Chapter 13

"Mother of mine, I'm not sleeping with you again, come what may — all night long, now loud, now soft... what is it you don't want?"

Qi Qian'er opened her eyes, chest heaving violently, and looked around — oh, this was — she was back... it had been a nightmare.

The old woman, her bedding rolled up, leaned over and laughed at her: "Go on, tell me — what was it you didn't want? Did someone try to give you gold ingots? Listen to the noise you made! Don't you go not-wanting them on my account!"

Heh — gold ingots, indeed?

To think that she, Huo Qiqian — who'd lived a whole life, hard as it was, a clean and blameless old woman to the end — who'd have guessed that, old as she was, she'd be bullied by some dried-up old eunuch.

The old bastard — had she done something wicked, or what? Not even in dreams could she escape him. What did he mean, out of nowhere, slapping her — slapping the very crown of her head?

And in a dream, at that.

Qi Qian'er felt another stab of pain at the top of her head, reached up and grabbed — and came away with a handful of thin hair.

In that instant it was as if five thunderbolts struck her.

The old woman saw the handful of hair too, and seeing how hard it hit Qi Qian'er, she said: "It's nothing, nothing — when there's no food to be had and you're short on salt and strength, losing hair's a common thing. Later, this hair of yours..."

She looked over Qi Qian'er's hair from side to side, and sighed at last, dissatisfied: "So thin, is it?"

Qi Qian'er, helpless: "This is still my birth-hair."

The old woman was aghast: "Ho — did no one ever shave it for you?"

Qi Qian'er let out a long breath: "Who ever looked after me!"

The old woman nodded: "That's just what I said. Never mind — tomorrow I'll get you a razor from the camp up front and shave the whole lot off; and once you're eating your fill, I'll find you some good black beans. Granny tells you, in a few months you'll have a head of hair black as ink, I promise you..."

At that Qi Qian'er did truly long for it — in her last life she really had gone about with thin hair her whole life.

She got up and pulled on the jacket lying to one side; the old woman put on her outer robe too, muttering: "By the sound you made, someone had hold of you — was it that Madam of your family?"

Qi Qian'er tipped her face up and thought a moment; unable to tell her the truth, she fobbed her off: "Not only her — it was the Qingfeng gate, and the corpse-carts going back and forth all night long..."

At this the old woman grew unexpectedly smug; she cocked an eyebrow and, twisting her hair into a simple bun, said: "Listen to that little mouth rattling on — and here I thought you had some real gift. Heh! Dead people, is that all? I've seen plenty, and not just me! Go ask the aunties in this hamlet: in the old days, the moment there was a ceasefire up front — before the sound of it had even died away — we'd charge right in; a step too late to that sort of place and you'd find nothing worth having... heh, look how scared you got."

There the old woman didn't care to go on.

Grandmother and grandchild were both brisk sorts, and getting up together they set to tidying, the old woman reminding Qi Qian'er over and over that today the finding of houses must be made the pressing business.

Seeing Qi Qian'er agree, she went off happily to Qiao's side, and before long came back carrying a bucket, and drew well-water for Qi Qian'er herself, so she could wash at the bucket.

Qi Qian'er accepted her kindness, and thanked her with words spread like honey: "It's Granny who feels for me after all — won't let me do a thing."

The old woman loved to hear her granddaughter-in-law talk, too, thinking the girl's voice was clear and pretty, oiled smooth, so that fragrance seemed to come out whenever she opened her mouth.

She waggled her neck smugly and said: "Isn't it just — go and ask how long that one over there's been in the family; I'll not waste a single extra word on her. Girl..."

"Mm?"

"Say that thing you said yesterday for Granny one more time, won't you."

Qi Qian'er wiped the water-drops off dry and looked at her: "What thing?"

The old woman looked sheepish; sitting on the stone drum-stool in the courtyard smoking her pipe, she said indistinctly around the stem: "Mm... you know, those fine things you said in praise of this hamlet yesterday. I like hearing that. Tell me again."

Qi Qian'er didn't know whether to laugh or cry — the old woman had heard it twice already last night, and still wanted more?

Fine — so long as it made her happy, she'd tell it.

So she said: "Don't go looking down on our being outside Qingfeng city... it's the great, deep-pocketed houses of the capital that set up their manors outside the walls; everything around Yanjing is the crown's, and it's because they daren't seize that, that they come to Qingfeng — so wouldn't you say Qingfeng's a good place?"

"Good! How could it not be — back home the rich lord's house in our town, its very eaves didn't stand as tall as the little mud huts here."

"Isn't it just! That's how it is at the Son of Heaven's feet! See enough of it and you'll not marvel. Take our hamlet here — the houses are far better than the ones inside Qingfeng city."

"Truly?"

Qi Qian'er gave in; patting her own forehead, she said with a laugh: "Truly! Qingfeng, like Yanjing, is an old city — over there it's all family estates a dozen generations deep, several generations packed in cheek by jowl; go and see for yourself tomorrow and you'll know — shabby as anything, men and women, children and grandchildren all jumbled in one courtyard. A house with a roomy garden over there marks a family of real consequence. Here it's so much better — spacious! Every house with its flower garden and vegetable plot. In a while let's pick out the inconspicuous, newly built ones and set them up for the cousins, all right?"

"Good! Good, good, good!"

The old woman just kept saying good, and when she'd done she reeled off a long string of Buddha-prayers; perhaps feeling that wasn't force enough, she thanked a whole heap of Daoist lords besides.

Her thanks done, she saw Qi Qian'er carry the water-bucket into the west room, climb onto the west room's kang, hitch up her outer robe, tear a big piece straight off the jacket underneath, and set to wiping down the big kang with it.

Aiya! Here was a girl who didn't know how to keep house! How could you not treasure your clothes? The old woman was about to scold — but she didn't dare.

But not daring to say it, she couldn't get past the knot in her heart either, and after a good while she said, stammering: "You — why are you tearing up your clothes? I've got rags over at my place. You're a child who doesn't know how to keep house, you are."

She really didn't know praise from a hole in the ground!

Qi Qian'er didn't argue the point; she came over holding up the garment, pointed at a torn corner, and said to the old woman: "Give it a tug."

The old woman reached out, gave it an easy tug, and the corner tore right off.

"Ho — it's rotted through."

Qi Qian'er pursed her lips and nodded: "Mm. Rotted."

That said, she even lifted up a shoe that left her instep bare and smiled — the shoe was rotted too.

The old woman's heart ached; recalling Madam Wang's face that grudged every last copper, she was angry and choked with grievance a good while before she said: "We never should have given them so much! Best they'd all starved... it's only you who's suffered for it."

Qi Qian'er said, wholly unconcerned: "It's no hardship. It just means I've tasted a whole life's bitterness in these first dozen years or so; I reckon from here on it's all sweetness. And if it weren't this way, I'd never have come to our family, would I?"

How this one tugged at the heart!

The old woman gave Qi Qian'er a hard pat, and without waiting for her to say anything, swept a big hand through the air: "Isn't it just! A few clothes, what's that to anything! I've still got two bolts of good satin locked away at my place, and fine cloth too — I'll go cut you a good big piece..."

Hah, and not even waiting for tomorrow: with that the old woman turned on her heel and went out.

Qi Qian'er watched the old woman's retreating back and said nothing for a long while. She'd known she would live well from here on — but she'd never imagined the old woman could be as good to her as this.

Before long the old woman came sneaking back in, her belly all bulging, cradling a coarse porcelain bowl.

Inside, she said to Qi Qian'er with a big smile: "Girl, come quick — we're having noodle soup this morning, and I scooped you the bottom of the pot. Here — good and thick, drink it while it's hot."

Qi Qian'er took the bowl and looked at the soup, a few strands of mixed-grain noodles floating in broken rice — a heavy bowl, and the taste of it beyond telling.

The old woman even claimed her credit: "Drink up. I tell you, when I carried the bowl out — you should've seen the face she pulled! I'm not afraid of her — this is grain my son traded his life for; I'll eat it when I please! What can she do about it!"

Watching Qi Qian'er drink it down in one long gulping go, the old woman asked, beaming: "Good, isn't it?"

Ai, it was good, truly good! How many days since she'd had anything warm to eat.

"It's good!"

Qi Qian'er nodded and handed the bowl back to the old woman.

The old woman took it, ran a finger round the bottom and rim of the bowl, and then put the finger in her mouth and sucked it clean.

This, in truth, was what she'd scrimped from between her own teeth — Qiao would never put in one grain of rice extra.

The old woman hitched up her clothes, took out a dried taro chip, and chewing it grumbled: "We've only got the one cooking pot at home; if there were a spare pot tomorrow I'd eat over here with you — I'd bring my own ration and be spared that sour, hostile face of hers."

At the old woman's reminder Qi Qian'er's busy hands went still — pots, ah, there were pots... plenty of them.

Just look at that head of hers! The very keyhole rusted shut — if the old woman hadn't reminded her, she'd have clean forgotten a whole heap of things.

Seeing her gone still, the old woman reached out and patted her, and said as if presenting a triumph: "Come, girl, let Granny show you something good — I'll wager you've never seen the like."

With that she pulled from her bosom two narrow-width pieces of home-woven, earth-dyed cloth.

She spread the cloth out on the kang-mat, rubbed it lovingly back and forth, smoothed down the edges, and only then said: "This darker, aged color, I'll make you an inner jacket of; this leek-green one, a lined jacket. What do you think — good?"

Good — how could it not be good?

Clothes, just like that?

Two lifetimes fending for herself, and this was the first time anyone had given her clothes.

Qi Qian'er looked at the cloth, sniffed, and said: "Good — it's really good."

Seeing she was about to cry, the old woman hurried to soothe her: "Don't cry now, be easy — tomorrow I'll make my girl new clothes. Girl, the two of us never met before, you say — so how is it we two take to each other so?"

She raised a hand to stroke the fringe of hair on Qi Qian'er's forehead, and somehow her own tears spilled over: "You know... you really do look like your aunt, most of all like your youngest aunt — the very same set of the brows and eyes... Show her a little kindness and out come the tears."

And so the one real old woman and the one false young wife fell into each other's arms and had a good cry.

When they'd cried themselves out, Qi Qian'er took the old woman's arm and said: "Granny! We've got pots — plenty of pots."

The old woman didn't follow, and gave an "eh?"

Qi Qian'er counted on her fingers, smiling: "Master Huo's household — they stewarded the crown's estates for generations. There's no end of things Madam and the rest couldn't carry off in the flight. Think about it: an estate that size, that much yield every year — just from what I know of, our back court alone turned out two bolts of cloth a day at the least, and Master Huo's grain didn't feed people for nothing. I'd reckon they've surely hidden all of it away — there's no way they took it with them."

The old woman's face was all astonishment: "Couldn't take it? Then — then who gets the windfall of it?"

Qi Qian'er curled her lip: "Them? They'd let no one get the better of them! They'd sooner it rotted and moldered and was thrown away — they grudged us so much as an inch to wear. As if I don't know: it'll be in the graves at the mouth of the village, for certain. Talk about slippery."

The old woman started: "What? The — the graves?"

Qi Qian'er nodded: "Yes! Fake graves! They're clever ones — they know the rule out there is that whatever the dynasty, a grave-robber gets death. As if I don't know: passing the edge of the hamlet early yesterday, I saw a dozen and more grave-mounds heaped up in fresh earth, with new saplings planted on them too — afraid, no doubt, they'd not find them again later..."

A sudden ache took Qi Qian'er — she thought of her own mother.

Come to that, she was a heartless one too: long ago someone had pointed out the spot to her, but by the time she'd finished with her busyness in her last life and remembered it, and went back to Huo Manor, the place was one stretch of wild grass — a few autumns of cold wind, a few winters of snow, no one to heap the earth back up, and of course the grave was nowhere to be found.

She herself was an unfilial one.

Seeing Qi Qian'er about to cry again, the old woman grew flustered. She caught up her own satin garment and, without a second thought, went to wipe Qi Qian'er's tears with it.

"Crying again? What have you thought of now? Tell Granny — there's no one better at setting a heart at ease than me!"

Qi Qian'er blinked back her tears and said, half crying, half laughing: "It's nothing — let's not talk of this." She stood, looked at the brightness outside the window, and said: "Granny, from now on we'll put down roots here; we'll furnish this place to bursting, and live better than anyone!"

The old woman loved this kind of talk — it settled her, comfortable right down to the bone, every pore of her tingling with a rare and easy pleasure.

She patted the edge of the kang and nodded: "Good! Putting down roots is good! I'll not make idle promises, but say nothing else — I've still got a hundred jin and more of fine grain over at my place."

She winked at Qi Qian'er and held up four fingers: "She doesn't know about it — tomorrow the two of us will eat it on the sly, and not a scrap for her!"

Pfft!

"Right — not a scrap for her!"

---

In the infirmary camp, Meng Wanquan, having eaten his breakfast and with nothing to do, was leaning against a haystack chatting with the others, when, in the middle of his talk, someone laughingly warned him: Meng Wanquan, your granny's here.

Meng Wanquan cursed in a fury: "Your granny!"

The man wasn't offended; he just pointed at the gate and laughed: "No lie — it really is your granny."

Meng Wanquan sat up, and only then saw Old Madam Chen at the infirmary gate, craning her head and peering this way; the moment his gaze went to her she waved happily and shouted: "Wanquan, come out here!"

"Ai-yo, my dear — my dear own ancestor-granny's come, and so early too!"

Meng Wanquan and Chen Dasheng were sworn brothers who'd saved each other's lives; he'd properly kowtowed to the old woman and taken her as his godmother. He too had come up as a common trooper of the Long Saber Battalion; his arm hacked open, he'd lain on the ground, and Chen Dasheng had dug him out of the heap of the dead and carried him off on his back.

Called by the old woman, he naturally didn't dare be slow, and scrambled up and trotted toward the camp gate.

Reaching her, he looked at the old woman, then at his young sister-in-law, and asked: "Granny, what's this about?"

The old woman, her joy impossible to hide, took hold of Meng Wanquan and said: "Wanquan, round up some men for Granny and hitch a few carts — your young sister-in-law's family left some heavy, bulky things behind they couldn't carry, and we want to haul them back."

That said, the old woman licked her lips, all winks and eyebrow-play — pin a flower in her hair and she'd have been merry enough to dance a jig.

Ho, this was good news — there were still things to be had?

Meng Wanquan looked at Qi Qian'er, and Qi Qian'er gave him a smiling curtsy.

Truly a girl not the least bit shy of strangers.

How long since anyone had bowed to him — Meng Wanquan hurriedly returned the courtesy, then asked with a smile: "Young — sister-in-law, are you settled in all right?"

Qi Qian'er said with a smile: "Thanks to your kindness, uncle, all settled. Our old lady dotes on me — she even gave me two lengths of cloth for new clothes."

Ho — had the sun come up in the west?

Meng Wanquan stole a glance at the old woman, and the old woman waggled her neck smugly.

With a helpless little laugh, Meng Wanquan asked again: "Well, isn't that grand — our old granny's the most tender-hearted of all. You've fallen right into a nest of good fortune; you must live well from here on!"

"That goes without saying."

"Have you eaten, sister-in-law?"

"I have — granny brought me over some noodle soup."

Meng Wanquan was more astonished still, and said: "That's good, that's good! Now — this thing the old granny mentioned, is it true?"

Qi Qian'er nodded gravely: "Nothing so very fine — just the family's old surplus. They've gone back to the old home and couldn't move it, so better I bring it back and make a life with Granny on it. There's nothing to be had now — even to buy a scrap of cloth, you'll not find a draper's in the city..."

As she prattled on over here, Meng Wanquan grew more and more astonished.

Heh! You'd never have guessed — the mouth on this girl! And more than that, she was a shrewd one: in a single night she'd tamed the old woman?

At the thought Meng Wanquan grew a little worried; but before he could think it through, a train of carriages came up from the south, and the moment he saw them Meng Wanquan hastily left grandmother and grandchild and shouted back into the camp:

"Everybody up, quick! Someone's coming!!"

In an instant a good number came running out of the camp — men missing a hand, men blind in one eye, every one of them a wounded soldier still able to move.

When the party drew near, Meng Wanquan saw at the head, on horseback, a young general — slender of build, handsome of face, in gold armor with a gleaming, gilded phoenix-wing tang slung across his back: a great winged war-spear of a polearm.

This young general he knew; delighted to see him, he went over and caught the man's horse-rein with his one arm: "Heh, if it isn't our city-breaking general!"

At that the young general turned bashful; with a neat swing of one leg before the horse, in a movement wonderfully light and graceful, he sprang down from the saddle.

At once a burst of cheering rose up around him, fitting the moment.

The young general cupped his hands with a smile: "Brother Meng jests — 'city-breaking general,' indeed. It's one thing for others to make such jokes, but how come you to mock me too?"

Meng Wanquan laughed too: "I'm not mocking you — you truly cut a fine figure! Good horse, that. When did you come by it?"

Being young in years, the general tipped his head up and said: "His Majesty granted it yesterday."

Meng Wanquan felt no envy — he'd long since made his peace with things. So he praised it as the moment called for, praising until the young general couldn't stop laughing.

This young general's full name was Chang Lianfang. In the old days he'd trained in the Tan army alongside Meng Wanquan and Chen Dasheng — but only for half a year or so. Chang Lianfang's family backed a different patron, the Second Prince, Li Zongshan, and before long he'd gone off with his father to serve him.

At the present court, setting the civil officials aside, the military men fell into three camps. The first was the Emperor's own guard — the Li family's household troops. The second was the camp this young general belonged to: men risen out of the southern martial world. And the third was the Tan army, under old Marshal Tan — the lot Chen Dasheng and Meng Wanquan followed.

That second camp had come about like this. When the Grand Commandant first raised his rebellion, at the Huguo Temple in Shaoshang, he had few men to hand. His frail second son, Li Zongshan, had been sent off as a small child, three or five years old, to be raised at the southern Huguo Temple — for the Huguo Temple was in fact two: a northern and a southern. The northern was an imperial temple, said to be the first monastery under heaven; the southern was a five-hundred-year power of the martial world, its very grandmaster. Seeing the age fallen into chaos, the bonds of order broken and the people unable to live, the southern temple's abbot threw in his strength, gathering a band of southern martial-world fighters to help the Grand Commandant win the realm.

Meng Dingchen, who heads the Jiusi Hall today, was one of them: a monk since gone back to ordinary life — and, by the reckoning of martial generations, a martial-uncle to Li Zongshan.

On the face of it, it was only to serve an enlightened lord and for the people's sake that they broke the commandment against killing; but since there was a north and a south, who wouldn't wish to be head of the first great temple under heaven?

In the affairs of the world, all the bustle and jostle is for the sake of gain.

The martial world is vast, its big names resounding and its figures thick as ox-hairs; but the old sects with real roots and standing, with a name and a lineage handed down, are only a countable few. Never mind the northern ones that sided with the old dynasty — the south, these past years, has had no lack of friction with the north, and had the court not raised its new office, the Jiusi Hall, it might well have come to another great north-south war.

In the south back then there was a martial-world jingle that went: Xin Claw, Chang Tang, Flying-Star Monkey... This "Xin Claw" was a famous old sect of Jiugong Mountain in the south, whose family of course practiced the eagle-claw art of the hands; and as for "Chang Tang," that meant Chang Lianfang's house — the Chang tang, they said, had been handed down seventeen generations by his.

Chang Lianfang's father would say that the Chang tang went back to the dynasty before the last; in those days their forebears had started out as mounted cavalry, and later, over some power struggle — couldn't stomach this and that, as it went — they'd returned to the countryside and become free men of the martial world.

Hah! It was just talk, picking out the fine-sounding bits to show off.

Of the old eighteen weapons, the tang was the might of the long arms, and like the long spear and the crescent-moon shovel, it counted among the weapons suited to horseback.

The righteous men of the south helped the Grand Commandant rise up and rebel, and what truly served on the battlefield, fit for killing in the mass, were the long arms — the hammer, the tang, the spear, the halberd — and so Chang Lianfang's house came to be put to great use, and might be said to have made its fortune.

These days they don't even lean on the Jiusi Hall; they count as new-noble military honors, and Chang Lianfang's father has been made an earl.

Watching an old comrade shoot straight up to the skies, Meng Wanquan gave nothing away; he only called for hands, and they lifted and carried and propped the several dozen wounded soldiers who'd been brought and moved them into the camp.

Once those men were inside the camp, Meng Wanquan drew Chang Lianfang aside and asked: "There's been not a stir up front for days now — how is it this whole crowd's suddenly turned up?"

At this a strange look crossed Chang Lianfang's face; he glanced left and right and only then pulled Meng Wanquan off to a quiet spot: "I'll not hide it from you, Brother Meng — the day before yesterday the Emperor was set upon by an assassin, and these are the brothers caught up in it last night..."

Before he'd finished, Meng Wanquan went pale with shock: "What? Is the Emperor safe?"

"Safe — the Emperor has Heaven's protection, and of course wasn't harmed by so much as a hair."

"Then how have these men come to be sent to us, to the Tan camp?"

Chang Lianfang had known he'd take it so; with a bitter smile he pointed north and said: "Ai — they were caught up in it too, ordinary soldiers the lot of them; but the ones who came were the southern men! The guard failed, and it gave the old Empress Dowager such a fright that she flatly refuses to stay in Yanjing — the day before, in her anger, she'd have nothing for it but to go back to Shaoshang. Our Emperor's in a towering rage, and has summoned Master Dingchen into the palace again... they say he means to raise an Eastern Prison, to build up the Jiusi Hall..."

Meng Wanquan had grasped how things stood from the start, and whatever Chang Lianfang wanted to say, he'd no wish to hear it now; so he waved a hand to cut him off: "Ai! Good brother, all this 'this soup and that flatcake' — don't tell me any of it, I don't follow! Understand? This is your martial world's north-south quarrel; and we lot, who once took our orders from the old dynasty, don't have it easy either. Us — we're just the odds-and-ends little shrimp, sweeping up the tail-ends, eating the farts, catching a whiff and letting it go at that."

And that third camp — Marshal Tan's, the one Meng Wanquan and Chen Dasheng and their lot followed — was the one loved by neither father nor mother.

Marshal Tan and the Emperor had both once served in the same court under the old dynasty, and in the early days of the uprising the two had had their private quarrels; but for all that the old Tan house had no lack of able men, it had a good many odd ones too, and that dragged it back.

And so, subjects of merit though they were, everyone knew they ranked at the very bottom of the Emperor's regard, and might not come to be much used in future either.

What was more, this Master Dingchen that Chang Lianfang spoke of stood for the southern martial world behind him, and what they'd been crushing these past years was the northern martial world that had served the old dynasty...

Now that the fighting was over, to still go rushing toward all that hacking and killing — wasn't that folly?

Seeing the grief on Chang Lianfang's face, Meng Wanquan took him by the arm: "Look at you — the fire's halfway up the mountain, and what house's roof-beam are you, then? Come, brother, come see who this is!!"

With that he pulled Chang Lianfang along to stand before Old Madam Chen, calling out as he went: "Old granny, ai — look who this is!"

Old Madam Chen had been watching the excitement when she heard Meng Wanquan hail her; and when the two came near and she looked closely, she laughed too: "Ho — aiya! Mother of mine! Hah — if it isn't Hua'er? If it isn't Hua'er! What are you doing here?"