Chapter 107

After several bouts of parching summer heat came several days of steady rain, and all at once life in Yanjing was easier.

The old woman who went each day to the old house to pay Qi Qian'er's respects came back saying the old lady had got hold of a litter of cats from somewhere, and was keeping three of them.

She'd grown generous, too. All at once she let the Cui old lady be, no longer sharp with her, and smiled at everyone, and even brought out the cloth she'd hoarded away, saying it was to make clothes for Li-shi's and the others' children.

Could it be something had happened?

But the whole household, old and young, kept it from the wives. Qi Qian'er was no fool. Whether the one who shared her pillow slept well, and how his spirits stood, she knew very well.

Chen Dasheng used to start awake now and then in his sleep, and slept only in snatches. Qi Qian'er was the lighter sleeper of the two, and knew the moment he stirred.

But these days it was different. He could sleep the whole night through, and didn't start awake.

When he could sleep well, his spirits and mood were good, and it happened that this was a rest day. Father had sent a matron from the palace to teach etiquette at the house, and Chen Dasheng loafed in the lesson and wouldn't leave.

These days Chen Dasheng had turned boyish again, showing a child's temper. While Qi Qian'er suffered through her lesson at his side, he sprawled over the table snickering at her, wouldn't go when told to, and had even learned to make mischief now and then.

The matron was surnamed Jia, well past forty. She'd been in the palace since the old dynasty, charged with training the palace maidens in etiquette, and was said to have a very good temper.

Once the woman was in the house, Qi Qian'er found out what that meant: she never lost her temper with you, but she had endless patience. Every morning, from the moment Qi Qian'er opened her eyes, dressed, and came out, Matron Jia waited at the door and tied three little bells on a silk ribbon to Qi Qian'er's waist.

She never lost her temper with you, but if there was one thing you couldn't learn, she'd teach it over eight hundred times and never tire of it.

The bells were the lightest, airiest kind, and would ring at the least fault in how you sat, lay, stood, or walked. Now that she was in the capital, and might in a few more years be a commandery-princess, the things she'd never troubled with before had to be learned now.

Round the smallish hall were set things like little steps. Qi Qian'er, chest up, back straight, head level, eyes forward, walked in small steps with no long strides, back heel meeting front toe. The books of rites called this gait "measured tread in the hall," one footprint after another, slow, slow walking.

The women came and went reporting the accounts, thinking nothing of it, and made their reports just as they should. Qi Qian'er took her instruction with a blank face, practicing and running the household at once, so that neither was neglected.

Her attitude to learning was very good. She never said she was tired, did just as she was told, and never complained as others did.

Any learning, to her, was growth, a most precious chance, and how would she dare say it wearied her? She was low-born to begin with, and as Matron Jia said, with no foundation at all she was bound to suffer greatly before she could show grace in sitting, lying, standing, and walking.

But she wasn't used to it yet, and today, as she stepped up over a stair, a bell rang.

A paddle that didn't really hurt shot out and went smack across Qi Qian'er's back. The women below the dais sobered at once, but... out of place, a snickering laugh came from the middle of the room.

Qi Qian'er came down the board steps, and passing the maid who waited with the fruit, she smiled "gracefully," crooked a finger to pick up a piece of fruit, and flung it backhand.

Chen Dasheng looked up, all smiles, caught the fruit, and cried out low in mock dismay, "Aiya, the fourth mistress is cruel!"

And with that he took a crunching bite, and asked as he chewed, "I say, Matron Jia."

Never mind that Matron Jia was getting on in years; her manners really had soaked into her very bones.

Hearing the little patriarch call her, Matron Jia put away the paddle, folded her hands slowly in just the right place below her waist, then half-turned her body, showed a most graceful smile, and asked, "What does Marquis Chen wish?"

Tss, what a lovely bearing! It had nothing to do with a person's looks. Whatever way you took it, it was good to see.

Chen Dasheng glanced at his wife, who was watching him sidelong, and put on a slightly humble air. "You must be tired, Matron?"

Matron Jia smiled. "Thank you for your care, my lord, but we've only just begun, and I'm not tired at all."

Chen Dasheng leaned back, still smiling, but in a tone that brooked no argument. "You're tired, Matron. We'll stop here for today, and you can come again tomorrow."

Matron Jia drew a breath, smiled, and made her curtsy. "Yes, I'll come again tomorrow, then."

Once Matron Jia had gone, Qi Qian'er craned her neck to look out after her, and only when the woman was well away did she laugh. Untying the bells at her waist, she said to Chen Dasheng, "She's just a stiff, honest soul. All these days now, you know perfectly well she can't bend, so why pick on her?"

There was something a touch affected in Chen Dasheng's face. Mm, that look grew more and more like his father's.

He said, with a touch of scorn, "Waiting at your door every morning, who ever heard of it? She may not be tired, but I'm tired for her. And you, learn if you want to learn, send her off if you don't. Father only meant her to come tell you a few of these things. But no, she'd stick to you like a leech, and wears a stepmother's face every day. Who wants to look at that!"

Qi Qian'er sat down, took the tea Chen Dasheng poured her, bent her head and sipped a little, set the cup down, and then said with a smile, "By the sound of it, you still think she's giving me a hard time?"

Chen Dasheng looked at her, taken aback. "Isn't she, then?"

That he cared for her, felt for her, stood up for her, of course made Qi Qian'er glad. She settled her hands comfortably and then said, "Then you've truly wronged Matron Jia. She means nothing else by it. Father told her to come and teach, so she came. But all this practicing back and forth, that was my own idea."

Chen Dasheng didn't quite follow.

But Qi Qian'er looked at the pattering lines of rain outside and said with a smile, "When in a place, do as the place does, they say. In great Yanjing there's no end of coming and going, and on Gourd Street alone how many rich families there are. I used to think, I'll just take after my foster-mother's temper, live my own life, do as I please and be easy, and what could they do about it?"

Chen Dasheng's eyes lit up and he nodded firmly. "That's right! What could they do? Do as you please, whatever it is. I, I can always keep you safe."

But Qi Qian'er shook her head. "Only, my foster-mother doesn't want that! She's always wanting more tea-parties, to be more respected. Who doesn't want to be praised and spoken well of? She says she's so tired, and every time she comes to me and speaks of all the gossip, she sheds tears over it.

"And besides, I don't need you to protect me. I practice all this only because I'm afraid, afraid someone will say to our children, your father's a butcher and your mother's a bandit. We suffer a little now, eat a little more hardship, so that at least the children can go out with their heads up and be less talked about."

Chen Dasheng didn't know where his little wife had got this odd habit of hers, forever with "the children" on her lips.

Of course, every time he heard it his heart went soft, and he felt it sweet indeed.

At the thought the fellow reached out, took his wife's hand, stroked it a while, and sighed. "It's true. The ladies in the palace are the greatest women under heaven, and even they aren't at ease. The Emperor fancies fresh faces, so the Empress has to be all warm and close with those sisters of hers.

"The dowagers are honored too, but one of them, for her family's sake, has lived herself into a clay Buddha in the palace, showing off her noble character at every turn. That's not for the Emperor to see. It's to drive herself so hard that even when the next emperor takes the throne he could find no fault in her. And the Dowager Jiang keeps even further off, doesn't dare so much as tread on Yanjing's soil..."

Qi Qian'er sighed too, in sympathy. "Just so. Who lives for herself, after all? We're doing well enough now. I'm quite content. Whatever I want now, I have. Whatever I want to eat, I can eat. Not to be forced by want into giving way at every turn, that I count a good life in this world.

"Now you listen to those wild scholars and drunkards, forever talking of walking the world alone, free and unfettered through wind and rain. I don't believe a man with not one copper in his sleeve could keep up all that wild freedom. We live the life of this world, so let's have none of those immortal notions. That's what living is."

Chen Dasheng kept nodding, but didn't let go of her hand, until he heard a clatter of clogs outside, and then he let go reluctantly. "My wife is always right."

Qi Qian'er, in good spirits, sat down and used her newly learned skill to peel for him the fruit he'd half gnawed away.

Yanjing was a very old royal city. The first emperor to live in it had had underground drains built, but for all the city's size, after a few hundred years, though it looked well enough most of the time, the moment the rains came on, the gutters of the capital sent a foul smell back up to the surface.

Especially in the low-lying parts, where half the city's standing water ran down and turned the ground to marsh. So after a rain in Yanjing, the clogs the gentry wore were a cun higher.

Early that morning Hu Yougui and Guan Si'er got up and each combed his hair neat, put on a hair-crown set with gold and jade, and dressed in wide-sleeved round-collared summer robes of fine silk woven with a blue crane pattern, the kind they'd never once have worn before, and over them a plain-colored gauze. This was the fashion in Yanjing now. Simple enough at a glance, but good goods are good goods, and the gauze over-robe shimmered with color as the light shifted.

Stand out in it and even a beggar's eye would see at a glance that this was costly, and the especially costly kind at that.

In extra-high black lacquered clogs, the two of them went out not on horseback but, ringed by servants, climbed into a richly decorated carriage.

The carriage was lavishly fitted out, of course. The horse wanted for none of its hundred and eighty-odd ornaments, all of the finest gold-inlay work, and the cart they rode in was the fashionable Yanjing style too, costly wood carved with curling flower-patterns, its outside coated in twelve layers of lacquer, rich beyond words at a glance.

Never mind that Guan Si'er was young and handsome; take only Hu Yougui. He was good-looking to begin with, and so turned out, his whole person gave off an air of something high on the bough, proud against snow and frost, that no one would dare profane, pure and elegant as a white magnolia. He was simply beautiful.

Riding an open cart in the rain, three layers of thin gauze still couldn't hide that touch of mortal beauty, and it drew no end of staring eyes along the way. And more than one girl in the bloom of her years, with a spring maiden living in her heart, had only to glance once to carry ever after the memory of a handsome youth out of a dream.

Awkward under all the eyes, Guan Si'er grumbled, "The chief, really. He could have sent you alone, Brother. Here I am, daren't eat, daren't drink, hands and feet all bound up for fear of staining the clothes. Why did I have to come too?"

Hu Yougui had never dressed like this either. He'd spent the whole of last night practicing his gait, and he was nervous too, and had never been stared at so. Hearing Guan Si'er dare to grumble, he said crossly, "You needn't tell me! I'd as soon settle it with one stroke of the knife. I don't know what the chief was thinking."

"Exactly!"

And so, poor wretches both, the two of them grumbled their way west.

A hundred years ago, some flower-growers from who knew where, put off by how the Yanjing flower market shut outsiders out, took to selling wild orchids freely at the west gate, and over time this made an orchid market there.

The orchid market wasn't held every day, but only in the right season, on the last day of the month. So the orchid-lovers in the city would go out at such times to hunt up the orchids they liked.

And whenever the orchid market opened, there was another kind of bustle too: orchid-lovers in the city liked to show off the famous blooms they'd raised themselves, and if they meant to deal, they'd mark a plain price and sell them off besides.

A pity, though, that neither Guan Si'er nor Hu Yougui, who could each easily put away two jin of flower-shaped cakes, understood the first damned thing about the flowers themselves.

Full of woe and complaint, the two rode their fine cart through the streets, and just as they were about to pass out of the six-markets crossing, the carriage happened to brush past a rider on a black horse, in silver armor and a silver helmet, wearing a fierce beast-mask.

Just then a fine rain on a light breeze blew the three curtains slowly up, and out of curiosity Hu Yougui came face to face with the rider at the head.

A man who never cared for new clothes year in and year out, when he did now and then wear something fine, grew awkward and didn't know where to put his hands and feet.

Looked at now, Hu Yougui felt awkward at once. He took up the carved-ivory fan from the little table at his side, slowly opened it to hide his face, and with his other hand slowly drew the three gauze curtains up, too shy even to look outside.

The rider leading the party, seeing Hu Yougui, was struck breathless on the instant, and without thinking reined in to let the horse go slower. Seeing him so dainty and pretty, shyly holding up a little fan to hide his face, and, embarrassed, drawing the gauze curtain with his cheeks flushed red, the eyes behind the rider's mask lit with a smile, and the rider looked him over now without the least restraint.

Watching until the fine cart had passed, the rider pulled up the horse and said to the guards behind, "Yanjing, after all. The men here are a different thing from the men of our parts!"

"Listen to our general. What kind of place is Boyi Pass? There a man's called a fellow; in Yanjing they call the men young lords. What, has our general taken a fancy to one?"

The general pressed a hand to the heart and said nothing, only rode on abreast of the riders, and after a few steps suddenly reined in, and with a free, careless air waved a hand behind. "Someone, here."

A guard rode up to ask what was wanted, and the general pointed at the departing carriage. "See that? Follow it. In a bit, find a quiet spot, and the best-looking one." The brows behind the mask rose, and the voice was full of laughter. "Careful now, that one's like porcelain, tss! Speak sweetly, coax him if you can. And if that won't do? Tss! Whatever way you manage it, bring him home for my father and mother to see, so they can stop lying awake and nagging me day after day that I can't find a match."

The riders all started at this, and the one at their head said, hesitating, "General, is this quite proper?"

The general flicked the riding-whip, and with an open, easy air laughed up at the sky. "What's proper or not? His Majesty himself has said it: we are subjects of merit. In this Yanjing, never mind what great gate or whose young lord, if once I take a fancy to him, then he's my man! Tss, go on, quick! What's all this dithering? If you lose him, will you find me another as good-looking?"

And it turned out this general was a woman.

Hu Yougui had no idea he was about to be carried off for a bride. He leaned on the cushions and grumbled, "Damn it, I've never been so shamed in all my life. Of all the people to be seen by, it had to be those Yuwen women. Did you know their women grow beards?"

Guan Si'er wiped away a sweat that wasn't there, looked back once, and let out a long breath. "Brother, what are you worried about? Done up like a pair of painted birds as we are today." He swiped a hand down his own face and showed him the trace of white powder on his fingers. "I ask you, who'd know us?"

Hu Yougui laughed, sprawled loose-limbed across the seat, and drew a deep breath. "Heh heh, that's, that's true."

At the mouth of the orchid market outside Yanjing's west gate, Lan Zili, a small bundle in his arms, every hope dead in him, crouched in a sheltered nook out of the rain and looked out.

His family's case had been reported many days ago. On the day it happened the bailiffs had come and looked, and after that... after that they'd put out a warrant for a man of Lan Anjiang's description, and there was no after that.

In the vast sea of people, with over two hundred thousand strings, for the sake of that much money anyone could hide himself well enough. However much Lan Zili hated him in his heart, however he longed to cut the traitor a thousand times over, there was nothing he could do if the man couldn't be caught.

He'd given up the good three-court house he'd rented, and now the whole family lived, cramped and put-upon, in a back corner yard of some cousins' place.

The cousins weren't well-off either, and he'd looked down on them before. But after disaster struck his house, he'd gone round begging of everyone with his family in tow, and who'd have thought the ones he'd looked down on were the ones to take them in.

He had sent a letter home for help by an escort agency, but his old father was dead, and when they'd set out, several branches of the family had already given money to back the trip. To ask again?

And how much would he get? Whether he'd get any at all was the question.

Lan Zili had no faith in his younger brothers, and worried, and with no way out he'd drunk alone at home all day. But as the ready cash in his hand dwindled, the days grew hard to get through.

Why, just a few days ago, going often to the Shuntian prefecture office for news, he'd got to know, there at the office gate, a hanger-on named Wang Dengke.

This Wang Dengke knew many people and had many ways, and thanks to his setting him straight, saying the money was surely past recovering, Lan Zili had stopped wasting silver all over the place.

He'd set out so full of confidence this time, thinking that at worst, once the money was spent, the road to the top would open of itself.

So what now? He couldn't let it rest, after all.

Yesterday he'd had Wang Dengke to his place to drink, and in the middle of it Wang Dengke brought up a thing: there were many remarkable people in the palace, and among them an old eunuch surnamed Qian who loved orchids and often went to the orchid market outside the west gate.

This old eunuch was somebody in the palace too, a petty head of the Silver Works Bureau, a proper one of the Twenty-Four Yamen, and if Lan Zili wanted to make his acquaintance, he could put in a word.

Whoever Lan Zili trusted, he'd never trust a hanger-on, so he asked the price.

Wang Dengke said that, seeing how down on his luck he was, for fifty strings he'd point out which man it was, and for five hundred strings he could get him a card to call at the door.

Where would Lan Zili find five hundred strings now? With no other way, he could only return the jewelry his daughters had ordered, take back not even a third of the money, and have Wang Dengke point the man out at the orchid market. Come to the capital this once, he could at least see what the true god looked like.

He was at the end of his road now, his mind in a muddle, very much in the mood of: since the road's cut off, I'll chance it all.

As for what would come of seeing the true god, he hadn't thought that far.

So early that morning he and Wang Dengke came to the orchid market, and in the steady rain, poor as he was, not daring even to go into a tea-shed, he found a nook to shelter in and waited for the true god.

He waited over two hours, and as the crowd grew thicker he still saw no sign of the man, and was just thinking of leaving when Lan Zili heard Wang Dengke say in a low voice, "Brother Lan, over there, over there..."

Lan Zili looked where Wang Dengke's small gesture pointed, and saw an old man of forty or fifty, plainly dressed, with rather mean features, come out of the flower market carrying carefully a pot of orchids covered with thin gauze.

The man walked with a stooped back, and looked more like a monkey than a man. He truly hadn't a scrap of the air of someone who held power.

This was that Steward Qian?

When Lan Zili's father was alive he'd seen plenty of men of standing, but this one? Somehow he didn't sit right.

So he asked Wang Dengke, "Brother Wang? This is that Steward Qian?"

Fifty strings, gone just like that?

He'd scoured all Yanjing's gold shops hoping to run into the palace's managing matrons and never managed it, and here in the turn of an eye was a head eunuch?

Seeing he didn't believe it, Wang Dengke spread his hands. "Hai, all these years I've been in Yanjing, what great gate haven't I been into? If it weren't that you're down on your luck, would I bother earning these few coppers off you..."

Even as he spoke, the crowded press of the orchid market suddenly parted, and out of the city came a train of fine carriages, slowly.

Horse and carriage were plainly no common thing. Whether the fittings on the carts or the retinue to either side, none but a great gate could muster such pomp. And the great have always moved, from of old, unhurried and at their ease.

On it came slowly, and just as it was about to pass, the carriage suddenly stopped, and so the onlookers saw a small noble, fair as an immortal, open the curtain with a smile and say to a lean old man at the roadside with an orchid in his arms, "Oho, Qian the elder? So you are over here after all!"

The one called Qian the elder made to kneel, but one glare from the small noble and he dared not kneel, of course, and only bent his back and sidled close, and said carefully, "How is it the y-young master could spare the time to come out today? Does the, the old one of the household know you've, you've come out?"

The small noble didn't answer this at all, but all innocence, with a bone fan half-hidden in the sleeve, pointed at the flower in the old man's arms. "Let me see, what fine flower have you bought?"

The old man's face stiffened, loath to part with it as if parting with his own flesh, but not daring to refuse, and at last, bearing the pain, he raised the flower in both hands. "Hai, the young master has seen no end of fine things. What's remarkable about this wretched flower? It's nothing beside what you have at home, not worth half a glance of yours."

And with that he lifted the gauze off the flower to show the one in the carriage, and when the noble had looked, he turned and handed it to a servant outside the carriage. "It's no famous bloom, but it has a wild charm, and the buds have just come out as it happens. Set it on the young master's writing-desk for a bit of color, and when the young master's tired of his writing and looks up and sees it, won't that lift the mood?"

The servant took the flower, and the party, without so much as a farewell to the old man, moved slowly on. But they'd not gone far when a bone fan was tossed out from behind the gauze curtain.

The lean, aged old man was very nimble, and in a few steps had caught the bone fan to his chest.

And those around heard someone laugh softly from behind the carriage, "You sly old devil, sharp as they come. The young master won't take your things for nothing. Here, the fan's yours."