Time had passed into the fifth lunar month, and the dog days of summer had arrived. The June heat was scorching, the sun blazing, and amid the cries of cicadas the high sun seemed almost to boil waves of heat up from between the streets. Beneath the shade of eaves and trees, dogs lolled with their tongues out, gazing at the scenes along the lanes, seeking what little coolness they could find. Now and then a carriage passed, raising clouds of dust that soon settled quietly back into the heat.

In such weather, those who could avoid going out mostly did not brave the sun to suffer in the streets, and so business at the shops grew correspondingly quiet. Only the better-situated teahouses were full every day. Once inside, one could order a pot of cold tea, and beneath the shade of the old wooden building and the great trees outside the door, listen to storytellers, nibble pastries, and pass a pleasant day. Of course, truly wealthy households would mostly leave the city of Hangzhou altogether, retreating to cool villas in the nearby hills to escape the heat for a time.

Though Hangzhou did not carry the fame of the Qinhuai River in Jiangning, along the Grand Canal, Yangzhou, Suzhou, and Hangzhou were all renowned pleasure quarters, thick with brothels. Every night the city lights stretched on and on, and in the ornate houses song and dance rose in an atmosphere even more intoxicating than the summer heat itself. By day, naturally, none of this was visible—the women, having worked through the night, were either resting or, come afternoon, sitting in the shaded courtyards watching butterflies flit past, indulging their private sorrows.

Only a few places were somewhat different.

On the city’s northwest side stood a garden called Yihe Garden, built beside the water, which opened even in the daytime. It was not large, but its location was excellent; even in the fierce summer heat, cool breezes drifted through by day, and the old camphor and cypress trees inside and out kept it pleasantly shaded. On ordinary days it looked like nothing more than a teahouse, but in fact it was where several women who had left the brothel registers now lived together.

Foremost among these women was one named Ding Wanjun, who had once, in her time, held something of a reputation as the finest courtesan in Hangzhou. After she left the registers and retired here to live, patrons who still thought fondly of her would come calling, though she was choosy with her guests—at most she would receive one a day, sipping tea and chatting a while.

Later several more women left the registers one after another and came to live with her, and gradually the place was managed into the tranquil retreat it now appeared to be. In the fiercest heat of summer or cold of winter, business only grew better; the shaded teahouses, filled with the sound of cicadas mingled with strains of music, were said to be especially soothing to the spirit.

Long Boyuan liked to come sit here on ordinary days—though of course, there was not always room for him. He did not mind this either; even when turned away he was not angry, for in his own view, what he shared with Ding Wanjun was the friendship of gentlefolk. He understood that she had obligations of her own, other guests she had to attend to, matters beyond her control.

Among Ding Wanjun’s… friends, his standing was neither the highest nor the lowest. He was the head of the Hangzhou cloth merchants’ guild. The Long family had traded for generations, but this generation had produced a few sons with real talent for study. He and his younger brother Long Bofen both showed some gift for letters, but their parents eventually said that one of them had to take over the family business, and so he had taken up the trade.

Now both brothers were past thirty. Long Bofen held the rank of a provincial graduate and had been given a minor clerkship in the Hangzhou prefectural office, with no great prospects ahead, but he devoted himself to poetry and landscape. Though his days consisted of little more than attending one poetry gathering after another, this had made him something of a wealthy man of leisure in Hangzhou’s literary circles, and through it he had come to know a great many people, becoming in this way one of the Long family’s great pillars of support. Long Boyuan, meanwhile, had built the family business up briskly, and was very much in his prime. Having dabbled in letters as a boy, he carried none of the vulgar money-grubbing air of the ordinary merchant, and people called him a “scholar-merchant.” Perhaps it was for this reason that he had come to know Ding Wanjun and become her friend.

Yihe Garden’s location was excellent, and had Ding Wanjun and the others had no one behind them, the place would surely have been seized long ago by covetous hands. He counted himself as one of her protectors; there had been a few occasions when someone tried to force Ding Wanjun to sell the place, and he had spoken up on her behalf—though he had also heard that others of even higher standing than himself had spoken up too.

Ding Wanjun was a woman skilled at moving in many circles, with many connections, and he did not mind this. At forty, having played with women of every sort along the way, what he liked now was the loftiness of her character. Occasionally they would sit together over tea, exchange a few words—or say nothing at all—without it ever coming to bed, without carnal desire entering into it, and in front of him she spoke freely and without restraint. He liked it this way; had they truly become entangled together, he suspected he would have tired of her.

It did not strike him as strange that a woman of such refined character should be a courtesan, or that she should have to deal with men of every sort. In this life, one was often not master of one’s own fate; struggling along while holding to some goodness of heart was already enough. In his youth he had studied the sages’ books; later he had gone into trade, and had done no small number of things he had not truly wanted to do. For this reason he felt they had something in common—both of them carrying a reluctance they could not act on, forced instead to do what they must—and this stirred in him a tender affection.

Ordinarily he did not bring matters from outside into this teahouse. He always came alone, sat for half a day, and left. Today, however, was somewhat different—besides himself and Ding Wanjun, who was playing the zither, another man sat across from him in the room. This man too was a major cloth merchant of the Suzhou-Hangzhou region, named Fang Min, a good friend of the garden’s own Bai Qianqian. They had happened to meet today, and the man, wishing to grow closer to him, had come over to talk business. Long Boyuan obliged him, showing no trace of impatience on the surface.

“…Speaking of which, the fighting in the north hasn’t affected you and me much, but the trouble Fang La is stirring up in the southwest really is fierce. Just recently my family lost another shipment of cloth to bandits—this business gets harder to do by the day…”

“As for Fang La, though it’s flared up, I don’t think it will last long. I hear the court has sent General Tong Guan south with troops—this time they mean to wipe him out for good.”

“But it seems to me, with the fighting between the Jin and the Liao in the north, our Wu Dynasty is surely bound to send troops north as well. Yet now they’ve sent General Tong south—who else is left to march north against the Liao? Surely they can’t fight on two fronts at once.”

“Ha, how would you or I know such things? Court affairs are for court men to worry over. We’d best mind our own business…”

There was not much real acquaintance between him and Fang Min—only the sort of idle talk everyone was discussing these days. After chatting a while longer, Fang Min brought up something else.

“…Speaking of which, Suzhou embroidery and Hangzhou embroidery were originally one and the same. Jiangning’s cloth trade, though prosperous too, mostly deals northward. This time that woman from the Su family has come south to do business—surely she’s called on you already?”

“Yes, I met her back in the fifth month. What did you make of her, Fang?” By this time, every major city’s trades had their own guilds, and anyone coming to Hangzhou to do the cloth trade had, without exception, first to register with the guild—which meant that Long Boyuan was very likely the first person she had called on.

“Ha, I only bring it up in passing—she made little impression on me. The woman seemed quite modest, kept a low profile of late, observed all the proper courtesies. When she called on me a while back I learned there was a new figure in the trade. This Su family is a major cloth merchant house in the Jiangning area too—surely you know their background well, Boyuan?”

“Only a little. In Jiangning the cloth trade is led by the Wu family, with the Su family a distant second. We haven’t dealt much with that side, so I don’t know this Su Tan’er well either—only that her family had a formidable elder once, though he’s likely old now.”

“The Su family already had a shop here, but it dealt only in small goods, nothing that amounted to much. But watching how she’s conducted herself since arriving, I think she means to make something of it. At Yangbatou, the new shop she’s opened—business there is modest for now, but I hear she went to great trouble transplanting several trees there, and even hands out plum-vinegar tea free to passersby, without so much as mentioning cloth for sale. A small thing, perhaps, but it tells me she’s planning something on a larger scale.”

“Ha ha, well, having come to trade in Hangzhou and having called on both of us, of course she means to make something of herself. If she’d shown no activity at all, that would be the strange thing. But it seems to me, Fang, you’re rather taken with this young lady of the Su family…”

Fang Min, nearing fifty, was addressed as “Fang” out of respect, and now he laughed heartily. “Ha ha, just a passing thought. Jiangning’s cloth craft differs from ours in Suzhou-Hangzhou—if she wants to open up new ground here, it won’t happen overnight. It’s only that she’s come alone as a woman, which people find curious. Oh, and I hear she has some connection with the Lou family…”

Long Boyuan nodded. “I know of that. I heard that when the Su family came south, they happened to encounter the young lady of the Lou family, and traveled together several days. The two of them… their circumstances are somewhat alike, which I imagine is why they’ve grown close. Since you’ve met the young Su lady, Fang, you must also have met her husband—the son-in-law who married into the family. I hear he’s some sort of scholar too, somewhat like the Lou family’s son-in-law.”

“Yes, quite low-key. I asked him about his poetry and he only deflected with a few words, after which there was little more to say—one could almost overlook him entirely. As for the Lou family’s son-in-law, I’ve met him a few times, and he’s a bit different—it seems to me he rather wants to draw attention to himself, only his learning isn’t up to it, and others tend not to think much of him…”

Long Boyuan raised an eyebrow. “A man willing to abandon his own family to marry into another’s—what is there really to say about him…”

He seemed indifferent to the matter, in no mood to pursue it further, and Fang Min let it drop. They chatted a while longer before Fang Min took his leave. Long Boyuan sat by the window drinking tea, and the graceful Ding Wanjun, having finished a piece on the zither, came over at last to sit and pour fresh tea.

“Talking business here, of all places—aren’t you afraid it’ll be overheard and spread about carelessly?”

Long Boyuan laughed. “Ha, it’s nothing but trifles. Does Wanjun take it for some great secret?”

“I just found it rather interesting.” Ding Wanjun smiled. “Who is this young lady of the Su family?”

“Another young lady of the Lou family, in a manner of speaking.”

“Oh.”

Ding Wanjun nodded in understanding. The name Lou Shuwan was known to many in Hangzhou, for the three Lou siblings were all quite capable in business, and combined with the family’s already considerable influence, none of them was to be taken lightly in any regard. As for her private conduct, ordinary people might gossip, but it did no good.

The Lou family had connections in both trade and officialdom. Where ordinary men played with women, Lou Shuwan played with men—and did so quite openly and unapologetically. She was extremely particular about the men she chose; many knew she kept company with men outside her marriage, yet could rarely be certain exactly who. If a man who fancied himself dashing and refined tried to take liberties with her, she would slap him soundly across the face, guarding her chastity fiercely all the same. It was said that two scholars had once tried to seduce her, gone about it the wrong way, and ended up utterly ruined and disgraced for their trouble.

That the woman’s conduct was improper was something many vaguely knew, but she took care to keep to one man at a time, and—at least in Hangzhou—to keep the matter as discreet as she could. Because her husband had married into her family and she herself was strong-willed, the scholars who admired her preferred to imagine her as a woman of lonely, noble bearing since her marriage, someone a little pitiable. But she was not the type who wished to be pitied, and instead carried herself with a certain proud aloofness that, if anything, only lent her a particular kind of beauty—or so a number of scholars preferred to see it.

“Still, this young lady of the Su family brings her husband along on every visit… and he too married into her family, didn’t he?” Ding Wanjun said softly, with a light laugh.

“When Lou Shuwan first married, didn’t she and her husband also appear everywhere together? At the start she may not have been unwilling to play the dutiful wife and mother. But with a husband of no ability, and others gossiping so much, it would have been hard for her not to grow weary of it… As for this Su lady’s husband—what’s his name again… ah, Ning Liheng. When we exchanged greetings he seemed passable enough, but after that there was hardly a word from him—perhaps even those few polite phrases had been rehearsed beforehand. Ha, I imagine in time he too won’t escape falling into the same pattern… though this Su lady, gentle as she appears, has none of that petty, provincial air about her. Her bearing is generous, her words and conduct proper, everything done with an easy, unspoken grace—she’s a woman of real talent. A woman like that, most men couldn’t hold her down, let alone one who’s married into her family…”

Long Boyuan spoke idly, offering his opinion. Ding Wanjun, in the middle of pouring tea, paused slightly. “Ning Liheng?”

“Hm?”

“You just said… the man who married in is called Ning Liheng?”

“Yes, what of it?” Long Boyuan looked at her with a smile. “Could it be Wanjun knows this man?”

“No, I don’t know him.” Ding Wanjun smiled and shook her head, and after a moment’s thought went on pouring tea. “I was just thinking of something else… for a moment the name struck me as rather fine.”

“Oh.”

Though people called Long Boyuan a scholar-merchant, he was, after all, no longer truly of that world; when he read at all, it was only classical texts, and he had nothing but scorn for the current literary scene. Ding Wanjun thought to herself that the name sounded like the sort that might belong to the author of Prelude to Water Melody or Green Jade Table—but then, recalling the man had married into another family, she dismissed the thought as impossible. Probably just the same name by coincidence.

Hangzhou was neither so small nor so large a place; if it really were the person she suspected, and he had already been here a month or two, she would not have had to wait until now to hear of it from Long Boyuan’s mouth—the other scholars and men of letters would surely have spoken of it long before this.