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symbols of liveliness and tools to drive away the presumed evils were carefully wrapped with long sheets of fabric and retired to storage until occasion would call on their use again
.
    Could it be that Mr. Wang, who had been known far and near as a married man many times over, hadtaken another bride, this time of white skin, the daughter of his enemy?
    The other account, this one from a nephew of a butcher within the estate, claimed that ever since the Ocean Bride’s arrival, the lord’s meals had secretively taken on an aphrodisiac flavor prescribed by a famed doctor from the inner city of Peking to shore up his dwindled libido. Additional food items included daily supplies of oysters to be sucked raw with a dash of vinegar and soy sauce, four sets of mountain goat testicles simmered with ginseng roots, and blood-curd spilled from virgin pheasants weighing no more than nine lian (less than a pound)
.
    Another more serene and soothing account originated from Colonel Winthrop’s own cobbler, who had a widowed aunt serving as an
amah,
a tea lady, to Wang Dan’s third wife. Our
amah,
on several occasions, reported seeing the foot masseuse rubbing oil onto the Ocean Bride’s bare feet and thighs to warm her up for the coming night with Mr. Wang
.
    The above observation suffices to negate the unfounded claim that Citizen A was the object of torture and that her abduction was impinged upon her rather than a volunteer act
.
    All the above witness accounts unfortunately could aid us no further in our evidentiary exploration into the matter at heart
.
    Buchanan’s memorandum ended abruptly. The entire legation was reluctant to engage me in this subject matter or tell me what had become of Buchanan. I shunned theambassadorial staff who had long deemed me an insufferable creature lurching about their domain, overstaying my welcome, and instead I tried to befriend the kitchen staff. They were a sweaty bunch: a sous chef of Swiss descent, who after downing several shots of U.S. government issue whiskey, confessed in his Franco-English to having heard of Buchanan’s sudden discharge from legatine duty, and later his hush-hush tragic end aboard the Canton Express to Wu Hang, a central city of rebels and warlords, with assassins still at large and unpursued. I aimed to cajole the chef for further disclosure, but the single malt had kicked in and all he could do was cry and talk of his childhood spent in a Lausanne orphanage.
    The fate of my Annabelle eluded me at each step. But fate shall alter—it always does, mine and hers. Alive or ghostly, the myth and the mythology were to unveil themselves within that forbidden life awaiting me. All these entanglements are but precursors of what is to befall me.

13
    That day of my entrance into the royal palace, I was met by the High Prince Yun, the birth father of the emperor, at the Gate of Valor. Prince Yun was a man of average height, with a pair of bushy, slanting eyebrows hanging over long slender eyes. After pleasantries were duly exchanged, Prince Yun read me a lengthy royal decree of things that were to come my way. Among the listings, I was to receive the fourth highest rank of officialdom among the Court personage, allowing me the privilege to ride on a four-manned sedan and be gifted with an apartment within the palace grounds. The offerings were long and tediously delivered, detailing such trivialities as the meals and petty household upkeep privileges.
    Though the outside world was only a wall away, the isolation seemed complete upon the closing of the tall iron door. A sense of suffocation and longing overwhelmed me. This must be what a convict would feel facing the mighty facade of his destiny.
    Eunuchs draped over my shoulders an embroidered silk robe in the color of blue, with elaborate piping and patterns of dragons and phoenixes, and they put upon my head a hat with a peacock-feather plume: symbols of my rank. Henceforth I ascended into a four-man sedan. The foursome