Chapter 35

"Xiao Ci, you tell your brother."

From childhood, Huiheng would deliberately smooth away the wrongs she'd suffered so as to spare him worry; and Xiheng's expression too seemed to want Ciheng to tell it, while Xiao Yong's slightly awkward manner made it hard to press him to speak.

Ciheng was quick-tongued and frank of heart, and was sure to lay it all out clear and plain.

Getting her big brother's word, Zhuo Ciheng felt as if pardoned, and heedless of the warning in Huiheng's eyes, gave a full account of the whole string of events after the news of Zhuo Siheng taking the zhuangyuan had reached home.

It turned out that when word came of Zhuo Siheng's success as zhuangyuan, the whole village was overjoyed; congratulations went without saying, and the village head even hosted a village feast for everyone to bask in the glory of a top graduate's honor. Officials from the neighboring townships, and even from Ningshuo City, came to the Zhuo family's little farmstead courtyard to offer congratulations, and both prefecture and local offices sent a great many congratulatory gifts. For any prefecture to produce a zhuangyuan was a great event — a political achievement! The previous Shuozhou zhuangyuan hadn't even had a home on this side; people who'd wanted to congratulate him couldn't find a door to call at. Now that they'd finally caught hold of a zhuangyuan's family living locally, for half a month running the house was full of guests coming and going, and the prefecture and county, by the custom of honoring learning, bestowed commendations; and to encourage the sons of every village to study, the education officials added no small amount of extra rewards besides.

Before Zhuo Siheng left he'd charged the steady, capable Zhuo Huiheng with running the household. She handled people and affairs with great propriety, and having received the rewards didn't hoard them away; mindful of the kindness and goodwill the elders of Xingshan Township had shown the Zhuo family, she shared out more than half among the villagers, and even sought out the village head to present a sum of the prefecture's reward silver, to fund the building of a proper schoolhouse for Xingshan Township.

Even so, the Zhuo family had overnight come into no little property — and so certain people grew envious.

That day, all at once a din of pipes and drums struck up at the gate and wouldn't stop. Huiheng thought some official from somewhere had come to congratulate them again — but it was a neighbor of the village, Xu the Second's wife, leading a great crowd; and she was, it turned out — you wouldn't know until you asked — leading a matchmaker to propose marriage!

However good Zhuo Huiheng's composure, she was still a young woman, and hearing this she was furious on the spot; but ever deep-thinking, she quietly sent Xiheng to fetch Old Huyan and Ciheng to find Fifth Aunt Zhu, while she herself, swallowing her disgust behind an outward courtesy, sparred with the lot of them.

In the end, Xu the Second's wife reckoned that now Zhuo Siheng was zhuangyuan, Huiheng ought to remember the kindness the folk of Xingshan Township had shown over the years and not be ungrateful — better she marry the woman's son to repay it. Weak in body and afflicted with an illness carried from the womb though she was, their family didn't mind; they'd even got a child ready to adopt in.

Luckily Fifth Uncle Zhu was home that day, and dragged over by Ciheng; one question and he was livid, his face iron-dark, and he planted himself in the Zhuo courtyard shielding Huiheng and roared out at them: "We village folk may not have book-learning, but we know our manners too. When your man came courting to your family back then, did he sneak over in the dark while your elders were out? After a father dies, the eldest brother stands as a father — and the brother who heads this house is still out there toiling away, and here you come dragging some mongrel matchmaker from god-knows-where, hollering your fool head off! Do you take me and my wife for anything less than the Zhuo family's elders? Tell your son to go take a piss and look at his own sorry mug in it — can't grow a beard a fingernail's-width long in two years, a pig's brains have got more twists and turns than his, cut him open and he's a plate of offal, and he fancies himself a dish worth serving? Setting his sights on my niece — has he got a death wish?"

Zhuo Ciheng recited Fifth Uncle Zhu's words word for word, and Zhuo Siheng hurried to cut her off: "Just give the gist — no reciting it verbatim." Fifth Uncle Zhu had come up through the army camp, and his curses came from the foulest place under Heaven, as filthy as filthy could be; but Ciheng imitated it vividly, tone and phrasing copied whole, so that a vein at Zhuo Siheng's temple began to throb.

Ciheng shrank her neck a little, not daring to challenge her big brother's authority on matters of upbringing, and went on: after Old Huyan arrived he too shook with rage, brows and beard trembling together, and jabbed a finger at the woman's nose, cursing his own fellow villager: "What kind of cur gets such a wicked notion, blackening our whole village's name? The Zhuo family owes us nothing — all these years since Teacher Zhuo passed, his children have gone on teaching the village young ones their letters; over the years every household's had someone learn to read, gone off to be soldiers, landed better posts and prospects — and your good-for-nothing son, who can't make anything of himself, sets his sights on Hui'er instead, comes forcing a match while her elder brother's away! Word of this gets out, and what'll people say of our village? How will our boys ever go courting in the parts around here after?"

Old Huyan's words made good sense: the whole village had received the Zhuo family's kindness. Though it was give-and-take on both sides, still, all these years Zhuo Yan and Zhuo Siheng had done good with all their hearts — and more: the father died and the son went off to sit the exams, while the sister taught the children through her illness and never once let their lessons lapse; of the prefecture's reward money, they'd given more than half to build the village a schoolhouse — the first little academy in any village in all Shuozhou! Such fine repute and goodwill, ruined by this one household that thought only of petty gain. In a moment the villagers were roused to indignation, all rounding on the Xu family's wrongdoing; and Xu the Second's wife, stripped of the swagger with which she'd bullied Miss Huiheng for having no one to speak for her, was so mortified she wanted nothing more than to drag off her matchmaker and her pipers and flee.

Since in the end it was the villagers who had wronged the Zhuo family, both Old Huyan and Fifth Uncle Zhu felt they couldn't hold their faces up, and told Xiao Yong to make Zhuo Siheng their apologies; he himself was seething with an anger he couldn't vent, and truly couldn't bring himself to recount it.

Whoever heard of going to propose to the girl herself while the head of her house was off on a distant journey! Shameless, plain and simple!

Hearing it out, Zhuo Siheng told himself over and over that he mustn't lose his temper in front of his sisters and brother, mustn't lose his temper in front of his sisters and brother... chanting it three times, he finally pressed the surging fury in his heart back down to room temperature, and looked at Huiheng with an ache and a guilt, his voice unspeakably low and gentle: "It's your brother's fault. At your brother's side from now on, you'll never suffer such a wrong again."

Zhuo Yan had said that if there were a suitable young man in the village willing to make a match with their family, they'd consider it — what mattered in a marriage was character and the family's ways, and even if Zhuo Siheng one day won rank and title, no match was to be broken off for the sake of pedigree. But Huiheng's case was special, and all these years there'd been no movement on her marriage, for reasons everyone knew in their hearts. Now that he'd passed high, someone had suddenly come, while he was away, and pulled a stunt that humiliated his sister — and if word of it spread, how was his sister Huiheng to hold up her head?

Hearing her brother say this, Huiheng fought back tears of a hundred mingled feelings, and, smiling, nodded hard.

No one could ever part the brother and sisters again.

Zhuo Siheng caught sight of Xiheng's hands, clenched at some point into fists, the knuckles standing out a cold white; though his brother said nothing, at that age, seeing his own sister shamed, how could he swallow it? Not wanting Xiheng to fall into a dark spiral, Zhuo Siheng soothed him gently: "Brother, when your second sister told you to go fetch someone you did it at once without a word — that was very well done, and that's the greatest protection of all. This is just how our family should be: as long as we're of one heart, no hardship is worth fearing."

Zhuo Xiheng unclenched his hands at that, and the corners of his mouth eased at last, curving faintly upward as he nodded to Zhuo Siheng.

Zhuo Ciheng saw her brother turn to her last, and thought she was in for a scolding over her cursing just now; but her big brother beckoned her, and when she edged over uneasily, unexpectedly Zhuo Siheng clapped her on the shoulder as he would a boy, his voice very soft and slow: "You've had the hard work of looking after your second sister's health all this while — the healing arts you've studied are far more use than my zhuangyuan's learning. Don't hold back in protecting your family for being born a girl; there's none of that 'women are lesser than men' talk in this house of ours."

Ciheng had never cried twice in one day, but hearing this she broke her own record and hugged her big brother's arm again, tears pattering down a second time.

It was their own home, after all; Zhuo Siheng motioned Huiheng and Xiheng over too, and the three of them gathered close around their eldest brother — just standing there, he could set everyone's heart at ease.

Being the head of a family was really not easy.

Huiheng was gentle without, firm within, keen of mind: he had to give her a full sense of shelter and of being needed, so she'd never fret over being a burden and sink into self-reproach and resentment;

Ciheng was bold, tough, forward and competitive: he had to encourage and guide the growth of her nature and steep her in warmth, so she could handle things without haste or temper, and yet not be hemmed in by her own disposition;

Xiheng was deep, reserved, self-restraining: he had to give him warmth to spare, teaching like a spring breeze that transforms in silence, coaxing him along and setting an example himself, so that in all things the boy's mind might open to a broader way and not knot forever deep and tangled inward.

These were all ways of caring worked out over years of living day and night with his sisters and brother.

Loving one's family, sometimes, also took method.

If the three of them could live out their lives in safety and happiness, no amount of pains was too much for him to gladly take.

Huyan Yong took all this in, moved and full of admiration. Traders like him prized reading faces and taking the measure of hearts above all, and in these years he'd learned a smattering of the two skills — enough to make his way. But brother Si was a scholar, and yet could observe and gauge and say something different to each family member, treating each one's knot at its root — a hundred times shrewder than his own so-called experience and eye. Truly it made one look again.

That night, Zhuo Siheng talked a good while more with Huyan Yong, settled him to rest, then went to look in on Xiheng — who had already put his own things neatly away — bade him bathe and turn in early, and then went to the east wing to see his two sisters.

Here, with Ahuan's help tidying, the room had already taken decent shape; Zhuo Siheng told her to go rest too, and sat down to talk a little with his sisters.

"A good many things in the room are gifts from your cousin Fan. He felt for you girls having no trousseau, and added some jewelry besides; a few pieces he especially charged were left by our aunt for the Zhuo daughters — they're all in that camphorwood box. Your brother knows nothing of such things; look them over and divide them yourselves."

His two sisters had never once, like other families' children, fought over anything, so he needn't worry about the dividing; rather, he let the two of them choose as suited them best.

Zhuo Siheng knew nothing of pearls and hairpins, but some of the jewelry, from the materials alone, couldn't possibly be cheap; and going by the Fan family's ways, these might well be part of the aunt's own dowry from back then. At the time Zhuo Siheng had been most anxious, refusing by any means to accept, telling Fan Xiliang to keep them himself — they might be things the aunt had left for the daughter-in-law she'd never meet; but Fan Xiliang had said, a little embarrassed, that his mother had arranged it all very carefully, with instructions for what went to whom, and he was only carrying out her dying wishes.

Put that way, Zhuo Siheng could hardly refuse.

"Shouldn't we pay our respects to Cousin and to our late aunt?" Blunt as Ciheng's nature was, she'd been raised by Zhuo Yan after all, and in matters of propriety was not a whit behind the daughters of official families.

Taking the jewelry box down from up high for them, Zhuo Siheng wiped it as he spoke: "Your cousin Fan's family situation is rather special; we'll talk of it slowly another time. I'd meant for you to meet him when you reached the capital, but your cousin was given a posting away, and by now he's already at Tongtai County, serving as magistrate."

Huiheng cared nothing for the jewelry; she cared more about the cousin himself, who had looked after their whole family without pause all these years, and asked at once: "Is that the Tongtai County in Xiangyi Commandery, Lingzhou?"

Zhuo Siheng hadn't expected his sister to know this; then, on second thought — of course. He'd later sent home several batches of books, not only the classics and histories for Xiheng but also geographies, travel accounts and gazetteers for the two sisters, and Huiheng, who loved reading most, had probably pored over them who-knows-how-many times and long since knew them by heart.

"Just so." Zhuo Siheng was quite satisfied with where his cousin had been posted. "That your cousin could go to that place sets my mind at ease too."

Huiheng, recalling what the books recorded, set down her worry for the cousin she'd never met: "It is indeed a good place."

"Second Sister, you've never been to the south — how do you know it's good there?" Ciheng, folding clothes over on the other side, heard and, curiosity suddenly kindled, couldn't help asking.

Zhuo Siheng felt a small tremor within, and with his eyes encouraged Huiheng to speak her thoughts.

Huiheng rarely showed her learning or what was in her mind, but with her sister asking and her brother's nod, she no longer deliberately held back; her voice came softly, spun out like a spring breeze: "The Gazetteer of the Southern Prefectures that Elder Brother sent home says Tongtai County lies on the west bank of the Ying River, a tributary of the Three Mountains River; the climate there is damp and hot, best suited to the growing of tung trees, so the counties thereabouts abound in tung oil. Only, the terrain is steep and strategic with very little arable land, and there's no other special product, so it's rather poor and cut off."

"Doesn't sound like much of a good place, then..." Ciheng was puzzled.

Huiheng signaled her sister with a look to be patient, then went on gently: "I once heard Fifth Uncle Zhu talk of army-camp affairs — he said the hardest post is that of a newly arrived commanding officer, because these newcomer junior officers don't know the natures of the troop-leaders under them, nor can they read their tempers, so it's very hard to get on well; conflicts are many, and offend the head soldier and the men below take his part and start making trouble — a great vexation. Fifth Uncle put it in plain words, but I think what he meant was: know yourself and know the other, and you'll come through a hundred battles unbeaten. The Tongtai County our cousin's gone to has no coveted products like salt or mines or tea, isn't near any tribute goods, and has no deeper trades tangled up in it — inside and out, it's plain at a glance; best for 'knowing yourself and knowing the other.' And it isn't so barren as to have no livelihood at all — isn't there still tung oil, one product to take hold of? Given that our cousin's character and ability draw even Elder Brother's endless praise, if he serves as a whole county's father-and-mother official, he's sure to soothe the people and win them, with fine achievements to show, and come through his first posting in safety and success."

Having finished, Huiheng didn't look to others for their approving, admiring eyes, but only lowered her head, calm and refined, veiling away the brilliant light that had been in her eyes.

Zhuo Siheng couldn't help clapping: "Truly worthy of being our parents' daughter, and my sister!"

That was exactly how he'd analyzed it for Fan Xiliang at the time — he'd even written many of the key points he'd looked up into a letter and tucked it among the books he sent off with his cousin, for him to consult when needed.

He was, when all was said, a court official, and the sheer breadth and volume of information he had access to was something a woman like Huiheng — chronically frail, able only to convalesce in a remote village — could never reach; and yet she could, from limited sources, draw the very same conclusions as he. Her closeness of thought and power of logic were plain to see.

Though Huiheng had been praised so plainly by Zhuo Yan and Zhuo Siheng often enough at home, each time she'd still be a little abashed to face it head-on, only lowering her head further, seeming most modest and endearing.

Looking at his sister — of matchless clear beauty, her mind limpid and keen — Zhuo Siheng felt it was time to talk with her about some of life's crucial questions, and so said to Ciheng: "Ahuan doesn't know where you've put everything; go help her sort it out, and pick out Xiheng's things — I've a couple of words to say to your sister."

Ciheng knew that when her brother said this, there was some matter about their sister Huiheng to be gravely discussed in private, so she agreed readily and left in a flash, leaving only brother and sister to talk in the room.

Huiheng too knew her brother had something to say to her, and so raised her head and waited quietly.

Zhuo Siheng gazed into his sister's star-bright eyes, and pitched his voice softer and gentler still: "A-Hui, if our mother were alive these are words she'd say to you; but we four haven't that blessing, and now you've only me, your eldest brother, so it falls to me to ask you. Sister — about your own lifelong matter... do you have any thoughts?"