Chapter 6

This past year, on top of the usual noise of children being scolded, husbands and wives bickering, and talk of the weather in the fields, Xingshan Township had gained the sound of recitation.

In an ordinary June, when the sun stays up until nearly midnight, the township's half-grown children would be running wild outdoors all day — grabbing cats, teasing dogs, catching fish and snaring birds, a swarming mess of them, the big ones leading the small, loathed by man and dog alike, not one of them giving anybody peace. Now, of all things, they were all sitting in the village school at Schoolmaster Zhuo's house, dutifully swaying their heads over their writing and recitation, and the hill township was quiet.

In the year since the school opened, Village Head Wu had watched the children learn more and more characters and produce whole strings of classical phrases. He understood none of it, but he was delighted to scurry over to the new schoolmaster's house with grain and vegetables, and from time to time he had the township women, idle between harvests, mend clothes for the Zhuo children. No detail left unattended to.

Just now he had strolled up outside the open brushwood gate of the little courtyard, and heard the children reciting inside:

"The gentleman does not seek to eat his fill, nor to live in comfort. He is diligent in affairs and careful in speech, and draws near to those who have the Way so as to be corrected by them. Such a man may be said to love learning."

He didn't understand it, but he stroked his beard and nodded along with the rhythm. Not wanting to disturb them, he knocked twice on the open gate. The youngest Zhuo child, who was also the one who spoke least, was out in the courtyard reading on his own. He looked up at the sound, and Village Head Wu waved him over.

Five-year-old Zhuo Xiheng set down his book, closed it properly, came to the gate and bowed. "Good day, Village Head Wu. Please come in."

Small as he was, he spoke by the book and quite like a grown man, with no levity at all — poles apart from his eldest brother. With his fair little face it was thoroughly winning. Village Head Wu bent down. "Your father's teaching. I'll leave these and go. Tell him for me. My old woman went to the woods before noon and picked these bilberries, fresh-guaranteed. Set them in the well water to cool, and they'll be just right by the time your father and eldest brother finish lessons." He handed over the willow basket, added a few words about the boy having the clever look of a scholar, and went on his way.

Zhuo Siheng heard the noise and came out with his book, but Village Head Wu was gone. All he found was a basket of round purple-blue bilberries. He went out to look, but the old man walked fast and had already taken the shortcut.

"I'll get the water. Go back to your book." Xiheng was already lifting the bucket.

Zhuo Siheng had to laugh. A five-year-old giving orders to a thirteen-year-old, like a father to a son. He caught his brother's collar, pulled him back, and took the bucket. "You study. I'll fetch third sister on the way."

The well stood under the largest cypress in the township. He had just reached it when he saw his live rabbit of a sister coming this way with a medicine basket on her back, skipping two steps and bounding the third.

So the two of them went home together.

Being handsome and clean-featured, scholarly and quick to smile, Zhuo Siheng had become the best-loved young man among the township's older women. The aunties and grandmothers at the well fell over each other to draw his water, muttering that a hand that wrote characters shouldn't do coarse work. Before he could finish declining they had tipped their own water into his bucket.

Zhuo Ciheng watched, grinning, and only on the road home did she say in a low, laughing voice, "Brother, it's lucky there's no girl in the township near your age. Otherwise these aunties and grannies would brawl over having you for a son-in-law or a granddaughter's husband."

"Best not. I couldn't survive it." Her crisp teasing took away most of the tiredness of a morning's study, and he chatted on. "So you went up the mountain gathering herbs with Doctor Rong again?"

Ciheng was at the liveliest age, about eight, and even household matters came out light and carefree. "Sister's medicine ran out, so I'm laying in more. And Father starts coughing in autumn, so I have to get ahead of it. What's that phrase again?"

"Mend the roof before it rains." He was quite resigned about it.

Of the four children, three were fine material for scholarship. Only Ciheng nodded off at the sight of a book. She'd picked up plenty of characters from Zhuo Yan, but book learning was never to her taste. She did still remember the ambition of her early childhood, and had learned something of medicines and the physician's art from a former army doctor in the township. Zhuo Yan worried constantly about her studies. Zhuo Siheng always reassured him: everyone has their own affinities, and finding something you love and sticking to it is one of the great pieces of luck in being alive. Didn't Confucius himself talk about teaching according to aptitude? After he'd fed his father some modern notions of individualized education, Zhuo Yan stopped fretting, and after long thought he had someone bring two medical classics back from the city and taught them to her as her canon. As it turned out, Ciheng burned the lamp oil late alongside Zhuo Siheng and read them with real relish. In two years she'd made real progress on a path of her own.

Zhuo Siheng was a beneficiary of exam-oriented education and had marched at the front of its ranks, but he knew it didn't suit everyone. It was simply what the age demanded and you had to adapt. If Ciheng had been in the modern world with him, he'd have printed out the medical schools' admission cut-offs and hung them in her room, and said to her earnestly, "Little sister, look at these scores. Can you afford not to study?" And then he'd have had her by the scruff every day, grinding through problems to the death — because it bore on her fate, her future and her livelihood, and was the only route to what she wanted. But this age wasn't the one he came from. There, to be a doctor you first crossed the single-plank bridge of the examinations, and had to be near the top of them to reach the threshold of medicine. Here she had the circumstances and the ability to be taught in a way that fit her, and there was no need to plow blindly down one road. Perhaps her gifts and her luck held a lotus all their own, finer than the other three bookish children's.

Ciheng's cheerful voice broke into his thoughts. "That's it! Brother really is clever! You'll pass high up for certain!"

He came back to himself and picked up where he'd left off. "Don't change the subject. Father agreed you could learn medicine from Doctor Rong. Did he agree you could go running into the mountains with people? You're a child. It's dangerous. Think how worried he'd be if he knew."

Zhuo Ciheng always found it strange that her brother was harder to fool than her father. Two lines like that and Father would have been steered right past it. But Brother always found the crux and the thread in whatever she said, and however she went around it, he picked the thread up again.

So all she could do was answer honestly. "If you don't tell him, he won't know. Besides, Master Rong ran into a raccoon dog up there last time, and while his legs were still jelly I drove it off with a sickle. And when Brother Lun came back from the army camp he taught me several moves with a blade. They're really useful. Nothing's going to happen."

Then her eyes darted, and turning his own method back on him, she circled round to his earlier question. "Well now. From the sound of it, Father is the only one in this house who worries about me. Doesn't Brother worry about his little sister? How hard-hearted."

Zhuo Siheng rather wished the dynasty allowed women to hold office. If it did, he'd find a way to make his third sister a remonstrance official. Leaving a talent for contradiction and a gift for the slippery slope like that out of the business of arguing with people was a real loss to the politics of the age.

All he could do was laugh. "That sharp tongue only ever bullies me. Wait till your sister deals with you at home."

At the mention of her sister, Ciheng went meek. She wasn't afraid of an eldest brother who was always gentle and reasonable, but her sister, mild as her temper was, always had a way of bringing her to heel. So she made a face, fell silent, and walked quietly all the way to the house, and only then spoke again, slowly. "But Brother, you go up the mountain hunting with Grandpa Huyan yourself. Every time you're up there for days, Father can't sleep for nights worrying about you, and for the last two days before you're due he goes out to the head of the village road after lessons to wait for you."

Zhuo Siheng was slightly taken aback, warmth and guilt together in his chest, and his voice dropped. "We're all growing fast. This winter we'll need more hides for new padded coats and a cloak for the cold. Your sister feels the cold badly, so I want to take a deer and make her a felted deerskin rug for the couch. Warm and comfortable both."

Old Huyan was the only grown man in the township who had never been a soldier, said to be because his father was a foreigner from the Eight Tribes of Wohan. He had drifted here thirty or forty years ago and made a home. His family all died early, leaving only a small grandson, who studied a year with Zhuo Yan and was now apprenticed to a merchant caravan traveling in Zhuzhou down south, seeing something of the world. Old Huyan had a family art of mountain-craft and hunting, and being grateful that Zhuo Yan's teaching had won his grandson such a road forward, he passed the whole of it on to Zhuo Siheng without holding anything back.

The two of them talked their way home just as lessons ended and a houseful of children came running out. Xiheng was reporting Village Head Wu's visit to their father. Zhuo Yan listened thoughtfully, and when he saw Siheng and Ciheng come in he said to his eldest, "Siheng, remember to take some of the fish we scooped up when Little Snake Creek flooded yesterday over to Old Master Huyan."

"Let's go tomorrow. If it's late the old man will have had his drink and gone to sleep." Old Huyan loved his cup. He said he'd taken a bad chill in the mountains years ago, and without a drink at night his body wouldn't warm up.

Unusually, Zhuo Yan turned down his son's reasonable suggestion. "Today. Tomorrow I have something else for you."

Zhuo Siheng thought nothing of it, agreed, and went to deliver the fish. The old man was indeed asleep. He set the fish in a basin, covered it, tucked the quilt in properly, checked the stove, and left.

Halfway back it started to rain. Northern spring and summer love a sudden downpour, and it comes without warning. The clouds had barely arrived and the thunder and lightning barely started before fat drops were hammering the ground. Zhuo Siheng ran for home, and before he was through the gate he saw Zhuo Yan coming out to meet him with an umbrella, in more of a hurry than the rain.

Both of them were soaked through. Ciheng brewed a hot draught to drive out the chill, and only after that and a hot wash did they feel right again.

---

Early the next morning Zhuo Yan told Zhuo Siheng to come out with him.

But he had prepared a great many things, not at all like the usual easy outing when father and son went fishing and talked. They carried fish and hides and some southern goods bought for them in Ningshuo, both hands full, and only when he couldn't hold any more did Zhuo Yan step out of the yard.

After the night's heavy rain the village road was mud, with broken branches and fallen flower-cups trampled everywhere. Zhuo Yan walked ahead in silence. Several times Zhuo Siheng offered to carry more and was refused with a shake of the head.

He thought it strange. He'd been to Village Head Wu's house many times — New Year visits, small matters about the children's lessons — and it had never been this formal or this odd.

It was only a short walk. Zhuo Yan had his son make the greeting, set down the gifts, and went in with him. This time he didn't sit when invited. He bowed deeply to Village Head Wu instead. "I won't hide it from you. I've come today with something important to ask."

The countryside was plain-mannered and neighbors came and went as they pleased. The village head was called a petty official, but he was really just the old man who worried about the village, with no airs and no dignity to stand on. He had never seen a house call like this, and it frightened him into waving both hands. "Schoolmaster Zhuo, you're this township's great benefactor. Don't talk like that. Your family's business is the township's business. Just say it!"

"In two months I intend to take Siheng to Ningshuo to sit the qualifying examination." Zhuo Yan kept the same formal tone, a beat between each phrase. "I need you to issue a household statement and a certificate of guarantee with your mark on them. Then I take those to the prefectural office in Ningshuo for the official seal, and only then can the boy enter the examination hall."

Village Head Wu declared that this was serious business indeed. He couldn't read, but with Zhuo Yan writing and himself sealing there'd be no problem. This was the first child in their township to go out and sit an examination!

The person actually concerned, standing to one side, was stunned.

Zhuo Yan had explained the system to him. The examinations went in three stages: the prefectural, the departmental, and the palace examination. But to sit the first one you had to be either a student of the Imperial Academy or an enrolled student of a prefectural school. Zhuo Siheng was neither, so only the third route was open to him: sit a qualifying test and pass it.

He'd known it was coming, and still, taking the first real step onto the examination road left him a little unsteady. Handing his fate over like this was a strange feeling, one he'd never had before.

Then again, he had never once been afraid of an examination in his first life. Time to see what the examinations of this one could do.