The White Mirror (18 page)

He stepped in. “I was just going to the kitchen,” he said.

Kamala sat at the loom. A colorful pane of intricate patterns extended in front of her, ending abruptly in a forest of white thread. Her daughter was beside her, watching, the infant cradled in her arms. The two boys played on the floor. Sera was carding yak wool between two brushes.

“There is butter tea and bread at the hearth,” Kamala said.

Li Du was about to go when Sera spoke to him. “You were very quiet there at the door. Eavesdropping can be dangerous. Consider the emperor who disguised himself as a commoner in order to hear what his soldiers really thought of him.”

“I do not know that history,” said Li Du.

“It did not end well,” replied Sera.

“For the soldiers?”

Sera smiled. “For the emperor. And on the subject of emperors, I was about to recount a history to the children in which your own emperor plays a part. Will you stay to hear it?” She gestured for him to sit.

“I would be glad to.” Li Du went to the chair she had indicated.

Sera turned her attention to Kamala and the children. “You have heard, perhaps, the legend that all of Tibet is built on the body of a defeated demoness. She is held down, imprisoned by temples like pins to fix her joints to the earth. The temple in Lhasa is the one that pins down her heart.

“Lhasa is a city where every object is multiplied a thousand times. A single temple has a thousand duplicates. For every sculpture there are a thousand like it. In Lhasa there are so many flags and scarves and butter lamps that they will never be gone, even when sand and wind and water scrape the city down to its foundations.

“At the time of my birth, Tibet was ruled by the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, who was so powerful that even the most fierce and warlike families, who live on horses in the northern mountain plains where there are no trees, swore allegiance to him.”

“You mean,” asked the elder of the two boys, “the ones that cut Yeshe's feet so that a tiger would eat him in the forest?”

“Not all of the northerners are bandits, but hard lives can make hard people. Many conquerors were born in places where death takes the weak away quickly. But even the northern clans, who have always followed their own laws and no others, pledged their loyalty to the Fifth. He lived beneath the golden roofs of two palaces, the White Palace and the Red Palace.

“With each year of his rule, Tibet and its people grew more prosperous, more powerful, and more secure in the bonds between its clans and cities and monasteries. But one day, death came for the Fifth, as it had to do. And do you know what happens when the great lama dies?”

“He is reborn,” said the boy, “and they find him wherever he has gone.”

“Yes. But events did not unfold in the usual way when the Fifth died. You see, he had in his service a regent who had been his student since childhood and who loved him. The regent knew that with the death of the Fifth, families who were united only out of loyalty to him would renew old quarrels. And certain—” Sera paused her narrative and her eyes flickered to Li Du. “Certain other powers could turn their eyes to leaderless Lhasa.

“So the regent concealed the death of the Fifth. He proclaimed that his master had retired into solitary meditation and would no longer speak to anyone or see anyone. The body of the Fifth was hidden. The secret was kept. And it was kept for a very long time. For years, Tibet was ruled by a man who was dead.”

The children stared at Sera, transfixed. She smiled and leaned forward. “But even though his deception was successful, the regent knew that his master was dead, and that somewhere in this land or another, his successor had been born. Somewhere, the Sixth Dalai Lama waited to be recognized and brought to his true home in Lhasa.”

Li Du sensed a presence behind him and turned to see who had come. It was Hamza. He was watching Sera with a concentration and intensity that Li Du had not seen in him before. His eyes were narrowed in assessment, as if he was looking at her for an answer to a question that confounded him.

Sera herself was so caught up in her own story and in the attention of Kamala and the children that she did not appear to notice Hamza's arrival. “The regent sent out emissaries in secret to search for the boy,” she said. “They asked their questions very discreetly so that no one would guess what they wanted. They searched for signs described to them by the regent's most trusted lamas and astrologers. And soon, they found him, a little baby, born in a humble town in a land not quite Tibet, not quite China, not quite India, a land a bit like this one, a hidden place on the border of empires.

“But what could the regent do? He could not reveal the boy to the public. He could not raise the boy as the Sixth Dalai Lama when everyone believed the Fifth still to be alive, ruling from the shadows of his solitude in the palace. So what did the regent do?”

Sera paused, enjoying the silence. Then she drew in a breath and continued. “He hid the boy in a tower in a village that no one knew existed. The boy was kept there, not knowing why, and uncertain of who he was. For a time his family stayed with him, but then he was alone, and lived only in the company of tutors who came and went. At night, the boy could see the stars through his window.

“But I think that he did not always stay there. I think that he ran away for days and months at a time. He traveled on ships through storms and ate delicacies and fell in love and learned the names of animals and flowers from sight and not only from pictures in books.”

Sera paused. She stretched her shoulders slightly, a leonine movement barely perceptible under her voluminous black wool travel clothes. “When the boy was sixteen years old, the regent revealed the truth to the city, and brought the boy to the palace to take his place as the Sixth Dalai Lama. But what do you think it was like, after all those years of not knowing who he was, to be suddenly surrounded by people expecting him to be a leader? He did not like it at all. So he would go into the city at night in disguise and dance and sing and drink with the common people.”

“Was he punished?” asked the boy, with an apprehensive look at his mother.

There was a wistfulness in Sera's smile. “Not for that,” she said. “The people loved him even though he did not spend his time making laws and strategies.”

“Is he there now?” Kamala's daughter asked the question. Her fingers were netted in colored threads.

“No. He is not there.” Sera's eyes were sad. “Just as the regent feared, the northern clans discovered that Tibet no longer had a strong leader. For them, Lhasa was like a bright pebble that your little brother has and that you want for yourself. It is easy to take. It was not long before Tibet had a new ruler.”

“But what happened to the boy who was the Dalai Lama?”

“The new khan declared that the recognition of the Sixth had been a mistake, that he was a false incarnation and impostor. He was imprisoned and sent away to China, where the khan's ally, the Emperor of China, promised to keep him.”

“Then he is in China now?”

“No. He never arrived in China. He became sick on the road and died.”

There was an abrupt silence. Then the little girl began to cry. Sera leaned forward and touched the girl's cheek. Her low, assertive voice became very gentle. “Or maybe he did not. Some say that he escaped. So if you meet a man on the road, a pilgrim perhaps, and think to yourself, deep in your heart, that he is a prince, then maybe it is the lost Sixth. No one can say whether this is a true story or a false one—it is only one version of events.”

*   *   *

After the midday meal, the manor inhabitants spread throughout the compound, clustering around sources of heat or occupying themselves with chores. Li Du and Hamza found the door to Sera's room closed. Hamza knocked, and she opened it. She had taken off her coat, and now wore a voluminous shawl of red wool belted at the waist over a dress of supple leather. Behind her in the room, a ceiling brazier emitted tendrils of smoke that snaked toward the window.

Her expression was defiant. “Have you come to chastise me for incautious speech? I do not regret my words. One benefit of being so far from the hearts of empires is that I can speak freely on subjects of interest to me.”

“On the contrary,” said Li Du, mildly. “It is a freedom I, too, enjoy.”

Sera's brows drew together. “Are you here to discuss my political allegiances?”

“Not at all,” replied Li Du. “I appreciated your account. It was one I had not heard before.”

This statement was met with silence. “I remember the uproar in Beijing,” Li Du went on, “when we heard that the Great Fifth Dalai Lama had been secretly dead for fourteen years. It was an embarrassment to the Emperor that none of his spies had uncovered the deception sooner.”

The furrow between Sera's brows disappeared as her eyes widened in surprise. “You speak of your Emperor as if he were a man. I did not think that was permitted.”

Li Du gave a small smile. “As you say, we are a long way from the center of the empire.”

Sera regarded him warily. “Then why have you come?”

Hamza had been examining the carved and painted animals that decorated the lintel above the door. “The day before yesterday was a dreary day to be wandering in the forest,” he said.

Sera looked from one to the other of them. “I was not wandering in the forest.”

Li Du looked at her. “You told me that you spent the morning with Lumo,” he said.

“I did.”

“But you were not there the whole time.”

The furrow reappeared between Sera's brows. Her posture became tense. “Why do you care where I was?”

The time for disguising his inquiry as casual conversation was over. Li Du lifted his eyes to hers. “We are not certain that Dhamo killed himself,” he said. He kept his voice just above a whisper.

Sera's expression was carefully blank. “Whatever happened to him,” she said, lowering her voice also, “I had nothing to do with it.”

“But it is true that you were not at Lumo's the whole morning,” said Li Du.

“I have no reason to discuss this with you,” she replied.

Hamza crossed his arms over his chest. “You do not know who we are. My friend may be a magistrate in disguise. I may be a prince. You should tell us the truth.”

“I didn't kill the painter,” said Sera.

Li Du spoke. “If we are correct, then someone did. Yesterday there was almost another death. Consider that if a killer is among us, no one is safe. I urge you to tell us what you know.”

Sera did not answer.

Hamza renewed his efforts, his voice low and stern. “What secret errand took you from Lumo's while she slept?”

Sera met his eyes. “You think it is so important to know what I was doing during that time?”

“I think,” said Hamza, “that you should stop treating us as fools and explain what you were doing in that snowy forest even as a man was meeting his doom amid those same trees.”

“I was bathing.”

There was sudden and complete silence. Hamza stared at her. “Bathing?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was bathing in one of the hot pools. Lumo had showed them to me several days prior, and when she fell asleep I decided to go there and bathe.”

“Bathing—without clothes?”

Sera's face was impassive. “It was very pleasant.”

“But you were bathing.”

Li Du looked at Hamza with exasperation. “I am surprised, my friend, to see you overcome, when you have told me so often of the many harems you have visited, where bathing women anoint themselves in rare perfumes while you tell them stories.”

Hamza was instantly affronted. “I am not overcome.”

Li Du turned to Sera. “Dhamo went to the hot springs that morning. Did you see him there?”

She hesitated. “I did not see him there.”

“But you saw him somewhere else.”

She nodded.

“Tell us what happened.”

With a long exhale, she relented. “I was in one of the higher pools,” she said. “I thought I saw someone through the trees some distance away. I did not want to encounter a stranger, so I left as quickly as I could.”

“Can you describe this person in any more detail?”

She shook her head. “It might have been a shadow.” Her eyes went to Hamza. “I thought it might be you.”

“If it had been me, I can assure you that I would have made my presence known.”

Sera continued. “I was returning to Lumo's through the forest. It was getting colder. That was when I saw Dhamo. He was coming up the path from the bridge. He must have been going to the hot springs.”

Somewhere in the hallway, the wind caught a shutter and rattled its hinges. “Is there nothing more you can tell us?” Li Du asked.

For a moment it seemed that she would say more. Then she shook her head and took a step back into her room. “Nothing,” she said. “I have told you all I know.”

 

Chapter 15

Pema sat by the courtyard brazier holding a bowl of butter tea. The barn behind him was swept, and a shovel leaned against the wall beside a wheelbarrow full of dung. A cow raised its head at Li Du's approach, watching him with the expression Li Du often saw in cows, as if it was seeing something different from what Li Du imagined himself to look like.

At the sight of Li Du, Pema seemed to emerge from a trance. He hastily offered Li Du tea, which Li Du accepted only in order to prevent Pema from becoming self-conscious about drinking his own.

“When I went to the hot springs yesterday,” Li Du said, handing his bowl across the fire, “I found cinnabar rock.”

Pema nodded and filled Li Du's bowl. “Dhamo used it to make red paint.”

Li Du turned his bowl absently around in his hands. “It occurred to me that Dhamo might have gone to collect cinnabar on the morning of his death.”