The Swallow Falls, the Crow Cries - Chapter 1

In the suffocating heat of high summer, the room held its warmth, and my wounds rotted fast.

The windows had been nailed shut against the light.

I called for A-Chan. I called for someone to report the crime. Day and night, no one answered.

So I stretched out a hand and knocked against the shutter, over and over.

All the while I murmured,

“Wronged. Wronged. Wronged.”

Suizhou’s grandest pleasure house rang with clappers, pipes and strings at night. By day, it lay sunk in a dull, oppressive gloom.

A hinge gave a faint creak.

Lutan slipped inside in a panic, something concealed in her hands.

She was cunning and a snob, but she had never killed anyone. When my eyes opened, she stumbled back, nearly falling to the floor.

I had shouted myself hoarse. Staring at the ceiling, I went on talking.

“When A-Chan died, her little hand was clenched so tight. I pried her fingers open one by one. There was a piece of jade inside. Cui Zhao broke his pendant while he was killing her. There’s no mistake.

“The rest of his jade must have fallen somewhere. Lutan, you’re his lover. Have you seen it?”

She looked close to tears, her teeth clenched and chattering.

“You’re mad. Beating the grievance drum, bringing charges against those two untouchables! Everyone knows they can do as they please. One is the prefect’s eldest son. The other is the marquis’s own brother…”

The fever had left me delirious. At the mention of the marquis, I gave a little laugh.

“Shao Huaiyong saw them too. That night, he and I went out together on the Qian River. It poured on the way back, remember?

“He took off his outer robe and wrapped me in his arms. I thought, no one would ever believe the marquis could be like this.

“We had just entered Crowcall Lane when we saw two figures climb over the wall. Cui Zhao. Shao Xingjian. No mistake. No mistake.”

Coarse cloth came down over my face. Lutan’s hands shook as she threw her whole weight onto me, clamping it over my mouth and nose.

“Who do you think wants you dead? Never mind Cui Zhao. Shao Xingjian—Shao Xingjian is the Old Madam’s darling. Did you think the marquis would let you live?

“Don’t blame me. Go quietly. Go and join those two down below, mother and daughter…”

I do not know how long I lay unconscious.

When I opened my eyes again, I was still alive.

The madam had once told me in disgust, Your life is as worthless as grass. Even Heaven must find you hateful.

Now the blazing sun scorched my eyes dry through the sack over my head. I heard crows beating their wings, eager to descend.

And the soft click of prayer beads.

There was a story I had heard in the pleasure house, about monks who contemplated bones. They spent their days in the burial grounds, watching corpses decay.

A hand lifted the rough cloth from my face.

Crows settled all around.

Against the blinding white disc of the sun, a black-robed monk bent to look at me.

A tranquil smile rested on his face.

He said—

On the seventh day of the seventh month, Suizhou’s most celebrated diviner had chosen an auspicious day: Heaven’s virtue in harmony, favorable for marriage.

Instead, rain came down in torrents.

The gale snapped old trees and blocked the road. The marquis’s bridal procession had to halt before a ruined temple.

The bride was ushered inside to shelter.

Outside, everyone was in a frenzy.

Some shifted fallen trees, some led horses, some rescued the dowry. Silks and paintings could not bear a soaking. Even the nursemaid and maids hurried back into the rain, carrying the chests in one after another.

Only the bride sat on a cushion before the Buddha, arms folded around herself, shivering a little with cold.

For a long while, I studied the woman who was about to marry Shao Huaiyong. Then I called softly, “Miss Cui…”

Only then did Cui Yanru realize she was not alone in the shadows. She started.

“Who—who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I have been wronged. Please, miss…”

My breath failed me. After barely a few words, I began coughing weakly.

Her brows drew together. “Tell me what injustice you have suffered. My father is the prefect of Suizhou. He will see that justice is done.”

“It began seventeen years ago…”

She looked me over, unable to hide her curiosity. “Why so far back?”

I invited her softly, “Come a little closer, miss. Let me look into your eyes.”

She edged nearer. In the dim light of the storm I could make out her lovely, long eyes, their outer corners tilted upward.

Looking at her, I could not help smiling.

“Seventeen years ago, in Crowcall Lane, here in Suizhou…”

A poor scholar met the most beautiful courtesan of them all.

She spent every coin she had to send him to the capital for the imperial examinations and pay for the connections he needed.

Later, the scholar passed with distinction. He returned home in glory, married, had children and prospered in office.

And forgot the courtesan, and the illegitimate daughter who could never be acknowledged, leaving them both in the pleasure house.

Seventeen years later, the scholar’s son by his lawful wife went out carousing with his dissolute friends. He happened upon a girl and wanted her.

She fought him to the death. He smashed her with a paperweight until she was a bloody ruin, and she died where she lay.

“Lies.” The prefect’s daughter knitted her slender brows, her face flushing red. “I don’t understand… those things they do. But if she was a girl in a pleasure house, why would she die defending her chastity? And what would a place like that be doing with a paperweight?”

A low, stifled laugh escaped me. It pulled at my wounds, and cold sweat broke out from the pain.

A-Chan loved books.

Accounts, medicine, poetry—she wanted to learn everything. And she learned it all so well, so quickly.

I had asked a patron who traveled to the capital to bring her a paperweight.

It was carved with a little rabbit so lifelike it might have been real. She treasured it, setting it on the pages where she practiced her writing. Her handwriting had been so beautiful…

“What happened next?” After waiting too long for an answer, the young lady demanded it sharply.

“The former courtesan saw her daughter murdered. That very night, she jumped from an upper floor.

“The scholar, now the prefect, framed an elderly physician to protect his eldest son, and hastily closed the case.”

“…How do you know he was framed?”

“His son’s jade pendant had his date of birth engraved in tiny characters. A piece of it broke off in—”

The prefect’s daughter sprang to her feet.

“You’re the madwoman who falsely accused my brother! And now you dare implicate my father!”

Her face was pale, but her voice grew colder and harsher.

“My father is an honest official. There are no wrongful convictions in Suizhou. Besides, women in pleasure houses choose to sink so low. If I ever fell into such a state, I would dash my head against a wall and die. I would never let anyone dishonor me!”