Chapter 59

On the third of the third month, Chen Dasheng mounted the dueling platform as the rules required. He sat there in his new armor and waited out the full hour. He won, of course, by default.

Chen Dasheng came down feeling a touch let down. The Emperor had told him to hew that wretch to pieces. Now, it looked like there'd be no hewing him at all.

By now the whole story was out. Yesterday, at the Qingfeng city gate, a woman in red had pounded Pang Tu almost to a pulp, and broken his disciple Shen Fanjiang's arms and legs besides.

And that Shen Fanjiang had enemies of his own. All along the road, leaning on Pang Tu's power, he'd brought grief on plenty of people. The martial world works on give and take, a kindness repaid with kindness and an enmity with enmity. No sooner had the woman in red gone than a great crowd of his foes swarmed in on him. They struck off his head and his limbs and shared out the pieces to carry home and lay before their own dead.

So of the master and disciple of Yuegong Mountain, not one was left alive.

In Yanjing there was still Pei Daohai. He heard the ill news and went at once to Qingfeng with the men of the branch lodge, but he was too late even so. By the time he arrived, Shen Fanjiang was no more than a half torso with no arms to it, and the blood had dried where it lay at the gate.

In grief and fury Pei Daohai took the Yuegong Mountain branch lodge men and went about Qingfeng in a high rage, hanging up notices and prying after the woman's identity. But however much they asked around, they came in the end to one single answer. That woman could be no human being. A tree spirit, perhaps, or an immortal. But a human being she most certainly was not.

And the escort masters and chief masters who'd been so eager to fawn were all of the same mind. She could be no human. No human could have such strength.

Pei Daohai was so galled he all but followed his master to the grave. He made trouble up and down Qingfeng and even hung out a martial-world bounty of thirty thousand strings. Seeing him go past all bounds, the Jiusi Hall's Qingfeng branch master simply issued an order of expulsion, and left Yuegong Mountain not a shred of face.

Yuegong Mountain, after all, had offended clean through both the black way and the white.

With this one battle, Yuegong Mountain lost every lodge it held within five hundred li of Yanjing, and that had nothing to do with the Jiusi Hall. This is the rule of the martial world. So many lives were thrown down, and still no one could make you halt. But once you've lost, you may no longer keep your trade. That is the rule of the martial world.

Had Qi Qian'er been a man, and had she such power in her, Meng Dingchen would have spent every effort to dig her out. But she was, as it happened, a woman, and had no wish to put herself forward. So no one would come seeking her, for the Jiusi Hall was a court office now.

To go back a moment. Those martial-world folk who hadn't shown themselves this time, wanting to keep their trades going, pooled their money. Starting from the Qingfeng gate they built charity pavilions to shelter travelers from wind and rain, a stone pavilion every ten li, all the way to the foot of Xiaonan Mountain.

These pavilions were an apology made for all the world to see. They had nothing to do with the orphans and widows. The upkeep of those had its own source. There were no fewer than three hundred guilds, great and small, around Yanjing, and every one set aside a charity fund each year. Those righteous men had died for the sake of all, so their orphans and widows had to be looked after. Otherwise, who would ever step forward as a righteous man again? This too is a rule of the martial world.

In no more than the blink of an eye, the steaming, bustling summer was upon them. In the dog days' heat the old lady, who couldn't bear the heat, took her people off to the Qingque Nunnery early to escape it.

She had her own meditation room over there now. She'd made quite a few incense-burning friends and given alms round to every temple in the country. Now she was the foremost incense patron of all Quanhou Manor. Buddha was on her lips when she opened her mouth and Buddha when she shut it. She'd fallen clean out of her old miserliness into another realm of mystery altogether.

The old days when the several old ladies sat at the manor gate at their needlework, gossiping and watching the fun, were gone and would not come again.

The great fight beneath the dueling pole was like an empty dream. But a human life, after all, had been taken, and for a good half month after she got back Qi Qian'er couldn't sleep sound. It wasn't until Chen Dasheng came home, and she saw this hale, hopping, good-for-nothing simpleton, that Qi Qian'er was cured, once and for all, without a drop of medicine.

By rights, over the merit coin that belonged to Chen Siniu's son, the man should have had something to say. But the old lady willed them buried with her, and he went along with it and never breathed one word too many.

Madam Qiao, though, seemed to have taken another beating over it...

The funeral was seen to, and the old lady had no more longing for anything in this world. Except over Madam Qiao's business, which she'd reckon stubbornly to the end, she was merry the rest of the time. She'd even put on some flesh, and looked the kindlier for it.

She'd only picked up one bad new habit. Open her mouth or shut it, and out it came: I'll ask Guanyin Bodhisattva to bless you with long life. I'll ask Maitreya to bless you with a fortune of ten thousand strings. I'll ask my Buddha the Tathagata to bless you with rank and riches... In short, of all the Buddhas and Arhats and Venerable Ones under heaven, there was not one the old lady couldn't call down.

As for Qi Qian'er, this was when she truly began to be run off her feet. The hereditary land wanted a manor built on it, wells dug, and tenants found. The Plague God's temple wanted an added wall. There were farm stewards to hire, and new manors and fields to buy up in other parts...

Beyond all that, she'd bought in one lot a thousand taels of seasoned birch, hired a dozen and more carpenters and sawyers, and set a lively workshop going right there in the house. Red sandalwood was not to be dreamed of, but with the silver she had, counting down from Meng Wanquan, there were seven full sets of furniture to be made.

So Guard Lane was steeped from morning to night in a curious smell of sawdust, a rather pleasant smell, as it happened.

And even that was not the end of it.

Besides the sawdust, Guard Lane now got, from morning to night and every so often, another sort of visitor. The official matchmakers! Yanjing's official matchmakers, Qingfeng's, and those of a dozen-odd counties round about would come now and then to try their luck.

Yu Qingguan aside, the oldest of the old sabers, Tong Jintai, was already twenty-four, and the youngest, Guan Si'er, was nineteen. These six fine-looking, thick-browed, bright-eyed, spirited seventh-grade Registrar lords were all kicking their heels at home, bachelors every one.

Such a chance the official matchmakers would by no means let slip. Only, it was a pity. Qi Qian'er was full of experience, and had picked and picked her way down to the present, and hadn't fancied a single one.

As for Meng Wanquan, he'd always had a great mind of his own. He seemed to have taken a fancy to a Qingfeng widow with a little property to her name, and ran off into the city quite diligently these days.

Busy and every which way, and now it was the start of the fifth month. Quanqian Manor was full up at last, and Qingfeng was beginning its move in earnest. The farmland in front of Quanqian Manor was all requisitioned by the court. The Board of Works officials began measuring off the shopfronts by the new well sites, laid out new official roads, and tamped down foundations to lay ceramic pipes for the drains.

With everyone breaking ground at once, it was one great tangle. The manor gate was too choked for a cart to pass, and there was no help for it. The lords of the manor took the little mountain path to Yanjing instead. That little path, in under two months, had become a road three carts wide.

It was another busy early morning. The old lady was seen off up the mountain, every corner and cranny of the courtyards was inspected, and the newly lacquered furniture was looked over. Only when all was settled at last did Qi Qian'er get a spare moment for a mouthful of water.

But she'd taken only a few sips of the tea Fifth-Moon brought when She Jixiang led in a woman from outside. One glance told her it was someone she knew, Dame Zhao, of the old Chang lady's own service.

Dame Zhao came in smiling and made her fawning courtesy. "Aiyo! It's been an age since I paid my respects to grandmother. And look at that ruddy, glowing color on you. The magpie must have lit on your eaves this morning and cawed the whole morning long. Our grandmother's in fine health!"

She said "an age," but in truth they saw each other every three or five days. Little Hua had his great mansion now. He was doing it over, buying furniture, and had a steward of his own sent to see to it, but the money was all drawn from Qi Qian'er's side.

A son who takes a loss cuts his parents' very heartstrings, and it pains them sore. So the old lady and the mistress over there, whatever bit of private savings they had in hand, would change it for a few sticks of furniture and quietly send it by Dame Zhao to be stored first at Qi Qian'er's.

They stood on no ceremony with Qi Qian'er, and Qi Qian'er of course stood on none with them. The two houses got along... well enough. The trouble was chiefly a Big-Madam Bao of theirs, a woman of a most peculiar temper, and there the tale grew hard to tell in a word.

Qi Qian'er hadn't the leisure to spar with that female. She was far too busy!

The seven empty houses in the lane had no one to open the windows and air them, and sweeping the rooms was no small matter either. So she'd used the Chang house's own regular official broker, bought two nimble page boys for each house, and set She Jixiang to breaking them in first.

In no time there was a great crowd of them. As a rule they cooked at Little Hua's old courtyard at the lane's end. When they'd eaten, they went back each to his own courtyard to put it in order and waited for its master to return.

So many people, so many courtyards, so many matters, and an old lady to wait on besides. Yet no one round about had ever seen Qi Qian'er complain that she was tired. Watching this little wife keep house, there were but four words for it: like flowing cloud and running water. The way she set things in order was clean and brisk. She had it all in her head, and could get it all done neat and trim. So she'd become one of the two most capable mistresses of a house in all Quanhou Manor.

Qi Qian'er had a stool fetched for Dame Zhao to sit, and then asked, "And what have you brought over today?"

Dame Zhao smiled. "Nothing gets by grandmother. It's two carts of fine porcelain the mistress has quietly had moved up from Shaoshang, things of some age but not too dear. The mistress bade me tell grandmother, we're putting you to the trouble and toil of it again. The mistress says she'll always treat you as her own daughter, and we've a long road ahead together, so she won't stand on the reckoning of these few days. And she says these vases and bowls the two houses over there have never set eyes on, so she'd like to put them down under your name..."

Dame Zhao winked at Qi Qian'er, and Qi Qian'er laughed outright and nodded, brisk. "Done! Have them carried to the usual place."

It was every finger the same flesh, after all. The Chang house's two elder daughters-in-law were both watching from the one courtyard, and the old lady and the mistress wanted to slip a little to the youngest on the sly. They dared not let that side see it, so they sent it to Qi Qian'er's side, to pass for what this side had given.

Chang Lianfang was the old lady's adopted grandson, and Chen Dasheng's sworn brother, and loved here as her own grandson. They'd given him a whole mansion to take, so a few carts of furniture were nothing beside it.

Qi Qian'er sent She Jixiang out to count the things.

When the room was clear of people, she said to Dame Zhao, "That Steward Liu your house found, whose man is he?"

Mm~ this bird again!

She knew the answer well enough in her heart, but Qi Qian'er meant to ask it once all the same.

And she said to Dame Zhao without ceremony, "Go back and tell the old lady, say it was I who said it, to send a different steward over by and by. This one can't be used."

Dame Zhao's face flushed red to hear it. It was, after all, two households, and to be picked at for a fault by another house's mistress was a shameful thing indeed.

But then, the old lady and the mistress over there had entrusted this mansion to the Chen grandmother, so if the steward they'd sent wasn't fit, she had grounds to speak. Only, Dame Zhao had never thought a mistress of so high a house would be so blunt about it.

Dame Zhao stood up and asked with a coaxing smile, "But, but did this Liu Feng do something amiss? Has he angered grandmother?"

Qi Qian'er reached out, pulled an account book down from one side, spread a sheet of paper, and said as she wrote, "He, anger me? So mighty a man as he! I'm run off my feet, as you know, and it's not the one house I keep, either."

Dame Zhao said at once, "Yes, yes, yes. The old lady says herself, never mind Qingfeng, but in all Yanjing, a housekeeping wife more capable than grandmother is a rare thing..."

Qi Qian'er set down a few strokes, then looked up and smiled at her. "You needn't flatter me. I've no time to take your flattery! Just go back and tell the old lady, this Steward Liu, in half a month, my patrols have caught out of his place five times, with only hired-in craftsmen from off the road inside the gate. When I called him to answer for it, he wouldn't have it, and said he wasn't of our house and so wasn't under my charge. Very well! Then send over one who'll take charge, that's the first thing!

"And second, this Liu Feng, even if he goes back, you must never use again. A rat of a rogue, a scoundrel! Keep him and he's a menace. And he wanted to be Little Hua's head steward, no less, truly a face bigger than a millstone!"

Qi Qian'er wasn't cursing Steward Liu at all. This was spat straight in the face of the Chang house's Big-Madam Bao.

Because of the mourning she wore, Qi Qian'er couldn't go to another's door. So when that side wanted Qi Qian'er to manage a thing, it was generally by a steward-woman's mouth.

Back at the end of the third month, when Qi Qian'er was in a poor humor to begin with, the Chang house's eldest madam, Bao-shi, had sent her steward-woman to point and order Qi Qian'er about, and set her to this task and that.

Qi Qian'er's temper being what it now was, she'd simply had the woman marched back to the Chang house to ask. Was this to take over the running of my household? Should she hand the keys of the silver store to your madam? And ask the eldest madam too, while she was at it, how much a month does she pay this court Lady of the sixth grade?

And from that day the feud was joined.

The truth is, every house has its dung-stirring stick. And mm, she was both the dung and the stick, and played away at it very happily, with no notion at all how odious she was.

It wasn't that Qi Qian'er had never borne with her. But she'd found the eldest madam to be a give-her-an-inch-take-a-mile creature, small-minded, full of scheming guile, sour of tongue, and eaten with envy. However good you were to her, she thought it her due, and whatever you gave her, she thought you were begging a favor of her.

There is but one way with such a person. Deal with her head on, give her not one shred of face, and she'll behave.

Dame Zhao stood there with a dry smile, and Qi Qian'er wrote on. "...He handed me one account, for the gilt-and-color repair of the long corridor, and one glance told me the account was wrong. The man can't be used! I said I'd not settle it and told him to take his ledger away. He stood there muttering and dawdling and being tiresome, so I had him slapped twice! I've got him shut up. You hurry and take him off my hands. I keep several houses' affairs, and all of them together are less trouble than the one he makes me!"

Dame Zhao was a little frightened, and stood there, and answered a respectful yes, just as if she were in her own house.

At the last Qi Qian'er tossed her a paper and pointed at a string of figures on it. "His accounts won't bear looking at. I've not paid him one coin. Here, malachite green, cinnabar, gold dust, lacquer, old glue, every last thing bought dear! More than double, and the dearest of them he's marked up fivefold! Top cinnabar is two hundred cash the tael in Qingfeng now, and two hundred and ten at the old Yanjing houses. The list he handed me writes it at nine hundred..." Qi Qian'er fixed her eyes on Dame Zhao and laughed, cold. "Your madam's a bold one!"

There, off she went jeering again. The eldest madam surely had no notion that of the whole family it was Qi Qian'er who was the rich one, while she herself hadn't the least idea of the size of things.

Dame Zhao took the list and took her leave, and took the luckless Steward Liu away with her too, his two cheeks swollen up like a goldfish's bubbles.

Seeing that side off, She Jixiang came in and counseled her, smiling. "They're another house. Why go provoking them? At worst, just don't manage it for them."

Not manage it? What the old Chen family owed Chang Lianfang was far more than a simple favor. Without Little Hua, Chen Dasheng could never have come near the Emperor.

Light as the push had been, Chen Dasheng's whole life had lacked just that one push. With it, he'd met the wind and turned to a dragon.

A person must have a conscience, after all.

Qi Qian'er smiled and said, unconcerned. "She's she, and the old lady's the old lady. The very cloth on my back now was given me by that old lady. Whatever her daughters-in-law have, I'll have too. A person must grow herself a human heart! And as for Bao-shi, what do I care who she is? Isn't everyone's life a short one? By what right should I put up with her temper? Is she better looking than me, or more able? Is she brisker than me? Is her title bigger than mine? She can't better me in one single thing, and still she'd instruct me? Ha, let her try it!"

She Jixiang was tickled past all bearing. Every time he watched his own grandmother put someone in their place, it did his heart good. Where did such a fine, satisfying feeling come from!

Qi Qian'er walked with him toward the old lady's courtyard, and the whole way, Guard Lane was clean from end to end. The very hitching posts were polished to a smooth bright gleam, and the old plum boughs of green leaf that reached out over each house's wall had been trained into a good deal of artful effect.

And the corridor lamps under each house's eaves were exquisite things, all alike in size and broad and handsome in style besides. Come nightfall, dignified and grave, they shone bright from the mouth of the lane clear to its end.

Of the seven great official lanes of Quanqian Manor, Guard Lane was reckoned the finest and the most orderly.

With that, she went into the old court, where the several women of the sewing room had the cart loaded ready, and were only waiting for Qi Qian'er to look it over.

Qi Qian'er opened the biggest bundle, and turned the things out one by one to show She Jixiang.

"This is the teacher's summer cloth underclothes, and single shoes, and single socks, all in the pale, quiet colors he favors. The seams run with a soft-thread edge-stitch, never drawn tight..." She glanced about her, and the several women went quickly out. Qi Qian'er lowered her head and said quietly to She Jixiang, "The teacher's inconvenienced in his body, and surely goes through no end of undertrousers, and the stubborn old thing keeps a hard mouth about it! So I've had twenty of them made for him. Tell him just to wear them, and throw one out when he must, and no more thought about it. You tell him, we're none of us young now, and he's not to bottle up a need he has. A body gets used to it in time. We're his own people... ah!"

For a eunuch is apt to lose his water, and so has always a smell about him.

She Jixiang, hearing it, near burst into tears, and nodded a yes, over and over.

Qi Qian'er went on tossing bundles onto the cart. "This is for the pack of fools. They say they're off keeping the Emperor company against the heat, and won't even send their spring clothes home..."

That night, at the summer palace outside Yanjing, the eunuch She, faced with a great heap of undertrousers, was somewhat torn between shame and anger. He flung them left and right in his disgust and said to She Jixiang, sour, "Hmph, as if I fancy these few crotch cloths!"

She Jixiang paid him no mind at all, but set out on the table the pickled vegetables he'd brought, and a few sorts of ground bean-flour and fine flour besides.

Poor Qi Qian'er. So that she might lawfully push the mill, the grain the two elders of her house ate was now all milled by her own hand.

Seeing She Jixiang take no notice of him, the eunuch She, a bit at a loss, asked in a roundabout way, "She, she's not kicked up any mischief these last few days?"

At that She Jixiang smiled, and told him the whole of Qi Qian'er's little to-do that day with the Chang house's eldest madam, and hid not a jot of it...

And when he'd done, and looked up again, those few crotch-cloth things on the master's bed had long since been tucked away. There was no telling when the man had done it.

At the summer palace thirty li outside Yanjing, the Martial Emperor Yang Zao lay stripped bare but for a jacket thin as a cicada's wing yet not sheer. He lay on a low couch beside the lotus pond, going over the lists of names sent up in provisional recommendation from the various parts.

The sound of the zither strings at his ear stopped of a sudden. He lifted his head and found it was the eunuch She, in high good humor, strolling over with his hands behind his back and a smile on his face.

The Emperor pointed at a few slices of cucumber on the table. "Well timed, indeed. Come, have a slice. Early melon, but the flavor's not bad at all..."

The eunuch She cared nothing for that. He'd come to show off.

He sat on the edge of the low couch and asked first, "What are you reading?"

The Emperor gave a snort. "The recommendation lists, before the grace-exam..."

The eunuch She nodded, and said, with a show of unconcern, "Ah, that~ ahem... Jixiang's back!"

The Emperor took a bite of a cucumber slice, and only then caught his drift, and at once played up to it. "Ho! That filial daughter-in-law of yours, milling you your flour again?"

The eunuch She pursed his lips. "Idle, that's what she is. Pure needless fuss! Do I want for that mouthful? And now she's fallen out with that fool of the Chang house again. I always said it, such a temper at so young an age, where does she come by it? It's only my Sheng'er who's honest enough to put up with her..."

Without Qi Qian'er ever knowing it, whatever little corner-and-cranny matters of her household She Jixiang got wind of were, in due course, spilled out whole without a jot held back.

This housekeeping wife went about things too flinty by half, and that steely, straight-out directness of hers, above all, was just the thing to scratch the Emperor's and the eunuch She's itch. Every time they heard of it, it was as good as hearing a whole long storybook.

The eunuch She enjoyed the telling of it no less. He gnawed his way through half the Emperor's plate of melon and summed it up at the last. "A brazen woman like that, you'll not see in three thousand years! She truly dares say anything, and holds herself in the right besides. Listen to this! What does she mean, isn't everyone's life a short one, by what right should I put up with her temper? And thinks herself the best looking too, with those pale brows of hers, and that little bit of a height?"

The Emperor had laughed a good few times already. When the eunuch She had finished, he sighed in satisfied wonder. "I'll say this, if Cao-shi had a temper like that, I'd not have needed to hide myself off over here. What's the good of being all roundabout, I ask you? She's the Empress. Whatever comes after is but a word's work, settle it and be done with it. But no, she must make a show of her virtue over every last thing. Well then, I'll let her be virtuous in the palace..."

The Emperor had not brought the Empress to the summer palace, and still had not let her take the main palace as her own.

The eunuch She had no wish to hear about the Emperor's own house, and said without ceremony, "Never mind your family, speak of mine!"

The Emperor's mouth twitched, and he nodded, helpless. "Fine, yours, yours! I tell you, this eldest daughter-in-law of Old Chang's, you could grope blind underground and turn up a better one than her. His eldest son's talent and looks are none of them wanting. How did he come to get this one?"

At that the eunuch She rolled his eyes. "Your Majesty still dares speak of it! These days you ride the Six-Steeds Farm horses mostly, but in the old days, whose horses did you ride?"

The Emperor's face went, for no clear reason, a little red, and it was a good while before he said, somewhat abashed, "Old Chang's eldest daughter-in-law, she's a Bao?"

The eunuch She nodded. "Just so! The second true-born daughter of Bao Wudao of the Junli Horse Farm, out past the passes. Old Chang traded you his best son for those horses..."

The Emperor patted his own head, oddly sheepish, and covered it with a wry laugh. "Heh! It's these state affairs keeping me so busy, and I'm getting on in years, my head won't hold it all. Just so, just so... no wonder she's forever losing to your daughter-in-law. This Bao-shi will have learned only her father's stinginess and never got the marrow of him..."

The two of them were nattering away like a pair of gossips when Zhang Minwang came hurrying in. "May it please Your Majesty, the abbot of the North Nation-Protecting Temple entered nirvana two hours ago."

The two holders of the empire's power, who'd been lolling so idly, sat up straight together and traded a look. The Emperor asked, the joy plain on his face, "When was this?"

Zhang Minwang answered, "Two hours since."

The Emperor asked again, "And who has taken up the dharma-staff?"

Zhang Minwang answered, "The old abbot's youngest disciple, the Chan-master Sikou."

The Emperor tapped the edge of the couch, over and over, with the round fan in his hand, and a good while later said, smiling, "Well then, since they mean reconciliation, at the sealing of the shrine seven days hence, let Zhen'er go. If any of the imperial clan wish to go, there's no harm in it. And the capital's great families, its officials, and their kin, if any have a bond of karma with the Nation-Protecting Temple, let them go as they please too. Only, the names, have Fifth bring them back to me."

Zhang Minwang assented, but he'd gone only a few steps when he heard the eunuch She order, "Have the Sixth Prince go as well. The ages match, at least, and children are always more at ease together. And let Dasheng and the rest go and see the sights of it, and see the regalia's arranged handsomely, so they don't truly turn into a pack of gate porters!"

The Emperor, for no reason at all, fell to dry-coughing.