Chapter 130

Madam Cheng bore an exceedingly beautiful daughter.

The old lady said with some envy, "You don't know, all ours put together aren't as pretty as the Cheng house's girl. You tell me, all living folk the same, so how is it the child they've raised is so lovely?"

Lu-shi chimed in with a smile, "Master Cheng and the mistress are neither of them plain, how could the child they bore be ugly?"

Qi Qian'er helped the old lady over to the Cheng house for the washing-of-the-third, and the old lady had readied a good many little pink coats and skirts, all new.

The house had a needlework-room ready to hand, so readying these cost no effort.

And besides, a solid pure-gold longevity-lock, a great expense the old lady could seldom bring herself to in all her life.

They pushed open Master Cheng's courtyard gate, and all was quiet within, and Snow-aunt, who'd once seemed above the smoke and fire of the mortal world, sat in an apron by a basin washing a great tub of nappies.

Seeing the whole crowd of them, she was much surprised.

No house in Guard Lane was small, and even that Madam Qiao had had to buy people for a hand, but Master Cheng's house was always just three souls, with never a gatekeeper or servant of any kind.

Seeing people come, Snow-aunt stood and came to greet them, her face flushed.

She made her bow first to the old lady, then to the young sisters-in-law.

In the old days, this girl avoided doing so, and seeing people from afar only nodded.

The old lady took Snow-aunt's hand and asked, "My child? Isn't your house holding the washing-of-the-third today?"

Snow-aunt shook her head with a smile. "Old Madam, we'll not hold it, we don't really know anyone."

Everyone loves a clean, pretty girl, and in the old lady's words, the Cheng house's Snow-aunt was like a fairy come down to earth, and put a little rabbit in her arms and she was the Moon-Goddess's girl.

She was fond of her, but a pity this one didn't like to go out, nor to be close with people, and rarely to be caught by the hand like today, so she stroked her a few more times.

The Cheng house folk were all thus, shutting their door and living their own life, but if you'd a headache or a fever, however late, one call and he'd come, and in the lean days Master Cheng had even provided the medicine out of his own pocket.

Hearing that Master Cheng's trueborn daughter would have no washing-of-the-third, the old lady was displeased, and taking Snow-aunt's hand walked in, saying as she went, "Now that's you elders in the wrong. A girl comes into the world but once, and all that's her due you should ready for her. These little ones are touchy, and the heaven-gate's not shut yet, and if she sees you treat her ill, she might not even want to stay in your house..."

Snow-aunt had never heard such country talk before, and asked, "The heaven-gate?"

The old lady nodded in earnest, pointing between her own brows. "The old folks say, a child is born with a third eye here, brought from heaven, and later... growing up slowly, seeing more and more of the world's bad things, that eye is defiled."

Snow-aunt lifted the curtain, and murmured, pensive, "So that's it, so that's it..."

A group of women followed the old lady into Madam Cheng's delivery room, and Madam Cheng was awake, the quilt drawn up, leaning at the bed-head eating, mouthful by mouthful, the chicken broth Master Cheng fed her.

The couple looked at each other, each wholly given to the other, and hearing the stir and seeing the old lady and her whole crowd come in, both were startled.

Yang-shi, standing behind the old lady, loud of voice, before anyone could say a thing spoke up, "The two of you now, how is it you're so unsociable? In the old days on the road when Sister Lü bore a child, Master Cheng, on the third day you even brought two liang of cotton-wool from the camp to help celebrate, so how is it when it's your own turn you don't breathe a word?"

Madam Cheng smiled, pushed aside the soup-bowl, and looked earnestly at the faces before her.

There was Old Madam Chen, the four Chen mistresses, the Chen married daughter, Yang-shi, Lü-shi, Wan-shi, Huang-shi, Gao-shi, and Zhang Wanru and Lu-shi and the rest...

Everyone smiling with real warmth, their congratulatory gifts in their arms, they stuffed the house full to bursting.

Quanhou Street had so many good neighbors.

She lifted her eyes to Master Cheng, but Master Cheng didn't look at her, only set down the bowl and went silently out, carrying chairs and stools into the room without pause.

The old lady didn't sit, but walked over eagerly, and said to Madam Cheng with a smile, "Come, let me see our Ugly-Girl again."

Master Cheng, silent all this while, was startled. "Ugly-Girl?"

The old lady nodded firmly. "Yes, Ugly-Girl!"

With that she carefully took the red-flowered swaddle Madam Cheng held out, looked down smiling at the child, and sighed, "Aiya, this child is truly ugly, look, she hasn't even any hair."

Qi Qian'er, stroking her belly that had begun to harden, walked over and looked down, drew a cold breath and nodded. "Oh! Ugly as could be!"

Lu-shi tossed the bundle in her arms straight to Master Cheng, trotted over and looked down, and seeing the child in the swaddle astonishingly lovely, skin outshining snow, brows and eyes fine, little nose full, little red-bean mouth pursed, her heart melted, and she sighed, "Aiya, aiya, raise her a hundred days and the skin fills out and it's not even..."

Zhang Wanru tugged her hem, and Lu-shi crooked her neck and swallowed the rest, saying, "It's not even... this ugly."

Madam Cheng couldn't hold back a laugh. "She takes after her father."

Everyone turned to look at that disheveled, bearded face, and let out an "eh" as one, all distaste.

Done with their distaste, they swarmed round and looked this way and that, loving her to distraction, and then came stretch on stretch of running her down, stinking, hideous, no hair, she should be called Ugly-Girl indeed...

Master Cheng, in low spirits before, leaned against the door, and for once showed a smile.

Madam Cheng, the quilt in her arms, watched this crowd of women and thought, "Ugly-Girl, growing up at these good people's side, her days will never be bad. Guard Lane, truly a good place."

She lifted her eyes to Master Cheng. These sincere people, it was by this honest man, by the doctoring and the free medicine he'd given from his own heart these years, that they'd been warmed back.

Seeing the couple's faces so cool, everyone thought the two of them didn't love their daughter, and the old lady leading, they fell to scolding them in a babble.

Zhang Wanru said with feeling, "I tell you two, you're not to pull such faces! What's wrong with a daughter? Look at my father and mother, a whole heap of sons, and the other day when my mother ran a high fever, your house knew of it, the medicine was Master Cheng's prescribing.

"My mother was fevered out of her wits then, and foul about the body, and set her so-called filial daughter-in-law to clean her up, and the daughter-in-law minded not at all, but my mother was so ashamed she'd not have it for the life of her!

"And don't tell me the house has servants! Could a servant be as careful as I, the cold and the hot brought to her very lips, the dirty and the foul cleaned up by hand. Filial piety rests all on a daughter. A daughter-in-law, now, it's all surface feeling."

The round-cheeked Pan Baqiao was commanding for once. "Yes, no washing-of-the-third even, to not mark it for the child, that's you two in the wrong. She's come down to earth but once, and look at the two of you, your faces so sour. What? You don't want her, then give her to me! My house won't call her one too many..."

Ding Yuniang, who seldom spoke, first slapped the kang-head hard, and seeing everyone look at her, pressed her belly down hard, to say she could bear no more.

Having said so, she snatched up the child to carry off, but Master Cheng stopped her and apologized, "Past, let it pass, it's my fault, madams and mistresses, spare me this once."

He carefully took the child, looked down once, and went still. Three days, and all this while he hadn't been able to face the child.

He looked at her at last until he wept, and after a long while choked out, "She, she's truly, truly ugly..."

Qi Qian'er went over and patted him. "Ai, what are you crying for? Get it readied, quick."

Master Cheng, the child in his arms, raised his head and smiled, baring his teeth. "Yes, yes! I'll ready it at once."

The Cheng house had readied nothing, but Qi Qian'er doted on children, and had readied several sets for her own child before it was even born. She had someone bring a fine sandalwood basin from home and give it to Master Cheng.

To say truth, Master Cheng was a curious one. Either he wouldn't look at all, or once he looked, no one else could get a hand in.

Everyone sat there and watched the man busy himself.

He went to the stove himself and lit the fire, climbed the house's medicine-cabinet, found the best dried tangerine peel, mugwort, Sichuan pepper, honeysuckle, motherwort, and boiled the water.

When the water was decocted, afraid the guests would leave, he eagerly took up a folding fan and fanned the great sandalwood basin of hot water, until the sweat ran down from his whole head in soybean-sized drops.

The old lady, fearing Madam Cheng would take a confinement-grievance, held her hand to comfort her. "My child, you mustn't lay all this muddle up in your heart. A man's coarse of heart, and awkward the first time he's a father, they're all like this, and it'll come right by and by..."

Madam Cheng nodded, held the old lady's hand and said with a smile, "Ai, it's not his fault, it's only that we've put you to trouble, Granny."

The old lady drew up her quilt, stroked her hair, and said with a smile, "What trouble, in this lane of ours, every house's affairs are our own."

The words went to Madam Cheng's heart, and she threw herself into the old lady's arms. "Old Madam, I'm one without father or mother, and I don't know how many lives' worth of blessing I cultivated to come to rest in our Guard Lane, to be neighbors with you good people, to become, to become your own family... Hereafter, if there's some little thing I do not so well, I must trouble you to look after it more..."

The old lady snorted a laugh and patted her back. "Oh, a mother now, and still playing the coy one? Good, I'll look after you, look after you! Any child at my feet is this old woman's own, and you're a mother for the first time, and by and by it'll be well..."

Madam Cheng looked at Snow-aunt bustling to and fro, and nodded.

The washing-of-the-third basin was set in the middle of the room, ringed with the longans, scallions, peanuts the others had brought... the newborn, deep asleep, was stripped bare, and surrounded by them all, was slowly lowered into the water...

And the blessings rang out one after another:

Baby, you've washed the third, your body strong as a hill.

Baby, you've washed the third, you'll dwell in a great broidered bower.

Baby, you've washed the third, your hair fair as glossy ink.

Baby, you've washed the third, you'll marry a prince or lord one day...

The clear, ringing wail of the baby rose over Guard Lane...

The twenty-ninth of the fourth month by the farmers' calendar, a propitious day ruled by the Director of Destinies, a tiger-day clashing with the monkey, among the twelve spirits an opening-day, most lucky for coffining and for burial.

Early that morning, the Board of Punishments minister Wei Jitai, with his able aide Tang Jiuyuan, both dressed in red, stood at the south gate of the Great Liang palace.

They were waiting for the chief culprit Su Bailian to give herself up.

The Great Liang Emperor Yang Zao too wore red today, a red cloth over his head, waiting early atop the gate-tower.

Autumn was the day for beheadings, but there were only so many healers in the realm, and to hold them longer, Great Liang couldn't bear the great weight of it. And thanks to White Stone Mountain's Su Bailian sending word to turn herself in, the court high and low breathed easier as one, with a way down at last to settle this grudge.

Though today was a fitting day the Directorate of Astronomy had picked out of a thousand, the Emperor was uneasy still, and turning his head asked Meng Dingchen, "Will Su Bailian truly come today?"

Meng Dingchen wore no red, but for once his old monk's robe, and told his prayer-beads the whole morning.

By now, the more physicians were seized, the more there were who might live or might die.

White Stone Mountain had long since scattered, but the tens of thousands of wronged souls of Great Liang's army, dead in battle beneath White Stone Mountain's poison powder, still circled unwilling to leave over this empire.

In the past White Stone Mountain had been a sharp weapon in the old dynasty's hand, and this weapon had to be broken by the present dynasty in broad daylight, before the eyes of all Great Liang's people.

This was no simple matter of law, but a great affair touching the face of the nation.

The nation rode a tiger it couldn't dismount, the sovereign rode a tiger he couldn't dismount.

The evenness of the law had to be defended.

Thinking of what the letter had said, Meng Dingchen nodded firmly. "Rest easy, Your Majesty, Su Bailian will surely come."

The Emperor nodded, then asked, "She won't have someone die in her stead?"

But Meng Dingchen shook his head. "Your Majesty, White Stone Mountain is a medical house, but these thousand years their backbone has always come before their art, and they'd scorn to do so."

Early that day, a shaft-cart went out early from Guard Lane.

Meng Wanquan, up early to go to the garrison, saw Master Cheng driving the cart and greeted him with a grin. "Oh, up early? Where to?"

Master Cheng, calm of face, looked at him without a word, and in the awkwardness the cart-curtain opened and Madam Cheng put her head out smiling. "Brother Quanzi, didn't we pray for a child before the Buddha and set a day, so come what may we must go today to make good the vow."

Meng Wanquan drew a breath. "I say, are the two of you fools?"

He glared at Master Cheng and scolded, "Your wife's not out of her confinement, and a bit of wind in it is a thing for the rest of her life, get back, quick!"

But Madam Cheng said with a smile, "It's nothing, Brother Quanzi, I'm wrapped up thick. We gave our word before the bodhisattva, and the bodhisattva gave me a good daughter, and we dare not break faith."

Meng Wanquan believed none of it in his heart, but he'd heard his wife go on at home about how fine their Ugly-Girl was, how lovely their Ugly-Girl was...

He smacked his lips, pointed at the curtain, and said with some irritation, "You, you let the curtain down quick, don't take the wind, when you're old you'll know your regret! And no old one at your side is no good thing..."

Madam Cheng looked hard at Meng Wanquan, and let the curtain down.

And she heard Meng Wanquan scold Master Cheng, "And here I thought you were one to hold up under a great matter."

Master Cheng shook his head helplessly, desolate within.

But Meng Wanquan caught hold of him and pulled him aside. "Say, younger brother, never mind your long beard, but you're two years younger than me, that's right, isn't it?"

Master Cheng nodded.

Meng Wanquan looked left and right, shielded them from the wind and from being heard, and said to his ear, "A woman, now, there's always a stretch of her life when she bears a grudge, and these days you be careful, ai... don't put your weak point into her hands, or it'll never end your whole life!"

Master Cheng looked at him in surprise.

Meng Wanquan wiped away sweat that wasn't there and said, "Brother, from the time I can first remember, my mother would nag my father over just one thing. When she bore my elder brother, she wanted to eat an egg, and my father said, my own mother didn't get an egg, by what right do you? Just over this... my brother, my brother lived past twenty, and my mother nagged my father twenty years and more."

Something came to mind and he gave a shiver, and with his one arm patted Master Cheng's shoulder hard and sighed, "Don't you let them bear a grudge, or you'll have no peace even in the next life..."

Master Cheng's eyes went wide, earnest, and he nodded hard, rose, and drove the cart off.

Meng Wanquan watched the cart vanish, and something in him felt oddly wrong.

He looked at the gloomy, overcast sky and said, "What's with today? Why do I feel a bit choked up?"

Lu-shi happened to come out to fetch him to breakfast, and said, "The almanac says today's unlucky for all things, auspicious only for coffining and burial, a once-in-a-hundred-years earth-gate-opening day, so get inside, quick, and no wine today, you hear?"

"I know, I know."

"And no gambling, you hear?"

"No gambling, no gambling, heh heh, I'll gamble with my wife..."

Forty li from Qingfeng to Yanjing, and as Master Cheng drove the cart out of Quanhou Street, the fourth-month wind through the street rose stronger.

He drove the cart very, very slow, and sometimes, seeing an early-open food-shop, would stop and buy a packet and hand it back into the cart.

As they passed Qingfeng's apothecaries, they saw several physicians in deepest mourning, paulownia staves in hand, walking slowly toward Yanjing.

A paulownia staff is held for a mother's death, and today was the day the healers of the realm came back to life.

When the cart had left Qingfeng, Master Cheng heard the curtain stir, and Madam Cheng came out smiling and sat down beside him.

Master Cheng urged her back. "The wind's strong out here, don't let it blow on you."

But Madam Cheng only smiled, a packet of peanuts in her hand, and eating them laid her head on Master Cheng's shoulder, and now and then fed him one.

Master Cheng ate in earnest, chewing slow and fine.

In the midst of their eating, a thin baby's cry came from inside the cart.

Master Cheng reined in the horse, looked at her face, and his mouth could not find his voice.

Madam Cheng laughed, frank and clear. "Aiya, drive your cart, she'll always cry me a couple of cries, I'll hold back my milk and give her a full feed in a bit."

And the cart began again to drive slowly toward Yanjing.

Madam Cheng, leaning on Master Cheng's shoulder, asked softly, "Wanning, do you remember the words carved on the entrance-stone of our White Stone Mountain?"

Master Cheng turned his head to kiss her black hair. "I remember. A great physician of the people."

Madam Cheng smiled. "Yes. 'If one come seeking help in sickness and trouble, ask not whether he be noble or base, poor or rich, foe or kin, friend or stranger, of the Hua or the barbarians, wise or foolish, but hold them all as one, as you would your nearest. Look neither before nor behind, fear not for luck or ill, shield not your own life. With a heart grieving deep, shun not day nor night, cold nor heat, hunger nor thirst nor weariness, but go single-heartedly to the rescue, with no thought of show or of self, and so may you become a great physician of the people.' So the Thousand Gold Prescriptions have it... yet my White Stone Mountain made itself the blade of three dynasties' emperors in a row."

Master Cheng's lips worked a long while before he said, "But, we did nothing..."

Madam Cheng dropped the peanut-wrapper, sat up straight with clear, upright eyes. "Yes, we did nothing, and said nothing, and when those blades were handed out, we never said even a single 'no,' and this is my reckoning today."

Master Cheng didn't want to speak, and turned his head aside, but his hand pulled the reins to go slower still.

But however slow, they had to come to the place.

The cart came at last to the foot of Qingque Nunnery's hill, and Madam Cheng suddenly reached out and held the reins, and Master Cheng's whole face was fright, and after a long while, his lips working, he said, "There's, there's still a way we can walk... let me, let me see you a little farther..." He looked at the sky again. "It's, it's near noon, why don't we, let's go back and eat..."

Madam Cheng reached out and held him, and laid her lips on his.

Inside the cart the baby's thin cry sobbed on, and her father and mother held each other and looked.

Master Cheng said, I beg you... stay a little longer, a little longer... but the more you hurried, the faster time went, and Madam Cheng let go of Master Cheng and got into the cart, and before long the baby's cry turned to the sound of ravenous sucking, with now and then a small aggrieved hiccup.

"Ugly-Girl has a real temper."

"Mm, like me."

The bronze bell of Qingque Nunnery began slowly to ring. Its incense-fires burned strong, and it was the largest convent nearby now.

Two Madam Chengs faced each other below the cart. The Madam Cheng who was to go straightened her clothes, knelt in earnest, and kowtowed to Snow-aunt, who was to be Madam Cheng from then on. "Hereafter, I entrust Ugly-Girl to you."

Snow-aunt stroked her head and sighed, "By rights I should go, but I've never entered a medicine-hall, nor set my name-seal, so only you can go. A-li, once you've gone, my White Stone Mountain parts from all that was before, and from now heals throughout the realm, to repay our sinful debt."

At this she too knelt, and kowtowed to Madam Cheng in earnest. "Only, the wrong of it falls on you."

Madam Cheng calmly received it, rose, and untied a carp jade pendant from her waist and handed it to Master Cheng. "When Ugly-Girl is three, hang it on her. She is my daughter, and so grand-aunt to all the realm's healers, and will surely, surely be sheltered her whole life, free of care..."

Master Cheng gripped the little carp, and a thin mist came over his eyes, and in an instant he could see nothing.

Before his eyes was all this little carp's lively, leaping way. The first time he saw her, she'd been up a tree being naughty, and after frightening him had said, "You're really good-looking, are you a new little disciple of the outer gate? You're to call me grand-aunt."

She jumped down from the tree, ran up to him, then covered her nose and stepped back in distaste. "You really stink..."

The little boy couldn't help his shame, and when the outer-gate teacher asked him which branch he'd study, he said, I want to learn the fragrant branch.

The outer-gate teacher laughed aloud, and from then he entered the aromatic-medicine bureau.

They grew up together, bowed to heaven and earth countless times on the back mountain, and later when the mountain's mistress took in Snow-aunt, A-li stole Snow-aunt out to be witness to their bowing to heaven and earth...

Madam Cheng looked at Ugly-Girl once more, kissed her several times, and when the bell had ceased, left.

She'd walked a few steps when she heard someone cry out behind her.

"Wait! Wait for me!!"

Madam Cheng stopped, and Master Cheng hurried up before her, pleading, "Wait..."

Madam Cheng smiled and said all right.

They looked at each other a long while, and Master Cheng reached out and took her arm, pushed back her sleeve, bent his head, and bit down hard on her arm.

The bite was savage, so hard the blood came.

Madam Cheng didn't stir, but waited smiling for him to finish, and then heard her little fool say, "I, I want you to have no peace in the next life either. You must remember me. You cheated me this whole life, and you... you must pay me back in the next."

Su Bailian smiled at last, blinked, her smile like a great red flower of spring, and reached out all charm and coyness. "Then, then I want the same, I want you to have no peace either."

Master Cheng nodded fast as a pestle, briskly rolled up his own sleeve, and raised his arm high to her lips.

Su Bailian held it, bit down, but couldn't bear to hurt him in the least, and left only two warm rows, dripping on his arm and running down.

She let him go sharply and turned to leave... but the man ran to her side like a madman, raised his arm and cried, "Su Bailian! You've cheated me again, cheated me again! I want no peace, I want no peace in the next life, nor the life after! Bite me... bite me! Or else... if I can't find you, what am I to do? Su Bailian, I beg you, cheat me a little more, will you?"

Su Bailian stopped, looked at him close, and scattered a handful of powder over him. Master Cheng swayed in disbelief, and fainted at last to the ground...

Why would A-li not bite him?

...This fool was unlucky enough to meet me, and he has decades yet to live, and is he to live looking at a ruined arm?

Below Qingque Nunnery the brook ran full, and Su Bailian washed off her disguise, changed into a great White Stone Mountain robe, set the bamboo crown on her head, hung a little lingzhi-mushroom pendant at her waist, and looking down at herself in the water, smiled, reached out and stirred up the fourth year of Yong'an's brook-water, and went barefoot up to the highroad.

On the highroad the physicians in deepest mourning grew more and more, and they bore a white coffin, and when they saw Su Bailian, bowed their heads and slowly knelt.

Su Bailian walked up before the old man at their head and said, "If one day you see a little girl with my carp pendant at her waist, that is my daughter."

The old man bowed his head, tears in his eyes. "Yes, that is our grand-aunt."

And so the woman took the thorn-branch and laid it on her back, and with thousands of thorn-bearing physicians, went barefoot step by step toward the city of Yanjing.

Seen from behind, thousands of white backs splashed with red plum-blossom, and it was spring come again to the world of men...

In the fourth year of Yong'an, to avenge an old wrong, the Great Liang Emperor ordered three thousand White Stone Mountain physicians seized, and after, White Stone Mountain's Wangdu Hall mistress Su Bailian bore the thorn and begged pardon, and her identity verified, the Martial Emperor in mercy granted her poisoned wine and let her keep a whole body.

From this day White Stone Mountain vanished wholly into the dust of history, and from then... the White Stone Mountain folk called themselves the Carp Sect, and took the great healing of the realm for their charge.

Ugly-Girl was named Cheng Xiaoli.