novelAbuy Chapter 041: Jiazhou Girl
Chapter 041: Jiazhou Girl
On the 22nd day of the fourth month of the 12th year of Xing, at the third quarter of the hour of Chou.
It was still dark when Qin Keqing came out through the small gate of the side courtyard of the Prince of Puan's mansion.
She changed into coarse cloth clothes, wrapped her hair with an indigo cloth, and carried a bamboo basket.
The bamboo basket contained starched and washed clothes.
On the surface, she was delivering work to the laundry shop in the west of the city for a servant of the Prince's mansion, but in reality, there was a roll of bamboo paper as thin as a cicada's wing under the clothes basket, on which three lines of words were written in tiny regular script.
Last night, after the banquet at Huining Palace, Zhao Bocong was summoned to the warm pavilion by Zhao Gou.
With Qin Hui present, Prince Puan escaped unscathed.
This message must be delivered to the dock before dawn.
Li Bao's ship will dock at Chenshi (7-9 AM) today, and the sailors on board will stay at the dock for half an hour as is customary.
If we miss this ship, the news will likely linger in Lin'an for another three days.
The alley was quiet, with only the distant sound of the night watchman's clapper.
Qin Keqing walked very fast, her footsteps making almost no sound on the bluestone slabs.
She grew up in that environment and from the age of twelve, she learned how to walk through the corridors at night without disturbing any of the servants on night duty.
She knows how to tell which flagstones will feel loose when you step on them, and which wooden stairs will not creak when you step on a particular step.
They knew to pause at the corner for a moment and wait for the patrolling servants to walk away, and they knew how to use the gentlest smile and the most submissive posture to make the questioner think they were being suspicious when they were discovered.
She used these skills for seven years without ever making a mistake.
But today, when she reached the middle of the Imperial Street, she saw someone who shouldn't have been there at that time.
The lantern at the back gate of the Qin residence was lit.
It wasn't the small lantern used for night watch; the night watch lantern was made of yellow paper and its light was dim.
The lanterns lit now are made of white gauze with copper bases. They are the kind that are only lit when a master of the mansion goes out, and only when that person returns.
Someone was entering and leaving the Qin residence late at night, and this person was of considerable status.
Qin Keqing slipped into the shadows of the alley wall, placed the bamboo basket at her feet, pressed her back against the damp, cold wall, and stared motionlessly toward the back gate of the Qin residence.
The door opened.
The man who came out was wearing a dark blue robe, without an official belt around his waist, but Qin Keqing recognized him at a glance.
Zheng Gangzhong, the Naval Commander of the Privy Council, was a third-rank official in charge of the dispatch of warships along the Huainan East Route.
He signed the joint memorial impeaching Yue Fei for abusing his military power in the twelfth month of the eleventh year of Shaoxing, making him one of Qin Hui's most trusted pawns in the Privy Council.
Zheng Gangzhong did not ride in a sedan chair, but only brought one attendant. The two of them turned into the back alley one after the other and disappeared into the darkness.
Qin Keqing stood by the wall for a moment, then bent down, picked up the bamboo basket, and continued walking towards the dock.
She did not return to the Prince's residence to report the news, because it was too late.
Zheng Gangzhong's late-night visits to the Qin residence could only mean one thing: Qin Hui was about to take action against the Zhenjiang navy, and that action was about to be taken.
At 2:45 AM, at Lin'an Wharf.
A river breeze carrying the smell of fish wafted over, and groups of porters had already gathered at the dock, squatting by the pier smoking their pipes.
The cargo ship that had come from the direction of Zhenjiang had just docked. The sailor in the short brown shirt at the bow was looking towards the shore. His gaze swept around the dock and finally landed on a porter. He paused for a moment and then looked away.
Qin Keqing stood under a willow tree upstream from the dock, a bamboo basket slung over her arm. She didn't directly meet with the sailors; she was waiting to confirm one thing: whether there were any unfamiliar faces on the dock.
She spent half an incense stick's time looking around three times, but there was no one there.
Then she walked toward the porter.
"Excuse me, sir, could you lend me a hand?"
She placed the bamboo basket by the pier, and the porter put down his pipe and came over.
Qin Keqing bent down and took out a stack of washed clothes from the bamboo basket, with a roll of bamboo paper underneath.
As she handed the clothes to the porter, the bamboo paper had already silently slipped into the coarse cloth sack draped over his shoulder.
"Deliver it to Li's Pharmacy in Zhenjiang. Give it to Miss Jinbao."
The porter nodded, took the clothes, and carried them onto the pier.
The entire process takes no more than ten breaths.
Qin Keqing turned and left the dock with her half-empty bamboo basket in her hand. When she reached the alley entrance, she paused for a moment.
A notice was posted on the alley wall, bearing the seal of the Provincial Judicial Commissioner, the ink still fresh.
The notice read: A body has been found floating in the moat. The person is about thirty years old and dressed in gray. It is suspected that the person fell while drunk. Anyone who knows the identity of the body is asked to report to the Criminal Investigation Department for a reward.
Qin Keqing looked at the words "slipped up after drinking" without any extra expression in her eyes.
She knew how the man in gray died, and could roughly deduce why Qin Hui had killed his own informant before the purge.
Qin Hui didn't trust any chess pieces, didn't think there was any need to keep used pieces, and didn't like people to know how many pieces he had hidden in his possession.
She looked away and gazed towards the west of the city.
There is still a living line there, the deputy commander of the Forbidden Army.
After the gray-clad man died, the informants he had directly contacted were successively cut off from the Qin family, but the deputy commander of the Imperial Guard was still a mole in the stable at the west post station of the city.
This person did not know Qin Keqing's identity, only recognized copper coins, and did not know that his name was written in the account book of Shunhe Tea House.
He and she were nodes at different levels within the intelligence network; Qin Hui missed the second level when he was cleaning out the first.
Qin Keqing hesitated for only a moment before turning around and walking back.
She had to get back to the Prince of Puan's mansion before the end of the morning, and then, as a maid returning from washing clothes and delivering goods, pass through the side gate of the mansion again so that the servants on night duty could see her coming back from outside.
The safest disguise is to maintain a stable and repetitive routine every day.
Only after everyone got used to her routine of washing clothes, delivering goods, and returning home was she able to accomplish those extraordinary things in every seemingly ordinary outing.
At the end of the hour of Mao (5-7 AM), when Qin Keqing stepped through the side gate of the Prince of Puan's mansion, the first wisp of smoke was just rising from the chimney of the kitchen.
The old doorman on night duty was dozing off against the doorframe. Hearing footsteps, he opened his eyes, saw it was her, and then closed them again.
"Good morning, Miss Qin." He mumbled a reply.
"Good morning." Qin Keqing's voice was very soft and gentle, and you could not tell that she had already dressed up and walked through almost the entire Lin'an.
She walked through the corridor toward the side courtyard, and paused for a moment as she passed the door of the study in the main courtyard.
The study door was ajar, and the faint sound of papers turning could be heard from inside.
Zhao Bozong was still awake; he was waiting for her to return. Perhaps he had been waiting all night.
Qin Keqing stood under the eaves, her fingers loosening and tightening their grip on the bamboo basket handle.
She knew that all she had to do was push open that door and tell him—the Zhenjiang Navy was in imminent danger.
Today, she personally confirmed the fact that Zheng Gangzhong and Qin Hui had a secret meeting late at night, and she personally witnessed the omen of the impending naval mobilization order.
But she had to act alone.
She did not explain why she happened to bump into Zheng Gangzhong outside the Qin residence, why her surveillance methods were so sophisticated, or why she could recognize the Privy Council official's title at a glance.
Similarly, Zhao Bocong did not pursue the matter further.
This made Qin Keqing feel that the person in front of her was silently leaving a door crack of unknown width for her, waiting for her to push it open one day in the future.
Perhaps the price she paid for transforming from a girl from Jiaozhou into a strategist in Lin'an was that she could never tell a complete truth.