‘Best luck for your trip, Your Honor!’

  But that morning did not turn out to be an auspicious one for Judge Dee.

  Shortly afterward, another messenger hurried over. He was one of Yang’s shady connections, surnamed Liao, and he came to report the death of Ning, the former Empress Wang’s personal maid. Ning had been found hanging on a tall date tree in a deserted courtyard. According to Liao, the rigor of the body suggested that Ning could have hanged herself there around midnight.

  One thing struck Judge Dee as odd. Liao claimed that he could not see any signs of a chair or ladder near her cold, stiff body at the scene of her apparent suicide. Could she have jumped up from the ground so high as to reach her head into the dangling loop overhead?

  No, Judge Dee did not think so, either, and the sickly Ning had no strength to do the job by herself, even with a ladder. She could not even have walked in and out of the restaurant the previous day without Yang’s support, her legs wobbling all the time, he recalled with the sensation of something like a bucket of ice water pouring down his spine.

  If she hadn’t taken her own life, had Ning been murdered and the suicide scene clumsily fabricated?

  Then Judge Dee shivered again at an unexpected, newly emerging possibility. An owl hooted eerily in the small woods near the hostel, as if echoing from an ancient horror story.

  Could the murder have been caused – directly or not – by his meeting with Ning the previous day? The state surveillance of the Tang Empire could be so horribly effective. Empress Wu had numerous secret agents working hectically under her like ants before the arrival of heavy rain. Ning too must have been surveilled and shadowed all the time—

  Similarly, Minister Yuwen’s surprising visit to the party of the poets had been plotted by the empress for the same purpose: to put the investigator Judge Dee under constant secret surveillance.

  An ancient saying came into Judge Dee’s mind, and he paraphrased it then and there for the occasion. ‘I did not kill Ning, but she died because of me.’ The judge was overwhelmed by a huge wave of sadness. It was true that he had to leave today. If he did not do so, the far-reaching net of surveillance would catch him in no time. But he still had to look into the death of Ning.

  ‘Yang,’ Judge Dee said, turning to his servant, ‘tell your connection Liao to continue looking into the death of Ning. Anything and everything suspicious shortly before her death? Who had contacted her? She had lost two of her front teeth. Could she have suffered vicious beatings or torture? Were there any palace ladies who were a friend to her?’

  ‘I’ll carry out your order, Master. Before we set out for the trip?’

  ‘Yes, we have to leave today. Give Liao a handsome retainer fee, and ask him not to spare any cost or to say anything about it to others.’

  ‘So where are we going today, Master?’ Yang asked as he returned after quite some time to the side of the carriage. It startled Judge Dee out of his dark, drowsy thoughts.

  ‘Um, let’s go to the Wuding River first,’ he decided.

  ‘Why, Master?’

  ‘That’s where the last battle was fought between the rebellious and royal armies … and also where Luo was reported missing,’ Judge Dee added after a short pause. ‘According to the latest information provided by the empress last night, Luo had stayed there previously with a local herbal doctor surnamed Hua, who treated him for a minor wound sustained in an earlier battle.’

  ‘The trip could take more than one day, possibly two days, Master.’

  ‘But do we have any choice?’ Judge Dee asked, shaking his head with resignation before he went on. ‘Can we manage to speed up our journey – travel there as fast as possible?’

  ‘I’ll try my best, Master, but more likely than not, we will not be able to reach Wuding River until tomorrow.’ Then, handing over something like an envelope, Yang hurriedly added, ‘Here is something for you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Liao’s first report.’

  ‘This is just a preliminary report, Your Honor, written in a great hurry. Yang insists on it, saying you’re leaving to pursue the investigation in other cities. So it is a combination of something I may have already told Yang, but a bit more detailed – plus something I have not yet told Yang.

  ‘Regarding Ning, I came to notice her because she moved into the area under the control of our Green Bamboo Group. Control only in a dark way, needless to say, but our group is not unconnected with the government authorities, you know. She moved over from a mysterious place, all by herself. What’s more, she appeared to have been put under secret state surveillance. For a sickly, harmless, middle-aged woman like Ning, why all the bother?

  ‘We knew nothing about her background, but we knew better than to get involved. We just kept an eye on her. She hardly mixed with her neighbors. And she seldom came out, except for essential grocery shopping.

  ‘Early this morning, one of the younger brothers in our group reported that he had heard some strange noises in her deserted back courtyard. So he and I hurried over there for a sneak view. To our horror, we saw Ning hanged on the withered pagoda tree. Her tongue was sticking out, her hair was disheveled, her body totally rigid. At a rough estimate, the time of death could be shortly after midnight. It’s just our guess, of course.

  ‘Yang may have told you about one thing suspicious at the scene of her death. We did not find a ladder or a tall chair underneath her lifeless body. It’s hard to imagine she actually had the strength to jump into the loop dangling high on the tree.

  ‘And then we checked into her meagerly furnished room. There were no signs of her putting up a struggle there. The room had been ransacked, however, with everything turned upside down. That, too, beat us. Apparently, she was not someone with enough money to warrant a possible murder at midnight. Nor was Ning a woman who could read or write. We happened to know that because she had once been asked to fill out the registration in the neighborhood, and she told us she was illiterate …’

  The part about Ning’s mysterious arrival at an area under the control of the Green Bamboo Group – or Green Bamboo Gang – was no mystery to Judge Dee. Driven out of the palace, she had to be placed somewhere. What struck the judge as particularly suspicious was the fact that the murderer, either before or after the murder, did a thorough search of her place. It was not for money; Liao had ruled out that possibility. For something left by the former Empress Wang? Judge Dee ruled that out too. When Ning was driven out of the palace, she must have been searched and re-searched from head to toe. For something related to Ning’s meeting with the judge? Dee could not rule it out, though he was bamboozled about it.

  ‘I don’t know whether this information will be of help to your investigation. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted with anything new. It’s such a great honor for you to entrust me with the job. How can I not exert myself like a dog, like a horse, Your Honor!’

  Yang, sitting in the front of the carriage again, raised the whip, ready to crack it. It was already almost lunchtime.

  ‘So here we are, at the beginning of our investigation. A long, long trip indeed, Master.’

  As the carriage started rolling out, Judge Dee felt increasingly drowsy in spite of his effort to concentrate on the Luo case. He lifted the carriage curtain a little to see outside. The scene still appeared to be familiar.

  Out of the capital, the road then became uneven. Thanks to the considerate, thoughtful Yang, who had placed several soft cotton-padded cushions in the carriage for his master, Judge Dee was not jolted too badly. And there was an extra-soft, damask-covered pillow as well.

  The scenes flashing past outside now appeared to the judge to be dull, dispirited. The carriage wheels rolled on with a mechanical, monotonous hum. Eventually, he could not help sinking into sleep, slipping in and out of weird dreams.

  Several characters seemed to be drifting past on a dimly lit gigantic stage. Empress Wu, Emperor Gaozhong, the former Empress Wang, Luo Binwang, Ning … these, plus many others, kept popping in and out of the fragmented dream, insubstantial yet so real and intense. After all, men and women are but such stuff as dreams are made of, including Judge Dee himself.

  Four

  ‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead

  Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

  Say not soft things as other men have said,

  That you’ll remember. For you need not so …’

  – Charles Sorley

  ‘I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.’

  – John Locke

  ‘Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?’

  – Albert Camus

  It was almost the afternoon of the second day when the travel-weary master and servant reached their destination, with the view of the Wuding River rolling to the distant horizon.

  A couple of water birds could be seen frolicking tirelessly over the river’s surface, their white wings flashing energetically under the golden light, as if eager in their attempt to catch something out of the shimmering ripples.

  Indeed, it had been such a long journey. And such a long river too. Judge Dee had no idea, however, as to where exactly the last battle in question had been fought. So he decided to check into a nearby hostel first. Yang agreed, more than readily.

  Once he had the information about the location of the battlefield from the hostel’s front desk, Judge Dee wanted to go there straight away to present an offering to those who had died in the battles near the Wuding River. He saw it as the responsibility of a high-ranking government official in his position.

  He was aware of a tragic irony in Tang history. Seven or eight years earlier, another bloody battle had been fought by the river, between barbarian aggressors and the grand Tang royal army. The recent battle had been equally ferocious and cruel, if not more so. According to unofficial statistics, far more people had died in General Xu’s crushed rebellion than in that earlier battle.

  The coincidence triggered Judge Dee’s memory about a touching poem composed by a contemporary poet Chen Tao, who was also known for his focus on the inhumanity of wars.

  Pledged to wipe out the Huns,

  they fought without any thoughts

  for themselves, and then died,

  all of them, five thousand sable-clad warriors,

  lost in the dust of the North.

  Alas, the white bones scattered there

  by the faraway Wuding River

  still come in spring to haunt women’s dreams,

  in the shapes of their dead lovers.

  At the new battlefield, Judge Dee was more than shocked at the sight of white bones sticking out like accusing fingers, black ravens screeching, circling overhead, ready to pounce on the decaying carcasses in the field.

  A tiny yellow flower was blossoming in an empty human eye socket, which still seemed to be scanning the field, the flower swaying in the mournful wind that swept over the wasteland.

  Were these wars and battles justified?

  Politicians would surely say yes, of course, arguing with sticky saliva frothing around their mouths, veins stretching out like earthworms on their foreheads. They believed that they had no choice. The interest and welfare of the Han nationality could not tolerate any harm. Nor could the so-called political stability under the rein of the great Empress Wu.

  But what about the Huns in the poem? And what about their surviving wives and families after the battles? The heart-breaking scene happened to the Huns too, as so sensationally depicted in the poem by Chen Tao.

  Even more immediately, what about the dead and wounded in this new battlefield, which was still littered with bodies, decaying under Judge Dee’s very eyes? After all, that bloody battle was fought among the Han people.

  According to Luo Binwang in the ‘Call to Arms’, the war was perfectly justified. And the same could be argued just as passionately from Empress Wu’s side.

  Mencius, a Confucian scholar considered in imperial China to be second only to Confucius himself in philosophical status, put it very well: ‘During the long, long Spring and Autumn period, there were no just or justified wars.’

  That was probably why Mencius had to rank after Confucius in China.

  Mencius also said, ‘People are the most important, the welfare of the state next, and the emperor least of all.’ Naturally, the emperors did not like Mencius.

  For Judge Dee, another quote from Mencius, which had served him as a key principle during his official career so far, came flashing through his mind again.

  If you don’t stand upright, you cannot see the way ahead.

  To Judge Dee’s surprise, the moment he arrived back at the fairly comfortable hostel and stepped inside, the local mayor surnamed Zhuang hurried over in a vermilion official sedan chair.

  As it turned out, Mayor Zhuang had been one of the successful candidates at the capital-level civil service examination more than a decade ago. It was an event that just so happened to have been supervised by the high-ranking Minister Dee. So Mayor Zhuang had come to claim himself as a disciple of Judge Dee’s.

  ‘Welcome, Your Honor,’ Mayor Zhuang said, all smiles. ‘I’ve just prepared a light meal to wash the dust of the long trip from my distinguished mentor. It is nothing but a token of my sincere gratitude.’

  Following the mayor, Zhuang’s two servants took cold and hot dishes out of the food baskets they were carrying and spread them out on a small table in Judge Dee’s hostel room. They also placed on the table a dainty silver wine kettle, full of nicely warmed, amber-colored sticky rice wine.

  Strictly speaking, Mayor Zhuang could not be counted as a student of Judge Dee’s, who had just happened to be the high-ranking official in charge of the capital civil service examination that year. Judge Dee would not have met any of the candidates in person, including Mayor Zhuang. He merely gave grades to their papers in a separate room, unapproachable, unknown to the candidates. But it was conventional for successful candidates – grateful for the high grades they had obtained – to acknowledge their examiner as their mentor.

  It might be just as well, though, Judge Dee thought. He had been exhausted by the trip. Although he had been seated all the way, supported by those soft cushions Yang had placed in the carriage, he still felt as if his old bones had been shaken out of their joints. Not to mention the fact that Yang had been driving the carriage all the time, and the tireless assistant definitely needed a break as well.

  More importantly, Mayor Zhuang might be able to tell him something more about Luo’s possible whereabouts. Since Zhuang looked up to Judge Dee not only as a superior official but also as his mentor, it would be a matter of course that the mayor would go out of his way to help.

  And so it soon proved.

  ‘I was so honored to have been your student, Your Honor,’ Mayor Zhuang said respectfully with another bow. ‘I’ve only just heard that you would be arriving at the Wuding River today, as part of your investigation into the disappearance of Luo Binwang. But I have already started planning what I, one of your most humble students, could possibly do for you.’

  Busy piling up the delicacies on Judge Dee’s plate on the small table, Mayor Zhuang lost no time in briefing his mentor about the ferocious battle that had been fought by the Wuding River not too long ago, and sharing all the information he knew concerning Luo Binwang, the missing person in question.

  ‘According to the information we have so far collected, Your Honor, Luo was reported missing in the last battle fought here by the rebellious army. Before that battle, Xu’s troops had gathered here for about a month or so. During their stay, nobody but a local herbal doctor surnamed Hua came into close contact with Luo. Luo had sustained a minor wound in an earlier battle, and Doctor Hua was responsible for taking care of Luo’s wound in his small hut. With Hua’s effective herbal prescriptions and acupuncture treatments, Luo was said to have enjoyed an amazingly speedy recovery. The two seemed to have been getting along pretty well, according to the neighbors there, talking and discussing a lot with each other.

  ‘Hua had taken part in the civil service examinations in his twenties and thirties but was not successful. So he became an herbal doctor here, though he remained a passionate reader of poetry and a huge fan of Luo’s poems. It was understandable that Hua did his level best to take care of Luo. Before rejoining the rebellious troops seven or eight days prior to the last battle, Luo was said to have written a poem for Hua in appreciation of his help.

  ‘Consequently, local people began speculating about the possibility that, after the annihilation of General Xu’s army in the battle by the Wuding River, Hua could have helped Luo into hiding somewhere nearby. Naturally, Hua has been repeatedly interrogated, and his hut searched and re-searched, with everything turned upside down. In reality, the whole area, not just Hua’s hut, has been combed and re-combed, both by local runners and the secret police specially dispatched from above. In spite of all their efforts, though, they drew a blank. I know all this because our local police joined in the thorough search for Luo Binwang.’

  Although Luo’s close connection to the local herbal doctor, Hua, was not exactly news to Judge Dee, the fact that the secret police had thoroughly combed the area and found nothing did not come as a surprise to him. While he could not afford to completely rule out the theory Mayor Zhuang was talking about, it seemed highly unlikely to the experienced Judge Dee.

  Besides, in the Tang dynasty, most ordinary people chose to believe wholeheartedly in an emperor or an empress, who was endowed with what was commonly accepted to be a divine mandate to rule over the country. To them, it did not really matter who exactly was sitting on the splendid throne, especially at a time like this when the country happened to be enjoying a relatively peaceful and prosperous period in its history. If Luo was hiding nearby, someone would have noticed him, and the news of the dangerous poet’s whereabouts would have spread.