Chapter Eighteen
The Well, A Second Time
The second antidote came at the dusk drum.
Ah-Sa brought it. He stood at the rear gate in the long grey evening light with the small clay flask of the apothecary's storeroom of the second day held in both hands at the level of his sash. He did not speak. Nanny Zhou took the flask. Ah-Sa inclined his head a finger's width and turned at the lane and was gone.
Nanny bolted the gate.
She brought the flask to the writing-desk and set it on the corner where the brother had set the first flask the night before.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"The second flask. By the apothecary at the second day."
"Near the dusk drum."
Wanjun lifted the flask. It weighed, to her hand, what the first had weighed at her hand. The seal at the lip was the same plain reddish wax the brother had named at the writing-desk the night before — the unmarked wax the southern apothecaries used in the wards Lu Zhongming's clerks had never file from.
That evening she did not, drink yet.
The brother had told her at the writing-desk the night before that the second dose was to be taken near the dusk drum of the second day, by the half-cup, with water boiled at the dawn drum and cooled to the inside of the wrist. midway through the dusk drum was the half. The dusk drum had not yet sounded.
She sat at the writing-desk.
She did not lift the lacquered letter-box. The box had been at its corner since the dusk drum of two evenings ago, a count she had begun to hold against the inside of her chest in the way the apothecary's slow compound had been a count she had held at the back of her throat.
She drew from the inner drawer a clean wax tablet and the small bronze stylus her father had given her at eleven on the dawn-drum morning he had received his Henan circuit posting. She wrote, in the careful small hand she used for wax:
The well. The shard. The third cup. The tattoo. Anhua. The kiln.
She read the six words.
She set the stylus at the upper edge.
\ \ \*
Brother Hui came at the dawn drum.
He came by the back lanes from his kiln in the dim grey of the last quarter of the watch without, in walking, allowing his sandals to slap a single flagstone louder than the swallow's wing at the eave. Nanny Zhou took him to the writing-room.
He was carrying, in his left sleeve, the wrapped square of pale yellow oilcloth he had carried at the dusk drum two evenings ago. He set it on the writing-desk.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"The cat is at the second furnace at the dawn drum. The cat, by the noon-drum, will not be a cat."
"The cat will not."
"The second flask."
"At the dusk drum yesterday, by Ah-Sa."
"You drank."
"At the half. By the cup."
He inclined his head. He drew the oilcloth open at the three folds. Inside lay the cuff-scrap, folded a second time in the careful folds she had set the parchment in two nights ago, and a small slip of paper in his careful kiln-grade Han.
"Sister."
"Brother."
"The third confirming. The pin-mark."
"Of a clerk of a silk-shop of the second arcade."
"Sister. I have, in the second half of the third watch, set the pin against three pins I keep at the kiln-hut. Two are pins of the southern tailors' guild — the broad-headed brass pins the southern guild has used at the second-pearl bolts for eleven years. The third is a pin a kiln-boy at the second furnace gave me, in the autumn of last year, from the cuff of a delivery-boy whose master had sent him with a sample of seven-pearl from the second arcade's eighth shop. The third pin, sister, is the pin of the cuff-scrap."
"The eighth shop of the second arcade."
"Yes."
"Is the shop of Master Zhang Cong."
"It is."
She set the bronze stylus at the upper edge of the wax tablet.
The registering she held at the inside of her chest in the place she kept the registerings of the day until she had set the day's tablet against the day's evidence.
\ \ \*
"Brother."
"Sister."
"the middle of the seventh hour we will, by the back lanes, walk to the An compound."
"Sister. The well, by the dusk drum yesterday, was — by the brother of the sabao at the second pillar of the inner hall of the fire-temple of Liquan — closed. The sabao has, by Pei's quiet hand at the third hour of the afternoon, asked that the well not be reopened until the household's last rite has been registered at the Western Market customs office."
"At what hour."
"midway into the seventh. The customs office will set its red mark on the rite at the third quarter of the sixth. The inner court will be no household's court, sister, for the reckoning of one hour."
"One hour."
She rose.
She walked to the corner of the writing-room where Nanny had set, the middle of the fifth watch, the dark cotton robe she had folded at the bottom of the second cabinet behind the cistern the night Wei Wan had told her she would, by the autumn drum of the eighth moon, walk back into the long quiet retirement of the eighteenth month. The dark robe was not the half-mourning. The dark robe was the plain dark cotton a Daoist nun wore at the inner court of a foreign household on the morning of a household rite the household had not, in the autumn of 748, asked a Daoist nun to attend.
She set the robe on the bench by the cistern.
"By the rear gate the seventh hour at its midpoint, brother."
"By the rear gate."
\ \ \*
Anaxa was at the rear gate the seventh nearing its midpoint.
He had ridden alone. He had not sent Ah-Sa. He had come down the back lane at the slow careful walk of a man who had been told by his own ribs that the half-pace was the pace, on a small grey gelding he had bought from a Liangzhou trader against the chance that he would, in a season he had not yet named, need a horse that would do, at the back lane in the dawn-drum hour, a thing a Sogdian-bred horse would not do. He had walked the last three lanes leading it on a single rope.
He stood at the lane in his weather-grey under-robe and a dark cotton over-robe a Sogdian caravan-master wore in his own caravanserai when he did not wish to be read at twenty paces as a caravan-master.
Wanjun was at the inner door in her dark cotton. Brother Hui at her right shoulder in his weather-grey.
She inclined her head.
"Gongzi."
"Lady."
"You came."
"I came."
At the door he did not lift his hand. He held the rein of the small grey gelding at the rope in his right hand and the cotton at the wrist of his left hand at the angle a careful man held his sleeve when he had decided not to let it fall.
"Gongzi."
"Lady."
"You will not, this morning, be at the well."
"I will not."
"At what pillar."
"The second pillar of the inner hall. The patriarch of the household took his second cup of barley tea at the dawn drum at that pillar every morning of the last seven years of his life. I stood at it at the dawn drum of the day the household was buried."
She held his eyes for two breaths.
She did not, at the inner door, give him a word.
She turned and walked out the rear gate. The brother followed at the half-pace of a brother walking behind a sister. Anaxa followed at the rein of the grey gelding, at the half-pace of a man whose ribs were at the measure of the third day.
\ \ \*
The Western Market the seventh hour half-spent was not yet the Western Market of the noon-drum.
The avenue was empty. The carters from the southern wards had not yet brought up the morning's grain. The Sogdian apprentices at the upper stalls had not unlatched their shutters. A water-vendor at the second-arcade corner was setting a small clay jar on a low cart, in the unhurried way of a man who had been at the trade for forty years and had been told by his back, this season, to begin the day half-seventh and not the third quarter of the fifth as he had begun it at thirty.
They walked the back lane.
They walked three abreast in the narrow places and single file in the narrower. Brother Hui at the front. Wanjun at the centre. Anaxa at the rear at the rein of the grey gelding.
They reached the rear gate of the An compound at the third quarter of the seventh hour.
The sabao's deputy was at the gate — a Sogdian man of perhaps thirty, of the An clan's third tier, in the formal white over-robe of a household's mourning attendant.
"Lady."
"Deputy."
"The inner court is open. The customs office's red mark, lady, is at the lintel."
"The well-shaft."
"By the patriarch's brother at the dusk drum yesterday, has not been re-bricked. The rope is at the lower hook of the well-house. Of hemp, of the second weight, with the carrying-loop the brother asked for at the dusk drum yesterday set into the lower end at the seventh-watch tying."
He inclined his head toward Brother Hui. Brother Hui inclined his head. The deputy stepped back from the gate.
\ \ \*
The inner court at the third quarter of the seventh hour was the inner court of a household that had been the inner court of a household once.
The brazier at the centre, at which the killer had set the tea-things on the night of the seven dead, was where it had been on the morning Wanjun had first walked in eleven days ago. The wine cups had been taken away. The table had been taken away. The mat had been rolled. The dust had been swept, at the dusk drum yesterday, by the sabao's deputy's own hand.
The well sat at the southeast corner of the court.
She walked to it.
She did not, at the well, look at Anaxa. He had stopped at the second pillar of the inner hall. He stood there at the rope of the grey gelding, with his right hand at the inside of his ribs in the careful angle a man set his hand against a second-day stitch when he had decided to stand at a pillar for the picture of an hour.
Brother Hui knelt at the well.
He took, from the small cloth bag at his sash, a strip of yellow oilcloth half the width of his palm and the length of his forearm. He set it at the lower lip. He took, from the same bag, a small clay lamp of the kind a Da Ci'en Si cell-master kept at the bench against the dawn reading of a sutra. He set the lamp on the oilcloth.
He looped the rope at his waist in the practised loop of a southern monk who had been lowered eight times in eighteen years into the bottom of the southern wards' funeral kiln to set a piece of bone in a small clay jar at the second hour of the dawn drum.
He set the loop at the second knot.
He inclined his head to the deputy. The deputy took the upper end at the second post. Wanjun took the upper end at the third.
Brother Hui lowered himself at the rim.
In lowering himself he did not set his weight at the rope at the rate a man who had not been lowered in eight years would have. He set it at the slow patient half-pace of a monk who had known, at the rim, that the bricks of the upper third would, by the eighteen-month's settling, take the weight of a thirteen-stone monk if the weight came down at the rate the bricks could read it.
He sank.
The lamp at his sash lit the upper third of the well as he sank.
She held the rope. The deputy held the rope. The deputy did not look at her. She did not look at the deputy.
She looked at the third pillar of the inner hall, the pillar at which a Han hand had, on the night of the seven dead, set the third Han-style cup half a fingerwidth out of square in a household whose table-grammar had been the table-grammar of an elderly aunt who had not, on the night of the seven dead, been alive to set it in.
\ \ \*
The brother was at the bottom for perhaps thirty breaths.
He tugged twice at the rope.
The pulling was the slow careful pulling of two hands at the upper post of a well-house at what she had kept of the brother's half-pace at the rope at the second knot, and the brother came up in the slow patient half-pace of a man whose thirteen stone had not, in the lowering or the rising, given the bricks of the upper third a single fault to read.
He stepped over the rim at the third quarter.
He set the lamp.
He took, from the inside of his sash, a small wrapped square of the same yellow oilcloth he had laid at the lower lip. He unwrapped it at the rim.
Inside lay a fragment of porcelain the size of half a thumb.
The fragment was of the pale celadon of a Tang prefectural kiln. Its upper face had the faint half-curve of the lip of a cup. Its lower face had the small clean break of a fragment that had been broken from the body of a cup not by the slow wear of an old jar at a kitchen yard but by the sharp downward force of an object that had struck the bricked-over base of a well and had not, in the striking, broken the brick.
It bore, at its lower face, the small clean impressed mark of a Tang prefectural kiln.
The kiln-mark in the dawn-drum light at the rim was the small flat impressed sun-and-river mark of the Tang prefectural kiln of Hexi — the same kiln-mark her late husband, in the second paragraph of his circuit-letter of the autumn of 748, had named as the kiln-mark of the prefectural kiln whose pigment-imports the customs office at the third arcade had filed in 748 in a count three times the weight of it the kiln could, by the brother of the prefectural kiln-master at the dusk drum of the eleventh day of the seventh moon, have fired.
The kiln-mark was the kiln of Hexi.
The kiln of Hexi was a kiln that could be, by the customs office, commissioned only by a Han merchant of the second arcade who held, in his own ledgers, the prefectural license for the importation of Khotanese pigment.
The Han merchant of the second arcade who held the license was, by the customs office's filings of the autumn of 748, one merchant.
The one merchant was Master Zhang Cong.
The third cup had been Zhang Cong's cup.
The third cup had been knocked into the well by the killer's escape at the rear of the inner court on the night of the seven dead.
The killer had borne the same kiln-mark at his forearm — the small flat sun-and-river mark Wanjun had registered, in the lamp at the back hut of the Western Market on the night of the knife in the lane, at the inside of the right forearm of the dead attacker the kiln-boy had laid, at the dawn drum of the eighth day, in the corner of the southern apothecary's storeroom.
The killer kept a private retinue marked at the forearm with the kiln-mark of his own private kiln.
The killer was Master Zhang Cong.
She inclined her head a finger's width.
She set the fragment back into the oilcloth and folded the oilcloth at the three folds.
She held the registering against the inside of her chest in the place she kept the registerings of the third confirming hour of the morning of the twelfth day.
\ \ \*
"Brother."
"Sister."
"The third Han cup."
"The third Han cup, sister, was the cup that, on the night of the seven dead, was set half a fingerwidth out of square at the table of the household by a hand that had been at the inner court of the household on the night of the seven dead and had, in the escaping at the rear of the inner court, knocked the cup at the lip into the well. The kiln-mark at the cup is the kiln-mark of the prefectural kiln of Hexi. The kiln of Hexi is, by the customs office of the autumn of 748, licensed for commission to one merchant of the second arcade of the Eastern Market."
"The one merchant."
"The one merchant is Master Zhang Cong."
She inclined her head.
\ \ \*
She walked from the well to the second pillar.
She did not, in walking, allow her step to register at the third pillar.
Anaxa had not moved. His right hand was at the inside of his ribs. His left held the rope of the grey gelding. The stillness at the pillar was the stillness of a man who had been told by his own breath that the second pillar was the second pillar and the second pillar was the work.
"Gongzi."
"Lady."
"The third Han cup, gongzi, has been at the bottom of the well for eleven days. The kiln-mark at the third Han cup is the kiln-mark of the prefectural kiln of Hexi."
He did not lift his eyes.
She set the wrapped oilcloth, in her right hand, against the back of her left wrist at the angle of the dawn-drum light at the rim. She did not set it in his hand.
"Gongzi."
"Lady."
"You have had tea with him."
He inclined his head.
"In the spring of last year, lady. At the third arcade. By the courtesy of a Sogdian apothecary of the second southern arcade who had not yet, in that season, told me that the courtesy was, in its later reading, a courtesy I had not understood."
"You have had tea."
"I have had tea."
She held his gaze for two breaths.
She did not ask him whether the tea in the spring of last year had been the tea of barley with the slow patient steeping of a man whose hand had, in fifty years, learned to pour with a steadiness that did not vary by a hair's width between the first cup and the second.
She did not ask because she knew, by the steadiness of his stillness at the second pillar at the third quarter of the seventh hour of the morning of the twelfth day, that the tea in the spring of last year had been the tea of barley with the slow patient steeping of a man who, in pouring two cups by his own hand, had not poured a half-dose into the cup of An Naxia.
The half-dose, in the spring of last year, had not yet been the slow private record of the cup at the noon-drum.
The half-dose, in the spring of last year, had been the reckoning by which the steadiness of his hand could, in a later season, be the steadiness of his hand at a different cup.
She set her hand against the second pillar.
She kept it there for three breaths.
She did not weep.
\ \ \*
They walked back to Yongchong by the back lanes at the dusk drum.
Brother Hui walked at the front in his weather-grey, the wrapped oilcloth at his sash, the fragment at the inside of the oilcloth. Anaxa walked at her right hand at the half-pace of a man whose ribs had been at the measure of the third hour at the second pillar. She walked at the slow Daoist walk of a nun returning to her ward at the dusk-drum hour.
They walked in silence.
At the corner of the lane behind her own east wall she turned. He turned with her. She stopped midway down the lane.
She did not look at him.
"Gongzi."
"Lady."
"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. Nanny had been at the inner side since midway through the dusk drum. The bolt 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 three paces from the gate with his right hand at the inside of his 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.
"Lady."
"Gongzi."
"Ah-Sa will be at your rear gate at the dawn drum tomorrow with the third flask of the apothecary's storeroom at the third day."
"By the apothecary, the third flask is not required."
"It is not. He will bring it nevertheless. The third flask is the flask the apothecary set out for the lady against any reading the lady would register at the back of her throat that the second flask had not, in the second day, fully drawn."
She inclined her head.
She did not, at the gate, give him a Persian word.
That evening she did not, give him a Han one.
She lifted her hand.
She set it, briefly, against the inside of his right wrist, where the cotton at the cuff was the cotton he had folded at the dawn drum of the second day at the angle she had set the cuff at the angle of the lamp three nights ago in the third room of the abbey.
She held her hand at the cuff for three breaths.
She did not lift her eyes.
She lifted her hand from his cuff and stepped through the gate.
Nanny drew the bolt across at the inner side.
\ \ \*
She walked to the cistern in the inner court.
The swallow at the kitchen eave had finished the third course of the nest at the dusk drum and was, midway through the first watch, at the fourth.
She sat at the bench by the cistern in the dark.
She held against the inside of her chest the third confirming registering — the shard, the kiln-mark, the licence. She held also, in the same inside, three breaths at the cuff of his right wrist at the gate.
She did not, on the bench, weep.
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 she had set her hands at the dawn drum on either side of it and had not opened it.
That evening she did not, open it.
She sat at the writing-desk.
She drew the wax tablet of the dawn drum from the corner of the desk.
Below the six words she had set at the dawn — The well. The shard. The third cup. The tattoo. Anhua. The kiln — she set the bronze stylus and added a seventh.
The licence.
She read the seven words back.
She rolled the tablet at the wax in the way her father had taught her.
She set 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.
She walked 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.
She drank.