cell. It was almost as though she had been standing there since the last time Gurbesu had spoken to her. She was staring through the grille in the cell door, her almond eyes unblinking in the afternoon sun. The bandy-legged guard scurried out from his post and unlocked the cell door without being asked by Gurbesu. The afternoon was tolerably warm, with only a hint in the air of how cold the autumn would soon get. Gurbesu drew the girl out of her cell. The gaoler was nervous, and took a step towards them, but Gurbesu’s stare froze him in his tracks. She took Jianxu’s arm and they sat under the shade of the lone tree opposite the cell door, just as I had done two days previously. Gurbesu called out to the guard to fetch them some water. Grudgingly, he went, and came back with a wooden pail and a ladle. The water in the pail was cool, and both she and Jianxu drank in turn from the ladle in silence. Their thirsts quenched, Gurbesu began her gentle interrogation.
‘How did you come to be living with Madam Gao?’
Jianxu stared off into the distance as though she were looking far away into her own past.
‘My father was a poor scholar, who had not yet taken his exams when his wife — my mother — died. I was seven years old, and of an age where I could be useful to a household. In order to finish his studies, my father offered me as a servant to Madam Gao. In return, she would give my father an amount of money sufficient to pay for his exams.’
Gurbesu stirred, uncomfortable at the implication.
‘In essence he sold you to Madam Gao.’
Jianxu did not flinch from the hard conclusion drawn by her interrogator.
‘It was a mutually convenient arrangement. Before he left, he pleaded with Madam Gao to be kind to me, and told me to be obedient. I think both of us kept our bargain. I served Madam Gao well, and she had no cause for complaint concerning my domestic duties. We did not talk much, other than when she gave me instructions, but then Madam did not seek or want a companion. Time seemed to pass with great speed. It was ten years later that Madam Gao’s son asked me to marry him, and I was pleased to do so. Once again, it was mutually convenient. Sadly, he was a sickly person and our joining was never consummated. He took ill and died soon after we were married.’
Jianxu paused in her narration, and Gurbesu wondered about her apparent calm. How had she felt when her husband had died so soon after the wedding? Had she mourned for him? What feelings had coursed through her veins? She got an answer of sorts when Jianxu continued her story.
‘The Three Duties of a woman are obedience to her father, her husband, and to her son after her husband’s death. Sadly we had no son.’ Once again she paused, but only briefly this time. ‘But one of the Four Virtues says a woman should serve her in-laws. Madam Gao’s own husband had died a long time before, so my duty was to serve Madam Gao. This I did, and would still strive to do, if I were not in this prison.’
‘She sounds too good to be true.’
Gurbesu smiled sweetly, but insincerely, at my banter. I knew the Three Duties, and the Four Virtues would not play well with her. As a man I might have wanted a woman of such an exemplary nature, but had not yet found one. One can but dream. Gurbesu told us what she thought.
‘I don’t think she was lying to me. She seemed to want to believe in what she was saying. Whether it represents the actual truth is another matter. I could detect no emotion in her at all.’
It was Lin’s turn to make a contribution to the debate.
‘In my country, women are assumed to subordinate themselves to men. And there are seven grounds for divorce — disobedience to parents-in-law, barrenness, adultery, jealousy, incurable disease, and theft.’
Gurbesu frowned, counting in her head.
‘That is only six.’
Lin smiled sweetly.
‘Yes, the seventh is loquacity. Do you think you could be more to the point, dear Gurbesu?’
Gurbesu snorted, and punched Lin playfully on the arm. Lin, however, was making a serious point. Women were subject to the whims of men in Cathay, and it took a particular temperament to overcome that drawback. Madam Gao had achieved it, it would seem, by simply being a determined person whom no one dared cross. But even she had been obliged to consider Geng’s marriage proposal. So how difficult was it for a young woman like Jianxu to be in control of her life? Perhaps her situation had required her to suppress her feelings.
‘Shall I go on?’
Gurbesu was staring at me with a curious look in her eye. I nodded, not seeing why my inner thoughts should have delayed her.
‘Yes, please do. What more is there to tell us, Gurbesu?’
‘Quite a lot, actually.’
Jianxu began to explain to the dark-haired woman sitting next to her in the shade of the solitary tree just how things had gone wrong.
‘Madam Gao uses the profits from her business to lend money at a rate of interest. The paper money system created by the Mongols has been a boon to her business, and many people come to her to borrow. One of them was Geng Biao. He eventually owed her a lot of money. I think he imagined that by marrying her he could eradicate his debt.’
‘But why would Madam Gao even consider his proposal if she was to lose out on a lucrative deal?’
Jianxu shook her head slowly.
‘She didn’t for a long time. In fact she was becoming quite irritated by his persistent attention. Especially when he suggested his son could marry me. As if this would solve the imagined problem of my being so old and without a husband.’
Jianxu turned her gaze on her interrogator.
‘I told Old Geng that I already had a husband. He was sadly dead, and I believed that widows should not remarry. He got very annoyed and stormed out of the house.’
Once again Jianxu returned her gaze to the far distance. There was a long pause before she continued her story.
‘Then something happened. I don’t know what it was, but it must have shocked my mother-in-law. I thought she had been seeing another client, but suddenly she emerged from her counting house followed by Old Geng. She was clutching her throat, and I thought that Geng had attacked her. But then I saw it was the opposite. Geng was holding her shoulders and comforting her. That night, Madam called for me and told me she was to marry Old Geng, and I was to be wed to his son. She said it was our duty. I cried the whole night, and prayed that my yun — my luck — would change overnight. But yun moves as slowly as an oxcart’s wheel, and the next morning nothing had changed. I was still betrothed to Wenbo, and Madam was set on marrying his father.’
‘I did then ask her about the poisoned broth, but her story was the same as when I first interrogated her. She made it for Madam Gao, and Old Geng took it off her before she could give it to her mother-in-law.’
I looked at Gurbesu.
‘Did it sound the same story? I mean, exactly the same?’
Gurbesu nodded, and her thick, black hair fell across her eyes. She swept it up with her palm, wedging it behind her ear.
‘Yes. It is a considered story, rather than consistent. But it sounds truthful, all the same.’
Lin had been silent for a long time. Now he spoke up, echoing the thought that was in my mind.
‘We have to investigate this incident after which Madam Gao completely changed her mind about marrying Geng. What was it, I wonder?’
Tadeusz, who, too, had kept quiet during Gurbesu recital of Jianxu’s story, now entered the conversation.
‘I may be able to help you there. Among the debtors of Madam Gao was a physician called Sun. He disappeared around the time Gao agreed to marry Geng. By all accounts he was a poor doctor, who sometimes made his patients worse than they were when they went to him.’ He paused. ‘He would of course have had aconite in his collection of cures.’
This was very interesting news to me. Was this the source of the poison that killed Geng?
‘Disappeared, you say? Doesn’t anyone know of his whereabouts?’
Tadeusz waved a hand in the air and grimaced.
‘I have not so far been able to find anyone who does. But I shall not give up. And there is something else to say about Sun.’
