The Willow Pattern

Early in the morning, just after daybreak, Judge Dee walked out on the marble terrace, still clad in his night­robe. One look at the thick, impenetrable wall of yellow fog that surrounded the terrace on all three sides sufficed. This same fog had greeted him every morning for the last three weeks. It meant that there was no breeze, no change of weather and hence no chance of rain. The stricken city was facing one more suffocating day, in a hot, pestilence-laden air.

He went back inside, and pulled the terrace door shut behind him. It was hot in the large, low-ceilinged room, but he had to keep the unhealthy fog outside. Normally this room, located on the top storey of the Governor's palace, was used as banquet hall for smaller parties in summer, when the guests could enjoy the evening cool out on the marble terrace. After the emergency had been declared, and the Grand Council assigned the palace of the Metropolitan Governor to Judge Dee, the judge had decided to make this room his private headquarters. He had the four banquet tables arranged so as to form a square, and placed his own writing-desk in its centre. On the first table were put all dossiers and documents relating to the routine city administration, on the second those concerning the emergency measures, on the next the papers of the High Court, while the fourth table was littered with files and folders on the food supply. Thus he had all these docu­ments within easy reach when he sat working at his desk.

Against the back wall stood a couch and a tea table with four chairs, in the corner a simple wash-stand. Judge Dee had lived, eaten, slept and worked here, ever since he had sent his three wives and his children to the mountain villa of one of his friends and locked up his own official residence, to the south of the Imperial palace.

It was from this room that he directed the administration of the city which the Emperor had personally entrusted to him, three weeks before. Then the Emperor, the Court, the Cabinet and all national government organizations had moved to the Imperial Camp in the cool mountain plain, thirty miles from the capital. There a temporary city of tents and barracks had been constructed, and this was now the administrative centre of the huge Chinese empire. The capital, its teeming population reduced to two-thirds of the normal figure, had become an island, as it were, isolated by the Black Death that walked its streets. It was left to Judge Dee to see this city of fear through the present emergency.

In Judge Dee's improvised headquarters scores of clerks and orderlies maintained liaison between him and the more important branches of the city government he had installed in the palace. The military administration, headed jointly by Ma Joong and Chiao Tai, was located on the third floor below; the archives, assigned to Tao Gan, on the second floor, while the Municipal Chancery took up the entire ground floor of the palace, as in normal times.

An orderly came in and placed a bowl of rice and a platter of salted fish and vegetables on the tea table. Judge Dee sat down. But after he had lifted his chopsticks he realized that he had no appetite at all. He had been drafting official documents and proclamations with Tao Gan till long after midnight. The two hours of sleep thereafter had been dis­turbed by bad dreams, a fitful slumber that had left him more tired than before. His throat was sore, and he greedily drank the cup of strong, hot tea. While he was sipping his second cup, Chiao Tai came in. After he had wished the judge a good morning, he poured himself a cup too, and said: