Sandalwood Death: A Novel (Chinese Literature Today Book Series)

put on a show.”
    “The Supreme Commander does not converse with the unidentified. I repeat, state your name!”
    “Sun Bing, you are truly lawless. Hear me out. I am a representative of the Great Qing Empire, Gaomi County Magistrate Qian Ding, with the style name Yuanjia.”
    “So, it is the trifling Magistrate of Gaomi County,” Sun Bing remarked. “Why have you come here instead of functioning as a good official in your yamen?”
    “Will you let me be a good official, Sun Bing?”
    “As Supreme Commander, my only concern is to exterminate the foreigners. I have neither the time nor the interest to bother with an insignificant County Magistrate.”
    “Exterminating the foreigners is what I have come to see you about. Open the gate and let me in. We will both be losers if their army decides to come.”
    “Whatever you have to say, you can say it from out there. I can hear you.”
    “What I have to say is extremely confidential. I must talk to you privately.”
    After a thoughtful pause, Sun Bing said:
    “All right, but just you.”
    The Magistrate stepped back into his palanquin.
    “Raise the chair!” he ordered.
    “The chair stays outside!”
    The Magistrate parted the curtain.
    “As a representative of the Imperial Court,” he said, “I am expected to be carried in.”
    “All right, but only the chair.”
    The Magistrate turned to the head of his military escort. “Wait for me out here.”
    “Excellency,” Chunsheng and Liu Pu said as they held on to the shafts, “you must not go in there alone.”
    The Magistrate smiled.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, “Supreme Commander Yue is a sensible man. He will not do injury to this official.”
    With a series of loud creaks, the gate opened inward to permit the Magistrate’s palanquin to enter, swaying from side to side. The musketeers and archers of the escort attempted to storm their way in after him, only to be pelted by rubble raining down from atop the wall. When they took aim at their attackers, the Magistrate ordered them to lower their weapons.
    The palanquin passed through the newly reinforced wooden gate and was quickly enveloped in the heavy fragrance of pine oil. Through gaps in the bamboo screen, he spotted half a dozen furnaces that had been set up on either side of the street, the fires kept red-hot by large bellows. Local blacksmiths were hard at work forging swords, their clanging hammers sending sparks flying. Women and children walked up and down the street with flatbreads and leeks stripped of their hard skins; lights flashed in the eyes of the glum-looking women. A little boy with tufted hair and an exposed belly who was carrying a steaming black clay pot cocked his head to gape at the Magistrate’s palanquin, then suddenly raised his juvenile voice in a rhythmic Maoqiang aria: “A cold, cold day and heavy snow~~northwest winds up my sleeves do blow~~” The boy’s high-pitched voice made the Magistrate laugh, but what came next was a dose of bone-chilling sorrow. Reminded of the German soldiers who drilled alongside cannons lined up on the Tongde Academy grounds, the Magistrate took a hard look at the ignorant Masang Township residents, who had been whipped into a state of fanaticism by the bewitching black arts of Sun Bing, and he was struck by feelings of obligation to rescue them from their plight. The sonorous inflections of a pledge rang out in his mind—what the First Lady had said made perfect sense: at this critical, perilous juncture, he must reject all thoughts of dying, whether in the name of the nation or of the people. To seek death at this moment would be shameful and cowardly. A world in turmoil gives rise to great men, and it is incumbent upon me to take a lesson from Lord Wenzheng, who defied difficulties and laughed at danger, who fought to save desperate situations and liberate the masses from peril. Sun Bing, you bastard, you have led thousands of Masang residents into the jaws of death, all to satisfy your thirst for personal vengeance, and I am morally and legally bound to see that you are punished.
    Sun Bing rode ahead of the Magistrate’s palanquin on a dejected-looking chestnut horse. Its harness had rubbed the hair off the starving animal’s forelegs, exposing the green-tinted skin. Bits of watery excrement hung on the bony hindquarters of what the Magistrate easily identified as a plow horse, a pitiful animal taken from the fields to become Supreme Commander Yue’s personal mount. A young man