Chapter 69

"The Grand Princess wishes to see me?"

Zhuo Huiheng thought she'd misheard. She had never had any dealings with the Grand Princess, and her brother kept well clear of the imperial kin. To hear it so suddenly from Luo Yuanzhu, she dared not answer rashly, and only said, "I came today to send medicines for my sister. I'm plainly dressed, and I'm afraid I'd shame my family before the Grand Princess."

"It's from the abbess that the Grand Princess heard of your family's good name, and so she wishes to meet you. As for your dress, the second young lady needn't give it a thought. The Grand Princess is no stiff, old-fashioned noble, and meeting here is chance besides. Who would stand on empty form at such short notice?"

Luo Yuanzhu's voice was cool and clear, but her words were soft and gentle. Huiheng could not well refuse again, and agreed to go with her to call on Her Highness the Grand Princess Xuanyi.

The Grand Princess Xuanyi was the emperor's only sister. The two had been close from childhood, and after the hard years, once brother and sister were reunited, their bond of blood ran closer still. The emperor cherished this sister past all others. The princess had her own residence, and kept sleeping quarters in the palace as well, so she could come in and share the warmth of family with her brother. Though only two years short of the emperor in age, she was still unmarried. Since his accession she had asked leave to follow the old example of the Grand Princess Zhenguo, keeping her hair and taking up cultivation, claiming no revenue and no empty title, wishing only to serve the state with her own person and stand at the sovereign's side.

Zhuo Siheng had once spoken to Huiheng of this Grand Princess. Her brother had said, "The emperor fears consort-kin above all, since so many of our dynasty's standing ills began there. So his every move since taking the throne has been to root out that ill. Even Noble Consort Luo, the most favored of all just now, was a choice free of consort-kin trouble. That shows how wary he is. If the Grand Princess were married off, to whomever, then with her closeness to the throne and her high standing she'd form the strongest, largest consort-clan of the dynasty, against the emperor's whole purpose. So this Grand Princess is one of two things. She may have a very high head for politics. She knows her marriage would shake the court, so she'd rather keep to herself, and in that way keep her position clearly neutral and her political voice. Or she may truly care for the bond of brother and sister, and not want to put her brother in a hard place. So, rather than be caught between family feeling and a throne's suspicion, she holds the best balance of all, and keeps both power and affection, and has it all. Against those two, a political marriage can hold little attraction. Of course, it may also be the emperor's own arrangement, and the princess only obeys."

Huiheng still remembered her brother's last words. "If the Grand Princess Xuanyi is not a soft, dutiful, warm-hearted sister, then she is surely a political animal like her brother, with the surge of power running in her blood."

But on the Grand Princess Xuanyi's well-kept, noble face she could find not the least thread of the truth.

The Grand Princess had Luo Yuanzhu raise the bowing Huiheng, and said gently, "I'd long heard Vice-Prefect Zhuo was a man of great talent, much prized by my imperial brother. I never met him, but seeing his sister's grace today, I know the man must be out of the common run."

Then, by her brother's reasoning, best suppose the second case for now, Huiheng thought. Their Zhuo family had paid dearly over the matter of human nature in the imperial house, and a little caution never went wrong.

"Thank you, Your Highness, for praise I don't deserve." Huiheng had a frail look about her by nature, and her voice with it. Hearing her, the princess asked at once whether she was unwell, and whether she'd seen a doctor, and said that with her brother away governing Lingnan and keeping its people safe, she must take good care of herself at home. If she felt unwell, she might come to the princess's residence for medicine. The princess had an attending palace physician granted by the emperor, in constant residence.

So Zhuo Huiheng was kept two hours by the princess and the scribe Luo, talking of women's health. She played along, but knew quite well the two had not come to the convent to discuss long-life recipes with the abbess.

Only when the abbess came back did Zhuo Huiheng understand. The Grand Princess had come in person to beg a blessing-lamp lit here for her newborn baby niece.

That Noble Consort Luo had borne a little princess was the hottest talk in the capital these two months.

The emperor, it was said, was overjoyed, and gave the Noble Consort a great many rewards. He granted her, alone, a seal, cut with four gold-seal characters in his own hand: "Blessings Doubled and Complete." That set the pot boiling. A good many officials of the Ministry of Rites and the Court of State Ceremonial sent up memorials to say that to grant a seal to anyone but the empress broke the rules. But the emperor very handsomely invited them to the Tianzhang Hall, and holding the lovely month-old princess himself, talked with them, and said with a smile that the Noble Consort's seal carried no real power at all. She loved painting and calligraphy, he said, so he'd had one cut for her to stamp on her collection for fun. He understood each man's principle of keeping to his duty, but there was truly no need to worry. And he had the officials all look at the sweet little princess, and asked the Court of State Ceremonial and the Ministry of Rites to be sure to find this great treasure a fine title.

So no one could say more. It was only a seal for appreciating art, after all, and to make a great to-do of it was truly needless. Yet there seemed to be in it a hard-to-read drift of the emperor's will that no one could quite ignore, and that could not easily be passed over as nothing.

The Luo family's favor made men's eyes burn, but the Luo family gave no one a handhold to climb by, which near drove the climbing sort to distraction. They turned their eyes on Noble Consort Luo's one younger sister, Luo Yuanzhu. For a time several noble houses sought an edict to marry the Luo house's youngest daughter. The emperor seemed very open about it, and asked Luo Yuanzhu's own wish in person. To everyone's surprise, Luo Yuanzhu knelt and begged not to marry. She said she had been called by Heaven to be a female scribe of the palace, charged with teaching the noblewomen, and dared not forget so great a grace. She kept to it diligently day and night, in fear of failing the emperor's will. Her students were still shallow in learning, she said, and she felt she'd fallen short of the great hope laid on her, and was deeply uneasy. She asked only to go on making up for it. She dared not claim she could bring the imperial and noble daughters up to the heels of the Grand Princesses Zhenguo and Dingguo, but at the least she would have them lettered and fluent, fit to stand as a model of women's learning for the whole land.

The emperor, hearing it, was much moved, so it was said, and only bade her go on taking pains over his own unworthy daughters and the other girls, and said he trusted the scribe Luo's learning and virtue could raise two more loyal and righteous princesses for the state.

And Noble Consort Luo took the chance to say she hoped her own daughter by the emperor would one day have her younger sister's learning and bearing. So she hoped her sister might take charge of compiling a book, lives of the Grand Princesses Zhenguo and Dingguo and of every woman of the imperial house worth a line for her virtue and ability since the dynasty won the realm, for the imperial women of days to come to look to and follow.

The emperor gladly agreed, and told the Grand Princess to oversee it too. The Grand Princess felt deeply for the aim of writing up the virtue and talent of the dynasty's women, and so they had come to the convent, wishing to go through the brushwork various noble ladies had left here over the abbess's three reigns, to study and weigh it.

Huiheng vaguely felt the matter might be less simple than it looked. But since her brother took up his post she'd lost her way into palace affairs, and could not judge rashly. She could only listen from the side to the talk of the princess and the abbess.

"Since this collection is to be lives of women, it should be women who compile it. Yuanzhu, as the dynasty's female scribe, is chief compiler by right. For the rest of the editors I'd like to gather more of the capital's women of learning. Does the abbess have anyone to put forward?"

The abbess seemed on very good terms with the princess, and wasted no courtesies, but named a few of the capital's talented women she knew. Huiheng knew one or two of them a little. And just there the abbess turned the talk. "The second Miss Zhuo, for wide reading, is a leader among women too."

Hearing her own name spoken so, Huiheng's heart jumped, and she bent her head in haste and humility. But what rose from the bottom of her heart was a hot, burning thing. She wondered suddenly whether her brother, that day in the golden hall when his name was called out solemnly before the throne, had felt this same pride he couldn't say aloud.

The princess's round eyes seemed always to hold a smile. She only said it was good, and added, "I've had the scribe Luo put forward a good many able women too. We must choose with great care, so as not to fail the weighty charge the emperor has laid on us."

The scribe Luo, who had been as silent as Huiheng, suddenly spoke in that cool, clear voice of hers. "Your Highness, how are we to choose? I beg your instruction."

Huiheng, come back from her dream of the golden hall, took it up on the turn. "Why not do as the examinations do, and test for the talent?"

The other three in the room all fixed their eyes on her.

Huiheng knew she'd spoken out of turn, but she might not have spoken wrong. She knew well this might be a rare chance in a lifetime, and forced herself calm as she said easily, "The way to choose talent is of course best set by our dynasty's examinations. That being so, why not follow the same course, and ask the Grand Princess to judge, and pick the fine brushes for this collection?"

Luo Yuanzhu's eyes, that always seemed misted with rain, now lit with an eager light too, and she put it to the princess as well. "The method is a fine one. It would choose fairly and uphold the tone of learning, and there could be no one better than the Grand Princess to preside."

Huiheng stole a glance at Luo Yuanzhu, and thought: everyone is of one mind, sure enough. If the Grand Princess did not head it, none of them would have the standing or the face to get such a thing going. And the princess, for her part, was this not a chance too good to miss?

The princess gave no word either way. She allowed that the idea the two girls raised was an excellent one, but said the matter wanted long thought, and she would weigh it when she went back.

Huiheng was surer now of her brother's guess. This Grand Princess was no common person.

Leaving the convent, Zhuo Huiheng's mind was unsettled. She'd come only on her sister's errand, and who'd have thought such a chance would meet her? Yet how many details worth turning over lay in this seeming-happy, truly-strange turn of fortune?

The book was Noble Consort Luo's idea, and she wanted her own sister to lead it. There might be some political aim in that. The Luo house had not a single kinsman who could enter office. Only by raising Luo Yuanzhu's standing could they lay up any stake to hold for her child. Compiling a book touched no court affairs and showed off the emperor's virtue besides. It was a safe and seemly thing. Once the book was done, Luo Yuanzhu would surely be the talk of the capital, perhaps the first female scribe in the dynasty's history to make her name in print.

But the emperor, though he let the scribe Luo be chief compiler, gave the place of real charge to his own sister. For the Grand Princess might be the one woman now with both the ability and the power to have a say in affairs. The Empress Dowager was not the emperor's birth mother, with an awkwardness there that couldn't be spoken. The empress, even on easier terms with the emperor now, still could not well speak out. Noble Consort Luo had always been careful and quiet, and was never heard to overstep or say too much. Only the Grand Princess Xuanyi. Her talking politics with the emperor was no secret, and it was said that over several court cases a few years back the emperor had asked his sister's view in particular, and the princess could always give counsel that fit her place and came nearest the emperor's mind. What all understood without saying was that the Grand Princess had always taken the Grand Princess Zhenguo, likewise unmarried all her life and given to affairs of state, for her model, and that with such a precedent, and the princess always winning men by her virtue, there was no talk against her at court. Now, holding this charge, she could build her own name and standing too, and come a long step nearer her political aims and ideals.

And what of herself?

Looking up at a clear, deep-blue patch of sky, Huiheng asked her own heart.

What was it she sought? If she wanted nothing at all, then why, on hearing of this, did her heart stir so, and her breast heave and surge?

But if she took such a step forward, would it touch her brother?

Weighing the two against each other, her heart was at war. In the end only one thought was left.

Write and ask Elder Brother what to do.

What Huiheng did not know was that at this same hour the elder brother she trusted past all bounds was scrambling, filthy and disheveled, up a mountain gorge.

"Are you truly all right, my lord?"

Seeing Zhuo Siheng clawing up the rock hand and foot, Song Yunhe looked deeply worried.

Zhuo Siheng bore the ache of his scraped palms and said bravely, with a smile, "Since you say, Manager Song, that the tea trees on this gorge-side are the crown of the whole garden, then of course I must see them."

Curiosity always had its price, and spending some strength was the smallest price of all. Song Yunhe had told him the tea trees growing in this rock gorge were seven or eight hundred years old, and the rock tea they gave was the king of the groves. Since the man had offered of himself, Zhuo Siheng wanted to see them, and not only out of curiosity. He also felt that for tea off so precious a stock, to be stored in crag-kiln jars would seem too plain a setting. He'd seen the crag kiln's quality with his own eyes. Hemmed in by its soil and water, it was a little coarse and low. For ordinary tea it would do, but a rare stock like this surely called for fine packing to add some value. So he decided to go and see for himself.

But the way was truly hard, and with rain fallen at daybreak, none of the four had rain-clogs, so every one of them slipped and fell and was smeared with mud and moss.

Still, in the end, they saw the tea tree, huge as a canopy.

Zhuo Siheng had not known a tea tree could be so grand and lovely. The rock tea's own light smoke-green seemed gathered thick into one place, a canopy of cloud, low and deep and green, as if green raindrops were about to fall from the sky's edge.

"This is the mother tree, near enough the ancestor of every rock-tea tree in the whole valley." Whenever he spoke of tea, a pride welled up in Song Yunhe's voice. "Every spring we and the tea farmers hold a sacrifice to the tea ancestor. You've missed it this year, my lord, but you might come and see next year. Truly, every place has its own ways. I was quite lost in it myself when I first came. The pity is that for all the fine tea this tree gives, it has never been seen by the emperor's own eye, never won a title. A pearl in the dust, truly. A great pity."

Zhuo Siheng knew well enough that rock tea was no tribute tea. Were it tribute tea, this tree's leaves would of course go up as tribute, and the tree itself might win a title for the honor. He sensed dimly one of the real reasons Song Yunhe had asked him here, so he took it as one more small thing learned, nodded slowly, and turned the talk aside, saying he'd heard that since Jinzhou was so full of hills, its odd and curious sacrifices and its god-shrines all seemed tied to the mountains and the living things in them.

As they talked, he went to step closer to the mother tree, and no sooner had he taken a step than his foot caught and he pitched flat on the ground.

"Ow!"

With his fall there came another voice too.

Pan Guangling and Chen Rong both rushed to help him up, and out of a few waist-high clumps of tea beside them stuck half a leg, the very thing Zhuo Siheng had tripped on.

At a glance, it looked as if someone had dumped a body here. But the voice just now had come from the owner of the leg, so the man was likely not dead.

Before long Zhuo Siheng came out of the daze of his fall, and the man in the tea clumps crawled out too, just as grimy and mud-smeared, yet the best-looking match Zhuo Siheng had ever seen for the words "a jade tree in the wind."

"You! You young wretch!" Song Yunhe stamped with rage. "What are you doing out here instead of minding the counting-room?"

Song Yunhe had been all genial money-making the whole way. Now his eyebrows all but stood on end, so he was truly angry.

"Catching this, of course!" The young man, bawled at, seemed to feel none of it was aimed at him, and spread a smile bright as the stars. He shook the woven rattan cage in his hand, which had been chirring all along. "I made a wager with Seventh Brother that his General Strawcloak would be no match for mine. And look, I heard there was a lively chirp of an insect under the tea mother tree, and I've caught a Redback. Third Uncle, this time I'm sure to win!"

Zhuo Siheng thought Song Yunhe might drop dead of a heart attack on the spot. With a shaking finger the man pointed at the handsome young fellow, who looked like the simple son of some landlord house, and swore. "Your father told me to bring you along to see the world and learn something, and here you are, forever leading off your cousin that we only just got to settle down, to play. And now this. Do you even know who you've tripped? Come here and beg the vice-prefect's pardon!"

With that he bowed first himself. "Please, my lord, don't be angry. This is my eldest brother's youngest son, my own nephew, just turned eighteen. He's a rash, careless boy. His given name is the single character Duan. He's a scamp past teaching, and he meant no offense to you, my lord."

Not yet come to himself, Song Duan was pressed by the head into a bow, swaying all over, his wits still seemingly none too clear.

Zhuo Siheng thought: where am I angry? It's nothing. He put on no airs either, and said mildly, "It's no matter. A small knock, that's all."

"Third Uncle, see, the lord doesn't mind, so let go. My neck hurts..." Song Duan struggled his head up and out of Song Yunhe's grip. The uncle, beard and brows all aquiver with rage, had to beg pardon again, and only stopped when Zhuo Siheng said plainly there was no need.

Zhuo Siheng knew the man feared that in a rage he might ruin this chance of working with the government, which was why he minded so. It made him surer that what the Song tea gardens most wanted now was the title and prestige of imperially-granted tribute tea.

He let nothing show, and said lightly, "Young Master Song meant no harm, Manager Song. No need to be so anxious. I didn't come here in my office, after all. This is Yongming Commandery, not Anhua. If a vice-prefect from next door threw his weight about here and word reached my superior, he'd never let me off when I got back."

Song Yunhe laughed at that, then shook his head and sighed. "That you don't mind is your own largeness of heart, my lord. For you to come all this way is a blessing we couldn't have begged for. I only feared my nephew's offense had spoiled your pleasure."

"Had no Yongming official come here before, then?" Zhuo Siheng feigned surprise.

"The commandery's deputy administrator came once, over the building of the village school." Song Yunhe found Zhuo Siheng truly an official with no airs, whose mind ran always on business and not on himself. If he could get on terms with the man, perhaps the family's trade in Jinzhou might truly climb a rung. So he said, "This tea garden is a poor place. The next honored guest after that is you, my lord."

"With all this mud on me I can hardly be called an honored guest. To my eye it's this tea tree that is the honored thing, the precious of the precious. A pity Anhua Commandery has no such gift of nature, only the crag kiln, and that only because you don't disdain its coarseness, Manager Song." Out of the corner of his eye Zhuo Siheng saw Pan Guangling bursting to speak. But to his relief the lad had learned his lesson, and for all this talk of self-reproach and self-lowering he did not argue back.

The boy could be taught.

Song Yunhe only smiled at this. "Our tea is a common thing too, no match for the white tea off Dongmu Mountain in Chaoping Commandery, famous far and wide since of old. That tea wasn't shut up in a gorge. It won a title from the old Wuyue king, and has been tribute tea for a thousand years, with a great name. Fine as our tea is here, with all the rich, sweet, deep fragrance of rock tea, it can't send its scent beyond Jiangnan. How would it dare claim to be precious or blessed? You praise it too far, my lord."

Zhuo Siheng took the chance to say he'd like to see the tea-making, and tour the tea works. That fell in exactly with Song Yunhe's wish, and he agreed at once, then had men take Zhuo Siheng off to change and rest. After they'd eaten, he said, they would see to it.

Yet as Zhuo Siheng left the mother tree, he noticed that the young Master Song Duan, so very handsome and so very guileless, had watched him with a smile the whole time, with no manners at all, yet truly seeming to know nothing of common affairs.

There was something about him Zhuo Siheng couldn't name.

But the strangeness was soon crowded out by three days of touring, and above all by what the trip brought in, which to Zhuo Siheng's mind was the best outcome he could have had.

Only on the fourth day after arriving did he set out home. Before he left, Song Yunhe and Song Duan saw him well out of the tea garden and some way along the mountain road before they would part. On the way back, uncle and nephew, Song Duan still carrying his beloved cricket-cage and teasing the insect as he went, said, "Third Uncle, this Lord Zhuo is no simple man. I've been at your side a long time, and never seen anyone draw you out before. Yet in a few words he muddled you right past yourself. Quite a gift."

"Nonsense. Your Third Uncle won't boast of much, but the sense of people and the world I've built up these years knocking about north and south is a match for any old hand in officialdom, I promise you. He's served one term of three years, no more. He's still short of the fire." Song Yunhe admired Zhuo Siheng, but did not think him so uncanny as all that. His nephew had met the man only once, while he himself had walked near two days' road with him, and knew him the deeper.

Song Duan teased the cricket through the little rattan window and said, easy and idle, "Third Uncle, that stroke of his is the Wuzi's 'judge the enemy's weak points and strong, and strike where he's in danger.' While you were most on edge, afraid of offending him, he worked you with words and felt out your weak and strong. From you he learned the family's dealings with the local officials here aren't deep, and now he means to use one place as a stepping-stone to get at another, and win the tribute-tea title through some other door. He's learned our aim and our stake, while we still haven't read his plans. If he truly means to deal to mutual benefit, then, knowing our bottom line, he'll trade the least ground for the most gain. When that day comes, I truly don't think Third Uncle will be calling him 'short of the fire.'"

With each line, Song Yunhe's face grew worse, and by the end it was ashen. Looking back, he saw his nephew's words held good sense, but whatever he said now was too late, and all regret.

"Don't fret, Third Uncle. I have a way. It's a desperate throw, but it might just turn things round." Song Duan touched the cricket's feelers with a fingertip white and smooth as jade, his idle, happy look like a man sure of winning, or like one who didn't care at all whether he won or lost.