Chapter 100

Great Liang's long-empty post of Board of Revenue Minister was taken at last by Lord Wen Fengshu.

This Lord Wen, just past forty, belonged to the old Shaoshang faction. Before taking the post he had been one of the Martial Emperor Yang Zao's advisors, a close friend and confidant of She Qingling, much valued by the ruler, and always on easy, friendly terms with every board at court. And yes, this Lord Wen had a nickname too: the greasy rat.

Good with everyone. Which is a fearful thing.

To be called greasy is bad enough. A rat on top of that tells you the man's nature. A few days into his term as Board of Revenue Minister, he showed his slippery ways in full. All the lords who had once chafed at She Qingling's blunt, cutting honesty now felt a sour breath stuck in their chests, unable to go up or down. And they could not even hate him for it.

Now the officials of the six boards, the Board of Revenue included, missed She Qingling more than they could say. And it was too late.

As for the former Seal-Holding Eunuch, the shadow-chancellor, he packed his bags in the palace at his ease and made ready to move out without a single backward glance.

In the contests of officialdom, the most fearful is the one who controls the heat.

She Qingling had seen through the whole business of holding office. He picked the best moment and withdrew in one piece, without offending a soul. So the Martial Emperor Yang Zao, feeling guilty, gave him the old dynasty's Prince Hui mansion to live in, and readied the edict making him Prince Rui'an, a prince of the commandery rank, to be proclaimed the day he left the palace.

She Qingling was no perfect man, but the Martial Emperor and the old ministers knew his merit to Great Liang in their hearts. And merit aside, by blood he was one of the ruler's few real kin. Yang clansmen who had done Great Liang no good at all could still take a commandery-princedom, so why not him? A commandery-princedom was, for She Qingling, no lavish grant at all. Anything higher, though, and for his body's sake they would have to shortchange him a little there.

So it was. She Qingling did not care how the Martial Emperor thought, or how the old lords thought, and Chen Dasheng cared even less. The only one who cared was Qi Qian'er.

She cared nothing for power. It had never had much to do with her anyway. What she cared about was that she could no longer live in peace in her good Guard Lane, and now had to come to Yanjing now and then to do hard labor.

Yanjing's turmoil was drawing to an end, and Qi Qian'er brought the maids and pages she was used to in Guard Lane into the city.

She stood now outside the Prince Hui mansion at her wits' end. In this life and the last, she had never seen so grand a gate, let alone so vast a mansion, and of course she had no experience managing so many people and affairs.

The Prince Hui mansion stood halfway down an old street called Gourd-Mouth. Two more great mansions down was the former She mansion.

That alone told you the old She house, in people and in standing, was not far behind the Prince Hui mansion.

That a woman twice over, once a widow keeping her widowhood, would one day become the household mistress of so vast a mansion was something Qi Qian'er could never have reckoned on. And not this mansion alone. By She Qingling's wish, the old She mansion down the road was to be managed by his daughter-in-law too.

The first time Qi Qian'er heard it, she thought: that's it then, I'm done for. What's left of the second half of my life? A single mansion had a hundred or two hundred servants below stairs, and now she had to manage two. How was that to be done?

In short, she hadn't yet grown the wits a mansion this great called for.

Privately, Qi Qian'er had no wish at all to come to the capital. She only pitied her foster-father, who had no one else to turn to. The Zheng house, with their twisted hearts, had sent someone to hint at it, the gist being: you're low-born, a son-bearing tool who tripped into dog-luck, and what have you ever seen of the world, that you could manage so great a mansion? Best give up the place quickly and let a proper Zheng lady come and lend a hand.

Say such a thing and you really can't rage at it. For all Qi Qian'er's ability, what she hadn't seen, she hadn't seen, and what she'd never managed, she truly didn't know.

Nor was she alone in this. Every household mistress along the Six-Board lanes was young, and none had the experience for it. Even if they wanted to learn, there was no one in all their circles and connections who could teach them.

Ask through all Yanjing: how many successful princely-mansion housekeeper-madams were there? Almost none.

A household mistress who could hold the household's affairs, inside and out, to something near right, who knew the face of every steward and stewardess across the several courts, and knew what was what, was a person of no small mark.

The above speaks mostly of the new-noble houses, being all newly rich. The old houses did not lack such talent, but the new nobles would not make marriage-kin with the old dynasty's high houses.

Oh, the Zheng were of course dressed down by the Emperor again, until even the shameless old dowager felt ashamed. But they would just bring that thick skin of theirs and stick close beside you, clinging on, again and again. Let your guard down a moment and there they were in front of you, showing themselves off, and beaten back they would only come again, unbroken. You couldn't very well throttle them.

Qi Qian'er felt weak against it, but She Qingling had just one word for his daughter-in-law: no matter! Qian'er, go and tidy it up a little. If you don't know a thing, then you don't. We'll go slow. Even if you turn the place into a thatched farm-hut, we're family, and we won't mind living in it.

Said that way, she had to come. There was no not-coming, even though she didn't want to.

Now Qi Qian'er stood at the Prince Hui gate with her hundred or two hundred old servants and new bond-folk, a little dazed. Jixiang's wife, with a dozen and more old stewards of the old She house, tears in their eyes and hands and feet shaking, muttered under their breath as they washed the seal-strips off the vermilion great gate with their own hands.

The smell of candle and incense drifted from the old mansion, and the sound of monks and priests chanting to release the souls came slowly out of it too.

It felt no place for the living, more a great temple thick with incense.

The night the old dynasty's army fell, the old Prince Hui was left behind with no time to flee. He and the old Princess-consort took a few of the women and hanged themselves in the main hall.

These aggrieved spirits had to be well looked after and sent respectfully on their way, since someone was going to live in their house after all.

What Qi Qian'er had to do today was watch these servants take the seal-strips off every gate of the mansion. Tomorrow's task was to inventory the property, a huge job. It would likely take two months of hard slog, at the least, before this vast mansion was set in plain order.

Once the seal-strips were washed clean, Jixiang's wife and the old stewards ran eagerly into the court and set out the sacrifices they had readied, of every kind, at the mansion's three front gates.

The masters had said that from today seven sets of sacrifices must be offered, one after another, to bribe the old mansion's gate-gods into becoming the old She house's gate-gods instead.

A few strings of firecrackers went off, and once the choking smell had passed, Qi Qian'er held her nose and sighed, "Truly big!"

Big as a temple!

Jixiang's wife, standing by, drew a breath, and only after a good while choked out, "Madam, our old gate wasn't as big as this, nor as high. But the life and bustle of our house was far beyond this. And what's here but a few souls coming and going, ai..."

She took her sleeve and wiped her nose, dropping for a moment the airs of the old head-servant she always carried.

Jixiang's wife was a hereditary She servant. Her mother had been a stewardess in the old She matriarch's court, so her whole childhood had passed among high gates and great houses. She had truly seen the world.

These days the little old men and the older stewardesses were forever fond of weeping before Qi Qian'er.

At first Qi Qian'er saw them grieve and offered a word or two of comfort. Now she thought: weep if you'll weep, we won't comfort you anymore, we're too worn out to keep up.

The stone lions before the old Prince Hui gate were veiled in red cloth and carried off, and new stone lions, veiled in red cloth too, were carried back and set in their place. Once the monks and priests finished their singing and posturing, Qi Qian'er kept them company through a dozen rounds of kowtows, and was allowed in at last.

Just as she entered, Qi Qian'er heard some idlers, the kind who don't mind how big a mess grows, mocking off to the side: "Heh, a real eyeful! Never in all my years have I seen a house where the man doesn't come and a woman presides over the move-in rite. Have morals truly fallen so far, with no rule left at all?!"

Like it or not, that was the way of it.

She Qingling of course would not come. And a priest had reckoned that Chen Dasheng's zodiac clashed with the rites, saying he bore a blood-omen in his stars, so that if he came, the lonely wandering ghosts would not dare come out today. He had to wait until every gate had been offered to before he could enter the mansion.

The family was only these three souls, so come or not, Qi Qian'er had to come. When all the ceremony was done, four matrons lifted a bright hardwood sedan. Qi Qian'er sat straight in it and bowed left and right, and when she saw the hour was near right, she took a winnowing-basket of coins from beside her and scattered them flying left and right, to buy her way down the road...

The neighbors had waited this half-day just for this. She scattered the first basket of coins, and someone had long since readied several great baskets of lucky-coins strung on red thread, and flung them over too. While the neighbors scrambled for the fun of it, Qi Qian'er went in through the main gate of her future princely mansion.

A woman entering the main hall through the main gate, this too was a first for Yanjing.

No house anywhere had the household mistress enter the main gate first.

Once inside, and after a great stretch of walking, Jixiang's wife trotted along by the sedan and comforted her: "Madam, don't let those idle words anger you. Those idlers are just jealous, green with envy, and trod on you to say it."

Qi Qian'er smiled: "No matter, I didn't catch what they said. Our firecrackers were too loud..."

There was plenty enough to fret over. What could a few harmless idle words do? The Prince Hui mansion was rank with weeds everywhere. Some of the flimsier rooms, unlived-in for two years and more, had whole families of rats moving in, and the roofs leaked. That was what deserved her worry.

To describe the Prince Hui mansion, you couldn't use such shallow words as how many rooms it had, how many gardens, or how much ground it covered. Describe it that way and you're a plain country mud-leg indeed, for only a mud-leg counts how many tenths make a mu.

Put it this way. The future Prince Rui'an mansion was a house five generations of the old dynasty's Princes Hui had each poured a lifetime's strength to nourish.

For the Princes Hui to hold their princedom secure, they first had to have one merit that others lacked. A prince had to be a knowing, tasteful, honest man with no ambition.

Such an honest man dared not compete at court, and had wealth enough besides. So, generation after generation, all his life's time went into nourishing this mansion.

For instance, five years' fief-income to haul a rockery stone from the south and set it in a garden corner. Or ten years' pains to become bosom friends with a great calligrapher of the age, only then to open his mouth and ask the man to write a plaque for his study.

They kept the nation's finest gardener in the house, and that gardener spent twenty years more raising the prince an orchid garden, a peach-blossom garden, a wintersweet studio. And these gardens, across a Prince Hui's whole life, came to no more than a few fond memories.

More often, a dozen years would pass, the garden would come into its glory, and then some spendthrift prince, annoyed by one summer's mosquitoes, would turn around and fill in the whole great lotus pond, and dream up some new way to pass the time instead. Back and forth, on and on, this was the mansion's fate.

As for adding a painting today, a side-table tomorrow, and the day after tearing down the butterfly-corridor to build a roofed walk, it was no more than a passing thought.

And such passing thoughts, sprung up on a whim, were the whole lives of several generations of Princes Hui.

The Prince Hui mansion was a fine place. Though it had run to ruin inside and out, to a country woman like Qi Qian'er it was still beyond all reach.

After that windfall from the Plague God temple, Qi Qian'er had once thought herself very rich. But as the hardwood sedan carried her around the Prince Hui mansion, and gate after gate opened before her, she felt herself poor.

Not from the shock of gold and silver heaped on the ground. Rather, she had scarcely begun her round when a house-steward came to ask what to do about a house-thief caught some days before. The stolen goods were a dark heap of things. Qi Qian'er glanced at them and saw only a few crooked, ill-carved broken cups, and felt too embarrassed to speak first.

She had no idea at all why the thief had stolen such rubbish.

The caught servant knelt there, despair on his whole face, like a heap of mud, limp as if the sky had fallen on him.

Qi Qian'er stayed silent, and Jixiang's wife coughed. "Look, madam!" She was furious, her hands shaking. "This old mansion never had a good thing in it to begin with, and now they're bullying us for not knowing the lay of the land!"

Qi Qian'er followed her hand and sized up again the dark heap of carved things of different sizes. She almost said it: what are these things? Why does that thief look like he's at death's door?

She was afraid to show how green she was, so she held it in. Keeping her bearing, she said to Jixiang's wife, as if she'd seen it all before: "We've only just moved in, and sooner or later we were bound to run into this. They're not our people. Have the things valued and send him to the yamen. New come as we are, it's not good to draw blood. It's hard enough sending one ghost off without adding another one to wander the gardens. That wouldn't do at all."

That was cleverly said, and Jixiang's wife, much satisfied, said: "You heard the madam? Haul him off and send him away, quick! Hmph, and they thought our madam wouldn't know rhino-horn when she saw it? A few unfashionable lotus-cups, nothing more. In the old dynasty rhino-horn was something, and sold off it might fetch a few hundred strings. But look how many houses have fallen now, how much of this goes to the pawnshop these days. We've got heaps of this rubbish at home!"

The old servant was hauled off screaming. Rhino-horn was a costly thing, worth a few hundred strings, and at the yamen that was enough to earn him exile thirty thousand li away.

Qi Qian'er saw the servants so satisfied, and broke into a cold sweat. What nonsense is that? We don't have a single piece, and they say we've got heaps of it? Two lifetimes, and this is the first time I've ever seen rhino-horn!

Wasn't rhino-horn a medicine? She'd often seen it in a fright-remedy on a prescription. How had it turned into cups? Live and learn.

After that, the rare things she'd never seen only kept coming. Squirrel-carved bamboo brush-pots, worth ten thousand strings three dynasties ago, carved so crudely she could hardly tell what they were. And of statues of Samantabhadra Bodhisattva alone, carved in rosewood, red sandalwood, nanmu, camphor, and poplar, the house had two whole storehouses.

Don't ask why so many. A Prince Hui two generations back thought his son a dolt and wanted to change his descendants' brains, and so he prayed his whole life for them to grow cleverer. He prayed and prayed, but grudged the high price of buying the statues, so he learned to carve them himself. Idle as he was, that earlier Prince Hui became a master carver, one who only carved and never sold.

Farther in, Qi Qian'er saw a splendor beyond anything she'd known. Some hundreds of years and several generations of hoarding meant even the chamber pots filled a storehouse each. Of one kind of covered box alone, the Prince Hui mansion had five generations' worth. No generation wanted to use its elders' relics, so box was swapped for box down the generations, and there sat a whole storehouse heaped with boxes of gold, silver, copper, iron, wood, and every kind of lacquer. And an old-clothes store, a stationery store, a screen store, a lantern store. Restoring any of it would waste far more effort than just buying new.

Inside, the Prince Hui mansion was ruined past bearing. Only the huge-rooted old trees, grown and kept by heaven alone, were still alive. The orchid garden once famed through Yanjing was a legend now. This garden might as well be called the wild-grass garden, its stalks a good man's height and more.

Was there not one soul in the whole house who loved birds? Every bird had its own keeper, and every keeper had a family in tow, and that alone was an endless drain of money.

Foster-father had given her fifty thousand strings to start with, and at a glance it was nowhere near enough. The money was the small part of it. This heart-and-strength-wearing work, Qi Qian'er couldn't bring in kin like Zhang Wanru, or even Li-shi, to help with. Not that they weren't close, or that she didn't trust them. But a place like this the Emperor had given for free, and you shouldn't set human nature too high a test.

The same age, much the same rank. What's your life worth against another's? Money is too delicate a matter in the end. Best not to test human nature.

After being carried about for a good two hours and more, Qi Qian'er finished her round of the Prince Hui mansion.

Once the round was done, the first thing she did was send away every one of the old Prince Hui servants. The Chen and She servants might be fewer, and slower, tidying court by court, but at least they wouldn't add to this mansion's losses. In matters of money, she trusted no one.

Soldiers had guarded it before, and none had dared touch the registered big pieces. But in two years, who knew how many small things, like those rhino-horn cups, had simply disappeared.

Think of it now and her whole liver ached. A few hundred strings no money? A mu of land is but a few hundred coppers!

Chen Dasheng, waiting out in the street, got word at last that the rites were done, and only then dared move. He was helped down from the cart, limping, drank a bowl of red stuff first at the gate, and was walked left and right by a fussy old priest with a peachwood sword before he was let pass.

Jixiang was leading a few pages, down flat on the ground washing the floor with cloths. He saw it was the fourth master, scrambled up, and came smiling to make his courtesy. "The master's come at last. The fourth madam's over at Quzi Court doing accounts."

Quzi was not a building, but a Sage of Calligraphy from five hundred years before, a great master who excelled at cursive script. Of his genuine work left in the world, there now remained only one stone stele.

Later this stele was bought at great price by the second Prince Hui and set in a small front court. Quzi Court was built around it.

The Prince Hui knew nothing of calligraphy, but there was no help for his feeling he must have such a thing, and so he had it.

Chen Dasheng smiled, looked around, saw no one near, and said to the cart behind him: "Come down, all of you."

Jixiang craned his neck over, curious to look, and saw the Little Seventh master hand down a page as light as a wisp of cloud. One glance, sharp as he was, and he knew it was a woman. But he asked nothing, and went in to have three bamboo sedans brought to carry them all to Quzi Court.

The few of them entered the mansion and went along the side walk. On the way they saw a wild cat crouched on a front-court rockery, peering out. Guan Si'er grumbled to Chen Dasheng: "The Emperor, too. He says this house is handy for being near the old She mansion, and handy it is, but couldn't he have sent someone to tidy it first? Look how ruined this garden is!"

Chen Dasheng looked around and nodded too. "There's that..."

His wife was going to be worn out again over this, and he only felt sorry for her. The farther he walked, the more it frightened him. This, this was too big by far.

Jixiang, for his part, was quite excited, and trotted along saying: "Master, this mansion's grand indeed. In the old days, the Prince Hui's several generations, a hundred souls and more, lived very comfortably in it..."

Chen Dasheng drew a cold breath at that. His whole family put together wasn't a fraction of theirs.

Qi Qian'er was pouring out the leftover tea at the foot of the stele behind her. She didn't know it was the Quzi stele, only that the stele's foot felt cool, so she had a low couch-table carried over and set up a makeshift accounts-office right there.

Chen Dasheng arrived by bamboo sedan, got down, and smiled at Qi Qian'er across a thread of running water. "Wife, how come you're sitting in this out-of-the-way spot?"

Qi Qian'er stood and pointed at the thread of water. "It's cool here, and those old wells need dredging before they'll serve, but this is live water. I had them clear it so we could use it first. It's handy for cooking, at least, isn't it?"

Chen Dasheng praised her at once: "My wife's clever indeed."

Ge Sansu, handed down from the bamboo sedan by Guan Si'er, went weak in the knees. She looked around and twisted her face even harder.

Her family had dealt with men of letters for generations, and one look told her what this was. But she couldn't point it out, and still less dared she, so she could only rail in her heart: this is the Quzi stele... this is the Sage of Calligraphy's Quzi stele!

Qi Qian'er didn't know the Quzi stele, but she could tell this was a girl of sadly poor health, so she asked Guan Si'er: "Seventh brother? And who is this young lady?"

Guan Si'er was abashed past bearing, but Chen Dasheng said briskly: "This is our house's future Little Seventh's wife."

Guan Si'er cried out low, awkward: "Brother!"

Chen Dasheng turned and glared at him: "What? You won't marry her?"

Won't marry her, and yet hop about at her side all day, all but taking the mute matron's own place waiting on her hand and foot.

Could Guan Si'er say he wouldn't? He looked carefully at Ge Sansu, and when he saw her bow her head and say nothing, he finally said it plainly: "Ge girl, don't mind my big brother's wild arranging. I'm willing, of course I'm willing. But if you're unwilling, we, we can't take advantage of you in your plight. Right? Right?"

Ge Sansu didn't lift her head, but on the hand steadying her, she pinched a little bit of skin with her nail and twisted it.

She had just lost her whole family. Where in her heart was there room for so many thoughts? In plain words, friendless and helpless, on a dead-end road, Heaven had pointed her to this man, who had saved her too. So she had to pull herself together and make a life with him.

Guan Si'er drew a breath, and through the pain smiled stiffly at Qi Qian'er: "She, she's in mourning, sister-in-law, we can't speak of this now. Sss, don't, don't keep doing that, ai, it hurts..."

Ge Sansu let go quickly, and her body swayed at once. Guan Si'er, as if that had been his aim all along, caught her again.

The Ge girl? The surname sounded a touch familiar.

Qi Qian'er looked her over, and smiled at last: "This, she's come to shelter with us?"

Chen Dasheng scratched his cheek helplessly and made his wife a bow. "Wife, you're put out with me. The Ge girl truly had nowhere else to go. My side's been in an uproar these days, with someone burning paper outside the wall every day. I don't mind it myself, only I was afraid the Ge girl would feel uneasy..."

"My lord!" Ge Sansu lifted her head to Chen Dasheng. "I am not uneasy! Only, only I've caused you trouble. All the lords here are kind and upright, taking on such a burden for my sake. If it truly won't do, send me to the yamen instead. As long as my family's wrong is righted, I'd stay in a jail cell willingly."

Qi Qian'er laughed, and went and took her hand: "Good girl, you've come to save my life!"

With that, half-guiding, half-hauling Ge Sansu along, she brought her under the stele, pressed her down to sit, and heaped on her without ceremony a stack of account books two chi high: "These are the old inventory-ledgers of the sealed things in this mansion. Starting today, we'll check the goods against them first. Once they've tidied a little more, we'll really have our hands full."

And busy meant busy indeed. Band after band of stewardesses came bearing freshly copied ledgers. Qi Qian'er grabbed up a few of them, took Ge Sansu by the hand, got into a bamboo sedan again, and was borne off in a bustling crowd?

Just went off?

Chen Dasheng and Guan Si'er, left behind, looked at each other. A good while later, Guan Si'er, loath to see her go, said: "Brother, she's ditched the two of us?"

Chen Dasheng scraped a sour breath up from his chest. "Ah, were you expecting your sister-in-law to feed us?"

Not beating you was luck enough.

But the two of them didn't know that from that day on, Huo Qi Qian'er truly worked Ge Sansu to death as her accountant. Ge Sansu, who had eaten nothing day after day and only let her mind wander, from the moment she entered the old mansion opened her eyes to ledgers and closed them on ledgers, and no one had to talk her into it. From then on, her greatest longing each day was simply: when's the meal? When can I rest? When can I sleep my fill, all at once?