Chapter 22

The whole way, the two young men lay limp in the cabin in a stupor, not a word between them. There were plenty of dried fruits and pastries Fan Yong had bought and readied in the carriage, but Zhuo Siheng felt only a scalding in his stomach, without the least appetite.

After swaying who knew how long, the carriage finally stopped. Fan Xiliang opened his eyes a crack and seemed to try hard to stand, but failed in the end; it was Fan Yong who helped him down. Fan Yong turned back and said to Zhuo Siheng, "Young Master Zhuo, we've reached our mansion. Wait for me a moment — I'll see the young master back to his courtyard, then come back and carry you to the temple to rest."

Zhuo Siheng's body had given up the struggle, but his mind still had a shred of clarity; he vaguely felt something was odd, cleared his throat and asked softly, "Can you manage to support him alone? Did no one else come?"

Fan Yong sighed, seeming not to want to trouble Zhuo Siheng just then, and only told him to wait. But the doubt in Zhuo Siheng's heart grew heavier and heavier, and he actually took hold of Fan Yong's shoulder and struggled down from the carriage.

It was already toward evening, dusk falling; lamps had been lit before the Fan gate, but the main gate was shut fast, only a small side door open, a servant leaning against it yawning again and again — and otherwise all was quiet.

"Last time, at the departmental exam, did no one from your mansion come to meet my cousin either?" Zhuo Siheng's mind was jolted fully awake by anger.

Fan Yong's eyes reddened at once, and he shook his head hard.

"And no one opened the main gate, to receive him before the mansion?"

Fan Yong went on shaking his head.

A wild flare of anger rose in Zhuo Siheng's breast, wrath surging to his throat; he propped Fan Xiliang's body at a slant against Fan Yong, and from somewhere found the strength to step forward two paces and shout, lifting his voice: "The eldest young master of the Fan house is back from the departmental exam — open the gate!"

The yawning servant was so startled he toppled to the ground, and once he'd grasped what was happening scrambled up and ran into the courtyard.

Zhuo Siheng's own fate had been full of hardship. Coming to this world, he'd met a pair of worthy parents, and for the first time in his life tasted the joy and contentment of a child cherished at his parents' knee; hard as the days were, he'd still borne them gladly. But Heaven willed him to be left alone and helpless, his mother and father dying one after the other, so that he had neither the tie nor the fortune to enjoy the warmth of family after an exam.

But his cousin was different.

His aunt had died, true, but his uncle was still living; and even with a new wife taken, flesh and blood was still the closest kin. Cousin Fan's father was alive and well — not to see his son off to the departmental exam, very well; not to fuss over whether his things were thoughtfully prepared, let that go too; but to keep the gate shut and not even see him on his return, with no one in the whole household to receive him — what sense was there in that?

"The eldest young master of the Fan house is back from the departmental exam — open the gate!"

The Fan mansion was no duke's or marquis's estate taking up a street to itself, a lofty gate and great courtyard; His Honor Fan held only a sixth-rank office, so across the street from the residence and off to its side were the households of other officials, and hearing these shouts, some busybody servants poked their heads out of side doors to look.

First out of the Fan side door came a man of about fifty, glib-tongued, his manner neither warm nor cold, who said he was the Fan household's steward, that no one knew the rules better than he, that the eldest young master had come home this way before too, and that outsiders who didn't know the household's rules had best not meddle. Zhuo Siheng didn't argue with him — it wasn't for this man to interrogate him — but forced out the loudest bellow he could muster just then: "The eldest young master of the Fan house is back from the departmental exam — open the gate!"

The steward saw that this man would not let up, while the onlookers only grew more numerous; by now the neighboring official family, several of them out to welcome home their own candidate, and their carriages too, had stopped and blocked the way.

Just as Zhuo Siheng was about to call out again, the main gate finally opened.

Out came a middle-aged man of forty-odd and a beautiful woman, five or six household servants following behind.

"Who are you, making an uproar at my gate!" Fan Xun said angrily.

Neither humble nor overbearing, Zhuo Siheng, for all the ache in his back, drew himself as straight as he could and said, "I am a fellow candidate of your household's eldest young master. His strength failed after the departmental exam, and I saw him home to your mansion — but the gate was not opened and no one came to receive him, so I called out."

Fan Xun's face at once flushed red with embarrassment at these words; but the richly dressed woman beside him spoke first: "Look at the fine friends our eldest young master makes. Home is home — under the Son of Heaven's own feet he's hardly the only one sitting the departmental exam; what's all this blind shouting? Haven't we opened a door and let him in? With a racket like this, is His Honor to keep his office or not?"

This, surely, was Fan Xiliang's stepmother, Madam Li. Anger rose in Zhuo Siheng, and his tone turned cold and hard, every word landing with weight: "Our dynasty has a law: scholars are vessels-to-be of the state, and going in and out of the examination compound, the main gate must be opened and the way cleared to receive them. Your household's eldest son returns from the departmental exam, and the main gate is shut fast with no one to attend him — to treat your own family's scholar so harshly runs counter to our dynasty's spirit of honoring scholars. His Honor Fan serves at court too; does he then hold with this notion of indulging a household's neglect of its eldest son and of a man of letters? And the examination compound itself opens its main gate to receive scholars — is the house-law of the Fan mansion, then, greater than the law of the state?"

These days of the departmental exam had ground half the life out of Zhuo Siheng; his cheeks were sunken, his face a greenish white, and when his naturally open, handsome brows and eyes gave off a cold air through his anger, there was even in it the keen edge and temper of a young man who commands awe without wrath, every ringing word carrying the might of a thunderclap.

The servants peeping from all around, seeing this scene and hearing this reasoning, were all secretly filled with admiration, clicking their tongues at the Fan household's people, already working out how they'd report it to their own masters and mistresses. Only there was no telling what those in the carriages that had stopped but not returned to their own gates made of hearing all this.

Madam Li, in a towering rage, was about to speak again, but was stopped by Fan Xun, whose face went red and then white by turns: "Enough! Get someone to help the young master into the house!"

Only then did several servants come up to support Fan Xiliang inside.

Fan Xiliang had been roused a little too by Zhuo Siheng's shouting, and now there was a glimmer of light in his eyes; but his feet still could not walk, and he only looked at Zhuo Siheng in silence, a thousand words all held in his gaze.

Fan Xun prized face above all, and having lost every scrap of it under this strange scholar's fierce, itemized argument, could only, in his haste, round on Madam Li beside him to patch things up: "Stupid woman! I told you to go and bring Xiliang home, and you didn't go — shaming me like this! How am I to face my colleagues from now on!"

Madam Li's reaction to these words was very quick; covering her face with a handkerchief, she actually began to weep. "My lord, I'm only a woman of the inner chambers — how would I know the hours of the examinations? I sent a carriage to meet him long ago; perhaps it missed him on the way, who can say. Our eldest young master has always had a mind of his own — he arranged his own carriage and didn't say a word to me, leaving me, the stepmother, in the wrong whichever way I turn. He won't trust me, won't wait even a moment for the household's carriage, and now he's tricked an outsider into coming to put me to shame — where am I to find any justice in it?"

Zhuo Siheng was thankful that Fan Xiliang had already been helped inside and hadn't heard this speech. He himself felt as though that earlier tirade had drained him of all his strength; he heard her out quietly before speaking: "Since a carriage was sent to meet him, then His Honor Fan had best wait here for that carriage to return, and ask the servant who went just where it missed him — lest, when the second young master sits the departmental exam one day, the road be missed again and the hour delayed."

Fan Xun's beard fairly trembled; he shouted for the gate to be shut and the guest seen off. The carriage at the gate was led away too, and when Fan Yong reported that the young master had bidden him see the guest home, he too was shoved in through the mansion gate.

The side doors of the households round about closed one by one, the servants left, the carriages drove back to their own mansions, and the sky went fully dark.

Zhuo Siheng stood all alone before the shut gate of the Fan mansion. He meant to leave on his own and ask whether there was an inn nearby where he could put up for the night; but after a few swaying steps the world spun around him, his strength utterly spent, and he pitched to the ground.

The brisk sound of horse-hooves seemed to reach the ear pressed against the ground, but Zhuo Siheng hadn't even the strength to lift his eyes, and passed out completely.

When he woke again he had no idea what day or hour it was; roused by the ache all through his body, Zhuo Siheng opened his eyes, and the sight that swam from blur into focus was an utterly unfamiliar one.

Soft apricot-yellow bed-curtains — soft to the eye — screened the frame of a wooden bed carved all over with auspicious patterns; his whole body seemed sunk into gentle fur, but reaching out to feel it, it was an extremely soft mattress.

Zhuo Siheng sat bolt upright, setting off aches all over his body.

The door opened — someone, hearing the movement, had come in to check. Zhuo Siheng saw that the one who entered was a girl of about Ciheng's age, though she walked far more steadily than his live-rabbit of a third sister; unstartled to see him awake, she at once poured him water and, with a slight bow, said, "Master Zhuo, I hope you are well. Our master, on the way home from meeting our young master after the departmental exam, saw you in difficulty and brought you back to rest in a guest room. Please rest for now and don't move about; I'll go at once to tell the master you've woken."

Zhuo Siheng wanted to thank her for the water she'd handed him and ask where this was and who had rescued him, but the girl, having spoken, left briskly, giving him not the slightest chance to say a word.

In a little while the door opened again, and this time the one who entered was an old man, his hair and beard all white. Zhuo Siheng found him somewhat familiar, and searching his memory more carefully, suddenly realized that the man before him was none other than the old man who'd come down from the carriage before the compound to meet Tong Shipei.

He at once made to get out of bed and pay the greeting due from a junior, but had barely thrown back the covers when the old man stopped him with a smile: "This is no time for elaborate courtesies. You're a sick man; there's no harm in speaking as you rest."

"Sir, forgive my discourtesy." Seeing the old man's resolve, Zhuo Siheng could only fall in with his host's wishes. "I saw you on the day the departmental exam ended, but never thought I'd trouble you like this."

Zhuo Siheng laid out fully how he'd come to know Tong Shipei and the help he'd given him, and thanked the old man again; the other seemed unsurprised, and only smiled and said that he was Tong Shipei's father, an old man who couldn't set his mind at ease over his youngest son's exam — he hoped Zhuo Siheng wouldn't laugh at him.

Zhuo Siheng was a little surprised — Tong Duo looked quite old, perhaps in his sixties, while Tong Shipei was a year younger than himself; then he thought that perhaps this was a son born to him late in life, in which case such solicitude was possible enough.

Tong Shipei's father had a kindly smile and a gentle voice. "Top Graduate Zhuo, you ran a high fever the night you were brought back; luckily, after the physician saw you he said it was only an exterior-and-interior depletion from exhaustion and collapse. We fed you medicine a few times while you were unconscious — do you feel any better now?"

Zhuo Siheng hadn't known he'd actually fallen ill; staying at another's mansion and troubling them to call a physician besides — it was truly too discourteous. He made to get out of bed and apologize again, and again was stopped.

"That good-for-nothing son of mine is still asleep at the moment — worn until he's half a simpleton. Otherwise I'd have had him come see you, to spare you bowing one moment and thanking the next before an elder." Tong Duo teased Zhuo Siheng with a smile, his tone still exceedingly mild. "You needn't thank me — it may be I who ought to thank you. It shames me to say it: I've doted on my youngest, and so he's the most unruly and hard to tame, and these two months, when I set him to study, he'd run off out instead; yet who'd have thought that when I set him a topic, his composition had come along? I asked, and only then learned that since getting to know you, the two of you often talked over the principles of composition, and he'd benefited no little from it."

"Brother Fangze lent me a good many rare printed books too — I'm grateful for that as well." This was no mere courtesy from Zhuo Siheng but came from the heart; yet he felt that Tong Duo's gaze at him was very deep, his smile gradually settling into stillness.

"That my son has a friend like you — of a deep scholarly line and fine character — is his good fortune." After a moment's silence Tong Duo spoke slowly, but his tone seemed long and far-off. "You needn't be surprised that I know of your family's affairs; nor was it my son who told me. Top Graduate Zhuo, that day when you angrily rebuked the absurdity of the Fan household, I heard it, and in my daze it was as if I'd gone back to the first year of Hongyou, before I'd retired."

Zhuo Siheng could not but be startled: the old man before him not only knew his identity, but the first year of Hongyou he spoke of was the very year Emperor Jingzong had charged the treasonous heir with crimes and brought condemnation on his whole family.

Tong Duo looked at him with a gaze deeper and harder to read than mere significance, and said, "On that day I was summoned to the Tianzhang Hall to be consulted on affairs of state, and passing outside the hall, I once heard a rebuke in just such a tone of suppressed anger, as resolute and cold, as yours two days ago — that was your grandfather, loudly calling Emperor Jingzong to account outside the hall."

Not only Zhuo Siheng's body but his mind and heart trembled along with it a few times.

"He had knelt three days, and not eaten a single meal; his voice was hoarse and hard to make out, his straight-kneeling body trembling without cease — but that voice was like a great bell, every note striking upon my heart." Tong Duo's aged frame was dragged back to those years by the memory; his lightly closed eyes opened again, and looked back at Zhuo Siheng, who was too shocked to speak. "That day you were the very image of him. Sitting in my carriage, I felt as if I'd gone back and was standing dumbly outside the Tianzhang Hall in the first year of Hongyou."

"Uncle Tong, you are..." Zhuo Siheng did not remember his father ever mentioning any colleague surnamed Tong connected with the events of that time.

Tong Duo only waved a hand. "I'm nothing but a useless old man, retired from office... In those years I never spoke up in fairness for your family — but neither did I throw stones at a man down a well. You needn't feel any gratitude or wariness toward me or my house; it's only that an old man, well on in years, seeing an old friend's child turn out so well, is moved to a sigh, that's all. You're a good child, and you'll surely never disgrace the great name of your grandfather and your father. This much I can declare today: the revival of the Zhuo family is at hand."