Chapter Seventeen
The Fold of the Prayer
Brother Hui came at the dusk drum.
He came not by the kiln-boy and not by his own slow southern walk but by the back of a cart that had been carrying turnips from the southern stalls to the Sparrow Bridge crossing — a cart driven by a half-deaf old farmer who had owed Brother Hui a copper since the spring, and who had this evening, by the brother's quiet hand at the inner stall of the second southern ward, agreed to drop a passenger at the back lane of Yongchong before the dusk drum sounded.
He climbed down in the lane.
He paid the farmer in a single dried fig the kiln-boy had brought him at the third hour from a stall at the second arcade of the south.
He walked the last forty paces in the slow patient step of a man who had not, in walking, made any sound that would wake the dog at the third house.
He came in at the rear gate.
Nanny Zhou took him at the inner court. She had been at the inner court since the noon-drum. She had not, in the six hours since, sat down. The half of a dried fish she had wrapped, by Wanjun's hand, on the writing-desk mid-eighth hour was no longer at the corner; the kiln-boy had taken it at the dusk drum, by the rear gate, with the rolled slip, and was, by the brother's account at the rear gate, by now on the eastern arcade of Yongchong heading south to the brick-kiln.
The kiln-boy would not return until the dawn drum.
The brother had come instead.
He had come in his weather-grey monk's robe, with at his left sleeve a small wrapped square of pale yellow oilcloth — the same square he had carried at the dusk of the eleventh day — and at his right a small clay flask of the kind a southern apothecary's storeroom kept against the slow Sogdian compounds the Western Market's foreign households did not.
He set the oilcloth on the writing-desk.
He set the flask beside it.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"You drank."
"I drank."
"At the noon-drum."
"At the noon-drum."
"How much."
"By the steady pour of his hand, brother, the half-dose. By the bitter at the back, brother, the bitter of the second day. By the watches, brother, the six."
He inclined his head.
He did not, at the writing-desk, lift his hand to her wrist.
He lifted his hand to the flask.
"Sister. The flask is the second flask of the storeroom of the apothecary at the second day. The flask is the antidote to the half-dose. The antidote, sister, by the apothecary at the second day, is to be taken halfway through the third watch from the dose, at half an inner cup, with water that has been boiled at the dawn drum and cooled to the temperature of the inside of the wrist."
"The third watch from the noon-drum."
"The third watch from the noon-drum is the middle of the third watch of the evening. By the dusk drum tonight, sister, you will have had three watches at your throat. By midway into the third watch you will have had three and a half."
"I will take it the third watch half-spent."
"You will."
He did not, at the writing-desk, lift the flask a second time. He set his hand back at the wrapped oilcloth.
He drew the square open in the three slow folds of a man who had been taught, at the cell-master's bench at Da Ci'en Si, that the unwrapping of a paper was the unwrapping of a paper.
Inside the oilcloth was the folded scrap of waxed Liangzhou parchment they had taken from the cuff at Bashang.
He set it flat on the writing-table beside the celadon cup of barley tea Nanny Zhou had set at her elbow at the dusk drum.
"Sister. The scrap, this evening, will not wait. I have, in the kiln-hut of the brick-kiln this afternoon, read it again at the brighter lamp the kiln-boy keeps at the second furnace. I have read it three times more, in the slow patience of a man who had decided, on the fourth reading at the dusk drum yesterday, that he had perhaps missed the third thing wrong. I have, this evening, found the third thing wrong."
"The third thing."
"The pin."
He laid his finger at the small darkened circle at the upper left corner of the scrap, where the cloth-pin Aroka's killer had used to tack the parchment to the inside of the dead girl's cuff had pressed.
"Sister. The pin-mark, by the second lamp at the kiln, is not the mark of an ordinary brass cloth-pin. The pin-mark is the mark of a pin of the second-arcade tailors' guild — the small flat-headed pin with the cross-cut at the head that the second-arcade tailors set in the upper edge of a bolt-sample to mark it for the day's running. The pin is, by the second-arcade tailors' use, the pin a clerk of a silk-shop would set in the upper edge of a bolt of seven-pearl or eight-pearl on the day the bolt was set out for a private customer. The pin is, by my reading at the kiln, a clerk's pin from a silk-shop of the second arcade."
At the writing-desk she did not, look up.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"You have, this afternoon, read the scrap as a scrap that was tacked to the cuff with the second-arcade tailors' pin of a clerk of a silk-shop of the second arcade."
"I have."
"A clerk of a silk-shop of the second arcade."
"A clerk."
"Brother."
"Sister."
"At what hour the dawn drum tomorrow."
"At the third quarter of the fifth watch."
"You will not, this evening, sleep at your kiln."
"I will not."
"You will sleep at my second cabinet behind the cistern. Nanny will set the cushion-rugs at the third watch. You will be at this writing-desk at the third quarter of the fifth watch."
"Sister."
"I will, the third watch at its midpoint, take the antidote. I will, mid-fourth watch, sleep. I will rise at the third quarter of the fifth watch with you."
"Sister. The antidote, by the apothecary at the second day, requires the lady to lie at her own bed for the three watches following the taking. The antidote does not sit, by the apothecary, at the writing-desk."
"Brother."
"Sister."
"I will lie."
He inclined his head.
He did not look at the lacquered letter-box on the corner of the writing-desk.
He set the second-arcade pin-mark in its place on the cuff-scrap and folded the parchment a second time in the three folds the parchment had been folded in when she had set the oilcloth down on the writing-desk.
He set the oilcloth back over it.
He did not, this evening, lift the flask of the antidote a second time. He set the flask, with the small care of a man who had been told that the lady would take the antidote halfway through the third watch, on the writing-desk nearest the brazier, where Nanny Zhou would, at the third watch, find it.
He rose.
\ \ \*
Brother Hui slept at the cushion-rugs in the cabinet behind the cistern.
Nanny Zhou set the rugs at the third watch. She set, beside the rugs, a clay water-jar and a single linen wrap of the kind the brother's cell at Da Ci'en Si had given him on the day of his ordination and which he had kept, against any season's chance, at the bottom of his weather-grey monk's robe for sixteen years.
He laid the wrap at the upper edge of the rugs.
He did not lie down at the rugs until he had heard, by the kitchen door at the third watch, the lady Wanjun take her antidote.
\ \ \*
She took the antidote the middle of the third watch.
She drank it in a celadon inner cup — the half-cup the brother had named — with water that had been boiled at the dawn drum of the day before and had stood in the clay jar in the brazier's shadow at the temperature of the inside of her wrist. The antidote was bitter at the back of the throat in a different bitter from the bitter of the noon-drum. The bitter of the antidote was the bitter of a southern bark she had not, in eighteen months of sitting in southern apothecaries' shops on her own occasional ailments, drunk.
At the writing-desk she did not, allow her face to do anything.
She lay at her own bed in her travelling coat with the wrap of her father's old linen at her throat.
She did not sleep that evening.
She lay at her own bed for three watches.
\ \ \*
The kiln-boy was at the rear gate at the third quarter of the fifth watch.
Nanny Zhou took him at the gate.
He had walked, by his own slow account at the rear gate, from the brick-kiln of Anhua Ward by the back lanes of the southern wards through the long thin grey of the fifth watch's last quarter without, in walking, eating. He carried, in his left sleeve, a small wrapped square of the same pale yellow oilcloth Brother Hui had carried at the dusk drum.
Inside the oilcloth was the body of the cat.
He had wrapped it in the oilcloth at the second corner of the lane behind the empty house of the old Mistress Lin mid-fourth watch. He had not, at the wrapping, looked at the cat's face.
He set the wrapped oilcloth beside the kitchen brazier.
Nanny Zhou took him to the writing-room.
Wanjun was at the writing-desk. Brother Hui was at the second stool.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"Set it on the writing-table."
The kiln-boy set the oilcloth at the angle the brother indicated. He bowed. He stepped back to the kitchen door.
Brother Hui drew the wrap open at the three folds.
The cat was the colour of a winter rabbit. It was perhaps a year and a half old, by the wear at the mouth. It had died, by the brother's first reading at the upper edge of the oilcloth, in the third watch of the night, on the lane by the empty house of old Mistress Lin, at the second turning west of the third arcade of the eastern wards of Yongchong.
She did not, at the writing-table, lift her hand to the cat.
"Brother."
"Sister."
"How long after."
"By the colour at the lower eye, sister, perhaps two and a half watches from the eating. The cat ate mid-eighth. The cat died at the third watch."
"Three watches less than the measure for an untreated half-dose."
"Three watches less, sister, because the cat is half a stone of body and the lady is six stone of body. The cat's three watches, sister, are the lady's six. The dose at the back of the lady's throat at the noon-drum, by the cat's three watches, was the dose Brother Hui had told the lady at the writing-desk yesterday it was."
She inclined her head.
She did not, at the writing-table, allow her face to do anything.
She held the registering against the inside of her chest.
The registering was the registering of a man who had measured the slow Sogdian compound twice in the autumn of 748 and had measured it again at the dawn drum yesterday in the inner kitchen of the back study of the Eastern Market silk-shop at the fourth gate of the second arcade.
The hand that had measured the compound was the hand of a Han silk-merchant.
The Han silk-merchant had been waiting for her since the autumn of 748.
That morning she did not, name him.
That morning she did not, need to name him.
She had named him on the wax tablet of her writing-desk in the autumn of 749 — when she had set Zhang Cong's two prior jade-petitions of 748 against her late husband's circuit-letter of the autumn of 748 and had found that the same Hexi prefectural kiln had been named in both — and had been waiting, in her own steady way, for the second confirming registering. The second confirming registering had come at the noon-drum yesterday. The third — the cat — had come at the third quarter of the fifth watch this morning.
The naming had been done eight months ago.
The confirming had been done in the cup.
\ \ \*
Brother Hui set the wrap back over the cat.
"Sister. The kiln-boy will, at the dawn drum, take the cat to the kiln. The cat will, at the second furnace of the kiln, be at the burning by the noon-drum. The cat, by the noon-drum, will not be a cat."
"Brother."
He inclined his head.
He turned at the writing-desk.
He drew the oilcloth with the cuff-scrap in it back from the corner of the writing-table to the centre.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"The third thing wrong. The pin-mark."
"The pin-mark of a clerk of a silk-shop of the second arcade."
"Yes."
"Brother."
"Sister."
"We are, at the third quarter of the fifth watch, on the second confirmation. The first was the cup at the noon-drum. The second is the cat at the third watch. The third is the pin-mark on the cuff-scrap of the dead servant girl beside the middle willow at Bashang."
"It is."
"We have, brother, the chain of three."
"Sister. The chain of three is the chain by which the lady has, at the writing-desk, set the inference she had set in the autumn of 749. The chain of three is the chain by which the lady has, at the writing-desk this morning, the second confirming evidence. The lady will, brother, not yet move."
"She will not."
"Because."
"Because the lady, brother, holds the cup and the cat and the pin-mark and has not yet, in any avenue of Chang'an, set them in a slip to be delivered to Pei's quiet hand at the tea-house behind the Censorate. Because the lady knows, brother, that the moment the slip is in Pei's hand the lady has set the boundary of the trade — the moment past which the trade is the lady's open countermove and not the lady's quiet one. The lady, brother, has not yet decided the moment."
"You have decided to wait."
"I have decided, brother, to walk to the abbey the seventh hour at its midpoint and to read, in the quiet of the third room of the inner gallery, the cuff-scrap a second time at the abbess's western lamp."
She did not say what else she had decided to do at the abbey.
The brother did not ask.
\ \ \*
She walked to the abbey of Princess Yuzhen's quiet cousin the seventh nearing its midpoint.
She walked alone in her grey. She had folded the half-mourning cotton at the bottom of the second cabinet behind the cistern at the dawn drum and would not, in this season, take it out again. The cotton would, in the autumn drum of the eighth moon, be the cotton at the bottom of a cabinet of a Han widow of Yongchong who had set herself, at the public reading, back into the long quiet retirement of the eighteenth month.
The abbess took her at the inner door.
"Daughter."
"Mother."
"The third room."
The abbess inclined her head a finger's width.
She walked Wanjun through the small inner garden of the abbey, the seventh hour half-spent, to the third room of the inner gallery — the same room in which she had stitched An Naxia at the third watch four nights ago. The room was empty. The lamp at the lower edge of the platform-bed had been trimmed at the dawn drum to the height of a half-thumb. The clean linen had been set at the writing-table. The clay water-jar at the lower edge of the platform-bed had been refilled at the dawn drum.
The third room had not been opened in three days.
The third room had been kept, by the abbess's quiet hand, at the picture Wanjun had asked for at the rear gate the middle of the fifth watch of the morning after.
The abbess did not, at the inner door, ask.
She inclined her head a finger's width and left.
\ \ \*
He came at the third quarter of the seventh hour.
He came on his own feet — slow, careful at the rib, in the unhurried way of a man who had counted his own walking for three days and had, at the third day, set himself to walk the half-mile from the An caravanserai by the back lanes without, in walking, allowing the second-day stitches to do anything.
He stood at the inner door.
"Lady."
"Anaxa."
At the door he did not allow his face to do anything.
He had not, in the three days since she had left him midway into the fifth watch, heard his given name from her in his own waking. He had not asked, the fifth watch half-spent on the day of the false confession, whether the slip on the writing-table at the lamp had been her hand. He had read the slip. He had stayed at the abbey, by the abbess's discretion, until the dusk drum. He had ridden back to the caravanserai at the third watch of the second night by the back lanes, on Ah-Sa's quiet horse, with the linen at his ribs unchanged. He had changed the linen at his own caravanserai at the dawn drum of the third day.
He had not, since the fifth watch at its midpoint on the day of the confession, sent her a slip.
She had not, since halfway through fifth on the day of the confession, sent him one.
She had, half-seventh this evening, sent the abbess's porter.
He stepped through the door.
She inclined her head.
"Sit."
He sat at the writing-table, in the slow careful way of a man whose own breath had told him there was nothing now but the chair and the work.
She walked to the platform-bed and took, from the upper edge, the wrap she had left at the bed three nights ago — the wrap she had, at the bed, set to light his ribs through to the dawn drum. She set it on the writing-table.
Under the wrap was a clean piece of paper, folded at the four cardinal folds in the discipline of a Manichaean cell-master's hand.
She set the folded paper on the wrap.
She did not unfold it.
"Anaxa."
"Lady."
"The confession of the lay-cell elder Anpan, at the prefecture midway into the third watch of the morning of the fifth day, was the broadside of the spring of 749 of the Liangzhou cells, copied the third watch half-spent by the senior clerk of Lu Zhongming's office."
He did not, at the writing-table, lift his eyes.
He inclined his head.
"I have, in the three days, registered that. I have, in the three days, not asked you to register it for me."
"You have not."
"Lady."
"Anaxa."
"The dead at the noon-drum yesterday in the back study of the silk-shop at the fourth gate of the second arcade — you did not, on the slip at the lamp halfway through the fifth watch, name the shop. You named that you would walk to the Eastern Market for a silk commission. The shop, by the kiln-boy at the dusk drum, is the shop of Master Zhang Cong."
She did not, at the writing-table, lift her eyes.
She did not yet have words for the registering at the back of her own throat.
She had not been about to tell him, this evening, what she had kept of the cup.
She had, the seventh at its half-mark, set herself to read the cuff-scrap at the western lamp and to walk back to Yongchong at the dusk drum. She had not, halfway through the seventh hour, set herself to tell him what she had drunk at the noon-drum.
She did not know whether she would.
"Anaxa."
"Lady."
"At the noon-drum yesterday I drank, in the inner study of the back court of the silk-shop at the fourth gate of the second arcade, a celadon of barley tea poured by Master Zhang Cong's own hand from a kettle on his own brazier. The barley was the barley of his own kitchen yard. The cup was a half-dose of the slow Sogdian compound Brother Hui named, at the dusk of the second day, as the compound the An household's brazier had not, by the apothecary's reading, kept. The half-dose, by the cat at the lane by the empty house of old Mistress Lin at the third watch of the night, is the dose Brother Hui had named at the writing-desk yesterday. I took the antidote the third watch at its midpoint."
He did not, at the writing-table, lift his hand.
Through the three breaths he allowed himself at the writing-table, he allowed himself no word.
He set his right hand at the inside of his ribs, in the careful angle a man who had been cut at the inside of the rib set his hand against the stitches in the moment a sentence had been set in front of him that required, of him, a steadiness he had not, this evening, been prepared to be required of.
"Wanjun."
She lifted her eyes.
He had not, in the eleven days since they had stood at the well at the second visit to the An compound, called her by her given name.
He had not, in the autumn of 748, named the friend.
He did not, at the writing-table, look away.
"I am not, this evening, asking you to withdraw."
"Anaxa."
"I am, this evening, asking that you let me walk the avenue with you at the dusk drum. By the back lanes. To Yongchong. I will, at your gate, leave. I will not, this evening, come in."
She inclined her head.
She did not, at the writing-table, give him a second word.
She lifted the folded paper from the wrap and held it out, without unfolding, to him.
"Anaxa."
"Lady."
"This is the cuff-scrap of Aroka. The brother at the brick-kiln has, at the dawn drum, read it the fourth time. The third thing wrong, by the brother's reading, is the pin-mark at the upper left corner. The pin is the pin of a second-arcade tailors' clerk in a silk-shop of the second arcade."
He took the paper.
He did not, at the writing-table, unfold it.
He held it in his hand at the angle the western lamp of the abbey reached the writing-table.
He inclined his head.
"Lady. The pin-mark, at this hour, will not be unfolded a second time at this writing-table. The pin-mark is the third confirming registering. The lady, by the three confirmings, has the chain of the cup, the cat, and the pin. The lady will, at the dusk drum, walk by the back lanes to her own gate at Yongchong. I will, at the lady's right hand, walk the half-mile."
"Anaxa."
"Wanjun."
"At the gate I will, at the dusk drum, leave you. I will go in alone."
He inclined his head.
He set the folded paper back on the wrap.
Rising from the writing-table he kept his face still.
She rose with him.
\ \ \*
They walked the back lanes to Yongchong at the dusk drum.
They walked in silence. He kept at her right hand at the half-pace of a man who had been told by his own ribs that the half-pace was the pace. She kept at the slow Daoist walk of a nun returning to her ward in the dusk hour. The streets were almost empty; a baker at the second back lane was setting his second-day flour-sacks at the gate of his shop for the morning carter; a child at the third house was crying briefly and stopping. A baby cried, beyond a wall, once. A dog at the fourth house barked twice and was silent.
They reached the corner of the lane behind her own east wall.
She turned at the corner. He turned with her.
She stopped midway down the lane.
She did not, midway down the lane, look at him.
"Anaxa."
"Wanjun."
"At the gate."
"At the gate."
They walked the last forty paces.
At the gate she did not lift her hand to the brass ring. She had told Nanny Zhou, at the dawn drum yesterday, that she would be at her own gate by the dusk drum of this evening and that Nanny would, at the dusk drum, listen for her step at the inner side of the gate. The inner bolt of the gate slid at the second tap of her sandal. The gate opened by Nanny's hand.
At the gate he did not step through.
He stood, at the lane, three paces from the gate, with his right hand at the inside of his own ribs in the careful angle a man set his hand at his own stitches when he had decided not, this evening, to ask for the second word.
"Wanjun."
"Anaxa."
"I will, by the dawn drum tomorrow, send Ah-Sa to the rear gate of your courtyard for the weight of it of the antidote. The antidote, by the apothecary at the second day, is a dose halfway through the third watch and a second dose near the dusk drum of the second day. I will, by Ah-Sa, bring the second flask."
"You will not bring it. Ah-Sa will."
"Ah-Sa will."
"Anaxa."
"Wanjun."
She inclined her head.
She did not, at the gate, give him a Persian word.
She did not, at the gate, give him a Han one.
She stepped through the gate.
Nanny Zhou drew the bolt across at the inner side.
\ \ \*
She walked, in the inner court, to the cistern.
The swallow at the kitchen eave had finished the second course of the nest at the dusk drum and was, midway through the first watch of the evening, at the third course. The kettle in Nanny Zhou's brazier whistled briefly and stopped.
She sat at the bench by the cistern in the dark.
She held, against the inside of her chest, the three confirming registerings of the day — the cup, the cat, the pin.
She held, against the same inside, the moment of her given name in his mouth at the writing-table.
She kept her face still at the bench.
She did not, at the bench, weep.
She did not, at the bench, count the breaths.
She rose, in her own slow patient time, and walked to the writing-room, where Nanny Zhou had set the second lamp on the desk and where the lacquered letter-box sat at its corner where, this morning, she had set her hands on either side of it and had not opened it.
That evening she did not, open it.
She sat at the writing-desk.
She set a single wax tablet at the centre of the desk and wrote, in her own careful hand, the three confirmings:
The cup.
The cat.
The pin.
She set the brush down.
That evening she did not, light a third lamp.
She read the three lines back in the light of the second lamp on the desk. She rolled the tablet at the wax in the way her father had taught her to roll a wax tablet against the morning's reading.
She left the tablet on the desk beside the lacquered letter-box, where the second lamp's spill reached them both at the same angle.
She rose.
That evening she did not, walk again to the cistern.
She walked, instead, to the kitchen door, where Nanny Zhou had set, midway through the first watch, a clean small clay water-jar of the boiled water cooled to the inside-of-the-wrist temperature that the antidote required.
She took the jar in both hands.
She drank.