Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Rite of the Small Clay Jar
On the morning of the twenty-fifth she walked to the kitchen yard at the dawn drum.
Nanny was at the edge of the brazier. She had been there since the second watch. She did not lift her eyes.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"The jar."
"The jar, Nanny."
On the morning of the twenty-first the old woman had set the small clay jar of the laundress's daughter at the brazier's edge. It had stood there five mornings. The stalk of southern willow Wanjun had laid below it on the sixteenth — the morning she had walked back from Lady Wei Wan's bench with the apothecary's compound — was no longer there; she had carried it, on one of the two walks of those four days, to the wall of the lay-shrine at the second corner of Anyi Ward, and set it where no stalk of hers had ever been set before.
On the twentieth she had laid below the jar a small folded square of unbleached cotton.
In five mornings she had not lifted the jar.
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She set her father's bronze pin at the brazier's edge.
From the cuff of her grey she drew the folded vial of the third-strength antidote — the vial she had drunk in the silk-merchant's inner study on the evening of the eighteenth.
She set the vial beside the pin.
From inside her under-robe she drew the husband's letter of the third moon of 748, folded a second time.
She set the letter beside the vial.
She did not lift her hand to her face.
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"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"By the rite a Han father keeps at his own writing-desk, in the seventh moon of the year his daughter has been buried."
"Mistress."
"By the rite his own father kept before him — in the second moon of 738, when he set the small clay jar at his kitchen-yard brazier at the dawn drum of the third day after the second daughter's burial."
"Mistress."
"It is that rite, Nanny."
The old woman set her right hand at the brazier's edge. She did not lift it.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"The laundress of the south hall of the southern Buddhist hospital took your folded silver at the dusk drum, the second evening after the audience."
"By the silver, Nanny."
"By the silver, mistress." She was quiet a moment. "Her daughter was the daughter at the inner court of the An clan."
"By the laundress, Nanny."
"And a Han nurse of this house," the old woman went on, "sat at this same brazier's edge, at the dawn drum of the third day, in the autumn of 738 — after the small daughter of the third house had been buried at the unclaimed yard of the south wall."
She paused.
She set her right hand at the brazier's edge again.
"A nurse who set the small clay jar there in the slow patient way she had been taught, in the autumn of 728, at her own father's Bianzhou yard."
"By the way you were taught, Nanny."
The old woman lifted her right hand from the brazier. She set it at the left sleeve of her under-tunic, at the small inner pocket she had kept through fifty-seven years of service to two generations of the Cui household.
She drew out a small folded square of unbleached cotton, perhaps the breadth of a man's thumb.
She set it at the brazier's edge, beside the jar.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"This is the ash of the seventh moon of 738 — from the brazier of this kitchen yard, at the dawn drum of the third day after the small daughter's burial."
She set her right hand on the folded square.
"I have kept it inside my left sleeve in the eleven years and seven months since."
She did not lift her eyes, nor weep.
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Wanjun set her hand at the brazier's edge, beside the old woman's, at the corner of the folded square.
She did not press.
The small daughter of the third house of Yongchong Ward had never, in the seventeen years since the autumn of 733 — when Wanjun was six at her father's Bianzhou yard, and her elder sister six months at the burial of the unclaimed yard of the south wall — been a sister Wanjun could place. She remembered her own brothers at six and three. She had never remembered the small daughter at six months.
She held her hand at the brazier's edge.
She did not lift it to her face.
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"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"The small daughter."
"At the dawn drum of the second day of the second moon of 733, mistress, at the Bianzhou yard."
"At the Bianzhou yard."
"At the burial of the unclaimed yard of the south wall, that morning."
"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"The small daughter was the elder sister."
"The elder sister, mistress, was Cui Wanqing."
"Wanqing."
The old woman inclined her head a finger's width. She did not lift her eyes from the brazier's edge.
"Cui Wanqing, mistress. A Han nurse who has kept this ash in her sleeve for seventeen years knows it: the small daughter of the second moon of 733, at the unclaimed yard of the south wall of Bianzhou, was the elder sister."
She set her right hand at her own left sleeve.
"A nurse, mistress, who has never set her name into any roll of any household of yours."
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Wanjun did not weep.
She set her right hand at her own left wrist and held it a moment. She lifted her hand.
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"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"The rite, Nanny."
The old woman laid the folded square of cotton on the upper rim of the small clay jar. She did not lift the jar.
Below it she set the stalk of southern willow Wanjun had carried that morning from the lay-shrine at Anyi Ward — the stalk that had stood at the shrine's wall four days, and was now a stalk of willow below a small clay jar at a brazier's edge at the dawn drum.
She set the stalk.
Wanjun laid the husband's letter of the third moon of 748 beside it.
She did not lift the letter to the flame. She held her hand at the brazier's edge.
She lifted the letter again.
She did not look at Nanny.
She set the letter back inside her under-robe, against the linen wrap of the grey.
The letter, this morning, was not the letter the rite was for. The letter the rite was for — the letter for the elder sister of the third house, buried at the unclaimed yard of the south wall of Bianzhou in the second moon of 733 — was a letter Wanjun had never, in seventeen years, held in her own hand.
She set the folded vial of the third strength at the brazier's edge — the vial she had drunk against the silk-merchant's second cup on the evening of the eighteenth.
She did not lift it to the flame. She held her hand a moment.
She lifted the vial and tucked it into the cuff of her grey, at the place she had kept, these eighteen months, the small folds of household silver.
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"Nanny."
"Mistress."
"By the rite of the small clay jar, at the dawn drum of the twenty-fifth."
"Mistress."
"By a nurse who has kept, seventeen years, the ash of the seventh moon of 738."
"Mistress."
The old woman set her right hand at the folded square on the jar's rim.
She did not lift the square. She inclined her head a finger's width.
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Wanjun did not weep.
She set her right hand at the brazier's edge, beside the folded square on the jar's rim, and her left below the jar, at the stalk of willow.
She held her hands there a long moment.
She lifted them.
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The rite of the small clay jar, at the dawn drum of the twenty-fifth, was the rite a Han father kept at his own writing-desk in the seventh moon of the year his daughter was buried. It was the rite a Han nurse had kept at this brazier seventeen years before. It was the rite a Han widow of Yongchong kept now.
She inclined her head a finger's width.
She turned at the brazier and walked back to the writing-room.
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She came to the writing-desk and set her hands flat on the wood, on either side of the lacquered letter-box. She held them there a long moment. She lifted them.
From the inner drawer she drew the wax tablet of the four days.
She set the bronze stylus at the upper edge. Below the two lines of the audience — The four men in mid-fifth-moon next year; The fifth name in mid-second-moon next year — she wrote a single line.
Cui Wanqing. The second moon of 733. The unclaimed yard of the south wall of Bianzhou.
She set the stylus down.
She read the line back.
She did not erase it.
She set the wax tablet — in the slow way of a woman who had never, in seventeen years, set her elder sister's name into any roll of any household — on the desk beside the box.
That morning she did not, light a second lamp.
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She walked to the rear gate midway into the seventh and out into the lanes, in the long grey of a late-spring morning, bound for Anyi Ward.
She walked the back lanes of Yongchong and the public lane behind the western edge of Anyi, east to the gate of Lady Wei Wan's courtyard.
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Lady Wei Wan was at the inner door, in the dark blue under-robe of a woman of fifty in late spring.
The blue tinge at the left corner of her lip was the tinge of a woman whose heart had been failing, slowly, a decade.
She inclined her head a finger's width.
"Daughter."
"Mother."
"You came."
"I came."
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She sat at the second stool at the bench by the southern wall. She did not lift her grey from her shoulders. She set her hands in her lap.
She did not weep.
She held her hands in her lap for perhaps half an hour, and Lady Wei Wan held hers for the same length, and neither of them lifted her eyes.
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"Mother."
"Daughter."
"The audience."
"The audience."
"At the dawn drum of the nineteenth, mother, at the prefect's hall, the matter was the silk-merchant of the second arcade, and the laundress's daughter at the willows, and his attempted flight at the second pillar of the southern colonnade, three hours after the dusk drum of the eighteenth."
"Daughter."
"And by Vice-Censor Pei Yu, just past the noon-drum of the nineteenth — by the misfiling of a clerk at the dawn drum of the seventeenth — my scrivener license was not, after all, rescinded."
"By the misfiling, daughter."
The old lady inclined her head a finger's width.
"And the four, daughter."
"In mid-second-moon next year, mother — through the senior clerk's Hexi-transfer, through a debt three winters old — the four men of the Manichaean lay-cell will be sent to the Hexi-prefect's caravan-grooming office for three months."
"For three months."
"By mid-fifth-moon, mother, the four men will be at that office. And they will not be there past it."
"By mid-fifth-moon, daughter, the four men will not be there."
"They will not, mother."
She was quiet a moment.
"By a Han widow who set, at the rim of her own cistern at the noon-drum of the fifteenth, the four men against perhaps ten further evidences not yet ripe."
"Daughter."
She did not weep, nor lift her eyes.
The old lady set her right hand at her own lap. She held it there a moment. Then she lifted it and set it, briefly, on the back of Wanjun's left hand at the edge of the bench.
She did not press.
She set her hand back at her lap.
And Wanjun, at the edge of the bench, wept.
She wept perhaps thirty breaths, in silence. She did not set her hands at her face, did not lift her hand to her sleeve.
She wept at the southern-wall bench of Lady Wei Wan's inner court, in the late spring of the morning of the twenty-fifth.
The old lady did not lift her hand a second time. She held her hands in her own lap.
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A little past mid-eighth hour Wanjun lifted her eyes.
"Mother."
"Daughter."
"The fifth name."
"Daughter."
"At the dawn drum of the day the fifth name takes office at the second tier of the chancellors —"
"At the dawn drum of that day, daughter."
"— the lacquered letter-box at my writing-desk will be open by my own hand."
"It will."
"Five years, mother."
"Five years, daughter."
She inclined her head.
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"Mother."
"Daughter."
"The elder sister."
The old lady was quiet a moment. She inclined her head a finger's width.
"Cui Wanqing, daughter."
"Cui Wanqing, mother."
"In the second moon of 733, daughter, at the burial of the unclaimed yard of the south wall of Bianzhou, your father set a single line into the wax tablet of his own writing-desk at his Bianzhou yard."
"In the second moon of 733."
"He had set into the lacquered letter-box of that desk a folded letter — the letter of a Han father whose elder daughter had, that month, been buried."
"Mother."
"And in the autumn of 737, daughter, your father walked, slow, to the corner of his own writing-desk and lifted the lid of that box a second time."
She was quiet a moment.
"His hand at the lid, that autumn, set down beside it the memory of his own father's rite — the small clay jar at the kitchen-yard brazier of his father's house, at the dawn drum of the third day, in the second moon of 738."
"Mother."
She did not weep; she held herself still.
The old lady inclined her head a finger's width.
"The rite of the small clay jar, daughter — at the brazier, at the dawn drum of the third day after the burial — is the rite."
"By the rite, mother."
"By the rite, daughter."
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She rose mid-ninth hour.
She inclined her head. The old lady inclined hers.
"Mother."
"Daughter."
"The spring caravan of 751."
"Daughter."
"At the dawn drum of the third moon of 751, the gongzi will walk west from the inner gate of his own caravanserai compound."
"Daughter."
"By a Han widow of Yongchong, at this bench, on the morning of the twenty-fifth —"
"Daughter."
"— the gongzi will not walk alone."
The old lady held her eyes a long moment. She inclined her head a finger's width.
"Daughter."
"Mother."
"At the dawn drum of the day the fifth name takes office, you will lift the lid of the box a second time. And by that dawn drum the gongzi will be at Liangzhou, or at Khotan, or at the fanyang garrison — a Sogdian caravan-master whose clan-sister's hand has carried him the news of a Han widow at her own writing-desk."
She was quiet a moment.
"And the gongzi who walks west at the spring caravan of 751 — a man whose inner gate has taken no second hand in eleven years — at that gate, on that morning, will set a second hand."
"By that, mother."
"By the measure, daughter. On the dawn drum of the third moon of 751, the inner gate will take that second hand."
She inclined her head.
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Wanjun walked out the gate of Lady Wei Wan's courtyard a quarter past the ninth hour.
She walked back to Yongchong at the slow Daoist pace, in the late spring of the evening before the evening the Sogdian caravan-master would walk west, at the dawn drum of the third moon of 751.
She walked through the back lanes of Anyi, the public lane behind the western edge of the third eastern ward, and east at Yongchong.
She reached her own rear gate at the noon-drum.
Nanny was at the gate.
"Mistress."
"Nanny."
"The mother."
"The mother, Nanny."
She walked, in the grey, to the kitchen yard.
The small clay jar stood at the brazier's edge. The folded square of unbleached cotton was on its rim. The stalk of southern willow lay below it.
Nanny had set, beside the jar, the small clay water-jar of boiled water cooled to the inside-of-the-wrist temperature.
Wanjun drank. She set the water-jar back at the brazier's edge.
She set her right hand, briefly, at the brazier's edge beside Nanny's. She held it there a moment. She did not press; she lifted her hand.
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She walked, in the grey, to the writing-room.
She set the wax tablet of the four days, with the morning's line at its top, on the desk beside the box.
She did not light a second lamp. She did not sit.
She walked, slow, to the inner court and sat at the bench by the cistern in the early afternoon light.
She held against her chest the elder sister at the unclaimed yard of the south wall of Bianzhou, in the second moon of 733.
She held also the folded square of cotton that had lain in Nanny's sleeve seventeen years and seven months.
She held also the small lantern at the upper edge of the An caravanserai office's northern wall, on the evening of the twenty-fourth.
She held also the spring caravan of 751.
She did not weep.
She rose and walked back to the writing-room.
She set her hands flat on the wood of the desk, on either side of the box. She held them there a long moment. She lifted them.
That afternoon she did not, open the lid.
She walked, slow, to the kitchen door, where Nanny had set the small clay water-jar.
She drank.