Chapter 70

"My lord, it fell out just as you foresaw. Vice-Prefect Zhuo passed and stopped at none of the Prefect's inscriptions the whole way. He went instead to the Song tea gardens in Yongming Commandery, then rounded by Chaoping Commandery, and tonight he came back over the ridge from Dongmu Mountain. He's already at his own residence."

In the study of the administrator's house, the lamp-flames were hooded in silk, their haloes gathered to light the room. Cui Lu's hand paused a moment over the letter he was sealing, then he gave a soft, cold laugh. "His coaxing and cheating can fool none but a simple soul like He Mengchun. Tomorrow I'll have him bring out those poems he promised, and see how he answers. If I can fix on him the business of lying to get the map, then even timid, trouble-dodging Lord He won't dare shield him. A few days at the emperor's side and he's picked up some cheap tricks for fooling people, and comes to wave his sleeves in the provinces. He should learn that offend the wrong man, and for all his silver tongue and quick wit he'll come to grief."

"You see it true, my lord. For a rotten speck of a firefly like Zhuo Siheng to dare vie with your sun and moon, he deserves no better." The servant hurried out the flattery he'd made ready.

But Cui Lu showed no pleasure at it, and pressed the spy who'd brought the report. "Now then, did he do anything else at the Song tea gardens?"

"He stayed three days at the Song gardens, only going about the place, but he met the young Song master. That young master is a wastrel, idling his days at cockfights and dog-racing, good for nothing. When Zhuo Siheng left he took a good deal of local produce, mostly tea and the like that Song Yunhe gave him. But there was one box sealed up tight, so big." The spy marked out the size of the box with his hands. "Zhuo Siheng carried it himself and let no one else touch it. No telling what's in it. He kept that box by him the whole way, even to the white-tea gardens on Dongmu Mountain, even while he looked at the tribute tea. The box never left his side."

Cui Lu laughed aloud. "Zhuo Siheng, Zhuo Siheng. I took you for a man pure as the breeze, a gentleman like the lotus that no mud stains. And here you're another grubby thing crawled out of the mire, only putting on a show to win a fine name. I've seen plenty of your sort of scholar. I thought a man who weighed so on Lord Tang's mind might be a rare bird, but you're just another bookworm maggot out of the sage's own pages. Listen. He's taken the Song house's goods and money, so he'll surely do the Song house's work. Watch him close, and when he moves, come and tell me."

The spy said he would, and added, "He played the hypocrite the whole road, all tender care for his underlings and courtesy to his own servants. It was all a show. Before he came back from Dongmu Mountain, he even sent his body-servant ahead with the gifts he'd got on the road, no doubt afraid that to set out empty-handed and come home loaded would look bad for his name as an official. You see the sort through at a glance, my lord, the scum among scholars."

"Scum? He's no scum." Cui Lu rose and paced before the puzzled spy. "Every scholar is just like this. On his lips, chasing fame. Inside, selfish and headstrong. Since they're all so, Zhuo Siheng only goes with the current. Where's the scum in that? My whole life, back in my Jiangxiang Academy days, it was these scholars I saw most of. Sage's books, sage's deeds. All of it mouthed and scorned in the same breath. Every one a fine hand at worming in and chancing it, yet each must dress his doings up, find some sage's pretext to raise an arch over, and talk of filial duty and the way of the world. But when the time comes to step back, no one turns faster or forgets those words quicker. Look at Zhuo Siheng and that old friend of his, Gao Yongqing, both the same. For all the fine talk on their lips, cut to the quick of them and they'll yield and give way at once. What scholars, what top graduates. They only fool themselves."

"A lofty view, my lord. A grand argument!"

"Say no more of that kind of thing from now on." Cui Lu's face was cold when he turned to the spy. "I'm not He Mengchun. You just do your own work. The moment Prefect Wang has word, bring it to me without fail. And tell your other men, if Lord Tang gives an order, there must be no delay, or I'll hold you to account!"

The spy, his flattery fallen flat and a scolding on top of it, said yes over and over, and backed out in fright.

---

The Vice-Prefect's residence.

"You came back early. Did no one grow suspicious?"

"No. They took it that my lord had been given so many gifts he sent me ahead with some. No one thought anything of it. The empty boxes for show have sat in your study since, and no one's opened them to find there's nothing inside, only a few packets of tea and a few pieces of fired porcelain." Chen Rong offered up a few closely-written sheets. "These are the Prefect's inscriptions and poems I set down on the way back. Nearly all of them south of the commandery seat are here. Some of the sights and landmarks I've marked with their names for you to look over."

"Very well done. These days have been hard on you. Go and rest." Zhuo Siheng smiled at Chen Rong. "Since you're back in your own home country, find a chance to go and see whether you've any kin left. You needn't stay in the residence all day. It's thanks to you teaching me the local dialect that I can speak and act freely here. Thank you."

"It's your own foresight and hard study that did it, my lord. I take no credit."

Used as Chen Rong now was to Zhuo Siheng's warm, easy way, he was still careful and held-in, and kept the strict forms of high and low even in private, taking his leave without a hair out of place. Watching his back, Zhuo Siheng only sighed softly, and opened the stack of booklets Huiheng had sent. Inside, all neatly cut, were copied-out poems. He went through them against the He Mengchun inscriptions and local sights that Chen Rong had gone round and set down first, and for each he changed and trimmed the lines by Xiheng and his schoolmates, sorting out several dozen. He patched in a few rough lines of his own among them, copied the whole over in his own hand, and it could pass for the real thing, false for true.

Zhuo Siheng had never cheated at anything, but this heart-racing feeling was, truly, a little addictive.

He looked through again, glad to see how much Xiheng's reading and verse had come on, but found no family letter among them. Just as he was wondering, Ciheng knocked and came in and handed him a thick letter.

Before he left, Zhuo Siheng had told Ciheng that to keep no news waiting, she should open any family letter first, and if there was anything amiss, send word to him. So Ciheng had already read this one, and said with a worried face, "Elder Brother, there's something about Elder Brother Gao in it. Look, quickly."

Zhuo Siheng had read the court gazette already, and thought: if it were any great matter the gazette would surely carry Gao Yongqing's name in big letters. But Wuning Commandery, Weizhou, lay quiet, with not a word. If it was only in a family letter, then it must be some weighty but unspeakable thread of the thing. So thinking, he smoothed the letter flat and read it over, and for a long while said nothing, only looking quietly at his second sister's familiar hand.

"Elder Brother, what's wrong? Is it so serious? Didn't our sister say there's been no imperial ruling yet? Elder Brother Gao may not be in trouble. Even if those soldier-bullies throw their weight about, with the prefecture army's ranks all shielding each other, they still can't get round the law of the land!"

Ciheng's crossbow-quick questions made Zhuo Siheng laugh. "I'm not worried."

"But your face isn't the face of a man who isn't." Ciheng felt that, knowing her brother as she did, she couldn't be reading him wrong.

"The thing is serious, true, but your Elder Brother Gao has done it beautifully. What worries me is not that he'll be punished." Zhuo Siheng explained patiently. "The whole thing is strange through and through. First, the garrison commander not pursuing it and standing aside. Second, the emperor's hesitation. And last, why was Yongqing so rash? For all that he always seems to act without a care for what follows, in truth he weighs every move and keeps a way out. He's never simply reckless. So I believe that in beheading the vice-commander he surely had a reason no one could question, and that reason is far graver than killing a man, which is why both the garrison commander and the emperor would rather let it stand that Yongqing merely executed an officer of the army."

"A thing graver than killing a man?" Ciheng was quick, and with a blink or two thought one up, and near frightened herself with it. "That vice-commander was of the prefecture army, and Weizhou lies on the border, right next to the old Fan lands. Graver than killing a man. Does that mean he was guilty of dealing with the enemy, of treason?"

Zhuo Siheng looked at his sister with admiration and approval, thinking: Ciheng, sure enough. A touch and she sees it. There were only the two of them in the room, so he hid nothing and said straight out, "There can be no other reason. The vice-commander killed those people perhaps because the herders had seen him dealing with Fan men, and so he silenced them. Yongqing caught the strangeness of it and acted at once, to cut off the trouble before it grew. But if a man under him was dealing with the enemy, the garrison commander could not escape blame and would surely be called to account by the emperor. So he dared not, for a dead officer of his, let the matter blow up. He'd sooner hold down the men making trouble in the ranks and wipe the thing away. And the emperor too has no wish for word to spread that his own border garrison is in secret traffic with the neighboring land. If the army's loyalty wavered, or the court pressed him to ready for war, the balance he's kept at such pains might break. So Yongqing's choice was good for everyone. Only those few men under the vice-commander, not knowing the truth, let blood go to their heads and blew it all open. Now the emperor is at a loss how to handle it, and so holds it back and says nothing."

Zhuo Siheng explained it smoothly, but he understood in his heart: with a border commander's weak spot in his grip, Gao Yongqing would surely find his work there run more smoothly from now on. If he handled this well, it was not past hope that the emperor might use the pretext to raise him a rank.

But this road was far too sheer.

Still, it was as well that the trouble the Tang house had laid was all here at his own end, so his worthy brother Yongqing wasn't stretched too thin and had time to work his plan. And he himself ought to be doing something too.

These things Zhuo Siheng could not say to his sister. The two of them talked on gently of the small doings of his trip, ate a late supper together, and then went each to their room to sleep.

The next day Zhuo Siheng went to the yamen to report his work to his superior He Mengchun.

As he'd expected, Cui Lu was there too.

Zhuo Siheng was the very picture of calm, but in his heart he knew the real bite of holding himself in.

He Mengchun had perhaps been waiting eagerly for Zhuo Siheng to come back. Seeing him travel-worn and much darker, he asked at once whether he'd like a couple more days' rest. But Zhuo Siheng said, as if joking, "Your inscriptions led me a fine chase, my lord. However did all those good sights and fine poems come to be in such out-of-the-way places? It was hard going, truly."

He Mengchun lapped it up and laughed aloud. "Yunshan, you've read so widely, how could you not know the sense of the old line, 'the wonderful and rare and extraordinary sights of the world are always to be found in the dangerous and the far'? To seek out the finest scenes, of course you must walk the hard road!"

Zhuo Siheng thought: if his old high-school Chinese teacher had heard He Mengchun twist that essay so, he'd have made him copy it out fifty times.

Cui Lu put in from the side, "Vice-Prefect Zhuo said before he left that he'd trade verses with you, my lord. All these days you were away, our lord kept waiting for your return, to sit and talk poetry together and carry the Way in letters. I'll not be laughed at for saying so, but even I waited on tiptoe."

"Just so, just so. Yunshan, this trip left me waiting in agony! Let me see them, quick. Have you any fine pieces?" He Mengchun laughed.

Such a cozy office. Zhuo Siheng half thought he was back in a primary-school after-school club. Knocking about officialdom in Jinzhou was easy enough. Write a couple of poems and you were sure of calm waters and safe passage.

How funny.

And sure enough he laughed, a mild and easy laugh, and brought out the several dozen loose sheets he'd copied over afresh. Under Cui Lu's doubtful, uneasy eyes he handed them to He Mengchun. "They're only playful pieces. Look them over and set me right, my lord."

Lord He read one and praised one. This one plain without being coarse, that one supple and true to feeling. Zhuo Siheng took it all, unabashed, as if hearing his own brother praised, and was well content inside. But Cui Lu was far from easy. He'd thought Zhuo Siheng meant to cheat the map out of them for some foul purpose and then bluff his way through, and from the spy's report he knew the man had been to not one of the inscription spots. Where he'd got this sleight-of-hand to slip it past them all, Cui Lu couldn't tell. But here truly were a good many poems, the places and sights in them described exactly, even set in the same order as the Prefect's own notes.

A new scheme came to Cui Lu, and he joined He Mengchun in a word or two of praise, and said, "Vice-Prefect Zhuo is a man of great gifts, polished in letters and deep in the classics. His name is well earned." He drew out one sheet and pointed it out to He Mengchun. "Take this one, the poem on Withered-Tree Crag. Forgive me, my lord, but I daresay it bests your own. Is it that you love that strange sight most, Vice-Prefect, that you wrote such fine lines?"

He thought: the rest you can cheat and have another write, but without truly going there you can't know the details.

"Withered-Tree Crag has the shape of a dead tree and a base like an old well, all jagged and sheer. I never saw it myself. The lines in your own poem, my lord, 'a fist of coiling, coiling meaning, a brow of knotted, knotted folds,' could not be more apt. And in truth I love this one for another reason too. My lord's nature runs all mild and gentle, a gentleman's warm ease, and his letters with it. Yet this poem stands apart, lean-boned and spare, sharp and cold, holding the bone of the poet Meng Jiao and the spirit of the poet Jia Dao, a thing of its own body and rhyme. For the fining of word and line it may fall short of the others, but for heart and brush as one, for its whole bearing laid bare, this piece is the crown of them all." Zhuo Siheng finished and looked at Cui Lu with a smile. "What does Administrator Cui think?"

Cui Lu could have ground his teeth and called Zhuo Siheng a glib sophist dressing up a sham. But seeing He Mengchun's look of boundless delight, he dared not, and could only nod along with a sunk, dead face. "Vice-Prefect Zhuo is right. This one is out of the common." When he raised his head to look at Zhuo Siheng again, his heart gave a sudden start. The mild, quiet young man was still smiling at him, but there was no smile in his eyes. The kindly, down-curved gaze was colder than ice and snow, and yet the warmth at the corner of his mouth seemed no pretense either.

The strangeness of it threw Cui Lu into confusion. He couldn't tell whether the man before him already knew of his dealings with the prefect, nor make out his meaning, nor how he'd managed, without setting foot at the inscription spots, to bring back poems so real and so full of substance. He could only hold up a forced smile in his unease, and sit with He Mengchun and Zhuo Siheng talking poetry and the Way.

The day over, He Mengchun had not had his fill, and asked Zhuo Siheng to sit with him again. Cui Lu, on pins and needles, found some excuse to leave the two to talk and fled. Near the end of the meal, Zhuo Siheng suddenly turned the talk to his Yongming trip, his savoring of it plain in his voice. "Lord He, through Futing Mountain south of Anhua there's a scene worth seeing, above all the Song tea gardens in Yongming Commandery. There's a tea mother tree there, towering and lovely, wrapped in green mist. In the rain it's as soft and dim as the willows on the Jiangnan dikes, and in the sun it outshines the green waves and waving grass of the Taicang Plain. A sight past all telling."

"Is there truly such a sight? I did hear from Administrator Cui that you'd gone on into Yongming on the way. He's the most careful of men, afraid you'd leave some handle there, let another commandery say our officials meddle. But I told him to set his mind at ease. You love letters and roaming, and it's your first time in Jinzhou, so of course you'd wander a bit and play. See, I was right. Your elder brother and you are friends across the years, newly met, yet I know your nature as a friend of the heart knows it. You went to the garden and saw such a wonder, and now you've told me and widened my eyes too." He Mengchun's words gave Zhuo Siheng a small inward start. So Cui Lu had known his route before he even got back. He couldn't be too careless. But it didn't touch his plan, and he went on as before. "Administrator Cui is a steady, careful soul, and he too was sharing your load, my lord. These days I was away you must have toiled over the commandery's affairs day after day, in heart and strength both, and I'm truly uneasy over it. So let me say this. You've worked hard this while, my lord, and ought to unbend. Come with me to the Song tea gardens, see the sights of Futing Mountain and the country of Yongming. What do you say?"

As for roaming hills and waters, He Mengchun was of course glad to. But his gladness gave way to hesitation. "Only, Yongming isn't my own ground. Might it look improper to go rushing over?"

"You needn't worry, my lord. No official but the education officers has ever gone to the Song tea gardens. They send up no tribute tea, so there aren't so many rules, and they've no dealings with our own commandery. I've some acquaintance with the family. If you'd go, I'll send a letter, and have them put men to show you round the fine sights nearby, no official business, and no one to say a word about it."

Hearing Zhuo Siheng so sure of it, He Mengchun, who'd grown more than a little tired of a month in the yamen, went home that very day and had his servants pack, and told Zhuo Siheng to mind the commandery yamen and its business well, and told the rest of the yamen officials to heed Vice-Prefect Zhuo's orders in his stead while he was gone. When he'd given his instructions he thought: if from now on he and this worthy Zhuo could take turns at the main work, then one of them could slip free of the dull grind of affairs and roam the wide world, and perhaps go on into Lingnan to see it besides. The weight on his own shoulders would be so much lighter. How very pleasant!

The day he set out, Zhuo Siheng went to see him off in person, the two parting fondly. Zhuo Siheng charged him with many things for the road and many sights to see, and He Mengchun said the commandery's affairs would be a trouble to him.

Watching He Mengchun and his dozen or so servants go off in their grand straggle, Pan Guangling, who had learned at last to say the right thing at the right time, asked, "Yesterday you had Chen Rong take a letter to the Song tea gardens. Was it for this? Only I don't understand. You talked Lord He into going and passing by the works, but with his habits he'll surely never go up to that poor mountain hollow to look. He'll round straight to the gardens. Isn't our care wasted?"

"You call it wasted before any care's even been spent. You're too hasty. And besides, it makes no difference whether he goes to the works or not. I had Chen Rong carry the letter to say our lord, on my word, is very taken with the tea mother tree and the matter of tribute tea. The Song gardens are glad enough to host one vice-prefect, so they'll be gladder still to host a prefect. They'll not let such a heaven-sent chance slip. And I told them too the longer they keep the prefect, the more they stand to gain. What Song Yunhe cares for most is his family's trade and name, so they'll never waste the opening I've made. As for the works, it doesn't matter in this." Zhuo Siheng watched He Mengchun's train vanish in the distance, his mood as fine as the wide, open country, a clear fifth-month breeze and running jade-bright dew. As pleasant as could be.

"If the works don't matter, then what does?" Pan Guangling found Lord Zhuo harder and harder to follow.

"Tell me, what is the office system of our commandery?"

Zhuo Siheng's question, come from nowhere, left Pan Guangling more fogged than before, and he answered without thinking. "How could you not know, my lord? A commandery seat has the prefect at its head, and under him the vice-prefect, and under him the administrator and the deputy administrator, and the patrol inspector stationed in the commandery, and men like me, the six-office clerks below them, and then the counties."

"And tell me, our prefect is off on commandery business a month and more. This month, to whom do the commandery's affairs and government fall?"

"What's there to ask? Of course they fall to you, my... my..." Pan Guangling's words stopped short. He looked quietly at Zhuo Siheng, who still gazed into the distance, and could not get out another word.

Lord Zhuo seemed wrapped in sunlight, and in that flood of light he did not narrow his eyes, but kept them wide and still, his green official robe near melting into the deep green all around. Yet standing so quiet and composed, Zhuo Siheng had nothing of his usual mild, gentle air about him. The whole man was like a sword drawn from its sheath, flashing a dangerous light with his words.

Pan Guangling thought suddenly of Zhuo Siheng's first days in office. One day as he worked in the yamen as usual, a few idle clerks with nothing to do were talking of face-reading, and one said the new vice-prefect had deer's eyes. A woman born with such eyes was a bodhisattva come again to ferry men out of the sea of suffering, soft-hearted and all kindness, come into the world only to save, a born loving mother sure to be blessed in sons and nephews. But a man born with them had something of a woman's look, and could hardly escape a woman's soft-heartedness, too gentle and weak, and even in office would end his days middling and timid, with no nerve to build a name or a work. Pan Guangling had sneered at it, of course, yet he'd had to grant that Zhuo Siheng's eyes did have a deer's quick, still light, only too gentle, with no edge of their own. But looking now, what deer were these round, bright eyes? They were the round eyes of a hawk, an eagle, a golden kite, and what flowed in them was nothing of soft, going-with-the-current calm.