It was a quiet, peaceful night in the temple. In the distance, however, someone was heard playing a pensive melody on a bamboo flute.

A stanza of a ci poem floated across his mind, as if flowing out of the flute melody under the dark night.

The flute sobbing,

waking from her dream,

she sees the moon shining,

above the high tower. The moon

shining above the high tower,

the willows turn green again, year

after year, along Baling Bridge,

where lovers sadly part.

The authorship of the ci poem remained unknown, but it had recently been circulated a lot in connection to the Xuanji case. Some scholars claimed that it was her poem. Judge Dee also felt rather inclined to include it in the collection of Xuanji’s poems, if he ever managed to compile it one of these days.

Without worrying too much about the authorship, the sensibility of the poem could have truly applied to Xuanji. She was waiting for her man, year after year, but to no avail. ‘Baling Bridge’ in the first stanza referred to a scenic location in the capital where lovers would choose to part, with the verdant willows weeping in the background. She, too, could have been standing there, holding on to the willow shoot, as if gazing out of the willow poem she had once written in the company of Wen, which had made her name widely known in the circle of poets.

Judge Dee could not exactly recall the second stanza of the poem, which seemed to be shifting to a more impersonal tone, with the introduction of the image of a ‘royal mausoleum’ lifting the poem to an everlasting sadness at a universal level, yet also carrying an ominous note about her tragic life, waiting for Wen, for Zi’an, without seeing a messenger bringing the message so crucial to her, and then toward the end of her life, waiting, waiting for the man in the yellow silk dragon-embroidered underrobe, with the moon shining on the high tower – no, into the dark prison cell, still no message coming along the ancient path.

Once again, Judge Dee wished he too could write a poem like hers, but he had reached an age, he told himself, when he could admit what was beyond him. So many years he had wasted playing politics, which, unlike poetry, would not survive him.

FIVE

After a short, broken sleep, Judge Dee rose in the early morning with the rain pattering against the lattice window, as if pattering in a half-forgotten dream.

In the temple courtyard, a sleepy-eyed, palm-leaf-capped-and-clad monk was yawning, stretching himself, and then beginning to strike the large bronze bell for the morning service, blow after blow, the sound reverberating into the impenetrable mist and rain.

It was time for Judge Dee to check out, he knew. Yang was waiting outside his room, ready to resume the journey with his master.