Chapter 84

Jiang Wenyao paid her respects to Zhuo Yan and Song Liangyu in deep grief, and Zhuo Huiheng took her off to the guest quarters to rest and freshen her face, then led her to see the study she and Xiheng now shared, and showed her Xiheng's writing and the letters Ciheng sent back. For all her sorrow, a little comfort came to Jiang Wenyao, and with Huiheng's soft words to soothe her she could speak at ease again.

"I know in my heart that to see those two learned and settled and happy, I should be content. A-Hui, every time you comfort me it eases my mind, and hearing that Siheng has done so well in the provinces besides, I am deeply comforted... Good or ill, it is all as fate would have it. Now I've let it go, and ask for no more." Even as she said it, Jiang Wenyao's eyes clung to the notes and summaries Xiheng had written on the desk, a muddled grief and a calm mixed in the smile at her lips.

Seeing her so, Huiheng was still not easy, and said, "Third Aunt, the books say the ice of the north is a thousand years in melting, but I've seen that a human heart can be harder to turn than ice. My brother and I know well we can't have it all, yet we always think it would be good if such a meeting, kin seeing kin, could one day come to seem an ordinary thing... Only, nothing can be forced. You must mind yourself. If one day Ciheng or Xiheng should change their minds, and you were no longer... would that not leave them a grief instead?"

Jiang Wenyao fell silent, then nodded in earnest, as if she had truly taken it in.

Huiheng breathed a little easier, and said with a smile, "How is it Lingsheng didn't come today?"

"That child is all hop and skip. I feared she'd be a bother to you." At the mention of her daughter, Third Aunt's smile opened out. "Her father thought so too, and kept her home. The child's old enough for her books now, and we both want her to be like you, A-Hui, a daughter who can still study and make something of herself."

"What I've made is nothing beside my brother. But Lingsheng is so clever, it would be a waste not to have her study." Huiheng smiled. "Does Uncle Mei teach her at home?"

Mei Ziyi, into whose family Third Aunt had remarried, Zhuo Huiheng had met twice, a grave man who rarely smiled, yet of a surprisingly open and clear mind. He knew Third Aunt kept up with the nephews and nieces of her former Zhuo family, and far from hindering it, he bade her care all the more for the Zhuo children who had no parents, and said only that one need not mind old matters or stiff custom, that the main thing in life was to keep one's conscience clear. Zhuo Huiheng liked this Lord Mei, newly back in the capital from a posting away. His shelves were heaped with books, and she had gone to borrow some to consult. Hearing it was for the compiling, he gave her several rare old cut editions hard to find in the market, and bade her give it her whole heart. From Lord Zeng she'd heard this man was iron-faced and would show no favor. A couple of years back, when Duke Xingning's heir, studying at the Imperial Academy, let his servants beat a man, Mei Ziyi drove the heir out of the Academy by the letter of the rule, which earned him the resentment of a good many of the powerful, yet a high name among the upright.

"Your Uncle Mei keeps a stern face for other people's children, but his own daughter he can't bear to cross. Any day Lingsheng takes up the brush and says she's tired, he hurries her off to play. He's spoiled the girl past all sense. I talked it over with him, and we'll send Lingsheng to a girls' school after all." Jiang Wenyao said smiling.

"A girls' school?" Huiheng thought: can I have buried my head in the compiling so long that I no longer know the new things of the world?

Jiang Wenyao nodded. "Just so. Ever since the selection exam, with official houses seeing that a daughter's learning could win such glory too, some have engaged women tutors to teach their girls, and kin hearing of it send their own daughters to study along, and so it has spread. Many well-off houses with a spare garden are glad to engage a woman master to keep a hall and teach, and little by little they've opened girls' schools of a kind. I'd like Lingsheng to study at one, better than larking about at home all day. My brother heard of it, and thought of the little Qin garden standing empty, quiet and pretty as it is, and said why not engage a good woman master and set up a small girls' school of our own, three or five girls learning virtue and letters together in one place, a bond from childhood too."

Zhuo Huiheng had not thought the selection exam could work such a charm, setting official houses to let their daughters chase after learning. If the book she was compiling were one day done, perhaps it would open a new world again.

---

The Great Xiangguo Monastery.

The all-surnames market was at its liveliest in the first lunar month, and within and without the whole monastery there was no room to turn. Zhuo Xiheng and Yang Lingxian, in their new first-month clothes, stopped now and again before the dazzling stalls and spoke low to each other.

The good of the all-surnames market was that high or low, all had to pick over the goods on the ground stalls, and even the grand young lords could not ride about on their high horses. The finest brocade winter robes and the coarse cloth gowns of common folk jostled together before the stalls, which made its own sort of living warmth.

Zhuo Xiheng found a good many stalls claiming to sell honey-ware, but on a close look, every one was false.

The most sought-after porcelain in the capital now was this kiln-ware, but the Song house of Jiangnan held the carrying of it to themselves, and the crag kiln being a small local works of thin output, in the north a single piece of honey-ware was hard to come by. People even scrambled to buy the Song house's rock tea, only because that tea came packed and sold in honey-ware.

A good many stall-keepers claimed their goods came by some hidden road from the Song house. Others could hardly tell, but Zhuo Xiheng and Yang Lingxian could see the true from the false at a glance.

Yang Lingxian was tall, with thick brows over a pair of narrow eyes, and a cheer always in his voice, able to find something to say where there was nothing. Having looked over one more stall of false honey-ware, he said to Zhuo Xiheng, well pleased, "That honey-ware brush-washer you gave me is a fine thing. Lucky I don't care for reading and writing, so it sits on my desk as an ornament and does very well!"

"Elder Brother sent back some more honey-ware. Do you want this?" Zhuo Xiheng drew from his robe a brush-rest, three peaks rising with two saddles between, no bigger than a palm, yet that small block of pale gold like thick set honey was as if cut from amber.

"Wonderful!" Yang Lingxian took it and cupped it and looked a good while, and after thanking Zhuo Xiheng said, "My brother comes home in summer, and brings me some Suizhou coal-jade every year. That pendant and paperweight I gave you were both of it. This time I'll have him bring something new, and you can take your pick!"

The two sisters of the pair were both at the women's history, so the talk turned to the compiling, and talking they passed a northern trader crying Muzhou purple-hair brushes, and stopping to look, both thought them good, and meant to buy a few for their sisters.

Right beside this stall a seller of writing things was calling his wares, one breath "honey-ware," the next "true goods from Jinzhou." The two had seen too many cheats to wonder, and did not so much as glance that way, but picked over the brushes.

"May I have a look at your honey-ware?"

Someone who did not know the trade had been drawn in by the crying.

The voice was clear, and Zhuo Xiheng turned his head to find, sure enough, a fine-faced youth of about his own age, his dress plainly that of a rich house's young lord.

The stall-keeper could see it too, and welcomed him warmly, and drew out with great care from the cloth bag behind him a porcelain jar. "Young master, you've an eye, look at this one..."

But as he handed the jar over, he let go on purpose before the youth had it fast, and the jar fell with a sharp crash that startled everyone near.

All these little tricks Zhuo Xiheng took in.

"You... you'll pay me for that honey-ware!" The stall-keeper seized his chance and leapt up, grabbing the youth's sleeve. "That's a fine thing I carried back from Jinzhou on my own shoulders! You've broken it!"

The youth could not get a word in. Seeing the crowd thicken, and seemingly no hand at talking, he could only say low, in his awkwardness, "How much silver... I'll pay you for it."

"Twelve taels!"

At the man's blurted price a good many onlookers drew a sharp breath. It was more than a whole year's keep for many a farming household.

The youth seemed not to hesitate, but felt in his robe with the hand that was not held.

"Hold on."

People looked round at the voice, and it was another handsome youth, fine and clear and cool, who had spoken.

Zhuo Xiheng had somehow picked up a shard of the broken jar, and his voice was so even it was almost cold. "This is a fake."

Four plain words, and the whole crowd was taken aback.

The cheating stall-keeper, seeing the fat sheep in his mouth about to be spoiled, ground his teeth with hate. He looked round, and finding most of the onlookers plainly dressed, guessed none of them had seen true honey-ware, and found some nerve. "You young wretch, talking rot! You've never seen the real thing and you dare run it down! If this isn't honey-ware, what is? Open your country eyes and look at the mark on the base, is it the Jinzhou crag kiln or not?"

The man's talk was coarse, and Yang Lingxian's temple-veins jumped to hear it. He took a step forward, ready to roll up his sleeves, only to be stopped by Zhuo Xiheng's hand against his chest.

Zhuo Xiheng was not angry. His look was stiller even than his voice. "This is crag-kiln ware, true enough, but fired before the sixth month last year. Before the glaze was improved the crag kiln's ware held a great many impurities, mostly this mud-yellow, with sunken brown spots, and the body was coarse. Only after the change did it get its fine, smooth body, its glaze the color of amber and yellow jade, of beeswax and set honey, which is how it got its name. Your jar has only the coarseness of the first, and none of the fineness of the second. How can you call it honey-ware?"

Yang Lingxian wanted to clap for Zhuo Xiheng, for his tight-lipped friend had just spent a whole day's words in one breath.

The cheated youth looked at Zhuo Xiheng with round, bright eyes, as at a savior.

But the stall-keeper would not give it up. Seeing the muttering onlookers half swayed by the youth's clear, ordered words, he said sharp, "Rubbish! Jade and beeswax, listen to him. Porcelain can't fire to such a color. This is the best yellow glaze there is, which is why it's called honey-ware! You're so clever, bring one out and show me what honey-ware is!"

"Well now! I didn't know there could be such a lucky chance under heaven!" Yang Lingxian laughed aloud, and drew from his robe the brush-rest Zhuo Xiheng had just given him. "My friend gave me a piece of honey-ware to handle only today. So today I'll open your eyes to the real thing!"

When the true honey-ware showed its shining face, the mud-yellow shard in Zhuo Xiheng's hand and on the ground was at once put to shame, no more than the dirt beside the cloud. The onlookers gazed as if drunk, all saying they'd not come to the Great Xiangguo Monastery for nothing today, to have seen with their own eyes the honey-ware there was no getting hold of now. Then they fell to shouting at the stall-keeper to let the youth go, and in the din called for the city guards the prefecture had posted to patrol the all-surnames market, which so frightened the stall-keeper that he bundled up his things and bored into the crowd and was gone.

With no more show to see, the crowd thinned by degrees. The youth who'd been wronged rubbed the wrist that had been gripped sore, and let out a long breath at last. Then he bowed deep to Zhuo Xiheng and Yang Lingxian, back straight and head down, holding the pause, then the smooth sweep of the arm rising from below, a bow so exact that even Yang Lingxian, who often went into the palace with his commandery-princess sister-in-law to give thanks and receive edicts, was startled. For all his practice before going in, his own was not a tenth so smooth.

But to meet some great house's young lord at the all-surnames market was no rare thing, the more so on the fifteenth.

He thought little of it.

"Thank you, sirs, for speaking up for right and helping a man in trouble. I'm deeply grateful." The youth said softly when he'd raised his head. "My young sister at home loves honey-ware and has begged for it in vain, so I, as her brother, have been asking everywhere. I dare not be so forward as to ask you to part with yours, but might I beg to know where it was bought? So I can send my sister this great gift for the Lantern Festival."

He spoke in earnest, and it was for his own sister, and Zhuo Xiheng and Yang Lingxian both had sisters, and thinking how they too would run their legs off for anything a sister wanted, they felt of a sudden a fellow-feeling for him.

"No need for ceremony, friend. I'll speak plainly, don't take it amiss. This isn't a thing you buy. There's no buying it now for any silver." Yang Lingxian said in all sincerity. "This came to my friend here from his elder brother in Jinzhou."

"Then... could your honored brother bring back more?" The youth's round, kindly eyes were full of a stubborn, unwilling hope.

Zhuo Xiheng only shook his head, and said calmly, "He's posted away in Jinzhou, and can't come back just now."

The youth started a little, and looked at Zhuo Xiheng a long moment, seeming to waver. Yang Lingxian, not wanting him to press further, said, "Friend, I can see you're of an official house too. His brother's no merchant. He holds office in Jinzhou, vice-prefect of Anhua Commandery, where the crag kiln is, so now and then he sends a piece or two home for his brother and sisters to play with. To sell them would be against the law, you know, so it can't be done. Don't ask anymore. There's nothing we can do."

Zhuo Xiheng was the sharpest of men, and when Yang Lingxian named his brother's office, he saw the strange youth before him jolt as if struck by lightning, and fall back two steps, and stare at him hard. In that instant the youth's eyes held surprise and a startled gladness, and a strange unease and fear besides. Odd that a man's eyes could hold so many tangled feelings in the space of one glance. Zhuo Xiheng stared back, thinking: can this man know my brother?

But before he could ask, the strange youth turned and ran, and the crowd he'd pushed apart closed again with grumbles, and there was no more sight of him.

"That fellow! What manners! We'd no way to help him in the first place, and he hears that and bolts! Really! The nerve!" Yang Lingxian regretted the rescue now. But seeing the thoughtful look on Zhuo Xiheng's face, he saw it was not anger at the stranger, but some care on his mind.

"What's the matter?" Yang Lingxian asked.

Zhuo Xiheng stood still a while, then shook his head, and said softly, "Never mind. Let's go."

But a few steps on, he could not help looking back all the same, his mind still on it. Who was that strange youth?