Chapter Fifteen
A False Victory
The arrest was at the dawn drum of the morning of the fifth day.
She heard it not by Pei's deputy and not by Brother Hui but by the rain.
The rain had begun at the second watch — a soft slow rain of the kind a late spring brought to Chang'an by way of the western hills, a rain that did not, on the paving of the avenue, raise the dust but laid it down in a thin grey wash that ran in the gutters of the third arcade. She had not, at the second watch, been asleep. She had been at the writing-desk in the writing-room of the third room of the abbey of Princess Yuzhen's quiet cousin, with the lamp at the lower edge of the platform-bed turned down to a half thumb, and a piece of fresh paper on the writing-table at which she had not, in the four hours since the stitching, written.
She had been listening.
She had heard the rain begin in the small inner garden of the abbey. She had heard it gather on the tile of the third room's roof at the second quarter of the second watch. She had heard, at the third quarter, the soft slap of a sandal on the wet flagstone of the inner gallery — the porter, by his stride, walking from the gate to the abbess's quarters with the unhurried step of a man who had been waiting at the gate for a runner he was not, on his own account, permitted to detain.
She heard, at the half of the third watch, the abbess's own step at the door of the third room.
She rose.
She opened the door.
The abbess was at the door in her plain grey winter robe and an oilcloth cape against the rain. She was holding, in her left hand, a slip of paper damp at the corner. She did not, in handing it, look at the sleeping man on the platform-bed.
"Daughter."
"Mother."
"A runner of the prefecture has come to the gate. He has not, this morning, asked for any of the names this abbey is keeping. He has asked, instead, that the daughter at Yongchong be informed, in the hour of the dawn drum, of an arrest. The arrest, daughter, has been made by Censor Lu Zhongming at the half of the second watch in the Manichaean lay-cell of the second southern ward. The man arrested is one Anpan, an elder of the cell, by his own confession before the prefecture's clerk the man who instructed, in the autumn of last year, a private cell-cohort to kill seven Sogdians of the An clan in the Western Market for the matter of a sectarian debt unpaid in the matter of Khotanese stone."
She did not, at the door of the third room, allow her face to do anything.
"Mother."
"Daughter."
"At the half of the second watch."
"At the half of the second watch."
"He confessed at the prefecture."
"He confessed at the prefecture. The confession, daughter, by the runner's reading at the gate of this abbey, was set down in the careful hand of Lu Zhongming's senior clerk and was signed by Anpan at the half of the third watch. The case, by the prefecture's clerk, will be heard at the dawn audience this morning. The case will, by the prefecture's clerk, be closed at the half of the fourth hour."
"Mother."
"Daughter."
"The runner."
"He waits at the gate. He has, daughter, been told by my own porter that the daughter of Yongchong will, by the dawn drum, send a brief reply."
She inclined her head.
She walked to the writing-table and took up the fresh paper at which she had not, in four hours, written. She set it under the lamp. She lifted the brush from the inkstone-cup she had kept warm by the brazier through the third watch.
She wrote three lines.
The lady Cui of Yongchong acknowledges the prefecture's runner. The lady will be at her own writing-desk by the half of the fifth hour. The lady will be at her own gate to receive the prefecture's runner at the half of the sixth.
She did not sign the third line. The signature was the half of the third hour. The third hour had not yet sounded.
She passed the paper to the abbess.
The abbess inclined her head a finger's width.
"Daughter."
"Mother."
"You will, at the dawn drum, walk out by the rear gate. The Sogdian gongzi will be at this abbey, by my discretion, until the dusk drum of this evening. The brother at the gate has been told."
"Mother."
She bowed.
The abbess left.
\ \ \*
She walked, in the dim grey light of the dawn drum, to the platform-bed.
An Naxia was asleep. The lamp at the lower edge of the platform-bed had burned through the third watch and was, this morning, at the last quarter-thumb of its wick. The wound at his ribs had not, by the linen, bled through to the second layer. The stitches she had set at the half of the fourth watch held.
She did not, at the bed, allow her face to do anything.
She did not wake him.
She wrote, on a second slip of paper, four lines.
Gongzi. An arrest has been made. The case is, by the prefecture's reading, closed. I am at Yongchong by the half of the fifth hour. You will, by the abbess's discretion, remain at this abbey until the dusk drum. Ah-Sa will, by my brother's hand at the third hour, be brought to this gate. You will, by his hand, return to the caravanserai at the dusk drum.
She did not sign the slip.
She set it on the writing-table at the angle the lamp at the lower edge of the platform-bed would, in the second-to-last quarter of its wick, lay across at the moment he opened his eyes.
She walked to the door.
She did not, at the door, turn.
She opened the door.
She stepped through.
She closed it behind her.
\ \ \*
The avenue of Vermilion-Bird, at the dawn drum of the fifth day, was the colour of a brazier that had not been lit. The lanterns of the third arcade had been put out. The rain had thinned to a slow patient drizzle that lay along the paving in a thin grey film. The carters of the western consignments had not yet come up from the first eastern gate. The Gold Bird guardsmen at the third arcade stood at their post in the unmoving stillness of men who had been on station since the third watch and had not, this morning, been called to anything.
She walked.
She walked in her grey Daoist robe. She had taken the dark robe off at the abbey and folded it, with the silver ingot rolled inside, into the inner cuff of the grey. She walked, in the grey, with the ingot at her waist, in the slow patient walk of a Daoist nun on the dawn drum of a morning that had not, on her face, been a morning of any unusual hour.
She reached her own gate at the half of the fifth hour.
Nanny Zhou was at the inner door.
She had been at the inner door, by the long heavy fold of her morning shawl, since the second watch.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"You walked the avenue."
"I walked the avenue."
"The grey."
"The grey."
"Mistress. There has been a runner of the prefecture at the gate."
"There has been."
"At the half of the third watch."
"Yes."
She walked past the inner door. She did not, at the inner door, hand Nanny Zhou the silver. She walked to the writing-room.
The wax tablet with the diagram and the empty circle was on the corner of the writing-desk. The lacquered letter-box was where it had been at the dusk drum of the night before. The clean wax tablet on the writing-table was empty.
She set the silver, in the dark robe's fold, on the corner of the desk beside the wax tablet.
She unfolded the dark robe.
She lifted the silver ingot. She set it, flat, on the wax tablet beside the empty circle.
The lower face of the ingot, in the morning light, showed the older kiln-mark in the faint trace under the recast upper face.
She did not, at the wax tablet, allow her face to do anything.
She walked to the brazier. She lit it.
She set, on the writing-table, the brush and the inkstone. She drew, from the writing-desk's inner drawer, a clean fresh sheet of the prefecture's plain paper — the paper she used for petitions she would, at the half of the second-day audience, hand over to Pei's deputy at the tea-house behind the Censorate.
She wrote, in her own careful hand, a request.
The lady Cui of Yongchong respectfully requests, of Vice-Censor Pei's office, the loan, for the count of one morning, of the broadside set in the prefecture's public lists at the third arcade of the eastern wards in the past ten days, on the matter of the Manichaean cells of Liangzhou and the Manichaean cells of Chang'an.
She rolled the paper. She tied it. She set it under the brass weight.
She walked to the inner door.
"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"The runner of the prefecture will be at the gate at the half of the sixth hour. You will, at the inner door, take from him the prefecture's slip. You will, after taking it, hand him the request I have set under the brass weight. You will not, Nanny, name the brother at the kiln. You will not, Nanny, name the abbey."
"Mistress."
"I will, at the half of the eighth hour, be at the writing-desk."
"Mistress."
She walked back to the writing-room. She closed the door.
\ \ \*
Brother Hui came at the half of the seventh hour.
He came not by the gate but by the rear lane of the courtyard, in the soft slow step of a man who had walked the back lanes from his brick-kiln hut in Anhua Ward in the morning rain and had reached the rear gate at the half of the seventh hour without, in the walking, allowing his sandals to slap a single flagstone louder than the rain.
He stood at the second pillar of the outer hall.
She walked out to him.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"You have heard."
"I have."
"At what hour."
"Sister. A boy of my own kiln-cohort, who works the night-cart of the prefecture's clerk's house, brought me the count of the arrest at the half of the fourth watch. The confession, sister, was signed at the third quarter of the third watch. The confession, sister, was — by the kiln-boy's reading of the prefecture's clerk's whispered account at the front gate of the clerk's house — a confession that was, in its first paragraph, the confession the prefecture had wished to hear, and in its second paragraph, the confession the prefecture had not been able to wish away. The kiln-boy, sister, did not understand the difference. The kiln-boy reported the difference."
"What was in the second paragraph."
"Sister. The second paragraph, by the kiln-boy at the half of the fifth watch, named four members of the lay-cell who had — by Anpan's signed reading — accompanied him to the An compound on the night of the murder. Three of the four, sister, are at this hour in the prefecture's holding-room. The fourth, sister, by Anpan's reading, fled to Liangzhou in the morning after the murder and has not, in the eleven days, been heard from."
"Three of four."
"Three of four."
"The three of four will be available to the dawn audience this morning."
"They will be available."
"By the prefecture's count, they will be the corroborating witnesses to Anpan's confession."
"They will be."
"And the confession."
"Sister."
"Is set in the careful hand of Lu Zhongming's senior clerk."
"It is."
She inclined her head.
She walked back into the writing-room. He followed at the half-pace of a brother walking behind a sister in the inner gallery of her own house. He stopped at the door.
She walked to the writing-desk.
She lifted, from the corner of the desk, the wax tablet with the silver ingot set on it. She set it on the writing-table where the light from the writing-room's eastern window fell at its strongest.
She drew, from the writing-desk's inner drawer, a sheet of paper she had been keeping in the drawer for sixteen months. It was a broadside of the spring of 749, a public bulletin set by the prefecture's clerk in the third arcade of the eastern wards in the second month of that year, on the matter of a Manichaean lay-cell dispute in Liangzhou over a Khotanese-jade shipment. She had filed it, at the time, against the chance she would need it. She had not, in the sixteen months, taken it out.
She set the broadside on the writing-table.
She did not allow her face to do anything.
\ \ \*
The runner of the prefecture came at the half of the sixth hour.
Nanny Zhou took him at the gate. She handed him the rolled request, took from him the prefecture's slip, and closed the gate without exchanging a word beyond the formal one.
She brought the slip to the writing-room.
The slip was the prefecture's notice of the confession. It was set in the careful hand of Lu Zhongming's senior clerk. It was, by the inner test Wanjun had been keeping at the back of her own attention since the dawn drum, the careful clean hand of a man who had been at the Censorate for nine years and had set his name to perhaps four thousand documents.
She set the slip on the writing-table beside the broadside.
She read the first paragraph of the slip.
She read the first paragraph of the broadside.
She read them side by side.
The first paragraph of the slip was, word for word, the central paragraph of the broadside of the spring of 749, with the substitution of the An household of the Western Market in the late spring of 750 for the Mahmud household of the Liangzhou southern ward in the second month of 749. The sectarian dispute over Khotanese jade was identical. The cell-master's name had been changed. The names of the four accompanying lay-cell members had been changed. The phrasing of the Bēma prayer had been changed from the Bukharan to the Loulan dialect, in the same change the cuff-scrap had made.
The confession, in the slip, was the broadside of sixteen months ago, copied at the half of the third watch by the senior clerk of Lu Zhongming's office.
The man named Anpan had not confessed. The man named Anpan had signed his name, at the half of the third watch, to the broadside.
She did not, at the writing-table, allow her face to do anything.
"Brother Hui."
"Sister."
"The confession is the broadside of the spring of 749. The man named Anpan has signed the broadside."
He stepped to the writing-table. He read the slip. He read the broadside. He took the slip in his left hand and the broadside in his right and held them side by side at the angle the eastern light of the writing-room reached its strongest.
He did not speak for the count of perhaps thirty breaths.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"He has signed the broadside."
"He has."
"The four of his cell will, at the dawn audience, sign their own names to four paragraphs from the same broadside. The four of them, sister, will then have signed the broadside of the spring of 749 as the confession of the spring of 750. The case will close at the half of the fourth hour."
"It will close."
"The lady will, by the half of the fourth hour, hold no public ground from which to open the case again."
"She will not."
"And the lady."
She lifted, from the corner of the desk, the wax tablet with the silver ingot. She set it back on the writing-table. She lifted, with her finger, the older kiln-mark at the lower face of the ingot to the angle the eastern light caught.
"The lady, brother, holds the ingot. The lady holds the kiln-mark. The lady holds the cuff-scrap. The lady holds the laundress's testimony. The lady holds Sirin in the apothecary's storeroom of the second day. The lady holds the cousin of Anvar in Liangzhou. The lady holds the lacquer at the second lane of the Eastern Market. The lady, brother, holds the husband's slip of the autumn of 748."
"And the lady will not, this morning, lodge these at the dawn audience."
"She will not."
"Because."
"Because, brother, the prefecture's audience at the half of the fourth hour is, by the prefecture's count, complete. To open it again, this morning, with a clean petition before the prefect, would be to ask the prefect — in the presence of Censor Lu Zhongming — to acknowledge that his senior clerk has, this night, set down a confession copied from a broadside sixteen months old. The prefect, brother, will not acknowledge. The prefect will reject the petition. The petition will, in being rejected, expose to Lu Zhongming the breadth of the lady Cui's reading. The lady will, in being so exposed, lose the count of perhaps ten further evidences that are, at this hour, not yet ripe."
"Sister."
"The lady will accept, this morning, the closing of the case. The lady will not, at the dawn audience, speak. The lady will not, this evening, tell the Sogdian gongzi that the closing is false. The lady will hold the closing as the prefect holds it — as a closing. The lady will, in the days to come, by the quiet channel, open it again."
He inclined his head a finger's width.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"I do not, at the door, like it."
"Nor do I, brother."
"Sister. The four of the cell will, in the days to come, be put to death."
She did not, at the writing-table, allow her face to do anything.
She held the silence in the writing-room for the count of perhaps twenty breaths.
She turned. She walked to the corner of the writing-room where the small clay water-jar Nanny Zhou kept against the cistern's failing in summer sat on the floor. She knelt at it. She set her hands, palms flat, on the floor on either side of the jar.
She did not allow her face to do anything.
She did not allow her hands.
She held, against the inside of her own chest, the count of the four of the cell who would, in the days to come, be put to death.
She did not, at the jar, weep.
She rose.
She walked back to the writing-table.
"Brother Hui."
"Sister."
"The four. We will, in the days to come, write — by Pei's quiet hand — to the prefect of Hexi, who is, by the quiet testimony of my late husband's circuit-letter of the autumn of 748, a man who held, in those years, an old debt to Vice-Censor Pei's brother-in-law. The prefect of Hexi will receive, in the morning of the eighth day, a private slip in Pei's own hand asking that the four be transferred, on a thin technical question of jurisdiction, to the Hexi audience. The Hexi audience, brother, is not, in this season, in a hurry to put four Sogdians to death on a Chang'an confession."
"Sister."
"It will not save them, brother."
"Sister."
"It will give them, brother, three months."
"Sister."
"In three months, brother, the quiet opening of the case may have widened sufficiently."
"It may."
"It may not."
"Sister."
She turned from the writing-table.
She walked, briefly, to the inner door of the writing-room and opened it. Nanny Zhou was in the corridor.
"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"The runner of the prefecture has been received and the slip filed. The runner will not return today. I will, in the afternoon, walk to Pei's deputy at the tea-house behind the Censorate. I will, this evening, be at home."
"Mistress."
She closed the door.
\ \ \*
Du Fu came at the third hour.
He came at the rear gate, in his under-robe and a cotton oilcloth, with the wry tilted smile of a man who had been at a wineshop since the dawn drum and had not, on his way, been allowed to come in at the avenue.
Nanny Zhou took him at the rear gate. She did not, this afternoon, send him to the writing-room. She gave him a bowl of millet rice and a cup of barley tea in the small kitchen yard.
Wanjun walked out to him.
He stood. He bowed. He set the bowl down.
"Lady."
"Master Du."
"You have not, this afternoon, been to the audience."
"I have not."
"They closed the case at the half of the fourth hour."
"They closed it."
"The proprietress of the Three Magpies, lady, in whose tea-shop I have, this morning, been at the second cup, has told me that a quiet wager has been laid down — by the kitchen-boy of the prefecture's clerk's house, in the loose idiom of the kitchen-boy at the third cup of his own wine after the audience — on the matter of how many days it will take the lady Cui of Yongchong, in her own grey, to ride into the matter again."
"What is the wager."
"Lady. The kitchen-boy of the prefecture's clerk's house has set the days at eight. The kitchen-boy of the tea-shop's own kitchen has set the days at twelve. The kitchen-boy of the wineshop two streets east has set the days at twenty. The proprietress of the Three Magpies, lady, has set the days at three."
"And the master."
"I have, lady, set the days at none."
She did not, at the rear gate, smile.
She did not, this afternoon, have time for the smile.
"Master."
"Lady."
"You will, this evening, walk to the wine-shop of the Sparrow's Tail. You will, master, drink one cup. You will, in the drinking, listen for the proprietress's count of the names she has, in the past week, set in her own private ledger against me. You will, in the morning, by my own gate at the half of the seventh, bring me the count."
"Lady."
"A noodle, master, by Nanny Zhou's hand."
"Lady."
He bowed. He drank the barley tea. He left at the rear gate.
\ \ \*
She did not, at the half of the fourth hour, sit at the writing-desk.
She walked, briefly, in the rain to the small lacquer-and-pomegranate corner of the inner court where the bench by the well sat under the eave. She sat at the bench. The rain ran from the eave in a thin steady drip at her left side. The cistern, in the rain, had filled to the upper rim and was now overflowing in a slow patient run at its eastern lip.
She did not, on the bench, allow her face to do anything.
She held, against the inside of her chest, three things.
The four of the lay-cell who would, in the days to come, be brought to the audience as the public face of a case the case was not. The senior clerk of Lu Zhongming's office who had copied, at the half of the third watch, the broadside of the spring of 749 onto the prefecture's plain paper and had not, in the copying, noticed that the broadside's Bēma prayer had been in the Loulan dialect and the Loulan dialect was the cuff-scrap. The lacquered letter-box on the corner of the writing-desk in the writing-room behind her, which she had not, in the dawn drum or the seventh hour or the third hour, opened.
She held them.
She did not, on the bench, weep.
She rose.
She walked, in the rain, to the gate.
She did not, at the gate, put on a cloak.
She stepped out into the lane.
The lane behind the eastern wall of Yongchong, at the half of the fourth hour of the afternoon of the fifth day, was the colour of a brazier in which a fire had once burned. The rain ran along the gutters in a thin grey patient line. The lanterns at the houses she passed had not been lit. A dog at the third house barked once and went silent.
She walked the lane to the corner where the lane gave onto the second eastern arcade. She did not, at the corner, turn east toward the avenue. She turned west, by the back lanes, toward the abbey of Princess Yuzhen's quiet cousin.
She did not, in walking, allow her face to do anything.
She did not yet know what she was going to say to An Naxia when she reached the third room of the inner gallery. She did not, at the corner of the second eastern arcade, know whether she would tell him the closing of the case was false. She did not, at the second turn of the back lane, know whether she would tell him she had not, in the eighteen months, opened the lacquered letter-box. She did not, at the third turn, know whether she would, by the dusk drum, tell him anything.
The rain fell.
She walked.