Chapter 48

The eighth of the twelfth month, first year of Yong'an. Great Snow.

Early that day Recorder Liu came begging Chen Dasheng. The Jinwu Rear Guard was short-handed. Would he cover half a watch at the east gate?

Chen Dasheng went, and got another eyeful. Cart after cart of oxcarts, more than he could count, hauled loads of ice-blocks from Baiquan Mountain into the palace. The stream of carts ran the whole morning without a break.

Only then did he learn that rich houses use ice in summer, and that the ice must be cut from the riverbed on the day of Great Snow, and only then may it go into store.

So it turned out the world has a great many solar terms, and they belong to the well-to-do alone. Before, he'd known only the New Year. Now he knew that the day of Great Snow alone had seven or eight rules to it.

Today the Emperor had to rise early to take the princes to the ancestral temple to sacrifice. Today no snow might be swept. And more or less every person of standing had to eat a bowl of hot congee to mark the season.

So on his post Chen Dasheng and his brothers ate the hot congee the little eunuchs brought.

The few little eunuchs came at a trot from the imperial kitchen with their food-boxes, across the better part of the palace, and when the covered bowls were lifted out, the congee still steamed hot.

Chen Dasheng craned to look. Well now, at the bottom of the food-box a little brass box held burning charcoal, keeping it warm.

The way people lived now...

He'd never known a bowl of congee could hold so much: beans of every color, rice too, and longan and red dates and walnuts knocking together, grainy, sweet, thick, sticky, wonderfully good.

Chen Dasheng drank two bowls straight off, and told the little eunuch he'd have the same again tonight. The little eunuch said yes, all smiles.

That's right. Chen Dasheng, in the palace now, had earned the standing to order his dishes.

Of course, given the choice he'd only ever order a meat dish. He knew meat was good, and that was all. If he hadn't eaten alongside his teacher every day, he'd never have known the world held so many good things! He never saw withered fruit now. Juicy pears and other fruit he could eat as he pleased.

The Emperor still had to have his food tested for poison. Chen Dasheng didn't. He'd grab a fruit and bite in, a dozen at a sitting. Only, his teacher wouldn't let him eat too many. He said such things came hard, every one of them step by step of blood and tears. After that, Chen Dasheng ate fewer.

Eunuch She ached for him, and saved every good thing he had for him...

And of course Chen Dasheng ached for his teacher too. Every day he rose early, and before the ministers entered the palace he went to the little courtyard to fetch his teacher.

His teacher was stiff-tempered and wouldn't ride the sedan-chair the palace assigned him. With the snow deep, Chen Dasheng carried the old man on his back to the front hall for duty. When his own watch ended, he'd go fetch him and carry him home again.

Later his teacher, aching for him, at last took to the warm covered chair. Chen Dasheng ran alongside. However cold, whatever the weather, it made no difference. He was there to see him there and back.

His wife had said: honor your teacher as you would your own father.

So this master and disciple looked after each other, openly, each with all the strength in him.

The two of them held themselves master and disciple, but the palace didn't see it so. Even the Emperor took Chen Dasheng for a son Eunuch She had adopted. After all, Eunuch She was a man who suffered not a speck of dust, and proud besides. It wasn't that no one had wanted to be his son. He'd simply thought them beneath him.

Then one day Chen Dasheng came into the palace and found the eunuchs had begun calling him "little patriarch."

Chen Dasheng grumbled to Eunuch She a time or two that he wasn't used to it, and Eunuch She wouldn't have it either. But the Emperor seemed set, deliberately, on nailing some name to it, and soon.

And so, day by day, Chen Dasheng entered a certain circle. One day he found he could go into the rear palace, and the women officials and palace maids too had begun, in private, to call him "little patriarch."

The Empress Dowager, the Lady Zheng, often called him over. Once there she'd say nothing, only look at him and shed tears. The first time, she wept herself into a faint, just as the old lady had.

Now she'd often call him to ask after Eunuch She's health, and bid him honor Eunuch She well.

Honor him he certainly would. But outsiders said the Empress Dowager Zheng had claimed him as a grand-nephew. That Chen Dasheng would not own, and his teacher forbade it all the more.

At any rate his teacher never went to the Empress Dowager's side. He would not obey even a formal summons. He defied the edict without the least scruple.

Chen Dasheng now wanted to win that same right. The old lady's tears never stopped. She was not the least bit the iron woman the world called her.

In under a month Chen Dasheng's eyes were opened daily. Just now, for instance, he'd only just gone off duty and hadn't got far when Directress Sun of the rear palace's Bureau of Apparel and two old serving-women stopped him in the road.

Chen Dasheng, helpless, spread his arms, and the two old women measured him head to foot.

Directress Sun looked at the figures and smiled: "The little patriarch's put on a bit of flesh lately."

Chen Dasheng felt his belly and shook his head, helpless: "Don't call me that. How old am I! And why wouldn't I fill out? Ai, every day it's good things going in here. Not filling out would wrong all that good eating!"

Directress Sun laughed: "Isn't that fine? If the old patriarch knew you'd filled out, how glad he'd be."

Chen Dasheng put his arms down, helpless: "My teacher doesn't like me stuffing myself. You lot, what's the pretext today?"

Directress Sun smiled again: "The little New Year's nearly here, then the great New Year, and this being Great Liang's first New Year, well?"

True enough. Great Liang's first New Year. Inside the palace and out, everyone was quietly putting out effort, bent on a fine, dignified show.

When Directress Sun had gathered her things and made to bow off, Chen Dasheng had to charge her again: "Plain cloth will do, don't make silk. My ration's on the guard garrison's side, go draw the silver there."

The serving-women glanced at one another and laughed together, and said yes. But they surely wouldn't. It was only a few suits of cloth.

This little patriarch was wonderfully easy to serve. He never made a thing hard for anyone, and ate whatever was given. As for dress, he had but one rule: plain cloth. However fine the make, however costly the brocade or silk gown, he'd send it back untouched. He wouldn't wear it, and that was that, stubborn as his foster father!

So honest a man, and born with that sweet-melon face, smiling at everyone. Never throwing the old patriarch's weight about to put anyone down, still less to make trouble.

And so he became the darling of the Six Bureaus and One Office.

The Six Bureaus and One Office being the domain of the Great Liang rear palace's women officials: the Bureau of Palace Attendance, the Bureau of Ceremonies, the Bureau of Apparel, the Bureau of Food, the Bureau of the Bedchamber, the Bureau of Works, and the Office of Rectitude.

One palace, two staffs: the eunuchs one, the women officials the other.

Chen Dasheng walked on. Going now to the Dongming Hall, where His Majesty worked, was as hard as running a picket-line at war. Out of nowhere a eunuch would pop up to strike up an acquaintance, to make up to him. And there was this sort of thing too...

Half a zhang from a certain obstacle, Chen Dasheng began to call out: "Jiang the Third! Jiang the Third?"

Before long, old eunuch Jiang De, keeper of the Autumn-Orchid Court, came flying from a corner, calling as he ran: "I said this morning a magpie cried, so it was a noble visitor coming! Here, here! Little patriarch, what brings you to my poor corner?"

Chen Dasheng had a fine memory. Any place in the palace, he'd know it once and never mistake it, still less a person.

Seeing the old eunuch in a sweat, Chen Dasheng let him catch his breath: "I cut through the near way. Don't rush, get your breath."

The old eunuch smiled and panted a few times, then asked: "Ai, ai, kind and thoughtful as ever. What does the little patriarch want? This old servant swears I'll see it done neat for you. I'll guarantee..."

Chen Dasheng could turn people down now. He pointed at the snow ahead: "There's nothing for you to do! It's just... that. Pick it up, see whose it is, and give it back."

One look and Jiang the Third laughed: "Ha ha ha... and here I wondered what it was. Right, right! I'll pick it up for you, I'll pick it up... aiyo, fine work, mandarin ducks on it, no less..."

The old eunuch went and picked up an exquisitely embroidered scent-pouch. When he looked up to make up a few more flattering words, Chen Dasheng had already fled as from the plague.

Old Jiang De laughed himself weak, glanced round, and saw a flash of leek-green skirt-hem whisk off round the corner of Autumn-Orchid Court. He sneered, cold and scornful: "A toad lusting after swan's flesh! What is our old patriarch, what is the little patriarch? Pah! Dream on!"

They'd long since settled it among themselves: they'd never let those baseborn creatures lay a finger on their little patriarch.

He beckoned, and two little eunuchs came up calling him "father." Jiang the Third sent them to see to it, a newcomer to be handed to her matron for correction, an old-dynasty one to be driven out.

The palace was thick with women, and men of the true sort were few. So this little patriarch had become the new target.

Lucky his temper was uncommonly odd. He'd not lift his face to look at any woman. If he met a kerchief or scent-pouch on the road, he'd give it the widest berth and not a glance. And when there was no help for it, he'd simply step over it.

Later the things on his path grew so many, and he so sick of it, that he took to exposing it outright. Whoever dropped it was made to take it back, to cut off those women's hopes for good.

But the thing wasn't so simple as he supposed. Only, no one told him.

He truly believed it was just being handed back.

Later still, it became the consorts' idle gossip. They all found it amusing, and, in their hearts, admired it: a man of rare worth indeed. Eunuch She knew how to choose.

How many flirtations of the old dynasty had come down through the ages. The Emperor himself had been snared a few times, and the rear palace was three beauties the richer for it... See, then: there are gentlemen in this world after all.

Chen Dasheng truly did cross mountain and range the whole way, and got at last to outside the Dongming Hall. His teacher was working late again. Chen Dasheng didn't fret. He asked for a little table, tucked himself into a spot out of the wind, took out the sutras his teacher had written, and set to copying them.

He knew the characters on those sutras now. His teacher had read them aloud to him a few times before the Buddha-shrine. He'd memorized them, then found a copy-sheet, and learned them by reciting as he wrote, one thing leading to the next. Only the writing sprawled every which way, truly hard to look at.

But his teacher didn't mind. Each time Chen Dasheng finished, his teacher took it away, glad, and burned it.

Chen Dasheng had no standing to enter the hall, so his copying-place was under the eaves. But he wasn't cold. A little eunuch had set a brazier by him.

He'd written four or five sheets when someone came out of the hall door.

His teacher said a man must know his own weight before he can go out and weigh others. He himself was only a petty sixth-grade officer. Anyone who could go straight into the Dongming Hall to face the sovereign was several grades above him without trying, so the outward courtesies had to be kept to the letter.

Chen Dasheng made a proper bow, and the one who'd come out did not move on. He raised his head, puzzled, and his eyes narrowed the least bit. He thought: so you've come at last... I've waited a long while for you.

More than once he'd reminded himself: however well he lived now, he must not forget that at his side there had once been one thousand nine hundred and ninety-three wronged souls, and add to them the boy Yangdan!

He'd waited, and waited, and at last waited for... this day.

Chen Dasheng had rehearsed it a thousand, ten thousand times in his heart. So, as rehearsed, he bowed again, grave and respectful: "This officer greets the old general! Such heavy snow, I never thought you'd come to the capital..."

This was Tan the Second's father: Tan Shouyi, Junior Preceptor of the Heir, Founding Marquis.

The last time he'd seen the old man, his hair was still black and his spirit high. This time it was white as snow, his face all grief.

His eyes too were red and swollen. Plainly he'd wept a bout on the Emperor's side.

Tan Shouyi of course knew who Chen Dasheng was. Indeed he'd come into the palace today with two aims. One, to see His Majesty, and, on the strength of his second son's old bond with the Emperor, to show his loyalty afresh.

The other was to find Chen Dasheng and the rest, and learn how it had gone the night his second son died... It wasn't vanity. If the world ranked its men, the martial world included, his second son would surely stand in the first ten.

Yet at the burial there wasn't even a whole corpse to bury.

Who could have killed him? Who could have hacked his body so... hacked it past all patching together?

These days Tan Shouyi hadn't slept one whole night through. The moment he shut his eyes, there stood his second son, bloody, high up, smiling at him without a word...

His son, his son!

It pained him to death!

Whether or not the man before him had once been his house's bond-slave, he'd now climbed to one of the highest branches of the empire, made the adopted son of that She Qingling.

So the asking couldn't go as it once might have. He had to inquire courteously.

But he'd never dreamed that this old blade, of whom he'd no memory at all, would know him at a glance, and salute so courteously, and, by the Tan army's own custom, call him "old general."

Was this not forgetting his roots? Or a guilty heart? Or... hiding something?

Half a life spent scheming against men, and yet Tan Shouyi was born with a kindly, gentle face. He sighed, and his eyes reddened again.

He asked Chen Dasheng: "You'll be the city-gate marquis the Emperor newly made, Recorder Chen? You... you actually remember this old man?"

Chen Dasheng answered gravely: "How could I not? When the Long Saber Battalion was raised, you came the day we entered the camp. That day the General drank a good deal with you, and for days after his face wore a smile... the General was a man who seldom smiled... The last time was the second of the fourth month last year, the General's birthday. You came to bring wine, and sat a while with our Second General, and after you left, the General... stood at the camp gate till dawn..."

Of the Tan house's affairs, no one knew them better than he, who had lived in the Tan army.

Tan the Second at the end was truly mad, no feigning. He'd cast off his humanity and become a demon, and only so had he lost it utterly.

And that demon! It was made, step by step, by the man before him, and by the men behind him.

How could he forget? How dared he forget!

Tan Shouyi's heart was stabbed as with needles. He pressed the place over it a good while before he said: "I wonder, is Recorder Chen on duty just now? If you're busy, this old man will wait for you outside the palace."

Something moved in Chen Dasheng, but his face gave nothing away: "I'm off duty. Has the old general some matter?"

Tan Shouyi nodded, looking at him: "I'd beg a word aside. Would Recorder Chen be willing?"

Here was a genuine first-rank minister of the reigning court, who held the Emperor's heavy troops in his hand, and still he could master his temper, and be courteous to him.

And what was he?

Chen Dasheng nodded, looked round, and said: "This way, then, sir."

He meant to have no contact whatever with the man outside the palace. He was the Emperor's man now, so he pointed out a spot, openly, meaning to speak with Tan Shouyi before every watching eye.

And in passing, to show the man his own claws, the claws of someone whose yearly income was under two hundred dan (a hundred and twenty dan, to be exact), while the old man across from him drew two thousand three hundred a year.

Tenfold apart.

Chen Dasheng pointed the way, and Tan Shouyi stepped toward it. So old a man, come through the snow from Shaoshang, worn by the road and the carriage, and then an audience with his sovereign, and yet his gait showed not a trace of weariness. He walked with a tiger's vigor.

Chen Dasheng followed half a step behind.

What did Tan Shouyi want with him?

Lately, at his books, his teacher had started him not on the usual first primers but on the Zengguang maxims. His teacher said that book best suited him. It held the lessons of dealing with men, and his study must begin with learning to be a man.

The Zengguang was a book of substance, not the sort of first primer that lightly kindles lofty ambitions. It laid human nature and the human heart open before you, plain. As now, he thought of the line: know yourself and know the other, measure another's heart by your own...

His teacher said the line meant using your own heart to understand another's. But he'd said too it could be read the other way about.

So, if he were Tan Shouyi, how would he think?

The head of a great clan, coming to the capital, would he put the truth of his son's death first? Or the stability of the house?

The stability, of course. The Tan house had never been Tan the Second's, still less Tan Shouyi's. Behind that surname stood the murderers of two hundred dan, of three hundred dan... and more, and more.

So he'd only come to ask, to set his own heart at ease?

Hmph! Not a chance!

In a corner of the outer court stood a pavilion, open to the wind on all sides. Chen Dasheng brought Tan Shouyi there, and at once little eunuchs came with padded curtains and hung three sides against the wind.

Two braziers of top-grade pine-scented charcoal were set quickly in the corners. The drum-table in the pavilion was spread with a brocade cloth, the drum-stools with brocade cushions. A pot of hot tea, two palace-made cups painted with landscapes, three little plates of the Bureau of Food's pastries, all set out without a sound, and then the servers quietly withdrew.

Even a first-rank minister had not this much face in the palace, and so Tan Shouyi looked Chen Dasheng over once more.

Chen Dasheng gave no sign of noticing. He lifted the pot, filled Tan Shouyi's cup, and raised it in both hands before him: "The weather's cold. Warm yourself first, sir."

"You trouble yourself, Recorder Chen."

"It's only right."

Watching Tan Shouyi slowly drink the hot tea, Chen Dasheng thought: so, then, let me measure your heart by my own.

The snow thinned, setting off the palace's made scenery finely. Chen Dasheng sat across from Tan Shouyi, neither looking at the other, both quietly watching the view outside.

After three cups of hot tea, Chen Dasheng said, a touch abruptly: "The truth is, old general, had you not come, I'd have sought you out."

Tan Shouyi started, and turned to look at him: "Oh? What does Recorder Chen mean?"

Chen Dasheng turned the cup in his hands, as if in deep thought, or in the act of holding something in... and at last, being young after all, unable to hold it, he said: "This officer thinks our Second General may have been done to death by the Grand General!"

A teacup dropped from Tan Shouyi's hand and shattered to bits on the floor.

Tan Shouyi had meant to shoot to his feet and berate this slave for his mad, filthy talk. Nonsense! Sheer raving!

But the shatter of the cup on the floor cooled him.

This was the palace! Not the Tan house, the palace! And one of the powers behind it was this boy's foster father...

Four little eunuchs came, swept quietly, quietly changed the set of porcelain, quietly turned and swiftly withdrew.

Chen Dasheng stood, poured Tan Shouyi another cup, and said: "I know the old general doesn't believe it. But it's not only I who think so. I've spoken of it in private with my brothers, and we all felt, unbelievable as it is, if there was a man in this world who wanted our General dead, the very first, past doubt, was the Grand General..."

This time Tan Shouyi didn't drop the cup, though his eyes swam a moment. In the end he mastered his temper and said with a forced smile: "Recorder Chen, you go too far! The brothers had their frictions, yes, but for Shiyuan to want Shize dead... how could that be?"

Chen Dasheng reached over and patted his own thigh, as if a great many things were coming back to him. His face was grief and endurance both, and a long while passed before he said: "Yes, how could you believe it? Who'd believe it, said aloud? And yet, a great many people know it. Not I alone."

Tan Shouyi set the cup on the table, and, copying Chen Dasheng, laid his hand on his thigh and patted it once: "This old man is curious, why does Recorder Chen think so? And says many know it? I'd ask you: where does this talk come from? Is there proof? Are there witnesses?"

His self-mastery was schooled to a fine edge.

Chen Dasheng was silent a moment: "That tale runs long..."

"This old man has time to spare. Or does Recorder Chen not?"

"No matter, just now I've idle time enough!"

"Then I'd gladly hear it in full..."

Chen Dasheng nodded, and sat a good while before he said: "The old general has likely learned this officer's origins by now, is that so?"

Of course he'd traced it, root to branch, to the present day. His second son was dead without a whole body, so how could he not have looked into it?

Tan Shouyi nodded, and owned it.

Chen Dasheng smiled, careless: "Just so! This officer is lowborn. My whole family, old and young, were tricked into pressing our marks to a contract, and then sold on to the Tan house as bond-slaves..."

Tan Shouyi made to cut in, but Chen Dasheng put out a hand and filled his tea: "Drink, and hear me out."

Tan Shouyi lifted the cup and nodded.

"...The truth is, that the Grand General would one day do the Second General to death. In the Tan army, there was likely not a soul but you who didn't know it..."

"Is that so?"

"Mm. How to put it? Oh, better start with myself. This officer came of a poor house, and through twists and turns was sold into the Tan army... A country boy, I hadn't the least notion that in this world a man could take two wives, three wives, four wives..."

At his ear the teapot knocked the cup. Chen Dasheng glanced up at the falsely-calm Tan Shouyi and went on: "It wasn't until I was posted to the Long Saber Battalion that I learned: among men, one may never afford a wife his whole life, and another may take a great many... and among sons, one is a lord from birth, gets the wind when he wants wind, the rain when he wants rain, and another is born base! You know, old general, that word, base, I first heard from the Grand General's mouth. He'd say it often, that baseborn cur of a lowborn woman, and he meant our Second General..."

The hand holding Tan Shouyi's cup began to shake.

"Then this officer thought: oh! So sons and sons are not the same! And then I wondered, if you knew he'd have no good life, why, why bear him at all... You know, old general, the truth is, our Second General had long since... gone mad!"

Another cup fell to the floor and broke in four. Tan Shouyi did not stir.

A little eunuch made to come. Chen Dasheng waved him back.

"...One Tan army, a few wooden stockades. On one side men who couldn't eat their fill. On the other, pigs slaughtered and sheep stewed and singing the whole night through. In those days, the moment the Second General won a merit, before long a letter would come from your lady at home. Our Second General would read it, and have to go and kneel before the Grand General's tent and recite the Classic of Filial Piety... The Grand General was well pleased then. He'd take a horse-whip to our Second General, throw cold water over him in the dead of winter, and call him baseborn seed!"

Without his knowing it, tears already ran down Tan Shouyi's face.

"...Before, I didn't know what your lady wrote in those letters. But now I do. Yes, I've come to know a thing or two of late. It was surely no more than this: your lady used the Second General's mother to threaten him... The Grand General wanted it all, grain and fodder, mules and horses, weapons, armor... until in the end there was nothing for it, and the Long Saber Battalion could only go into battle wearing no armor at all..."

For a good while there was no sound beside him. But he was a father, after all. He had to shield the boy. His heart was split in eight pieces, and still, before an outsider, he had to shield him.

Tan Shouyi said at last: "But Shiyuan would never have harmed Ze'er. They, they were brothers of one blood, after all..."

Chen Dasheng didn't agree, and instead said: "The day we stormed into this palace, we'd had no grain or fodder for two days. Every man's belly was empty. It was the Second General who killed his horse, and only then did we eat one full meal... Oh, that horse was your gift, wasn't it?" Chen Dasheng looked up at Tan Shouyi: "I remember it. It was your gift!"

Tan Shouyi's mouth worked: "Yes! Last year for his birthday, I paid a high price and found him a king of horses from beyond the passes."

What he did not say was that, thinking over his son's short life, that horse seemed the only thing he'd ever given him.

Chen Dasheng smiled: "...Our Second General loved that horse like a treasure. He'd have it sleep in his own tent, and even when it was shod he'd stand by and watch... And yet he killed it with his own hand to feed us. And after that..." Chen Dasheng pointed at his own head: "...the General wasn't quite right anymore."

Another cold, windy silence. At last Tan Shouyi asked, his voice trembling: "And then? My Ze'er... he went mad over a horse?"

Chen Dasheng recalled that night: "That night, we kept waiting for the Grand General's reinforcements, and the Grand General never came. And just so, the north gate sounded, the west gate sounded... and our Second General went mad. He was the first to charge in. I remember... at the south gate, drawn up in ranks, was Hongshun's last Black Cavalry, eight full rows... We were old enemies. We'd not mistake them.

"That side didn't mean to live either. They meant to die for their country... So we charged in after the General, just those few of us, and were scattered every way. I didn't know where I was, nor how the General came to die. I don't know that either... So when I say the General was done to death by his brother, this is what I mean. Had the Grand General come, our General would not have died. He didn't come. How deep must our Second General's despair have run? All dead! None to come back..."

Two lines of tears fell from Chen Dasheng's eyes. He wept for himself, and for the dead brothers. In truth the whole feud was a laughable thing, at bottom only a foolish man who'd taken a concubine and got a splendid son.

He stood, struck his chest one-handed in the soldier's salute to Tan Shouyi, and said: "Old general! Since our Second General died, I've thought and thought: I can never avenge him now, for the old dynasty is gone, the Benighted Emperor buried... Have you ever thought what the Tan house would be, had our Second General lived?

"Our General followed the Emperor through fire, before him and behind, and won shining merits, and had a brother's bond with the Emperor besides, and all for the sake of your house's legitimate-and-base... Ha, this I've held in a long while, and got it out at last! Sitting in the seat our Second General bought with his life, does that Tan Shiyuan sleep sound?

"Today I own you, too, for the last time as my old marshal. Honestly, that eldest lord of your house, I truly do despise. Hereafter, bridge to bridge and road to road. We serve in the same hall, and I've grievance against you in my heart, but you are the father our Second General cared for most. And toward the Grand General, I simply... simply hold him beneath contempt!"

He cupped his hands to Tan Shouyi: "This matter, the Emperor knows it, and many know it... If you've a mind to, go and ask around, well and thoroughly. This officer takes his leave. Keep well, sir!"

That said, Chen Dasheng turned briskly and left.

The wind, in the end, had risen.