I took in a sharp breath as the memory came flooding back.
A wedding, a betrayal, a death. I said the last word aloud.
Get a grip. Inanimate objects do not communicate with people. And they certainly don’t help solve murders. And yet several times in my life, when handling a precious object, a word or a phrase had seemed to distill the essence of a puzzle, a mystery. The source had to be my own brain. Evelyn Villiers had told me just enough about her daughter to plant the idea of betrayal. Somehow the húnpíng had acted as a portal—capturing, then magnifying my unconscious thoughts. That had to be the answer—the one I wanted anyway.
The door opened. “Wait ’til I get the leash off.” Vivian’s indulgent voice floated in. I heard the tapping of nails as Fergus trotted into the room and gave me a look. Where have you been all evening?
After washing up and putting on my pajamas, I logged into my computer and added the images I’d taken at Hapthorn Lodge to my spreadsheet. Then I telephoned Wisconsin. Sometimes a girl needs her mother.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, my darling. I’m trying to pack.”
I could see her with the suitcase on the bed, stacks of clothes laid out for her trip to the lake cottage with Dr. Lund. I felt the old stab of jealousy and ignored it.
“It’s very casual in the Northwoods,” she said, “but the weather can be chilly in May. James says I need to layer.” She sounded excited. “What’s happening where you are, darling? Any news on the húnpíng?”
I filled her in on my day at Hapthorn. Then I got down to my real reason for calling. “Tom’s mother has invited me for dinner next week. I don’t want to go. I’m not sure I can face her.”
“Of course you can, darling.”
I groaned. “But I told her I never wanted to see her again.”
“Tom has three women in his life, Kate—his mother, his daughter, and you. However you feel about Liz Mallory, you’re going to have to put the past aside and make up your mind to get along with her.”
“You mean pretend? I can’t do that. She was awful to me.”
“Who said anything about pretending?”
“You did. ‘Make up your mind to get along with her.’”
“My darling girl—in life there are feelings and there are decisions. If we waited to do things until we felt like it, nothing would ever get done. You can’t feel your way into right actions, but you can act your way into right feelings. Do the right thing, and your emotions will follow.”
“I can’t see that happening anytime soon.”
“Maybe not soon, but eventually. I think she’s afraid, you know. Afraid of you, afraid you’ll take her son away. He’s all she’s got.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. She might have been describing me—the fear and resentment I’d felt about her upcoming lake visit with James Lund’s family. Or was she describing herself, a decision she’d made not to interfere in my happiness, even if it meant losing me to England?
I took a few slow breaths. “So you’re saying I should apologize?”
“Certainly not—that would be pretending. I’m suggesting you treat her with all the kindness and courtesy you can muster—because she’s Tom’s mother. If she brings up the day at the Suffolk Rose, listen. Don’t rehash it and don’t apologize. Tell her you’d like to start again as friends.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“One more thing, darling. Remember, the only one you’re responsible for is yourself. Liz may not be willing—or able—to be friends. If that’s the case, let it be her decision, not yours.”
After we hung up, I pulled back the rose satin comforter and slipped into bed with Ivor’s book on Chinese art. In the chapter on the Han dynasty, I skipped over a long section on jade burial suits, thought to preserve the body for eternity, and found the part about soul jars, which the author had spelled “hun-p’ing.” My eyes felt heavy.
To keep myself awake, I mumbled the words aloud: “Among the rarest and most prized examples of Yue ware—first produced in the coastal province of Zhejiang.” I yawned and turned the page. “Their sudden disappearance at the beginning of the fourth century CE is attributed to changes in funeral rites imposed from the north.”
A number of colored plates showed examples. I sat up and adjusted my pillow. The designs ranged from the elegant and restrained to the outlandish and comical. One húnpíng featured a figure gleefully urinating. Each jar was unique, highly individualistic—slices of life captured in clay, a world that had vanished two thousand years ago.
By the time I reached the final paragraph, I was fully awake.
The ancient Chinese obsession with the afterlife is surpassed only by the obsession of modern Chinese collectors to reclaim what they consider their stolen national heritage. Shrouded in secrecy, the White Lotus Society is said to be dedicated to the repatriation of China’s ancient treasures. For more information, see the chapter on the looting of the Summer Palace in Beijing.
I looked at the clock on the bedside table. Nearly eleven. I thumbed forward, my fingers leaping centuries. I scanned the lines as quickly as I could without missing important details.
The Old Summer Palace, known in Chinese as Yuan Ming Yuan, or “Gardens of Brightness,” was built in Beijing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as the imperial residence of the emperor of the Qing dynasty. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, two British envoys attempting to negotiate a Qing surrender, along with a journalist and a small cadre of Indian troopers, were captured and tortured to death. In retaliation, Lord Elgin, the British High Commissioner in China, ordered the destruction of the palace. It took four thousand soldiers three days to burn it. According to UNESCO, as many as one and a half million treasures—sculptures; carvings; porcelain; jade; silk robes and textiles;
