Burton did not answer to our knock. The hotel employee was persuaded with cash to open the door. We found ourselves in a tiny room with only a cracked sink and two small cots. To find someone like Burton in a tiny room with toilets down the hall, a room that would never come even close to passing his standards of hygiene, was somehow really disturbing in and of itself. But that was by far the least of it. Burton was dead, curled up in the fetal position on a tiny cot. If he met someone, there was no indication of it. If he saw the Jade Women as he passed to the great beyond, we would never know. Most terrifying of all, his face was a horrible dark blue-gray color.
Six
In addition to serving Lingfei, I was going about acquiring considerable wealth. So disturbed had I been by Wu Peng’s revelation of what I saw to be my father’s perfidy in selling me to pay his gambling debts, I had overlooked for a time the other piece of information the man had offered me. He told me that his position in the royal household, which I might well take over on his death if I showed true merit, presented many opportunities for profit, that the access eunuchs had to the emperor was a highly valued commodity that I might exploit with care. I decided that I would not wait until Wu Peng died to take advantage.
There was a very good reason why eunuchs inclined to do so could enrich themselves, and that was that all was not well in the Imperial Palace. The Son of Heaven was revered as a wise and just ruler. Early in his reign, he stabilized the food supply throughout the Empire, thus bringing terrible famines under control. A benevolent leader of his people, he distributed government lands to the common people, and ended taxation for the poorest amongst us. He was strict in his insistence upon law and order, making the Empire safe hr his subjects, yet merciful in the administration of justice, approving executions only for the most heinous of crimes, and finally abolishing the death penalty. He was a patron of the arts, but also a man of enormous personal accomplishment, a gifted musician, an artful poet and calligrapher, an outstanding sportsman. He was a ruler of cosmopolitan tastes, having introduced the music, the costumes, and some of the customs of the peoples of the Silk Route to Chang’an.
But the Son of Heaven was spending very little time on the business of his empire. He was, you see, enamored of his Number One Consort, a young woman of the Yang family, one Yang Yuhuan, now known as Yang Guifei. Number One Consort brought her family to the palace, most notably her sister and her cousin Yang Guozhong, who rose through the ranks of power with incredible speed. More and more, affairs of state were left to people like Yang Guozhong, and First Minister Li Lin-Fu, a most unpleasant man according to my confreres, as the Son of Heaven spent most of his time with Yang Guifei, indulging her every whim and his. While the Son of Heaven and his Yang Guifei wiled away the hours at the imperial hot springs outside the city, other men were quietly flexing power. And it was into this void that those of us within the palace who wished to do so moved.
There was another man of much interest to Chang’an. That was the Sogdian, an accomplished soldier from the north, one An Lushan. Despite his bravery and tactical prowess in dealing with troublesome incursions on the northern boundaries, he was out of his element in Chang’an. He was uncouth, enormous in size, voracious of appetites of all sorts, and yet he was a favorite of the Son 0f Heaven. Perhaps the emperor enjoyed teasing this barbarian; I cannot tell. But the barbarian was named prince, was given a huge estate in Chang’an, and generally enjoyed access to the emperor that was the envy of many a minister and senior mandarin. An Lushan also seemed to enjoy the favor of the Yang family, except perhaps Yang Guozhong. That might well be because both An Lushan and Yang Guozhong were ambitious to a fault. It was perhaps inevitable they would clash, but who would have guessed the outcome of that political battle? I most certainly did not. A storm was gathering, but most of us were unaware of it.
“Argyria, almost certainly,” Dr. Xie said the following morning after he’d managed to extricate us from the police in both Hua Shan and Xi’an. “Completely preventable.”
“What’s argyria?” I said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“It’s a condition resulting from excessive intake of silver,” Dr. Xie replied.
“You mean Burton once worked in a silver mine or something?”
“Minute silver particles in suspension in distilled water,” Dr. Xie said.
“He drank it?” I said. “Are you kidding?”
“I regret to say I am not,” Dr. Xie replied. “He ingested it in some form.”
“You said preventable. He drank silver on purpose?” I said, aghast.
“There are those who believe it to be an extremely effective antibacterial, antibiotic agent,” Dr. Xie said. “Silver was used for centuries in the treatment of disease.”
“But an antibiotic that kills you, obviously,” I said.
“Not in my experience, no. Under certain circumstances, it does color the skin, as you now know, especially the nails and sometimes the eyes.”
“Is there a cure for this argyria?”
“The color of the skin, you mean? Again, not in my experience. I would have to consult the literature, and I believe there are those who claim it is reversible, but I have not seen any indication it can be done.”
“But it did kill Burton?” I insisted.
“We’ll have to wait for the autopsy,” Dr. Xie said. “It could have, but I repeat I do not know of any cases where ingesting it has killed someone.”
“Where do you get silver you drink?”
“You can buy it on the Internet, or you can make your own. All you need is distilled water, silver, and a battery, really.”
The things you learn! “Maybe it was a combination of things,” I said. “He was always dosing himself up with something or other: special teas, pills, tonics. Maybe they interacted in a fatal way. He was very big on traditional Chinese medicine, the Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor, disharmonious or blocked qi, that kind of thing. He seemed to know a lot about it.”
“Burton talked a good line about traditional Chinese medicine, but clearly he did not understand it,” Dr. Xie said, with an impatient gesture. “It is possible that he took something in a lethal combination, or merely took a lethal dose. You recall I told you that poisons are used in treatment of illness all the time, but in minute and controlled quantities. Perhaps he just took too much of something. It is also possible that he had an underlying condition, and that condition got out of hand. You see the body would regard silver as an invasive agent.”
“No kidding,” I said.
“I’m simplifying here, you understand, but the body would attempt to rid itself of this foreign substance, and in doing so, neglect, as it were, the other condition, which might then run rampant, get the upper hand. That might kill someone.”
“An underlying condition like what?” I said.
“HIV/AIDS? I shouldn’t speculate, nor should you. We will wait for the autopsy results. There is no question in my mind, however, that the blue-gray color of his face and chest is argyria.”
“Potable silver,” I mused. “Do you remember that recipe for the elixir of immortality in the T’ang box? It had potable gold in it. I thought… I guess I don’t know what I thought. That it was just silly, maybe?”