China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

sure to open the box and find it. By the morning, though, I’d had an idea.

After work that day, instead of hurrying home at once, I walked slowly past the alley that Old Stinker had told me was haunted. It appeared to be empty, and nobody saw me turn into it. The alley ended in a little yard with a door a few feet away on the left and a garden beyond. It was very quiet, and the moss on the cobblestones suggested to me that no one ever came there. I gently tried the door. It was locked.

I looked about. The alley walls were topped with little tile roofs, but they were too high to reach. The cobblestones under my feet seemed more promising. And sure enough, a couple of feet from the door, against the wall, I saw a cobblestone that seemed to be loose. I had a short knife with me. In a few minutes, I’d managed to prize the cobblestone out. Underneath it was just beaten earth. I carved out a little pocket in the middle, just big enough to receive the silver coins, leaving a rectangle of hard earth around it. Then I replaced the cobblestone. One would never have guessed there was a tiny hiding place beneath it.

During this time, I wasn’t troubled by the ghost at all.

The next day, early in the morning, I visited that place again. I easily prized up the stone and deposited the silver. Everything fitted perfectly. But just to be safe, I had made a little paste using dust and lacquer to bind it, and this I worked in around the cobblestone like a thin cement. It would hold the stone perfectly, but I could easily loosen it whenever I needed to open my little store again. By the time I’d carefully cut and transplanted some pieces of the moss growing on the neighboring stones, no one would ever have imagined the place had been disturbed.

I was still kneeling on the ground when I had the sensation of something behind me. It felt like the shade of a passing cloud. It was rather cold.

I didn’t look back or move at all. I just said, “Thank you, Honored Lady, for guarding my silver. It’s all I’ve got.”

There was no sound, but the sense of coldness seemed to melt away. And when I got up and looked around, there was nobody there.

—

As it happened, a month later, head eunuch Liu was sent on a mission by the emperor to inspect the coastal defenses to the south of Beijing. This showed how much the emperor trusted him, because normally eunuchs were not allowed to leave the capital. But it meant that Liu was away for nearly a month, and during that time his deputy took his place. This eunuch was rather frail. His name was Mr. Yuan, but behind his back everyone called him Shaking Leaf because he was always worried something would go wrong, which is probably why his arrangements were actually rather thorough.

To make matters worse for Mr. Yuan, the emperor returned to the Forbidden City for that month. People told me that everything was more formal in the Forbidden City than up at the Summer Palace; nobody wanted to be there, and all the courtiers were in a bad temper.

Old Stinker and I had far more work to do because of all the extra chamber pots, so we weren’t happy. As for poor Shaking Leaf, there were so many little things that could go wrong each day that he was in a constant state of anxiety.

He was certainly in quite a flap the day that changed my fortune.

—

They say that we’re all made by our previous lives. Our affinities for each other were made in the deep past, and when we meet people who become important in our lives, it may seem like a chance accident—no more significant than the flapping of a butterfly’s wing—but in fact a hidden force is drawing us together across the surface of the stream of life. Yuanfen, they call it.

So you might say that the head eunuch’s being away on the day that the emperor’s favorite concubine broke her fingernail was just a coincidence. Random chance. But I don’t think so. It was yuanfen, drawing us together.

I was in the kitchen at the end of the afternoon, all cleaned up and ready to go home, when Shaking Leaf suddenly appeared. “Does anyone here know how to reattach a lady’s broken fingernail?” he cried out.

Now the moment he said that, I was all ears. I knew what he must be talking about. Fashionable Manchu ladies at that time often had fingernails whole inches long. Proof they didn’t have to work, I suppose. But if the most important eunuch in the palace was so concerned about it, then the owner of the fingernail must be someone important. Very important. And why was he asking in the kitchen, of all places?

Obviously, he’d tried everywhere else. So why hadn’t anyone volunteered? I mean, it was hardly likely that none of the palace ladies or the servants on duty could have fixed a broken fingernail, was it?

They don’t want the job, I thought. This means danger. But also opportunity. And what did I have to lose? Nothing. As a matter of fact, if he’d asked if anyone knew how to catch a tiger, I daresay I’d have volunteered for that, too.

“I can help you, Mr. Yuan,” I said.

“You? Why?” he demanded.

“I was a lacquer craftsman, sir,” I answered. “I did the finest work. With lacquer and varnish I’m sure I could fix any broken nail.”

“Well, you’re all I’ve got,” he said irritably. “I hope you can.”

“May your foolish servant ask,” I ventured, as he led me along a passage, “whose fingernail has been broken?”

“The emperor’s favorite concubine. The Noble Consort Yi.”

That was her name just then. Later she’d be known as Cixi. People often change their names several times as they move up in rank.