“Did you not hear me?” Huang shook him roughly. “Who are you and what business do you have here?”
“I’m not a thief. I came because—” His voice broke and the next part came out rough with emotion. “Because I wanted to see Huilan one last time.”
* * *
HUANG LIT THE LANTERN. He even managed to procure a flask of wine and some cups from a cabinet in the parlor. Then he poured the wine and let the heartbroken stranger do most of the talking. His name was Wen Tse-kang. From his robe, he appeared to be a student. From the roundness in his cheeks, he appeared to be from one of the younger classes.
“I loved her.” Tse-kang let his tears fall down his face without shame. “We loved each other.”
“You know what happened to her,” Huang said, keeping his tone neutral.
“I heard of the news the morning after. Some of my colleagues were whispering about a beautiful courtesan who had been tragically killed. I ran all the way here, praying it wasn’t Huilan, telling myself that in no way could it be her. But it was.” He covered his face as his features twisted with grief.
Huang’s instinct told him this student wasn’t the murderer. His grief and confusion were genuine. But at the same time, he remembered Yue-ying’s warning about lovers being capable of violence. All it took was one moment of blind passion. They couldn’t be so quick to dismiss anyone from the list of suspects.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Tse-kang looked up, as if just seeing Huang for the first time. “Are you one of her patrons? I don’t care if you have me arrested and beaten. I still don’t regret coming here.”
Definitely a youthful and impassioned scholar.
“I’m not one of her patrons, but I do have some influence in the North Hamlet,” he lied. “I’m not going to have you arrested as long as you tell me everything I want to know.”
“The last time I saw her was at the dragonboat races by the canal. I had only a moment to speak to her. She looked beautiful that day. She always looked so beautiful.” The young scholar stared down at his hands. “I don’t know why she ever looked at me twice.”
“What did you say to her?”
Tse-kang looked directly at him as if he had nothing left in the world to fear. “I told her the preparations were ready. That we could go that night. That was our plan—her plan. She was going to leave this place and we would go together. Get married.” His chin lifted defiantly. “We were supposed to meet at the bridge by the temple, but she never came. I thought she had changed her mind.”
The plan sounded plausible. There was more freedom to move about at night during festivals. Huilan had the pass that he had provided in order to get through the ward gates, but there was still the vastness of the city to contend with and then the open road beyond that.
“When did she start talking about leaving the capital?”
Tse-kang thought back. “Maybe a month ago. The first time she brought it up briefly when we met at the bridge. I protested that my studies weren’t finished. What could I have to offer a woman like her as a failed student?”
Huang shifted in his seat, being the quintessential failed student himself, but said nothing.
“Huilan brushed the suggestion aside so quickly that I assumed she had been daydreaming. But the next time we met, she had thought of the details. She would sell her jewels and find a boat going east. She would hire a bodyguard if she had to. It sounded so dangerous, I knew I couldn’t let her go alone. So we started planning to leave together.”
Huilan would have needed a considerable amount of money, much more than she could have collected from pawning a few jewels or silken robes, yet she hadn’t asked him for any silver when they had struck their bargain.
“Did Huilan tell you why she had to leave so quickly?”
“I just thought she wanted a new life.” Tse-kang wiped his face with a sleeve. “She wanted to be free.”
* * *
“ANOTHER POOR SCHOLAR fantasizes about a beautiful courtesan falling hopelessly in love with him,” Yue-ying pronounced the next day with a roll of her eyes. “You know those romantic tales are all written by men.”
Huang smiled. “Poor scholars need something to aspire to.”
They were sitting on the second floor of a busy teahouse in the East Market. Yue-ying had insisted they meet there rather than at the Lotus or in the three lanes of the Pingkang li.
“There are certainly women who want to leave the North Hamlet and certainly many of them dream of becoming a wealthy man’s wife or concubine.” She tucked her hair behind her ear as she spoke. “But an elite courtesan doesn’t dream of running away with a humble scholar blindly out of love. Huilan had many admirers. She had a level of security and comfort and a reputation within the Pingkang li which she had rightfully earned.”
No matter how much Huang thought he knew the courtesans of the North Hamlet, no matter what their public personas might reveal, they kept part of themselves guarded away. That was why he needed Yue-ying’s insight.
“So something happened a month ago,” he continued. “Something that worried her. She needed to leave here fairly quickly.”
“Madame Lui would have a record of all of Huilan’s engagements and visitors.” She paused to think. “There was a banquet around midspring. I remember this gathering because Huilan forgot the words to a song. She was very upset by it.”
Huang frowned. “It was about that time when she first approached me.”
He had been drinking at the Hundred Songs with a couple of midlevel bureaucrats and Huilan had appeared through the curtain like a goddess through the clouds.
“I tried to think of something suitably impressive to say,” he recalled. “She was known as the Orchid of Silla so I attempted to tell her she was beautiful in the language of Silla.”
Yue-ying was taken aback. “You speak Sillan?”
Too late he realized his mistake. The know-nothing Bai Huang wouldn’t have such a command of languages. “I once encountered some dignitaries visiting from the Kingdom of Silla in a drinking house. I learned a few choice phrases over wine—though most of them weren’t exactly respectable.”
She seemed satisfied with his explanation, or rather annoyed with it. Which meant she believed him. For some reason, he wasn’t at all relieved.
“Huilan wasn’t really from the Kingdom of Silla,” she said impatiently. “It’s merely a story that Madame Lui conjured up to lend an air of exoticism to her prize courtesan.”
“Well, Huilan did reply in Sillan,” he noted. “We exchanged a few pleasantries, before speaking in Han again. At first there was nothing unusual about the conversation. She inquired about my family and my travels outside of Changan. Then she asked about leaving the ward.”
“Could she have been looking for you to redeem her?” Yue-ying asked, sipping her tea.
“I thought so at first, but she had wealthy protectors already.”
“It’s quite a different thing for an admirer to visit a courtesan in the entertainment district as opposed to bringing her home as a concubine,” she pointed out. “As far as I know, no one had made a bid for her.”
“Do you ever think of it?”
“Of what?”
“Of