Chapter 41

Less surprise than a kind of relish — Zhuo Siheng's fine, straight brows stirred with a flicker of interest; he motioned Huiheng to go on, and himself, while it was hot, ate two more mouthfuls of noodles.

Seeing her brother not only composed but even in the mood to keep eating, Huiheng's unease quieted a good deal; certain he had a plan of his own, she said softly: "I went to Sister Lanxuan's residence for a spring-day banquet, and the Tangs' eldest young lady, Tang Qiwei, told me of it."

Sister Lanxuan was Zhuo Huiheng's dear friend Zhao Lanxuan; that the two had come to know each other was thanks, of all things, to a request from Tong Shipei.

Half a year before, Tong Shipei had suddenly come to call — not to see Zhuo Siheng, but weeping and wailing to visit Huiheng specially; on asking, it turned out Uncle Tong had arranged a match for him, said only to be a girl of the Zhao family of the Earl of Yongxiang, and the old man would say nothing else and forbade him to ask more.

Tong Shipei was frantic. Of course he knew the Earl of Yongxiang's line had been military for generations, its sons all backed by martial merit, and he dreaded that the Zhao young lady might be some precious darling who out-braved three armies, and his carefree days would be over. But as a man he could hardly find a pretext to secretly look over a girl under marriage negotiation himself — word of it would ruin both his and the girl's names, and her family would surely beat him out the door. Having no sisters of his own, and cousins far removed, Tong Shipei could only beg Huiheng to find a chance to move among the women and see for him whether this Zhao young lady was a yaksha reborn.

Zhuo Siheng found it funny within: even if Miss Zhao really had three heads and six arms, wouldn't he still have to heed his parents' command — could he defy his father and refuse to marry? But seeing Tong Shipei on the very verge of tears, so pitiful, he could only have Huiheng — who didn't know whether to laugh or cry either — agree.

Tong Shipei didn't dare hide his little maneuver from his father; when the Zhuo family came to call over the New Year, Tong Duo had met Zhuo Huiheng once, and much admired and liked how, though raised in a wild and bitter place, she'd been cultivated into a dignity and temperament of great-house bearing, and so tacitly allowed his son, within the bounds of propriety and without harming the family's ways, to have Huiheng discreetly do a little scouting.

It happened to fall on the memorial day of Grand Princess Zhenguo; from somewhere Tong Duo procured an invitation to a ladies' banquet at the Earl of Yongxiang's house for Huiheng, and it was there she came to know her first close friend, Zhao Lanxuan.

Zhao Lanxuan was the Earl of Yongxiang's own niece; her father had served at the front under his own elder brother, and over a decade ago, when he was ordered to put down the rebel Qiang-Xia chieftains, at just past twenty he'd died saving his elder brother the Earl, leaving only a wife and Zhao Lanxuan, an only daughter. The Earl of Yongxiang had been close with his younger brother since childhood, and meeting such a blow — victory though it was — his heart was cut as with a knife; he raised Zhao Lanxuan at his knee as his own, more attentive to her than to his own sons. This match too came about because he'd once served at court alongside Tong Duo and knew Chancellor Tong's character and family ways; he chose and chose again before at last bringing himself to let his niece be spoken for.

Though the two girls differed by three or four years, rare it was that their natures suited; Zhao Lanxuan was gentle in looks and temper yet without affectation, with the frank generosity of a military house, and her talk apt to smile and to pout — the two hit it off at first sight, and had a friendship from then on, later even going to the Temple of the Princesses Zhen and Ding to swear sisterhood.

Hearing Huiheng heap praise on this Miss Zhao, Tong Shipei turned from marriage-dreader to marriage-nagger, asking his father every day when he'd send the betrothal — which so enraged Tong Duo that he cursed him roundly for a good-for-nothing.

Before long their match was settled and the betrothal sent; at the engagement the two principals, Tong and Zhao, met once per custom, each more than satisfied, and both sets of elders, seeing it, only smiled and said nothing, fixing the happy event for the seventh month of this year.

Now Zhao Lanxuan waited at home for her wedding, unable to move about much, and begged Huiheng all day to keep her company; this spring banquet too was her idea — to see once more, before the wedding, the sisters she'd played with since girlhood — and Huiheng helped her arrange it.

"But she didn't invite the Tangs' eldest young lady; there's no telling how Miss Tang got tied to the earl's house — she wrangled an invitation from her aunt and tagged along, and once there put on airs. Mind you, most of the guests were sisters of military-merit houses, all brisk and open-handed, and she alone held herself stiff, like an altar-offering come to life." Huiheng frowned faintly.

Zhuo Siheng knew his sister had the same temperament as his own — outwardly unruffled, inwardly ranting like mad — and only before him would she voice it; her occasional little barbs were quite endearing.

"Afterward she came at me with that meaning, and only then did I understand why she was so unwilling yet came anyway — turns out it was a task set by her family." Huiheng knit her brows slightly.

"What did she say?"

Zhuo Siheng was truly hungry; the bowl of noodles was all finished now, and he listened intently to his sister's account.

"She asked why I'd never been betrothed — whether it was because my brother hadn't yet taken a wife, and so I'd been held up."

Zhuo Siheng badly wanted to say: what business is it of hers — a family matter we siblings settle behind our own doors, who does she think she is.

But before his sister he still wouldn't use emotional expletives; his face, though, darkened.

"And what business is it of the Tangs anyway? Our own family matter — what right has an outsider to butt in?" Huiheng said coldly.

Truly his sister — perfectly omitting the expletives, precisely expressing his heart.

Zhuo Siheng's mood suddenly lifted a good deal, and smiling, he poured Huiheng tea.

Huiheng laughed too, a rare little slyness on her face: "Sister Lanxuan was displeased hearing her say it as well; being the hostess and blunt by nature, she just asked whether Miss Tang had set her heart on the Zhuo family's elder brother and come courting herself, that she pressed her sister so with all these questions."

Zhuo Siheng couldn't hold it and laughed aloud; one could imagine how furious Tang Qifei's sister must have been.

"Miss Tang's face went out of shape, and yet she bore it, and asked again — said her family had a fine relative, also an official, who'd met you when he came to the capital to report on his duties and thought you a talent, and wanted her to sound me out." At this Huiheng gave a cold laugh: "If you ask a favor, ask it; but with that proud face of hers, like a princess condescending to earth, as if bestowing some great grace on my family."

Zhuo Siheng sighed within: sister, you haven't seen her brother; see him and you'll know what it means that no wolf-pup ever crawled out of that dog kennel.

"Elder Brother, what are the Tangs scheming? Why fasten onto our family all of a sudden?" Her mouth satisfied, Huiheng let a little worry show; she never usually disturbed or asked after Zhuo Siheng's political affairs, but thinking it over, this surely touched the court, and hearing Zhao Lanxuan say the official mood was very tense lately — even the military houses a little on edge — her heart brimmed the more with worry, and heedless of much she asked outright what was in her heart.

Huiheng had met Gao Yongqing and knew Zhuo Siheng had been trying all along to reach him; Zhuo Siheng picked out the important matters of these seven or eight days and told her — for one, he felt his sister bright and clear-sighted, well able to weigh things; for two, he thought many things, hidden, became lurking worries, and if told plainly, the family would know where matters stood and needn't trouble themselves needlessly.

Huiheng listened, her embroidered brows knitting tight, then smoothing again, and said, as if she'd hit on an idea: "Since Elder Brother knows the gravity of it, your sister won't offer wild advice; only, this began at court. Though I've already told Miss Tang that as the younger sister it's not my place to discuss my brother's lifelong matter, to cut it off for good, Elder Brother must himself, at a fitting time and place, speak it out — only so can you foil that family's ill-meaning calculation."

"Rest easy — your brother's already thought it through. These days keep Miss Zhao company more, and don't fret." Zhuo Siheng comforted his sister gently.

"All right." Zhuo Huiheng hesitated a little more: "Then if I meet the Tangs' eldest young lady again and she brings this up, what should I say?"

She feared mishandling it — at the least leaving Zhuo Siheng a handle for the court's talk, at the worst being pressed by the Tangs into a betrothal, ruining her brother's lifelong match.

Zhuo Siheng lowered his head and smiled, and told his sister his plan; hearing it out, Huiheng gave a rare radiant smile, already sure of herself.

The next day Zhuo Siheng went to work as usual; he no longer needed to check in at the Secretariat office, but went straight into the palace each day, copied, and went home to write on, as if heedless of the world — Tong Shipei joked he was more like a man of the Taishi Hall than Tong Shipei himself.

The day Zhuo Siheng finished compiling the emperor's assignment was the day the emperor's appointed Junzhou inspection team set out — this batch not merely Surveillance Bureau officials, but two local officials of neighboring prefectures and officials of the Ministries of Personnel and Justice; one could see the emperor set store by it. Yet Zhuo Siheng, counting on his fingers, found one or two with kin ties to the Tangs among them too.

Their family really had a lot of fine relatives — they even wanted to turn Zhuo Siheng into a "kin-tied" Tang.

No telling how many of these fine relatives had joined this happy big family in just this way.

The Tangs' intent to draw Zhuo Siheng in by this was plain as day: thinking that, shut out at Gao Yongqing's door, he'd nursed a grudge? Did they really take him for a living Wang Dao?

The Tangs didn't even lift their heads to see: the sky the great gentry clans once covered with one hand had long since changed.

Just as Zhuo Siheng expected, the Tangs still wanted to work through Huiheng; Tang Qiwei found another chance to see Huiheng at the Zhao house, this time with only three or four of Lanxuan's good sisters present. Her topic unchanged, she asked Huiheng again about Zhuo Siheng's marriage; and Huiheng, per her brother's instruction, summoned tears at will and, using the very method Zhuo Siheng had used against Tang Qifei at the Fengle Tower, pointed at the Tangs' eldest young lady and wept and railed: "Who doesn't know I'm hard to betroth for my poor health — how many tears my brother has shed over my affairs, and how much guilt I carry for burdening my family? You too are a gentlewoman of a great house; time and again you've told me, hinted to me, that my brother's marriage being held up is my fault. Miss Tang, I've never provoked you — why do you again and again prick and wound me with your words? Bent on making me admit, to your face, that I'm the one blocking my brother!"

The girls who'd always kept company with Zhao Lanxuan all loved Huiheng's spring-breeze way with people; these daughters of military houses knew too that her poor health had held up her marriage, and all sighed that so fine a girl should have so cruel a fate. Many took her for an elder sister and told her their maidenly troubles to unburden themselves; it had always been she who, with gentle words and a tender heart, talked her friends round — when had they ever seen Huiheng bullied to tears like this? So they all grew angry, on the one hand comforting Huiheng, who wept till she gasped for breath and coughed and coughed, on the other scolding Tang Qiwei — what family ways, what upbringing, to press another family's daughter with matters no maiden should be made to discuss.

In the end Tang Qiwei, in shame and rage, left without taking leave, while Zhuo Huiheng wept nearly to fainting.

Here Huiheng, under Director Zhuo's direction, struck the gong and opened the show; there Director Zhuo's own acting bug flared up too.

Since entering the Hanlin Academy Zhuo Siheng had worked conscientiously and responsibly, never late, never leaving early; superiors and colleagues alike praised him with one voice — and who'd have thought that this day he'd actually ask for leave, saying his sister at home had suddenly fallen gravely ill, most urgent.

His Honor Zeng had said beforehand that for these ten days no leave would be granted, and on the very last day Zhuo Siheng handed in his slip.

In truth the Hanlin colleagues more or less knew each other's household circumstances, and that the Zhuo family had a sister of twenty still unwed was no secret; of course they knew it was for no other reason than that this Zhuo second young lady was truly sickly and frail, and so her fine years had been held up. Many a daughter without parents to care for her was married off early by the brother who headed the house; but Zhuo Siheng had searched out famous doctors to treat his sister and kept her honored at home — to have such a loving elder brother was, for the second young lady, a blessing in disguise.

Knowing this news, even His Honor Zeng, who understood the Zhuo family's situation, only sighed and said "never mind" a few times; the others, seeing it, added their words from the side, all saying that unless something were truly the matter, a man of Attendant Zhuo's diligence and character would surely never defy His Honor's wishes.

But in fact what had happened that day at the Earl of Yongxiang's residence had already spread among the high gates and official mansions of the capital. The Earl of Yongxiang, who'd always admired Zhuo Huiheng, hearing his niece tell of that day, angrily forbade any Tang to set foot in his house again, sullying their family's honor for nothing, and forbade Zhao Lanxuan to associate with the Tangs' eldest young lady — their military houses would have none of that self-styled "pure stream" gentry posturing. Afterward he had Zhao Lanxuan send some costly medicinal herbs to the Zhuo home.

The other girls too, with anger and cursing, recounted that day's scene to their families.

Many well-connected military men understood the present storm at court, and hearing that the Tangs would stoop to such means to win over Zhuo Siheng — who had an old friendship with Gao Yongqing — and had pressed his ailing sister to such a state, all held it beneath contempt.

The matter, spreading from the military set to the civil officials, made many a court official feel decency swept to the ground; their reading went a layer deeper — the Tangs meant to make an issue of Zhuo Siheng's being shut out at Gao Yongqing's door, and so promised a marriage-tie to win him over. Who'd have known Zhuo Siheng was no petty man to be manipulated for the sake of attaching himself to a great house: it was said that the day after his leave he entered the palace and told the emperor that, his position being awkward, he ought not meddle further in this matter; the emperor had already appointed several surveillance officials to go together to Junzhou, and the truth would out of itself; at this juncture Zhuo Siheng had been forced, willy-nilly, to stand at the storm's eye, and to be linked to the matter further would only harm the court's fragile balance, set rumors flying everywhere, and do no good to the case's fair, clear judgment or to court and public opinion.

In truth all this was secondary; the most important thing was that the emperor too had a younger sister of poor health with whom he was on the deepest terms.

The emperor at once declared that whoever again dragged Zhuo Siheng into this harbored ill intent — cherished thoughts of framing and cabal — and so the Tangs fell utterly silent, and Zhuo Siheng became, for a time, a capable gentleman of the most upright bearing in the court's talk.

...

With a crack, a Junzhou-kiln thin-bodied white-porcelain teacup was flung to the floor and shattered to bits.

"What are the Zhuo? A country dog from the northern exile-lands — I'd count it a soiling of my family's gate to marry them even a concubine-born daughter of a Tang collateral branch!"

Tang Qifei, cursing, still unappeased, flung a second teacup from his hand to the floor to shatter ringing.

Tang Qiwei was already weeping beyond control: "Father has never punished or struck me, yet today, back from court, he was so vicious! If not for his arranging and ordering it, why would I ever have lowered my face to speak of this? Are the Zhuo even fit to marry into our family? Zhuo Huiheng — I'd think her not noble enough even to be my bondmaid! I threw away my face and did as Father said, and it made trouble, and he still blames me for bungling it, says I'm unfit to be a Tang daughter!" And with that she fell to weeping again.

Tang Qifei, aching for his sister, both furious and hateful, said: "Those two, brother and sister, are cunning and mercenary through and through! What schemes that Zhuo Siheng has, I've learned firsthand, and that wretched sister of his is cut from the same cloth! I told Father long ago the fellow was no good, but Father would have it that his tie with that bastard Gao Yongqing could be made much of!"

"Brother, what am I to do... my face is lost before the whole court... Father doesn't spare me a thought; Brother, you must avenge me and take my part!" Tang Qiwei pulled desperately at her brother's sleeve, weeping: "Are we to swallow such insult from these down-and-outs?"

"Good sister, your brother's here!" Tang Qifei patted his sister's back, and said through gritted teeth: "On the surface Father scolds us, but in truth he prizes face above all; your being humiliated this time damages his and the whole Tang clan's honor. Rest easy — after this, Father will surely never let the Zhuo off easy."