Chapter 117

Li-shi held tight to Guan Si'er, her whole heart and eyes on him alone. In that instant everything else in the world melted away, and she could see nothing of it.

Guan Si'er helped her to one side, sat her down, and held her hand.

He said to himself, ah, so this is a mother's hand. Not like his brothers', not like anything warm he knew.

He even gazed earnestly at Li-shi's belly, thinking, I, I lived in there ten months.

Mother and son are one heart, and Li-shi understood at once. She took Guan Si'er's hand and laid it on her belly, and his face went red in a flash.

On the bench, Tang Jiuyuan reviewed the case on the local officials' groundwork, and it went smoothly. The evidence against Zeng-shi was solid. But the one thing no one could make out was this: every crime must have a reason behind it, surely?

So why had Zeng-shi done it?

Her natal family matched the Zhao house in standing, and on entering it she was much esteemed by her husband's parents. Old and young of the Zhao clan had scarcely a word but praise for her.

She had a rich dowry, a husband of the first rank in learning and looks alike, and children who did her credit. What more could she want?

Zeng-shi had taken Li-shi's beating without fighting back, without a word, letting them do as they would. Even Tang Jiuyuan, who seldom used the instruments, grew angry enough to put the finger-press to her, and she fainted from the pain without a sound.

A bucket of cold water brought her round, and to press her any further would have killed her.

Even the Second Prince said, from behind, that there was no need to question her more. The evidence was all there. Let the case rest here and be reported to the throne.

But Li-shi would not have it. These twenty-odd years she had often woken in the night from nightmares. She could never make out what happened in the dreams, but every time she sat up awake she would clutch at her heart and weep till it broke.

Before, she hadn't understood why. Now she knew. She and her child were bound by blood. When he was bullied, she ached. When he was shamed, she ached. When he fought for his life on the battlefield, she lay sleepless and full of grief.

People all said her life was fine, but she had always felt it was not whole, always felt something was missing, something cut out of her heart and flesh.

Some things in a life you let pass without understanding. But this one thing, if it ended still muddled, she thought, she would not close her eyes in death.

But this was the court, and the grudge she could not put down showed on her face despite herself.

Guan Si'er watched his mother carefully. When she grieved, his heart broke. Mother and son are one heart after all. So he let go of her hand, gave her a comforting smile, and looked up at Tang Jiuyuan. "My lord Tang, may the wronged party here ask a question or two?"

And why not? Tang Jiuyuan had tried cases for years, and this was the first time he'd met so hard a woman. Zeng-shi already carried old wounds and had taken the heavy instruments today, and there was nothing more he could do. He waved a hand, closed the file, and left it to Guan Si'er.

Someone brought a chair. Guan Si'er walked slowly up before Zeng-shi, lifted the hem of his robe, and sat down at his ease.

Zeng-shi was weak. Feeling Guan Si'er come near, she tried to prop herself up on her agonized fingers and keep some dignity, but the pain left her nothing to push against, and she slumped awkwardly on her side on the floor.

Guan Si'er looked at this thin, frail woman and could only find it hard to believe.

Back when he suffered in the Zhao house, he most liked to slip off to the fifth household. The servants all said the fifth mistress was the kindest of them. Make a mistake in any other household and there was no hiding from it, but in the fifth it came to nothing.

He remembered how, little as he was, he hid behind a tree and watched this noble lady rise early every day. She would stand in the courtyard and see her five children off to the family school, smiling as she straightened their clothes, smiling as she checked their brushes and ink. Now and then she'd fish a bug, a toy, a sweet out of a child's book-bag, and never scold, only dissolve into laughter with them.

She was endlessly patient. Each time she'd open the children's hems and feel layer by layer how thick they were, adding a coat when it was cold, and when it was warm charging them over and over not to let themselves get chilled.

She was always smiling, smiling like the Guanyin Bodhisattva.

And little as he was, he had longed back then. If only, if only she were his mother too.

But this was no bodhisattva. This was a demon in a cassock.

Because he said nothing, only sat there in silence, Zeng-shi couldn't hold out in the end. Her eyes crept up from his boot-soles, up and up, and came to rest at last on that smiling face.

He was smiling? Why was the little beast smiling?

Guan Si'er's smile unnerved Zeng-shi. She didn't dare meet his eyes, and quickly bowed her head again.

At that Guan Si'er snorted out a laugh. At last he said, "You needn't speak, really, I've no interest in hearing it..." His throat felt dry, and he turned to the clerk copying down the testimony. "Spare me a cup of your water."

The clerk started, then hurried to fetch an unused cup, scalded it twice over, and offered Guan Si'er the tea in both hands, saying apologetically, "It's only the cheap dust of tea leaves, this..."

Guan Si'er shook his head that it was no matter, took the tea, drank a few mouthfuls, and said, "So I'm the wronged party here, am I not?"

Zeng-shi kept her head down, still.

"Then our two houses are enemies, aren't they?"

Zeng-shi's body stirred as if to raise her head, but she held it in.

Guan Si'er didn't care how she took it. He only said, "You'll have had word along the way, I expect, and know what I am now. So I ought to thank you. Without all your scheming, I'd likely have been the baby of the house, with no need to hold up the family, no need for any grand ambitions. The roof-beam wouldn't rest on me, the family's glory wouldn't look to me. My mother had a hard time bearing me, two days of labor before I came, so she couldn't help but favor me a little, and let me run wild as I pleased..."

Li-shi gave a sudden sob, then bit her lip for fear of disturbing her child. Her eldest son came over and gently held his mother to comfort her, and Li-shi buried herself in his arms and wept without a sound.

Master Gong made to come and steady his old wife and comfort her, but she shoved him off with one hand.

Guan Si'er glanced at his mother, then turned back and went on, smiling, "They tell me my grandfather's house was a famous merchant family, so mine's surely never short of money..." He turned and looked earnestly at Master Gong. "Father?"

Master Gong went rigid all at once, and tears burst from his eyes. He stared, and only after a long moment forced out, with difficulty, "Yes, yes! Son, say it, say it..."

Guan Si'er bared his teeth in a grin. "Father, is our house rich?"

Master Gong nodded firmly. "It is! It is! Several thousand mu of good land!"

Guan Si'er nodded. "Then I'm the youngest, and good for nothing, and if I hadn't been stolen I'd surely have been a wastrel. So, how many mu would be my share?"

Master Gong started, and laughed and wept at once. "Then, then if you're good for nothing, ah, then, then my son being good for nothing, we'd, we'd have to favor you a little more, or I'd not rest easy even in death, afraid you'd starve for want of ability. We'd set aside half for you at the least..."

Guan Si'er laughed with real delight, and looked at his two elder brothers, whose faces were already streaming. These were his blood brothers, so like him in looks that out of a sea of thousands, anyone would take the three of them for brothers of one flesh.

He asked, smiling, "Eldest Brother, Second Brother!"

The two of them sniffled, could get no word out, and could only nod.

Guan Si'er asked, with a touch of the little brother in his tone, "Our father thinks me good for nothing, I'll be a wastrel and want a bigger slice of the family goods, so what about you two?"

The two were struck dumb, and after holding it in a long while, the one who looked exactly like Guan Si'er said in a thick voice, "That's Father and Mother's own to give to whoever they please. You, don't you worry, if it's not enough, your brother can spare it."

Guan Si'er laughed softly. "That won't do, your wife won't stand for it."

His eldest brother said, "She can stand for it or not, eh? That's how it is, who told you to be our house's one good-for-nothing. She's stuck with it, isn't she..."

Guan Si'er looked last at little A-mao, long since slumped on her brother's shoulder and beginning to sob, and nodded firmly. "You're my only sister, so I won't fight you for any of it."

A-mao, miserable as she was, snorted out a laugh at this and scolded, "Little Brother!"

"...Yes."

Guan Si'er answered sweetly, and when he'd done laughing he looked at Zeng-shi, who sat lost and uncomprehending, and said, "See, if you hadn't stolen me, this is about the fate I'd have had. One of the common crowd, going nowhere."

He handed the empty cup off to an officer holding a flogging-paddle. The man started, dropped the paddle, took the cup with a bow, and withdrew.

Guan Si'er thanked him for the trouble, then lowered his head and said to Zeng-shi, smiling, "So you see, everyone hates you, but I have to thank you. Thanks to you, madam, I'm now a sixth-rank Secretary in the Board of War, and chief saber-instructor of the imperial guard besides, with an honorary marquisate that carries the right to one cauldron.

"The Emperor looks on me as his own child. The people I keep company with are all the high houses of the capital, and I've brothers who treat me as their own flesh and blood. I'm the youngest here too, the seventh! So whenever there's some good thing going, they all give way to me. Oh, and, I've a rich bride-to-be as well, her family's wealthy, ten thousand mu of good land is only a part of her dowry. And all this, you gave me."

Zeng-shi's eyes filled with hatred. She fixed Guan Si'er with a hard stare. "What's the point, now, of saying all this before a dying woman?"

Guan Si'er laughed softly. "How no point? The point's a great one. Know this: from now on you are my enemy. I am your enemy, and Prince Rui'an of this court is your enemy, and if the Prince is your enemy, then the reigning sovereign is your enemy by nature. You don't believe it? You'll be made to. You'd like to die, but I, I won't let you die..."

He stood up suddenly, walked to the side of the hall, and ran his eye over Zeng-shi's terrified children. Judging their ages, he seized a young man dressed as a fair-faced scholar, hauled him before Zeng-shi like a chick by the scruff, and flung him to the floor. Zeng-shi drew a sharp cold breath.

She reached out her hands, helpless to stop it, and saw this, this, this wicked man raise his foot and set it on her son's face. He smiled with cold malice. "This is your youngest son, is it? Look at him. A promising one too, isn't he?"

"Ahh!" Zeng-shi, so calm all this while, went mad on the instant. She rushed forward and seized Guan Si'er's foot with her swollen red hands, straining to lift it. "What are you doing, what are you doing, you want to kill, to cut me to pieces, then come at me! All of it I did, I did it! It's nothing to do with them..."

How could she budge Guan Si'er's foot? He laughed in scorn. "Come at you? Where's the fun in that. I may be only an honorary marquis, but a marquis all the same, and what is your house worth? This is the Yong'an reign now. You dared steal me and sell me, and now you'd shoulder the crime alone? You've dreamed too many sweet dreams.

"For all the lives on your hands, every one who ought to go down with you will, not one gets away... And even if they slip this time, as long as I stand at court a single day, there'll be no future for you Zhaos. Bullying an infant, what kind of skill is that. Rest easy. Your five brats, and the natal house that raised a poisoner like you, I'll let not one of them off..."

With what she held dearest under threat, Zeng-shi broke down entirely. She watched her beloved child pinned down and unable to struggle, and could do nothing, and so she cried out for help, over and over, begging everyone to save him. Her husband hid from her. Her sons would not meet her eyes...

Tears pouring down, she crawled on the floor pleading for help on every side, reaching for Li-shi's legs, begging, "Sister, sister, we were close once, have you forgotten? I even made A-mao a skirt, I was never stingy with the gifts when your daughters-in-law first came to call. In this one thing alone I wronged you. I beg you, in my next life I'll be an ox and a horse to atone, punish me never to be born human again, I'll take it. Every crime I did alone, it's nothing to do with Fifth-Son. I beg you, cut me a thousand times over, will that do?"

She lifted her face to Li-shi, pleading bitterly. "Beat me! Beat me hard, oh, didn't you want to cut out my heart?"

She tore open her own clothes all at once, baring herself with nothing covered, past all shame, and said with a smile, "Come... come cut it out..."

Before she'd finished, someone grabbed her by the hair and flung her to the floor. Guan Si'er spat at her, "Now, are you afraid?"

Zeng-shi sniffled and nodded fast as a pestle, yielding. "Afraid, scared to death, scared to death, truly afraid now, I'm afraid..."

The onlookers said nothing, and couldn't have named what they felt. There were no words for it.

Guan Si'er crouched and helped the shameless woman close her clothes. "Leave a woman some decency. You may have none, but your children, and the women of your kin, still have to live in this world."

After all the struggle, Zeng-shi clutched her clothes and the tears came. She wept and laughed together. "I'm a dying woman too, can't I be given a little face?"

Guan Si'er shook his head in silence. Zeng-shi sank into the distant past, and no one knew what she thought of, but at last she said, "Too late, too late. From the very first I knew I'd gone mad... At twelve, my father held a literary gathering, and I saw him, and I was lost to it. How good those days were, free of all care.

"The scholars of our county all came and sat in our house, and my sisters and I hid behind the screen to watch them talk. He was so handsome. A whole courtyard of people, and I could see only him. He stood out above them all, like a white crane from the heavens, and I stared, lost. Then my third aunt teased me, she asked, sweet girl, are you picking out a husband for yourself?

"And I said, yes, that tallest crane, the handsomest, he'll be my husband. The whole family laughed at me, all laughed at me, and I laughed too. Only later did I learn he was a scholar famous across the realm, the finest talent of the Fengwu Academy. I loved him so..."

Zeng-shi turned to look at Zhao Changxi, his spirit shattered, and sighed. "Him, he's still this handsome now, and yet I hate him so..."

Zhao Changxi looked at her, stunned, but she was no longer looking at him.

Zeng-shi's voice had gone back, as it were, to twelve years old, the little girl who doted on a fine young man. She wanted to marry him, and so she studied with all her might, learned every skill with all her might, longing day after day. At last she grew up, at last the two houses matched, and at sixteen she got her wish.

She smiled like a bride. "At sixteen I entered the Zhao gate, bent low to honor his parents, my old mother weeping at home, uneasy and sad, the tender shoot just budding its pearl, a thousand li traveled alone, a whole life given to one man... I was so happy then. In my home country I too had a name for talent, pretty-faced and schooled in all four virtues, and how many sought to marry me, but I'd have none of them. My mother loved me and let me have my way, and joyfully I married the man I loved. I was so happy that I gave my dowry-maid a new name, Duoruyi, 'all goes as one wishes'... heh, heh, heh, heh, all goes as one wishes..."

The serving-woman Duo, kneeling to one side, watched her mistress with a white face and called out through her tears, "Mistress."

Zeng-shi had not meant to say these things, but she could hide them no longer.

She smiled, wretched and disheveled, smiled with a mouth full of blood. "I came with my dowry, came full of joy, dreaming sweet dreams the whole road, meaning to bear him many, many children just like him. But a pity... I came a thousand li and more, and on our wedding night he left me. Can you believe it, good people? Our wedding night, and he left me. I traveled thirteen hundred li from home to marry him, and all because Gong Zhiyi had written a fine essay, he threw me over, threw me over!!"

Zhao Changxi swayed, caught at a pillar beside him, and shook his head, unable to believe it.

Zeng-shi had thrown all caution aside now, and spared him no face at all. "The Zhao house was so big, so many people, and I knew only him, but he threw me over. From the sun setting over the Orchid Pavilion to the lonely moon that grieves a soul to death, every dream shattered, everything gone... I asked myself, is this to be my whole life?"

She looked at the people around her and suddenly cried out, "But my mother's house, I could never go back to it! Never go back!"

Guan Si'er was somewhat baffled. He'd been stolen and sold, and it was all because a woman had kept the bridal chamber alone while her husband went off to write essays by lamplight?

Zeng-shi pinched her collar in one hand and reached the other into the air, clawing at nothing, catching nothing, and laughed a cackling laugh. "I thought it would come right in the end, it surely would. He didn't come, didn't like me, was I not good enough? Then I'd be more virtuous, more gentle, more patient... No use. I did everything I should, but that name, Gong Zhiyi, could never be parted from my wretched days after that. On our wedding night he had a fine essay to write. Ten months I carried the child, and they held the Fengwu essay contest, and I struggled three days to bear the child in agony, and not one kind word. That thing of mine, because he'd lost to the other man by a notch, went on a hunger strike... heh, he stopped eating?

"My mother-in-law blamed me for not knowing how to serve my husband, and I had to swallow the pain and the tears and go to coax him round... And then I understood. As long as he didn't climb high, as long as he couldn't beat Gong Zhiyi, his eyes would never fall on us, his lonely wife and child..."

"You, what nonsense are you talking? How were you a lonely wife and child?"

Zhao Changxi, who had not spoken all this while, suddenly said this, his voice trembling.

But Zeng-shi did not turn round, only murmured, "They all told me, your husband is so fine, your husband is so bright and noble, a dragon among men! What have you to be discontent about? But I was cold... thirty-five years married, and not a day but he drove himself at his books till it cut to the bone, set on nothing but beating Gong Zhiyi... ha ha, who would believe it?

"Whenever Gong Zhiyi beat him, our life became unlivable. Gong Zhiyi took first place in the provincial exam, and our whole family couldn't eat. He flipped the tables over. When at last, on his second trip to the capital, Gong passed the metropolitan exam, I thought then... Gods, you've given me a way to live at last, ha ha ha, no way to live at all!"

Zeng-shi cackled, looking at Zhao Changxi with his face in his hands. She did not even know what she had lived her whole life for. "I prepared a full year. Three months gone with child, I set people to find a house in Yanjing. I thought I'd escaped to heaven... ha ha ha, say not the heart is iron, for iron breaks too. In the end, how many strings of your heart are left to break, Zhao Changxi? All at once the man gave up office, and the Yanjing house was bought for nothing, and we had to move up a mountain? Gong Zhiyi took it into his head to teach, and so Zhao Changxi had to have his own students all over the realm too...

"I hated it. I couldn't tell whether I was missing an arm or a leg... how had I let my life turn so wretched? I hated it, I wanted to set a fire, burn that Fengwu Mountain down! I sank in deeper and deeper. I gave alms and burned incense and was still filthy all over, filth ten lifetimes couldn't wash clean. Ha ha ha, but what was it all for, what for, what for, what for, what for... ah?"

The woman suddenly began to sing, little tunes all about a young girl's longing...

Guan Si'er shook his head. By now, anyone with eyes and a moment's thought understood.

The woman had long since gone mad. She hadn't the nerve to turn on her husband, so she took revenge on an infant. She would have left, but her children held her back and she could not break free, so she took her revenge, even foisting an out-of-wedlock child on her husband to blacken his name, sinking deeper and deeper into her madness...

It was an answer no one would have guessed, and yet one that made its own sad sense.

Zeng-shi had gone wholly mad. She sat there muttering, now recalling the good days in her mother's house, now speaking of the best time of her life, now breaking into raving, cursing out a string of the painted concubines' names...

Guan Si'er had had enough of listening. He stood and walked up before Li-shi, who had long since gone limp with fury and lay half-propped in her eldest son's arms.

Crouching slowly, he said to her, "Mother! Let's go. I'll carry you home on my back..."

The sky was dim, the first light of dawn breaking through.

Zeng-shi had forgotten all shame, her chest bared, her hands flying as she told out her life. A lifetime of pent-up hatred, she'd not be done telling it for a good while yet.

Guan Si'er carried his mother out of the place on his back. As they reached the door, Master Gong shook his head helplessly and flung his sleeve to go, but then heard someone behind him call, "School-, schoolfellow?"

They turned, and saw Zhao Changxi looking at Gong Zhiyi with his whole face pleading. "Though I died a thousand times, ten thousand times, I could never wash the sin from me, but, my children, they truly knew nothing of it..."

But Gong Zhiyi did not wait for him to finish. He walked straight up before him and fixed him with eyes blazing like fire.

And in the end, one word: "Pah!"

It was a morning of the deepest happiness. Guan Si'er carried his mother home to Scholar's Lane with a light step, passing under the long memorial arch.

Guan Si'er told his father and mother how Chen Dasheng, the first time he came, had taken the arches for chastity arches, and their faces eased into laughter.

The clouds up in the sky drifted free, and the vines on the wall withered as they pleased.

They met many people, and before anyone could speak Master Gong would catch hold of a stranger and say, this is my son.

No one dared disturb such a reunion. However much Chen Dasheng worried inwardly, he only followed his brother in silence to the mouth of the lane, and in silence watched them walk away...

The family went back inside, and Li-shi went to the kitchen herself to cook her son a breakfast.

The mother asked her son, "Sweet child, what would you like to eat?"

The sweet child said, "Whatever Mother makes, I'll eat!"

In the end they made a great spread, and all sat round the table together, and every one of them picked food into Guan Si'er's bowl. When he ate well, they were glad. When he ate a lot, the whole family was gladder still.

Full, and unable to sleep, they sat under the eaves saying nothing. They didn't feel the cold, only that the wind was good, and the world was whole...

That day Zhao Changxi took his own life at home, and Zeng-shi was led away, and from then on no one knew where she went...