to flinch. Instead she just reassured her verbally.
‘All in good time, Jianxu. Madam Gao has managed without you for a while now; a few more days won’t matter.’
She looked at Lin and me, and indicated that we should leave. We nodded, and crossed the courtyard to intercept Tadeusz’s arrival with the doctor. We were in time to stop them entering the room where Jianxu was closeted and manoeuvred Sun into Lin’s own suite of rooms. He had been bound by Tadeusz in such a way that his ankles and wrists were tied, while still allowing him to hobble. He squatted awkwardly on the floor, with Tadeusz standing over him holding a large stick. Lin sat cross-legged at his low desk, and Po Ku provided him with writing materials and paper. We began to take down Sun’s story.
I started by asking him the reason for his being at the Geng house on the day in question.
‘The day I sold the aconite to the boy?’
‘Yes. Did he ask you to go there?’
I wanted to know whether it was a deliberate plan of Wenbo’s, or a more spur of the moment decision. Sun frowned, looking at each of his captors in turn. There was something he didn’t want to tell us. I pressed him, and Tadeusz tapped his stick on his palm ominously. The weak-willed doctor broke down.
‘You must understand that I was not… popular in the Geng house. But Wenbo insisted that I went there, so I turned up in disguise.’
‘Disguise?’
‘Yes. I dressed as a… mendicant.’
Something came together in my mind, and I was firm with him.
‘A mendicant? Were you not dressed as a beggar? Like a leper, in fact, who was well known in the city.’
He nodded glumly, his subterfuge having been uncovered.
‘Yes. I thought if I looked like the leper, no one would come near me. And I would not be identified. I particularly did not want Old Geng to see me.’
I should have questioned him more on his reluctance to be seen by Old Geng, but I was in a hurry, and raced on.
‘But Wenbo told us that he tried to get rid of the beggar. Why would he be doing that when he had asked you to come in the first place?’
‘There was someone else there. A man with tattooed arms. He saw me giving the aconite to the boy and taking money from him. I suppose Wenbo wanted to keep our transaction a secret. When he saw we had been spotted, he treated me like the beggar I appeared to be. Besides, he was glad to be rid of me as soon as he had got what he wanted.’
I looked at Lin.
‘So that was what Nu saw, that later sealed his fate. Now, doctor, did you tell Wenbo what a fatal dose would be?’
Sun’s face went green, and he began to gasp in deep breaths that stopped him speaking for a while. I put my hand on his shoulder, and squeezed hard.
‘Come now. It is too late to escape your fate. You must tell me everything.’
A squeal emerged from his throat, and then he began to nod vigorously. When he spoke his voice was high pitched, and false.
‘Yes. He insisted on knowing how much was fatal. And I told him. But I had to do it you see. I had to.’
There he faltered and would say no more. It was curious as to why he felt he had to do what the boy had said, but it was no matter now. We had our evidence. Lin began packing away his writing materials, and Tadeusz yanked Sun up from the ground by the rope attached to his wrists.
‘I will take him to the jail right now.’
‘But it’s dark, Tadeusz.’
The little silversmith grinned evilly by the light of the lantern he bore.
‘I don’t think the doctor will try and escape. But if he does, I shall be pleased, for then I can beat him insensible.’
I hoped Tadeusz didn’t mean what he said. But recently he had shown a side to his character that I had not encountered before, and I was no longer certain of his intentions. His fall from grace over spying for Ko had hardened him. I watched as he poked Sun across the courtyard with his stick, causing him to almost stumble due to his hobbled legs. I resolved to reassure Tadeusz when he got back that he didn’t have to go too far in the opposite direction to prove his loyalty to me.
Deep in the night, she sat up, alert to any sound that took place. But the house was as quiet as her cell had been. Located as it was on the edge of town, there were none of the noises that characterized Geng’s old house. No sound of creaking timbers or of scurrying rats disturbed the calm of the night. No sound of neighbours coughing or shuffling feet as old men with weak bladders made for the slop bucket. She crossed her arms over her knees and contemplated her future. She could tell the red-haired Westerner viewed her with some suspicion, not understanding her deeply-ingrained sense of obedience. And the wild, dark-faced native girl also had expected a more emotional reaction to her release. She resolved to give them what they expected in future. That way she would not be closely watched, and she would be free. Yes, she would learn to shed a tear, as she had done when her husband had died. She rose quietly, and walked out into the silent courtyard.
TWENTY-THREE
The following morning the sky was bright blue, and Lin and I were optimistic. Today we would obtain Wenbo’s confession — without beating his bare feet to a pulp — and our case would be complete. I was ready quickly, and soon got irritated by Lin’s slow progress. He was fussing around with his papers and castigating Po Ku for not having his writing equipment ready. The poor servant got even more flustered by his master’s badgering, and dropped a brush in the dust of the courtyard. Lin groaned, and told Po Ku to go and wash the brush.
‘It will be no use with grit in it.’
Po Ku ran back indoors to carry out his task, whilst Lin continued to fiddle with his satchel of papers. He was digging through it, obviously trying to find a particular document. I walked over to him.
‘Chu-Tsai what on earth is going on? Why are you so worked up about this? We will have the boy’s confession soon, and everything will be cut and dried.’
Lin sighed deeply.
‘I know. It is all so straightforward from now on, isn’t it? It’s just that I have a small niggle about the detail of that fatal day.’
I knew Lin’s predilection for the fine detail of cases. I thought he got bogged down too often in irrelevant detail and missed the bigger picture. I wanted to tell him so, but suspected that, if I told him to forget it, he would persist even more in his hunt for the worm that was wriggling through his brain. And to be frank, now that he had raised the matter, I recalled there had been something that puzzled me to.
‘We will piece it all together when we interrogate Wenbo. It will come back to you.’
Just then, Po Ku reappeared with the cleaned brush, which he gave to Lin, and we set off for the jail. Tadeusz was left with the task of drafting another report for Ko that would mislead him but still leave him thinking the silversmith was in his pocket.
The message Ko received two days later was read with deep satisfaction. Tadeusz reported that Lin and I had gone out on a limb, pronouncing the girl, known as Jianxu, innocent. This was contrary to the ruling made by the local prefect, Li Wen-Tao, which had been confirmed by Taitemir, the Mongol governor of the district. Ko’s cadaverous face split into what passed for a smile. His plan had worked. When he had seen the petition written by the playwright, Guan Han-Ching, and read the accompanying documents, he could see that the ruling of Li’s court was flawed. So many possibilities had been ignored in the face of the confession wrung out of the girl by the use of the bastinado. Normally, Ko would not have cared. One more innocent girl’s execution would not bring Kubilai’s empire tumbling down. And for him, as the Master of the Censorate, to have a hold over a local official concerning a
