Several days after the fire at Bowang had died out, Cheng Yu (程昱) of Xudu (許都) placed a single envelope upon his desk.

The outer face of the envelope was blank. Neither recipient nor sender had yet been written. Inside it lay a single thick sheet of paper, folded. Upon one side of that sheet, Cheng Yu’s right hand had been writing since morning, one line at a time.

The writing of the letter was a mother’s writing. More precisely, a stranger’s writing imitating the mother’s hand. Over the past month Cheng Yu had studied Lady Xu’s (徐母) letters carefully — the angle at which her brush leaned to the left, a small pause at the end of the third stroke, her habit of stretching the breath before the name by one longer drag. Cheng Yu’s right hand had taken each of those habits into his own, one at a time.

Cheng Yu’s purpose was simple: to separate Xu Shu (徐庶) from Liu Bei (劉備). After Cao Ren’s (曹仁) defeat at Bowang in the north, the three characters of Xu Shu’s name had become, on Cao Cao’s (曹操) desk, a heavier name again. The single line in the corner of Cao Ren’s report — “Xinye has gained a new Commander-Counselor” — had dropped one measure deeper beneath the empty space of the character 劉 on the tenth of the ten slips on Cao Cao’s morning wall.

Cao Cao had given Cheng Yu the order himself. “Zhongde (仲德). Bring Xu Shu over. Only, not by a single rough word.” The command was firm, and inside that firmness lay a contradiction. Do not bring him by a rough word — yet the method was laid in Cheng Yu’s own hand.

Cheng Yu had chosen one of two paths. First, he had brought Lady Xu courteously to a study-room at Xudu. That was the seat already treated in Book 4 Day 118. The lady was of a great house, well versed in calligraphy, painting, and the classics. Upon receiving Cao Cao’s letter in his own hand, she had read the inner meaning at a single reading. If I do not go, the yard before the cottage will be troubled; if I go, the road before my son will be a measure clouded. She chose to bear, for a while, the latter. After reaching Xudu, she wrote no character for a week. Then, one evening, she took up the brush and wrote a single letter. A true letter, to her son. Its last line ran: Your mother’s stride may, now, go one stride ahead of your stride.

Cao Cao of Book 4 Day 118 had received that true letter and kept long silent. Then he said, low, to Cheng Yu: Send this down to Xinye just as it is. Let not a stroke of our hand be laid upon it. Cheng Yu had received with clasped hands. That letter went south as it was.

And today’s Book 5 Day 132 is the tale of the one sheet that followed behind it.

Even after Cao Cao sent the true letter down unaltered, an empty envelope still sat on Cheng Yu’s desk. Cheng Yu had already taken his lord’s order. No rough words. But if the mother’s true letter alone did not bring the son, the additional sheet would be Cheng Yu’s own work. He wrote that sheet himself, in the lady’s hand. Every brush-stroke resembled the lady’s body of writing, but the mind behind the strokes was not hers.

The content of Cheng Yu’s forged letter was more urgent. Your mother’s illness has grown deep. Come to Xudu at once, without delay. A line was added. Your mother’s stride has already begun to go ahead of your stride.

Cheng Yu placed the letter into the envelope and laid a hand upon the back of the last few characters. His right hand trembled faintly. As a counselor he had done this kind of work many times. This letter was only one more among them. And yet, to imitate a mother’s hand and bend the stride of the son even a little was not among those many times. The trembling of his right hand was for that one time.

He pressed the trembling down. He closed the envelope. He wrote the recipient on its outer face.

To Xu Yuanzhi (徐元直) at Xinye.

That evening, Cheng Yu sent two messengers separately. The true letter had already gone down by a kinsman of the lady’s own. The forged letter he entrusted to a merchant who had passed Cao Cao’s checkpoint. The merchant did not know what letter he carried. The four characters on the outside of the envelope were the whole of his task.

Two letters — one from a mother’s true hand, one from an imitating hand — travelled the same southern road, one behind the other. When the two reached together the hand of one man in the guest hall at Xinye, how would he read them? Cheng Yu could not sleep tonight before that question.

Beyond the western window of Xudu, a single early-spring star tilted quietly toward the south. That south was the very south down which the true sheet and the imitating sheet had both gone.

—

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