Chapter 77

The summer sky was clear and deep. The wind came from the south, but had no summer heat in it yet, and with last night's rain, the sixth-month morning in the capital seemed to have shaken off its weariness and kept only the fresh cool.

Before the main gate of the Grand Princess's residence, the carriages had drawn up in rows under the planes some while since. For modesty's sake, the street before the gate had been hung across with pale blue-green curtains, and once a carriage drew inside, someone closed the cloth again behind it, so that no one outside could peer in, and the women within the screen could wait more freely.

Since the dynasty was founded, after all, this was the very first time women had taken part in a contest of learning and the brush. The Grand Princess Xuanyi had asked an imperial command for it, to show that the emperor's civilizing virtue reached even the inner chambers. It might follow the set rules of the examinations: hold a selection exam, choose five women compilers, and together write the lives of the dynasty's great women. The women taking part must obey the Grand Princess's orders without fail, and by the strict letter there were penalties set for cheating and currying too.

So the Grand Princess Xuanyi had drawn up the course of the selection exam as closely as she could to the departmental exam, from the waiting and the order of seats before the doors to the rule that none might come and go or talk at will once inside. Most of all, she had found her own lettered maids to paste over the names and copy out the papers afresh. Nothing could be more painstaking.

By now more than a hundred richly dressed women stood before the residence behind the screen, every one of them keen to begin. These girls all came from houses of rank and power, and had read since they were small. None would claim a dazzling genius, but every one was a leader among women, and some were from official houses of the nearby prefectures, who had got everything ready and sent their daughters to the capital, truly as a house sends its sons to the examinations.

It made, too, a new scene never seen before.

Zhuo Huiheng watched the women coming and going and the crowding maids, and felt neither nervous nor anxious, but rather a joy hard to name brewing in her, and wondered, to pass the fretful wait, whether her brother had felt the same before his own departmental exam.

Then the residence maids hung the seating-roll, set in the order of the Thousand-Character Primer, at the top of a pole before the gate. The noble girls of the capital were proud and would not stir, and though fretting inside, had their maids go to the roll and read it back for them. Huiheng did not grudge the few steps, and looked up herself, and found her name in the middle, right after the character "Wang."

A high clash of a gong came from within, and the main gate of the Grand Princess's residence opened slowly. Luo Yuanzhu came stepping out, her clear, lovely voice now holding a grave, ringing note. "Let the waiting ladies send their people away and go in alone."

The others were taking the carry-cases of writing things, or the baskets, from their maids, ready to go in by degrees, when a dainty voice broke out.

"A moment."

Who the speaker was Zhuo Huiheng didn't know, but by her proud look her family was likely no small one.

"So we may not even take a maid in to sit the test? Then who is to see to our brushes and ink? Must we ladle water and grind ink ourselves?"

Everyone stopped now. In fact Zhuo Huiheng had already heard this grumbled low around her. Many daughters of high ministers and dukes had been raised in such state that, it was said, even turning a page at their books was done by a maid at their side. Glad as they were to take part, they had no end of complaint about all the rules. Now too there were low voices agreeing, a tangle of murmuring on every side.

If Zhuo Huiheng's heart had brows and eyes, they would surely all have knit at once. But she had no wish to touch such a quarrel, and stood quiet and said nothing, and wanted too to see how Luo Yuanzhu, as the chief examiner of this selection exam, would handle it.

Luo Yuanzhu did not raise her voice, and said evenly, "This selection exam follows the examinations' example, and in our dynasty's examinations no one may bring servant or attendant."

"The examinations are sat by men. We are women, gold-honored and jade-precious. How can the two be compared? To do these self-lowering things with our own hands would shame our families, and run clean against the very reason we came!" The woman would not let it go, and said with a cold laugh, "Still, no blame to a female scribe for not knowing. You were raised in a citrus garden of some wild border commandery, so of course you can't know how the capital's ministerial houses rear their treasured girls over the generations."

Zhuo Huiheng marveled at Luo Yuanzhu's calm, that even such an insult could not move her to anger. She stood unshaken and said, "The Pei house of Duke Xingning has held marquisates and chancellorships line after line, so you know the court's statutes well. This selection exam has no old precedent above it, but it has set rules to follow throughout. To talk wildly of the law by which the examinations choose men for the state, I would ask Miss Pei to think before she speaks."

Miss Pei, trading on her founding-duke house, took no account of Luo Yuanzhu, and said coldly, "To measure women high and low by the test that chooses able men for the state is itself a breaking of the rules!"

Hearing her go on about men and women, Zhuo Huiheng could not stomach it, and thought: my brother is a man, yet he never looked down on this women's selection exam, and even wrote to me the knacks and lessons of his own examinations, treating me as truly gone to the examination compound as a scholar of the state, grave and in earnest. Here is Miss Pei, a woman herself, and every other word is "we are different, we are set apart," talk that lowers us a rung, and galling to hear.

In the moment Luo Yuanzhu was silent, and the rest did not know whether to go in or not, Zhuo Huiheng stepped forward and said gently, "Before we handed in our names, we all knew how strict the rules of this selection exam were, and to do as they say is to agree to them. To argue it now would hold up the lucky hour of the test, and the Grand Princess might take it amiss. Better to follow the order promptly, and sit the exam on time, as we ought."

She did not so much as glance at Miss Pei. She only made Luo Yuanzhu a small bow, took her basket from A-Huan, and walked in.

Luo Yuanzhu watched her go with a look that seemed both grateful and respectful, and gave a slight nod.

Among Miss Pei's seven or eight maids one whispered something in her ear, and she came out of her discomfort and sneered. "I wondered who it was. The top graduate's little sister, as it turns out. Your brother, no sooner at his post, stripped his own subordinates of their offices and sent the court a great case, setting the whole place in an uproar. And the sister's no less, with a hand to put in and a say in everything."

For a moment Luo Yuanzhu thought Zhuo Huiheng would lose her temper. She had just passed her on her way in, when she stopped short, and a weight of force and anger past telling came off her whole person. Yet it seemed almost a trick of the eye, for when Zhuo Huiheng turned slowly round, her clear, lovely face held a smile that could not have been more composed.

"The elders of my house left this world of cares early, and my eldest brother is a father to me, so all I say and do I learned from him. My brother holds a local office and does a local office's work, each man to the duty of his place. But here and now, at the roadside, we are not at court, and you, miss, speak lies and talk wildly of the dynasty's affairs of state. I suppose that too was taught you, with all care, by your own father and mother."

Luo Yuanzhu counted herself steady and cool, yet at this she half wished to clap and cheer like a guest at a teahouse hearing a tale. The eldest Miss Pei's face had gone a swollen purple, past all bearing, and she was about to open her mouth when a grave, ringing cry came from ahead.

"Make way for the Grand Princess!"

Everyone bowed and drew aside at once, but the Grand Princess Xuanyi came with only two women officers of her household, dressed plain and dignified, and stood before them all.

"I had never heard of anyone daring to make such a loud clamor before an examination compound. It seems this imperially built residence is not grand enough for some."

Her voice was not loud, yet every word was clear, her dignity not to be slighted, and it struck fear into the heart to hear. Zhuo Huiheng felt that bold as she was, she too was a little afraid just then. But the Grand Princess's meaning was not hard to catch. Zhuo Huiheng's wave of anger had by now ebbed well back, and she thought: this Pei girl has it coming. For all that on the face of it Luo Yuanzhu set the rules, the one truly in charge was Her Highness. Without her word, would the scribe Luo dare act alone? To make a grievance of the exam's rules was folly past belief. Huiheng had always met a great many clever people, and meeting such a piece now, could hardly understand it.

Generations of wealth and ease do rot the will, sure enough.

"Since it is a test, the idle must stand aside, and I myself bring only one or two attendants. What then can a duke's daughter not do?" The Grand Princess Xuanyi did not mean to give Miss Pei a chance to beg pardon, and went on, "Since the duke's daughter would not lower herself to sit the test with her own hands, let her go home and be waited on in state. There is no need for her to take the exam."

With that she said to the rest, "The women who will sit the test, follow on, and don't delay."

At this no one dared say another word. No one so much as looked again at the duke's daughter, white in the face now and struck dumb. All sobered and silent, they filed in, slow and orderly, into the residence.

Zhuo Huiheng put her mind back on the test, and drew a deep breath. The master of ceremonies, a woman officer, had led them to the main hall of the Grand Princess's residence, and when she looked up again, the calm she'd won back broke into waves once more. The splendid hall had been laid out in the seating of a palace exam, exactly as her brother had told it, the seats set round the hall with hanging screens between to stop any sidelong glance, and on each desk the test question sealed in wax. Huiheng's palms began to sweat, and she wanted to rush over and tear it open.

But she held herself in.

From taking her seat to the strike of the chime that opened the test, it felt as if half a year and more had slipped by. Keen as she was, she opened the question slowly and without haste.

This selection exam, being to choose people to compile a book, tested only an essay of historical judgment. "Historical judgment," they called it, but it worked much like a policy essay, only that it needn't answer to the present court's affairs. The question still came from the histories.

The question they were to answer came from the Book of Jin.

The "Treatise on the Heavens, Part Two," of the Book of Jin, records:

In the sixth year of Yongjia, in Emperor Huai's reign, in the seventh month, Mars, Jupiter and Venus gathered between the stars Ox and Girl, moving back and forth. The divination manual says: "Ox and Girl are the field of Yangzhou." Afterward the two capitals fell, and Emperor Yuan restored the dynasty in the land of Yang.

Zhuo Huiheng read through the passage of the Book of Jin the question set out, and thought: by the sixth year of Yongjia, in Emperor Huai Sima Chi's reign, it was in truth already the Eastern Jin, the Yongjia disaster near its end, the realm in chaos, the Jin holding only a corner of safety in the south. There were so many men and matters to speak of. Why begin the argument from the stars?

Then she read the pointing of the question, and had she not been in the hall she would truly have clapped for the scribe Luo who set it, clapped that she could think up a question so fine in reading small signs and so bold in what it dared to say.

The scribe Luo's statement in the question went deeper step by step. First she said: since the Jin, the growth of astronomy and the calendar had proved such a conjunction of stars could never have occurred. It was a lucky omen invented and sent up by the officials whose duty was the heavens, so as to have Sima Rui, the Prince of Langya, take the throne as emperor in the southeast. Though Emperor Huai Sima Chi was still held in the north at the time, he had no reality of a sovereign left, and the south needed a new emperor to rule, so the court ministers sent up memorials one after another proclaiming the omen, urging Sima Rui to take the great seat. Even Sima Rui himself could not stomach it, and sighed, on hearing it, how could a state in such a sorry state have a lucky omen? Had Heaven no eyes?

Her statement done, the scribe Luo turned the point, and forced out the truth and the theme.

Most of those who sent up these words were great clans and consort-kin, joined limb to limb, who wished Sima Rui enthroned only to make for themselves a warm bed of power and a soil for politics, to swell their real power and grow their strength. What was that to the care of the state? From of old such things fill the histories, and are nothing rare. Consort-kin, the kin of the women's side, seen broadly, are the mother's and wife's families of an emperor, and seen closely, are the ties by marriage in official houses, in the mansions of dukes and marquises, and even in ordinary homes. The bond, the thread, is we women ourselves. From of old, not all consort-kin have been villains. There have been able ministers and fine generals, pillars of the state. Only, the evildoers are many, so that whenever men speak of consort-kin they first lay the blame on us women. Yet are those who truly lean on blood to do evil all of them women? Since the harm of consort-kin is not wholly our fault, the question then is this. As a woman, how is one to act so as not to become such a thread, and so as not to let one's own family become the evildoer in such a tie? And how is one to act so that, when others have already become such consort-kin, one may, like the Grand Princesses Zhen and Ding, be loyal and faithful to the sovereign and of use to the state?

Zhuo Huiheng used the lessons her brother had taught, and read the question and ground her ink while she drafted the argument in her head.

The question was sharp, yet safe. In truth it stepped perfectly clear of the present court. For the reigning emperor had no consort-kin at all. The scribe Luo was Noble Consort Luo's sister, but her only office was to teach the palace women their books, with no shred of real power. The houses of the Empress Dowager and the empress had both been purged once over, and those still living were as meek as cicadas dead at autumn's end. So though it sounded to cut to the very heart of every dynasty, it began in the histories and ended in the histories, with no risk of overstepping, and yet it could truly test the measure of the one who answered.

By the rule of answering her brother had taught, she first set down the two words "In answer," the last stroke drawn across, and felt a palace policy-essay should be just so, that after these two words every word and line carried a weight of gold, not to be trifled with.

"The Jin in the south, a dynasty of broken reigns and a sundered line, fled at Yongjia to a corner of safety, yet found no safety. The two revolts of Dun and Jun left the throne adrift..."

She drew her argument from the draft in her head, weighing each word, and by the scribe Luo's lead first hid the points she meant to make within the evidence, laying out the sense through a heaping of the histories. This was the "slow-reveal method" of the policy essay her brother had spoken of. There was also the "bold-opening method," stating the thesis plainly at the start, but she felt the former better suited what she meant to lay out here.

Zhuo Huiheng wrote on. Wang Dun's rebellion she would set aside, but Su Jun's rebellion was the work of Yu Liang alone. This man was the brother of Emperor Ming's Empress Yu, a true consort-kin. When Emperor Ming died and Emperor Cheng took the throne, Yu Liang, as the emperor's maternal uncle, took the power of regency back from the Dowager, boxed out the child emperor and held the government, yet was grand in aim and poor in gift, blind and rash, and even killed men of the imperial clan. He was the chief author of the end that was the rebellion of Su Jun and Zu Yue. When the Eastern Jin capital Jiankang fell into the rebels' hands, his sister, a reigning dowager, met a cruel death too. It was thanks to Tao Kan and Wen Qiao, who turned the tide, that the Jin line was not cut short the sooner.

Was Empress Yu, then, the Dowager Yu, guilty? She heeded her brother in all things, and could not save her own son once he was schemed against. It was only that a great clan's daughter like her was mostly reared into a useless vessel, a marriage-thread by which famed and noble houses laid hands on the throne, with no ability of her own. Even if in her heart she could tell good from evil and reason from folly, she had no power to change what was.

So I hold that if we would root out for good the chance of consort-kin harming the government, we must begin by thinking how women are taught. The examinations choose talent for the state, and their whole stress is "for the state." Yet the teaching of women has always stressed only the glory of the family. Is that not a thing of a lower order? So a good many women who become the marriage-threads of consort-kin know only the family and not the state. But if we could teach the women of the realm the way scholars are taught, so that they carried in their hearts the weight of the state's great work and knew the reasoning of ordering the world, then even with a Yu Liang among their fathers and brothers and sons, a borer-worm of the state, a villain of the court, they would have the power to hold him in check. For a woman taught in the government of the state, like a scholar set on office, would put the state before the family, and hold an aim as grand, and be not to be broken.

Zhuo Huiheng wrote on for several pages in this way, drawing out the point by example and then unfolding the evidence, crossing out and weighing words again as she went, and, afraid her words were not deep enough, cutting and adding much.

At last, near the end of the essay, Huiheng thought suddenly of a story from the Book of Jin she had set deep in memory reading with her brother as a child, and it would serve for the close, both to turn back to the theme and to carry a long after-meaning. She thought a moment, then took up her brush and set down what welled in her.

Liu Xia of the Eastern Jin, a commander of refugees, had for his wife a daughter of Lady Shao's house, the lady being the daughter of the worthy minister Shao Xu. In that day Shao Xu, seeing that though Liu Xia was no man of the great clans he was "loyal and brave and resolute, his sincerity worthy of praise," gave him his daughter to wife. Taken into the court's service, Liu Xia held firm as General of the North and Prefect of Yanzhou, and in that time put down several revolts, and did not fail the regard of the emperor and his own father-in-law.

Later Liu Xia died. He was a refugee-commander, after all, and many of his men were rough fellows, and a good number, greedy for merit, wished to use the hour to set up Liu Xia's son as king. Lady Shao, by then a widow, heard of it, and first held still. When the time was ripe she went and set fire to the arsenal of Liu Xia's army, and so sudden was it that no one could save the store, and the arms and weapons were destroyed in a breath. Those who would have raised a revolt had now no sharp tools to work with, and Lady Shao took them all and brought them to account. A state full of holes was spared one more collapse, and a people worn to the bone one more scattering.

It is said that Shao Xu in teaching his daughter often drew on the classics and the historians, and taught her not only the sense of words but riding and horsemanship too, rearing her as one rears a son. In the end this daughter kept a state in peace and spared a house disaster, which cannot but make a man feel deeply Shao Xu's far sight and clear eye, and Lady Shao's breadth of heart, worthy of a servant of the state.

"Had the Yu clan taught their daughters to hold such virtue and such breadth of heart, the northern march and the reuniting of the realm might not have come to nothing unheard."

She could not be better pleased with this close. The brush came down hard, and the strike of the chime sounded with it.

Trouble. Only two hours left before the test ended!

Zhuo Huiheng hurried to grind fresh ink and add water, took out a clean sheet, wrote her native place and name, and copied the answer over. Only in the moment she finished copying and her whole body loosened did she feel a touch of dizziness and a weariness all through her. She was spent to the last, and a light wipe of her brow brought away a bead of sweat big as a soybean.

The old sickness of her childhood seemed to be coming on again. The choking pain of a breath cut short, long unfelt, was back now like an old friend met again, but not so warm an acquaintance as that.

Zhuo Huiheng set her teeth, afraid she'd be disqualified by a faint or the like. She cheered herself on over and over, saying: be strong, stronger yet. Elder Brother sat his departmental exam three days, with no one to see to his food and clothes, and had to do everything himself, from the test's preparing down to the small doings of each day. He had it far harder then than I do, and yet he could show his gifts and make his name, and come first in the palace policy-essay besides. I have not his hardship that day of bearing all those things alone, and I must not show a weakness my brother never did.

At last the test was done, and the Grand Princess's women officers took up the papers. Zhuo Huiheng came out slowly, and saw that most of the other women were in much the same state, their faces white, some with their lower lips bitten near bloodless. A four-hour test was a trial they'd never met, raised as they were with never a taste of the examinations' demands. It was the first time every one of them had felt such hardship and such a weight.

But not a single one of them had given up partway.

Outside the gate, at each carriage, with call upon call, those who came down were not only richly dressed ladies, but many a girl not yet of age and boy not yet capped. They had come to fetch their sisters, and a good many of the girls, seeing their families, could hold up no longer, and threw themselves into their kin's arms and wept, yet with tears and smiles at once, and were helped up into the carriages.

Zhuo Huiheng wished with all her heart that her own father and mother were there to take her home, and then thought suddenly: the day Elder Brother came out of his three-day ordeal, and saw every other scholar met by parents and kin, and he alone with no one, how grieved and how wrung his heart must have been.

"Second Sister."

"Young Miss!"

Two familiar calls pulled her not-yet-drifted thoughts back. The one who called her "young miss" was of course A-Huan, but why was Xiheng here too?

The two came up and took her by the arms, their faces full of care. Huiheng's voice was faint as could be, but she made herself ask, "Brother, it's not your break day. Why have you come home?"

"I asked the academy for leave." Xiheng was sixteen, but already a head taller than Huiheng. He held his sister's arm so she could lean on A-Huan without falling right over.

"Foolishness!" Huiheng said, holding herself up. "To ask leave for so small a thing? And your warden allowed it?"

Xiheng's look did not change, and he said gravely, "Why would he not? I said my sister was sitting the selection exam today, a match for the examinations, the first matter in our house. Elder Brother has taken Third Sister away on his posting to Lingnan, so I am the only kin at home. By the bond of brother and sister, and by the way of a family alike, I could not fail to come. The warden agreed, so long as I was back before the gates closed tonight." He paused, and, as if he'd foreseen what his sister would say, added, "The year Elder Brother sat his exams, I could neither see him off nor meet him, and it was my regret. Today my sister sits her exam, and as her family, I must do this much."

Huiheng had been strong a moment before, but at her brother's words her eyes went hot of a sudden. She was unsteady on her feet and spent to the last, and only nodded, moved and glad, and let the two help her into the carriage. Before they set off, Xiheng had A-Huan get in first, and took out two tea-cups and walked to another carriage beside them, and offered them up in both hands to a lady more richly dressed and mannered than most, and thanked her. "My house came ill-prepared, and I thank you, madam, for the offer of tea. In the heat of the sixth month it eased our thirst. I return the cups, with thanks again."

A maid at the lady's side took the tea-tray, and from behind the smiling lady a youth popped his head out, about Xiheng's own age and height, and answered first. "What's there to thank? We've all come for our sisters. No need to stand on ceremony."

The lady did not scold him for his forwardness, and said to Xiheng, still smiling, "Just now the other families all raced their carriages into the screen, and you alone drew yours aside and let us go first. A little gentleman, I see. The ancients said a gentleman taking tea brings light even to a humble house. This is no humble house, but you are of an age with my young brother and sister-in-law, and I would wish them to take a little from the steady, open conduct of such a gentleman. So there's no need for so much ceremony. Is your sister in the carriage already?"

Xiheng nodded and bowed. "She is. I've fetched my sister home."

"My own sister-in-law is in the carriage too. They're worn out today, so when you're home see your people care for her well, and remember to have some light, easy-to-digest tea-things ready, nothing all oily and hot." The lady's voice was soft and gentle as a kind mother's, her care plain and true.

"Sister-in-law, you make it sound as if my little sister and I were wild folk of the hills who know no manners." The youth laughed aloud at his own words, and turned to call his sister. "A-Luo, didn't you want to know the little gentleman's name just now? He'll be gone in a moment if you don't come out and ask!"

A girl in a madder-red lotus skirt had been hiding by the carriage all this while, about the same age as the brother who called her, a year or two apart at most, and now, red to the ears, she shrank back against the carriage side, and unseen, only heard, said crossly, "I did not! Don't make things up!"

Seeing Xiheng so steady and grown-up, and her own two still such children, the lady smiled helplessly, and said gently again, "Please don't take it amiss. My husband holds office and is posted away for long stretches, so my young brother and sister are little taught at home. They're flighty and ill-mannered, and we've troubled you."

Zhuo Xiheng saw that this family were as free and happy with one another as his own, standing on no forms, which showed how deep their love ran. There was only warmth in it, and fellow-feeling. How would he look down on it? A mild smile came to his lips despite himself, and he said softly, "My sister and I are the same at home, forever troubling our elder brother. Among one's own family, at eye's reach and ear's reach, to stand on ceremony would be too hard a thing."

"That's the right of it! Sister-in-law, didn't Brother say so himself!" The youth laughed when he heard it.

The lady shook her head smiling, and told Zhuo Xiheng to go quickly and be with his family, for they too must get home. Only then did the youth stand up properly and take his leave by the courtesy of equals. But the girl in the madder-red skirt would not come out for anything, and burrowed into the carriage, and made not another sound.