“Sir, I can’t explain it, but something is wrong with Yu Lan,” I said urgently. “I don’t know where she is, but she’s in bad trouble, and unless you have a better idea I’d like to get to her father’s house as fast as possible.”
He looked at me for a moment. Then he hopped up and prepared to climb on my back. “Why not. We aren’t getting anywhere here,” he snarled.
Yen Shih’s house was dark and quiet as we turned through the gates. Master Li slid down from my back and hid behind a post with his throwing knife cocked behind his right ear as I stepped forward in moonlight and hammered on the door. All I heard was echoes.
“Yen Shih!” I shouted. More echoes answered me. “Yu Lan! Hello the house!”
Something stirred and I jumped back and looked up and saw a curious cat looking down at me from a corner of the roof, and then there was a sudden outburst of sounds, wheels rattling, horses’ hooves pounding like a bamboo grove exploding in a brush fire, and I had to leap out of the way to avoid being crushed as a black carriage pulled by a team of four horses raced into the courtyard from the stables. Ten horsemen served as outriders, black-cloaked, hats pulled low, swords glittering in moonlight, and more men clung to the sides and back of the carriage, holding on very professionally with one hand while the other wielded a short spear. In an instant they had come and gone, racing out the gate and down the street, and Master Li stuck a leg out and tripped me as I ran after them.
“Ox! You can’t catch them, and you know damn well you can’t follow where they’re going,” he shouted at me, and then he grabbed my arm and held on. “You’d only get killed, and what would that accomplish? All we can do is wait until morning when the gates open to the Forbidden City.”
He was right, of course. I had recognized the insignia. Those men were of the Black Watch, and their carriage would soon roll down the tunnel and beneath the moat into the barracks where the mandarins had taken shelter, and to try to sneak in at night would be suicide.
“But, sir… sir…”
He squeezed my shoulder. He’d seen what I had when wind whipped window curtains aside and moonlight poured in. Four people occupied the carriage. Three, laughing as they rode away with their prize, were Hog and Hyena and Jackal. The fourth was Yu Lan.
“Come. Her father may have been here, and if so he may need our help,” Master Li said.
So now we searched for the puppeteer, or his body, but Yen Shih wasn’t in the house. Instead we found a sealed missive that had been left in plain sight on a table in the little entrance hall, and it was addressed not to Yen Shih but to Master Li. He opened it. The script was elegant scholar’s shorthand, unintelligible to me, and Master Li read it aloud.
“Most esteemed Li-tzu, supreme among scholars, unchallenged among seekers after truth, greetings. This unworthy one begs the honor of your company in order to discuss the future of the young lady who has sought to improve her position by entering our humble household. Should your young assistant and the lady’s talented father care to join you they will be more than welcome, and so desirous am I to bask in your glorious light that each hour of darkness will be agony.”
The old man raised his eyes. “It’s signed by Li the Cat,” he said quietly. “Ox, don’t get overly concerned about ‘each hour of darkness will be agony.’ Eunuchs like to play around with elegant threats, and Yu Lan is not only a shamanka, she’s one of the best I’ve ever encountered. She isn’t defenseless. Now let’s check the stable for her father, and if he isn’t there we’ll get more men from Wong’s to search the city for him.”
The stable was dark and deserted. The moon was so brilliant that I realized a sand haze must have partially obscured it before, and the wind was causing a branch to move back and forth. The shadow of the branch moved across the shining canvas of the puppeteer’s great wagon, and the image looked amazingly like a maid mopping a floor. Back and forth, back and forth.
“Pacing Horse Lantern,” said Master Li, who was standing very still.
Then he ran forward and jumped up into the wagon. I followed, searching for Yen Shih, but Master Li was looking for something else. He had clambered up on the walkway above the stage and was examining the maze of gears and wires and wheels. Puppets dangled below, swinging slowly as the wind reached them, and I realized that the Hayseed Hong set was still in place. Suddenly Master Li spun a wheel and set a pendulum swinging, and I stared as a door in the set swung open. Out came two crooks carrying a pig, followed by Hayseed Hong, followed by the magistrate’s wife, followed by the occupants of a bedchamber who had no clothes on and whose eyes were like saucers. Master Li started another pendulum and the magistrate puppet sprang to life, bending to a keyhole, reeling back in horror with a forearm covering his eyes while behind him the mad procession moved in and out of another bedchamber. It was quite eerie to see puppets move to the moan of wind rather than howls of laughter. They continued to move for some time after the sage climbed down, and then once more they dangled limply on wires, slowly swinging to and fro.
Master Li took a deep breath. “Well, Ox, you always knew you’d come to a terrible end if you continued to assist me,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I was so miserable with fear for Yu Lan that I really didn’t care one way or another, but I went through the motions. “Which terrible end did you have in mind?” I asked.
“That’s up to Li the Cat,” he replied. “I’ve just realized we have no choice but to try swan dives into boiling oil, so we’re going to accept his kind invitation. The moment the gates to the Forbidden City open we’re going to pay him a call, and if you can sleep during the hours until then you’ll be immortalized by P’u Sung-ling, Recorder of Things Strange.”
21
The morning of the double fifth is traditionally one of the busiest times of the year. Before dawn on the fifth day of the fifth moon the streets of Peking were already crowded with people, and I knew some of them.
Mrs. Wu of the bakery was standing in line at the shop of the Persian alchemist to buy arsenic, sulphur, and cinnabar mixed into an insect repellent lotion, and her next stop would be a public scribe’s booth to buy a paper stencil of the written word “king.” Then she would hurry home and apply the stencil and lotion to her sleeping children to give each one the 3- mark on his forehead. It resembles the wrinkles on the forehead of a tiger. Even sickness and bad luck run away from tigers, and it’s most effective for children early on the fifth day of the fifth moon.
Old P’i-pao-ku, “Leatherbag Bone,” was Mrs. Wu’s grandmother, and she was waiting at the confectioner’s to get hard sugar decorations of the five poisonous insects (centipede, scorpion, lizard, toad, snake) to spread over the top of her wu tu po po cake, which she would purposely make as inedible as possible without being actually deadly. Every family member eats a slice on the fifth day of the fifth moon, and sickness demons stare at people capable of eating stuff like that and go elsewhere.
Feng Erh, “Phoenix,” was the chandler’s concubine, and she was waiting for the first finger of sunlight to reach a patch of grass she had staked out in a park. She would pluck a hundred blades and put them in a jar and walk straight home without looking left, right, or back. Boiling water would be added to the jar to make Hundred Grass Lotion that the whole family would use as a cure-all until the next double fifth.
Ko Sheng-erh never had any luck. His name means “Left Over from a Dog,” and he had idiotically gone up on his roof to fix some thatching three days ago, and he was waiting for a down-at-heels shaman to open shop and chant “Grow, grow, grow!” at his head, not that it would do any good, because everyone knows that working on a roof during the fifth moon will cause you to go bald.