Chapter 393 — The Idea Takes Root

It was nearly the Dragon Boat Festival. Yunqi Temple was thronged with worshippers, and the bearers of the Ying Estate's sedan, fearing to jostle Dou Yan, turned off and took the Stele Lane behind the temple. But someone in Stele Lane was marrying off a bride, and the firecrackers popped without cease, so the bearers had to go around Stele Lane and take Fucheng Street to Xuanshui Street and through Yuqiao Street.

The sedan swayed on, head down, pressing forward.

Idle, Dou Yan lifted the curtain and looked out, and in one glance caught the high spire of Wanming Temple.

Her heart stirred. She said to Duan Bing, who walked beside the sedan, "I should like to burn a stick of incense at Wanming Temple."

"That won't do at all!" Duan Bing said with a chuckle. "The whole city is out burning incense today — you mustn't be jostled in such a crowd. If you truly wish to see it, let me go back tonight and talk it over with Mr. Yan; once we have sent word to the abbot of Wanming Temple, we shall escort you there to burn incense." He added, "It is not that I have turned particular now that I am in the capital and in the Ying Estate, but your circumstances are not what they were — you cannot bear the fatigue."

Dou Yan smiled faintly. "Then let us find some quiet place near Wanming Temple and sit awhile. I have a matter I want you to look into."

Duan Bing ordered the bearers to set the sedan down by the roadside and sent a man ahead to scout; he found a small teahouse two streets short of Wanming Temple and settled Dou Yan in a private room there.

Dou Yan said, "There is a family named Li — a widowed mother with a son and a daughter — who lived in the Second Lane near here, and moved away seventeen years ago. Go and ask around for me, and see whether any of the old neighbours know where they went. If anyone asks, say you are a distant kinsman come to seek them out, and on no account draw attention."

The Li family had lived here since the previous dynasty; even if they had moved away, the old neighbours could not have lost touch so cleanly. In those days, with rumour running high, they might have found it hard to keep in contact with the old neighbours, but now more than ten years had passed, and it might well be that some of them knew where the family had gone.

Duan Bing looked doubtful, but asked nothing, and went off with an answering word.

Dou Yan sat behind the bamboo blind on the teahouse's second floor and studied the crowd around her.

No wonder Song Cen had set up his golden house near Wanming Temple in those years. Here was a side street given over wholly to rouge and powder, crowded with passers-by, women for the most part; and since Wanming Temple drew women worshippers to its Buddha, and it was close to the Li house as well, neither Song Cen nor Li Tiaoniang would have drawn much notice coming and going here.

She sat down and drank two cups of tea, and Duan Bing came back.

His face was somewhat sheepish. "The neighbours say that after the Li daughter died of a sudden illness, the family sold the ancestral house and moved away. I asked where they went, and no one knew. But the people now living in the Li ancestral house seemed to know a great deal about the family, and questioned me closely; I saw I was about to give myself away, so I beat a hasty retreat." He flushed. "Madam, forgive me — I have not done well with what you gave me to do."

Dou Yan was rather surprised. "Did you find out clearly who it is that lives in the Li ancestral house now?"

"I asked," said Duan Bing. "They say they were old neighbours of the Li family for many years, and when they saw the house going cheap, they bought it. They also said that in the first year or two people had come asking after the Li family, and that they had not thought to see anyone come asking after them again after more than ten years."

Dou Yan was startled. "And did you ask what sort of people came asking after the Li family?"

"I did ask," Duan Bing said, embarrassed. "But the household grew suspicious of me — they said the Li mother was a native of the capital, so where would she have kinsmen far off in Hebei... I dared not press further."

Plainly this sort of thing called for a professional.

Dou Yan soothed him with a few words and went home rather disappointed.

But she had scarcely stepped through the gate when a servant came to report: "Lord Chen of the Embroidered Uniform Guard has sent his wife's woman to bring you Dragon Boat Festival gifts. She is waiting outside the gate and begs leave to come in and pay her respects. Will you see her or not?"

The man had, after all, found her two maids of no small skill; that much face ought to be given.

Dou Yan said, "Then let her come in."

The servant answered with a smile and went to bring the woman in.

It was no more than a matter of knocking two kowtows on Chen Jia's behalf and speaking a few words of good cheer.

Dou Yan saw that the woman was comely, that she moved with proper measure, and that she spoke with courtesy and restraint — a thoroughly dependable sort — and took a liking to her; she had two fine red packets given her as a reward.

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Sisters and brothers, here is today's second update.

o(∩_∩)o~

ps: It is the Double Ninth Festival after all, so I shall shamelessly beg for pink votes!

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