu Gao. “It could be possible.”

“You have given us much to think on,” said Old Mu.

“In that case, I should be on my way.”

“Before you do, I will give you a list of villages. Your Chinese letters of invitation are nothing compared to the hospitality you will receive if you go to these places and say that we sent you. Knowing two old Mus still gets you something around here.” He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer, dipped a brush in ink, and quickly drew a map. “Here,” he said, pointing to a mark he had made, “ask for my uncle's stew in a copper pot. It will make the stiff fancy banquet tonight seem like greasy old market food for tourists. You will see.”

A short while later Li Du took his leave, the paper folded in his pocket. The two old men were arguing companionably over the names of the plants that used to grow in the old temple outside Dayan.

 

Chapter 21

At the inn, Bao was enjoying the attention of a rapt audience. Hamza and Hugh Ashton were among the listeners at the edge of the crowd, and Li Du joined them. Hamza explained in a whisper the subject of Bao's account. Sir Gray had presented the Company tribute, and Bao was one of the lucky servants who had been selected to carry and unveil each gift.

“I expect her to expire from self-importance at any moment,” Hamza concluded under his breath. “And our friend the scholar is confused, so you should translate for him.” Hugh Ashton looked relieved to see Li Du.

“It was in the secondary banquet hall,” Bao was saying, “because the first hall is being prepared for tonight's banquet, which I will also be attending. The secondary hall is filled with birds in golden cages, each one hanging from a golden chain so that it is like a high jungle canopy of golden trees. I helped to hang them.”

“But what was the Emperor like?” came a voice from the audience. “What did he say to the foreigner?”

Bao lifted her chin to a haughty angle. “The Emperor is more wonderful in appearance than any portrait. His robes were so bright I thought at first a dragon had come from the sky and perched on the carved throne. The seventeenth prince was there too, and he is very handsome. He looks like a gentle youth, but they say he is almost as skilled at hunting as the Emperor himself.”

“Did the foreigner look very afraid?”

Bao tapped a slim finger thoughtfully against her cheek, allowing the eagerness of the audience to build before she answered. “The Emperor emanates the wisdom of a god, and the poor ambassador was clearly overwhelmed by the majesty before him. Yes, he was very afraid.”