The White Mirror

 

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To Robbie

 

Prologue

It was more than ten years after my brief acquaintance with the scholar Li Du that I heard his name again, and it came from the unlikeliest of sources.

The year was 1718, and I was in Saint Petersburg. There were hundreds of foreigners in the city that summer. We were in Russia at the behest of the Czar, who wished his new capital to be a place of surpassing beauty and refinement. The canals were to be Dutch, the gardens French, the palaces Italian. My task was to contribute something of the English botanical perspective to its apothecary gardens. This occupation delighted me, not least because I had ample time to conduct my own survey of the plants, imported and domestic, growing in the city.

One day, late in the summer, I had reason to consult Dioscorides, and inquired as to where I might locate an edition. I was directed to an estate at the city's edge, a grand, two-storied hall set on a flat lawn with a forest behind it. Inside, I was received by an apologetic official, who explained that the estate was being converted from a private residence into a new royal library and cabinet of curiosities. The collection was incomplete and in disarray, but I was welcome to examine it.

I soon despaired of locating the volume I sought. Many of the books and objects were still packed away in crates, and those that had been unpacked had not yet enjoyed the ministrations of a librarian. I would have stayed to peruse, but found myself uneasy under the stares of half-assembled automata and preserved fishes. I learned later that the estate's former owner had plotted to murder the Czar and had, in punishment for this treachery, relinquished not only his property, but also his life. Perhaps the rooms retained a certain malevolence.

After abandoning my search, I set out to explore the forested grounds. Soon I was surrounded by the red trunks and dark needles of Siberian pines, my boots sinking into soft moss, the drone of insects loud in my ears. I stopped to rest beside a small lake, and was enjoying the blurred reflections of silver poplars and white birches in the water when I was hailed by a man walking toward me on the path. His clothes were richer than a peasant's, but worn and muddy at the knees. The hair beneath the brim of his hat was white. He carried a trowel in one hand, and a basket of iris roots in the other.

He told me his name was Étienne Laporte. He and his wife had come to Russia from France, he as a gardener, she as a lady's maid, and had served the estate for fifteen years. I questioned him eagerly, and found him particularly knowledgeable on the subjects of rhubarbs, lilies, and mosses. When he invited me to sup with his family, I accepted, and followed him to a modest residence separate from the main house, where I was received with gracious hospitality.

After a pleasant repast, Laporte led me to a parlor and poured two glasses of the Russian liquor. As I examined the room, my attention was arrested by a flower in a vase beside a small window—a red, waxy blossom that drooped from a thick stem curved like the neck of a swan.

The sight of it transported me. Before my eyes, I saw gray, sloping rooftops and courtyard gardens. When I drew in my breath, it seemed to me that the air held juniper smoke and the scent of angelica. I knew the flower—a species of peony—but I marveled at its presence, for I had never seen it growing outside of China. I remarked on it to Laporte.

To my disappointment, he did not immediately address the subject of the plant. Instead, he spoke of his employment before he came to Russia. He had been an undergardener in the palace of the Sun King, in that monarch's Labyrinth of Fables. Years of tending its hedges, he explained, had engraved the shape of the labyrinth into his memory. He would never forget its corridors or its thirty-eight statues and thirty-eight tales, stories of imprudent ravens and malcontented frogs intended for the moral education of the young dauphin.

Then he pointed to the red flower and told me that it had grown from a seed given to him by a traveler in gratitude for his recitation of those thirty-eight fables. Laporte laughed and said that this man, a talkative fellow, had insisted that one year the plant would produce a green flower, and from it would crawl a turtle with a jeweled shell that would grant any wish, so long as the creature was acknowledged the king of turtles.

I gave little credence to the improbable amalgam of plant and animal, and yet the traveler's manner, as conveyed to me by Laporte, was somehow familiar. I asked for his name. Laporte replied that no name had been given, but recalled that the man had a princely bearing. I asked whence the traveler had come. Laporte did not know, but told me that his eyes were dark as the seeds of the peony, and that he wore a short beard, oiled and pointed. Finally, I asked what stories the man had told of his travels. At this, Laporte rose to light candles and refill our glasses. The traveler, he said, as he returned to his chair, had told only one story, about a caravan on a path between empires, and a librarian who had once been an exile.

And that is how I came to learn, ten years after I returned home from China, what befell the friends I made there. I have endeavored to set down the account as Laporte related it to me, supplemented with my own memories of that part of the world, and with my researches into the Edifying and Curious Letters sent by men of the church.

Of the location where these events took place, I can say little. I do not know the path my friends took after I parted from their company. I know only that it lies somewhere on that branching trade route that connects the forests where the Chinese grow their tea leaves to the arid plateaus of Tibet, where it cannot be grown and is thus greatly valued. These paths, which wind through vast and treacherous mountains, have been claimed over the centuries by at least three powers: the emperors of China, the kings and monks of Tibet, and the Mongol princes of Tartary. Who rules there now, I do not know.

My survey of the plants of Saint Petersburg remains incomplete, my notebooks from that time being devoted, so unexpectedly, to the further exploits of Li Du.

—
F
ROM THE MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS OF
H
UGH
A
SHTON

 

Chapter 1

In high places, a single storm takes many forms. A wise traveler knows to be wary of what the clouds and the mountains are saying to one another. So when Li Du observed a raindrop strike his mule's bridle and bounce into the air instead of slipping quietly down the leather, he stopped and looked up with some trepidation. Through dripping branches, the sky was like rough silk stretched tight across a frame.

A gust of wind pulled at the tops of the trees. Li Du's mule shook her head, upset. The wind had loosed the flap of a saddlebag. It fluttered and snapped at her flank. Li Du freed one of his hands from his coat sleeve and stepped carefully around the animal, aware of the precipitous drop to his right where the edge of the path fell away through gnarled oaks into a deep ravine. At its base, cascading water frothed and pooled around boulders and forest debris.

Once he had secured the saddlebag, Li Du patted his mule's shoulder and tucked his hand back into his damp sleeve. It had been precipitating since dawn, an irresolute rain that was now assuming the colder, sharper guise of sleet. Ahead, the trail rose steeply, slick stones and black mud churned by booted feet and shod hooves. He resumed his progress, stepping automatically into the footprints that were already there.

Li Du was a small man of middle age with a smooth, oval face, unassuming square eyebrows, and eyes that smiled when he did. It was his tendency to walk with his head thrust forward and his chin slightly tucked, as if he was scanning the ground for a lost item. His rumpled wool hat was worn and faded. His long coat, cinched at the waist by a belt, had been mended many times.

For Li Du, there was a rhythm to each day of mountain travel. In the mornings, he opened his eyes to the blue half-light of dawn with a feeling that he had become part of the cold dirt beneath him. Later, after a hot breakfast and the effort of packing up camp, his fatigue left him and he was eager to set out. There followed a pleasant interlude of walking and noting with interest the varieties of vegetation, the vistas, and the birdsong.

By midday, the morning's energy was spent. Small pains broadened into aches, breath became an exhausting necessity, and fears of injury insinuated themselves into his thoughts. Fortunately, on all but the most difficult days, this discomfort passed and Li Du settled into his own steady afternoon pace, content in the knowledge that nothing was expected of him except that he match his slow stride to that of his mule until the caravan stopped for the night.

This afternoon was different. Li Du was anxious. Over the last ten days, they had not seen anyone outside the caravan except for a single farmer in a distant barley field who, upon observing them, had hurried out of sight. The air had been growing steadily colder. That morning, Li Du had witnessed a worried exchange between Kalden Dorjee and his men as they discussed signs of an approaching storm.

Li Du was nearing the top of the ascent when a sound reached him. He gave a little sigh of relief as he recognized the bells of the caravan's lead mule. He crested the rise and, blinking away stinging ice, peered down. In front of him, a steep declivity led to a wide clearing on the bank of the stream, where the caravan had halted.