Jade Dragon Mountain (34 page)

“On the day of the banquet, Pieter examined the tellurion.”

“Without my permission,” said Gray. “But I made sure that he did nothing to damage it. Why is this important?”

“He made notes in his journal. At first when I read it I was very discouraged. I could make nothing of the calculations. But I did notice one small detail. The final pages were the only pages in the book that contained errors. The only pages with numbers written, struck through, and written again. The two numbers that he appeared unable to reconcile in his equations were ‘six' and ‘seven.' This meant little to me until the moment I realized that
on the day he died, the eclipse was predicted to occur in six days' time
. Pieter was using the tellurion to predict the alignment of the celestial spheres, and it was telling him that the eclipse was not six days away, but seven.”

“But who killed him?” It was the first time Lady Chen had spoken. Her words were clipped and cold. Her hands were clenched together tightly.

Li Du looked at the faces that were all turned to him. “Each of you,” he said, “had the opportunity to poison Brother Pieter that night. Lady Chen—” He turned to face her. There was no fear in her expression, only restrained impatience as she waited for him to continue.

“Lady Chen left the courtyard several times during the storyteller's performance in order to bring more wine. She might have stopped at the guestrooms and prepared the poisoned tea during any one of her absences.”

“Are you accusing me?” Her voice was like ice.

Li Du met her gaze for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “There is no connection between you and the forged calendar. You had no motive to kill him.”

He glimpsed just a trace of surprise in her expression before she smoothed it away. He turned then to Sir Gray. “You also left the performance that night.”

Gray's nostrils flared and he gave Li Du a furious look. “I told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I spoke to Brother Pieter that night. I saw him die. But I had nothing to do with his death.”

“And yet you were the only one who was seen quarreling with him. He disapproved of your Company's strategies. Perhaps this concerned you more deeply than you revealed. Perhaps you feared his ability to turn the Emperor against you. And if you were involved in the forgery of the calendar, then you had yet another reason to kill him.”

“That is not true,” said Gray. “And you know that it is not true. I am as shocked as any of you to learn that the eclipse will not happen tomorrow.”

“But how is it possible that you did not know? You carried the tellurion with you. Your mission was constructed around the eclipse.”

Gray was livid. “It never occurred to me that I would be required to help the Emperor
make
his prediction. The tellurion was calibrated by our astronomers and clockmakers in Calcutta. When I arrived there, it was given to me. My only instruction was to keep it safe, and to be sure that it was presented to the Emperor in time for the eclipse. My itinerary was already set according to the Emperor's announcements. So how could I possibly have imagined that this blasted piece of metal was ticking toward one moment while the Emperor marched toward another? Everyone knows the Emperor of China has not made an incorrect prediction since he took the Jesuits into his employ. How was I to—And now it is all in jeopardy!”

Li Du waited until Gray's tirade was over. Then he said, “It is not unreasonable to suppose that you were involved in the calendar plot. The Company, after all, has reason to harm the Emperor.”

Gray tensed, but said nothing.

“The Emperor has refused the Company's requests for years. If he were to be publicly humiliated before his people, it might provide you with an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.”

“This is preposterous,” said Gray.

Li Du acknowledged this with a little bow of his head. “Not preposterous,” he said, “but also not what happened. The tellurion proves as much. If the Company had helped to sabotage the Emperor's calendar, why also send what is, essentially, a correction of the error, to the Emperor as tribute? The two actions make no sense together. No—the altered calendar was a threat to the success of your tribute. And so I realized that you were not involved.”

“You play a dangerous game,” said Gray softly, “accusing an ambassador when you knew already that it was not me. If you are going to accuse foreigners, why not drag in that missionary who skulks in his rooms? He is the secretive one.”

Li Du bowed his head, but there was no shame or capitulation in the gesture. “Neither you nor Brother Martin killed Brother Pieter.”

“Then who did?” Tulishen broke in.

Li Du turned to face his cousin. “Let us speak for a moment of you, Magistrate. You did not leave the performance that night, but you had the power to command his death. Any of your servants might have prepared the scene at your order.”

“I?” Tulishen's face darkened. “The murder has caused me endless inconvenience and anxiety. I would never have upset the preparations for the festival with such an act. And I know nothing of calendars.”

“Perhaps. But it was you who insisted that the cause of death be declared natural, though the doctor saw that it was not. And it was you who refused to listen to my reasons for suspecting that the Khampa were not responsible. You insisted on that explanation, in spite of evidence to the contrary. Either you were remiss in your duties as magistrate, or you were framing the Khampa deliberately in order to cover your own crime.”

“No!” cried Tulishen. His face was waxen. “Why? Why would I kill him?”

“But you did deliberately try to cover up the murder.”

“No, I—I believed that those explanations were the correct ones. You must understand the strain I have endured. I had no time. There is too much required of me. I may have misjudged, but I did not kill the old man.”

“I know now that you did not, though for a time I suspected you. But that was before I discovered Pieter's journal, before I understood the true motive.”

Li Du paused, and the silence deepened. “Pieter died because he was an astronomer. Because he was curious. And the person who killed him is the same person who sabotaged the Emperor's calendar a year ago in Beijing. A person who knows how the web of the empire is woven, and is capable of breaking and spinning it into new patterns. There is only one person who could have done this.”

“Who?” whispered Tulishen, in a strangled voice. Gray's hand clutched the back of the chair so tightly that his knuckles were strained and white as a skeleton.

“It was Jia Huan.”

Tulishen started and looked behind him, as if he had forgotten Jia Huan's presence. “But that cannot be,” he said.

Jia Huan's face was very calm. There was only a gentle suggestion of hurt in his countenance. “I must speak in my defense,” he said to Tulishen. “Your cousin's imagination has led him far astray.” His clear voice emanated the gentle authority of efficient servitude.

“Tell me, Magistrate,” said Li Du. “Why have you been trying to convince me that I have lost my mind? You imply that I have succumbed to strain, that I am overtired. Ask yourself whether these thoughts were your own. Or were they given to you by Jia Huan? Did he suggest to you that my sanity should be questioned? Did he imply, perhaps, that my exile has driven me into such shame and jealousy that I cannot be trusted?”

Tulishen was startled, but he recovered quickly. “Jia Huan's thoughts are always of my convenience. He would have betrayed—”

“An hour ago I discovered that the wine in my room contained poison. Under the bed I found a letter, written in counterfeit of my own hand, confessing to Pieter's murder. I was to have committed suicide. Had Jia Huan prepared you to accept that lie, too?”

Tulishen did not respond immediately, but looked from Li Du to Jia Huan, doubt and indecision clear on his face. Lady Chen stepped toward him, apparently concerned, but she stopped herself and waited.

Then Tulishen's expression grew cold and hard, and he turned suddenly to face Jia Huan. “Jia Huan?” he demanded.

Jia Huan gave a soft smile, and it reminded Li Du of a painted portrait. “Can you imagine it?” he said. “Picture our Emperor, tomorrow at noon, standing on that tiered pavilion, his arms raised in command over the dark and the light. And before him a crowd of thousands, waiting. And the moments would tick by, one after another, closer and closer. Then the time would come, the moment, his moment. And then it would pass. And still he would stand there. His arms would tire like those of any man, and finally he would lower his hands while the bright sun mocked him from the sky.”

As he spoke Jia Huan's own arms had lifted slightly in imitation of the imagined Emperor. He had closed his eyes. Now he opened them and looked around him.

“This is madness,” said Tulishen, taking a step backward.

“You do not fully understand,” said Li Du calmly. “Jia Huan had a reason, a cruel motive for his work. The sabotage of the calendar was intended to humiliate the Emperor, but the true victims were to be the Jesuits. He wanted them to be blamed for the Emperor's mortification—they were responsible for the production of the calendar. He believes that the Jesuits should be banished from China, and his hatred of them was such that he was happy to sentence them to death.”

“So it was you.” Lady Chen's voice was icy. “You killed”—Li Du heard the almost imperceptible catch in her voice—“you killed the guest of the magistrate's home. You betrayed and endangered us all.”

Jia Huan's response was unconcerned. “I do not believe,” he said, “that it is reasonable now for me to deny it. It appears that our exiled scholar has succeeded in his task.”

“Then it is all as he says?” asked Tulishen. “The calendar?”

Jia Huan bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Yes. I created the false calendar for the reason he says. And I killed the old Jesuit.”

“But I do not understand,” said Tulishen. “We are speaking of the Forbidden City. A low secretary cannot forge an official document. Someone would have caught such an egregious violation.”

“It is not impossible,” said Li Du, “given the unique circumstances. Recall that the Emperor does not desire the role of the Jesuits to be widely known. The calendars are delivered without ceremony, and very few people are involved in the proceedings. Jia Huan was a secretary at the Bureau of Astronomy, and I imagine that they were as impressed by his efficiency as you have been. He watched the calendar as it was made, and created his duplicate slowly. It is a long process. The calendar is ornate, painted and decorated in the Western style. Jia Huan learned these techniques during his time in Macau. I am sure that the Dominicans were happy to give him the help he asked for when he told them his plan was to harm the Jesuits.”

“He is working for the Dominicans?” The question came from Gray.

Jia Huan answered in a hiss. “They are more foolish than the Jesuits. They thought they had recruited a spy. They thought that once the Jesuits were banished they would be allowed in.”

He stopped, and Li Du began to speak again. “He knew that the Emperor was planning a southern tour, and that during that time he would be separated from the Bureau of Astronomy. Jia Huan had only to wait for the circumstances to cohere, and they did. The details of the tour were announced. The calendar was finalized. The forgery was complete and the exchange was made.”

Jia Huan gave a slight frown. “You tell it in such a flat way,” he said. “Are you not impressed by my audacity? I was very clever. I manipulated so many of them. I was just another black-robed secretary eager to carry out my orders. I fooled the Emperor of China himself.”

Tulishen's eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out and he closed it again.

Gray's gaze was turned inward in intense deliberation, but now he looked up. “How did your entire empire not see it? All your elite scholars and officials? Not one of them noticed the error?”

“No one would dare to question the Emperor,” said Li Du. “Perhaps some star-gazers and shamans across the empire came to their own conclusions. But the Emperor's official prediction is not something to challenge.”

Jia Huan listened to the exchange with an amused expression. He addressed Li Du. “You found the journal. That was lucky. And you understood the old man's notes. But how did you know it was me?”

Li Du answered, “You made several mistakes.”

“What mistakes?”

“You pretended that you could not speak Latin, but on two occasions you revealed to me that you did. The first was when you quoted the
China Illustrata
. You said that you read in a Western book that the Chinese see the Jesuits as geniuses fallen from heaven and have put off their peacock tails. Those are the exact words of the text, but I know that the
China Illustrata
has never been translated into Chinese. The second was when you told me that Pieter and Sir Gray had argued over Pieter's refusal to support the Company's suit. I knew from Sir Gray that this was the content of their disagreement, but Mu Gao told me that they spoke in Latin. The only way you could have known the subject of their argument was if you understood the language. You learned it, I assume, in Macau. And you were employed at the Bureau of Astronomy a year ago when the calendar was made. I imagine you would have preferred that not to have been mentioned, but the magistrate brought it up when you first met Brother Pieter.”

Li Du paused for a moment, then said, in a thoughtful voice, half to himself, “But it was more than that. I have been forming a picture in my mind of the person who killed Pieter. The murderer provided answers meant to appeal to one person more than any other, the person with the power to cover up the murder. The magistrate was willing to believe that the death was natural. He was willing to believe that the Khampa were responsible. He would have been willing, I think, to accept my confession and suicide. I asked myself who had the talent and knowledge to manipulate the magistrate in this way.”