Chapter 91

Pan Weishan's cough seemed cured overnight. The man before Zhuo Siheng now was a lean, brisk official in his middle years, his hair barely touched with gray, his skin dark, his laugh as hearty as his son Pan Guangling's.

"By rights I should have gone to you and thanked you, and instead I've made you come and call on me. The truth is my place just now is an awkward one, and we can't well meet in private. I was afraid too that you'd no sooner reach Yongming City and find your feet than you'd be saddled with a name for currying favor." Pan Weishan shook his head with a rueful smile. "You've taken up a scalding hot potato, and in this place the men who'd like to see you fall far outnumber those who hope you can turn the tide. You'll want to keep that clear in your mind..."

Siheng had a particular meekness in him when he talked with his elders, a look of unusual plain honesty. "I came to pay my respects to you, Uncle, on Xuehe's behalf. He had me bring some local things along on my way, and I had to put them in your hands myself, or I'd not have done as he asked, so how could I let you come all this way? But... forgive me the rudeness, Uncle, the other day you seemed not yet over your cough, and today you're hale and hearty. How is that?"

Pan Weishan laughed aloud at this. "If you hadn't come to see me under the cover of looking in on a sick superior, how would the two of us ever get our chance to talk? I did have a chill a few days before you came, but with proper care it soon passed. Only I thought that boy of mine would surely be a plague to you, so I simply went on being 'ill,' for I'd things of my own I wanted to say to you."

Xuehe, oh Xuehe, look at your father! Why didn't you take in any of this smooth, worldly art!

Siheng truly wished he could haul Pan Guangling along by the collar to take the lesson, and was grateful too for Pan Weishan's careful thought, and said with feeling, "Xuehe and I are superior and subordinate in name, but in truth we're more like brothers. I'll tell you plainly, Uncle, that when I take him to task I'm likely fiercer with him than even you are."

"That's just what I meant to speak of." Pan Weishan rose of a sudden, his face grave. "These two years I owe you thanks for raising that worthless dolt of mine... I know my own son's make well enough. He never cared for his books from a boy, and would read only odd, off-the-track things. Well, no matter. As his father I'd strain to climb a rank and win him a post by hereditary right, and that was a father's part to do... But that temper of his, Yunshan, tell me, is he truly not made for official life? Every time I had to patch up the ill will he'd given, smoothing over the people he'd offended, I'd feel I'd done him a wrong somewhere. Then you came as vice-prefect to Anhua Commandery, and he seemed a changed man. He comes home less than ever now, but he gives no more offense and stirs up no more trouble, and once, after a holiday, he even came and knelt and bowed to me and said that his old wildness and willfulness, that had cost me so much worry, had been unfilial of him, and that he'd learned from you a great deal of how to carry himself as a man and as an officer, and would mend his ways for good. I truly... 'overjoyed' is too small a word for a father's heart to see his child grown into sound timber at last... I wrote to your teacher, my old friend Lord Zeng, and asked him just who you were, that you should have such reach-to-heaven, pierce-the-earth powers. And he only played coy with me, and said his student was of course a dragon and a phoenix among men."

With that, Pan Weishan made as if to bow to Siheng. "Even common folk know to honor a teacher and revere the Way. You are my son's teacher, and a teacher's bow from me is no more than your due."

This was the very thing Siheng dreaded most, and he hurried to hold the man up and press him back into his seat, and after a moment's thought for his words, began slowly. "Xuehe only doesn't suit the air of the Anhua yamen. With a nature like his, under some strong, able commander he'd long since have made his mark, and that's no flattering word. You say, Uncle, that as a boy he loved idle books and wouldn't bend to the examination essays. But it was exactly his 'idle-book' knowledge that brought good to a whole district, which shows that the examinations as they stand, while they do sift out talent for the state, are a net not yet finely woven enough. They can't truly choose the worthy and set the able to their work, or sort men out by what each really has in him. That's no fault of Xuehe's."

Hearing Siheng speak so of his own son, Pan Weishan was quietly startled, thinking: this young officer of five or six and twenty, who could read so much from so little and knew how to use a man to his gifts, might truly be the fittest hand to set the schools in order. He could lay a finger on the ills of the age and dared speak out on the good and bad of the examinations, the ancestors' own law, and seemed to have his own clear notions of how men should be used...

"But if the schooling of Jinzhou is tackled from the lofty and the far-off, it'll be slow to show any fruit." Pan Weishan felt he really was getting on in years, unable to keep from urging the young Siheng not to fix his eye only on the bright and distant, but to look more at the troubles right before him, and start from the small, near things.

Siheng thought that Lord Zeng, were he here, would remind him just so carefully and patiently, and was moved to real gratitude. "I understand, Uncle. Tomorrow I'll go to the prefectural school and see how things stand."

"What Wang Botang said today, though it was meant partly to sound you out and partly to cow you, there was one thing in it not overstated." Seeing Siheng steady and sure, with the order of first and last already measured out in his mind, Pan Weishan took to the young man the more, and simply threw the window wide and spoke plain. "He said the prefectural school has fallen to ruin, and that's the truth. When you get there, don't rush to lay hands on it and set it to rights. Walk it over first, and then settle on what's in your mind. I trust you've a plan, but the thing is hard at bottom, and there's no shame in thinking more of how to keep yourself whole. Measure your strength to the task, and you'll go the surer for it."

This was the counsel of an old hand who'd soaked in officialdom for decades, and Siheng would of course heed it, but he heeded it only in part. On his lips he was all meek, obedient good sense, but there was a hard spur in his heart.

If he couldn't manage the schooling of this one prefecture of Jinzhou now, what talk could there be of setting the whole realm's learning right later?

And more, if he did poor work under the very eyes of the Tang house, would that not be to waste a transfer cut and fitted just for him?

Whatever the cause, he had to act firm and sharp, with no softness in him at all, or else nothing waited for him but endless shrinking back and endless disappointment.

Siheng believed in himself. But he felt the weight of it all the same.

Leaving the Pan residence, he drew a deep breath, and the salt damp of the sea breeze filling his lungs put fresh heart in him. It had been long since he'd come to so busy a city, the night lamps lit bright as day. He led his horse and walked, taking the ease of the pleasant spring night on the shore to put his tangled, crowded thoughts in order.

Save for a few far-flung prefectures in the deep north and the southern marches, every prefecture of the dynasty had its prefectural school as the seat of official learning. Unlike the Imperial Academy, with its strict rule for entry, the prefectural school took in not only the sons of local officials but ordinary men's children too, once they'd passed the qualifying exam and been listed on its rolls. Only, the sons of the local offices went free of tuition, while the rest had to find a fair sum each year.

The teachers in a prefectural school were mostly men of deep learning from the district, and in places where learning flourished there might even be retired high officers of the court passing on all they knew, so the prefectural school was, locally, the best chance a man had of a sound, baseline education.

But over the last few decades, with the rise of the private academies, more and more people chose to send their children to the academies, which had the richer teaching resources. The private academies, besides, were not bound round with rules and codes as the official schools were. An official school's teachers drew a fixed stipend, so much and no more, which even the poorest place could not stint and the richest could not add to. The private academies could offer better terms, and so drew the great scholars to open their halls and teach.

The officers set over a prefectural school did hold proper rank, but the men who did the actual teaching were mostly mere clerks, with no reason to stay stuck in the school as plain commoners. Better to be practical, take a fatter wage and have an academy keep the whole family in board and lodging besides. Why would they not?

So apart from the sons of the local officials, the common folk had mostly stopped going to the prefectural schools. And because of the hereditary privilege, the officials' sons had no need to toil over their books either. The teachers drew the same dead wage whichever way, and taught in earnest the student who cared to learn, and were glad enough to sit idle over the one who didn't, much as things stood at the Imperial Academy...

Every one of these was a trouble at the root, but to do this surgery well, he'd still have to cut the skin first...

Walking on, Siheng found himself thinking of the time he'd taken Xiheng to the Xiongya Academy. He and Uncle Tong had not yet been close then, and he'd had to beg Tong Shipei to make the introduction, and bargain a good while after to win his brother a chance to study. It had been a roundabout, wearying, mind-wracking business. Elders the world over, with their children's good at heart, were much the same.

All at once he saw that this was his own starting point. If he too was an eldest brother, who had worn himself thin for a younger sister and brother, then he knew where he'd want to send his own family to study, and other men were no different.

To think a thing through by putting his own heart in another's place, that was perhaps the plainest and surest way of all.

So when he went with Lu Hui to the prefectural school the next day, Siheng already had his scheme ready. But the state of the school still took him aback.

Lu Hui had gone ahead earlier to "scout the ground" and reported some of it, but seeing was believing. The school's inspector, a junior-eighth-rank officer named Sun Jingjia, led him round, and what Siheng saw and heard was enough to chill the blood.

"How is it there are no students? Is today the ten-day rest?"

"To answer the Intendant, lessons at the school have been stopped above a month. Lord Wang gave the order that no classes were to open until the new Intendant arrived."

"Then where's the roll of enrolled students? Let me see it."

"The roll's not yet been set right. I'll do my best to have it ready for you to look over tomorrow, my lord."

"Why set it right?"

"A good many students have asked to withdraw from the school, so their names must be struck off."

Sun Jingjia was past forty. To have survived so sweeping a purge of the Jinzhou education office, he was likely a man of the utmost honesty, but he was honest to a fault. If Siheng did not ask, he said nothing, and only walked dutifully on, naming off whatever came before them.

The main hall and the side halls, the study chambers and the music room, the dormitory block and the dining hall, down to the least thing, and he'd gladly have told you in what year and by whom each was built. But on the matters that counted, ask as you might, he knew nothing.

"How many clerks are left at the school just now?"

"Your servant doesn't know..."

"Before the officers from the Ministry of Rites in the capital left off their inquiry, did they leave any record for reference?"

"Your servant doesn't know..."

"How much silver is left in the school's public accounts?"

"Your servant doesn't know..."

"Then surely you know, Sun, who's in charge of the school's affairs, great and small, just now?"

Siheng was not angry. He simply did not know whether to laugh or cry.

But perhaps his always-gentle tone turning so sharp of a sudden frightened Sun Jingjia, for sweat at once poured off him, and with a wretched face he got out one "your servant deserves death" after another "your servant is ashamed," and truly did seem to know nothing at all.

Seeing how things stood, a thought came to Siheng that he wanted proven, so he stopped Sun's self-flagellating apologies and said, easing his voice, "What were you, Sun, before you took the inspector's post?"

"Your servant was... was the hall clerk of the prefectural school, junior ninth rank. After the school came to grief, the men above were locked up or sentenced, and Lord Wang had me stand in as inspector for the time." Sun Jingjia was all but weeping as he said it.

Siheng was all but weeping too.

The hall clerk's post at a prefectural school was the keeping of the storehouse. Which was to say that before his "exceptional" promotion to inspector of the Jinzhou school, Sun Jingjia had been a storehouse keeper, in charge of buying the rice and the vegetables for the school dining hall, laying up the grain, and taking in and storing away all the gear of the dormitories.

This was absurd heaped on absurd. Absurd all the way down.