The Calligrapher and the Widowed General novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Dot
Shuyi sees the husband's hooked heart dot in the general's own signature, and a rider announces the Censor.
On the fifth day Shuyi was alone in the study for the first time.
A soldier had come to the door with an urgent message about horses.
Lanxin had gone out to the yard with a short, "Don't touch the box."
Shuyi had already copied twenty letters.
She was now very good at the husband's hand.
It leaned to the left, hurried through its turns, and pressed hard on the downstrokes.
Her own fingers had started to write that way without being told.
She sat looking at the character for heart in letter twenty-one.
It was the character xin, in the middle of the phrase, my heart is with you.
Every time the husband wrote it, the last dot hooked up and to the right.
Shuyi had noticed it in the first letter and told herself it meant nothing.
Every hand had a quirk, and a copyist copied quirks as well as strokes.
Her father had a way of crossing his sevens.
She dipped her brush and wrote the hook again, and then she went to refill her water dish at the side table.
A stack of army papers lay there under a jade paperweight.
They were ration orders, forage counts, and a guard roster, each signed at the bottom with the same three characters.
Ye Lanxin.
Shuyi did not mean to read them.
She was only looking for the cloth.
But the last character of the signature was xin, the same xin, the heart.
Lanxin's name was written with the same word her husband used for the heart.
And the dot at the bottom of it hooked up and to the right, like a small fishhook.
Shuyi set down the water dish.
She picked up the top order and held it beside the letter on her desk.
The hook was the same size.
It left the same thin tail.
The pressure under it was the same, a quick heavy press and a flick.
Shuyi turned over the next order.
In it the word for "of" was written with a long final stroke, drawn out far past the character like a tail.
She turned to letter twenty-one.
The same word, the same long tail.
Her mouth went dry.
Her first thought was that a wife might learn her husband's hand after years of reading it.
Her second thought was that a wife's signature would not copy his hook.
The hook was in the husband's letters, and it was in the general's name.
The two hands were not close cousins.
They were the same hand.
Shuyi stood very still, one order in each hand.
She was a copyist.
She could tell a left-leaning forger from a right-leaning one across a crowded market, and she could not tell herself this was a coincidence.
The door opened.
Mo Hanzhang stood on the threshold, grey-bearded and square, leaning on his stiff knee.
His eyes went to the orders in her hands, and then to her face.
Shuyi put the orders back under the jade weight, exactly as they had been.
"I was looking for a cloth," she said.
"On the shelf by the door," Mo said.
His voice was mild.
"Orders go out under the general's seal and her name, Miss Qin."
"They are tedious to read."
"Yes, sir. Very tedious."
He stood there a moment longer, watching her pick up the cloth and return to her seat.
Then he nodded and left, and she heard his uneven step go slowly down the hall.
Shuyi lowered her shoulders.
She picked up her brush.
Her hand was steady, because she made it steady, and she copied the next line without a flaw.
An hour later Lanxin came back with rain on her shoulders and a bowl in her hand.
"Ginger and brown sugar," she said, and put it by Shuyi's elbow.
"You have not drunk anything since noon."
"How do you know?"
"Your water dish is full."
Lanxin looked at her, and the corner of her mouth moved, very slightly.
Shuyi looked at the mouth for a moment longer than she meant to.
"You have ink on your cheek," Lanxin said.
"Where?"
"Here."
Lanxin lifted her hand and ran her thumb along Shuyi's cheekbone.
It was a slow, careful stroke, the same stroke she might use to check a blade for dust.
The thumb stopped at the corner of Shuyi's mouth.
Neither of them breathed.
The warmth of the thumb went all the way down Shuyi's spine.
Then Lanxin took her hand back and examined her black thumb.
"It will not wash out until morning," she said.
"Drink your tea."
Shuyi drank the tea.
It burned her tongue, and she did not notice.
She was thinking, a woman who has just seen a forgery should be afraid, and what she felt was something much worse.
The door banged open a third time.
A young soldier stood there, soaked, with mud to his knees.
"General," he gasped.
"A rider from the capital, with the imperial banner."
"The Imperial Censor, Du Wenyuan, comes to read the letters."
"He will be at the gate by dusk."
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