Chapter 127

At the end of the third month, the fourth year of Yong'an, Zhou Jizong came back to Quanhou Street with the bones of his elder brother Zhou Jiye, and within a month the old Tao house of Quanhou Street held two hurried weddings first, and then two funerals.

Ever since Zuoliang Pass was broken, Old Madam Tao, her soul scattered, had taken the women of the whole household and gone round every temple nearby to pray.

At first she held herself in, and however worried, let not a hair's breadth of distress show outside, but in early third month some report from who knew where said not one of Zuoliang Pass's defenders had survived, and she collapsed.

Meng Wanquan went to look in on her, and coming back had Lu-shi send fifty strings over, saying Old Madam Tao was in a pitiful way, that the life-sustaining medicine she took now cost four or five strings a day, and that was with Master Cheng keeping the medicine-store, so her house got its medicine cheap.

The next day Lu-shi came to sit with Qi Qian'er, and said that Old Madam Tao had long carried a knot in her heart that had become a bitter illness hard to loosen, and with the Tan now raiding the frontier and news every day of so many dead here and there, thinking her son would never come back, Old Madam Tao's every hope died and she could hold out no longer.

Qi Qian'er had hated Old Madam Tao once, for the old woman's scheming against people for her family's sake, and for her later ganging up with Madam Qiao, using the money Qiao had squeezed out of the Chen house to pave the way for that Tao grandson.

But now, now she let it go, let all of it go!

For the sake of the one far away, and of the one in her belly, she laid up some merit, and even sent thirty strings over, though of course it couldn't be more than the old lady's.

The old lady had fled the famine together with Old Madam Tao, and the two had leaned on each other and struggled through many years, and for all she sneered at the woman with her mouth, the moment she fell the old lady, uncommonly, sent two good ginseng roots from her private store, with fifty strings besides.

In the days when Chen Dasheng and the rest weren't at the old lady's side, it was Old Madam Tao who'd been there.

And those who'd been together before, Yang-shi and Wan-shi and the rest, each by what she could spare put out a hand to help too, five strings, ten strings, even twenty, all doing their best with not a trace of self-interest.

Old Madam Tao was one who knew well how to make friends, and besides Qi Qian'er, who knew her true self, when she fell ill and her house was hard-pressed, several old ladies of the Six-Board lanes sent people with money or medicine too.

But just at this juncture, Old Madam Tao's two grown daughters, one called Tao Liu and one called Tao Xu, were both married off in haste by Old Madam Tao.

Tao Liu married the Earl of Xin'an, the hardest-fated man in Yanjing, as his second wife, and the Earl of Xin'an was near fifty.

Tao Xu married Cao De, Consort Jing's younger brother, and this was no marrying-up. That Cao De had no taste for women, every old Shaoshang minister knew, and Cao De had meant to amuse himself happily his whole life, only the head of the lesser Cao house wouldn't allow it, and bowed and took him in an ornament for a wife.

To give her daughters some face, the several hundred strings of help-money the various houses had sent she put all into their dowries, and even the old lady's two ginseng roots, one went to each of the two daughters.

And so Tao Liu and Tao Xu each left Quanhou Street handsomely enough, with twenty-six trays of dowry, carried out to pipe and drum.

On the fifth day after the Tao daughters married, Zhou Jizong, desolate all over, came back to his mother's side with the jar of his brother's bones on his back.

He'd been shielded by his brother's own flesh and blood, and then, to avenge the wrong, on nothing but the fury pent in his chest, had secretly trailed the Tan army and brought back no little of the enemy's intelligence.

And so, with no time even to say an extra word to his gravely ill mother, Zhou Jizong went to the Board of War to seek help, and by the time Sun Shouyi had taken him into the palace and he came back at daybreak, Old Madam Tao had breathed her last clutching her third son's bones.

She went as if set free, with a smile.

And it was from this day that Zhou Jizong formally changed his name to Tao Jizong, and the Tan intelligence he'd brought back won him a sixth-rank battalion-commander's post... his prospects wide open from then on.

"Ai, a person just mustn't be too set on winning."

Old Madam Chen gave a sigh, took from the cabinet the several sets of grave-clothes she'd readied for herself, spread them out one by one, and was threading her needle to alter them for Old Madam Tao.

Old Madam Tao was thinner than she, and the torment of spirit before her death had been so great that, in Wan-shi and the others' words, she was down to fifty or sixty jin.

Qi Qian'er, carrying two bodies, didn't attend a death, and so sat at the old homestead eating and drinking, watching the old lady alter the grave-clothes.

Grave-clothes were also called "old clothes," and usually the daughters readied a few sets and the daughters-in-law a few, and the more worn and the better the quality, the more it showed the children's filial piety.

There'd been early signs Old Madam Tao would die, but she'd not kept the warmth of a single daughter-in-law or granddaughter, and with her daughters just married out, every spare cash she had she'd stuffed into the daughters' dowry-chests to carry away.

Which made the daughters-in-law hate her the more. She breathed her last in her old clothes.

The old lady had been a skinflint her whole life, and that she could give away her own grave-clothes was partly because there was good in the giving, and partly because she understood Old Madam Tao so well. For all the quarrels and tangles and mutual scheming of their past, as two souls fallen to the ends of the earth together, there was no one who understood better.

Could a thing in this world ever come out whole on both sides? Impossible!

The old lady even knew that Old Madam Tao had known she'd no grave-clothes, no coffin, and might be lodged in a charity-shed with not even a grave-plot, and yet the woman did not repent of it.

You might say that all the Quanhou Manor women who'd lived through the war owned their bitter lot, owned that their birth-signs carried ill luck, owned that they'd stored up no merit last life and so deserved a stretch of suffering in this one, but they did not know the two words "to repent"!

Drawing a few stitches, the old lady looked up and smiled. "You tell me, set on winning her whole life, she'd surely never have thought she'd go in my clothes. See how fine these clothes of mine are, all satin, look, what bright colors, and I sewed every stitch of them for myself..."

The old lady had no daughter now, and no filial daughter-in-law. Qi Qian'er said she'd see to it all, but the old lady had her own notions, and when she'd time made her own grave-clothes.

Her grave-clothes were silk and satin indeed, but from some old clothes Qi Qian'er had once dug out of the Huo family's ancestral hall, rotted satin among them, she'd find a good bit here and cut a whole piece there, and with what she'd gathered on the famine-flight road too, wasting nothing, thrifty as could be, she'd pieced herself together six sets of grave-clothes.

Had she not taken them out today, Qi Qian'er wouldn't even have known she had them. The old lady wanted praising, so Qi Qian'er praised her for real. "Granny, this you've made is the fashionable Qingfeng cut, oh! The stitching's far finer than mine, and I never knew you could cut a round-collared jacket. You truly are capable."

Proud at heart, the old lady said otherwise with her mouth. "Hai, capable my foot! There are able folk enough in this world, what am I? That dead one's one wit was worth ten of mine! There was no help for it, the cloth was too scrappy to make a crossed collar, so round it had to be. Anyway she's dead now and... and won't quarrel with me over it."

She held up the innermost set of fine cloth for Qi Qian'er to see, and folding it carefully said, "My hand's not as fine as hers, she was the cleverest. Ai, scheme a little less and she might have lived to a great age, but what was it all for, in the end she had truly nothing..."

Qi Qian'er nodded with a smile. "Yes, scheme less and you live to a great age."

"Tomorrow I'll go find your Granny Jiang, have her chant a couple of scrolls to see her soul across... In truth, your Granny Jiang didn't care for her scheming ways either."

"...All right."

That's because you did no little talking her down to her!

The old lady had a great deal to muse on today, and without waiting for Qi Qian'er to say anything to keep her company, fell to reminiscing on her own, all of it from the days following the army.

A pinchpenny most of her life, today she was truly open-handed. It wasn't only a matter of a layer of grave-clothes. When a person dies, they must carry something on them, and so the old lady strung some cash on red thread to make Old Madam Tao a sash.

"These go under the clothes, where the ghost-runners can't see, so it's her own private money... In the old days she used to say I was set on winning, couldn't bear with people, and did no little talking me down out there. Hmph! She was on fine terms with this one."

The old lady pointed toward the house next door where Madam Qiao had once lived. "Ai, the two of them so close they'd near eat out of one pot. But yesterday Old Madam Tao breathed her last, the door-plank was taken down over there and Old Madam Tao laid out straight, and not a sign of her come to burn a sheet of paper. Good or bad in a person has to be tried by what happens, isn't that so, Qian'er?"

Qi Qian'er, abstracted, nodded. "Mm, just so. Auntie Gao and Auntie Wan and the rest had quarrels with Old Madam Tao in the old days, and Old Madam Tao even called Auntie Wan small-minded, and Auntie Wan, seeing her fawn on the Board-of-Personnel lane, couldn't stand it, but yesterday they came to the door to help with the arrangements and the odd jobs."

The old lady held up a finger. "Just so. Your Auntie Wan gave ten strings at the least, and what's her life? Money scraped off her own lips one coin at a time, all of them keeping widowhood for the dead or the living, their men no good to lean on, renting a room and selling water, who won't let themselves eat a mouthful of meat any ordinary day. No comparing them with our house, eh!"

Qi Qian'er nodded, wanting to laugh and unable to.

The old lady's talk was always thus, liking to trample a bit on others with the family's present wealth, though never trampling before outsiders, only muttering a few words once home.

In the old days Qi Qian'er, hearing such talk, would surely have put in a jibe or two, but Zhou Jiye had fallen at Zuoliang Pass, and Quanhou Street's Chen Dasheng and the rest hadn't escaped it either, and had gone off too... did the men of Quanhou Street owe Zuoliang Pass a debt?

Qi Qian'er didn't want to speak of it, and changed the subject. "Granny?"

"Mm?"

She asked, knowing the answer, "Tell me, why is there the custom of laying out the dead for three days, for seven days, and why, when a household loses someone, do they take down half a door-plank and lay the body on it?"

The old lady, taking in the waist of the fourth set, paused at this, and remembering Qi Qian'er was a girl without a mother, whose own madam wouldn't have told her such things, patiently taught her. "You don't even know this? When some people die, the soul has to go report to King Yama, but if he was a good person, sometimes King Yama shows mercy and lets them come back..."

Qi Qian'er feigned astonishment. "Come back? A dead person can come back?"

The old lady held up the red thread and coiled it.

"That there are, there's one such right here among us! In the old days, the village next to our home country, oh, your Grand-uncle Gaoliang over Jiangzhu Mountain way, his wife's own aunt on her mother's side..."

Qi Qian'er had gone foolish with pregnancy and couldn't quite sort out this muddle of a relation, but these people, these matters, these forebears' ties, in the old lady's mind were never in the least confused.

She said, bending over her work, "By the generations you'd have to call her a great-grand-aunt. That great-grand-aunt was a naughty thing as a child, the apricots scarcely yellowing when she climbed a high branch, lost her grip in a moment and fell and her breath stopped. Well! Her father gritted his teeth and sold two sheep to get her a thin-shelled coffin, and before the body was even laid in, she was set out on a door-plank for a night, and the next day the moment the lord sun came out, heh! She lived!"

Qi Qian'er was truly taken aback. "She really lived?"

The old lady nodded. "Yes, she lived! There's plenty of such things. Long ago they just buried folk where they died, but when they moved a grave and opened the coffin again, you'd see the coffin-lid all scratched by fingernails, tsk, tsk... and so the old folks said, when a person dies don't coffin them, lay them on a door-plank and wait for King Yama to judge.

"If you're a great good soul, you can live again, and if you're surely dead, then on the seventh day you come back to look at your children and grandchildren. And those outside, seeing whose house is short half a door-leaf, know a death's in that house. Some of the old rules have good sense in them..."

Before the old lady had finished, a woman outside spoke to Qi Qian'er through the window. "Fourth Mistress, the Tao house's second mistress has sent someone to our court to borrow cookware..."

As for cookware, in the countryside a village of five hundred households would keep at least three sets of it, each set with at least two big cauldrons, three middling pots, five hundred coarse porcelain bowls and plates, so many pairs of chopsticks... in short, the gear for the big communal meals of weddings and funerals.

In a place like Quanhou Street, any household with some means would keep a set, even two.

Curious, Qi Qian'er asked the woman through the window, "Her house is ready to light the stoves?"

She'd thought Old Madam Tao's whole houseful of grudge-bearers wouldn't hold a funeral for her at all.

That old lady had been pitiless indeed, thinking only of providing for her daughters once she knew she was dying, and truly set the whole family against her.

The woman answered, "Answering the mistress, her house's Fourth Master has come back."

Oh, no wonder. Her son was back, so the funeral had to be gotten up now.

If you asked Qi Qian'er, everyone had reason to hate Old Madam Tao, but there was one who was no good at all, and that was Top-Scholar's mother Zhang-shi, for it was her son the whole family had been providing for.

For her to play deaf and dumb now was truly more than one could watch.

Had the son not come back, heh, Zhang-shi would never have brought herself to come borrow cookware. Theirs were two deaths, and the third son dead a violent death in a strange land besides, and once the cookware was used it had to be cleansed by a shaman-woman for money, and so great a heap of it would cost three to five strings at the least.

The old lady said without looking up, "Today let's not reckon anything up. Neighbors to either side, and an old friendship besides, and we've plenty, so ready a bit for her house to use, and at least let her go with some dignity."

Qi Qian'er nodded, and said out the window, "Go to the housekeeper for a tally, have her ready a few dan of mixed grain and salt, and send word to the manor to bring some spring greens these few days, and lead four sheep over..."

Had the old lady not reminded her, Qi Qian'er would have forgotten too. It was so long ago, and at the time she'd been in a daze with every hope dead, Dasheng gone and she without money, and that funeral, far kin and near, just as today, even the Tang house had put out a hand.

The court's edict of honor had come only on the seventh day, when the coffin was carried out.

The woman trotted off, and the old lady said, rather grieved, "That Zhang-shi, I never thought well of her, a thing with eight ghosts living in her heart! If you want one with an upright heart, it's Huang-shi, and a pity it is, her man as conscienceless as his father, and she without a son to guard her, and her mother-in-law thinking the less of her, every bitter, wearying thing left to her and her daughters. Old Madam Tao, these past days, not a bad smell on her, and when I went to look in, it was Huang-shi waiting on her too... tsk! See, one kick of the legs and..."

Before she'd finished, the gatekeeper came and said through the window, "Old Madam, Fourth Mistress, the Tao house's Fourth Master is kneeling outside."

The old lady paused, then asked, "Hasn't the death already been announced?"

The gatekeeper said uncertainly, "This servant doesn't know, the Tao Fourth Master came and just knelt there..."

Qi Qian'er made to move, and the old lady pointed and scolded her. "What are you stirring for, I'll go look, don't you dare go out, you'll frighten the one in your belly..."

Qi Qian'er stroked her belly, and raising her head again found the old lady had briskly gone out.

Tao Jizong didn't know how he'd gotten back to Yanjing. The commanding general had given his orders at random, the magistrate had fled by night through the right gate with his family, and left behind, he and his brother, fools, had thrown together men to meet the enemy, never dreaming the Tan would come in through the right gate without shedding a drop of blood.

And then, the sack of the city!

Firelight across the whole sky, his ears full of shrill screams, corpses over all the ground, Zuoliang Pass steeping in a hell's pool of blood, and his eyes went red with killing, and in the end he didn't know what he was hacking at.

Later his arm grew so heavy he couldn't lift the saber, and had his brother not shielded him with his own body, had he not, on leaving the capital, gotten a fine suit of armor through a great man's help, he'd have died long since.

He burned his brother hastily, gathered the bones, and with the jar on his back and a few surviving soldiers gathered to him, followed the Tan the whole way, counting their horses, counting their sabers, counting the number of their tents, and once he'd it all set down, carried the jar back to the capital.

The whole way he was in a daze, knew no pain, knew no hunger, and somehow muddled his way back. Lucky... he'd had a great man's help, and leaving the capital had gotten a good horse hidden early in an old temple near Zuoliang Pass, and so had the means to get back.

Having answered before the throne, he hurried from Yanjing back home, and his mother lay in a thin set of clothes, a patch-covered sheet over her, on a bare door-plank.

From then on, he was a child without father or mother.

The eldest sister-in-law was weeping, the second sister-in-law's eyes kept dodging his and she complained out a heap of grievances, and only then did he learn his sisters had married.

The third sister-in-law held the third brother's jar and wouldn't let go, and his own useless wife hid in the room and didn't show her face.

What his mother had been he knew well in his heart, keeping the whole household of women and children to support that fool Tao Wentong, the old lady's love wasted on him, and he could only kneel like a block of wood, unable to think of a single thing to do.

In a fit of fury he gave him a beating. The second sister-in-law would have fought him to the death, and the words she said were ugly.

In the midst of the uproar, a crowd of Quanhou Street's old neighbors, old aunties from other houses, came one after another to help, and looking then at his own lot, Tao Jizong's every hope died.

The house had no money, so he could only come to Guard Lane and set aside his face to borrow. His mother and his brother had to be buried, and that needed a coffin at least.

He pressed a hand to his shoulder and drew a breath, the wound below his collarbone not yet healed, dressed only last night when he entered the palace before the sovereign, who'd had medicine put on it. The Emperor had bidden him come back and bury his brother first, and who'd have known... his mother had gone too.

He hadn't wept, truly, nor felt much grief. These past days he'd seen so much death, a county town of fifty or sixty thousand souls at Zuoliang Pass put to the sword entire, and his mother gone, he couldn't shed a single tear.

"Child, why are you kneeling here?"

Old Madam Chen was helped out before him.

Tao Jizong didn't want to weep, but instead, with a bitter smile, knocked the old lady three bleeding kowtows.

The old lady was alarmed. "You, what are you doing?"

Tao Jizong lifted his face to the old lady. "Old Madam, I've come to borrow money. My brother's gone, my mother's gone too, and there's not a cash left in the house... I'm no good, and good for nothing besides..."

He slapped his own face left and right, and at last forced out, "Old Madam, I, I'd like to borrow a great sum of you, to, to buy my brother and my mother a plot, and two decent coffins to bury them in... I meant to ask Lord Meng or Lord Cheng, but, the two of them have gone to escort the medicine-shipments, and I... I, I truly have no way left..."

And with that, three more bleeding kowtows.

"A great sum?" The old lady was taken aback a moment, but surprisingly nodded. "You, you child! Don't do this, with such a great thing come upon your house... Hai, what am I going on at you for, your mother's lying cold over there. Just say how much you want!"

The old lady had truly no notion of a great sum.

Tao Jizong reckoned it up coolly in his mind, then raised his head and said loud, "A hundred strings for the funeral, and my brother's and my mother's coffins with the grave-plots, I reckon, come what may, two hundred strings. I'll borrow three hundred."

"Done!" The old lady, with not a moment's hesitation and needing no one's arm, turned and bustled into the house.

In a little while she came out with three women, three bundles in their arms.

Coming out and seeing him still kneeling, she quickly bade him rise. "Aiyo, you've suffered such hardship on the frontier, barely escaped home with your life, a funeral taking half a life out of you, and what are you kneeling on this cold ground for?"

With that, the old lady had a woman present the silver-bundle to Tao Jizong first.

"You've asked for once, and no hurry to pay me back, I've a use for it! Here's three hundred and fifty taels. At the street money-shops now a tael of silver is thirteen hundred cash, so mind you don't get short-changed in the exchange. I've given you a bit extra, so you've some to spare in hand, and a person's not so hard-put."

Tao Jizong sniffed, clutched the silver-bundle, and nodded.

The woman brought over two more big bundles, and the old lady patted them. "This bundle's the bedding and pillows to line the coffins, all unused, one set for your mother, one for your brother."

Tao Jizong opened his mouth and let out a hoarse "ah."

The old lady pointed at him. "There'll be time enough for your wailing! Seven days of it, save your strength! This bundle's the six layers of grave-clothes and grave-shoes I'd readied for myself, and had you not come, I'd have gone over today all the same. I was altering them at home just now. Take them back, and wherever they don't fit, have your wife draw a few stitches. Your mother was set on winning her whole life, and truly she had it hard.

"A person's life has one birth and one death, and her mother and father took her into the world like a treasure, raised her tenderly with care and gave her at last to your house, and she waited on your whole Zhou house high and low a lifetime, so at least send her back to her parents' keeping with some dignity, let her go warm and snug. What, do you still look for that conscienceless father of yours to be buried with her? Do you know how to dig the grave-hollow?"

The old lady glared at Tao Jizong as she asked.

Tao Jizong understood at once, and nodded immediately. "I know, dig a lone grave, my mother would scorn to lie beside anyone! Old Madam, I've changed my surname, I'm a Tao now."

At this the old lady was wholly delighted, and clapped her hands. "Heh! Now that's good, you're one with a conscience. You put on sackcloth and mourning for your mother and keep the old Tao house's incense, and your mother's suffering this life won't have been for nothing!"

The old lady put out her hand for Tao Jizong to steady her, and they walked toward the Tao house.

"There, I'll go over with you. Those of your house... not one of them's any use."

As they walked she said to Tao Jizong, unhurried, "It's not their fault either. Your mother treated them ill! This is the reckoning!"

Tao Jizong nodded, his face twisted.

"Put one of your own to watch the accounts, and if you've no one on hand, I'll find you one. Child, I'm lending you money, so keep a close eye on it. I'm not making mischief, it's the same in every house! The old one gone, the house falls apart, and this money's yours to pay back!"

"Ai, I understand."

The two of them hadn't yet reached the lane-mouth when they heard a clamor at the house gate.

The two stopped and looked, and there in the street an old man of about fifty was being pinned to the ground and set upon by seven or eight Quanhou Street women.

The old man rolled and roared, "It's my wife that's died! It's my house! By what right can I not go in?"

Yang-shi, the loudest-voiced, cursed with her hands on her hips. "Pah! You conscienceless old rogue, you think we don't know! Tao Lamei kept her face and didn't say, but hmph, how many years is it since you gave the writ of divorce? Your house? Your wife? What nonsense is this, you think Quanhou Street's an easy mark? I spit on you!"

With that she rolled up her sleeves, and hands on hips went to the covered cart at the gate and flung back the curtain, and inside sat a woman of thirty-odd, haggard-faced, holding two small children.

"Oh? And who's this? A slut, or a slut of a concubine?"

"Curse your three generations of ancestors!"

Lü-shi, the strongest and just getting into the swing of it, saw the woman and her big slapping hand came down harder still.

Quanhou Street had two kinds of widows. One kind, the man was truly dead. The other, the man had taken a concubine at his post and didn't come home, didn't keep the house, and they kept a living widowhood.

They'd all held a grudge pent up, and having at last caught one come to the door, who would they beat if not him?

A death here, and what of it if the mother's-side kin made things hard?

Old Madam Chen, too old to take it in quickly, asked, "Who's this?"

Tao Jizong's eyes filled with hatred, his teeth grinding. "I, I wonder myself, isn't he away in the provinces? That's my father..."

Before he'd finished, the old lady began to roar. "Curse your eight generations of ancestors! You still dare come? You stinking rogue, you dare come to the door and bully the dead? You think Tao Lamei has no mother's-side kin... I've not breathed my last yet!"

Through a whole war, countless women driving their carts had leaned on each other to live, neither abandoning nor giving up, many a year through wind and rain holding each other up, and down to one last cake it was a mouthful each to keep life going!

Others would never understand such a bond, and there would never be its like again.

And so a titled lady of the court, adoptive mother to a reigning commandery-prince, bosom friend of a Dowager, head of the incense-burning circle, granny of six marquises, joined the brawl outright, her big slaps landing harder than anyone's, and when her hand ached, she propped herself on a maid's arm and went to work with her feet...

When the Qingfeng prefecture's runners came and made out who it was, they were so frightened they hid to one side trembling, and never mind breaking up the fight, they didn't dare say a word, and wished they were blind.