The Story of the Stone

4

The estate was as large as one would expect for the ancestral seat of the former lords of the valley, but very little of it was still used. Weeds covered the formal gardens, and everywhere I looked I saw crumbling ruins. I suppose I was expecting a classic setting for a horror story, but that idea was dispelled the moment we walked through the gate to the wing of the mansion that was still kept up. The courtyard was rock and gravel and natural planting, and the spirit screen was simply a beautiful slab of red stone placed upon a sandalwood pedestal. We walked around the screen to the inner court, and instantly we were surrounded by a blaze of cheerful colors. Bright flowers were everywhere, and gaudy parrots and cockatoos greeted us raucously. A long vine-covered veranda led to the house, and a stack of broad-brimmed peasant hats had been provided for visitors who were allergic to bird droppings.

From the logistics of the place I decided that the living quarters had once been the kitchen. No obsequious flunkies came to greet us, but the door was open. We walked inside to a hallway, and instead of being confronted with grand family tablets proclaiming the Hall of Glory and Beautitude, we saw one simple plaque on the wall. Master Li had been obviously pleased, and now he practically purred. He said it was a classic essay by one of the ancients, Chen Chiju, and that it was one of the four pillars upon which civilization had been constructed. My education had not gone far enough to get to the pillars of civilization, and since it was in modern script, I read it with great interest.

“I think I'd like to see the other three pillars,” I said. “I like this one.”

“We'll get to them,” Master Li promised. He led the way down the hall to the living quarters, which were simply furnished with comfortable furniture, and our host came bounding from a back room to greet us.

Has anyone but me ever mistaken a prince for a feather duster? That was precisely my impression. He was small and skinny, but his thin neck lifted to a huge head, and the unkempt hair that sprouted from it in all directions could have filled a couple of mattresses. I remembered hearing that he was a renowned artist, and paint stains decorated his nose and chin. Brushes stuck out from his pockets, and his favorite cup for dipping them in hung on a cord around his neck.

“My surname is Liu and my personal name is Pao and I am honored to greet the renowned Master Li!” he cried, bowing jerkily. He moved in a series of uncoordinated jumps and bounces, and his cheerful smile jerked in my direction. “Arms like logs, legs like tree trunks, and no neck. You must be Number Ten Ox. Delighted to meet you!”

I have seldom met anyone I liked so much on first sight. I felt quite at ease with him, and after a few minutes I completely forgot he was a prince and his great-great-and-so-on-uncle had been Emperor of China. We sat outside on a terrace that offered a wonderful view of the valley and listened to chipmunks quarrel with parakeets while we sipped tea.

“They say that my revolting ancestor has been dancing in the moonlight with his mad monks,” the prince said. “Stories like that are scarcely new, but this time they tell me there really has been a murder. I also looked at the destruction on Princes’ Path. I saw it, but I don't believe it.”

“I wouldn't either if I weren't convinced that there's a reasonable explanation,” Master Li said. “As for murder, I can only say that the library was forcibly entered and a manuscript was stolen. Brother Squint-Eyes suffered a heart attack. He may have been frightened to death, but we'd have to prove intent and method. Have you ever seen the stolen manuscript?”

The prince shook his head negatively. “This came from it,” Master Li said, and he handed the prince the fragment of parchment. The prince was like the toad in that it took five seconds for his eyes to pop wide as soup plates.

“Buddha,” he whispered. “Whoever did this should be deified, but why would he make the forgery so obvious?”

“We may never know the answer to that,” Master Li said pensively. “The rest seems fairly simple. Brother Squint-Eyes came across a fake Ssu-ma Ch'ien in the ancient library scrolls. It probably doesn't matter whether or not he recognized it as a forgery. If real it would be worth a small fortune to historians, and if fake it would be worth the same to collectors of frauds.”

Master Li shook his head sadly.

“Brother Squint-Eyes succumbed to temptation, but he was woefully ill equipped for crime. He tried to forge the forgery by tracing, and then he took a sample page of the original to Ch'ang-an and made a deal with a collector. In order to divert suspicion from the librarian, the collector agreed to fake a burglary. The foolish monk received a small down payment with which he purchased an elegant meal, and then he returned to put his own little scheme in action. My guess is that he wanted it both ways. He would salve his conscience by keeping the original for the library, and pass off his tracing to the collector. He tried to swindle the wrong man.”

Master Li turned to me. “Ox, those iron bars had to be bent by large levers, which would make quite a bit of noise. All Brother Squint-Eyes had to do was draw the bolt and run out to the hall for help, but he stayed right where he was. That means he was an accomplice.”

He turned back to the prince. “I can well imagine the collector producing a knife and saying that since the good monk imagined he was Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the resemblance should be completed by castration. At any rate, Brother Squint-Eyes screamed and quite literally died of fright. The collector had forced him to produce the original. He snatched it from the dead man's hand and ran, and then he and his accomplices went into their act. Anybody who wants to steal something from the Valley of Sorrows is advised to dress as a mad monk in motley. Witnesses will probably keep running until they land in the Yellow Sea.”

The prince poured more tea. Master Li added a splash of wine to his.

“Prince, your ancestor tunneled all over the valley for iron, and Buddha knows what else. He also doused the place with acids and mysterious substances of his own invention. Suppose one of the tunnels collapsed. It isn't impossible that underground echoes could have produced a strange compelling sound, and that a pocket of ancient acids—or whatever—could have been released into that particular area of Princes’ Path. I don't know of any substance that retains its potency for seven centuries, but that doesn't mean there isn't one, and we'll find out at the academy in Ch'ang-an. We'll also find the person responsible for the burglary,” Master Li said confidently. “The problem will be proving murder. The abbot is willing to settle for a new roof. Do you have any objections?”

The prince pointed to his chest. “Me? My family hasn't had a claim to this valley since the ghastly days of feudalism, so beloved by Neo-Confucians. All we do is go bankrupt maintaining Princes’ Path, and a few other things. I have no say in it.”

Master Li looked at him quizzically. “I wonder if the peasants look at it that way,” he said. “Your family served as lords of the valley for almost five centuries, and I rather suspect that when it comes to the welfare of the valley, they won't turn to the emperor. They'll turn to you, and they won't ask for help. They'll demand it. Rather unfair, since you don't collect a penny of rent or a share of the crops, but there it is.”

Prince Liu Pao looked at him thoughtfully. Then he turned and examined my callused hands and large coarse body and homely face with peasant printed all over it.

“Number Ten Ox?”

I flushed with embarrassment. “Your Highness, Master Li is right,” I said. “Nothing will convince them that the welfare of the Valley of Sorrows isn't the responsibility of the Liu family, and as for fairness, it's like Princes’ Path. Peasants can't afford it.”

The prince laughed and stood up.

“It seems I have no choice but to go through the motions,” he said. “I assume I'm supposed to make sure that my abominable ancestor is safely tucked in, with the famous Master Li as witness?”

“That's all for now,” Master Li said.

The prince took a key from a cabinet and led the way outside and through a gate and down a winding path toward the face of a cliff. As we came closer I saw an iron door set in the rock, almost covered by tall weeds and thistles. The door was old but the lock was new, and the prince's fingers were trembling as he inserted the key.

“Nightmares of childhood,” he said wryly. “You see, the Laughing Prince's successor decided to keep the famous grotto precisely as he found it, and place the family tablets inside. Every succeeding prince has been forced to pray and sacrifice inside a monument to the abuse of power. Makes it rather difficult for us to pull wings off butterflies, if our instincts run to that kind of thing.”

I expected blackness, but there were fissures in the stone that let in a greenish-yellow light. The famous Medical Research Center should, I think, be part of the early education of emperors. It is hard to forget.

A long row of iron racks against one wall held the essential instruments for scientific research, such as thumbscrews and iron whips and testicle crushers and pinchers and various things for slicing and gouging. Ancient operating tables still stood in the center of the floor, and gutters beneath them ran to stone troughs for the blood. Grim-looking machines whose purpose I didn't understand lined another wall, and a third wall was lined with something I did understand: iron cages where peasants were held. They allowed the peasants a good view of what was happening to members of their families. The worst thing was the back wall.

It was naturally smooth stone, almost like a huge board of slate, and it was covered with annotated experiments, drawn with painstaking accuracy. Mysterious mathematical formulas and ancient script alternated as annotations, and Master Li was quite puzzled as he translated the script for my benefit.

“True path of the stone… False path of the stone… Stone strongest here… Total failure of stone… Stone branches three ways… No reaction from stone…”

It made no sense at all, nor did the jumble of arrows pointing to various gruesome aspects of the experiments.

“What on earth did he mean by all these references to a stone?” Master Li asked.

“Nobody knows, but his obsession appears to have been overpowering,” the prince said.

He took a torch from a bracket and lit it, and led the way toward a shadowed corner. There I saw the family tablets, and I shuddered to think of small boys being led in here to pray, with grim lectures about the curse the family carried. The tablets were lined up in front of an ancient sacristy, which was empty. On the wall above it an inscription had been chiseled, and again Master Li translated for my benefit.

The prince smiled at my bewilderment. “I agree,” he said. “It has the same quality of apparently leading somewhere and then disappearing that distinguishes the very finest Taoist mumbo jumbo.”

Master Li scratched his head. “Lao Tzu?” he wondered. “His third step toward Heaven was to hear the sound of stone growing in a cliff, but he didn't climb to the Gates of the Great Void on the screams of his victims.” He winked at me. “He rode an ox,” he said.

In the shadows of the alcove was a darker shadow that resolved itself into a narrow tunnel as the prince again led the way with the torch. At the end of it was another iron door, but this one had neither a lock nor a handle. On the wall was a large bronze plaque engraved with a map of the Valley of Sorrows, and beside it hung an iron hammer on an iron chain. The prince grimaced.

“Sense of humor,” he said sourly.

He raised the hammer and smashed the plaque, and the iron door slid silently open. We stepped inside to a circular room that was astonishingly bare. Nowhere was the sickening display of wealth that usually distinguishes the tomb of a tyrant. There was nothing but two stone coffins, two offering bowls, and a small altar with incense burners. Master Li was as astonished as I was, and the prince shrugged and spread his hands in an I-give-up gesture.

“My ancestor was a mystery from beginning to end,” he said. “He amassed an enormous fortune, but didn't spend a catty of silver on his own final resting place. What did he do with it? He certainly didn't pass his wealth on to his personal family, and there is no evidence that it was seized by his imperial brother. For several centuries after his death the family had to spend half its time chasing away people who dug holes all over the valley, and crooks still do a thriving business in fake treasure maps. The sarcophagus on the left is that of his principal wife, Tou Wan, who predeceased him, and my ancestor sleeps on the right.”

Master Li nodded to me. I stepped up and tested the stone lid. It weighed at least a ton, but it rested in smooth grooves, and I got in position and heaved. I almost broke my back before I could persuade it to move, but then it began to slide down toward the foot with a painful screeching sound. A mummy wrapped in tarred linen appeared. Part of the wrappings had crumbled away, but they had prevented the bone itself from crumbling, and a piece of a white skull was exposed. An empty eye socket gazed up at us, and I will confess that I was relieved to see that the Laughing Prince was not in shape to laugh and dance in the moonlight.

Master Li reached into the coffin and came up with a small enameled container like a pillbox. There was nothing inside but a tiny pile of gray dust, and when he cleaned off the top, we saw the picture of a toad seated upon a lily pad.

“I have heard that the Laughing Prince was expected to recover from his final fever, and this may explain why he didn't,” Master Li said thoughtfully. “Even in his day it was known that tear-like secretions of certain toads are heart stimulants even more effective than foxglove, and usually Toad Elixir was prescribed only for severe cardiac disorders. An overdose can be fatal, of course, and this could have been placed in his coffin either to signify a natural cause of death or the fact that the emperor had indeed sent him the yellow scarf and he had chosen to hop into the underworld upon the back of a toad. Not that it matters.”

There was nothing else in the coffin. In death as in life the lunatic lord was a mystery. I slid the lid back in place. We walked back into the tunnel, and the prince closed the door. The grotto was as ghastly as ever, but when we stepped outside I knew it was as dead and gone as the Laughing Prince. A lovely sunset was spreading across the sky, and birds were singing their last songs of the day, and down below us we could see the Valley of Sorrows in a haze of green and gold and purple shadows. As pretty as the setting of a fairy tale, and far more alive.