Chapter 57

Zhuo Siheng wasn't good at declaiming and giving pep-talks, but he had his own way of background-checking that suited him.

After winter set in, Huiheng had felt-hangings put up all round the cool-pavilion, leaving only two idle windows to let in the naturally clear, bright light of the garden outside; the study was mild and softly lit, warm and bright.

"You're called Chen Rong; have you a courtesy name?" He looked at the very neatly-written name on the paper and mildly asked the boy standing below.

Chen Rong had by now set down the brush and stood properly; he nodded, then shook his head.

"Your writing is very good; how many years did you study?"

"Three years."

"At a village school?"

"At the prefectural school."

Zhuo Siheng understood: "With your father's post, your family must have taken great pains to send you there to study." Painstaking parents the world over were much the same.

Chen Rong lowered his head and didn't answer.

Compared with fourteen-year-old Xiheng, thirteen-year-old Chen Rong, though near in height, was a good deal shorter; the days in the Office of Compassion were hard, and a forlorn child with no one to look after him could never be plump and well-fed.

"My household doesn't lack for servants. I chose you not out of a sudden fit of charity, but because I've a special task, and only you suit it best." Zhuo Siheng set down the paper with Chen Rong's name: "Your monthly wage is the same as my other servants; but you needn't wait on me or attend me — only two things I need you to do yourself."

Chen Rong looked up at Zhuo Siheng, feeling that though he didn't speak loudly or with any severity, there was, within the mild calm, always a gravity not to be trifled with.

Zhuo Siheng took from the shelf a new register of cut, snow-white pages: "The first takes the brush. I want you to write down the scenery and features of your home, Anhua Commandery — and all your experiences and observations growing up there, in every detail. Great things: the important matters of the commandery you remember, and the currents of public talk; small things: household trifles, field-side wonders, even a blade of grass or a tree. You're a boy out of the prefectural school; reading and wording are no trouble to you, and plain vernacular jotting is quite all right; what matters is fullness and truth. I'll read all of it, and then question you on it, and you'll answer and explain in detail — so writing sparingly to save time is fine too, but the important thing is that you have it clear in your own mind."

Chen Rong, who'd thought himself already fallen to servitude, looked at Zhuo Siheng with disbelief; but the other's face was still as water, without the least mockery.

"May I ask the second thing, sir?" Chen Rong spoke up of his own accord.

Zhuo Siheng showed, for the first time in this novel sort of master-servant interview, a smile: "The second isn't urgent; you'll know soon enough."

So Chen Rong settled in with Fu Ji, eating and sleeping with him daily; only, by day, in the little gate-lodge, he plied his brush without cease to finish the task Zhuo Siheng had set.

Fu Ji thought it odd — whoever bought a servant to have him read and write? — but he knew the Zhuo family's young master was no man to pick up a child on a whim to indulge a fancy for teaching; there must be some special arrangement.

Before Fu Ji could work out Master Zhuo's far-sighted special arrangement, Master Zhuo's own special arrangement had already been wholly settled.

After the New Year's Day court assembly of Zhenyuan year fourteen, the Ministry of Personnel sent out, as usual, the roster of offices-and-granted-residences, listing the surnames and registries of officials retiring this year from every region and their customary rewards, and the emperor's extra kindnesses to old ministers. Besides these were the names of replacements and their corresponding posts; reading to the bottom, the successor to the retiring vice-prefect of Anhua Commandery, Jinzhou, Du Han, was written plain: the three characters, Zhuo Siheng.

Zhuo Siheng first saw this roster at Zeng Xuandu's residence, and in both their hearts one same stone finally settled.

After the New Year's Day grand assembly came three days of rest in a row — a rare little long holiday for the dynasty's civil servants. His Honor Zeng had changed out of his official robe into a half-worn everyday one and sat in the taishi chair of his study, his expression showing neither joy nor worry; Zhuo Siheng, sitting in the chair below him, folded up the roster, quite at ease.

What was to come would come sooner or later; and now it had, he was fully prepared.

Not only unworried — he even rather looked forward to it.

"In three days the Ministry of Personnel will submit the master-roster of the Zhenyuan-thirteen official assessments and all the out-postings, promotions and lateral moves; you'll be 'superior,' raised to full sixth rank." Zeng Xuandu had plainly seen the Ministry's memorial, and said slowly, half-lidded: "In fact at first the Ministry set you at junior sixth, but the emperor felt that rank a bit cramped for a vice-prefect, fearing you'd be hemmed in and unable to spread yourself, and deliberately raised it. For a capital official such a thing would surely draw sidelong looks, but you, though promoted, go to a remote place on an out-posting, so others will likely say nothing."

From seventh rank to sixth usually took at least two three-year out-postings; his cousin Fan Xiliang, for instance, with a "superior" merit at his term's end, went from full seventh to junior sixth, without a qualitative leap; only above sixth rank could an official take a commandery post, and Fan Xiliang's arrangement was likely to stay on another three years before his record was weighed again.

There was another important reason Zhuo Siheng's swift promotion drew no envy: of his same-year first class, the bangyan and tanhua both stayed on at the center, not sent out.

Peng Shihu received the emperor's commendation — praised as diligent and expert in his duties — and was raised to junior-sixth Reader-in-Waiting, still kept in the Hanlin Academy before the throne; a great honor and gracious decree. For a time Peng Shihu was unmatched in prominence, and many wished to call at his door, all of whom he refused; it was said the emperor was much pleased, and before the year gave him privately a good deal of money and silk as reward.

Xu Yanfeng too stayed in the capital, but not in the Hanlin Academy — he went to the Imperial Academy, and, as chance would have it, to serve as registrar under the Director of Studies, Jiang Wenrui — secretary work again — and was likewise raised to junior sixth.

The bangyan and tanhua stayed, and the zhuangyuan left.

All the more since everyone knew Zhuo Siheng had done the emperor a great service, and yet still went to a less-than-ideal out-posting. True, men like Peng Shihu and Xu Yanfeng, even kept on now, would in future be sent out to be seasoned — that was the dynasty's unquestioned rule, no one excepted; but most of the first class could stay several terms in the capital, until their experience and ability had built up somewhat and their footing was firm, before being sent out to temper themselves.

This too had been Zeng Xuandu's plan for Zhuo Siheng.

"I'd meant for you to stay a term at the center; I'd already picked out a vacancy in the Orchid Terrace Palace Library. But man proposes and Heaven disposes; never mind — this out-posting is no demotion-and-disgrace either, and perhaps distance from the capital court just now is, for you, a blessing in disguise." Zeng Xuandu, more than persuading Zhuo Siheng to accept reality, seemed to be counseling himself not to fret over present gains and losses.

Zhuo Siheng knew Zeng Xuandu had long worried over the awkwardness of his being too close with the crown prince, so he smiled: "Since the autumn hunt, Teacher has worried much over this; now he can sleep easy."

His Honor Zeng shot him a disdainful look, his face as if wanting him to be serious, yet himself broke and shook his head, laughing: "It really was a hard spot; the sovereign still handled it fittingly."

"When has the sovereign ever handled anything unfittingly?" Zhuo Siheng smiled.

For power's sake, the unfitting must be made fitting too.

"After the New Year comes the palace exam, and new young men will enter office; the Hanlin Academy will have new vacancies, and the sovereign will have room to maneuver again." Zhuo Siheng tried to make his words sound less snide, but by His Honor Zeng's expression it seemed not very successful.

"You... you're really a man of sharp edge and keen spirit. Well? These three years hiding it away — has it been hard?" Zeng Xuandu smiled and sipped his tea.

"Baring one's edge at every turn is the harder; quarreling wears and drains one, and my energy's not up to it — the present way of handling things suits me better." What Zhuo Siheng really meant was that he was highly energy-saving, with long standby time in low-power mode — his way of sustainably developing himself.

"After the New Year, get ready for taking up the post; ask around more of relatives and friends who've done out-postings — what to mind on the road, what to prepare on arrival." Zeng Xuandu, having said it, felt this was all stale counsel; and with Zhuo Siheng's wits and ability, whatever should be prepared was surely prepared, needing no reminder from him, so he changed the subject: "Jinzhou's administrator Pan Weishan served under me a few years and has some friendship with me; I've already written to him. If you meet trouble at your post — say that fine son-in-law of Lord Tang's, the prefect, gives you a hard time — he'll find a way to help you unpick it a little. But in the end the local business and the record of governing for the people must rest on yourself."

For snideness His Honor Zeng was no worse than himself; hearing the first part Zhuo Siheng meant to jest, but by the end only gratitude was left in his heart, and he rose and bowed to His Honor Zeng: "I thank you for planning and arranging for me; I've no lineage-tie at court, and all along it's been you who lifted me up — I've truly no way to repay it."

"No — you can repay me." Zeng Xuandu said.

Zhuo Siheng looked up at him, not knowing why His Honor Zeng spoke so directly today.

"Yunshan — I'll take the liberty of calling you so for now." Zeng Xuandu motioned him to sit, and went on: "What sort of temper do you think our sovereign has?"

Cherishing lofty aims, bent on the grand design, scheming to the bone, narrow of measure, lenient without and tight within, avenging the least slight; with a wise ruler's wits, but not a wise ruler's benevolence.

By the professional competence he'd gained in these years since abandoning science for the humanities, he'd already swapped the above for a version that wouldn't cost him his head; but meeting His Honor Zeng's burning, candid gaze, in the end he told the truth in another sense:

"I know, but I dare not say."

His Honor Zeng burst out laughing, then, after the laugh, sighed: "In truth I dare not either..."

The two looked at each other in tacit understanding.

"So — though the road ahead is perilous and unclear, your future is bound to be better than mine... My whole life, being an old minister of Jingzong's, ends about here at most; to the end of my days it's impossible I should win the sovereign's esteem in matters of policy." His Honor Zeng's tone was full of helplessness and decline: "I may reach the height of ministerial rank, yet in the end can hardly realize the aspiration in my heart — to hold power and bring benefit to all under Heaven."

In truth fifty was not old at court — just the age when a man is a pillar of it, giving out his light and heat; yet His Honor Zeng's words were not without reason.

Given the emperor's nature, he'd surely treat old ministers well and use them in show; but the real state policies and strategies he'd not heed from them. His long, deep valuing of the examinations was just because he wished to choose his own disciples himself; since his accession the several batches of Zhenyuan jinshi had all been given weighty use and were gradually mounting the political stage, while the old ministers drifted, one by one, farther from power. It could be foreseen that in the near future the whole Zhenyuan court would grow very young, and in ten or twenty years the key offices and power organs would surely have no one left of Jingzong's reign.

"In truth the sovereign already treats you with what may be called esteem." Zhuo Siheng wished to comfort His Honor Zeng, but he knew that, both of them seeing the times so clearly, any comfort was in vain; still, he had his own art of speaking: "He discusses every matter great and small with you; though the sovereign may not heed it, to lend an ear may not be all show either. Sir, forgive my presumption in guessing — the emperor has, more or less, still heeded some of your counsel; not much, but some, hasn't he?"

He hoped to restore His Honor Zeng a little confidence and keep him from too much gloom — bad for a middle-aged-to-old man's body and mind.

But hearing his words, Zeng Xuandu suddenly fell silent, as if aged several years all at once, his color going grey.

Zhuo Siheng, ever so skilled in the art of words, was flustered; he felt there shouldn't have been anything wrong with the consolation he'd just offered — hadn't he put it rather well?

He was about to patch it with a couple more words, when His Honor Zeng waved a hand.

"The sovereign... did once heed my counsel on an important matter... only, that matter is also what I most bitterly repent." He slowly looked at Zhuo Siheng: "Do you know which matter?"

Zhuo Siheng shook his head — how would he know...

"In Zhenyuan year ten, by gracious decree I was named administrator of the grace-examination's departmental exam. On the last day of grading, the two policy-essay examiners fell to quarreling — one was Academician Wang Peilin, whom you saw daily in the Hanlin Academy, the other Xu Rushu, once Editor of the Hongwen Academy, now retired."

Zhuo Siheng's heart jumped; he thought to himself: Zhenyuan ten, the departmental exam... could it have to do with him?

Zeng Xuandu looked at the long scroll of the Ni Kuan Zan hanging on the study wall, as if his body were back four years ago, and said quietly: "The cause of their quarrel was that each wished to make the candidate he'd graded first the departmental champion, and the two contended without yielding, their words fierce, near to coming to blows... it was I who came out to stop them. Seeing the papers, I felt at first that though this sitting was but a year after the last, the talent was even richer than before, and especially the one Academician Wang put forward was truly, for all its keen ardor, not lacking in refined correctness, its strong argument joined to a penetrating grasp."

Zeng Xuandu rose and paced toward the Ni Kuan Zan he'd brushed himself, and, his back to Zhuo Siheng, stood before the long scroll and began to recite:

"The discourse says: to hold to one's office and follow the principle of things, so that where one departs the people long for one..."

Hearing Zeng Xuandu recite the first line, Zhuo Siheng shot to his feet, dazed and blank, until His Honor Zeng recited to "such men are no talents for serving the heir, and hard put to serve a sage ruler, let alone to serve the state..." — only then did he come back, from a years-deep daze, to the present three years on.

The essay His Honor Zeng recited, he too could produce at a word — for this was the departmental-exam policy essay he himself had written.

He listened to His Honor Zeng slowly recite his whole essay to the last line, already astonished past speech, only watching quietly as he turned to face him, his face grief-ashamed: "That's right... the departmental champion Academician Wang chose was you."

Zhuo Siheng clearly remembered he'd been second in the departmental exam; driven by his competitive streak he'd fretted a little over it at the time, but later, taking the zhuangyuan, that feeling had never troubled him again.

Now, brought up so suddenly, he still didn't grasp His Honor Zeng's meaning.

"What Xu Rushu put forward was Peng Shihu's essay. Your two papers each had their strengths, but your answer cut to the heart of the question, decisively breaking the old arguments — better than his by more than a little, and I admired it greatly..." At this Zeng Xuandu sighed long: "But in the end I named Peng Shihu champion."

One as quick to grasp as Zhuo Siheng already knew the reason.

"It was a sealed, transcribed paper; I didn't know who wrote it or its origins, only that from the essay it seemed to argue much, and forcefully, against the case of the treasonous heir those years past — and though all it said was reasoned and just, it would still surely stir court and country to censure. I judged this essay would certainly win deep imperial favor; but the court already had one Gao Yongqing... the year that man appeared, the storm raged long, and for half a year court and country knew no peace... And just then everyone was probing the imperial mind, wishing to know his criteria for choosing talent, and whether he meant to reopen the old case, so as to take sides by it and seek his favor. I feared the momentum of factional strife would rise again from this, and so overruled the others, naming Peng Shihu champion and you second..."

Zhuo Siheng heard the near-weeping in His Honor Zeng's voice, and couldn't bear it; in truth the matter was so long past, a departmental championship would have had no such great effect on him, nor had he so deep an attachment — hearing it now was only a shock, not rising to grudge or rancor.

But His Honor Zeng gave him no chance to explain, and went on: "Later, when the roster was revealed and I saw it was indeed the Shuozhou candidate who'd written that essay, my heart grew the more guilty, until the day the emperor, having read the departmental policy essays, summoned me to the Tianzhang Hall to question me — asking why I hadn't named you champion. I hid nothing, only set out the pros and cons one by one, counseling the emperor by no means to kindle any momentum of factional strife, for even so small a spark might, once loosed, be past putting out. That time the emperor heeded my counsel — his own intent had in fact been to overturn the departmental result, weigh the two again, and give you back the triple first you deserved..."

These words fallen, Zeng Xuandu bowed deep to Zhuo Siheng: "Yunshan... I have wronged you; I made you miss, by a hair, the blessing of the triple first. I don't ask you to forgive this muddled old fool's fault, but let me make my apology..."

"His Honor Zeng need not!" Zhuo Siheng held Zeng Xuandu fast: "Teacher! You must not!"

Zeng Xuandu had been struggling to bow, but hearing this one word "Teacher," his whole frame stood as if carved of stone, unable to move at all.

"How can a teacher bow to his student? How would you have me live with myself hereafter?" Taking advantage of Zeng Xuandu's stunned pause, Zhuo Siheng steadied him back into the taishi chair and himself knelt down: "Though Teacher has never said it, you and I have long had the bond of teacher and disciple; these three years in the Hanlin Academy Teacher has lifted me up at every turn, sincere in all; whatever I've been involved in has cost you no end of care. This bow you should long since have taken; I only hope Teacher won't mind my rashness and sharpness, and will instruct me the more hereafter."

With that he made, in the full rite by which a school pupil kowtows to the master who teaches him, the ceremonial obeisance; and Zeng Xuandu, once he'd risen, hurried to raise him.

In Zhuo Siheng's heart, he'd long taken His Honor Zeng for his own teacher.

Mindful of the former dynasty's lesson of factional strife, the Founder, since his accession, had strictly forbidden academy students and serving officials, examinees and examiners, to call one another master and disciple, to keep the powerful and great from using the name of master-and-disciple to work cabal and private gain and gather authority to themselves, and to spare poor scholars the plight of having to attach themselves to the vermilion-and-purple to get ahead.

But such teacher-student ties were extremely hard to police; unless a faction was truly too openly displayed, private friendships, or a friend's request to teach one's children on his behalf, were still unavoidable.

The teacher-student bond — so long as the examination system and the present mode of instruction existed — was bound to become a necessary form of scholars' friendship and connection. Only, controlled by law, the notion of "the Son of Heaven's disciples" had now sunk deep into men's hearts, weakening the interlocking power-chain of master-and-disciple cabals.

Though many officials too had, in private, their own teachers and students, none dared show it in the open; officialdom had its treacherous side, and no one dared publicly touch the bottom line of the ancestors' law.

Hearing this one word "Teacher," Zeng Xuandu knew Zhuo Siheng could not more truly and reverently regard him; and so, after his shame and guilt, he still firmly steadied his heart and accepted the master-taking rite, with an unspeakable gladness besides.

He raised Zhuo Siheng up, settled him again, and, once his own excitement had gradually calmed, went on: "It being so, between you and me there's no more barrier; what should and shouldn't be said, hereafter I'll no longer avoid. Thirty-odd years I've been at court with no disciple; now that one carries on my aspiration and mantle, I may at last call my wish fulfilled."

"Your student, looking up to Teacher, has learned much of the way of office and governance; though hereafter I'll not be in the capital, I still hope Teacher won't stint his instruction." Zhuo Siheng didn't quite know whether one ought to say such things having just taken a master — all his knowledge, after all, had come from his own father, and he'd never spent a day in a school — but at least being solemn made his father's teaching by word and example not wasted.

Sure enough Zeng Xuandu nodded, most content: "Then let's dispense with empty ceremony; I'll only ask you — three years an official, what have you felt? Have you formed any vision of ordering the age? Tell me all of it."

The topic was vast, but Zhuo Siheng fell into thought, and only after a long while said clearly: "My father, all his life, never got to open out what was in his breast; his deepest regret was that, once an official, he never got to order the age — a drifting duckweed with nowhere to spread his talent. What he laid on me was the hope that I would not fail the learning of my whole life: to regulate the family and govern the state — privately, to re-establish the Zhuo house of poetry and letters; publicly, to bring the whole of my learning to benefit all under Heaven. My wish is to complete his."

"And your own vision for your official career?" Zeng Xuandu knew Zhuo Siheng was in fact a man of his own strong views — his face ever a gentle breeze, his heart forever beating up mighty waves.

Zhuo Siheng felt suddenly a little shy, but after a moment decided to say it: "Teacher, I... I love children."

Zeng Xuandu nearly said outright: then marry and have your own — over twenty and no sense of urgency! But then, on second thought — no, likely that wasn't what Zhuo Siheng meant — and he pressed: "And then?"

Zhuo Siheng's smile was bright and open, his clear eyes flashing with light as he spoke: "My vision is that all children might grow up in a clear, bright age of great peace, with no worry of warmth and food, no peril of life and death, and then go to experience, to touch, the good and the not-good, the bad and the not-bad of this world."

Having said it he truly felt a bit awkward — a feeling he rarely had anymore — and scratched his head; but when he looked up again he saw His Honor Zeng's eyes too shone with flowing light, gazing at him with a look of utmost admiration and praise.

"Bound as I am to a body of Jingzong's reign, I can no longer realize my aspirations under the present Son of Heaven." Zeng Xuandu gazed at his proud disciple with eyes full of expectation and hope: "But you are different; you are the zhuangyuan the emperor himself named, the foremost model of a scholar this dynasty has yet had. If you can hone your will in depth without changing your breadth of heart, keeping virtue by the Way and wit by method, then one day your vision will surely come to pass; and I hope that on that day this teacher may yet have the fortune to see with his own eyes what it is when peace fills the land within the seas, and the sky's light breaks through the clouds!"