Chapter Eleven
Aroka, in the Willows
The runner came at the dawn drum.
Nanny Zhou took him at the inner door and brought, with the kettle, the slip of paper he had not handed over. She did not, this morning, allow her face to do anything. She set the slip beside the kettle and stepped back to the corner of the room where Wanjun had been writing since the fourth watch.
The slip was written in Pei's deputy's hand — Wei, who used a brush sharpened too fine for the paper it lived on. Lady. A body at Bashang, by the willows of the eastern gate, by the report of the gatekeeper of the second eastern. A Sogdian girl by description. The Censorate is not yet riding. The brother at the gate is not yet riding. The lady, by Pei's quiet hand, may ride if she wishes.
She set the brush down.
She washed her hands.
She tied her hair in the plain knot her father had taught her for a riding hour, and went out to the courtyard, and stood at the well-edge for the count of three breaths before she called for the horse.
The horse was a quiet bay her husband had bought her for the autumn of 747, when he had still been alive enough to think she should ride. She had ridden it perhaps eighteen times in the eighteen months since. The stable-boy at the corner of the lane brought it through the gate at the half of the fifth watch in the patient walk of a boy who did not understand horses and had been told by the boy who did that the lady's bay was not, this morning, a horse to be hurried.
She mounted at the second mounting-stone.
She did not, at the mounting, allow herself the inference she had set, last night, beside the lacquered letter-box and had closed the chamber against. She did not yet know what she was riding to. She allowed the not-knowing.
She rode east.
The avenue at the half of the fifth watch was empty in the way Chang'an avenues were emptied only at the half of the fifth watch — the curfew gates open for the dawn but the night-traders not yet at their stalls and the day-traders not yet at the gates. The elms ran their grey ribbon at her left. A single Gold Bird guardsman at the third arcade looked up at the bay and at her grey, and let her pass. He did not, in passing, raise his hand. He did not, in passing, ask her name.
She rode the avenue's length to the eastern gate and through it onto the Bashang road.
She rode the Bashang road for the count of perhaps a thousand paces. The willows began at the second milestone. The willows of Bashang, in late spring, were a thin grey-green that did not yet meet overhead, and a man who had come to Bashang in this season to weep for a friend, or to compose a poem in farewell, would have ridden a horse he did not love through this grey-green for perhaps a quarter of an hour before reaching the grove the proper farewell would be made in.
Aroka had not, by the gatekeeper's account, been mounted.
\ \ \*
The grove was the third grove, on the right hand of the road, where the willows thickened to a wall.
A boy from the eastern second ward was sitting at the milestone in the cotton smock of a gate-runner. He stood as she rode up. He pointed without speaking. She inclined her head. She dismounted at the milestone and tied the bay to the milestone's iron ring and walked the last fifty paces.
Brother Hui was already at the grove.
He had come on foot, from the southern wards, in the pre-dawn — by what private channel he had been told she did not yet ask. He stood, in his weather-grey monk's robe, at the foot of the willow that held the body, in the patient upright stillness of a man who had been at a foot of a willow before.
"Brother."
"Sister."
He stepped aside.
The girl was nineteen. She was hanging at perhaps the third low branch — a branch a tall man, or a man on a stool, would have reached comfortably. Her feet were six handsbreadths from the ground. Her face was turned slightly toward the road. Her left hand was open at the wrist, the fingers slightly curled, in the relaxed posture of a hand that had loosened before death, not in it. Her right hand was closed at the cuff. Her hair was tied back in the Sogdian household-mourning braid she had worn at the kitchen door of the An compound on the morning Wanjun had not been allowed to speak to her.
She was wearing the cotton under-robe of a junior household maid. She was not, this morning, wearing the apron of an An-clan kitchen girl.
The rope was hemp. The knot was a hangman's knot, set behind the right ear in the form a southern provincial executioner used. The rope had been thrown over the branch and tied at the trunk. The tie at the trunk was a sailor's hitch. A Sogdian household-maid would not, in her own grief, have known either knot.
Wanjun did not, at the willow, allow her face to do anything.
She walked, slowly, around the trunk.
The grass at the foot of the willow was undisturbed. There were no scuff marks. There was no fallen stool. There were no fallen anything. A girl who had hanged herself from this branch would, in the ordinary order of a hanging, have stood on something to reach the branch and have kicked the something away in the last second of her own decision. The something would have fallen. It would have fallen, by the position of the body, to her left.
There was nothing to her left.
She walked, slowly, back to the front.
The girl's neck was not the neck of a hanging. The bruise at the throat was wrong. It ran horizontally, in a thin pale line under the jaw, the line a thinner cord — perhaps a silk band, perhaps a strip of linen — would have left if it had been drawn tight around the throat from behind by a man's two hands. The hemp rope at the throat now had been laid over this earlier line. The hemp had not made the bruise. The hemp had been arranged to suggest the bruise.
She had been strangled. She had been hanged afterward.
Wanjun did not, at the willow, allow her face to do anything.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"The livor."
He stepped to the body. He did not, at the body, lift his hand. He looked at the girl's face, at her neck, at her open palm.
"The livor, sister, is at the small of the back and at the buttocks. It is, sister, the livor of a body that lay on its back for perhaps three hours before it was set in this branch. The livor of a hanging would be in the feet. The body, sister, was not hanged in life."
"It was hanged in death."
"It was."
"How long."
"By the cooling at the cheek, the dropping of the lower jaw, the early stiffness at the shoulder — perhaps the eighth hour of last night. The body, sister, was at a back for perhaps three hours after death, and was set in this branch perhaps four hours after the death. The death, sister, was the third watch of last night. The setting, sister, was the second to last watch."
"Curfew."
"Curfew."
"A man who set a body in a willow on the Bashang road at the second to last watch of last night was a man who could pass the eastern gate during curfew."
"He was."
She stepped, carefully, to the girl's right side.
The right cuff was closed. She did not, at the cuff, allow her hand to lift it. She looked, instead, at the small linen tack at the inner edge of the cuff — three small stitches in pale yellow thread, set in the unhurried hand of a person who had stitched the tack at a writing-table in lamplight rather than at the gate in haste. The thread was the thread of a writing-master's pen-cleaning cloth. The stitches were the stitches of a Han household, not a Sogdian one.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"The cuff."
He looked. He did not, this morning, touch the cuff. He stepped half a pace back.
"The cuff has been tacked, sister, by a hand that did not belong to the cuff."
"Inside the tack."
"Sister."
He lifted, with the thin wooden pick he had carried in his sleeve since the storeroom of the An, the corner of the tack. He did not cut the thread. He worked the tack open at one stitch only, in the slow practised way a careful unfrocker worked the spine of a borrowed sutra. The tack opened.
Inside the cuff, against the linen, was a folded scrap of paper the size of a thumbnail. The paper was a faintly waxed parchment of the kind a Liangzhou caravan used for slip-notes that would not run in the rain. The scrap was folded twice. On the top fold, in Sogdian script in a careful unhurried hand, were three small characters.
Brother Hui did not, at the cuff, read them aloud.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"The script is Sogdian. The hand is — I will, this evening at my hut, read it under stronger light. The script, sister, is not — at this hour, at this light — the script of a girl of nineteen who has braided her hair at a Sogdian household. It is the script of a person who has, on a writing-table, set characters from a hand-copied page. The fold, sister — " he did not lift the scrap; he set the tack back over the paper with the same patient practised pick — "the fold is fresh. The fold was set last night. The scrap was set in the cuff last night."
"In Chang'an."
"In Chang'an. The wax on the parchment is still slightly tacky at the fold."
"Then it was set in the cuff after the third watch."
"It was."
"By the man who hanged the body."
"By the man who set the body. Whether he also strangled the girl, sister, is a question for the second light. He may have set her in the willow only. He may have set her in the willow because another man, three hours earlier, had handed her body to him already bound for the hanging."
She inclined her head.
She stood, for the count of three breaths, with her hands at her sleeves and her eyes on the girl's open left palm.
She did not allow herself the inference.
She allowed instead, in the careful corridor of her own attention, the placement of three things side by side. A Sogdian house-girl, nineteen, dead at the third watch in a Han manner of death made to look like a Sogdian manner of death. A waxed Liangzhou parchment, set in the cuff after the third watch, by a hand with reference-level Sogdian and access to a Chang'an writing-table. A rope set at the willow by a man who could pass the eastern gate in curfew.
The reading would be made elsewhere. The reading would not be made here.
She stepped back to the foot of the willow.
\ \ \*
An Naxia was at the milestone.
He had come, by the patient unhurried walk of his horse, perhaps a quarter of an hour after she had. He had not, on coming up, ridden into the grove. He had tied his horse beside hers at the milestone's iron ring and walked the fifty paces and stopped at the edge of the grass where the willows began.
She walked out to meet him.
He stood in his mourning white, in the careful unhurried stillness of a man who had ridden out in the pre-dawn and had, on the riding, allowed himself only one decision per furlong. His eyes were the grey she had registered on the morning of the second day. The right hand sat, this morning, at the level of the left.
"Lady Cui."
"An gongzi."
He looked, briefly, past her shoulder at the willow. He did not look at the body. He looked at the branch.
"She was the same age as my sister."
She allowed the sentence to sit in the air between them for the count of one breath.
She did not, on the sentence, file it. She let it stand.
"An gongzi."
"Lady Cui."
"The girl was strangled in the third watch and hanged at the second to last. The rope is a southern provincial knot. The cuff has a Liangzhou-paper scrap set inside it after the third watch, in Sogdian script. The grave-cloth, the apron — she was changed before she was hanged. She was changed at the third watch by a person who had access to a Han household's pen-cleaning cloth and a Liangzhou caravan's wax parchment."
He stood very still.
"Lady Cui."
"An gongzi."
"You are telling me, lady, that the man who set this body in this willow had access, in Chang'an in the night of last night, to a Liangzhou caravan's waxed parchment."
"I am."
"There are perhaps eight households in Chang'an that keep that parchment in any quantity. The An clan's caravanserai keeps it in the kitchen yard."
"I had registered the parchment."
"You had."
He did not say more.
She watched him for the count of two breaths. He had not turned. He had not, at the sentence, allowed the grey of his eyes to do anything. He stood with his weight at the heel of his right foot in the careful unhurried stillness of a man whose first decision of the morning had been the decision not to move.
She did not, at the milestone, allow herself the third inference.
She allowed the first two.
"An gongzi."
"Lady Cui."
"You will, this morning, ride the second mile of the Bashang road with me back to the gate. We will, at the gate, separate. You will return to the caravanserai. I will return to Yongchong. We will, in the evening, by Brother Hui's hand, exchange the second light of the Sogdian script in the cuff."
"Lady Cui."
He looked once more at the branch.
"Lady. She was the same age as my sister. I have said this once. I will not, this morning, say it again."
"An gongzi."
"Lady."
He bowed. She inclined her head. He walked back to the milestone. She walked back to the willow and stood at the foot of it, briefly, with Brother Hui, and gave him quiet instructions for the moving of the body to the eastern coroner's hut by way of the southern wards' Buddhist lay-burial society, which would not, by its own discipline, ask the names of the dead it carried.
She mounted at the milestone.
She did not, on the riding back, allow her face to do anything.
\ \ \*
They had ridden perhaps a half-mile of the second mile when, at the rise of the road that gave its last view of the willows before the Chang'an wall took them, she allowed herself one sentence.
"An gongzi."
"Lady Cui."
"The parchment."
"Lady."
"In the An caravanserai. Who keeps it."
He did not answer for the count of perhaps six breaths. The horses' hooves on the road were a soft slow rhythm she had taught herself, in the riding of the past two days, to count as a curfew drum counted — by the eight breath, by the sixteen breath, by the half-watch. She counted to six. She counted to seven.
"The senior steward of the kitchen yard keeps it, lady. The steward's apprentice keeps it on the desk by the well. The kitchen-master who came from Liangzhou last autumn keeps a private supply in his under-room. The household's senior accountant has, at his ledger, a small ration for the household's quarterly accounts."
"Four hands."
"Four. There may be others. I have not, lady, counted in the past month."
"You will."
"Lady."
"By the third watch this evening."
"Lady."
She did not, in the riding, look at him.
He did not, in the riding, look at her.
The horses' hooves continued their soft slow rhythm. The willows of Bashang fell behind them. The wall of Chang'an rose ahead.
\ \ \*
At the eastern gate she dismounted at the third mounting-stone and walked her bay through in the easy pace of a woman who had ridden out for the dawn drum on a Daoist errand of mourning and was now, at the half of the sixth hour, returning to her own ward.
The gate-keeper at the western post was a man she did not know. He looked at her tally. He looked at the bay. He did not, this morning, ask her where she had ridden.
She had reached the second arcade inside the gate when the second man stepped out from behind the public-records pillar.
He was perhaps fifty. He wore the dark plum-coloured robe of a senior censor at the half of the morning audience. His hair was tied in the upright tail of a man who had taken some pains, this morning, with his appearance. He carried, at his left sleeve, a sealed sheaf of papers. He carried, at his right, no weapon and no fan.
His face was the face she had been keeping, for eighteen months, in the back room of her own attention.
Censor Lu Zhongming.
She did not, at the pillar, allow her face to do anything.
She inclined her head.
"Censor."
"Lady Cui."
He stepped a half-pace into the arcade. He did not, on stepping, look at the bay. He looked at her grey, at her tally, at the unfastened ribbon of her riding-knot. He let his eyes rest on the ribbon for the count of perhaps two breaths.
"Lady. You have ridden out to Bashang at the dawn drum."
"I have."
"On the matter of a Sogdian girl."
"On the matter of a body."
"The body, lady, is under the Censorate's review as of the half of the dawn audience. The Censorate has, this morning, formally accepted the case of the An compound as a Manichaean sect matter. The girl at Bashang is, by the Censorate's reading, the second victim of the same sect, killed by the same hand. The case, lady, will be heard at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow. The matter is no longer one on which a private scrivener of Yongchong is required."
She did not, at the pillar, allow her face to do anything.
"Censor."
"Lady."
"You have made the case a sect matter at the dawn audience."
"The Censorate has."
"On what evidence."
He smiled.
The smile was a very small one, set at the right corner of his mouth, the corner she had been told by her husband — once, in a third-watch conversation in the autumn of 747 when he had returned from a tea at the senior censor's house in a state she had registered but had not asked him to name — was the corner Lu Zhongming used when he was pleased with himself.
"On the evidence, lady, of a Sogdian-script fragment in the cuff of the girl's right sleeve."
"You have not yet seen the cuff."
"I have not. I have, however, this morning, received the report of the gatekeeper of the second eastern gate, who has — by the quiet courtesy of a runner of the Honglu Si — included in his report a note of a Sogdian-script fragment at the cuff."
"The gatekeeper did not see the cuff."
"He did not. He was told, lady, by the runner."
"And the runner."
"Lady. The runner has not, at this hour, given his name."
She did not, at the pillar, allow her face to do anything.
"Lady Cui."
"Censor."
"You will, at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow, be at your own writing-desk in Yongchong, drafting petitions for Pingkang courtesans. You will not, at the second-day audience, be present at the Censorate. You will not, in the morning of the fourth day, ride to Bashang. You will not, in the morning of the fifth day, walk into the Eastern Market. You will not, in the morning of the sixth day, present yourself at the gate of any household whose name has, in the past week, been spoken in the Censorate's small inner court."
"Censor."
"Lady."
"You have not yet rescinded my license."
"I have not. The license, lady, was issued by your late husband's authorisation. The authorisation, lady, will — at the half of the second-day audience tomorrow — be reviewed. I would not, lady, presume to anticipate the review."
She bowed.
She did not, in the bow, allow her face to do anything.
He inclined his head a finger's width. He stepped back behind the public-records pillar and was gone in the direction of the Censorate offices at a walk that was, by its very unhurried evenness, the walk of a man who had, this morning, accomplished what he had set out to accomplish.
She walked the bay forward.
She did not, in the walk, allow herself a word.
She had — she registered, in the careful corridor, at the pillar she did not yet allow herself to look back at — three things she had not, at the dawn drum, known. The case was, this morning, the Censorate's. The script in the cuff was, this morning, public to the Censorate before it had been opened by the lady of Yongchong. And Lu Zhongming had been told, by a Honglu Si courier whose name had not been given, what was inside the cuff before the cuff had been read.
The Honglu Si did not, ordinarily, run couriers for senior censors at the half of the dawn audience.
The Honglu Si had been running couriers, in the past three nights, for one household.
She did not allow herself the inference.
She walked the bay home through the avenue of the third arcade, in the slow patient walk of a woman who had been at Bashang at the dawn drum and was returning to her writing-desk at the half of the sixth hour. The elms ran their thin grey ribbon at her left. The wall of Chang'an held the morning sun at her back.
At her own gate Nanny Zhou took the bridle. The stable-boy took the bay.
Wanjun did not, this morning, walk to the writing-desk.
She walked to the inner court and sat, briefly, on the low stone bench by the well, and washed her hands in the cold dawn water of the courtyard cistern. The water was very cold. She held her hands in the water for the count of perhaps twenty breaths.
She lifted them out.
She walked, water still cooling at her wrists, to the writing-room, and stood at the writing-desk, and looked, for the count of perhaps three breaths, at the lacquered letter-box she had not, last night, opened.
She did not, this morning, open it.
She turned.
She walked to the brazier in the corner of the writing-room. The brazier was cold. She knelt at it and lifted, from the small basket beside it, a single piece of dry pine. She set the pine in the brazier. She did not, this morning, light it.
She knelt for the count of perhaps twenty breaths in front of an unlit brazier with a single piece of dry pine set in its centre, the water at her wrists cooling, the bay at the stable, the body of a Sogdian girl in the eastern coroner's hut, the censor at the pillar of the second arcade, the cuff of a sleeve in a Liangzhou parchment, and the lacquered letter-box on her writing-desk that she had not, last night, opened.
She did not allow her face to do anything.
She did not allow her hands.
She rose.
She walked out of the writing-room.