Chapter 38

Zhuo Siheng didn't know what the emperor's life had been like, imprisoned before his accession, but one thing was certain: it was not as happy as his own.

Was his family wretched? Wretched.

But a family of one heart and one breath, with no grounds for warm togetherness, will make the grounds even so; and though they'd met round after round of misfortune and the wrenching loss of kin, their parents had still left the four of them countless memories of family warmth and tenderness, so that four children of differing natures each, amid the pains they'd tasted, kept guard over the tenderest, softest corner of their hearts and memories, and in spirit and in character never walked alone.

The reigning emperor had not been so lucky.

The treasonous heir and his consort had been deeply devoted, with one son and one daughter and no other concubines or children. The son was the reigning emperor; the daughter, Grand Princess Xuanyi. When the heir was deposed the emperor was only fifteen — a proud young scion of Heaven's line, a rebellious youth, thrown in irons into prison; his sister, gold branch and jade leaf, escorted into the palace lateral courts; their parents under sentence of death, brother and sister scattered — one could only call it the darkest hour of a life.

A long night breeds many dreams: in Jingzong's original plan both the emperor and the grand princess were to die, but who'd have thought Zhuo Siheng's grandfather would lead the hundred officials in forceful remonstrance and plea, and by main force preserve these two descendants of the treasonous heir — though eight families were shattered and scattered for it, the old pedigrees no more what they'd been yesterday, the sun and moon of the court made new. Jingzong enfeoffed the meritorious men who'd helped him to power throughout court and country; and with the cautionary example of the seven disgraced officials before him, who would dare say a word more?

As for the emperor: escaping the death sentence, even the reduced one was hard — Jingzong ordered him confined in the South Tower behind the Court of the Imperial Clan, a place with water on three sides and a mountain at its back, the mountaintop the garrison of the Central Metropolitan Prefecture's palace inner guard, sealed airtight all around. This, after all, was the standalone villa the Founding Emperor had specially prepared for his rebel brothers; princes had been imprisoned to death here, eight or ten if not more, and a fifteen-year-old former imperial grandson could stir up no waves.

Yet he leapt as a dragon transformed — one day he stepped out of the South Tower and gained the supreme seat, the ninety-five honored place.

During his imprisonment there was clearly no one to give him any counseling or moral-uplift programming; add to that his abandoning his own father's line for the throne's sake, entering himself into the register of Jingzong — his father-and-mother-killing arch-enemy — and Zhuo Siheng felt that even someone as stable in character as himself, meeting such a thing, would turn dark, cramped, and hard to fathom.

So he particularly understood the emperor's being deeply calculating and vengeful to the last slight.

The emperor was forever outwardly "benevolent," and toward the wife of his father's killer — the present Empress Dowager — "filial" enough to be a model for all under Heaven. But Zhuo Siheng, serving as his secretary at his side, would find, on stringing many matters together by the unit of time and thinking a little, that the emperor forever acted with a surface of "We are anxious and uneasy," "We cannot bear to inflict it," and a heart of "We're loving this," "We'll finish you off."

In daily attendance as an edict-attendant, this year nearly every edict had passed under Zhuo Siheng's eyes; and the cases of the emperor's unfathomable might that he'd seen in practice were as follows:

Early in the fifth month of Zhenyuan year eleven, a certain censor memorialized that this year's spring drought in Jun and Jin prefectures was all because the emperor had failed to cultivate his virtue, enfeoffed a son still in swaddling clothes as a prince, and put deep faith in the clever words of a woman of the harem. The emperor showed himself especially fearful — bathed and fasted three days, ran to the Ancestral Temple to confess his fault to his forebears; Noble Consort Luo, in plain mourning dress, submitted a memorial pleading guilt and begging the emperor to strip her of her rank and her son of his princedom. The emperor was all but about to grant it, when at last the heavens sent down great rain on the two prefectures, and the emperor declared his ancestors had forgiven him and he'd never dare so again; at the grand court he singled out this censor for commendation, granting him a residence and a promotion, and even wrote him a plaque — "Upright Remonstrance, Loyal and Good" — to hang in his family hall.

Come the eleventh month of Zhenyuan eleven, this censor was impeached for taking bribes and appointing by favoritism, using his post in the Ministry of Personnel to stuff his kin and connections into key local offices; his wife's younger brother's embezzlement of salt taxes brought disaster, and only then were his doings exposed. The emperor grieved so bitterly he took ill for several days, lamenting again and again that he'd misjudged in employing men, knowing only to heed the false, fame-fishing talk of the "pure stream," and not understanding the scheming and turning of men's hearts. The officials all urged the emperor to guard his health — such officials who fish for a pure name by cursing the emperor had existed since ancient times; it was no fault of the emperor's. The Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review had already passed sentence: the censor and his brother-in-law were to be beheaded, and for twenty years neither family might enter office, their sons not to be employed. The emperor sighed and sighed, saying that guilty though the man was, how pitiable and innocent were his children — take back that plaque of mine, but let them go on living in the house; I'll keep the plaque to remind myself never again, in employing men, to look only at conduct and not examine their aims.

The assembled officials lavishly praised the emperor's benevolence and his courage to reflect.

The first thing Zhuo Siheng did on leaving court that day was run back to the Secretariat and open the edict archive from six months before, finding the handwritten decree in which this censor had been praised and promoted; there it was, blazing plain — that he was a model for the hundred officials, that with a few more such upright ministers bold to speak and good at remonstrance in the realm, why fear the administration wouldn't be clean? Thinking of it now, that edict had been deliberately written to slap the faces of the hundred officials — a very model for casting the court's opposite pole. Perhaps back then many in court and country had seen he was deliberately offending the imperial countenance by remonstrance, deliberately fishing for the name of an upright minister, a thing men despised — only at the time everyone felt the emperor was in high spirits and it was awkward to contradict him. Today, this censor drawing such ironclad proof of guilt and so swift a sentence — the ministers, six months ago, had likely already been drawn, unwittingly, into the emperor's camp by this one "praise-to-kill" edict, and had been longing for this day a good while.

The emperor's guile and methods were truly terrifying.

The above made Zhuo Siheng realize one thing: the thing the emperor cared least about was face.

Because ever since he "took the thief for a father," he'd already lost the greatest face of all; the barefoot don't fear the shod. All the realm knew this laughingstock of his, and however he strove to recover his countenance it was no use — better to treat so-called face as a thing outside the body, and pursue more of the real "lining": like sitting firm on the throne, like avenging his pain and gladdening his kin.

Zhuo Siheng was still holding the archive in admiration when His Honor Zeng Xuandu came; he hurried to bow, and after bowing the two just stood there looking awkwardly at each other.

His Honor Zeng glanced at the archive in his hand and said, drowsy-eyed: "I too came to look up this very record — has Attendant Zhuo finished with it?"

Zhuo Siheng hurriedly offered it up in both hands.

That he and his superior had thought of the same thing — he didn't know whether that was good or bad.

His Honor Zeng leafed through a while, nodded, and handed it back as if nothing were the matter: "Put it away."

Zhuo Siheng did so.

The two, in tacit understanding, left the Secretariat without a word, each going home.

But after this, His Honor Zeng, when he went now and then to colleagues' tea-gatherings for pure talk, would bring Zhuo Siheng along, saying the young man had no parents, not even a proper elder, nor a reliable relative in the capital; at his age he ought to complete this step of "regulating the family," and for him, the superior, to play matchmaker was only human — and so took him about.

Zhuo Siheng was astonished — when had he ever said such a thing? But His Honor Zeng wore the very expression of a man repeating something truly said, exchanging introductions with officials each at least a vice-minister, and talking Zhuo Siheng up with all his might.

No wonder you can be an intimate minister to the emperor — lying without a change of face, no draft needed; Zhuo Siheng was impressed.

Of course he knew this was a pretext, and that His Honor Zeng had no real wish to matchmake a wife for him.

In truth his family background was awkward; the clever were all waiting to see whether next year's autumn exam would again throw up a jinshi or two among the descendants implicated in the treasonous-heir case, and gauging the emperor's mind, none daring rashly to show the least hint of taking sides. Add that Zhuo Siheng had no backing, having charged back to the capital with his whole family and no foundation at all, and that one couldn't yet tell how he performed in the Hanlin Academy or whether the emperor favored him — so it was all loud thunder and little rain. Many, after meeting Zhuo Siheng a few times, admiring his looks, character and learning, thought of a collateral-branch girl of suitable age at home; but His Honor Zeng declined them all with various deft excuses.

Zhuo Siheng knew this was His Honor Zeng's way of pulling him up — deft and giving no handle for gossip. His Honor Zeng had no disciples and had always had a fine official reputation; had it not been for this year's daily observing and appreciation, he'd never have taken such pains for him. Such help was surely of great benefit to Zhuo Siheng; besides, a gentleman's friendship is plain as water, and His Honor Zeng waged no factional strife nor pulled him into any strange political struggles, and had once given him a pointer or two — and for advice he could and ought to heed, it was worth staying close to such an elder.

This year Zhuo Siheng's work in the Hanlin Academy served him very well; entering court, he touched at once the empire's power center, and though "the pavilion nearest the water" couldn't quite be said to "get the moon first," he could at least watch and admire the moon from closer up, learning, with his own eyes and ears, knowledge and experience others might not gain in a lifetime.

Before the New Year the emperor would give his intimate ministers some extra rewards, especially the Hanlin Academy, his close-attendant staff — nearly everyone got extra encouragement and commendation. Zhuo Siheng got no little, and even showed his face in the emperor's separate New Year commendation edict to the Hanlin Academy: the emperor singled out His Honor Zeng and several academicians who daily gave the lecture on the classics and attended him, and then singled out Zhuo Siheng alone, the youngest, praising him as usually "mild and humane," "broad-minded and open-hearted," and saying that he himself was young and hasty of temper, and it was thanks to Zhuo Siheng's frequent "gentle good counsel" and "loyal mediation," finding him many a way down and many a compromise, that he'd been spared some of the ills his over-haste in governing would have caused. The emperor expressed the hope that Zhuo Siheng would go on cultivating himself diligently in the Hanlin Academy, shaping himself for the emperor and the state.

Hearing it out, Zhuo Siheng went quite numb.

Your Majesty, you really do sell yourself short. You, hasty? To revenge yourself on one petty censor who'd offended you, you could bide and endure six months, store up richly and release sparingly, and wash away the shame in one stroke; my own poor level truly doesn't grasp what "enduring humiliation to bear a heavy burden" means as you do.

Still, taking the silver was a pleasure.

Zhuo Siheng now took the emperor's reward silver without the unease he'd felt just after becoming zhuangyuan, when he'd often lie awake at night asking himself whether he was truly serving state and people and not failing the imperial grace. This year he had indeed worked conscientiously in the Hanlin Academy, and he took this reward silver with an easy conscience.

This was the first time the Zhuo family passed such an abundant, bountiful New Year together.

After buying a good many things with the New Year reward and sending them back to Xingshan Township, Zhuo Siheng separately prepared things to send to Fan Xiliang; unloved by his father though the cousin was, he'd grown up in silk and fine food, and now, in a remote and desolate place, was bound to lack this and that. Zhuo Siheng laid in a great deal and still felt it not enough; but thinking that if he covered every possible need it might draw criticism that the cousin lived unfrugally, he had to compromise for now, and picked only the inconspicuous, essential things to send.

The first month of Zhenyuan twelve slid over the Zhuo family's rooftops in a posture of happiness and peace. The capital's climate was mild, and sure enough Huiheng's health, after careful nursing, was now sound; she managed the Zhuo family's affairs great and small, and when His Honor Zeng visited he praised her bearing and speech without end — and His Honor Zeng had never praised even Zhuo Siheng to his face. Ciheng, though, found the many restrictions here quite irksome; she could no longer roam and practice medicine with Doctor Rong as before. But she found, in the capital's outskirts, a women's Daoist convent called the Chanyue Convent — its founding patriarch had been most kind of heart and skilled in medicine, often treating the women and children of the farming families about; the present abbess was that patriarch's disciple and heir to her mantle. Ciheng, versed in medicine and pharmacology, went into the hills to gather herbs with the abbess and won her great fondness — so at least she wasn't cooped up at home all day. Xiheng studied with the utmost diligence; Xiongya Academy was famed for strict scholarship that brooked no idleness, and Xiheng never broke a rule, his marks among the very top, "superior" every assessment; even Tong Shipei came to tell Zhuo Siheng that the headmaster of Xiongya Academy, calling on his father, said he either didn't act or, once he did, introduced only fine students — and praised Xiheng to the skies. As his learning grew, Zhuo Xiheng's trend of thinning also eased; perhaps having reached the age of shooting up in height, his voice too began to change.

In short, until the third month, the start of spring in Zhenyuan twelve — before the local and outposted officials whose three-year terms were up came to the capital to report on their duties — all was still fair and calm.

What Zhuo Siheng anticipated all the more was that Gao Yongqing, the one he'd most longed to see, had also returned.

But he did not return empty-handed.

The first thing Gao Yongqing — imperially appointed Surveillance Commissioner of Junzhou — did on returning to the capital was submit a memorial impeaching the Junzhou prefect Tang Lingxi on five great charges: letting farmland lie waste, neglecting the river works, failing in disaster relief, keeping and indulging vicious hound-slaves, and shutting out rivals to build a private clique.

One memorial, and the court was thrown into utter upheaval.