Barry Hughart - Eight Skilled Gentlemen

“This is the bunch?” I asked admiringly.

“Exactly. Every bastard involved, including Li the Cat and two other eunuchs of ministerial rank,” Master Li said. “Now, if only…”

He let the sentence die a natural death. He meant “If only the Celestial Master is sane and in one piece and able to help,” and worry returned, and he was silent the rest of the way to the Hall of Literary Profundity. There we were told that we had just missed the Celestial Master, who had hobbled out for his morning walk, but we would surely find him on the lawn leading to the Palaces of the Young Princes. Master Li dismissed the palanquin and set out on foot, and both of us stopped in our tracks and let out long sighs when we reached the lawn. Ahead of us, painfully pushing his canes toward Nine Dragon Screen, was the unmistakable form of the Celestial Master, unchanged from the last time we’d seen him.

“I had feared torture,” Master Li said quietly.

So had I, since that or insanity was the only explanation I could think of for the saint’s signature on a terrible execution order. Now Master Li had to face the likelihood that for once he’d made an error judging calligraphy, and the signature had been forged, but the prospect didn’t seem to bother him. He was almost cheerful as we took a shortcut past the Archery Grounds, but when we came to Nine Dragon Screen there was no Celestial Master.

“Ha! That was a remarkable optical illusion,” Master Li said. “I could have sworn he was right here, but look.”

He pointed to the left and far ahead, and my eyes bulged as I saw a small distant figure hunched over a pair of canes, inching like an arthritic snail past the Gate of the Bestowal of Awards toward the Gate of Peaceful Old Age.

“Better carry me. Somebody must have given him a lift, and it’s too damn hot for my rickety legs.”

I took the old man on my back and started off again, but soon we were out of sight of the saint, wending our way through mazes of high hedges. The gardens of the Forbidden City are for aristocrats, not peasants, so every view is planned for eyes riding at ease at palanquin level. Pedestrians can’t see much of anything until they reach clear spaces, and when I got to a clear space I stopped so suddenly Master Li almost bounced over my head, and when he was settled again I asked in a tiny voice, “Sir, can there be more than one Celestial Master?”

The ancient saint was so far past the Gate of Peaceful Old Age that he had actually reached the Great Theater, and I would have been hard pressed to cover the distance in the elapsed time even at a trot.

“Let’s concentrate on this one,” Master Li said in a tight grim voice. “Catch him, Ox.”

I took off at a run, taking an angle to come out far ahead of him, and I kept racing through lanes of flowering oleander and pomegranate until I panted to a halt at the Well of the Pearl Concubine. I turned and looked back where the saint should be. There was no slow shuffling figure, and I saw nothing to my right. Ahead of me was the outer wall of the Forbidden City, so the only direction remaining was left, and I turned and almost toppled over. Far, far away, between the Hall of Imperial Peace and the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Springs, a tiny stooped figure was straining to move a pair of canes ahead of his shuffling feet.

Master Li was very still on my back. Then his hands squeezed my shoulders. “Let’s try something,” he said quietly. “Turn away and cut between the Palaces of Tranquil Earth and Sympathetic Harmony, as though we’re giving up and making for West Flowery Gate.”

I did as I was told, and in a few seconds I was again running through mazes of shrubs and trees, and after about four minutes Master Li told me to stop, double back, and take the first opening to the left. I climbed a small hill and got down on my stomach and wormed through low shrubs, and Master Li reached past my ears and parted a pair of leafy branches. We were looking out across the long velvet lawn in front of the Palace of Established Happiness, and my liver turned ice cold.

The Celestial Master was racing across the lawn like a panther, stooped low, leaping gracefully over obstacles. His simple Tao-shih robe billowed behind him like a kite, and he was running so fast the robe’s ten ribbons and cloud-embroidered sash were pop-pop-popping in the air like the blurred wings of racing pigeons. He leaped over a huge stone I would have had to climb, hanging suspended in air, legs spread like a dancer’s, and pushed down with his canes to give his body an extra forward vault as he hit the ground. The saint sped on until he reached the Hall of the Nurture of the Mind. Had we continued on the path we had taken we would now be coming out of the shrubbery in view of the hall, and of the Celestial Master, and suddenly he stopped, and tentatively extended his canes, and an aged, frail, crippled gentleman was painfully pushing himself across the grass.

“Sir… Sir… Sir…”

“Why the note of surprise? We haven’t witnessed a miracle since a disembodied dog head chewed the grand warden, so we were overdue.” Master Li said in a high hard voice. “Ox, back to the Hall of Literary Profundity, and hurry.”

At the hall he had me go around the side and through a maze of little gardens, and then he pried a window open and we climbed through. He picked a lock, made his way through an empty office, had me carry him out the side window and across a balcony, and we climbed through another window into the office of the Celestial Master.

“Remember the little object like a brush used by the Eight Skilled Gentlemen to activate the cages? I assume the Celestial Master had one when he sent his message to the mandarins. Find it,” Master Li ordered.

The room was crowded with mementos of more than a century of service and it could have taken us a month to search it all, but now and then the obvious choice pays off. Master Li overturned the jar of writing brushes and pawed through them, and suddenly his hand stopped. Slowly he picked up a brush and held it to the light. It was incredibly old, with a stone handle and a tip made from the tail of a musk deer.

“Same period, same type of craftsmanship, and same feel to it,” Master Li muttered.

We went outside again, back in the silent shadowed recesses of the library garden. Nobody was around. Master Li wasn’t going to take any chances with the cage we’d almost been killed for in the mandarin’s greenhouse. He had it firmly tied to his belt beneath his robe, and he took it out and examined it with speculative eyes.

“We know that it’s activated for sending messages by touching the symbols of the five elements with the brush,” he said thoughtfully. “What I’m hoping is that it also retains messages. If so, one would logically assume the Doctrine of the Five is also involved, such as the five colors, directions, seasons, celestial stems, mountains, planets, virtues, emotions, animals, orifices, tissues, or flavors.”

My knowledge of the Five begins and ends with the fact that the odor and sound connected with the planet Mercury are “putrid” and “groaning,” so I kept my mouth shut.

It took some time because there was a maze of symbols engraved on the bars, but finally he decided to try the animals associated with the seasons in backward order, and I jumped a foot into the air when the brush touched the head of a tortoise. A sudden glow of light filled the cage, and then I was looking at the face of a mandarin I didn’t know. He was obviously struggling with fear and rage as he tried to keep himself under control.

“Why haven’t we killed the old fool?” he demanded. A tic jumped in his left cheek. “I must know, I demand to know, why haven’t we killed him? Don’t you fools realize that since the Cat dealt with that clerk we have corpses to account for? If we don’t slit Li Kao’s throat he’ll toss us to the dogs!”