Chapter 14

At the residence of the Deputy Prefect of Ningxing, the lamps and candles were all lit and the underfloor heating was gradually warming; guest and host were resting in a small hall off to the side of the study. The furnishings were antique and fresh, the hanging scrolls of calligraphy and painting few, potted flowers and green plants used instead to set off the whitewashed walls — an air, rather, of the leisured and well-to-do.

The servants, having brought tea and refreshments, withdrew in silence, leaving in the room only Liu Su — Deputy Prefect of Ningxing, newly come to the post just last year — his mentor Tong Duo, who had retired and gone home from office, and Tong Duo's third son, Tong Shipei, just turned nineteen.

"Young Fangze did excellently in this prefectural exam — my teacher's hard travels home to look after him were not in vain. Only, I hear His Majesty has already personally named the Hanlin Academician Recipient of Edicts, His Honor Zeng Xuandu, as chief examiner for this departmental exam; His Honor Zeng is a close minister of His Majesty's and favors rare, obscure parallel prose in composition, so young Fangze had best spend this month studying more of the poetry and rhapsodies of the Six Dynasties to be sure of himself." At Liu Su's elbow lay the Education Office's report of the posted prefectural-exam results for Ningxing; with the Prefect now gravely ill, Liu Su had just received the edict to act in his stead for the time being, and a matter of this weight had to pass through his hands.

"You're not to praise him." Tong Duo was around sixty, yet his hair and beard were wholly white, his dress plain and unadorned, his bearing deep and still as a mountain; he seemed unsatisfied with the result. "He's been overpraised since he was small — praised into what he is today, so that the least little success and he's floating off, no idea where his own feet are. When all's said, he's no more than second place in a prefectural exam."

Liu Su had been Tong Duo's disciple more than twenty years, always on close terms and knowing his teacher's temper well; now he couldn't help laughing. "That's not what my teacher said when he first saw the posted results."

"It's a good thing I've had Elder Brother Liu to put in a word for me these days in Yunzhong." Tong Shipei's handsome face had all a young man's spirited dash, and always wore a smile that came from the heart, his voice tending to lift at the end when he spoke. "Otherwise, with my father lecturing me three times a day at every meal, I'd have gone into the exam so frightened I could never have answered well enough for a result like this."

Liu Su knew how dearly Tong Duo loved this son; sure enough, hearing him tease like this, his ever-stern teacher wasn't angered but shook his head with a rueful smile. "With such a flippant manner, how is he to serve at court? He'll likely undo all the honor I've earned. Well, never mind, never mind — I'll be closing my eyes for good before long anyway; let him play the fool as he likes..."

"If my teacher says such things, don't blame your student for contradicting you. Young Fangze has been clever from a small child — even Chan Master Zongding of the Xiangguo Temple once praised him as one of 'wise and creative nature' — and with my teacher's own instruction by word and example besides, a man of such character and family learning, entering the court as an official, is surely bound to be a great vessel of the state in time." Liu Su had read Tong Shipei's policy essay, and at nineteen he himself might not have matched it; these words too came from the heart, with nothing feigned about them.

Tong Duo thought his youngest son clever too, but decided not to praise him to his face, and only changed the subject: "His learning is a good deal short of this exam's top graduate, mind."

"This exam's top graduate — why do I feel his name rings a bell?" Hearing his father bring it up, Tong Shipei picked up the report at Liu Su's elbow. "Zhuo Siheng... I feel I've heard it somewhere?"

Liu Su and Tong Duo exchanged a smiling glance, and after a sip of tea Liu Su said slowly, "A few years back, when I returned to the capital to report on my post and called on my teacher — weren't you there too? I spoke of a talented young scholar turning up in remote, bitter-cold Shuozhou, of all places; it was this very man I meant. My teacher too felt back then that the boy answered with real breadth of mind and force of brush. Only, after my term was up and I came back to the capital, I watched two departmental exams and never saw him — I thought he was probably just another flash in the pan. Who'd have guessed I'd see him again on the prefectural roll here in my Ningxing post? Talent will out, sure enough — a bright pearl shining in the dark." His feelings were rather mixed: glad that his eye had proved keen after all, and vexed that so fine a talent had only come to sit the exam now, and hadn't racked up credit for him back during his tenure at the Shuozhou Education Office.

"So that's how it is!" Tong Shipei clapped his hands and laughed. "Then losing to this fellow isn't so hard to swallow after all — he's a talent both Elder Brother Liu and my father think well of, when it comes down to it."

Tong Duo set his face and said sternly, "That young man studied without let-up from childhood in a land of wind and snow beyond the frontier, while you had fine clothes, rich food and famous masters to guide you here in the capital — how are the two of you to be compared? Go and rest now. Tomorrow, following your Elder Brother Liu's advice, read some Han and Six Dynasties poetry and rhapsody; and in a couple of days, before you set off back to the capital, I'll examine you on your studies myself."

Hearing his father say this, Tong Shipei was neither cowed nor afraid, and agreed with the same brimming smile, taking his leave of the two and departing with a light step.

With only Liu Su and Tong Duo left in the room, the mood turned somewhat grave. Watching his son's departing figure, Tong Duo let a trace of both comfort and worry show on his face at last, and sighed. "There's no telling what court and country will look like by the time Fangze enters office..."

"Why does my teacher say such a thing?" Hearing this, Liu Su sensed his teacher was not optimistic about the court's future.

"These past couple of years His Majesty has been well pleased with the new men rising into court through the examinations, and has given them heavy use." Tong Duo spoke with weight. "Last year's top graduate spent only a year in the Hanlin Academy before being sent out as patrol inspector of Dengtai Commandery in Junzhou — a key post with a direct line to the throne's ear. Several from the year before have been promoted too... And do you know their background?"

Liu Su had come up as an education official, and knew a fair amount about most of those who'd passed high on the golden roll these years. Casting his mind briefly over the third rank of jinshi from the ninth year of Zhenyuan, he suddenly recalled that one of them had come up through his own Ningxing Prefecture, and understood at once what this was about, answering low: "They're all descendants of the officials condemned in the treasonous-heir case..."

"Just so. And this top graduate in your hand now is another such." Tong Duo pointed to Zhuo Siheng's name. "His grandfather was Zhuo Wenjun — the treasonous heir's Supervisor of the Household of the Heir Apparent, and the one Jingzong personally named first among the 'Eight Disgraced Officials' in the treasonous-heir case."

Liu Su was taken aback, and when he looked at the name again, to his admiration was added a trace of something deeper. "A deep line of family learning — can it truly keep the sons and grandsons from letting their soaring ambitions fall..."

"At the start of his reign His Majesty granted these families a general amnesty; they weren't allowed to return, but these children have every one turned out well, it now seems. For the state, that is both a good thing and a bad one..."

Tong Duo's voice, as it sank, took on an aged hoarseness, and he coughed a couple of times; Liu Su rose at once to pour and bring his teacher tea, and only when the old man's color had improved a little did he speak. "I understand my teacher's meaning. You fear that these descendants of the treasonous heir's old associates may return to court bearing thoughts of revenge, stirring up factional strife and turmoil and leaving the administration unsettled."

Seeing that his student had grown seasoned and far-sighted, Tong Duo felt much easier at heart, and his voice was no longer so thin. "What bitter suffering these children have been through, you and I both know full well; whether they were wronged is hard to raise again now, but there can't but be a grievance in their hearts. And retired though I am, I see that the sons of the old great houses at court mostly lean on hereditary privilege, and few among them could stand comparison with these plainly-dressed men returning to court — wealth and rank do sap a man's will in the end... Yuanhui, tell your teacher the truth: looking at the Zhuo boy's essay and my youngest son's, can you really see no gap between them?"

Retired though he was, his teacher still saw through the affairs of court and country as clearly as watching a fire; Liu Su both revered and feared him. That question, though, he didn't know how to answer for the moment. With his own seniority, having knocked about the Education Office so long, how could he fail to see it? Zhuo Siheng's essay was lofty in conception and brilliant in argument, clear in its reasoning and drawing besides on wide learning, threading the classics and allusions through it — how could most others match it? But seeing that his teacher now had only this one son left at his knee, and was speaking such words of foreboding, his heart was wrung, and he wouldn't open his mouth.

"You're bound to see it — you just don't want to say it and wound the face of this lonely old man... It's no fault of Fangze's either... it's all my fault... my own fault..."

"Why must my teacher speak so..."

Tong Duo shook his head and waved a hand, cutting off Liu Su's consolation, and went on regardless. "I had three sons at my knee once; in the old days my colleagues all envied me my flourishing line... Fangze's two elder brothers above all — in two successive palace examinations both won His Majesty's commendation: Fanglie fifth in the second rank, Fangzhi ninth in the second rank... But the two of them died young, one after the other. Heaven had no pity, and would not spare me from burying my own sons — and what could I do..."

"Fangze was the youngest, and I doted on him; I never pushed him to study and pursue a degree. I only thought that, with two capable elder brothers, what harm if he was a little idle, enjoyed the ease his family's privilege afforded, and passed his life as a man of leisure and means? Now both his brothers have died young, and he alone is left at my knee, so I've no choice but to drum it into him to study and better himself. Clever though he is, in the end his nature has been spoiled by me into an easygoing, go-as-you-please thing. I see the court growing ever more treacherous and unpredictable, His Majesty's mind hard to read — if the two factions come to blows, how is he to hold his own in the midst of it? And if he has no degree, then after I'm gone there'll be no one to stand at his side and grant him a measure of peace and ease; he'll have only himself to rely on... To fail to plan far ahead for one's child — that is the parents' fault. It's all my doing..."

At that, driven by grief, Tong Duo fell into another violent fit of coughing; Liu Su, tears already in his eyes, brought water and rubbed his back, for all the world like a son.

It was a long while before Tong Duo grew calm. Then Liu Su moved before his teacher, made a deep bow and knelt, and said clearly, "My teacher need not worry. Fangze is as a younger brother to me; his troubles tomorrow are my cares today, and from now on I'll look after him exactly as I would my own blood brother."

Tong Duo bent to raise Liu Su up, and the two of them sighed together again a while. The night cold froze to ice, and out in the courtyard beyond the hall the snow was already flying thick.

Sheets of snowflakes melted against Tong Shipei's slightly lowered, sorrowful brows and eyes, wetting his long lashes. He stood quietly outside the door, lifting his gaze toward the deep, mysterious emptiness above — the very place from which the snow was now silently falling...

The snow fell a whole night through. When the examination compound posted the results the next day, fine grains of sleet still danced merrily in the north wind; many scholars, seeing the prefectural roll, danced and waved about along with them, while others hung their heads in dejection, swayed where they stood, and dragged their husks away as if their souls had left them.

Zhuo Siheng had eaten and drunk his fill the night before and slept soundly; he rose early and even read a while. He'd been a little on edge at first, but seeing Xiheng's hand in the copied books — upright and correct, with much of their father's manner to it — his heart suddenly stilled, his stray thoughts gone, and he didn't set out until about the hour the results would be posted.

By the time he came treading through the snow and reached the examination compound, the prefectural roll was already up and heads were packed thick; many had been waiting there since early, unable to sit or stand still, and now some servants and attendants and the like were running about shouting, "He's passed! My young master's passed!" — hurrying to the carriages parked nearby to bring the good news.

For a moment Zhuo Siheng couldn't squeeze in, but luckily he was tall, and craning his neck to look, whose name should he see at the head of the roll but his own?

Top graduate: Zhuo Siheng, Ningshuo Commandery.

Not bad, not bad. He'd once been the top gaokao scorer in his province, so he'd seen this kind of scene before; the Ningxing prefectural exam, though sat jointly by the scholars of the four northern prefectures plus Ningxing, was in the end much like a within-province gaokao. It was only the first hurdle, the prefectural exam — but "top graduate" was not an honor every man who passed could claim, and now that he'd seized such a distinction, he truly wished his parents and the rest of the family could be at his side to share the joy of this moment.

Zhuo Siheng had thought that, having been through such glory before, he'd be quite calm; but still his heartbeat quickened and his palms went hot, and all at once the freezing cold wasn't cold at all. Elated at having proven himself, he could almost have charged straight up to the golden hall then and there, grabbed the old emperor by the collar and made him set the questions right away — while he was hot, he could knock out a couple more!

By now the surging crowd had, without his noticing, pushed him — flush with ambition — right up to the front of the roll, where the scholars had already been buzzing with talk for a good while.

"This top graduate is a complete unknown, and he's not from the prefectural school either..."

"I've never heard of the man..."

"Does anyone know this top graduate? Could he be some family's home-taught son?"

One voice was the loudest, and it sounded oddly familiar; coming back to himself out of his elation, Zhuo Siheng looked over and found it was none other than the scholar who'd jeered at him in the Dongwang Tower the day he'd entered Yunzhong, the Northern Capital, for the exam.

In high spirits, Zhuo Siheng was suddenly seized by a playful impulse; he turned around abruptly and, with a smile, said in mock mystery, "This top graduate Zhuo — I know him. He's no man."

Everyone before the roll was startled, all their eyes converging on this fellow with the guileless smile; some had already begun to whisper, and one, thoroughly disdainful, rebuked him — the Master did not speak of prodigies, feats of strength, disorders or spirits.

"Then what... is he?" the scholar who'd insulted him before couldn't help asking.

"Him? Why — he's a great black bear crawled out of a mountain gully!"

With that, in the best of moods, Zhuo Siheng paid no more heed to the various looks around him and strode off, head high.