The Year of Rice and Salt

'I will. If I can I'll send word to the Temple of the Purple Bamboo Grove.'

'No. If we don't hear from you, we will know you are well.'

He nodded. As he was about to take his leave, he hesitated. 'You know, lady, all beings have lived many lives. You say we have met before, but before the festival of Guanyin, I never came near here.'

'I know.'

'So it must be that we knew each other in some other life.'

'I know.' She glanced at him briefly. 'Go.'

He limped off upstream on the bank path, glancing around to see if there were any witnesses. Indeed there were fisherfolk on the other bank, their straw hats bright in the sun.

Kang took Xinwu back to the house, then got in a sedan chair to take the snivelling Shih to town and the magistrate's offices.

The magistrate looked as displeased as Widow Kang had been to have this kind of matter thrown in his lap. But like her, he could not afford to ignore it, and so he interviewed Shih, angrily, and had him lead them all to the spot in town where it had happened. Shih indicated a place on the path next to a copse of bamboo, and just out of sight of the first stalls of the market in that district. No one habitually there had seen Shih or any unusual strangers that morning. It was a complete dead end.

So Kang and Shih went home, and Shih cried and complained that he felt sick and could not study. Kang stared at him and gave him the day off, plus a healthy dose of powdered gypsum mixed with the gallstones of a cow. They heard nothing from Bao or the magistrate, and Xinwu fitted in well with the household's servants. Kang let Shih be for a time, until one day she got angry at him and seized what was left of his queue and yanked him into his examination seat, saying 'Stolen soul or not, you are going to pass your exams!' and stared down at his catlike face, until he muttered the lesson for the day before his queue had been cut, looking sorry for himself, and implacable before his mother's disdain. But she was more implacable still. If he wanted dinner he had to learn.

Then news came that Bao had been apprehended in the mountains to the west, and brought back to be interrogated by the magistrate and the district prefect. The soldiers who brought the news wanted Kang and Shih down at the prefecture immediately; they had brought a palanquin to carry them in.

Kang hissed at this news, and returned to her rooms to dress properly for the trip. The servants saw that her hands were shaking, indeed her whole body trembled, and her lips were white beyond the power of gloss to colour them. Before she left her room she sat down before the loom and wept bitterly. Then she stood and redid her eyes, and went out to join the guards.

At the prefecture Kang descended from the chair and dragged Shih with her into the prefect's examination chamber. There the guards would have stopped her, but the magistrate called her in, adding ominously, 'This is the woman who was giving him shelter.'

Shih cringed at this, and looked at the officials from behind Kang's embroidered silk gown. Along with the magistrate and prefect were several other officials, wearing robes striped with arm bands and decorated with the insignia squares of very high ranking officials: bear, deer, even an eagle.

They did not speak, however, but only sat in chairs watching the magistrate and prefect, who stood by the unfortunate Bao. Bao was clamped in a wooden device that held his arms up by his head. His legs were tied into an ankle press.

The ankle press was a simple thing. Three posts rose from a wooden base; the central one, between Bao's ankles, was fixed to the base. The other two were linked to the middle one at about waist height by an iron dowel rod that ran through all three, leaving the outer two loose, though big bolts meant they could only move outwards so far. Bao's ankles were secured to either side of the middle post; the lower ends of the outer posts were pressing against the outsides of Bao's ankles. The upper ends had been pressed apart from the middle post by wooden wedges. All was already as tight as could be; any further taps on top of the wedges by the magistrate with his big mallet would press on Bao's ankles with enormous leverage.

'Answer the question!' the magistrate roared, leaning down to shout in Bao's face. He straightened up, walked back slowly and gave the nearest wedge a sharp tap with his mallet.

Bao howled. Then: 'I'm a monk! I've been living with my boy by the river! I can't walk any farther! I don't go anywhere!'

'Why are there scissors in your bag?' the prefect demanded quietly. 'Scissors, powders, books. And a bit of a queue.'

'That's not hair! That's my talisman from the temple, see how it's braided! Those are scriptures from the temple – ah!'

'It is hair,' the prefect said, looking at it in the light.

The magistrate tapped again with his mallet.

'It isn't my son's hair,' the widow Kang interjected, surprising everyone. 'This monk lives near our house. He doesn't go anywhere but to the river for water.'