Chapter 106

The knife-point ran swift across Lan Anjiang's thigh. Hu Yougui drew the blade and slid it back into his boot in the blink of an eye.

Tong Jintai moved with him. As the knife went in, he pulled the cloth sheet off the kang, wound it a few turns round his wrist, and clapped it over the wretch's mouth, smothering his heart-rending scream.

A violent fit of shuddering took him. This kind of pain is a hair's breadth from a faint, and if you don't cross over, there is only the pain.

Lan Anjiang was a coward to the bone, a man who bullied the weak and cowered before the strong. He writhed and struggled, running with tears and snot, until his water ran out of him too. When at last he'd worn himself out and the fierce man let go of his throat, he cried out in a hoarse voice:

"Spare me! Spare me, my lord! Spare me, ancestors! Under the bed in our master's room there's a cellar with over two hundred thousand strings in it, the key's tied to our master's belt, the mistress's own money's all in a hidden drawer of her dressing-box, I'm only a servant that waits on people, there's nothing much on me worth taking, spare me, my lords, spare me..."

The words weren't out before someone dealt his already-aching face a neat slap, and for an instant he felt his head tumble a few times through the air. It came back to his neck in the end, but it ached as if torn.

Chen Dazhong took a fire-stick and lit the candles in the room. Lan Anjiang was hauled up to kneel before the kang, and when he lifted his head in fear and looked by the candlelight, a cold sweat broke out all over him.

In the wavering candlelight seven or eight fierce men watched him, some seated, some standing, no expression on their faces. They looked at him as at a worthless beast. No, not even a beast. As at a blade of grass, perhaps.

No, not even a blade of grass. As at nothing at all!

When he used to go to the slave-market to pluck a flower for his master, he liked to use just such a look himself. That feeling of holding another's fate at your whim, of this one dies if you say die, that one lives if you say live.

They were like the bailiffs in King Yama's hall, every one in dark-red official robes of rank. Eh? No, no, these weren't out of King Yama's hall. These were a pack of lords holding office in the living world!

Gods and Buddhas, great Heaven above, what was happening? How had he brought the Emperor's officers to the door?

Wild thoughts ran through Lan Anjiang's head. He was frightened out of his wits, and limp all over he begged and protested, "My lords, my, my lords, there's some mistake, surely? I know nothing, I'm only a bondservant! I'm nothing but a nobody that waits on people! Whatever the masters have done, I, I know nothing of it! It's, it's a wrong done me..."

He wanted to knock his head on the floor, but someone had a grip on his hair and dragged him back, so he could do nothing but beg, his mouth full of blood, his face full of tears.

The pain in his leg grew and grew. He wanted to faint, and his eyes had just narrowed when a ladle of cold water flung in his face shocked him sharp again.

He slumped down, and found he was kneeling on the big quilt that had been spread over his own kang.

What did that mean?

Chen Dasheng watched without expression, asking himself over and over. Just such a man as this? Just such a man as this?

And it was the very man! He hadn't seen wrong, hadn't mistaken him.

This was the man who had torn his whole family's flesh and blood apart, parted them for ever between the living and the dead, and none of them died a good death.

The whole day the four brothers had been worked up, but now that they were here they were worked up no longer. They only found it laughable, too laughable.

Tonight he'd come with his men in their official robes, and all the way he'd never once ducked out of sight, because the capital's guard-routes, when the watch changed, what day the lines shifted, who stood where, what route the patrols walked, he knew it all clear as day.

He'd swapped the south-gate night watch with Liu Daya, and just now there was only the quick-witted Yu Qingguan at the south gate, keeping a few stuffed dummies company.

It was a crude trick, but it worked, and no one would dare play such a trick right at the Son of Heaven's feet. But he dared.

He held a heavy fist in his hand now, bold as the sky was wide. But back then, every man of his family hadn't even dared break the ropes and run.

When his grandfather and his father were alive, what they liked best to say was: our house has been honest folk for generations. Your great-grandfather, when a man spat in his face, wiped it off and walked away, took no notice at all. You now, you must never cross anyone. Keep to your place, be an honest, upright man...

But through the long struggle of his road he had learned to reap men's heads by day and eat and drink as usual by night, to look three steps ahead at every step he took. And now he had everything, hadn't he?

He had a wife he loved to the heart's core, a foster-father's doting, the Emperor's trust, his colleagues' respect, and he wanted for neither power nor cunning. But back then, why? Why had it all been?

It was simply... not to be looked back on!

Chen Dasheng came slowly down off the kang. He walked up to Lan Anjiang without so much as bending at the waist, and looked down at the fellow along his lowered lids, at that swollen, suffering face.

The man's eyes were muddy, full of pain and pleading as he looked up at him. He was thin and small, and standing up he came no higher than Chen Dasheng's shoulder. This time Chen Dasheng studied the face carefully, clear through, and after a good while reached out and dealt him a crisp slap. "Have you ever been to Yizhou?"

Lan Anjiang answered quickly, "No, no..."

Before the word was out, smack! Another slap knocked out a tooth.

Chen Dasheng's slaps were not easy to take. He had the knack of it: as much pain as he chose to give, and whichever tooth he chose to make you spit, out it came.

Lan Anjiang's face was in agony and he wanted to scream, but the man behind him was quick: as the slap landed he stuffed the cloth into his mouth again, and only when the screaming was done did he loose it. Lan Anjiang spat out an old tooth and wept, his mouth full of blood. He tried to beg, and took another slap in the face.

"Think hard. Have you been there?"

Spitting out another tooth, Lan Anjiang took a long while to recover, then said, "Been there, been there..."

Smack!!

This slap was hard, and sent two teeth flying. Lan Anjiang, his head swimming, thought, I've said I've been there, so why, why do they still hit me?

He spat out in agony a mouthful of blood from his torn tongue, and shaking, weeping, he begged, "Spare me, my lord, spare me, master, spare me, ancestors, I'll say anything. I've been there, I've been there! I've been to Yizhou, truly I have!"

This time Chen Dasheng did not hit him, but wiped his own fingers on a cloth with distaste and asked, "When did you go? What did you go to do?"

Lan Anjiang swallowed a mouthful of blood and begged through his tears, "I can't, can't remember the year, it was back in the old dynasty, great lord. What year was it, what year? Ah, that's right! Seven or eight years ago, no, no, four or five?

"I can't remember clearly. None of it had anything to do with me. No one sent me, how would I have dared go? It was our old master who gave me the money and sent me to Yizhou to buy people..."

The words weren't out before he took four more slaps, left and right. This time it was Chen Dayi.

Chen Dasheng drew a breath. "Brother, don't beat him dead."

Lan Anjiang was slapped clean out. When he came round he spat out half a mouthful of teeth, and lay face-down on the floor wanting a good cry, but someone turned him over with a foot.

Chen Dazhong came down off the kang, set his foot on Lan Anjiang's fingers, and, heedless of his pain, ground it left and right. "In a moment I'll let you go, and you'll tell me in full. Was it your old master who gave you money to go buy people at Yizhou?"

With a hand over his mouth, Lan Anjiang was in such pain his soul all but fled, and he couldn't even cry out. He couldn't manage to faint, either. Even now he couldn't make out why he had to suffer so.

And so he began to nurse a secret hatred of the Lan family. When the man told him to speak in full, he thought: for the Emperor's officers to come at dead of night and put him to the question, the Lan family must have done something grave. His life was worth nothing, but he prized it all the same, so, never minding anything else, he would surely earn merit to work off his guilt...

There was no satisfaction at all in beating such a man. He was filthy and sickening, and to touch his flesh would turn your stomach.

The room was bright with candlelight; all the candles Lan Anjiang had set out had been lit.

Chen Dasheng sat cross-legged on the kang, his face numb, and listened to the wretch's tale. "...That year the court's soldiers passed through Ziye, and the lord of the Tan army levying men came to the door. They said, you Lan family are a great and wealthy house, so send a hundred and twenty men to the camp by your household register..."

Chen Dayong, who had said nothing all this while, suddenly cut in. "Which of the Tan family went?"

Lan Anjiang, already scared out of his wits, began to tremble at once, and covering his face he begged, "My lord, I'm only a bondservant, I don't know anyone, I don't know who went, truly I don't..."

Chen Dasheng raised his face and looked at his brother. "No need to ask him this. A levy was a proper matter of record. We can look it up later."

The veins at Chen Dayong's brow throbbed a few times. He clenched his teeth, mastered his temper, and nodded.

Someone pulled Lan Anjiang's hair. "No rambling. Go on. The Tan family wanted a hundred and twenty men. What then?"

This time there were no blows, and Lan Anjiang, breathing easier, confessed, "Yes, yes, yes. That year the Tan family wanted men, and what, what could our house, no, what could the Lan family do? Nothing at all... So the old master of the house had men take a great sum of money through the night to beg the Tan family off..."

Someone coughed, and quick to take the hint, the wretch covered his face and begged, "Master, I don't know which of the Tan family they begged off, I only know they gave three hundred thousand strings. That same night the old master came back and said the young gentlemen of the clan needn't go after all, but the Tan family still had to be given the full tally of men by the register. So then... the old master gave the young master two hundred strings and a thousand jin of grain, and sent him to buy men nearby..."

Chen Dazhong raised his face and cut him off. "This young master you speak of, is that Lan Zili?"

Lan Anjiang nodded like a pestle pounding garlic. "Yes, yes, yes, it's him, it's him." He tried to shuffle forward on his knees, but someone hauled him back onto the quilt by the hair, and trembling he begged, "My lords, truly I know nothing of it all. The old master gave so much money and grain, but what the young master put into my hands was only, only a hundred strings... truly... only a hundred strings."

He took another kick, and someone asked, "Weren't you told to buy people nearby?"

Lan Anjiang bore the pain and said, "You don't know, ancestors. When rich men make their silver abroad, or come first in the exams, they go home to mend bridges and pave roads. Ziye is the Lan family's root, and the good name there had to be kept.

"Buy laborers nearby with a hundred strings? How could that be! The young master pocketed the money and grain, and what could I do? So then... with no other way, I took, took..."

Lan Anjiang, who had been so meek till now, let his eyes shift, and the moment he paused he took another hand-span knife-cut, and the whole round of agony over again. The fierce man on the kang jeered at him. "No tricks. Speak."

The pain scattered Lan Anjiang's wits, and it was a long while before he got his breath to say, "Yes, yes, I'll speak, I'll speak. I had no way. With so little money, I, I could only take two boys with me, go two hundred li off to Yizhou, and, and round up some refugees to fill the count. As for what our, our young master has actually done, I truly don't know..."

And so, their family simply deserved its bad luck.

Chen Dazhong tilted his face up a little toward the roof-beam, drew a hard breath, and held himself in. Things long past kept turning over and over in his head, tormenting him.

The Lan servants brandishing their whips, the banners on the battlefield, the dark press of roaring men all around, the clink and clash of armor, the swarm of arrows the crossbows raised in a storm, and the faces of his elders, all furrowed, crawling with terror. In the end they had grown bolder, and endured day after day. Of house or country they knew nothing, they had even laid down their hatred, and one thing only filled their minds: they must live, they must stay alive...

Now that he saw the man, the thousand cuts he'd dreamed of could not rouse his spirit. In the end, before all this evil stood one thing: cowardice. A full hundred and twenty men, driven two hundred li by a dozen cruel servants with whips, and sold?

And not one of them, the whole way, had dared resist.

Chen Dasheng laid his hands on his crossed knees and softly closed his eyes.

Lan Anjiang's mouth was stopped again, and he dared not struggle, but let them bind him into a human stick and wrap him in the quilt beneath him.

Now Lan Anjiang understood why they'd spread a quilt. For all the time they'd tormented him, not a trace, not a clue was left in the room.

He had never seen, never even heard of, dared not imagine, that there were such cruel men in the world.

He didn't know how long passed before Lan Anjiang heard the fierce man at their head say, "Money's a fine thing, isn't it, Qian'er..."

Someone knocked him out with a blow.

From faint to waking was the matter of a blink.

Someone was talking, and Lan Anjiang opened his eyes in a daze. He felt himself bound tight, so that he couldn't move even a finger.

The weather was hot, and wrapped in the cotton wadding he sweated through layer after layer. The fierce men, afraid he'd die, had cut a hole in the floor of the cart, so that face-down his nose was left clear to breathe freely.

He could see nothing, and could only breathe quick through his nose. His body was pressed between boards and could not stir. He listened quietly, and heard at his ear a faint chink of copper coins.

Lan Anjiang had carried his masters' money-purse on his back for years, and this had once been his favorite sound.

His body swayed again, and when they'd gone a good way the cart stopped, and Lan Anjiang heard someone, with a thread of flattery in his voice, greeting somebody.

"Oho, Marquis Chen! Where are you off to?"

That familiar voice came, the fierce man's, with a smile in it. "Hai, the old lady at home's a bit poorly, so here I am, taking your sister-in-law back to Qingfeng to see to her."

"Ah, the weather's bad this year, call this hot! Old folk getting on in years, and daren't use ice, it's bound to be hard on them."

"Isn't it just. And you're here for...?"

"You'll not have heard, Marquis Chen. There was a great case on Wenchang Street yesterday, and our lord set us at the city gate to help with the search. Hai, wasted effort. Money can't talk, and it all looks exactly alike, and still they'd have it found again, isn't that so?"

At these words Lan Anjiang's body shook. He wanted to make some stir, but could only breathe quick in and out, and grew more and more despairing.

The fierce man was bold indeed, and actually went on questioning.

"Oh? Such a thing happened?"

"Marquis Chen, you're busy with your duties every day, where would you find the leisure for such trifles? Yanjing's a big place. How many people die quietly every day? All small matters! I tell you, this family were outsiders, and whether they were fools or what, they never looked where they were, and spent money wildly every day at the six-markets crossing with their womenfolk. And then their steward's heart turned black, piped sleep-smoke through the whole house by night, working with men outside, heh heh! and made off with the masters' whole fortune of over two hundred thousand strings in a single night!"

Lan Anjiang's eyes went wide as they would go, and in his heart he screamed, No! I didn't! I'm right here! Help! It's a wrong done me...

Great Heaven, open your eyes and look! How can the men of this world be so cruel! What's the difference between an officer and a bandit? Heaven, are you blind? Working with men outside, they call it? I'm wronged, help... If this charge is fixed on me...

All at once Lan Anjiang's every hope died, and tears ran from his muddy eyes. He strained with all his strength, with the strength a babe puts to the breast, bearing the pain of his whole body to make some stir and rouse someone. But it was no use at all. The men who'd bound him were old hands, and the cart rolled grandly out of the city.

The whole way was uneasy, with men stopping them again and again, yet no one ever looked the cart over properly. They dared not even come near, and Lan Anjiang heard many strange forms of address.

General, Marquis Chen, little patriarch, Brother Feilian, my lord Vice-Director... the more he heard, the more he despaired.

He struggled no more at last, and thought of his wife back in Ziye, and of his two sons. The mistress had even said that if this year's errand went well, when they got home she'd give the two maids who waited at her side to his boys for wives.

If this charge of working with men outside were fixed on him, his whole family was lost.

Lan Anjiang wept the whole way, wept to fainting, wept till his every hope was dead, from daylight into the black of night, more and more despairing.

Deep in the night, in an out-of-the-way corner of Mount Baiquan, a dozen and more torches blazed. Lan Anjiang, half dead, was dragged out of the cart and hauled all the way to a great pit.

He'd had neither food nor water all day, and the ceaseless blows to his mind and the hurts to his body had left him half an idiot, letting himself be handled as they pleased. He seemed to know he was going to die, and in his daze he lifted his head, and by the bright torchlight he was frightened out of his very liver and gall.

On a great red cloth spread flat before him stood a number of spirit-tablets.

He could read, and seeing coarse names like Chen Daniu and Chen Erniu written on the tablets, he was puzzled a while.

The three layers pressing down his tongue were taken out, and he opened his mouth and cried hoarsely to those around him, "Wronged... I'm wronged, wronged..."

He thought his voice was loud, but it was only a very small struggle.

The old lady had been carried up the mountain on someone's back, and hearing the bound wretch in the pit dare to cry that he was wronged, she took her eldest grandson's hand and walked slowly down into the pit, and said to the man:

"They told me you're surnamed Lan. Ai, I was wrong! All wrong!"

Who was this? Lan Anjiang couldn't fathom it for the life of him. He looked at the old lady, his whole face bewildered, and knocked his head, crying, "Save me, save me!"

But the old lady smiled. "Don't let him speak. Everyone listen to me."

And so this time he couldn't even cry that he was wronged.

The old lady said, in all earnest, "I thought all this while you were surnamed Jiang, and I cursed you often. I cursed your whole family to die, cursed your line to be cut off, cursed you to be born a beast in the next life and slaughtered at anyone's whim... Who'd have thought I had it wrong. No wonder your reckoning only comes to you today."

Lan Anjiang, all bewilderment, looked at the rich old lady before him, decked in gold and silver.

Seeing him dazed, the old lady pointed at the spirit-tablets. "Steward Jiang, perhaps you don't know who they are, so I must tell you. Those are the flesh fallen from my own body, my sons, my grandsons. Every one of them was sent to the battlefield by you, at Yizhou. Do you remember now?"

The old lady said this with no heat in her at all.

It was like five thunderbolts on his head, and when his wits had been shattered, all his memory came back. So that was it. Yizhou. Eh? Yizhou!

This was vengeance, come for him.

Lan Anjiang understood at last how it all stood, and gathering his whole courage, with the last of his strength, he began to shake his head violently. He wanted to explain, that he was only a steward who did as he was told. He wanted to beg, to beg these people to spare his life. But no one wished to hear him, not so much as a single word.

Seeing him so, the old lady smiled. She looked at the tablets and pointed. "Afraid now?"

Lan Anjiang nodded hard, and knocked his head.

But the old lady's smile opened wider still. "The truth is, I have to thank you. Do you know, I lost a good many sons and grandsons, but do you know, thanks to your leg-up, muddy-legged country folk like us have come to hold office!"

Lan Anjiang looked left and right, and saw a half-ring of official robes.

He squirmed toward the old lady again, but Chen Dazhong kicked him away.

Chen Dayong brought the old lady a drum-stool and helped her to sit, and leaning on her cane she said to Lan Anjiang, "Do you see this cane? It was given me by the Emperor himself. The Emperor said my whole Chen family were loyal and brave, and made me a titled lady..."

Lan Anjiang gave a shudder and tried to curl himself into a ball.

As if chatting with the neighbors, the old lady went on with her good-tempered boasting. "Steward Jiang, this old woman has to thank you. If not for that sale of yours all those years ago, my Chen family might have starved to death on the famine road. And even if we hadn't starved, we'd have been the most helpless souls on earth, and in the end no tile over our heads and no pinch of earth beneath us, that should have been our lot. This old woman thanks you."

Lan Anjiang could not understand why the old lady said all this. His eyes only grew wider and wider, and the fear had robbed him of his human wits.

But the old lady laughed, very happy, and slapped her knee. "Aiya, who'd have thought it, if not for your leg-up that day, head steward, our house would never have had such good days! Truly, my eldest grandson now, oh, the son of that tablet there, and my second and third grandsons too, they're all proper sixth-rank lords of the court, and the in-laws they've married into are all official houses, and my grandsons' wives all know their books and their manners, and are ever so dutiful to me."

The old lady set down her cane and pushed up her sleeve, and on the wrinkled old skin hung three gold bracelets. She pointed at them. "This gem-set bracelet was a gift from the Emperor himself. This one the Empress gave me. And this one, woven of gold thread, the Dowager herself gave me, the very latest fashion in Yanjing!

"And these are nothing, there are more than these. I've whole chests of gold and silver ornaments, more than I can wear, more than I can spend, and still the palace sends cartloads of gifts to my house at every festival. This old woman lives so well, and it's all thanks to you."

Lan Anjiang held his head up, and slowly the blood crept into his eyes.

The old lady pointed again at Chen Sanniu's tablet. "The one who got on best is his son! That's a grand thing. You know She Qingling? He's my foster-son now, and my grandson is his son to keep his old age, adopted over to him. So my grandson is a foster-son of a commandery-prince of this court now, and in time my descendants are sure to inherit the commandery-prince's title, a rank above all the ranks, do you understand? Ai, a country fellow like you, what would you ever have seen? All this wealth and rank, it's you who gave it to us, I have to thank you..."

A particularly fat wild boar was led to the edge of the pit. Chen Dasheng looked at the boar a while, and then at Lan Anjiang.

The look made Lan Anjiang's hair stand on end, and he didn't know whether to listen to the old lady flaunting her wealth, or to fear the fierce man turning a knife on him.

So he tried to watch both ways, his head swinging left and right, until he saw the fierce man snatch up a knife like lightning and strike the boar's head off in an instant, and blood a chi high came spurting from the boar's neck.

Lan Anjiang made a strange, choked gasping noise and backed away in terror to the edge of the pit. But the old lady stood up, walked to him step by step, bent her head, and said, "Steward Jiang, you've been so good to my house, I swear I'll repay you. And how I'll repay you is this: in your next life you'll pass into the way of beasts. How's that, eh?"

The boar's innards were dug out and thrown to the bottom of the pit. Lan Anjiang was lifted up, and only then did he understand what the old lady meant to do.

Among the common folk, the one thing most shunned in burial is to put an animal's hide on the dead, for they say that whatever beast's skin you wear, that beast you become in the life to come.

He could die. He could pay with his life. But he did not want to be a beast in the next life.

He struggled with all the strength in his body, but there was nothing he could do. Thin and small as he was, he was still long, so the fierce man took him up by the legs and folded him double, and in the agony of it he was put inside the boar's belly, watching with open eyes as the men sewed, stitch by stitch... sewed until he could see nothing at all.

Was this death, then?

Surely not?

Was it real?

Dying?

Lan Anjiang thought, what did I come into this life to do?

Faintly he heard the last words of this human world, the old lady saying, "Don't be afraid, Steward Jiang, you'll come through in the end. I've had them wrap you in sixteen hides. This is how my Chen family does things. For the eight lives of my house you'll be a beast for sixteen lifetimes, and that's only fair and right..."

Lan Anjiang believed in such things. He didn't wait to be smothered. He was frightened to death, alive, by the thought of the next life, and of life after life to come.

Once the last layer of earth was filled in, Chen Dasheng carried his granny down the mountain on his back.

As they went, his granny chattered at his ear.

"My heart feels so much easier now."

Chen Dasheng hitched her up higher on his back. "Mm, that's good, then."

But then his granny asked, "And the Lan family?"

Chen Dasheng thought a moment, then said, "As Granny says. Whatever you say, that's what we'll do."

After a silence, the country old lady who couldn't read a word of writing said, "Whatever others do, there's a scale in this heart of mine! That family's old master didn't mean it to be like this. In our famine days, never mind the money, a thousand jin of grain could buy a good many people. It was that someone's heart had turned bad."

"Mm!"

"Scabby, keep your heart right in the middle, and let what should be, be. Granny tells you, that branch of the Lan young master's you spoke of, that is our enemy, and you must take care not to avenge yourself on the wrong one!"

"Aye, I won't, Granny."

"Scabby."

"Mm?"

"Tonight, Granny feels she might just see your grandfather again..."