Chapter Nine
A Petition from Pingkang
She did not return to the Pang household at the half of the noon hour.
She had told the head of the house she would; she had told Brother Hui at the pillar she would; she had begun, in the small slow walk back along the second arcade, to compose in her head the form of the second visit — Madam Khorshid at her shoulder, the wine-merchant's name laid in front of the head of the house, the careful Sogdian-household courtesy of a refusal politely retracted. She had walked perhaps half the length of the arcade in this composition.
At the corner of the arcade, before the silk-mercers' lane, she stopped.
She did not, on the corner, allow her face to do anything. She set a single small private question against the inside of her chest, and waited, in the small narrow patience her father had once taught her, for the question to answer itself.
The question was: if the head of the Pang household is innocent, what does the lady Cui of Yongchong gain by walking through his door a second time at the half of the noon hour with the proprietress of the Cool Vine in her company?
The answer, after perhaps four breaths, was: nothing the lady Cui requires.
The lady Cui required two things from the Pang household. The first was the confirmation that the senior accountant was an innocent decoy. She had that confirmation; she had had it, in the inner room, at the small flat second when the head of the house had named Madam Khorshid. The second was the identity of the man who had instructed the head of the house at the dawn drum. She would not get that identity from the head of the house. The head of the house was — by his own offering of an alibi too clean to be tested — a man who had been told that the cleanest defence against the lady Cui was the surrender of one false lead while the deeper account was kept closed.
The deeper account would not be opened by a second visit at the half of the noon hour.
The deeper account would be opened, perhaps, by a second visit at a different hour, by a different person, after the household's instruction had aged sufficiently for the household's own discomfort to be the thing that opened the account.
She turned to Brother Hui.
"Brother Hui."
"Sister."
"You will, at the half of the noon hour, walk to the Cool Vine on my behalf and ask Madam Khorshid the small specific question of whether, in the small private idiom of her own household custom, she settled her quarterly account with the Pang household at the third hour of the night before last. You will, at the asking, watch the small private gesture of her left hand. You will not, brother, write down her answer. You will memorise it."
"Sister."
"You will then return to me, at the second hour after noon, at the corner of Vermilion-Bird Avenue and the small lane that runs into Pingkang from the east. I have a small private appointment in Pingkang at the second hour. I will, after the appointment, take from you Madam Khorshid's answer in the small specific gesture of her left hand."
"Sister."
"In the meantime, brother. The Pang household is not to be visited."
"Sister."
She inclined her head. He inclined his. They parted at the corner of the silk-mercers' lane. He walked west; she walked north; the small slow morning of the third day continued.
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She had a petition.
The petition was, in the small dry idiom of her practice-book, four months old — the small narrow case of one Little Pomegranate, a Pingkang courtesan of the second-rate house at the back of Lane of the Goldfinch, who had been beaten by a regular patron of a Han mid-rank ministry in the early autumn of last year and had, in the days since, been beaten twice more by the same patron in the same room. She had come to Wanjun in the third month of this year, on the recommendation of Madam Khorshid, with the small specific request that the lady Cui of Yongchong draft for her, in the careful idiom of the small grievance the prefecture would receive without referring it back to her own house, a petition under the Tang Code's provision against the persistent maltreatment of a registered entertainer.
The petition existed. The petition had been drafted. The petition had sat, since the third month, in Wanjun's writing-desk, with the small final paragraph — the paragraph that named, in the careful flat idiom of the second clause of the relevant provision, the patron — unwritten.
The paragraph was unwritten because Little Pomegranate, on the third visit, had asked the lady Cui to wait.
She had said: Lady, I am not, this month, ready.
She had said: Lady, I am, this month, asking whether the petition is — would be — kept in your desk.
She had said: Lady, I will come to you in the half of the noon hour of a day I will, in advance, send word.
Word had come at the dusk drum of two days ago, by way of Nanny Zhou, in a small folded slip from Madam Khorshid that said the Pomegranate would be received in the half of the noon hour of the third day, at the back of the Lane of the Goldfinch, in the room of the cook of the house.
The slip had come on the evening Wanjun had been at the An compound for the first time, and she had — in the careful corridor of her own discipline — set it aside on the writing-desk under the lacquered letter-box, where she had, on each of the past two days, in the small fragmentary corner of her morning, registered its presence without yet lifting it.
She had decided, at the corner of the silk-mercers' lane, that the petition would be the work of the half of the noon hour.
She did not, on the decision, allow herself a justification beyond the small flat private one: that the lady Cui of Yongchong was the scrivener-of-grievances of Yongchong Ward, that the case of the An compound had not, in the last sixty hours, suspended that practice in the eyes of the small narrow constituency of women who walked through her gate at the half of the morning hour, and that to suspend the practice — even for a case as large as the case of the An — was to give the small narrow constituency of Pingkang reason to walk through some other woman's gate.
She did not, on the decision, allow the second justification — which was that the work of the petition was the small precise thing she required, this morning, to clear from her chest the small flat unease of the Pang household's second arcade.
She allowed the first.
She walked north along Vermilion-Bird Avenue at the slow patient walk of a woman who was, in the half-hour before noon, on her way to the small back lane of Pingkang.
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Little Pomegranate was twenty-two. She had the small narrow Han face of a Henan-born girl whose Pingkang house had bought her contract at the age of thirteen and who had been working in the small back room at the rear of the Lane of the Goldfinch since the age of seventeen. Her hair was, this noon, undressed; she was sitting in the cook's room of her house in a plain Han under-robe and a small grey shawl, with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes lowered. There was a small clay cup of tea on the table beside her. There was a small white bandage on the upper edge of her left ear.
The cook was at the worktop. The cook was sixty, in the small dun-coloured apron of a Pingkang house-cook, and was, this noon, peeling a small bowl of garlic for the afternoon's preparations. She did not look up.
Wanjun sat at the table. She did not, at the sitting, look at the cook.
"Little Pomegranate."
"Lady."
"You sent word."
"I sent word, lady. I am, this month, ready."
"The patron."
"The patron, lady, is the same man. The patron, lady, has been visiting the room twice since the new year. The patron, lady, in the night between the fifth and the sixth of the third month, struck me at the upper edge of the left ear with the heavy half of a wine-cup. The bandage, lady, has been there for two months. The cut, lady, is healed; the bandage is a small private mark I have been keeping for myself, lady, until — until I had decided whether to ask the lady to write the last paragraph."
"You have decided."
"I have, lady."
"Tell me the name."
She lifted her head.
"Lu, lady. Lu Zhongming. Senior censor of the Censorate. The man who, by my house's account, has been making the small careful private trouble for you in the matter of the An compound, lady, since the night before last."
Wanjun did not, in the small cook's room of the Pingkang house, allow her face to do anything.
She had, in the corner of her own writing-desk, the small inner room she had been keeping for Lu Zhongming for eighteen months — the room she had built for him in the autumn of 748, when her husband had been a junior censor under Lu in the small specific way a junior censor was under a senior censor, and Lu had, in the third month of that autumn, refused her husband three requests for circuit reassignment without giving a reason. The room had grown a great deal in the eighteen months since her husband had died. The room had been, in the corridor of her own discipline, the small reserved chamber at the back, the chamber she had not, in the eighteen months, fully opened.
Little Pomegranate had, in a single sentence, opened it for her.
"Little Pomegranate."
"Lady."
"You have been beaten three times by this man."
"I have."
"You have, in the past four months, told no one."
"I have told the cook. I have told the proprietress of my house. I have told Madam Khorshid of the Cool Vine. I have, lady, told you."
"You have not, until this morning, told me his name."
"I have not, lady."
"Why this morning."
She looked at her tea. She did not drink it.
"Lady. Because, in the past day, the senior censor has been writing in the small private idiom of a man who has, in his own household, begun to make a list. The list, lady, by the cook's brother who is the door-keeper of the senior censor's outer hall, includes my own name. The list, lady, is the small list of women in Pingkang who have, by the senior censor's reckoning, been speaking aloud about the senior censor. The list is, lady, the small ordinary list of a senior censor who has been beaten in his own house by the small private speech of his wife, who is, by Madam Khorshid's intelligence, the Yang clan cousin who has, on the matter of his promotion, told him she will, this month, withdraw her sponsorship if he does not — in her own idiom, lady — quiet his small private appetites."
"His wife."
"His wife, lady. Has, this month, beaten him at home. He has, this month, begun the list."
"And the list."
"And the list, lady, ends with the women on the list either persuaded to silence by his small private intermediary, or, if not persuaded — by my house's intelligence — taken in the small ordinary curfew-charges of the Gold Bird Guard for matters not their own."
"You are afraid."
"I am, lady."
"You wish me to write the last paragraph."
"I wish, lady, the petition to be filed at the prefecture at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow. I wish, lady, the prefecture to know, in the small private idiom of the second-day audience, that a senior censor has, on three occasions, struck a registered entertainer in a Pingkang house. I do not, lady, require the prefecture to act. I require the prefecture to know."
Wanjun did not, in the cook's room, allow her face to do anything.
She had — she registered, in the small careful corridor — been told, by a Pingkang courtesan of twenty-two with a small white bandage on the upper edge of her left ear, two things in three minutes that altered the small private map of the lady Cui's case of the An compound.
The first was that Lu Zhongming, who had been pressing, since yesterday, for the case of the An to be heard at the second-day audience as a Manichaean sect matter, was a man on whom — by the small specific private testimony of a Pingkang courtesan, written into the last paragraph of a petition the prefecture would receive at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow morning — the lady Cui of Yongchong now held a small narrow lever.
The second was that Lu Zhongming had, in the past day, begun a list of women he considered a problem. The list, by the small private logic of a list of that kind, would not be confined to Pingkang.
She did not yet know whether her own name was on the list.
She allowed herself, in the careful corridor, the small flat second of the registering.
"Little Pomegranate."
"Lady."
"I will write the last paragraph at the half of the third hour, in my writing-room. I will, at the dusk drum, hand the petition to a runner of the prefecture by way of Vice-Censor Pei's assistant. The petition, daughter, will be received at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow. The senior censor will know, at the third hour of the audience, that the petition has been received."
"Lady."
"You will not, daughter, be in Pingkang at the half of the second-day audience. You will be at the small back-room of the Cool Vine, in Madam Khorshid's keeping, until the prefecture has — in the careful Tang idiom of these matters — issued a small admonition. Madam Khorshid will, at the dusk drum of this evening, walk you there in person."
"Lady."
"You have done me a courtesy, daughter."
"Lady."
"At the half of the third hour, the last paragraph."
Little Pomegranate lowered her head. The cook, at the worktop, took the last clove of garlic and laid it in the small bowl. She did not, in the half of the noon hour, look up.
\ \ \*
She walked home, briefly, to write the last paragraph.
She did not, in the writing of it, allow herself any flourish. She wrote, in the careful flat idiom of the second clause of the relevant provision, the small narrow sentence that named the patron, dated the three occasions, identified the witnesses, and requested — in the small ordinary phrase the prefecture preferred — the admonition of the prefecture against the senior censor's persistent practice. She did not, in the writing, allow her hand any pleasure. She rolled the petition. She tied the petition. She set the petition at the corner of her writing-desk under a small brass weight.
She left.
\ \ \*
The corner of Vermilion-Bird Avenue and the small lane east into Pingkang was, at the second hour of the afternoon, busy with the noon traffic of the southern wards. She stood at the corner in her Daoist grey. She had, at the corner, perhaps four minutes to wait before Brother Hui arrived from the south.
She had not, at the corner, allowed herself the careful sorting of the Pang household question.
She allowed it now.
The leak had four possible sources. Aspand was the naasalar's second; he had been at the kitchen door for the well-work; he had not, by her own four minutes of watching, left it. Brother Hui had been in the well. Brother Hui had been in the storeroom. Brother Hui had been at her own writing-desk last night. Brother Hui had — by his own twenty years of careful Buddhist discipline of saying nothing — the longest record of silence of any man she had retained. She did not, this afternoon, believe the leak was Brother Hui.
An Naxia had been at the kitchen door for the whole of the well-work. He had taken from her hand the laundress-cloth before she had wrapped it in her sleeve. He had given it back. He had been the only person in the kitchen yard, at the half of the noon hour of yesterday, who had had the cloth in his own hand for the count of perhaps three breaths.
She allowed the inference. She allowed it without naming it.
She did not, on the second thought, allow herself the third — which was that An Naxia had, on the morning of yesterday at her gate, by the sabao's soft phrase, been described to her in three sentences as a man of the An clan in mourning for his uncle. The description had been a description. The description had not, on yesterday's morning, been an account of An Naxia. The description had been the small social form by which a man of the An clan in mourning for his uncle was named to a Han widow who was the scrivener of the southern wards. The man behind the description she had been reading for two days from inside a Sogdian household crisis whose terms had not, in two days, given her one minute of him in any room he had not been ordered to be in.
She did not yet know, in the small careful corridor, who An Naxia was.
She allowed the not-knowing.
\ \ \*
Brother Hui arrived from the south at the half of the second hour. He came alone. He carried, in his left sleeve, his small writing-tablet. He did not, at the corner, speak immediately.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"Madam Khorshid was at the Cool Vine. She poured me a small cup of millet wine of which I drank a courtesy mouthful. I asked the small specific question. She answered, in the small specific gesture of her left hand, that she was at the Pang household between the seventh and the third hour of the night before last on the matter of her quarterly account; that she signed for it in the household's senior accountant's presence; that the senior accountant was, at the third hour, at the desk in the second inner room, where she left him; and that, in the small private idiom of her own observation, sister, the senior accountant has — by the testimony of her own four hours in the room — the small specific habit of rolling his left foot as he sits. The roll, sister, is involuntary. It is not, sister, the roll of a man who has been at the kitchen of an An compound."
"It is the roll of a man who has been at a desk for four hours."
"It is."
"And she was at the desk for four hours."
"She was."
"Then the senior accountant is innocent."
"He is. The wristband, sister, was the small careful planted lead."
"And the head of the house was told at the dawn drum to receive me."
"Sister."
"Yes."
"The head of the house was told by a man whose name I have not, this morning, obtained. I have, however, obtained from Madam Khorshid the small narrow fact that, at the half of the eighth hour of last night, a private courier of the Honglu Si delivered, to the gate of the Pang household, a sealed correspondence from Hexi. The correspondence, sister, by Madam Khorshid's private observation through the inner door of the storeroom, was passed by the senior accountant directly to the head of the house. The head of the house, sister, opened the correspondence in the third inner room at the half of the third hour of the morning."
"The dawn drum."
"The dawn drum."
"And the correspondence."
"By Madam Khorshid's small careful inference — which I have, in the past hour, declined to allow myself to test by direct question of her — the correspondence was the small specific instruction to the head of the house that, at the half of the seventh hour, a Daoist nun of Yongchong would arrive at the storefront on the matter of a cotton wristband. The instruction did not name the lady Cui of Yongchong. The instruction named the Daoist nun. The instruction was, sister, a small careful precaution against a household which might, on receiving the lady Cui's name, have refused her entry. It told the head of the house only the description and the hour."
"By a private courier of the Honglu Si."
"By a courier whose name and household I do not know."
"Brother."
"Sister."
She did not, at the corner, immediately answer. She allowed, in the small narrow corridor, the small flat second of the reading.
The leak was not Brother Hui. The leak was not Aspand. The leak was, possibly, An Naxia. The leak was, more probably — by the small specific channel of the Honglu Si and the small specific courier and the small specific hour of the dawn drum — a man who had access to the Honglu Si's couriers and who had, at the dusk drum of yesterday, known what Brother Hui had brought up from the well.
The man who, at the dusk drum of yesterday, had known what Brother Hui had brought up from the well had been, at the dusk drum, in three rooms.
Brother Hui's brick-kiln hut. The kitchen yard of the An compound. An Naxia's caravanserai office.
The Honglu Si did not keep couriers at the brick-kiln hut. The Honglu Si did not keep couriers at the kitchen yard.
The Honglu Si kept couriers at the caravanserai office of any caravan-master of the An clan whose sister was married into the household of an fanyang general.
She did not, at the corner, allow her face to do anything.
She did not, this afternoon, allow herself the third inference yet.
She allowed the first two.
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A small clatter at the south end of the small lane brought her, briefly, up out of the careful corridor. A man — thin, threadbare, with the small hopeful slope of an unfed scholar — was coming up the lane in the careful unhurried walk of a man who had been at a wine-shop since the dawn drum. She had known him for four years. She did not yet, at the corner, raise her hand.
"Lady Cui."
"Master Du."
"You are at this corner at the half of the second hour. I have, this morning, been at the wine-shop of the Sparrow's Tail. The proprietress of the Sparrow's Tail, lady, has told me three things, of which one is for you."
"One."
"That a junior censor of Lu Zhongming's office, lady, who was at the wine-shop at the third hour of last night, told the proprietress, in the small private idiom of a junior censor at the third cup, that the senior censor would, at the second-day audience tomorrow, be naming three Manichaean lay-cell elders, of whom one is a Sogdian wineshop owner in Pingkang."
"A Sogdian wineshop owner in Pingkang."
"By the proprietress's reading, lady, the description fits the proprietress of the Cool Vine. I would not, lady, swear by the reading. The proprietress of the Sparrow's Tail is, lady, a woman of small careful private rivalries with the proprietress of the Cool Vine, and her hearing, lady, is not, this season, the hearing of a court reporter."
"You have done me a courtesy, master."
"Lady. A noodle would, this evening, repay me."
She did not, at the corner, smile. She did not, this afternoon, have time for the smile.
"Master. A noodle this evening, in my courtyard, after the dusk drum. By Nanny Zhou's hand."
"Lady."
He bowed. He stepped past the corner, into the avenue. He did not, in passing, look at Brother Hui.
She did not, on his departure, allow herself a word.
Lu Zhongming, by Madam Khorshid's testimony, had been alibi-witness in the inner room of the Pang household at the third hour of the night before last. Lu Zhongming, by Little Pomegranate's testimony, had begun a list. Lu Zhongming, by Du Fu's wine-shop, was preparing to name Madam Khorshid at the second-day audience tomorrow.
Madam Khorshid was, in the small narrow logic of this morning, both a witness against Lu and a witness Lu would, by morning, be naming.
The race, in the careful corridor, was the race between the lady Cui's petition and the senior censor's audience. The petition would, at the dusk drum, be in Pei's hand. The senior censor's audience would, at the half of the second-day audience, be in the prefect's. The two papers would, in the morning of the fourth day, be in the same room.
She did not, at the corner, allow her face to do anything.
She inclined her head to Brother Hui.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"Walk with me to Madam Khorshid. By the back lane, brother. Not the avenue."
"Sister."
They walked.