City of Ink

by Elsa Hart

  “What do they do here?” asked Hamza.

  “They lend majesty to royal processions,” Li Du replied. “When they are not so employed, they live in these stables, and are given more care and indulgence than are most citizens.”

  Hamza spoke without taking his eyes off the elephant. “I met a storyteller from Japan once, who told me about the elephants of the Emperor of China, how they are taught to bow to him, how they bathe in the city moat in summertime, and how they are granted noble titles for distinguished service. I, myself, prefer to see them depicted in gold and silver threads, or sculpted from metal and stone, or painted, not alive and kept in stables. And yet I would not have missed an opportunity to visit them, and thank them, for they have inspired more tales than could ever fit within the covers of a book.”

  A short silence followed, during which Li Du half listened to the conversations around them. There were between twenty and thirty Bannermen with them in the building, distributed across its capacious interior. Most were discussing familiar subjects: grain stipends, military drills, weddings, funerals, and of course, examinations. Others were simply watching the animals. Li Du sometimes wondered if the Bannermen who often visited the stables were those who perceived in the eyes of the elephants wilder, more open spaces than the city that confined them. Trained as soldiers, and descended from the mounted warriors of the steppe, there were those among the Manchu and Mongol Bannermen who chafed at urban life, despite being born and raised in the capital.

  “I searched the markets for Ji’s agates,” said Hamza, interrupting Li Du’s thoughts.

  “And?”

  “And they cannot be bought. The first market I went to had no peddlers of rocks and gemstones at all. The second had one such peddler, but she told me she had never seen a rock of the description I gave. The peddler at the third market insisted that he had agates, but held before me a piece of quartz. The one at the fourth market insisted she had seen me in a dream, and made suggestions that were tempting, but unrelated to my query. At the fifth market I was hungry, and forgot my errand.”

  “And the sixth?”

  “The sixth and last market was the one that gave me an answer. The peddler, a man so sturdy of feature that he appeared hewn from rock himself, listened carefully to the description I gave, and told me there are only two ways to obtain such agates. The first would be to journey to their place of origin and chip them from the mountains myself. The second, to become a prince, for such rare stones cannot be bought or sold by anyone outside the imperial household. They are considered too precious for commoners.”

  “Which leaves us to wonder how the master of the Glazed Tile Factory came into possession of those we saw on his shelf,” said Li Du. “And whether it has any connection to the death of Madam Hong.”

  His words caused Hamza to turn his attention away from the elephant. “Only of Madam Hong?”

  With a glance at the Bannermen nearest to them, Li Du suggested quietly that they continue their conversation outside. Hamza turned a last, regretful look at the elephant. To his delight, the elephant nodded its head in apparent dismissal. Hamza followed Li Du out onto a wide avenue, and directed a pitying smile at a group of horses as they trotted past, bearing several officials in court dress. “I used to think horses more grand than I do now,” he said. “Observe their thin legs and polished hides. If they stood beside the gray majesty of the elephants, they would not hold themselves in such a superior way.”

  As they walked, Li Du gave Hamza an account of all that had happened that day, beginning with his conversation with Bai, and ending with Zou’s confession.

  Hamza listened attentively, interrupting only to congratulate Li Du on the deductions that particularly impressed him. “But how did Zou know that Pan would return to the factory that night?” he asked, when Li Du had finished his summary.

  Li Du thought back to the interrogation of Zou that had followed his admission of guilt. Quaking with fear, Zou had begged for lenience, and promised to answer truthfully any question put to him. “Because Pan told him,” Li Du explained. “When Zou went into the office to serve Pan food and wine, he found Pan looking at the open bag of ingots. According to Zou, Pan smiled at him, and said he could see Zou was the kind of man who liked the shine of silver. He said he had business in the office that night that required privacy, and offered to pay Zou two taels if he would leave the factory entrance open. Zou agreed.”

  Hamza nodded his understanding. “But Zou wanted more, and to that end, he left a poisoned bottle of wine for Pan to drink.”

  “Yes. Pan had remarked on the wine’s pleasant taste, which is what gave Zou the idea. He knew where to find poison. Old Gao, with whom he shared a room at the Sichuan lodge, had told him about the dangers of taking too much of his medicine.”

  Hamza was thoughtful. “Then Zou didn’t know anything about Madam Hong?” he asked.

  “No. Pan had only said he had business in the office. Zou didn’t care what the business was. He just hoped Pan would still have the silver with him that night. Imagine Zou’s shock when he entered the office in the morning, hoping to find Pan dead of seemingly natural causes, and the silver lying ready for him to take. Instead, he found a room soaked in blood, and two bodies instead of one.”

  “And yet his greed survived his shock,” said Hamza. “He retained the presence of mind to take the silver, as he had planned.”

  “He thought he was safe,” said Li Du. “After all, he didn’t cut Pan’s throat, or stab Madam Hong. For all he knew, Pan hadn’t taken the poison at all. Unfortunately for Zou, there is clear evidence that he did.”

  “The wound that did not bleed enough,” murmured Hamza. “And the blue lips that spoke of aconite.”

  Li Du thought back to the Gendarmerie office, where Zou, toying anxiously with the cuffs of his sleeves, had made a final, desperate attempt to persuade them that he was not truly a murderer. If I hadn’t done what I did, Pan Yongfa would still have been there, dead. Someone else meant for him to die that night. He was fated to die. They both were. From the expressions on the faces of the Gendarmerie officials, his pleas had failed to convince.

  “Our object, then, is changed,” said Hamza. “We are now searching for a killer who attacked two people, but whose blade ended only one life. We are looking for the murderer of Madam Hong.”

  Li Du’s silence affirmed the storyteller’s statement. “Tunnels and temples,” Hamza went on musingly. “Speaking of temples, this one has an unusual shape.”

  They were passing the South Church. Over the wall, Li Du could see the roof, still caved in, slumped on one side like a wounded shoulder. Feeling a pang of guilt for his neglected friendship with Father Calmette, Li Du suggested they stop inside and ask the priest if there had been any progress with the repairs.

  The courtyard was empty. The round windows on the church façade were dark. Li Du and Hamza ascended the quiet steps toward the imposing doors, which were unlocked. The air inside smelled of frankincense and rose, faint and chilled by stone. Once they had stepped over the threshold, the windows that from the outside had been featureless were transformed into brilliant fragments of blue and green.

  “It is like being beneath the sea,” whispered Hamza. “Beneath a capsized ship.” Li Du looked up at the vaulted ceiling, and imagined himself suspended in dark water. He shivered in silent agreement. Without the presence of worshippers or of lighted candles, or Father Calmette’s indefatigable optimism, the space was very quiet. Though the church, with the exception of its damaged roof, enclosed them with protective welcome, there was a hint of forlorn pride to the grand, empty interior.

  They left the church and crossed the courtyard to the offices. But these, too, were empty. “They must be inside the palace,” said Li Du. “Or at the Observatory.” There was nothing unusual about this. The Emperor had always preferred the Jesuits to be beneath the golden tiles of his personal domain. It reinforced their role as his advisors, rather than independent actors capable of build
ing their own communities within the city.

  As usual, the offices of the Jesuits were cluttered with the accumulated results of their dauntless curiosity. There were books open to half-colored sketches of birds, maps so crowded with labels that the lands they identified were obscured, globes of assorted sizes, dried specimens of apothecary plants, vials filled with potions, and varied alchemical and astronomical tools. Hamza walked to a table and began to examine the inner parts of a clock that were arranged on its surface. In addition to the more utilitarian gears and springs, there was an array of jeweled flowers ready to be animated by mechanical trickery.

  Li Du walked to another clock that rested alone on a marble pedestal. “They say this is the first clock built for the Wanli Emperor by Matteo Ricci,” he said.

  Hamza joined him. “I know the tale. Long ago, and yet not so long ago, there was a man who wished he could visit the Emperor on the other side of the world. He wrote a courteous letter asking the Emperor to grant him an audience, but two years went by with no reply. Surely, thought the man, the business of court life distracted him from his correspondence. So again he wrote, again he waited, and again he received no answer.

  “Years passed, and he filled the silence from the empire across the world with his vision of a place of abundant knowledge and sights unknown to him, of philosophies and languages and histories that, fitted with his own understanding, would turn questions into answers, uncertainty into complete knowledge. But without an invitation, he could not go to that place.

  “So he wrote again, and offered to share with the Emperor all that he knew. I can tell you, he wrote, the formula to calculate the movement of stars. I can speak to you of the history of my own kingdom. I can reveal to you the existence of God and of heaven. And I can teach you how to make a clock that chimes on its own, with no need of human hand to ring a bell and announce the hour.

  “The Emperor, pacing through the offices within his palace, had these letters read to him, but they were like colorful insects one passes on a springtime hunt, of interest in the moment, but soon forgotten once larger animals came into view.

  “This continued for twenty years, and silver appeared in Matteo’s hair as he set his pen to paper again and again. In the continued silence, twenty years of imagination flourished, and finally, he could bear it no longer. He set to sea to find the Emperor. He had many adventures on that journey, and faced many perils, including the sea monster—”

  Li Du cleared his throat.

  “Of which I will tell you another time,” Hamza finished. “At last, Matteo reached the wall of this very city, and asked the soldiers there to take him to the Emperor. But everyone knows that visitors cannot simply ask to see the Emperor. The guards assumed that the dusty man who spoke Chinese in the garbled tones of an imbecile must be mad. And Matteo was cast into prison. There, in the dripping cell, he believed that the time granted him had run out.

  “As it happened, it was time that saved him. One day, the Emperor, at work in his study, heard the sound of bells as his loyal servants struck the hour across the city. And in that moment, the Emperor wondered whether someday they would fail him. He was the ruler of a dying dynasty, and knew that men could not be trusted.

  “So the Emperor went to his advisors, and he asked them about the man who had once written to him from a distant country, the man who had offered him a self-chiming clock that would speak to him of time with no intermediary.”

  Hamza’s words inspired a faint worry in Li Du. He tried to remember how long it had been since the bells had tolled the hour of the rooster. The light in the room was dimming.

  “The advisors, who were tasked to know of every person in the prisons of the city, told the Emperor that the man who had written to him of the clock was within his very walls. And that is how Matteo Ricci came to have an audience with the Emperor of China. The Emperor was patient with him, and taught him to behave in a civilized manner. And even though the clocks ticked the Wanli Emperor to his doom, the friendship formed between the Jesuits and the palace survived the fall of that dynasty, and lived into this one.”

  But not too close a friendship, thought Li Du, in the silence that followed. The Jesuits had never been granted freedom of movement in and out of the city. His glance fell to the surface of a nearby desk, and on the red seal of the Censor’s Office stamped onto a paper there. Even their words didn’t have free passage.

  He put on his spectacles and picked up the letter. The handwriting was even and precise, with the red stamp made over it to show that its contents had been read and approved. The paper was thick and crisp, the ink fresh. He imagined it reaching its destination, distant Rome or France, by which time the ink would be blurred, the paper rough at the edges, wrinkled and stained with salt water.

  “‘The Emperor,’” he read from the top page, startling Hamza from his inspection of Ricci’s clock, “‘sent to enquire our names, our several capacities, and the talents we possessed. The tranquility which the empire enjoyed by his prudent conduct, since his two last journeys into Tartary, the Relation of which we had perused in Paris, gave us the opportunity of answering that the French admired his majesty’s genius and conduct, and entertained the highest idea of his valor and magnificence.’”

  “Ah,” said Hamza. “A letter that knows it is being read by the censors. Imagine what it would say without awareness of the watchful eye? The Emperor inspired terror in us by demanding to know what we could do, as if in expectation of our ability to perform magic. We flattered him as best we could in order to distract him from asking us to turn water to wine, a miracle of which he seems to believe us capable, and which he is most curious to see effected. We fear our mission is failing, and that we are no longer truly welcome here.”

  Chapter 30

  In the chamber at the top of the drum tower, the tip of an incense coil dropped to the tray beneath it in a tiny heap of ash. Another hour, marked on the coil with a red line, had burned away, and the drummers took their positions to announce the coming of night. Li Du heard a rumble that might have been thunder, an evening storm blowing in after a day of fitful rain, except that instead of diminishing, the sound continued in a repeated rhythm that spoke of human discipline, not nature’s mystery. They had left the church too late. It was the hour of the dog, and the gates were closing.

  Xuanwu closed with a rattle of hinges just as they came in sight of it. Li Du watched soldiers take their places in front of the door. Their movements were relaxed, unhurried as they followed a routine that almost never required improvisation. Over time, the mere presence of soldiers had become enough to deter most citizens from attempting to break curfew.

  Li Du called quietly to Hamza, who was a few paces ahead of him, to stop. “We can’t get through,” he said, when he had caught up to the storyteller.

  Hamza looked up. “The sky is still so light that I can only see one star. The soldiers will allow two more to pass before the door bars are in place.”

  “Not without asking us our business,” Li Du said. “And as there is no way to predict the course of such a conversation, I would rather avoid it. I suggest we return to the South Church. Even if the Jesuits are still absent, we can assume we are welcome to stay there.”

  Hamza dismissed the suggestion with an exaggerated shudder. “I will not spend the night in a cavern of cold stone. Such an accommodation may be acceptable on a mountain, but not in a city full of light and food and silk cushions. Where else can we go?”

  Li Du considered. “There is another gate. Zhengyang is used by so many ministry officials that it often stays open later than the others at the end of the day. We won’t be able to get all the way to Water Moon Temple, but at least we’ll be back in the Outer City. We’ll have to find a place to stay on the alley of theaters and pleasure houses.”

  “A dire prospect,” said Hamza with mock sincerity. “Perhaps we should return to the empty church after all, and sustain ourselves on cold vegetables from its courtyard garden.” His words did
not reach Li Du, who had set off at a fast pace, heading east. Hamza hastened to join him.

  Li Du’s prediction proved to be correct, and they were jostled through Zhengyang Gate with a group of about twenty beleaguered officials muttering at the soldiers to let the hardworking men of the city go home to their dinners. The neighborhood into which they were funneled was assuming its evening guise. Book and antique shops, their doors shut tight and flat against the alley walls, were almost invisible. The morning’s peasants and merchants, carrying baskets heaped with vegetables, were replaced by groups of men swaying down alleys, laughing and gesticulating. Because of the curfew, those who did not live nearby would be frequenting neighborhood establishments until dawn. Women with heavily powdered faces waited in the shadows, calling to revelers who looked capable of paying.

  The single star Hamza had seen above became many. “We’ll have to find somewhere to stay,” said Li Du without enthusiasm. He had never liked crowded places. He liked them least in the gloom and glow of night, when confusing shadows made it harder to see faces, and to distinguish friends from strangers.

  “I count four signs for inns on this alley alone,” said Hamza cheerfully.

  Li Du straightened his hat, which had slid to one side, and they started down the bustling lane. As Li Du expected, Hamza’s optimism proved to be unwarranted. At each inn, they were informed by harried servants that there were no rooms available. “I doubt,” said Li Du, after their fourth attempt, “that we will be able to find a bed, pallet, or couch in this neighborhood that has not been claimed by an examination candidate or an accompanying family member.”

  He was debating which way to turn when he noticed a restaurant across the alley from where they stood. Its name, The Green Door, was painted on a wooden sign above the entrance. With an effort, he shut out the din around him and tried to remember why the name was familiar.

  Hamza stopped a few paces ahead of Li Du to read the advertisements pasted to the alley wall. “Famous cold noodles,” he said. “Just down the alley to the right.”