Chapter Eight
The Laundry at the Sign of the Three Crosses
The Eastern Market in the morning was, in the late spring, a different city from the Western. The Western had its dust, its camel-piss, its smell of yak butter from the upper Liangzhou consignments, its background hum of Sogdian and Pahlavi and a small persistent Tibetan; the Eastern had the smell of paper-glue from the booksellers' lane and the smell of mutton-fat from the noodle-shops and the dry small fragrance of Han ink. The Eastern was the older market. The Eastern had been a market under Sui. The arcades on its western side had been rebuilt twice in her lifetime.
She walked it, on foot, in her grey, at the half of the seventh hour of the morning of the third day.
Brother Hui walked behind her at the small respectful distance of an unfrocked Buddhist following a Daoist nun who had retained him for the day. He carried, under his left arm, a piece of damp cotton wrapped in pale yellow paper — the laundry-mark cloth from the well. He had spent the late evening of yesterday, in his brick-kiln hut at the edge of Anhua Ward, identifying the small three-cross red thread. He had narrowed the Eastern Market's three hundred and ten registered laundries down to seven. Of the seven, four did the small three-cross stitch as a wash-house mark and three did it as a wash-attendant's signature. Of those three, one was a sub-stall at the back of the silk-mercers' arcade and was, by his quiet inquiry at the dusk drum yesterday, the only laundry in the Eastern Market that did the mark with a thin red thread on a cotton-and-not-linen ground.
The sub-stall was the laundry at the sign of the Three Crosses.
The sign of the Three Crosses sat at the rear of the silk-mercers' arcade, behind the second of the two public-records pillars, in the small narrow alley between the arcade and the back wall of the bookbinders'. The sign itself was a wooden plank, painted a faded red, with three black crosses arranged in the small even vertical of a tally. The laundry was a single room with a brick washing-trough along its rear wall, a hemp drying-line running the length of the room above the trough, and a low door that opened, at the half of the seventh hour, onto a courtyard with a slate cistern and a single laundress already at work.
The laundress was thirty-six. She had a long lean Han face, the kind of face the prefecture clerks called zhang shi xiang — long-stone-face — and the wet sleeves of a woman who had been at her trough since the fifth watch. She did not look up when Wanjun stepped through the door. She did not look up when Brother Hui did.
"Mistress."
"Mistress."
"You will not need to look up. I will not, this morning, ask for anything you cannot give me without looking up. I am a lay Daoist of Yongchong Ward. The brother behind me is, this morning, my reader. We have come for a small narrow inquiry concerning the small three-cross stitch on a cotton wristband."
The laundress did not look up.
She continued to plunge her wooden paddle into the trough, in the careful flat half-circle that drove the water through the cotton without bruising the warp.
"There are three women in this market who do the three-cross stitch on cotton. The mistress will tell me which."
"There are. I am one. I am the only one who does it in the small red thread that this brother carries in his sleeve. There are two who do it in black silk and one who does it in linen blue. The mistress will say which she has brought me, if she wishes."
Brother Hui stepped forward, unwrapped the cloth, and laid it, flat, on the rim of the trough. The water in the trough was grey with the morning's lye and the cloth, on the rim, looked thinner than it had in the lamp of the storeroom.
The laundress, without lifting her hand from her paddle, glanced at the cloth.
"That is mine."
"You are sure."
"Mistress. I have been doing the three-cross stitch in red thread on cotton wristbands of clerks of the Pang household for nine years. The stitch on this band is the stitch of an older hand than I — my mother. My mother died four years ago. The mistress has, in her sleeve, the wristband of a clerk of the Pang household. The wristband is older than four years. The mistress's case, mistress, is an old case."
"The Pang household."
"The Pang household in the Eastern Market, mistress. The Pang clan of the second arcade. The merchants of jade-and-stone. The household has had four clerks in my mother's time and two in mine. The wristband, by the cut, is for a man who wore the band on his right wrist. Most clerks wear it on the left; the band is for sweat at the writing-hand. A right-wrist band, mistress, is for a clerk who writes with his left."
"You remember which clerk."
"There were two left-handed clerks in the household in my mother's time. One was dismissed in the year of the wet summer. The other, mistress, is in the household still. He is the Pang household's senior accountant. He has a small wen at the throat, the size of a date-stone. He rolls his left foot slightly when he walks. His name is Pang Sicheng."
Wanjun did not, in the small narrow laundry, allow her face to do anything.
She had heard that name yesterday afternoon, in the apothecary's storeroom, from the kitchen girl Mowei, who had not heard the name herself but had described — in the small specific Sogdian-household phrase that meant the Han man who came to the kitchen door at the seventh hour of the night before last — a Han man with a wen at the throat and a rolling left foot.
Mowei had described, by every visible mark, Pang Sicheng of the Pang household of the Eastern Market.
The Pang household had been one of the three names on her late husband's slip.
\ \ \*
She walked out of the laundry at the half of the eighth hour with the cloth back in Brother Hui's sleeve and the laundress's paddle still plunging in the trough behind her. She did not, in the alley between the arcade and the bookbinders', allow herself a word. Brother Hui did not, in the alley, allow himself one either.
At the second of the two public-records pillars she stopped.
"Brother Hui."
"Sister."
"The Pang household is the household of jade-and-stone."
"It is."
"My husband's slip — the eleven characters — held three household names. The first was the silk-merchant Zhang. The second, by Datis's reading, was a man I have not yet identified. The third was the Pang."
"And Pang Sicheng."
"Pang Sicheng is the senior accountant. Pang Sicheng has the wen at the throat. Pang Sicheng has the rolling left foot. Pang Sicheng was in the kitchen of the An compound at the seventh hour of the night before last."
"So it would appear."
She allowed the inference. She let it stand in front of her, in the small narrow alley, with the dust of the morning rising at her shoes and the smell of the bookbinders' paper-glue in the small still air.
The inference was very tidy.
The inference was, she registered, perhaps too tidy.
She did not, this morning, allow the second thought yet. She allowed the first.
"Brother Hui."
"Sister."
"The household. The arcade."
"Yes, sister."
They walked.
\ \ \*
The Pang household's frontage in the second arcade was the third storefront from the south end, set behind a high blue-grey awning of a kind that the Eastern Market's stone-merchants had been keeping since Sui. The awning had been re-painted recently — within the year, by the colour. The lacquer of the door-frame, however, was original; the small fine cracks at the corners had the dryness of a frame that had been weathered through ten summers. The shop-front was open. Inside, behind the long mahogany counter, a senior clerk was, at the half of the eighth hour, going through the morning's accounts.
The senior clerk did not have a wen at the throat. The senior clerk was a younger man with a small clean Han face and a flat-and-attentive expression which had, in the past two days, taught itself, by the testimony of his shoulders, that something in the household was wrong.
"Mistress."
"Master clerk. I am Cui Wanjun, the scrivener-of-grievances of Yongchong. I am here on a small private matter relating to a wristband whose laundry-mark belongs to your household. The wristband is not, this morning, the matter. The matter is the wearer of the wristband. The wearer of the wristband, by the laundry-mark and by the small habit of left-handedness, is Pang Sicheng."
The clerk did not, at the counter, immediately answer.
He set down the abacus-bead he had been moving. He folded his hands inside his sleeves.
"Mistress. Pang Sicheng is in the household. He has been in the household since the year of the wet summer. He is the senior accountant. He is — mistress, the matter on the table this morning is a matter you may wish to have at the table with the head of the house, not with me."
"He is in the building."
"He is, mistress, in the inner room."
"I would speak with him."
"Mistress. The inner room, this morning, is the room of the household's accounting on the matter of the An compound, which the head of the house has, at the dawn drum, set the senior accountant to in the small private idiom of a household that owes the An compound — by yesterday's bell — fourteen consignments of southern stone and one cart of wool that have not, in the past two days, been delivered. The senior accountant is, mistress, deep in the accounting. He has not, mistress, slept. He has not, mistress, been outside the inner room since the third hour of last night."
She did not, on the second clerk's small Han phrase, allow her face to do anything.
"He has not been outside the inner room since the third hour of last night."
"Mistress."
"You will tell me, master clerk, who was in the inner room with him at the third hour of last night."
"The head of the house, mistress. The head of the house's eldest son. Three junior clerks. The cook. The master of the small inner storeroom — who is not, mistress, by your house's question, a man who has been in the kitchen of any compound but ours."
"And before the third hour of last night."
"Pang Sicheng was, mistress, at the half of the eighth hour of last night, at the gate of the household receiving the sealed correspondence from Hexi by the courier of the Honglu Si. The courier remained at the gate, mistress, for the count of perhaps thirty breaths. The senior accountant signed for the correspondence and bore it into the inner room. He did not leave the inner room from that hour to this. The head of the house, mistress, will, if pressed, swear to it."
She did not, in the shop-front, immediately answer.
She had, in the inner corridor of her own discipline, the small flat reading of a man who had, by every visible mark on his clerk's face, told her the truth.
She had also the small flat reading of a clerk who had been instructed by the head of his house, perhaps at the dawn drum this morning, that the lady Cui of Yongchong was expected and that the answer to the lady Cui's question was Pang Sicheng has been in the inner room since the third hour of last night. The instruction would have been simple. The instruction would not have required the clerk to know what the lady Cui was asking.
She did not, in the shop-front, decide which of the two readings was the true one.
"Master clerk."
"Mistress."
"I will speak with the head of the house."
\ \ \*
The head of the Pang household was a stocky man of fifty-eight, in a pale grey scholar's gown that had been recently let out at the seam under the right shoulder. He received Wanjun in the second of the household's three inner rooms, with the door open onto the small inner court. The senior accountant — Pang Sicheng — was in the room behind the second, at the desk against the back wall, with his back to the door. He did not turn when Wanjun was shown in.
She could see, from the inner room, the line of his back; the small wen at the right side of his throat — visible above the collar of his under-robe; the slight tilt of his left foot on the floor, the right foot square, the left rolled a fingerwidth outward. The senior accountant matched, in every visible mark, the description Mowei had given of the Han man at the kitchen door of the An compound at the seventh hour of the night before last.
The head of the house bowed.
"Lady Cui."
"Master Pang."
"You are looking, lady, at my senior accountant."
"I am."
"My senior accountant, lady, is a man of nineteen years in this household and of no enemy beyond the small ordinary enemies of a clerk who has corrected the addition of the household's juniors. He is, lady, the man you suspect of being at the An compound at the seventh hour of the night before last."
"He matches the description."
"He matches, lady, the description by the wen and by the foot and by the wristband and by the laundry-mark, all of which are public marks of his household identity. He does not match the description by the small fact that he was, on the evening before last, at this desk in this room, in the company of his cousin who is the master of the small inner storeroom, his cousin's wife who is the household's bookkeeper, and a Persian wine-merchant from the second arcade who had come to settle his quarterly account in the small custom we keep of paying the senior accountant in person. The wine-merchant left at the third hour of last night. The cousin and the cousin's wife slept the night in the small east room of this compound, having been at the desk until the fifth watch on the matter of the An compound's fourteen consignments. The senior accountant did not sleep the night. He has not, lady, been out of this compound since the noon hour of yesterday."
He did not, in the inner room, look at the senior accountant.
He looked at Wanjun.
He had — she registered, in the small flat corridor — the careful flat look of a man whose senior accountant was, at this hour, the indispensable centre of a household crisis the household had not been able to see beyond, and who had walked, this morning, on instruction of someone else, to a desk at the back of his own second inner room, to clear a doubt that the household had not yet known to fear.
He had been told, at the dawn drum, that she would come. He had been told what to say.
She did not yet know who had told him.
"Master Pang."
"Lady."
"You will give me, master, the names of the four other persons in this compound at the seventh hour of the night before last."
"My cousin. My cousin's wife. The Persian wine-merchant. The household's master of the inner storeroom."
"And the Persian wine-merchant's name."
"Khorshid. The widow of the wine-merchant of the Cool Vine."
She did not, on the fifth name, allow her face to do anything.
Madam Khorshid had been at the Cool Vine at the seventh hour of the night before last when An Naxia had returned to the gate of the An compound with a brand from the atash of Loulan. Madam Khorshid had not been in the Pang household at the seventh hour. Madam Khorshid had been the source — at the third hour of yesterday afternoon, in the room of her own wine-shop — of the testimony that the Pang household was the household of the second of the three names on her husband's slip.
The Pang household had, this morning, named Madam Khorshid as the alibi for the senior accountant on the evening of the murder.
The head of the house had, in three sentences, walked her into the small careful Sogdian-household courtesy by which a witness's witness was named as a witness back. The household had been told, by someone with the small careful knowledge of her own intelligence channels, that the lady Cui's most credible alibi-breaker, in the Eastern Market, was the proprietress of the Cool Vine, and the household had — perhaps last night, perhaps at the dawn drum — set the alibi accordingly.
The head of the Pang household was either telling her the truth or telling her a lie in the small specific shape of a lie that had been designed for her.
She did not yet know which.
She bowed.
"Master Pang."
"Lady."
"I will return, master, in the half of the noon hour, with Madam Khorshid of the Cool Vine in my company, who will tell me, in your hearing, whether she was at this table at the third hour of yesternight."
"She will, lady."
"She will."
She turned. She walked out, in the slow careful walk of a woman who had been told, by the head of a Han household in the second arcade of the Eastern Market, two things she could not yet sort.
Brother Hui followed.
\ \ \*
At the corner of the arcade, by the second public-records pillar, she stopped.
"Brother Hui."
"Sister."
"He is innocent."
"You believe."
"I believe. The wen, the foot, the wristband — these are public marks. The household offers an alibi I can break or not break by walking to the Cool Vine. The alibi was prepared for me overnight. The household had two hours to invent a lie. They did not invent. They named Madam Khorshid."
"And."
"And, brother — the household was also told. Someone instructed the head of the house, at the dawn drum, that the lady Cui of Yongchong would walk in. Someone wrote him the alibi. Someone knew, by the small specific knowledge of the small specific channels of my own work, that the proprietress of the Cool Vine was the only Pingkang witness whose word I would, in the first hour, take."
"Who."
"That, brother, is the question."
She paused at the pillar.
"And the wristband in the well."
"The wristband was planted. The wristband was a wristband of a real clerk of the Pang household, lost or taken at some other hour, set in the bristles of the broom by the silk-merchant himself, so that the laundry would lead to the Pang clerk, and the Pang clerk would lead to a man whose physical description matched the description Mowei had given. The kitchen girl saw a Han man. The kitchen girl saw the wen, the foot, the left-handed wristband. She did not see the face. The killer dressed himself in the small specific public marks of a man whose description he had read from somewhere — perhaps from a clerk of the Honglu Si, perhaps from a market-roster, perhaps from the laundry-mark itself."
"Why."
"Brother. Because, in the small narrow logic of the broker, the lady Cui of Yongchong was always going to find the wristband in the well. The lady Cui was always going to take the wristband to a laundry, and the laundry was always going to take her to the Pang household, and the Pang household was always going to deliver the senior accountant. And the lady Cui — if the lady Cui were not careful — was going to file the senior accountant, and ask Pei to have him taken to the Censorate, and walk home at the half of the noon hour with the small flat private feeling of a case closed."
"And if the lady Cui were careful."
"If the lady Cui were careful, brother, she would walk into the Pang household at the half of the seventh hour, look at the senior accountant for the count of perhaps eight breaths, see the man Mowei had described in every public mark, and feel — at the inside of her chest, brother — the small flat unease of a man who looks too much like the description. She would then sit at this pillar and ask herself why a man one was meant to find in three hours had been so carefully arranged to be found."
"And then."
"Then, brother, she would ask herself the second question, which is who, in the city of Chang'an, knew at the dusk drum of yesterday that a laundry-mark on a cotton wristband had been pulled from a well by a Buddhist monk on a rope at the half of the noon hour of the same day."
"That is not, sister, many people."
"It is not, brother. It is four. It is you. It is me. It is Aspand the naasalar's assistant. It is An Naxia."
She did not, at the pillar, allow her face to do anything.
She did not, this morning, allow herself the second sentence — which was that she had walked into the Pang household at the half of the seventh hour at the small narrow direction of a wristband Brother Hui had pulled from a well in the company of An Naxia, who had stood at the kitchen door of the kitchen yard for the whole of the well-work, and who had, at the half of the noon hour of yesterday, taken from her hand the laundress-cloth before she had wrapped it in her sleeve.
He had taken it from her hand to look at the stitch.
He had given it back.
She had not, in the kitchen yard, watched what he had done with his hand between the looking and the giving.
She walked, slowly, in the careful unhurried walk of a woman who had been brought, by the laundry-mark in a well, to a household in the second arcade, and who had been told by the household three things, none of which she could yet sort.
She did not, this morning, allow the third reading.
She allowed, in the small careful corridor of her own discipline, the first two.
She walked on.