For the present moment, Xuanji was literally imagining herself into the one beside the prince, begging for mercy nakedly like a queen, or an imperial concubine, with the same pose, even though the prince was not there, prostrating himself alongside her in the dust.

To his consternation, Judge Dee became disoriented at the sight of something like a fly stuck on her white bare sole – or merely a smudge in spite of the wash she had taken in the cell. He was getting too old, he thought.

‘You are known as one of the most loyal, capable Confucianist officials of the Great Tang Empire, Your Honor. But for you, the country could have been irreparably ruined by unscrupulous conspirators like Minister Wu under Her Majesty. I’m so grateful for what you have been doing for the empire all these years. And this time, like other times, you’ll do the right thing for the Great Tang Empire, I believe.’

The message for mercy became even clearer. The degrading posture was made, not for herself, but for the prince.

For the Great Tang Empire of the Li family.

She was begging Judge Dee not to have the prince implicated in the conclusion of the case.

That night, it was the prince, not Wei, who came to the nunnery, and who had helped with the burial in the backyard.

The way the investigation was going, it would most likely be a matter of time for people to trace it to the prince, as Judge Dee had supposed.

Even the role of an accomplice could turn out to be too much trouble for the prince, who had been recently exiled from the capital. Were it to be found that the prince, instead of staying out of the capital as ordered by the empress, had become involved with a notorious courtesan in the nunnery on the outskirts of Chang’an – possibly a reminder of the empress in her younger days in a Daoist nunnery – the disastrous consequences could be easily imagined.

But it was not the moment for Judge Dee to think too much about all this, with Xuanji still groveling and kowtowing in the dust at his feet.

‘Please get up, Xuanji. I do not have the final say in this case, as you know, but I’ll try my best to do the right thing, I give you my word,’ he promised vaguely, though he could not help wondering what the right thing could possibly be, and how he could possibly do it.