Chapter 8

Old Madam Chen looked at Qi Qian'er with a fierce glint in her eye, and Qi Qian'er craned her neck and held her ground.

It wasn't that she feared a beating — but to be beaten in front of everyone, that was a serious loss of face. Being looked down on herself was no matter, but how would An'er hold his head up later?

One day, when An'er made something of himself, people wouldn't grant him his worth; they'd bring him up with a curl of the lip — oh, that one from the Chen family, I know him, his mother was bought, and got a thrashing from his granny every single day.

What to do? Get into a fight with this old woman?

The two of them stared straight at each other, neither showing a flicker of fear.

No one knew better than Qi Qian'er that this old woman's ferocity was nothing like that of the ordinary old women down the street. This was a savage old woman who had threaded her way to and fro across battlefields and hauled a whole family fortune out of the thick of it, alive.

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As the rebel army's territory grew with the fighting, Old Madam Chen — a rebel soldier's dependent, the kind who'd be killed if left behind — was forced to follow along in the army's rear with Dingxiang, the one small granddaughter she had left. At first she got by doing mending at the camp gate; later, when enough of her family's boys had died, she earned some respect, and when the army moved and the rear shifted with it, an officer let her have half a cart-end to sit on.

Later still, the menfolk who lived slowly worked their way up and recovered their own names and surnames, and she gained the privilege of traveling with the column — the higher-ups issued her grain to eat and gave her a donkey cart to get about in.

From fleeing the famine to now was a full five years. The Chen family had once numbered over forty souls; now all that were left, struggling on in the army, were the eldest branch's two grandsons, the second branch's one grandson, the third branch's one grandson, and her fourth son and a grandson-in-law serving in the ranks.

And Scabby was the third branch's.

The old woman had borne the pain of her own flesh being cut away piece by piece; that she hadn't gone mad was itself a mercy.

Holding off the madness, she'd managed with great effort to raise her one remaining granddaughter, Dingxiang — and then last year Old Madam Chen had taken it upon herself to marry the girl to the superior officer of the eldest branch's two grandsons.

The old woman couldn't read a single character, yet she'd found the best of all ways to guard the Chen family's last few threads of blood.

Dingxiang, who'd depended on her for life itself, had gone to a man fifteen years her senior — did it not grieve her?

It did!

Ever since Dingxiang married, the ache had her pounding at her chest now and then.

But for Dingxiang to keep roaming about with her, a lonely old woman — through refugee throngs, through the infirmary camps, lingering on the great battlefields — that was far less safe.

So she'd given Dingxiang up as if cutting off her own flesh — and by it, at least, she'd safeguarded three lives.

Now, though she didn't know on which front her granddaughter's husband was fighting, or where the eldest branch's two grandsons were shedding their blood, the old woman was easy in her mind: after all, those two were his brothers-in-law, and however heartless the brother-in-law might be, he'd have to look after his own, wouldn't he?

Now it was all right — the dynasty had changed.

And her sons and grandsons, from year after year of staking their heads and gambling their lives, had at last grown bone on the killing field, grown sinew and spine, and stored up war-merit.

And so her house now had a whole nestful of sesame-seed commandants in official rank — a full five of them.

The old woman was tough as they came — the sort of old woman who could drive a donkey cart thousands of li keeping up with the army, who dared go onto the battlefield to gather corpses, pull the blades and strip the armor off the dead, and turn around and sell it in the camp for cash.

And it wasn't only Old Madam Chen. There were several big clusters of army dependents, and her lot were the dependents under General Tan of the vanguard, a cluster that had formed on its own with no one to govern it.

With no one to govern them they'd gone wild; and it wasn't just the old woman — the several dozen women living in Quanhou Village, every one who'd survived, was no lamp that burned cheap oil.

Their husbands were all low-ranking soldiers. Compared with the capable, respectable ladies — who traveled with servants and maids and an armed guard to protect them — what did these women have? They could only drive their own carts along with the column, and take up their own blades to guard their bodies and keep themselves alive.

You can imagine how hard it was, back when Qi Qian'er married in, to deal with this pack of aunties.

This crowd of aunties and old dames had come into Quanhou Village trailing a bandit air they couldn't hide: wherever they lit, any empty house with no one in it, any stray bit of livestock, was as good as theirs the moment they laid claim.

For all the world a band of woman-bandits — and Old Madam Chen counted as the woman-bandit chief.

In the thick of war, the men up front could always turn up a bit of unexpected loot; and over the years, where once they'd followed the great camp on their own two feet, now this pack of women had scavenged so far and wide that nearly every household had a donkey cart to ride.

And among them Old Madam Chen counted as a big household: her family had two mules and a donkey, and three cartloads of goods besides, coming and going.

You can imagine the sight of this pack of old women coming upon a respectable place like Quanhou Village: naturally they lived wherever was best and grabbed whatever they saw. And what if the good houses were sealed with official strips? They couldn't read anyway — who was to know who'd sealed them up?

And what was this courtyard the old woman had picked for Qi Qian'er, next to the one the fourth son's wife had taken with Xique'er? That other one was the grand one — a three-courtyard house with a little garden, and Madam Qiao even slept in a thousand-labor eight-step great bed. She was no proper grande dame, yet every day she dreamed her haughty grande-dame dreams all the same.

But not being truly a woman of wealth and rank, she couldn't after all carry off the proper airs of one. After a few nights in the great bed, Madam Qiao kept feeling there was a ghost behind it, so there was nothing for it but to call in a few of her cronies to live there together and chatter — and in the old woman's words, that courtyard's coming and going was just like a henhouse: no eggs laid, and all day long they clustered together clucking, cluck-cluck, cluck-cluck, without a moment's peace.

Though the old woman lived among them, she saw to her own grain-tally every day and watched how Madam Qiao did hers. Madam Qiao was full of little schemes, and after the old woman had come off the worse for them a few times on the sly, she felt something was wrong and flatly refused to keep the books jointly with her anymore.

And it was over this that, the year Dingxiang was married off, Madam Qiao took a savage beating from her man — her face wasn't fit to be seen for a good half a month.

When Chen Siniu took Madam Qiao as his second wife back then, the pretext was that he wanted someone to wait on his old mother — but no sooner was she in the door than, after a few days' good behavior, she started playing her tricks and squeezed his old mother out. Naturally Chen Siniu wasn't having it.

A country man doesn't know tenderness in dealing with a wife — only his fists.

Beaten, Madam Qiao had the wits scared out of her, and now on the surface she was all obedience to the old woman, all but ready to kneel and wait on her.

But what sort was the old woman? A rare iron plowshare of a creature — once she'd fixed on a thing she didn't generally veer off it, and she gave Madam Qiao no good face at all.

Fond as she was in her heart of Xique'er, she could hold even that in check — wouldn't so much as glance at the child — and what did it matter if it put Chen Siniu's unfilial name right out in the open?

The old woman didn't understand the first thing about it, and neither did Chen Siniu: that once the realm was at peace, those sour scholars would make their way in the world on ritual and filial piety — and Chen Siniu would squat on his sesame-seed commandant's rank, not budging for ten years and more.

A mother wrecking her own son's prospects — well, there was no one quite like her.

---

Qi Qian'er simply would not go into the five-generation scholar's courtyard; afraid the old woman would throw a tantrum, she wouldn't give ground though it killed her.

Old Madam Chen couldn't keep her face, and her expression darkened on the spot; she meant to teach the thin-haired thing a lesson.

It was just Madam Qiao's bad luck: the old woman was about to raise her hand when, from the steps, she caught sight of the lane mouth — there was Madam Qiao with a gaggle of women, smiling and watching the show.

The old woman's mood soured at once. Better to school the girl behind closed doors, she thought. This was a proper, above-board newly-betrothed granddaughter-in-law; young and dim as she was, the girl would have to be brought round slowly to run smooth — and if they had a falling-out, then afterward folk would say it was Madam Qiao who'd been wronged and the girl who was the sly little piece.

And so, amid all the tittering, Old Madam Chen let go of the pipe-stem she'd been gripping behind her back, dredged up a scrap or two of tenderness, stepped forward and pulled Qi Qian'er into the courtyard, then slapped the gate shut hard and started cursing at the crowd outside: "Laugh! This isn't the day you dropped your brats under a donkey's belly and came crying to me! You didn't laugh when I was cleaning up your pools of blood and your muck — so what are you gawking at now? Clear off, the lot of you!"

Outside they were still in fits of laughter, but in the end the crowd broke up.

Old Madam Chen was well on in years, and whenever one of this lot fell pregnant and had a child to drop, they'd all have need of her yet.

Once the people outside had gone off, Old Madam Chen glared at Qi Qian'er and scolded her: "If your fourth aunt weren't a lightning-blasted wretch, I'd never let you live out on your own. You're a dim one! What do you know next to me?"

As she spoke she jabbed a finger against Qi Qian'er's forehead.

"You little blast — you'll grow some sense from here on, hear me? Grain in the field is only yours once it's in your own barn. What's so good about that house over there? You think because it's newly built? I could spit myself dead over how ignorant you are! What do you know next to me? That's a one-courtyard place, eight or nine broken-down rooms with nothing in them. This one! I climbed over the wall into this one before! This one's got a rosewood great bed, made fine as you please, and this main hall besides. You're young and green — from now on you just do as I say, and that'll do..."

At that Qi Qian'er looked around. Much as she admired the rockery and the wintersweet, the green bamboo and climbing vines in this courtyard — did moving in really make it yours?

Heh — the old woman was dreaming!

At that thought Qi Qian'er dodged her head aside, set the basket down off her back with a smile, loosened her back and waist, and only then said to Old Madam Chen: "Granny! However nice this one is, it's no use — that one over there is where we ought to live!"

Old Madam Chen looked at her own finger in some surprise. When she jabbed that finger at her own sons and grandsons, terrified out of their wits as they were, not one dared dodge — Chen Siniu never came home without taking a few slaps from her, and even he never dared duck.

This girl... this girl had turned the sky over!

The old woman flew into a rage and raised her voice: "Hey-yo! I'm talking to you, you little lightning-blasted thing — 'this one's good, that one's off,' is it? You think once you move in, it's yours? You're a dim one — it's all other people's! Understand?"

Qi Qian'er wasn't afraid of her; she watched the old woman with bright, merry eyes, thinking: she's just a dried-up little old woman, not even very tall — if I put my back into it, I could probably hoist her right up.

At that thought, a weighing-up look came over Qi Qian'er's face, and she began sizing the old woman up and down.

The old woman felt an inexplicable chill, swallowed a mouthful of spit, and shivered.

The girl's got a fine pair of eyes on her, she thought — clear and bright, dazzling as the flame off a landlord's white-wax candle.

What — did she mean to turn the whole sky over?

Holding in her temper, the old woman kept up the threats: "You still don't know what kind of house we are, do you? Hmph! We're a proper, above-board general's household — we'll be moving on sooner or later! You can't hold on to this place! It's all wealth passing through your hands: take a look and be content. There's a good house — enjoy it a while; there's a good bed — be pleased with it a few days. You think it's really yours? No wonder — now she's even picking and choosing! Dream on! There's no end of empty courtyards! You think you can carry them all off on your back, tramping the whole world over?"

Qi Qian'er turned her face to look at the wintersweet.

How infuriating!

Thinking of her nest-egg, the old woman fell into her usual grumbling: "Ai-yo, it's just like a shallow pond baking in the summer heat — two ladles of water out and there's your true face showing, you old turtle! Such a waste of my ten strings of cash and my fifty jin of best flour, to trade back for a thing like this... can't tell good words from bad! Aiya — what great virtue is the Chen family short on? First one comes with a crooked heart, and now here's you, a prize coarse blockhead. No wonder the Chen family graves have gone and got waterlogged and soggy..."

The old woman had her own method of cursing people: let her get hold of the smallest scrap of a point, and she could reel off her scolding at you for a lifetime without stopping.

But Qi Qian'er thought to herself: ten strings of cash, my eye! That money was the fallen dynasty's coin — it wouldn't be good but a few more days before it was scrapped; those wretched copper coins would be melted down and recast come the new year.

Well now — in this old woman's mouth, her ten strings of cash could be nagged up into the grandeur of a thousand taels of official silver.

Qi Qian'er had taken this old woman's scoldings before, and taken her pipe-bowl too. What of the world had she seen back then? Used to enduring, not daring even to cry, every time she'd stood there like a fool and let the old woman shame her... never daring to run, never daring even to dodge.

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Now, though, she only watched, finding it all good fun; and once the old woman had finished her scolding and paused for breath, Qi Qian'er put on a deliberately puzzled look and asked: "Eh? Moving on? Moving on to where?"

She was only teasing her — the old woman turned out to be the sort who'd jump the moment you gave her a poke.

Hearing Qi Qian'er ask that, Old Madam Chen only then remembered the girl didn't even know what her own man did.

Ai-yo, she'd spoken out of turn — the girl didn't know they'd be moving on.

In the wrong and a bit sheepish, she craned her neck to steal a glance over the broken wall, and seeing no one watching, set her mind at ease; then, thinking of who knew what pleasing thing, she took the pipe from the back of her waist and packed herself a bowl of shredded tobacco.

And gave a rather unaccountable little snort.

Qi Qian'er wasn't afraid at heart, but her body shrank back all the same.

Holding the pipe-stem in her mouth but loath to light it, the old woman worked herself up for a moment, then struck a pose and said, a touch smug: "I'll tell you this — for a fool like you to come to my house, why, that's the ancestors' good deeds paying out, that's Heaven looking on you with favor. Eh? Don't you doubt it. It's only that I'm soft-hearted — otherwise go out and see for yourself: a thin-haired scrap of no-meat like you, never mind ten strings of cash and fifty jin of grain, you wouldn't be worth five jin of chaff! You believe me?"

Believe it! Of course she believed it.

Finding a stone drum-stool set out in the courtyard, the old woman sat down, humming and groaning to herself.

Qi Qian'er sharply stepped up to support her by the arm, and perhaps because she'd never had such treatment, Old Madam Chen was startled for a moment — then she smiled.

All her life she'd hated to show weakness in front of others, and just endured it, endured it — and now all at once here was a biddable one, actually feeling for her.

Having never enjoyed such treatment, Old Madam Chen didn't know what to do with herself, and reached out and gave the back of Qi Qian'er's hand a hard smack, saying stiffly: "Aren't you the one for playing sweet!"

And then she regretted it all the more — the girl meant well, so what was she hitting her for?

On account of that, she fell to groaning twice as much.

Watching the old woman's unease, Qi Qian'er felt like laughing and aching at once.

For all her heap of grandchildren, in the end it was each nest minding its own; who cared what was on this old woman's mind, or what it was she wanted?

She was in some misery, this — Qi Qian'er understood it especially well, because in her own old age she'd had the same trouble: not knowing where it was you ached, no real illness, just a body that wouldn't settle, that had to groan aloud before the discomfort would ease and disperse.

On the days this old woman wasn't cursing or scolding or being spiteful to someone, her mouth kept up a ceaseless groaning. She was always saying she felt poorly in herself, too; they'd called a doctor in later, but he could find nothing wrong with her — though she took no end of medicine.

Madam Qiao said she was putting it on, but the old woman had gone about hunched over and groaning for a dozen years and more. If that was putting it on, then it took real perseverance.

Pitifully, this groaning of hers had become the signal for the children and the granddaughters-in-law to steer clear of her.

In the end, everyone turned into a tiresome old thing after all.

The old woman groaned a while before she said: "Your — your man, that grandson of mine, his formal name's called..."

Qi Qian'er looked up and cut in: "Granny! I know this one — he's called Chen Dasheng! It's written on the marriage contract."

Hearing the thin-haired girl say so, the old woman was tickled.

So she wasn't holding the smack against her? What a biddable one.

Say what you like, reading was a fine thing — once you could read you knew everything, and feared nothing.

Not like them: once out the door they had to keep close behind, and the moment they weren't careful the camp up ahead would leave them twenty li in the dust, and they couldn't so much as ask their way — didn't know east from south from west, knew only that they were General Tan's people.

And there were no end of people surnamed Tan under heaven: among the several armies up front, the Tans divided into Big Tan and Little Tans — Big Tan was the old marshal, and there were several Little Tans, split again into generals and junior generals.

The old woman's joys and angers were all on her face. Pleased as she was inside, she still had to talk the price down, so she pursed her lips: "Chen Dasheng, my eye — he's called Scabby! Chen Scabby! And that name of his, why, it was old General Tan who gave it — you know old General Tan? A great general who commands a million men, and he gave my Scabby his name."

The old woman's neck wobbled like a figure in a shadow-play, and she looked, for all that, rather endearingly old.

The corner of Qi Qian'er's mouth twitched at the sight.

Never mind that the whole new dynasty didn't have a million-strong army — even that remarkable old General Tan wasn't quite what she made him out to be.

That year, when the army was surrounded and cut off, Scabby and his brothers earned battle-merit and became part of the Tan family's own guard — and as luck would have it, the old General Tan they'd come under was a real character.

Whenever something came up this character always had to strike some improper attitude, and what he loved best was giving people lucky names, never minding whether a man already had one his mother and father gave him. So off the top of his head, to that pack of Scabbys and Stinky-eggs of the Chen family, he'd dealt out names like Dajie, Dawang, Dashun, Dasheng, Dayi, Dazhong, Dahe — Great Victory, Great Fortune, Great Bounty, Great Triumph, Great Duty, Great Loyalty, Great Union, the whole lot of them.

This rotten habit of his had earned him a written reprimand from the present Emperor — the Grand Commandant of those days — and a taste of the military rod besides.

And here the old woman was, using this very business to frighten people.

Fine, then — so long as the two of us get along, let her do her frightening. So long as you don't groan, anything can be talked out. Your groaning sets me thinking of myself: back then I was worse off than you. You groan for your children and grandchildren to hear — and what did I have?

Qi Qian'er played along: "A fine name! When people join as one they grow great; serve in the army and ever triumph, and that's great fortune indeed."

Ai-yo — the words came out so crisp, so wonderfully pleasant to hear, only she couldn't make sense of them.

The old woman ate it right up, softened her manner, and with half a measure more patience coaxed Qi Qian'er: "I'm not frightening you — your man, up at the front, is going to be a general! Him! He's no ordinary sort... You mind and do as you're told from now on, hear me?"

Qi Qian'er acted especially amazed, playing right along.

"Truly?"

"That it is! You, girl — you've fallen into a nest of good fortune, you're to be an official's lady!"

Qi Qian'er turned her face to look at the wintersweet; its leaves were quite green.

Seeing her turn away, the old woman took it for fear, reckoned she'd cowed her, and grew all the more animated: "You, now, listen to me — just be obedient! From now on, dry food or thin, there'll always be a share for you. Be sharp from here on: whatever I tell you to do, you do it! That Madam Qiao — you pay her no mind, hear? I'll not shortchange you, understand?"

So the old woman was getting ready to form a faction? Fine — count me in.

Seeing Qi Qian'er nod, the old woman patted down the tree-leaf-adulterated tobacco in her pipe-bowl and, aping the manner of some genteel old dame she'd once seen, said: "Now then — you tidy up and settle in first, though it won't be for many days; tomorrow we've still got to move on with the army camp, understand?"

The grandest old lady this old woman had ever seen was the old lady of the rich man's house back in their village.

Qi Qian'er showed just the right amount of surprise, lifting her face in astonishment: "Eh? Moving on? To Yanjing?"

Granny, you swing a hammer here and a club there, and you still haven't explained a thing — all you've done is try to scare me.

Oh, go your granny's leg! I can't take it anymore.

The old woman's scrap of patience burned out and her temper flared again — how could you not get through to this dim little donkey? She raised her pipe-bowl and cursed: "Yanjing? Dream on! The likes of you, and Yanjing? When the army moves out tomorrow, one word from the old general and if he says into the river, you jump; if he says up to the sky, you shoot straight up!

"How would I know where to? That's military orders — have you ever seen a military order? Too slow to move and you're dead! When the government soldiers come and find out you're a rebel's dependent, down comes the blade and you're bloody done for! Yanjing, still on about Yanjing — why not go and be a consort in the palace while you're at it?"

Qi Qian'er didn't take up her words; instead she leaned right into the pipe-bowl, set her head beneath it, and, eyes gleaming with mischief, looked at the old woman and said: "Granny! What you're saying makes no sense."

The old woman glared: "Sense? What sense?"

Qi Qian'er blinked and pointed off at the unbroken range of mountains behind the hamlet: "This military order you talk about, this us-having-to-move — the reasoning doesn't hold up."

The old woman had been following the army over four years now — since when did following along need a reason?

"What are you on about? What reasoning? Whose reasoning?"

The war had only just stopped, affairs of state barely settled, and a pack of ungoverned women and children still thought they could wander about at will? No chance! This was it — from the day they'd arrived, unless their men rose high and mighty, Quanhou Village would be the burial ground for the lot of them.

Any day now the second-rank ladies and gentry who couldn't get into Yanjing would come thronging in too, and then everyone would live by their own wits — big fish eating little fish, and the shrimp-fry poking about in the stinking mud.

Qi Qian'er had a money-making reckoning of her own running in her head, and right now, even if it took a trick wrapped inside a trick, she had to scare this old woman into settling where they ought to settle.

Reasoning, is it? Come on, then — let me show you what reasoning is, and what a real scare feels like!