The White Mirror (4 page)

“And I you, librarian,” said Hamza.

Hamza was a fellow traveler on Kalden Dorjee's caravan. He was a storyteller by profession, a master of languages, and a self-proclaimed collector of local tales and names of gods. A man of apparent youth, he might have been twenty or forty, and affected one age or another as it suited him.

Since Li Du had met him, seven months earlier, Hamza had never told the same story of his past twice. Once he claimed to be the sixth son of a family of gardeners from Akbarabad. On a different occasion he insisted that he was born in Istanbul and left home on a ship bound for Athens. On a night when he had drunk a bottle of wine around a fire in the Gyalthang inn, he spoke with vehemence of the death of his noble family at the hands of the East India Company in the narrow alleys of Hooghly, only to claim on the next night that he had been raised by spies and cutthroats.

Hamza's features offered little clue to his place of birth, but when he sat with the muleteers around a campfire, wearing his plain hat and rough coat, he could easily pass for a trader from Kham. His polished manners and skill with languages had earned him the role of ambassador for the trade caravan.

Now he stood in the doorway wearing a critical expression. “There are many acceptable gifts that a traveler can offer his host. You might have brought news of foreign kingdoms, trinkets for the lady of the house, or half a torn map, perhaps, or a cart full of wondrous objects. Instead, you present a corpse.”

Li Du gave a small smile, which faded quickly as he remembered the inert, icy figure on the bridge. “How did you hear?” he asked.

“From the old man in the cottage who is making cheese in a snowstorm,” said Hamza. “Perhaps it is a delicacy—curds separated amid snowflakes and clouds. Like tea leaves dried in moonlight.” Several months earlier, in the market inn at Dali, Hamza had spent a day composing a tale about moonlight tea that he swore would double the tea's value in the Lhasa markets. It was something to do with the ghost of a poet searching for his fox wife.

Li Du recalled the crippled man making cheese in his hut. “We met Yeshe. I think he knew who the monk on the bridge was, or guessed, but he was not eager to speak with us.”

“He is not warm with strangers,” said Hamza. “But the lord of the manor displays enough geniality to balance twenty gruff gatekeepers.”

“Is Yeshe a member of the family?”

Hamza shrugged. “The children call him Uncle.”

Li Du nodded abstractedly. He was turning his hat over in his hands, twisting the worn wool.

Observing him, Hamza frowned. “Was it so bad a death?” he asked.

“A nightmarish end,” Li Du replied. “Violent and inexplicable.” As Li Du described the scene at the bridge, he watched Hamza's expression flicker between surprise and curiosity. When he came to the paint applied to the corpse, Hamza's brow furrowed, as if he had not understood the words.

“Painted?” Hamza raised his hand to stop Li Du's account. “But are you sure this was not some trick on tired minds? This apparition on the bridge strikes me more as a spirit than a man. Perhaps this white and gold and blue was an illusion?”

“It was real,” Li Du said. “The paint was thickly applied. I saw the image clearly.” Li Du traced a finger across the surface of the wall, sketching an invisible copy of the shape he had seen.

“A white circle framed in gold and blue,” said Hamza, thoughtfully. He was leaning against the wall beside the table. He picked up the silver bells and began to polish them idly on his sleeve. “I have seen courtesans painted blue and green to intrigue princes,” he said. “I have seen a sorcerer's arms etched with black serpents that writhed, living, across his skin. I have seen eyes painted on the closed eyelids of the dead.” Hamza's gaze was focused on memories Li Du could not see, as if he was turning the pages of a book quickly, searching for a half-remembered illustration. “I have never before seen a dead man painted this way,” he concluded.

“And you did not even see it,” Li Du reminded him.

“No,” Hamza said. “No. When I arrived here yesterday, there was nothing on the bridge. Nothing living, nothing dead.”

Hamza set the string of bells down again on the table, now polished so bright that the walls of the room were reflected in each one. Li Du looked at the string of identical stretched reflections. His glance shifted to the round copper lid on the shelf, then to the painting in the corner. “I think,” he said, “that it was a mirror.”

Hamza, who had followed the direction of Li Du's look, lifted his eyebrows. “In this part of the world, mirrors are carried by gods.”

Li Du nodded in the direction of the shrine in the corner. “In paintings like that one.” He stood up and crossed the room to examine the little devotional painting. It was a delicate piece of work that depicted a woman seated in an open flower against a background of green and blue. She held a curling plant with red and white blossoms. Open eyes stared from her palms, the soles of her feet, and her forehead. Her red garments floated around her.

“There is no mirror in this thangka,” Li Du said, “but I have seen them, held, as you say, in the hands of gods and goddesses.” Li Du recalled the visible outline of the fingertip that had pulled the serpentine length of blue paint from one side of the dead man's chest to the other. “It was roughly done: the white circle, gold frame, and handle wrapped in blue ribbon.”

“And you say that he did it himself?”

“That is how it appeared.”

They were both silent for a moment, Li Du remembering the paint-smeared fingers and the terrible wound. “Did you meet a monk here?”

Hamza shook his head. “There is at least one monk, but I saw him just before I heard what happened, so he cannot be the dead man. There is a mountain temple not far from here—he is inside it lost in prayer.”

“You visited a temple?” Li Du raised his eyebrows slightly. Hamza was adamant in his wariness of monasteries, which he insisted were dangerous places.

Hamza shrugged. “In the name of exploration, not of worship. In the morning I went to the village, but I came back and had nothing else to occupy my time.”

“You did not return by way of the bridge?”

“No—the village is on this side of the water. There was no one about at the manor, and the pines were emitting a green light before the storm. I found stairs in the mountain like dragon's teeth. How could I resist? So I climbed them, and of course I came to a temple. It's always a temple or a shrine in these mountains. The snow became so heavy I feared I would become lost in it. I returned, and now I am here. My room is that way, closer to the kitchen and not so cold as this one.”

“And the family—what are they like?”

“The usual kind of family. A lord, his lady, children to inherit the land and coin coffers and animals. The wife is young, and seems to know all that occurs in the manor. I heard her recite the amount of payment received for every animal they sold last year at the market as if she had only just struck the bargains.” Hamza glanced behind him and lowered his voice slightly. “Doso is from an old family, and he will tell you how his ancestor did some service for a king. And then he will tell you about all of his ancestors. And then he will talk about crops and the value of different yak breeds.” Hamza sighed. “And there is a mother, Doso's, who turns her prayer wheel by the fire and does not speak. And the other visitors, of course.”

“More travelers? In this remote place?”

Hamza nodded. “For a valley so difficult to find, an unusual number of people have found it. There is a dignitary from Lhasa. He is a man of high status who asks uninteresting questions about taxes and crops and the state of the roads and the health of other families of rank. But it will please you to know that one of your favorites is here—a foreign monk.”

“A Jesuit?” Li Du had studied with Jesuit priests in the Forbidden City. They were the only Westerners currently permitted to enter China.

“I did not ask. He can communicate in Chinese, but has a translator here with him for the local language. If the translator's expression is anything to go by, I would guess that his employer is not an easy companion.”

“Strange company to find in this place.” Li Du rubbed his forehead, aware of his fatigue.

“There is a woman, too,” Hamza said. “A traveler. There is something odd about her—a religious fanatic, perhaps, or an abandoned mistress chasing a man who made false promises.”

“Have you met a young man, not much older than a boy, with short hair and a brown coat threadbare at the elbows?” Li Du told Hamza about his encounter outside the barn.

“No—a village boy, perhaps, performing required service for the manor.” Hamza seemed to lose interest. “Temples,” he said, “are dangerous places.”

“You have never explained to me why you think so.”

“Have I not?” Hamza looked surprised. “I have never told you that I once offended a demon spirit? I did not know, at the time, that the demon in my tale was a real demon. So I spoke of him to my audience—the harem of the sultan across the sea—in a private room that no man was allowed to enter. I was an exception. The sultan's favorite consort demanded a tale from me (I will tell you how I first met her another time), and the sultan was so enamored of her that he could not refuse her request. So I told the tale of a demon who posed as a saint. As it happened, my words were so well chosen and so accurate in their depiction of this demon (who I did not know existed) that they summoned that very spirit to the room. He challenged me to battle. I put him off—it is always wise to have prepared at least three ways to convince a demon to wait awhile before killing you—but I expect him to force the issue one day. I avoid monasteries because this particular fiend tends to frequent their paintings.”

“Of course,” said Li Du. “I knew there must be some explanation.”

 

Chapter 4

To reach the kitchen from his room, Li Du had to traverse the full length of the building. He passed four closed doors, then turned left into the wing above the main entrance. The kitchen was at the far end.

It was the largest room in the manor, and the warmest. The floor retained heat rising from the animals in the barns below, and the fire on the hearth was big enough to light the whole space. The hearth itself was a flat, raised platform surrounded on three sides by low, wide benches. An opening in the eaves drew smoke out into the twilight.

Dinner preparations were in progress. Kamala worked beside her children—two boys and a little girl who cradled a swaddled infant. Savory fragrances rose from a large pot set on the hearthstones, to which Kamala was adding pieces of meat. Her hands were shiny and slick with melting fat.

There were four people sitting around the fire. The first was a man in yellow silk robes trimmed with fur. His face, defined at the chin by a wispy white beard and at the forehead by a red hat, seemed too small for his voluminous attire. He held, cupped in his hands, a bowl with a golden rim that caught the firelight. The second was a younger man with a starved look to his cheeks and a suggestion of a reptile in his wide, thin mouth. He was looking at the fire as if he wanted to rearrange it.

The third person was a woman. Her hair was haphazardly tied and braided away from her face in a matted, knotted tangle, a document of moments when a braid was added in one place, a strip of leather tied to another, and piece of yarn twined in on some different occasion. When Li Du and Hamza entered the room, she glanced up briefly. Her eyes were bright, the skin around them faintly creased, like a page of a book that had been crumpled and smoothed flat. After a quick assessment of the newcomers, she turned her attention to the fire and retreated into her own thoughts. Beside her was a very old woman whose dark clothes blended into the corner so well that she was almost indistinguishable from her surroundings.

Kamala noticed Li Du and Hamza, and nodded toward the hearth. “Please sit,” she said, and returned to her work, issuing soft commands to the children.

Li Du bowed to the assembled strangers and sat down. Hamza remained standing, and after a moment began to walk slowly around the room, examining the vivid painted panels on the wall, the carved wooden bowls displayed on shelves, and the family shrine in one corner framed by translucent white scarves.

The man in yellow introduced himself first. He was Rinzen Ngawang, the dignitary from Lhasa. “I understand from your friend,” said Rinzen, with a nod to Hamza, “that you serve the Chinese Emperor. Do I take his meaning correctly—you are one of the Emperor's librarians?” His speech was formal, but not pompous. His affect suggested that he considered Li Du an equal.

Li Du accepted the cup that was handed to him by one of the children. “That was my formal title,” he said, “a long time ago. I am just a traveler now.”

The man who had been staring intently at the fire raised his eyes to Li Du's for an instant before looking down again. “I am called Andruk,” he said. “I am translator and guide to the foreign monk. He wishes to know what has occurred—it was your caravan, I am told, that found the body?”

Li Du nodded and was about to speak when a sound on the stairs announced Doso's return. The manor lord brought the cold in with him. It emanated from his coat, which he removed and hung on a hook in the wall. Even empty, the coat retained a formidable presence. Doso's footsteps vibrated the floor as he crossed toward them.

He looked shaken. The strong lines of his face were drawn, and he clenched and unclenched his hands as he held them to the fire. His eyes moved restlessly around the room as if he needed to ascertain that nothing had been taken during his absence. This scrutiny encompassed equally his wife, his children, stacked cups on the shelves, and glinting knives fixed to the wall.

Doso picked up a bottle and refilled his guests' cups before pouring the clear spirit into his own, filling it to the brim. He raised his glass and they drank. A soft rumble of pleasure sounded in Doso's chest. Then he turned to Andruk. “Where is the foreigner?”