Chapter 116

Qing Buyi turned herself in at the south gate of the Great Liang palace, and it shook all Great Liang.

Rack your brains as you might, you'd never have thought this madwoman would give herself up.

By the court's usual reading of martial-world folk, this wicked nun was cruel in her methods, and after her crimes should by rights have wandered off to the ends of the earth. For to such people the court's law was aimed at the common folk they could bully, and they themselves, of course, stood outside it.

Who'd have thought Qing Buyi would give herself up, and it shook the whole court and country, and the martial world besides.

The Emperor too was shocked when he first heard, but after a talk with Qing Buyi his mood, for no clear reason, lifted again.

For Qing Buyi said, very frankly, Tan Shiyuan shamed A-ze and shamed me, and against him of course I longed to eat his flesh before my hate was eased, but with you, with Great Liang, I have no quarrel.

This country's founding was what my beloved spent his whole life longing for, and how could I bear to blacken it.

And now Tan Shiyuan is dead, and not by my hand, so of course I come to give myself up. As for my breaking the ban again and again to duel men in Yanjing, that was none of my wishing. Who told those old recluses to stand in my way.

In short, these were words Chen Dasheng had said, and Qing Buyi turned round and said them over to the Emperor. She herself was a stubborn soul, ever blunt and straight and never roundabout.

The Emperor had been very angry at first, but then thought Qing Buyi not bad after all. She'd near enough been his own brother's wife, so near, just a hair short of it. What a fine woman, open and frank, pure to the last degree. A great pity indeed.

The Tan house was no good thing, sure enough.

Not long after Qin She learned Qing Buyi had given herself up, they sent by fast horse the patent of reward the Emperor had once granted Qin She, and offered besides a copper mine of their ancestral estate as redemption-money.

The Board of Punishments' officials went through the whole code, and the case was discussed more than once at court too, and several of the old lords conferred a few times, and all said that even judged by the heaviest of the penal laws, Qing Buyi's crimes truly did not merit death.

And more, Qing Buyi was the first to break the ban since Great Liang set up the Jiusi Hall and built the dueling platforms, and her giving herself up had a real power to overawe the martial-world folk. But if, after she'd given herself up, you killed her anyway?

That would make a poor effect.

Qing Buyi was in the end sentenced to exile three thousand li, never to set foot in Yanjing again her whole life, and the county she was exiled to lay at the very foot of Qin She's mountain.

On the day Qing Buyi left Yanjing, Chen Dasheng took the old sabers to see her off, and watching the nun sit meekly in the cangue on the donkey-cart and go, Chen Dasheng found it a curious thing to see.

Tong Jintai, holding his horse's reins, asked Chen Dasheng curiously, "Chief, how did you talk her round? Weren't you afraid the nun would turn and sell you out?"

Chen Dasheng's face was grave, and only when Qing Buyi was out of sight did he say quietly, "This woman has fallen into a madness ever since Tan the Second died, from all the wrongs she's suffered, and from more than that. And we're the only old sabers Tan the Second left, so of course she won't trust me. But she trusts Tan the Second!"

"So she's mad still?"

"Mm."

Ma Ergu rode up and asked, "Then why have her give herself up?"

Wouldn't it have been better to do away with her in secret?

Chen Dasheng looked left and right, and at last said gravely, "There's a thing you must all keep in mind: the one who brought us up out of the devil's den was the Emperor, and all our honor comes from the country. Whether Qing Buyi killed Tan Shiyuan or not, she had to have somewhere to end up. Only... as it is, you might call it a good somewhere. There, let's all go back. Tomorrow Little Flower and the rest should be home."

In the early winter of the third year of Yong'an, the Founding Earl Chang Mianshen ended three long years of putting down the rebellion and came home victorious, and with that Hongshun was wholly at an end.

That month the Martial Emperor issued twelve edicts one after another rewarding his meritorious subjects. Chang Mianshen was raised to marquis, with a fief of two thousand five hundred dan, his three sons' titles each raised a grade, and Chang Lianfang made a Founding Viscount with a fief of five hundred. A month later Chang Mianshen handed in his marshal's seal at the Board of War and was transferred to the Central Army Command, rising to Left Commander.

That same month Tan Shouyi received an edict at his post. What the sovereign's rebuke said, outsiders had no way to know, but his marquisate was brought down to an earldom, and his fief cut by half.

The affairs of the world are fickle, and a tower rises or falls in a single thought. Some of the old ministers said, in fact, that Tan Shiyuan's methods had been vicious in the old days, and the Tan sons loud and showy, and now the time was just right, and a thing like this happening was, if anything, a good thing.

But just as everyone was talking of the Chang house's fortune and the Tan house's ill luck, several prison-carts, escorted in person by a local garrison, quietly entered Yanjing and went into the Board of Punishments' death-row.

That night, Guan Si'er had just come back from the office when Qi Qian'er and a crowd of maids swarmed him and sent him to the bath-room and scrubbed him from head to foot.

When he came out they swarmed him again to bind up his hair, dressed him in a brand-new sixth-rank court robe just finished, and even hung on him a jade belt to match his rank. His face was dusted with a thin powder, his brows and nails trimmed neat by Qi Qian'er and her women, and he was even scented with fine incense.

Guan Si'er, with no idea what was afoot, was all bewilderment. He was pushed out, and in the courtyard, his brothers? Even Master She was waiting for him?

Everyone's face was grave.

Chen Dasheng looked at his brother, fair as a jade lord, and his heart ached.

Even She Qingling, seeing Guan Si'er's waist bare, beckoned with a smile. "Child, come here."

Was this, to send him decently to his death?

Guan Si'er's legs went a little weak, and he walked slowly up before the teacher, but the teacher first stroked his head and said with a smile, "Pick any one from our household at random and he's lived through hardship and twists too. You're grown now, you've seen no less than they have, been through all a man should go through.

"I trust you.

"Whatever happens, you're to remember you came from the Long Saber garrison, from the prince's mansion, that you're a child of my own knee... and no one would dare wrong you, do you hear?"

Guan Si'er, more bewildered still, nodded dully.

Master She took from his own waist a jade crab belt-ornament and a purse embroidered with an elephant, hung them at Guan Si'er's waist, and said with a smile, "Go on!"

And so Guan Si'er was taken by Chen Dasheng into the carriage and driven to a small hall behind the Board of Punishments.

The whole way Guan Si'er didn't ask his brothers what it was about. That was how an old saber was: the worst was death, and death was the one thing he didn't fear.

Only, going into the back hall, at one glance of the Second Prince Yang Zhen, he was indeed a little surprised.

Yang Zhen was ever a steady man, but today he was strange too, for seeing Guan Si'er, before he could make his bow, he stepped forward, raised him with both hands, and then took one of his hands and said, "Little Seven..."

Guan Si'er gave a shiver.

That name was always the Sixth Lord's to use, so how had the Second Prince taken it up too?

Guan Si'er felt he'd go mad, and gave an "ah," and said dully, in dread, "How is it Your Highness has come?"

The Second Prince sighed. "Hai, how could I not come? My royal father said this is a family matter in the end. What they told me, I could scarcely believe! Truly! Who'd have thought there was such a wretched thing in the world?

"But you've been wronged after all. Set your heart at ease, Little Seven. My father too was in a great rage when he heard of this case, and named Tang Jiuyuan to preside over it on purpose, and fearing you'd feel wronged, he even sent me along. The little Sixth wanted to come too, but my father feared he wasn't steady enough, and it drove the Sixth half mad, and he says he'll come home to see you tomorrow..."

"Your Highness?" Guan Si'er looked about him and asked Yang Zhen, "What on earth has happened?"

Yang Zhen, surprised, asked Chen Dasheng at once, "Don't tell me Little Seven doesn't know about this case?"

Chen Dasheng smiled wryly. "When it first showed signs, I feared it might come to nothing, and feared too he'd grow rash and brood on it, so I kept it from him all along. You know that temper of his, when it rises, who could hold it in?"

At this Yang Zhen couldn't help thinking of that sixth brother of his who wanted to become an immortal every day, and he sighed a little and patted Chen Dasheng's shoulder. "Ai, one to a family, it's fair enough, I suppose. Who'd have thought Little Seven's fate was so bitter. I'd thought the Long Saber garrison had suffered to the very end already."

So saying, he led them all toward the small hall of the Board of Punishments, but not into the hall itself, drawing them instead behind a bamboo blind, to watch the trial in front from behind.

The accused had not yet been brought in, but petty clerks offered up, one by one, the fair-copied case-records the local officials had written.

With a prince present Guan Si'er had no seat, so he opened one and read by the candlelight, and halfway through his legs went weak and he started to sink to the floor.

Chen Dasheng had foreseen it, and stepped up to catch his brother, and the Second Prince was very down-to-earth tonight, springing up and pointing at his own seat. "Come, come, sit here. Ai, lucky it was kept from him, no one could stand such a shock..."

And so Guan Si'er was helped into a chair, made to drink two mouthfuls of cold tea, and fanned about, and when at last he'd caught his breath and come to himself, he saw no one, only stared blankly at those few sheets, and after a long while said with a bitter smile, "So I'm not an out-of-wedlock child after all?"

Chen Dasheng, half-holding him, comforted him. "You're not! My brother is the trueborn son of a Confucian academy-head's house, of pure and noble standing, so how could he be an out-of-wedlock child?"

Guan Si'er nodded dully, drew a breath, and took up the record again, and having read it, read it over from the start three times more before he set the paper down. "That woman, why, why did she do such a thing?"

Never mind that Guan Si'er found it beyond belief, who could find such a case anything but monstrous?

Chen Dasheng shook his head. "I don't know."

Guan Si'er didn't believe him, and glared at his brother.

Chen Dasheng comforted his brother. "Never mind, she's an iron one, but today your brother will help you pry her teeth open."

But Guan Si'er sprang up, and looking at the small hall outside said, "Brother? Why not try it in the great hall?"

Just now Guan Si'er looked calm enough, or perhaps he dared not believe it.

He fixed Chen Dasheng with a hard stare, and Chen Dasheng, helpless, had to say, "There's just been the Tan house's wicked case of a mother killing her son, and not two months later another woman stealing a child. Great Liang is newly founded, and such things one after another are truly bad for the dignity of the state and the people's morals.

"How old are you now, and already a full sixth-rank officer of the court. You mustn't on any account be pointed at by the world over this. Let this case come out into the open, and you can imagine that however hard you strove your whole life, you'd be tangled up in it, hung about with pity and envy, forever talked of..."

Before Chen Dasheng had finished, the Second Prince coughed and took up the thread. "Don't blame your brother, he had no choice. If your brother weren't so careful, your case would be a dead one no one would ever have known of! Put it this way: never mind the old dynasty, in just these three years since our dynasty was founded, by grace exam, by regular exam, and by recommendation, more than thirty young officials come from the Hezhao Academy now hold office. If these young officials were only middling in talent, you could let it go, but as it happens they're every one of the first rank.

"Zhao Dongjin is head of the Hezhao Academy, and his failing in virtue, letting the woman of his house do this vicious thing, drags down the Hezhao students in office and still at their studies... Count it all up and there are more than three hundred bound to him by the tie of teacher and student. How are those students to blame?... Little Seven, ah..."

"I understand!" Guan Si'er broke in. He sniffed, licked his lips, and looked at the court beyond the bamboo blind, saying nothing.

No one spoke, only watched him tensely.

The Second Prince caught sight of the officer on watch at the door, and seeing the saber at his waist, silently pointed at Guan Si'er, then at his own neck, then at the saber, and at the last twisted his face in a grimace.

The officers' mouths fell open a little, then they understood, and in alarm were just about to tiptoe out when they heard Guan Si'er say, "It's all right."

He turned to look at them all, and gave a helpless smile at last. "I'm all right! Only it's so sudden, like a dream... I'm this old now, truly I'm all right! I've come through the hardest times, and now the truth's out and the old wrong is cleared, and I have the Emperor and the prince, the teacher, and my brothers shielding me like this, so how would I dare call it hard? Wasn't there to be a night trial?"

He looked about him. "Just... let's begin. I really am all right."

Tang Jiuyuan, who'd been silent in the corner all this while, spoke. "Then, Your Highness, my lords? Shall we begin?"

Guan Si'er turned his back and nodded firmly. "Mm!"

Two-and-twenty years ago, Gong Zhiyi and Zhao Dongjin both studied under the old head of the Fengwu Academy, and later the two sat the examinations together, and taught together at the Fengwu Academy.

For the teachers' convenience, a few mountain dwellings had been built around the Fengwu Academy, and the teachers brought their families and servants, and some lived there decades. And in those days the Zhao and the Gong, as schoolfellows, were next-door neighbors.

That year, in the eighth month, Zhao Changxi's wife Zeng-shi bore a fine son a month before, and a month after, Gong Zhiyi's wife Li-shi bore a son too, but a pity, the child was weak from the womb, and after crying a few times at birth his breath failed and he died.

There are many children in this world that don't live to grow up, and the second son dead at birth, Master Gong and Li-shi, grieved though they were, bowed to fate, and buried their dear son on Fengwu Mountain and kept the offerings to him to this day.

But who could have thought that behind it lay a shocking case of a swapped child.

As it happened, the day Li-shi bore a boy, the midwife she used was one sent by Zeng-shi's natal family, and before the child had cried twice, the two midwives put him out with a drug, and under cover of washing off the birth-matter, the midwife turned round and swapped in a dead infant and carried it out.

Because the midwives had tampered with things, Li-shi's labor was hard, a full two days of it, and when the child was born she was spent and fainted away.

She didn't know the two midwives carried that dead infant out to show Gong Zhiyi. Gong Zhiyi was young, no more than a humble teacher, and could never have thought anyone would swap his child, and with no grown women of the family at hand that year and no experience of his own, hearing the child had cried a few times at birth and then was gone, grieved as he was, he could only bear it, and bowed to fate.

He even found a carpenter, got good wood, and watched a little coffin made, and when the child was buried in it, he bought a good many playthings to go into the grave with him.

But who'd have thought the two midwives had long since passed his child over the courtyard wall to the next house.

That same month, Zeng-shi, on the occasion of her child's first-month visit to her natal home, secretly went round by way of Yuzhou and found Feng-shi, the widow of Zhao Changxi's sworn elder brother. Feng-shi had by then borne an out-of-wedlock child, and was being tormented every way by her husband's clan, yet would sooner die than say who the father was.

Zeng-shi bribed the guards to see Feng-shi, handed her the infant, and said that if only she'd say this was Zhao Changxi's out-of-wedlock child, then Zeng-shi would find her own child a good family to take him in.

Feng-shi, with no way out, could only fall into the trap, and the next day told her clan, sure enough, that her child had been got the year before by Zhao Changxi, come to visit her.

Having said it, Feng-shi dashed herself against a pillar and died, and the child was carried over into the Zhao house. Zhao Changxi, of course, could not clear himself with a hundred mouths, and in his fury he came to hate the child deeply, and wouldn't so much as look at him.

The Zhao house, helpless, believed in Zhao Changxi's character, but for their name's sake had to be blackmailed, and paid out a great sum of silver before the matter was quieted.

From then on this child lived on hard in the Zhao back-court, until, when he was about ten, Zeng-shi came home from the Hezhao Academy to make the ancestral offerings, and seeing that under the filth he was faintly the very image of Li-shi, and of the second son Li-shi had borne, she ordered a steward to do away with him in secret.

The steward had gambled his money away, and so didn't do away with him, but took him out and sold him to a slaver, and came back and told Zeng-shi he'd pushed him into the river and watched him drown.

This was the whole course of the case of Guan Si'er's swapping, and one thing more should be told: as for the real out-of-wedlock child, after Zeng-shi carried him off, passing a deep river she threw the child into it without a qualm.

Cracking the case was no hard thing. The chief point was that an extraordinary case needs an extraordinary man to crack it.

Chen Dasheng, who was over the scouts, had the man seized, the steward who'd sold him, and from the steward's mouth got to Zeng-shi. But he didn't alarm Zeng-shi, and instead seized the serving-woman who'd waited at her side for thirty years too.

Say what you would of Zeng-shi, shrewd she truly was, but call her a fool too, for the serving-woman had been in the case from first to last, and she'd never silenced her.

And then, from the serving-woman's mouth, they learned the things Zeng-shi had done over the years, and it wasn't Guan Si'er alone. Zhao Changxi had three concubines besides, and of the children these concubines bore, all but the girls, every one that was a boy, she'd done to death one after another, and even those girls, grown, were married into houses it's hard to speak of, with a bellyful of wrongs they could not voice.

And more: Zhao Changxi was a philanderer by nature, and now and then would leave an attachment out in the world, lie with a famous courtesan or such. But he'd leave the attachment and go the next day, and the day after, someone would surely come to buy the woman's freedom, and from then on that woman would never be seen in the world again.

Yet in the world Zeng-shi's name was of the best. She was virtuous and gentle, dutiful and kind to her elders and to Zhao Changxi's students, and when some students were poor, Zeng-shi would even sell her own dowry and quietly give them silver to help them study... The five children she bore Zhao Changxi she'd raised all proper and well-bred, with a fair name for talent in Ningjiang.

It was just such a Zeng-shi who, after the local office secretly arrested her, bore the heavy tortures, and even with the case laid bare, said not a word.

And so now they reckoned the cause of Zeng-shi's crime was jealousy. Perhaps, in those days, Zhao Changxi had done something toward Madam Gong, and she'd seen it?

But when Zhao Changxi was questioned, the man swore oaths and cursed himself, and was ready at any moment to prove his innocence with his death.

If not jealousy, then what?

Tang Jiuyuan took the bench and ordered the accused and those concerned brought up.

The people behind the blind watched intently.

First brought into the hall, of course, was Zeng-shi, her legs broken by the magistrate below, unable to walk, hauled up by the arms.

Even so, covered in the wounds of torture, this woman, knowing she was to face the court today, had smoothed her hair down neat, and her clothes long torn, she'd found needle and thread from who knew where and sewn up the tatters.

Since the two midwives of those years had long been silenced, those brought into the hall were the steward, a few serving-women of Zeng-shi's dowry, and kin of Feng-shi, the head of the Zhao house, and even the Zhao Changxi she'd never wanted to see...

The ever-calm Zeng-shi looked at them all at first with a cold indifference, and even when Zhao Changxi fixed her with a hard stare, she gave back a cold laugh, with not a trace of shame.

Until someone behind her called out, grieving, "Mother..." Then Zeng-shi jerked her face up and said to the lord on the bench, "What does my lord mean by this? This case I did alone! What has it to do with my children..."

But before she'd finished, someone cried out shrill, "Zeng-shi! Poisoner! I'll kill you, I've come to kill you!"

Madam Gong, Li-shi, swept in from outside the hall. She'd been summoned today to bear witness, and hearing Zeng-shi had been brought, she tore free of those holding her and rushed into the hall.

Zeng-shi took two great slaps left and right first, and then Li-shi bore her to the ground and pinched and bit her all over.

"You, fit to say the word 'children'? Are you a beast?"

Li-shi, in grief and fury, found even beating her no ease to her hate. She'd been Zeng-shi's neighbor years, and knew Zeng-shi loved her face above all, and at the last, from who knew what thought, this woman who'd been kind to people half her life, ever so gentle, suddenly put out a hand, caught Zeng-shi's already-torn clothes and tore at them, cursing, "You, fit to wear human clothes... Let me strip your skin and lay bare your heart and liver and see if they're black! For wronging, for wronging my child..."

Zeng-shi, who'd let her beat and curse till now, had no choice but to fight back.

Master Gong, seeing it had gone too far, stepped up to stop it, but his old wife raked his face all over, and Li-shi, glaring at Master Gong with fierce eyes, cursed, "Away! Away with you, you fool who couldn't even know his own child, why don't you go and die and be done..."

Master Gong covered his face in shame, looked about him, and at one glance of Zhao Changxi standing head-down and silent, anger rushed up in him, and forgetting in an instant the pain of his face, he bent, took off his shoe, ran over and pinned Zhao Changxi, sat astride him and beat him, cursing as he beat, "You utter sham of a hypocrite, I won't believe you didn't know."

Zhao Changxi, guilty at heart and every hope dead in him, let himself be beaten. "Schoolfellow! I truly didn't know, I truly didn't know Zeng-shi was so vicious..."

Hearing it, Gong Zhiyi grew angrier still, and put more force into his hand and beat the harder. "Schoolfellow, my ancestors' foot! Pah! You've the face still to call me schoolfellow? I gave way to you half my life, and you stole my child..."

Tang Jiuyuan saw that Guan Si'er's father and mother were getting the better of it, and that they'd a great wrong to vent, which had to be let out, and so he let it be.

The few Zhao children, seeing their parents get the worst of it, were about to go up and stop it, but Guan Si'er's two elder brothers were very dependable, and took off their shoes too, and not a whit afraid of the other side's numbers, went up and laid in... The Zhao had the guilt on them, and dared not much resist.

Even Guan Si'er's little sister, whose milk-name was A-mao, threw herself at Zeng-shi's eldest son, grabbed two fistfuls of his hair, and wouldn't let go.

Li-shi beat Zeng-shi with all her strength and could get no ease to her hate, and at the last she reached out to throttle the wicked woman, but before her hand reached the neck, a very strong hand caught hold of it.

Li-shi started, turned, and saw a young, handsome face, one she should have known for a thousand years at least.

In an instant she knew who it was, and thought even that if she'd but seen her son, there'd have been no need for anyone to crack the case. One look and she'd have known: this was surely her own... child.

Guan Si'er came out, and the hall fell quiet.

Everyone looked at the mother and son.

Guan Si'er smiled with difficulty, his mouth open a long while, and recalling a thousand times over how others did it, he learned at last to say "Mother," and said it with great difficulty.

He said, "...There, Mother, stop hitting her, mind you'll hurt your hand."

Li-shi slowly stood, and with trembling hands reached to touch her child, and seeing the dirty blood on her hands, scrubbed them hard on her clothes.

Scrubbing, she wept and said, "I'm not fit to be a mother either, my child was swapped and I never knew, I'm a fool!"

And with that Li-shi gave herself two slaps left and right, and when she'd done, held Guan Si'er and wailed, "What's to be done, what's to be done, my son, cut me a thousand times over..."

Guan Si'er held his mother, and seeing her head all gone gray, patted her back very gently, stroke by stroke, and said, "...Mother, don't cry, I don't blame you, I don't blame you. See, I'm quite all right."