The Emperor’s Scribe
The Emperor’s Scribe
The ink was to his left, a stack of parchment to his right, slightly behind.
Brushes were opposite the parchment, behind the ink, but in ready reach as needed.
The scribe sat, waited, watched. Listened and breathed.
A fresh sheet was in front of him. The ink had been ground earlier that day and stored tightly in its container, but now opened, also ready for use.
It was the early morning, yet darkness had not left.
A single candle lit the royal chamber, in front of the scribe, but more for meditation than illumination. For the scribe was known to write in absolute darkness with complete accuracy of form, never leaving a drop of ink where it would distract from the message he left.
The scribe was a Master.
And he waited before writing.
- — — -
As a student the scribe was often distracted, and would feel the cane of his teacher on his back. Gently, but with a sting that reminded him of the here and now.
The teacher would also leave that sting for errors in accuracy or form or a dozen dozen other infractions against the Scribe Code.
The emperor had rows of student and master scribes recording in his chamber, all the events of the royal day. The teacher would walk up and down the lines of students and masters, supervising.
Only the students would feel the sting of the cane. The master scribes were left alone.
And when the day was done, the emperor would leave. The courtiers would leave. The guards would leave. And then the scribes would stand, bow to the now-empty throne and take their exit. Teacher in front, masters following, students in line behind. Those who had been caned the most would bring up the rear, after they had carefully stacked the writings for the day in that same order that had just left. The last student would carefully put away all the parchment, ink, and brushes. The cane would fall again if anything was found out of place.
This one student was often last to leave, and so was cleaning up after the others, often last to dinner, last to bed. He felt the cane more than the others, as well as the head-shaking and clucking of the teacher’s tougue when he continued to make the same errors.
- — — -
The emperor read everything written each day, sorting through them all and selecting those which were to be stored in the archives as most accurate according to the emperor’s trained eye. He’d then pass these over to the librarian and his staff to roll and preserve in the archives.
Each day, the emperor would read late into the night, looking for something. And he found himself hurrying through the works, having sent most of the master scribes’ work to the archive and discarding the vast bulk of the students.
He hurried because he kept finding the best at the bottom of the stack.
There were drips, poor form, and wrong choice of brushes.
But the choice of characters was distinct. They gave several meanings instead of just the one which told the exact facts that had occurred in the court that day.
And the emperor would pause and study these deep into the night after the archivist and everyone else had left.
- — — -
One day, as court was held, the teacher was in a particularly foul mood. The weather was humid, hot, and everyone’s robes stuck to their skin from sweat. The teacher strode up and down the ranks dispensing his cane strokes with rapidity.
The one student was receiving more than his share, and the teacher found himself gravitating to the end of the line more frequently, delivering a cane strike, or several to that student before moving on.
That constant slight rap in that location caught the Emperor’s attention. He looked up toward that location with a stern look. The teacher was embarrassed, as his job was dependent on accurately recording the events of the royal chamber, not becoming part of them.
Swiftly moving to remove the offending student and expel him forever, he glided over to the students location in his silk slippers, taking care to not make any more noise to distract the emperor.
When he got there, the student sat still, waiting the cane again.
But a shadow crossed the student’s back. By the time the teacher reached the student, the emperor had already crossed behind that student and stopped the teacher in his tracks with a raised hand.
The emperor was reading the student’s characters over his shoulder.
For a long time, the chamber was still.
The emperor read.
The teacher, that student, and the rest of the courtiers and scribes and guards looked on in absolute quiet.
Only the birds could be heard in the courtyard outside, with the distant rustle of the trees. A cow lowed in the far distant fields.
Then the student drew a final character on his sheet.
The teacher blanched, reddened, and prepared to wield his cane, gripping it with white knuckles.
But the emperor waved him off.
The student had become the master.
- — — -
It became the master’s spot from then on. And this master would clean up his own ink and brushes and leftover parchment when he was done writing for the day.
His ink and clean parchment would go back into the stores. His brushes he would clean himself. And his writings he would take to the emperor’s private chamber and leave in a basket outside the door.
As the master left to travel back down the long hallway, the door to that chamber would slowly open, just enough for a hand to reach the scrolls in the basket and pull them inside, as the door then closed again.
- — — -
Not all days were punctual. Sometimes the scrolls only found the basket in the early morning as the light was coming in from the east down the long hallway to the emperor’s chamber.
One day, the scroll didn’t come at all.
A cleaner came to the chamber and whispered to the guard.
The guard frowned and pulled a silent cord that somewhere in the palace rang a quiet bell.
The rest of the palace began buzzing and making noises quite unlike the normal morning for a royal day.
- — — -
After his breakfast, the emperor went to his chamber, alone. It has been guarded since the cleaner had reported what he had found. No one had entered until the emperor arrived.
Striding quickly to the spot where the master wrote, he found no master. The ink was there, the brushes, and all the parchment was as clean as it had been on the shelves it came from.
The master was gone.
In his spot was a single character.
- — — -
The emperor studied that character all day, and all that night.
The business of the chamber was postponed.
No one disturbed the emperor. Not even for meals.
At last he rose and left, giving terse orders to the guard.
That next day, the parchment, ink and brushes had been removed. But a cordon made with gold thread, posted on gold and silver stanchions was placed around that character that now lay where the master used to sit.
Eventually, the emperor had that character inlaid with gold on that spot. He said that was because the ink was fading and he wished to study it longer.
- — — -
The master was never heard from or seen again. Rumors about the master floated about the palace from time to time, but riders sent to uncover the facts always returned empty-handed.
The kingdom flourished and became an empire, one of peace and rule of law. The emperor was known to be compassionate and just.
He had his throne moved to a spot near that gold inlaid character, as if to gaze on it for his own inspiration.
His children grew to be adults, and one as prince started caring for the chamber business, under the attentive ear of the emperor.
That emperor would spend the day recording the events on parchment. At the end of the day, the rest of the court would leave, followed by the scribes and cleaners, leaving the emperor to his parchment, ink, and brushes.
Often the emperor would not return to his own chamber until the early morning, and sometimes not at all.
Early one morning, a worried cleaner hurried to the guard outside the prince’s chamber. The guard pulled a cord that rang a quiet bell somewhere in the palace…
Originally published at Living Sensical Success Campus.